I'm playing a gigantic map, close star clusters, and all the races and got myself a nice little chunk of the map. All of a sudden, the Iconians (who I'm fighting a culture war with) get a random event in the middle of their territory. All uninabitable planets within 6 sectors are instantly converted to PQ7!
Since I am the galactic leader in both manifaturing and economy, I'm all over it. Suddenly I've got 15 colony ships flying like crazy to get there. Even with warp V, it takes a while. They finally colonize all the planets within reach, and I havn't got them all. So I send a second wave, but faster ships this time. The Altarins get the big idea to take 2 of them for them selves before wave 2 is over. There are still two whole star systems that have 5 planets just waiting each. So wave three starts.
When it is all over, I have almost trippled the size of my empire, and two other civs are drowning in my influence. I start flipping planets like crazy. The other civs start upgrading their influence starbases and mining stations, so I buy them all off of them. Then I figure, why stop there? So I buy the rest of their bases too. Now I've got a good thrid of the map, almost conquered two civs when I have only defenders, and have an income of over 3800/week with social set to max! Only downside is that I can't research much till I've got those first factories built.
Now that's an event!