Some duos are so iconic that you might assume they knew each other from elementary school, or else sought each other out for something to do with whatever made them famous. You would then be surprised to find out how some people met. For example, Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't particularly like each other when they met.
College tours aren’t normally life-changing—but in the case of Google’s founders, a walk around Stanford ended up changing the course of their careers (and had a pretty big impact on the rest of us). In 1995, Sergey Brin, then a second-year grad student in computer science, volunteered to be a tour guide for prospective students who had just been admitted to the school. By pure chance, Larry Page, an engineering major from the University of Michigan, ended up in his group.
Although the pair didn’t exactly start off as friends (they clashed during the tour and found each other “obnoxious”) it was a meaningful first impression. Several months later, when Page’s dissertation on the World Wide Web turned into a much bigger project involving a prototype search engine, he needed help building the system—which was originally named BackRub but, thankfully, was renamed to Google. The person he chose for the job? Someone who he had come to respect: his former tour guide.
Would we have Google today if Page and Brin had never met? Would we have the Beatles catalog if Paul McCartney and John Lennon hadn't decided to play music together? How would the world be different today if the future king of England had never met Wallis Simpson? Read how other famous partners, couples, and co-workers met at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Joi Ito)