unfolded

One of the greatest magic tricks I ever saw unfolded when Johnny Carson invited the illusionist Uri Geller on “The Tonight Show” to bend a spoon with his mind.

His attack in El Paso unfolded four and a half months later.

Momentum grinding to a halt, the absurdities and indignities that unfolded before this point are all but forgotten, lost in a swirl of badly rendered pixels.

The show’s slow-moving plot lines meant each disease unfolded over years - as they do in real life.

You can read that as a fluke, a demonstration of climate change or a metaphor: What had unfolded over the previous night and into early Wednesday morning was certainly a form of explosive combustion.