The brainstorm struck alumnus Philip Van Doren Stern, Class of 1924, when he was shaving one morning in the winter of 1938. The unshakeable idea was a story, fully formed in his mind, about a despondent man who rejects suicide and embraces life after a mysterious stranger allows him to see how the world would be had he never been born.
https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/about/inspiring-holiday-classic
https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/about/inspiring-holiday-classic