Random Events

Crop failure
Ship Incident
Small revolt-big revolt
growing black market 
Earth quake

Colonial flashpoint: a local ruler tries to defect from one country to another.
Tidal wave hits an area.
Carrington Event.
Horse horde starts forming an empire.
Native forces try organising a united front against colonial powers.

Mujahideen.
The War of Jenkin's Ear or Pastry War between two player nations.
Whaling crisis, we are running out of whales.
A twin tailed comet appears in the sky followed by earthquakes and erruptions.
Super-volcano eruption.

Krakatoa goes boom.
A new landmass is discovered.
New islands are discovered.
A miniature ice age hits.
Years without winters hit.

Once in a lifetime torrential rainstorms and flooding.
Unseasonably warm temperatures lead to increased icebergs and calving events, the northern and southern seas are more dangerous.
Space rocks rain down from the sky and damage infrastructure and even crush houses.
Locust plagues start becoming an issue due to declining bird populations.
Major smogs start hitting industrial cities.

Major ports and water ways (the Dragkona Strait) freeze over further south than usual.
A major technological breakthrough occurs (powered heavier than air flight for instance).
The moon has major volcanic eruption after getting hit by an asteroid, startling the scientific community.
A major coal deposit catches on fire, starting a scare over peak coal hitting.
An economic bubble pops starting a stock market crash.

The Springtime of Nations hits, excepting of course those countries which have recently had to deal with such an event. (Me.)
Someone tries to stop the international slave trade.
A Great Awakening Event hits and we have to deal with a new wave of religiosity hitting our countries.
The public turns against magic and start demanding witch hunts and magic be outlawed.
The public loses faith in sciencemen (bad weather predictions) and start turning more towards spiritualism.

An idiot nails his complaints to a door starting off a series of religious reformations and wars.
Due to lack of regulation and certain parties trading in it heavily, countries start seeing opium and cocaine addictions becoming more common.
A new religious doctrine spreads, specifically against displaying or making images of the divine. Iconoclasm becomes an issue.
The Blues and the Greens race each other in the hippodrome, leading to international controversy after their fans start mass riots.
Women start bombing people and demanding suffrage in countries which have voting rights.

A man by the name of Jan Hus has started challenging established religious rites, arguing that the common folk and the priests should partake in the same ceremonies and read the same texts. His supporters, the Hussites, are becoming militant and are raring for a fight to defend their new found egalitarianism.
Colonial outrage spreads as rumours of the army using lard, tallow, or other religiously proscribed substances hit the colonial forces. Mutinies, ho!