Have you heard of Ben Arous in Tunisia? Or of Timisoara in Romania? Probably not, but both are quite important in one regard: Both were places where major revolutions erupted as a result of a seemingly insignificant incident.

Ben Arous was a place where, in 2011, an unemployed computer technician whose fruit stall had been confiscated by a local police woman decided to set himself on fire. His death resulted in an uprising in Tunisia and set off the Arab Spring. Timisoara in Romania was a town in which, in 1989, the police tried to arrest a local priest, protestors rushed to protect him and soon began the revolution in Romania that toppled Nicolae Ceausescu.