Short, dispersed radio bursts from extragalactic sources have been the ultimate target of a number of surveys over the last ~1.5 decades. The regular detection and classification of such events could open new avenues through the cosmology of baryonic intergalactic media, relativistic astrophysics, and gravitational wave event markers. Searches for these bursts have produced a number of detections, unfortunately with varying levels of conflict in their interpretation. I will present the peculiar history of, and inherent difficulties in, extragalactic radio burst detection: from the too-good-to-be-true first discovery, through the discovery of "extragalactic" Earth-local events, to more recent reports of possible detections. Finally, I will discuss two recent exciting developments in extragalactic radio burst discovery and exploration, coupled with two surveys: First, the High Time Resolution Universe (HTRU) Survey, which was designed specifically to find highly dispersed millisecond pulsars and extragalactic radio bursts. Searches of this survey recently revealed what appears to be the most compelling case to date for a genuine population of extragalactic radio bursts. Second, the V-Fastr survey is a commensal radio transient detection system on the VLBA which has the capability of detection and localizing bursts like those revealed by HTRU.
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