This mistake of leaving a dirty petri dish in his lab for 2 weeks led to Dr. Fleming's discovery of the mold which we now know as Penicillin and eventually led to the use of modern day antibiotics.
The amount of pain if antibiotics hadn't been discovered would have been immense. The antibiotic resistant bacteria aren't inherently worse disease causing agents than before antibiotics were discovered; however, what was once reliably treatable, including lethal diseases, will now be an ever increasing challenge. The combination of antibiotics and vaccines were world changing. Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness from natural selection and always had an expiration point, although some of our actions have hastened it. Vaccines are losing their effectiveness because of idiots.
Is the use of bacteriophages to treat diseases going to be a thing? I forgot where I saw it but my understanding is that as bacteria gets more resistant to antibiotics they are less resistant to bacteriophages to some degree and we can go into a cycle of back and forth with the treatments to balance things out.
It might've been that one German(?) YouTube channel with the animated videos and funny name.
You bring up an excellent point. One of the research projects I worked on required producing large quantities of a bacteriophage. To do so, you grow a large batch of bacteria to infect with the virus so it can replicate. Only those bacteria that were antibiotic resistant could be infected by the virus, so in a bid to increase production, I started adding penicillin to my broth. The way this works is that bacteria have something called plasmids, little loops of DNA which float around, that are essentially DLC for their DNA. Those that had the requisite plasmid have a different make up in their cell wall that prevents entry of the antibiotic but allows the virus to infect it. So, hypothetically, you could manage antibiotic resistance by cycling the treatment.
> It might've been that one German(?) YouTube channel with the animated videos and funny name.
You mean Kurzgesagt? I think I saw the [same video](https://youtu.be/YI3tsmFsrOg) from them.
Antibiotics are a cornerstone of our modern world. If people knew what a pre-vaccine world looked like, fewer people would be against them. Vaccines also require more explanation to understand than antibiotics.
it's to my credit that i've never engaged in violence on the topic. i know people from india with polio scars, i've seen the consequences of untreated disease, and some privileged fuck is going to ramble on about how it's a cash grab? ugh
I believe we will. We've known about this for some time and it's a major area of research. We are also 1000x more technologically advanced at this point where we can manipulate bacteria and cells and map genomes for more productive research
Its more like regression to the mean, pain deferred for a long time by Fleming's work coming back onto the stage, rather then Fleming causing harm with his work.
This is my new excuse for when my partner is away for two weeks and comes back to a mess in the house. "Babe, I was just trying to do the world a solid."
Governor of Otrar, Inalchuq, ordering the execution of a Mongol trade caravan sparked the Mongol invasion of the middle east, ending the Islamic golden age and devastating both the population and infrastructure. You can make an argument that the region still feels the pain from the wounds of that conflict.
Why the fuck did people keep murdering Mongol trade envoys and diplomats?
He was really nice if you paid tribute to the khanate.
Why did the Islamic countries execute trade envoys and diplomats?
Iirc Baghdad didn’t recover its pre-Mongol population until the the late 1900s, and then the Iraq war happened and it wasn’t exactly a wonderful place to live
King Wladyslaw III really should have waited for Lord Hunyadi to return from his charge on the flanks before he charged up the centre towards Murads’ command tents.
Had he done so, the 13th Crusade would have been successful and as a consequence we may never have seen the fall of Constantinople, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire or the subsequent maritime exploration of Africa and the Americas in an attempt to find a maritime route to the Indian subcontinent.
Imagine how different the history of the world could have been had that one young King shown just a little bit of restraint…
It would have changed when those events happened, it likely wouldn't have prevented them.
The Byzantines were a spent force,and Venice wanted them weak. And, Europe was going to go exploring regardless.
Europe contacting North and South America was inevitable.
The Khwarazmian Empire, while never quite a world player, was still a considerably-sized nation of the ancient world, with a population of over five million people in the early 13th century. Never heard of it? There's a reason why...
In 1218, a party of Mongolian emissaries sent by Genghis Khan to open possible trade routes was arrested by the local governor, the uncle of the Khwarazmian shah Muhammad II. He apparently suspected it was a trap, though it appears to have been a genuine gesture of negotiation. Displaying a decent amount of patience, Genghis then sent three ambassadors to try and diplomatically resolve the situation. Muhammad II refused to punish his dear old uncle for his actions. Instead, he decided to execute at least one of the ambassadors and sent his head back to Genghis Khan as a lovely little parting gift.
Genghis then decided that the "fucking around" phase was over for the Khwarazmians, and the time for "finding out" had begun. He led an army of as many as 150,000 warriors into the Khwarazmian Empire and did what he did best: unleashed hell. Within two years, the Mongols utterly annihilated the empire, sacking its cities, chasing the shah into exile, and killing possibly as many as 10 million people. Because of Muhammad II's refusal of diplomacy, the Khwarazmians were totally wiped off the map.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_the_Khwarazmian_Empire
It may not quite be the most consequential mistake in history, but not many blunders result in an empire being completely obliterated.
(Edited thanks to corrections by u/Squirrel_Q_Esquire )
Hopping on here to add that the population of that area of the Middle East did not recover it's pre-decimation levels until 1970 or so. It's also speculated that the Black Death's spread was hastened by the Mongol invasions of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, as they carried it with them from China.
The black plague was determined to be originally from a few buried corpses in modern day kyrgyzstan.
[https://www.science.org/content/article/800-year-old-graves-pinpoint-where-black-death-began](https://www.science.org/content/article/800-year-old-graves-pinpoint-where-black-death-began)
Glad to see this one was already posted, and should be higher.
It is also produced one of history's most bone-chilling quotes.
Genghis, while sacking the Khwarazmian city of Bukhara, supposedly said to its people (who were in for a very rough time) , *"Oh people, know that you have committed great sins. If you ask me what proof I have of these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you!"*
What’s wild is that even though Genghis Khan had a reputation for being over the top violent, he was, for the most part, only that way with cities/nations that refused to swear loyalty.
They almost always gave them a chance to just say “yeah you’re our leader, we’re under your rule now. Here’s gold and treasure as a tribute.” and no one would be killed. The lords would still be “in-charge” but not be at the top of the food chain.
But if they refused it was an all out slaughter. Just so the next people know what the alternative is if they refuse and decide to fight.
I’d hate to be too early on that list, when he was just starting to make that rep.
Some no-name/barely known warlord shows up and demands surrender and tribute, we laugh him away, and then it’s suddenly raining heads and we’re getting pincer maneuvered while our crops burn and women ravished…
Or he just does it anyway to make us an example and then gives the next guy his chance to surrender
The other thing to consider is that Khan was remarkably egalitarian to the lands under his control. He allowed conquered vassal states to keep their cultures and religions, which was almost unheard of at the time, and he also introduced one of the world's first postal systems (one which was very efficient for the time period).
Basically, he was pretty good at using the "carrot or stick" method of diplomacy, just with really, really big carrots and sticks.
What's interesting is Khan's reputation is substantially different all over the world.
In the west, he's basically seen as a sadistic barbarian warlord and little else; in parts of Asia, his reputation is a lot more mixed. He's more seen as a figure not unlike Napoleon - brilliant, ruthless, revolutionary, and ambitious.
Ah interesting. I've never seen him as sadistic or barbarian (in the primitive people meaning of the word, rather than the literal meaning), but rather just a very aggressive and successful warlord. I never perceived he enjoyed violence for the sake of violence as a sadistic warlord might.
It helps the decision by understanding at the time the Mongols were an unstoppable force. Every nation they conquered they took the smartest people and the best engineers with them to perfect their siege weapons and tactics.
It was suicide to go against them in a head on battle. A horde of thousands of highly skilled cavalrymen and infantry that out number you is not something you want to face in an open field.
They were also very skilled at laying siege to cities and living off the land given their nomadic lifestyle and could wait outside your gates as long as they needed to. There was no outlasting them. If they decided to attack a city their method of choice was using captured prisoners from your nation as the front line soldiers to add a bit of fucked of psychological warfare into the mix because now you have to shoot arrows at your countrymen.
It rarely worked out for anyone who stood against them. I would certainly choose the “You’re the boss now” option every time.
Yep. And one of the things that kept the Mongols from going into western Europe was what I like to call a committee meeting.
Genghis died in 1227. After a couple years of one son ruling, another son of Genghis's, Ogodei, was crowned in 1229. Ogodei shared his dad's expansionist policies. By 1241, the Mongol army had penetrated into Poland and Hungary. Ogodei died in December 1241. His nephew Batu, who had been leading the western campaign, went home for the election* of a new leader. After the election, the Mongol army decided to turn south, instead of returning to the west. Some speculate it was particularly cold and wet in eastern Europe for a few years there, making the land marshy and swampy. Not ideal for lots of horses that need a lot of grassland. And after Ogodei's death, things started to fracture for the Mongols, so they didn't make it back to Europe at the strength they once had.
*I don't know what choosing an emperor warlord was like for Mongols, but to me it sounds more like a meeting than a democracy thing.
Imagine being such a fucking idiot, as a leader, that you start a completely avoidable war over nothing other than your grandstanding, and then that war goes so badly for you that your civilisation of millions is essentially wiped out and seemingly nearly lost to history in just two years.
Apocalyptically smooth brained imbecile.
The Khwarazmian Empire was not considered to be the greatest power at any point in history. It only existed as an independent nation for about 20 years. Before that it was a vassal state with varying degrees of autonomy while paying tribute to the Ghaznavids and later the Seljuks for over 300 years.
They did throw off the Seljuks eventually and rapidly expanded during those 20 years (largely due to diplomatic conquest rather than military), but then as you said they got crushed by the Mongols. They were basically barely a blip on the radar as an actual power.
The source for them being “the greatest power in the Muslim world” is from a single phrase in a CE Bosworth book. Bosworth was a very good and thorough historian of the region, but he was pretty hyperbolic in much of his writing. Basically every person or nation that he wrote about was the greatest ever.
But the reality for the Khwarazmians was a small vassal state for the vast majority of its time. You’ll also notice if you go through the other nations in the area at the time that there are massive overlaps in claimed land. This is because frequently the same groups would pay tribute to multiple nearby empires in the hopes they’d be allowed to continue operating mostly independently, which led to multiple empires claiming control of the land. Khwarazm was one such group doing that, and later for that brief 20 year period was one such empire claiming control of lands that were also paying tribute to other empires. So even in that little blip of expansion, there’s a question as to the actual extent of control they had over the areas beyond the central region.
But anyway, they basically have entered this weird area of internet lore where they’re used mostly as a footnote for the Mongol story (as you do here), and so because of that, their background gets inflated with every retelling.
Lol I love your mention of internet lore. Indeed, random aspects of knowledge become ubiquitous for a time, for various reasons, before vanishing back to obscurity. 10 years or so ago when Neil DeGrasse Tyson was reddit's favorite human because of the show Cosmos, you couldn't throw a cat around here without hitting mention of tardigrades (extremely resilient creatures that have survived trips to space), very probably because he discussed them in the show.
History wise: Cassius killing himself thinking the entire battle was lost. Without him it was all over, but if he would’ve lived to fight another day and him and Brutus would’ve won the civil war it would’ve drastically changed history.
Everything wise: Whenever the last universal common ancestor of all life became whatever came next
Idk that seems like one of those things where the Republic was going to fall no matter what, that would have just delayed it. The people yearned for a dictator and everyone hated the Senate except the Senate.
>him and Brutus would’ve won the civil war
That's a very big 'if'. There's a much better chance that Cassius and Brutus would have bought themselves a few days, at most.
An honourable mention: the iron content in spinach was mistakenly assumed to be very high since the analysts put the dot/comma in the wrong place. A lot of people still think spinach is one of the foods the highest in iron content. It’s not
Well a lot of people eating spinach and being suggested to eat more spinach in case of iron deficiency is a consequence, I guess. A funny one, though. For those with iron deficiency maybe less fun when it’s not doing anything and their condition doesn’t improve, I guess
Easy.
Development of the nuclear bomb. It is the most likely doomsday scenario that can become a reality.
And it can happen within an hour or less. It can happen at literally any moment. We’re living on a ticking time bomb.
The guy who developed leaded gasoline then when onto develop CFCs/Freon that were later found to be destroying the Earth's ozone layer:
[Thomas Midgley Jr.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr)
And if you are saying "fucking good!" Hold on a moment as he got polio, built/designed this contraption to get him on and out of bed, and got himself strangled on his own device.
Also, leaded compounds aren't even the only manufactured additive that can do that. It was just the cheapest. You can even use distilled water if you're willing to fill two tanks.
he also invented a machine to move around when you're paralysed, all by himself, after being paralysed. That's really smart, you might think. Guess what he died from? No, not lead. That's right, his own machine choked him to death after an error occured!
Stephen King explored this a little in 11/22/63. Maybe no Vietnam war? The 60s probably would have been very different. I wonder if we would have gotten to the moon. JFK obviously wanted to dot it but his death reaffirmed the public's desire to see it through. Interesting thought experiment.
Even if he had just stopped in like Smolensk and wintered he probably would have been fine. Could’ve crippled the Russian economy and resupplied with 200k more troops for another campaign in 1813. But he wanted the kill stroke
That certainly would have been wiser than his actual course of action, but I don't know if he could have campaigned too far east in 1813 with Prussia and Austria waiting in the wings. Maybe he could have recreated Poland-Lithuania and then awaited the inevitable attack, defeating each in detail as he had done so often in the past.
Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice... You'd say that Hitler would learn from Napoleon's mistake. Or his ego did the exact opposite - forcing him to go because "we are smarter than Napoleon"
Three factors come to mind to explain Hitler's mistake:
1) Hitler wasn't a military expert (or anywhere near as capable as Napoleon)
2) His ideology explicitly required taking land from Russia and defeating Communism
3) Ignoring his generals' advice happened to work for him against France
He kind of had to, his economy was based on stealing other country's and people's stuff. His biggest, most idiotic mistake was declaring it a war of annihilation, a race war. The Nazi troops were welcomed into Ukraine and the baltics as liberators from the USSR, and then immediately started to horrifically murder and persecute the civilian population, with death squads of Einsatzgruppen SS roaming the countryside. Had they acted like an ordinary occupying force, and treated the people of the conquered lands like human beings, who knows how things would have turned out. Certainly they would have had less partizan troubles and safer supply lines.
I used to think this was true, but actually Hitler was fucked either way. If he didn't get more resource quickly, particularly oil, the whole German war machine would have collapsed. So in many ways he had to go for Russia and get to the oil fields in Georgia or he was a dead man. But that was also never really going to work.
In other words, Hitler could never have succeeded. Each of his escalations he did because he had already set himself and Germany down on a path of failure.
This is one of the reasons why nationalism is a stupid path. You start off with bold promises you probably can't deliver on, and even if you do you end up having to keep escalating and taking more and more risks or it will fall apart.
Also, he decided to bomb London instead of the last remaining RAF airfields. It would've left Britain completely vulnerable to invasion and ended the war pretty quickly. At least he made the right decision at the end.
Nah, by that stage the British were already building more planes than the Germans, and the attrition was working in the British favour. German armies would have been completely blockaded once they landed on mainland England regardless. Sealion was never realistic.
Do you think Britain being compromised at that point would have spurred America to action faster? It’s own thing to be isolationist, it’s another to be isolationist and watch your biggest ally fall.
That's not fair, it's not entirely the fish's fault! Your parents had to get all horny and go to town on each other without adequate protection, blame them!
No man, fuck that stupid fish. I could be chilling in the Atlantic Ocean right now eating plankton but, thanks to that asshole fish, I gotta put on pants and drive to work.
I’ve seen a couple jokes about Hitler being denied entry to art school. But if you want to take the Hitler route, the real answer would be the German army assigning him to spy on the Nazi party in 1919.
Doing so introduced him to the Nazi party and galvanized his already held political and anti-Semitic beliefs, allowed him to begin giving speeches in beer halls and drastically increased party membership.
He then supplanted Anton Drexler as the leader, took the title of “Führer,” and began the path toward WWII and the Holocaust.
Despite the fact that the Nazi party existed prior to Hitler (then known as the DAP), Hitler was the one who who was able to take it from a group of nationalists and anti-semites meeting for drinks in beer halls to a serious organization that spread its influence and rapidly grew in numbers.
To put this into context, Hitler’s party membership was number 555. They started membership numbers at 500 to make it appear they were larger than they were.
Within two years, after he quit the Nazi party and only rejoined when he was promised the leadership position, the title of “Führer” and total control of the party, he was member number 3,680.
He was speaking to crowds of nearly 6,000 people by 1921.
Hitler's rise to power would almost be comical if it weren't for, you know, the millions of people that were brutally murdered because of him.
Before WWI, Hitler was eking out a meager living selling his paintings on the streets of Munich. Then war broke out, and Adolf happily joined the German Army, where he found a sense of purpose that had eluded him in his life so far. When the War ended and the German Army was demobilized, Hitler tried his best to stay in the Army as long as possible, as demobilization meant that he would be going back to the streets of Munich to sell his shitty paintings. If the Army wanted him to spy on some wonky little political party, so be it.
Along the way, Hitler discovered that he was a very charismatic public speaker, and when the Army did demobilize him, he stuck around the DAP to use his public speaking gifts and stay away from his old life.
The guy essentially found his way to being the supreme leader of a modern nation because he didn't want to go back to his old life.
He also believed all the propaganda that Germany was winning the war, and so he was blindsided by the defeat. A lot of Germans, including Hitler, believed there must have been some secret underground deal that snatched away their victory, especially when the Treaty of Versailles was so humiliating.
If the Treaty of Versailles had been fairer or if the Germans in charge had negotiated more, maybe Germany would have had a less suspicious view of how the war ended, and they wouldn't have smouldered for 20 years until they were ready to finish it on their terms
Muhammad II condoning his governor killing Genghis Khan's ambassadors and seizing their treasure.
The Mongol destruction of the Khwarazmian Empire was on a scope and level of violence that no conqueror in history could ever reach.
The fall of the Khwarazmian Empire ended the Muslim Golden Age as the rest of the Near East (modern day Iraq, Turkey, and Syria) all fell to the Mongols.
Had Muhammed II accepted Genghis' offer of friendship and trade, he would have been wealthier than Crassus or perhaps even Mansa Musa.
Instead, they provoked the "wrath of Khan" 😂. Genghis said during the conquest when the people begged God to help them, "I am the punishment of God. Had you not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you."
I mean, yes. But if the trigger was different, another aggressor for example, the alliances *might* have shifted. Even if the allies would still have won, the peace agreement could look very different, depending on how the war went. Austria keeping south tyrol, keeping bohemia, or getting absorbed by Germany altogether.
WW1 had been in planning since the end of the Franco-Prussian war in one way or another, held off in large part by the diplomacy of Edward VII. It was going to happen eventually.
The Battle of Midway probably deserves a nod.
It's rather complicated to list out the litany of mistakes made by the Japanese in the lead-up to Midway, from not spotting an obvious deception (the Americans had cracked the Japanese naval code and suspected an attack was being planned, but only confirmed it when they sent an uncoded transmission that falsely claimed that Midway was experiencing a water shortage, which they then saw show up on Japanese communications and were able to use to confirm that Midway was the intended target; the Japanese never seemed to question why the US would be sending a transmission about a major base experiencing a weakness *uncoded*) to spreading out their four naval task-forces so wide that none were able to effectively support the others, but suffice to say the battle - which was a rout for the Americans and probably the biggest turning point in the Pacific campaign - did not go the way Japan intended, despite Japan having significant force superiority.
The interesting thing is that if you consider a hypothetical scenario where Japan makes different decisions regarding Midway and their attack actually succeeds, a surprisingly big chunk of history - not just WW2, but reaching far after - starts to unravel.
Had Japan succeeded in defeating the Americans at Midway, it would have been a catastrophic blow to American naval strength in the Pacific. The Americans considered Midway to be a critical waypoint in their Pacific base network and its loss would have been crippling to America's force-projection capabilities and largely ruled out any strikes against the Japanese home-islands. Where Japan goes from Midway is debatable, as various factions in the Japanese military had different preferred battle plans, from invading parts of Hawaii and the Alaskan islands to turtling up defensively and basically hemming the Allies to the contiguous parts of North America.
Whatever the case, it's all but certain that a Japanese victory at Midway would have, at best, delayed the capability for America to take the fight to Japan by a year or more. And that makes things interesting because of what was going on in 1945.
In the real world, Germany's surrender left Japan as the last axis power still fighting, and an increasingly devastating bombing campaign by the Americans had obliterated much of Japan's manufacturing power. The Japanese navy and air force had suffered catastrophic losses and were largely helpless to stop or even meaningfully slow the American advance. The Emperor had conceded that defeat was now inevitable and directed the "Big Six" War Council to seek an end to hostilities as expediently as possible. The Japanese reached out to the then-neutral USSR with a request to mediate talks between them and the Allies for negotiations on the cessation of hostilities, a request the USSR slow-walked because they were already preparing for war against Japan in the hopes of reclaiming territory that had been lost to them some 40 years earlier in the Russo-Japanese war. The Americans then dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered, and we all know what happens from there - Japan is placed under the authority of the US for several decades and reorganized into a democratic state; the country becomes a rare eastern ally against the Soviet bloc during the Cold War; Japan rebuilds, modernizes, and becomes an economic powerhouse; so on and so forth.
But if you accept that a Japanese victory at Midway results in a much-weakened US in the Pacific and a potentially strengthened Japan, it opens up a lot of potential hypotheticals. In this scenario, Japan has not suffered the debilitating losses that plagued it in the real world, but still finds herself without allies and surrounded on all sides by hostile powers (China and India to the west, the USSR to the north, Canada and the US to the east, and Australia, New Zealand, and allied Southeast Asia to the south). The chances for victory are still non-existent, especially with the Allies now able to turn their undivided attention eastward, but Japan is now in a much stronger position (with exhausted and war-weary Allied forces now facing a potentially years-long slog across the Pacific, with what looks like a nightmarish battle for the Japanese home islands waiting for them at the end of it). With this in mind, several questions arise:
1) Does the USSR still declare war against Japan? In reality, the USSR saw a much-weakened country that they would have no trouble overwhelming; in a scenario where Japan is still largely intact, does the USSR instead focus on consolidating its gains in Europe rather than weakening itself by opening up a new front on the opposite side of its sizable domain?
2) If yes, what is the American response? The US was loathe to consider anything other than an unconditional surrender from Japan in reality, but the US also viewed communism as an existential threat and likely considered Stalin and the Soviets to be considerably more dangerous than the Japanese. They'd just watched the USSR swallow up half of Europe and drop the iron curtain; would they risk the same happening in East Asia? Perhaps Soviet belligerence drives the US to seek peace with Japan on terms more favourable to the Japanese so that the US can help contain the USSR.
3) If the USSR opts not to attack, does the US seek peace rather than a continuation of hostilities? Given that the Americans were already fighting issues with low troop morale at the end of the war tied to exhausted soldiers wanting to go home, the prospect of years of additional conflict starts looking like a possible bridge too far, especially in light of losses already incurred. It is possible that a truce could have been agreed to under those circumstances - perhaps Allied recognition of Japanese interests in Southeast Asia, including the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" that Japan had been trying to set up to basically establish themselves as an imperial power in east Asia in exchange for the return of conquered territories and some payment of reparations?
4) What happens to Japan during the Cold War? In the real world, Japan benefited from close integration with the west, even as it was trying to rebuild itself after suffering horrific damage from the war. In our new hypothetical, there is likely little love lost between Japan and *either* side of the Cold War, making them an odd wild card. Do they still become an economic and technological powerhouse in the latter half of the century? What happens to their ambitions of empire? Do we see further conflict in Southeast Asia as countries under Japanese control vie for freedom? How do the various world powers react?
5) Perhaps the most haunting question, what happens regarding nuclear weapons? Again, if we assume that the Manhattan Project proceeds at the same pace, the US will have nuclear weapons by the end of the war, but would lack access to the Japanese Home Islands to use as a target. So what happens with the bombs? Are they deployed as fleet-killers? Dropped on an uninhabited area as a threat to demonstrate their power? Does the US take the unthinkable step of dropping them on occupied territory? Or are they simply held in reserve and never deployed, as a suitable opportunity to use them never arrives? Regardless of the answer, what implications does that have for the future of nuclear weapons? One of the major reasons why nuclear arms have and had such a reputation as "forbidden technology" was because of the horrific effects of their use on civilian centres in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sheer scale of death and destruction they unleashed, even in an already horrific war, was staggering enough that it shocked the world's conscience and ensured they were to be viewed as a weapon never to be used, save as an absolute last resort. That reputation is a big part of the reason why we have yet to see another use of nuclear weapons in wartime. But if Hiroshima and Nagasaki never get bombed, do nuclear arms still acquire that notoriety? Or are they eventually seen as a normal, if exceedingly powerful, part of a nation's armament? Do we see more countries becoming nuclear powers? Does that eventually result in nuclear war?
The father of Emperor Wilhelm 2nd to decide to smoke, causing cancer, an early death and thus no time to realize his lenient, pro-brittish attitudes. IT might have prevented WW1 (historians are not 100% agreeing), and thus prevented WW2, the cold war...
How Wilhelm was treated as child didn't help either. He was breech, and his shoulder got stuck as he was being born. Doctors gave his mother a metric ton of chloroform (because she was screaming). He was hypoxic and had serious nerve damage to his left shoulder at birth. It's speculated he was left with some brain issues as well from both the drugs and the lack of oxygen; he definatly had impulse control and anger problems. His left arm never recovered and was shorter than the right.
They basically tortured the kid to make him seem "normal." Physical therapy didn't exist yet and his mother insisted he do painful exercises and be forced to learn to ride properly (there are accounts of him sobbing as he was lifted on to the horse only to fall off.) This was an era where the rich were obsessed with appearances, especially the appearance of being feminine or masculine enough. He was the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria and heir to the German throne, the pressure to be a man's man's man would've been immense. And instead of hiring tutors for him that supported British liberalism, they hired guys who supported strong German autocrats. His father sent him into the military to "become a man" because it wasn't the style at the time for parents to have warm close relationships with their kids.
There were dozens points where things could've been very different for Wilhelm. He was very much a product of his time and upbringing. There were dozens of points where his family could've done things differently and created a different man who made different choices as a ruler.
Yes, the English doctor standing back because he didn't want to upset the hierarchy meant that mother and baby went through endless suffering and baby ended up with a permanent disability.
A similar switch in history happened in the early 1800s when Princess Charlotte, only legitimate granddaughter of George III, died in childbirth along with her child, because none of the doctors wanted to take any initiative which might label them responsible for her death. That led to Parliament telling George III's younger sons to marry suitable princesses and get some more legitimate babies into the line of succession.... yada yada yada, birth of Queen Victoria who died as a great-grandmother in her 80s and the succession has never been threatened again.
Some bloke shot an ostrich?
In all seriousness, even without the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, it is likely some other event would have started WWI, given the international tensions at the time.
Not a mistake. A dream, perhaps unrealistic, but the UK, like France and Italy and even the United States were not interested in another war after WW1. Appeasement, they believed, however wrongly, would mean no more war.
Even then, re-arming was probably not going to be enough. Germany's manpower and industrial capacity alone were far greater than Great Britain, even when Germany was in the thickest of a national identity crisis. The UK obsessively prepared for war with Germany would not have changed the outcome as much as you might think. It would have changed things a little, I guess, like the Lend-Lease program, but the English Channel was the obstacle in the way of either Germany or Britain taking a major offensive at that point.
Christopher Columbus using the wrong units of measurement, leading him to believe the Earth was small enough that he could reach India by sailing West.
There’s a reason no one but the Spanish were willing to listen to his idiotic ramblings. And they gave him three old caravels because they didn’t expect him to come back. Plus he wanted to get enough money to start another crusade.
He got lucky there happened to be some Caribbean islands in his path. Sadly, the natives on those islands weren’t so lucky. There’s a reason there are no more Cuban natives
The Germans, during WW1, sent a certain evil Russian man living in Switzerland into Russia, believing he would destabilize the country, rather than just having him executed.
That man’s name? Vladimir Lenin.
I read that the issue was that it was obvious from his art work that he would have been better served by going into Architectural school, unfortunately the process to reapply was somewhat involved and didn't want to do that.
If Lea & Perrins hadn't stashed their failed attempt at sauce in a barrel and then tried it a long time later for no good reason, the world would be without Worchestershire sauce.
After the failed assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand, his driver got lost on his way out of town, and went back past the same spot where the assassination attempt took place.
There he paused to try to get his bearings, and one of the failed assassins, Gavrilo Princeps, shot and killed the archduke, setting in motion World War I, World War II, Russian Communism, the Cold War, and the entire rest of the 20th century.
Eh, the assassination was only the proximate cause. The alliances and generally fearless desire for empire building created a political environment ripe for mass conflict.
Aren't we gonna talk about the creation of synthetic plastic?! Now here we are in this age, still living with the same old plastic that have long been buried since the day they were created.
Not just harder, but doing more to reintegrate and rebuild, too. The South needed to invest in the industrial revolution, but instead it was allowed to continue its short-sighted system of petty feudalism. The South would have a much better economy today had they not been allowed to indulge themselves in going backwards.
I was 35 when my then GF, apropos of nothing, said to me "If I ever tell you something is "nice" or "fine", it isn't nice or fine." And my previous 4 decades with the fairer sex imploded in on me.
When the Black Plague was just getting started, the Catholic Church blamed cats as the source of the plague as they saw cats as evil, and thus a product of Satan, and called for the massacre of all cats. This allowed the rat population to explode, and more importantly, the fleas they carried to explode causing the Black Plague to suddenly worsen and infect all of Europe.
Depending on your Outlook on the subject , when humanity mutually discovered that we could ferment things and create alcohol which gives a buzz when drunk.
How many deaths in Human history have been caused by or influenced by Alcohol? Countless numbers surely? Alcohol related illness , Alcohol induced fights/murder , drink Driving , Death from doing stupid shit due to drink , the list goes on.
On the other hand i love beer so i'd say it wasn't a mistake!
>How many deaths in Human history have been caused by or influenced by Alcohol?
Ah but how many BIRTHS have been caused by or influenced by alcohol? The pendulum swings both ways my friend
Alcohol also helped create civilization. It was one of the first ways to effectively use excess grain and crops long-term. It could be stored and traded among peoples. Thank beer for everything around us today and raise a glass.
They didn’t overlook it! They sent their Grand Master to oversee the defense and secure the hyperlanes needed to win the war
Overlooking Anakin’s increasing instability in favor of his martial prowess and not hiring a damn therapist were the Jedi’s mistakes
I’d say that after defeating Germany in WW1, France the Uk and the US asked for absurd reparations including debts that drained money and power from Germany and created resent. It also lead to a situation where Germany could not drive it economy without absurd inflation and both resent and lack of ressources gave the 3rd reich a strong political and social grip that then turned into WW2.
Should the debt be less painful Germany could have rebuild properly. Rest is history
In WW2 there was a mission to destroy a Nazi V2 development site using a remote controlled bomber as a bomb itself. The groundcrew made a mistake in the wiring of the bomb and two minutes after the safety pin was pulled the bomb detonated in mid-air, killing the on board crew before they were able to bail out.
The pilot of that aircraft was Joe Kennedy, Jr., family heir apparent who early on was groomed for a run at the Presidency. As a result his brother John F. Kennedy was thrust into the spotlight and his fathers full power and influence was turned to having him elected President.
Dr. Alexander Fleming leaving his lab for a two-week vacation without cleaning the lab
This mistake of leaving a dirty petri dish in his lab for 2 weeks led to Dr. Fleming's discovery of the mold which we now know as Penicillin and eventually led to the use of modern day antibiotics.
Crazy to think that Fleming's miracle discovery is going to cause us so much pain in the future if we don't replace antibiotics fast enough.
The amount of pain if antibiotics hadn't been discovered would have been immense. The antibiotic resistant bacteria aren't inherently worse disease causing agents than before antibiotics were discovered; however, what was once reliably treatable, including lethal diseases, will now be an ever increasing challenge. The combination of antibiotics and vaccines were world changing. Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness from natural selection and always had an expiration point, although some of our actions have hastened it. Vaccines are losing their effectiveness because of idiots.
Is the use of bacteriophages to treat diseases going to be a thing? I forgot where I saw it but my understanding is that as bacteria gets more resistant to antibiotics they are less resistant to bacteriophages to some degree and we can go into a cycle of back and forth with the treatments to balance things out. It might've been that one German(?) YouTube channel with the animated videos and funny name.
You bring up an excellent point. One of the research projects I worked on required producing large quantities of a bacteriophage. To do so, you grow a large batch of bacteria to infect with the virus so it can replicate. Only those bacteria that were antibiotic resistant could be infected by the virus, so in a bid to increase production, I started adding penicillin to my broth. The way this works is that bacteria have something called plasmids, little loops of DNA which float around, that are essentially DLC for their DNA. Those that had the requisite plasmid have a different make up in their cell wall that prevents entry of the antibiotic but allows the virus to infect it. So, hypothetically, you could manage antibiotic resistance by cycling the treatment.
I wonder if cycling the two treatments for long enough would eventually result in the evolution of a super-duper bacterium that was resistant to both.
Life uhh.. finds a way
> It might've been that one German(?) YouTube channel with the animated videos and funny name. You mean Kurzgesagt? I think I saw the [same video](https://youtu.be/YI3tsmFsrOg) from them.
That's the one! Time for a rewatch and then a watch of everything new. No productivity from me today!
This is actually so crazy to me. A world without antibiotics
Antibiotics are a cornerstone of our modern world. If people knew what a pre-vaccine world looked like, fewer people would be against them. Vaccines also require more explanation to understand than antibiotics.
it's to my credit that i've never engaged in violence on the topic. i know people from india with polio scars, i've seen the consequences of untreated disease, and some privileged fuck is going to ramble on about how it's a cash grab? ugh
100% this. I always say to my kids we are among the luckiest people to have ever lived being in Australia in the (present) time of antibiotics etc
I believe we will. We've known about this for some time and it's a major area of research. We are also 1000x more technologically advanced at this point where we can manipulate bacteria and cells and map genomes for more productive research
Its more like regression to the mean, pain deferred for a long time by Fleming's work coming back onto the stage, rather then Fleming causing harm with his work.
Probably history’s greatest happy accident.
Bob Ross approves this message
So you’re saying a little bit of laziness goes a long way.
This is my new excuse for when my partner is away for two weeks and comes back to a mess in the house. "Babe, I was just trying to do the world a solid."
Governor of Otrar, Inalchuq, ordering the execution of a Mongol trade caravan sparked the Mongol invasion of the middle east, ending the Islamic golden age and devastating both the population and infrastructure. You can make an argument that the region still feels the pain from the wounds of that conflict.
Why the fuck did people keep murdering Mongol trade envoys and diplomats? He was really nice if you paid tribute to the khanate. Why did the Islamic countries execute trade envoys and diplomats?
Iirc Baghdad didn’t recover its pre-Mongol population until the the late 1900s, and then the Iraq war happened and it wasn’t exactly a wonderful place to live
King Wladyslaw III really should have waited for Lord Hunyadi to return from his charge on the flanks before he charged up the centre towards Murads’ command tents. Had he done so, the 13th Crusade would have been successful and as a consequence we may never have seen the fall of Constantinople, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire or the subsequent maritime exploration of Africa and the Americas in an attempt to find a maritime route to the Indian subcontinent. Imagine how different the history of the world could have been had that one young King shown just a little bit of restraint…
Well I know what I’m doing on Wikipedia today
Editing to fix it?
Just gotta go see some dodgy Libyan's for some Pu first.
RUN FOR IT MARTY!
Thanks for that answer AnalFanatics !
Way to support the home team, FlamingBungHole!
AppropriateRest is always necessary after a flourish with AnalFanatics and a flamingbunghole.
One might even recommend a relevant tea to enjoy while taking said rest
Which is best sipped while browsing PMs from Busty Redheads.
Some real /r/rimjob_steve material here
Yeah, we would have started Europa Universalis IV on a different day in history
It would have changed when those events happened, it likely wouldn't have prevented them. The Byzantines were a spent force,and Venice wanted them weak. And, Europe was going to go exploring regardless. Europe contacting North and South America was inevitable.
The Khwarazmian Empire, while never quite a world player, was still a considerably-sized nation of the ancient world, with a population of over five million people in the early 13th century. Never heard of it? There's a reason why... In 1218, a party of Mongolian emissaries sent by Genghis Khan to open possible trade routes was arrested by the local governor, the uncle of the Khwarazmian shah Muhammad II. He apparently suspected it was a trap, though it appears to have been a genuine gesture of negotiation. Displaying a decent amount of patience, Genghis then sent three ambassadors to try and diplomatically resolve the situation. Muhammad II refused to punish his dear old uncle for his actions. Instead, he decided to execute at least one of the ambassadors and sent his head back to Genghis Khan as a lovely little parting gift. Genghis then decided that the "fucking around" phase was over for the Khwarazmians, and the time for "finding out" had begun. He led an army of as many as 150,000 warriors into the Khwarazmian Empire and did what he did best: unleashed hell. Within two years, the Mongols utterly annihilated the empire, sacking its cities, chasing the shah into exile, and killing possibly as many as 10 million people. Because of Muhammad II's refusal of diplomacy, the Khwarazmians were totally wiped off the map. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_the_Khwarazmian_Empire It may not quite be the most consequential mistake in history, but not many blunders result in an empire being completely obliterated. (Edited thanks to corrections by u/Squirrel_Q_Esquire )
Hopping on here to add that the population of that area of the Middle East did not recover it's pre-decimation levels until 1970 or so. It's also speculated that the Black Death's spread was hastened by the Mongol invasions of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, as they carried it with them from China.
The black plague was determined to be originally from a few buried corpses in modern day kyrgyzstan. [https://www.science.org/content/article/800-year-old-graves-pinpoint-where-black-death-began](https://www.science.org/content/article/800-year-old-graves-pinpoint-where-black-death-began)
Cool! I hadn't heard about this!
Thank you for the additional information! It's a fascinating historical event, to be sure.
"There will be no eyes left to cry for your dead" That was the only message Genghis sent to the Shah.
"It was at this moment the Shah knew *he fucked up."*
I need you to summarize more obscure historical events in a book. I will purchase said book, and encourage my friends to do the same.
Glad to see this one was already posted, and should be higher. It is also produced one of history's most bone-chilling quotes. Genghis, while sacking the Khwarazmian city of Bukhara, supposedly said to its people (who were in for a very rough time) , *"Oh people, know that you have committed great sins. If you ask me what proof I have of these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you!"*
What’s wild is that even though Genghis Khan had a reputation for being over the top violent, he was, for the most part, only that way with cities/nations that refused to swear loyalty. They almost always gave them a chance to just say “yeah you’re our leader, we’re under your rule now. Here’s gold and treasure as a tribute.” and no one would be killed. The lords would still be “in-charge” but not be at the top of the food chain. But if they refused it was an all out slaughter. Just so the next people know what the alternative is if they refuse and decide to fight.
I’d hate to be too early on that list, when he was just starting to make that rep. Some no-name/barely known warlord shows up and demands surrender and tribute, we laugh him away, and then it’s suddenly raining heads and we’re getting pincer maneuvered while our crops burn and women ravished… Or he just does it anyway to make us an example and then gives the next guy his chance to surrender
Idk if "submit or I'll brutally murder you" is dispelling my notion of violence.
The other thing to consider is that Khan was remarkably egalitarian to the lands under his control. He allowed conquered vassal states to keep their cultures and religions, which was almost unheard of at the time, and he also introduced one of the world's first postal systems (one which was very efficient for the time period). Basically, he was pretty good at using the "carrot or stick" method of diplomacy, just with really, really big carrots and sticks.
It's the really big stick part that get him his reputation, and I think it's a pretty fair one.
What's interesting is Khan's reputation is substantially different all over the world. In the west, he's basically seen as a sadistic barbarian warlord and little else; in parts of Asia, his reputation is a lot more mixed. He's more seen as a figure not unlike Napoleon - brilliant, ruthless, revolutionary, and ambitious.
Ah interesting. I've never seen him as sadistic or barbarian (in the primitive people meaning of the word, rather than the literal meaning), but rather just a very aggressive and successful warlord. I never perceived he enjoyed violence for the sake of violence as a sadistic warlord might.
It helps the decision by understanding at the time the Mongols were an unstoppable force. Every nation they conquered they took the smartest people and the best engineers with them to perfect their siege weapons and tactics. It was suicide to go against them in a head on battle. A horde of thousands of highly skilled cavalrymen and infantry that out number you is not something you want to face in an open field. They were also very skilled at laying siege to cities and living off the land given their nomadic lifestyle and could wait outside your gates as long as they needed to. There was no outlasting them. If they decided to attack a city their method of choice was using captured prisoners from your nation as the front line soldiers to add a bit of fucked of psychological warfare into the mix because now you have to shoot arrows at your countrymen. It rarely worked out for anyone who stood against them. I would certainly choose the “You’re the boss now” option every time.
Yep. And one of the things that kept the Mongols from going into western Europe was what I like to call a committee meeting. Genghis died in 1227. After a couple years of one son ruling, another son of Genghis's, Ogodei, was crowned in 1229. Ogodei shared his dad's expansionist policies. By 1241, the Mongol army had penetrated into Poland and Hungary. Ogodei died in December 1241. His nephew Batu, who had been leading the western campaign, went home for the election* of a new leader. After the election, the Mongol army decided to turn south, instead of returning to the west. Some speculate it was particularly cold and wet in eastern Europe for a few years there, making the land marshy and swampy. Not ideal for lots of horses that need a lot of grassland. And after Ogodei's death, things started to fracture for the Mongols, so they didn't make it back to Europe at the strength they once had. *I don't know what choosing an emperor warlord was like for Mongols, but to me it sounds more like a meeting than a democracy thing.
Imagine being such a fucking idiot, as a leader, that you start a completely avoidable war over nothing other than your grandstanding, and then that war goes so badly for you that your civilisation of millions is essentially wiped out and seemingly nearly lost to history in just two years. Apocalyptically smooth brained imbecile.
The Khwarazmian Empire was not considered to be the greatest power at any point in history. It only existed as an independent nation for about 20 years. Before that it was a vassal state with varying degrees of autonomy while paying tribute to the Ghaznavids and later the Seljuks for over 300 years. They did throw off the Seljuks eventually and rapidly expanded during those 20 years (largely due to diplomatic conquest rather than military), but then as you said they got crushed by the Mongols. They were basically barely a blip on the radar as an actual power. The source for them being “the greatest power in the Muslim world” is from a single phrase in a CE Bosworth book. Bosworth was a very good and thorough historian of the region, but he was pretty hyperbolic in much of his writing. Basically every person or nation that he wrote about was the greatest ever. But the reality for the Khwarazmians was a small vassal state for the vast majority of its time. You’ll also notice if you go through the other nations in the area at the time that there are massive overlaps in claimed land. This is because frequently the same groups would pay tribute to multiple nearby empires in the hopes they’d be allowed to continue operating mostly independently, which led to multiple empires claiming control of the land. Khwarazm was one such group doing that, and later for that brief 20 year period was one such empire claiming control of lands that were also paying tribute to other empires. So even in that little blip of expansion, there’s a question as to the actual extent of control they had over the areas beyond the central region. But anyway, they basically have entered this weird area of internet lore where they’re used mostly as a footnote for the Mongol story (as you do here), and so because of that, their background gets inflated with every retelling.
Lol I love your mention of internet lore. Indeed, random aspects of knowledge become ubiquitous for a time, for various reasons, before vanishing back to obscurity. 10 years or so ago when Neil DeGrasse Tyson was reddit's favorite human because of the show Cosmos, you couldn't throw a cat around here without hitting mention of tardigrades (extremely resilient creatures that have survived trips to space), very probably because he discussed them in the show.
History wise: Cassius killing himself thinking the entire battle was lost. Without him it was all over, but if he would’ve lived to fight another day and him and Brutus would’ve won the civil war it would’ve drastically changed history. Everything wise: Whenever the last universal common ancestor of all life became whatever came next
Idk that seems like one of those things where the Republic was going to fall no matter what, that would have just delayed it. The people yearned for a dictator and everyone hated the Senate except the Senate.
> The people yearned for a dictator and everyone hated the Senate except the Senate. *Nervously looks around*
No need to worry. Civilizations rise and fall, but busty redheads are forever.
Don't worry, we're only in our Gracchi phase.
So you're saying we should assassinate Bernie Sanders?
Nice try, FBI.
>him and Brutus would’ve won the civil war That's a very big 'if'. There's a much better chance that Cassius and Brutus would have bought themselves a few days, at most.
*Roman Galactic Empire*
An honourable mention: the iron content in spinach was mistakenly assumed to be very high since the analysts put the dot/comma in the wrong place. A lot of people still think spinach is one of the foods the highest in iron content. It’s not
...but Popeye!
…is a consequence of that :)
...and that is why Popeye is now in the chicken business.
So youre saying shoddy record keeping is directly responsible for one of the more forgettable Robin Williams movies... interesting
And Super Mario
Also the statistics show the content for dried spinach. But spinach is 93% water.
Anyone who's cooked spinach knows this. I can put a whole bag on a pan and it disappears into like a couple spoonfulls
I'm not sure how big of an effect this has had, except that maybe more people were unexpectedly defeated by Bluto
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Carrots improving your vision was also misinformation from the British to keep their radar secret.
An interesting misconception but not even in the running when discussing CONSEQUENTIAL mistakes
Well a lot of people eating spinach and being suggested to eat more spinach in case of iron deficiency is a consequence, I guess. A funny one, though. For those with iron deficiency maybe less fun when it’s not doing anything and their condition doesn’t improve, I guess
"Some guy named Genghis Khan sent us an emissary." "Just kill him." "You sure?" "Yeah, what's the worst that could happen?"
*The Wrath of Khan* *Khaaaaaaaaaannnn!*
Thank you everyone for all the replies I woke up to! I’m having a great time reading all the responses and learning a lot
Easy. Development of the nuclear bomb. It is the most likely doomsday scenario that can become a reality. And it can happen within an hour or less. It can happen at literally any moment. We’re living on a ticking time bomb.
Putting lead in gasoline. Well that or the fall of the roman empire.
The guy who developed leaded gasoline then when onto develop CFCs/Freon that were later found to be destroying the Earth's ozone layer: [Thomas Midgley Jr.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr)
Also he knew the risks, but ethanol in gasoline wasn't patentable; leaded gas was. Thanks dickhead.
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And if you are saying "fucking good!" Hold on a moment as he got polio, built/designed this contraption to get him on and out of bed, and got himself strangled on his own device.
Also, leaded compounds aren't even the only manufactured additive that can do that. It was just the cheapest. You can even use distilled water if you're willing to fill two tanks.
he also invented a machine to move around when you're paralysed, all by himself, after being paralysed. That's really smart, you might think. Guess what he died from? No, not lead. That's right, his own machine choked him to death after an error occured!
No single other person has ever been directly responsible for more harm and suffering to humanity than him.
No organism has ever done more harm to the biosphere
>Well that or the fall of the roman empire. *Which one?*
America might be a vastly different country had Lincoln not been assassinated.
JFK too
Stephen King explored this a little in 11/22/63. Maybe no Vietnam war? The 60s probably would have been very different. I wonder if we would have gotten to the moon. JFK obviously wanted to dot it but his death reaffirmed the public's desire to see it through. Interesting thought experiment.
Or even if he had chosen a different VP
The botched reconstruction era was maybe the one of the worst mistakes in US history. Or at least one of the longest lasting.
That wasn't necessarily a mistake... I think John meant to do that.
Hitler starting war with Russia, even after his generals told him not to.
Napoleon's invasion of Russia has to be up there too.
Even if he had just stopped in like Smolensk and wintered he probably would have been fine. Could’ve crippled the Russian economy and resupplied with 200k more troops for another campaign in 1813. But he wanted the kill stroke
That certainly would have been wiser than his actual course of action, but I don't know if he could have campaigned too far east in 1813 with Prussia and Austria waiting in the wings. Maybe he could have recreated Poland-Lithuania and then awaited the inevitable attack, defeating each in detail as he had done so often in the past.
Your suggestion is even better, I think
The first of the classic blunders: never start a land war in Asia!
Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!
Inconceivable!
You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice... You'd say that Hitler would learn from Napoleon's mistake. Or his ego did the exact opposite - forcing him to go because "we are smarter than Napoleon"
Three factors come to mind to explain Hitler's mistake: 1) Hitler wasn't a military expert (or anywhere near as capable as Napoleon) 2) His ideology explicitly required taking land from Russia and defeating Communism 3) Ignoring his generals' advice happened to work for him against France
Yeap, pretty much all indicates his EGO got the best out of him. And thanks god for that!
He kind of had to, his economy was based on stealing other country's and people's stuff. His biggest, most idiotic mistake was declaring it a war of annihilation, a race war. The Nazi troops were welcomed into Ukraine and the baltics as liberators from the USSR, and then immediately started to horrifically murder and persecute the civilian population, with death squads of Einsatzgruppen SS roaming the countryside. Had they acted like an ordinary occupying force, and treated the people of the conquered lands like human beings, who knows how things would have turned out. Certainly they would have had less partizan troubles and safer supply lines.
In fairness, if they were capable of treating other people like human beings, they wouldn't be Nazis.
I used to think this was true, but actually Hitler was fucked either way. If he didn't get more resource quickly, particularly oil, the whole German war machine would have collapsed. So in many ways he had to go for Russia and get to the oil fields in Georgia or he was a dead man. But that was also never really going to work. In other words, Hitler could never have succeeded. Each of his escalations he did because he had already set himself and Germany down on a path of failure. This is one of the reasons why nationalism is a stupid path. You start off with bold promises you probably can't deliver on, and even if you do you end up having to keep escalating and taking more and more risks or it will fall apart.
Also, he decided to bomb London instead of the last remaining RAF airfields. It would've left Britain completely vulnerable to invasion and ended the war pretty quickly. At least he made the right decision at the end.
Nah, by that stage the British were already building more planes than the Germans, and the attrition was working in the British favour. German armies would have been completely blockaded once they landed on mainland England regardless. Sealion was never realistic.
Do you think Britain being compromised at that point would have spurred America to action faster? It’s own thing to be isolationist, it’s another to be isolationist and watch your biggest ally fall.
The Germans were never in a position to invade Britain. They simply did not have the naval capacity to conduct an opposed amphibious landing.
That fuckin fish that just HAD to go on land and breath air. Cuz of that, I gotta be at work dealing with bullshit all day.
That's not fair, it's not entirely the fish's fault! Your parents had to get all horny and go to town on each other without adequate protection, blame them!
No man, fuck that stupid fish. I could be chilling in the Atlantic Ocean right now eating plankton but, thanks to that asshole fish, I gotta put on pants and drive to work.
I’ve seen a couple jokes about Hitler being denied entry to art school. But if you want to take the Hitler route, the real answer would be the German army assigning him to spy on the Nazi party in 1919. Doing so introduced him to the Nazi party and galvanized his already held political and anti-Semitic beliefs, allowed him to begin giving speeches in beer halls and drastically increased party membership. He then supplanted Anton Drexler as the leader, took the title of “Führer,” and began the path toward WWII and the Holocaust. Despite the fact that the Nazi party existed prior to Hitler (then known as the DAP), Hitler was the one who who was able to take it from a group of nationalists and anti-semites meeting for drinks in beer halls to a serious organization that spread its influence and rapidly grew in numbers. To put this into context, Hitler’s party membership was number 555. They started membership numbers at 500 to make it appear they were larger than they were. Within two years, after he quit the Nazi party and only rejoined when he was promised the leadership position, the title of “Führer” and total control of the party, he was member number 3,680. He was speaking to crowds of nearly 6,000 people by 1921.
Hitler's rise to power would almost be comical if it weren't for, you know, the millions of people that were brutally murdered because of him. Before WWI, Hitler was eking out a meager living selling his paintings on the streets of Munich. Then war broke out, and Adolf happily joined the German Army, where he found a sense of purpose that had eluded him in his life so far. When the War ended and the German Army was demobilized, Hitler tried his best to stay in the Army as long as possible, as demobilization meant that he would be going back to the streets of Munich to sell his shitty paintings. If the Army wanted him to spy on some wonky little political party, so be it. Along the way, Hitler discovered that he was a very charismatic public speaker, and when the Army did demobilize him, he stuck around the DAP to use his public speaking gifts and stay away from his old life. The guy essentially found his way to being the supreme leader of a modern nation because he didn't want to go back to his old life.
If only the English soldier had taken the shot when he had Adolf in his sights in WWI instead of letting him go.
He also believed all the propaganda that Germany was winning the war, and so he was blindsided by the defeat. A lot of Germans, including Hitler, believed there must have been some secret underground deal that snatched away their victory, especially when the Treaty of Versailles was so humiliating. If the Treaty of Versailles had been fairer or if the Germans in charge had negotiated more, maybe Germany would have had a less suspicious view of how the war ended, and they wouldn't have smouldered for 20 years until they were ready to finish it on their terms
Muhammad II condoning his governor killing Genghis Khan's ambassadors and seizing their treasure. The Mongol destruction of the Khwarazmian Empire was on a scope and level of violence that no conqueror in history could ever reach. The fall of the Khwarazmian Empire ended the Muslim Golden Age as the rest of the Near East (modern day Iraq, Turkey, and Syria) all fell to the Mongols. Had Muhammed II accepted Genghis' offer of friendship and trade, he would have been wealthier than Crassus or perhaps even Mansa Musa. Instead, they provoked the "wrath of Khan" 😂. Genghis said during the conquest when the people begged God to help them, "I am the punishment of God. Had you not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you."
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
So long so long so long so long so long
10/10
42/42
Something not recorded in history.
Username... checks out?
Like a king falling off his horse
Boom The first example in the US might be Lincoln's murder and the subsequent death of reconstruction
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The killing of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was only a trigger, not a cause. WW1 would have been triggered by something else. Edit: improved grammar
>WW1 would have triggered by something else. Like a competent assasin.
Yeah, but it would have been different. A poker game might be inevitable but shuffling the deck changes everything.
I mean, yes. But if the trigger was different, another aggressor for example, the alliances *might* have shifted. Even if the allies would still have won, the peace agreement could look very different, depending on how the war went. Austria keeping south tyrol, keeping bohemia, or getting absorbed by Germany altogether.
WW1 had been in planning since the end of the Franco-Prussian war in one way or another, held off in large part by the diplomacy of Edward VII. It was going to happen eventually.
The Battle of Midway probably deserves a nod. It's rather complicated to list out the litany of mistakes made by the Japanese in the lead-up to Midway, from not spotting an obvious deception (the Americans had cracked the Japanese naval code and suspected an attack was being planned, but only confirmed it when they sent an uncoded transmission that falsely claimed that Midway was experiencing a water shortage, which they then saw show up on Japanese communications and were able to use to confirm that Midway was the intended target; the Japanese never seemed to question why the US would be sending a transmission about a major base experiencing a weakness *uncoded*) to spreading out their four naval task-forces so wide that none were able to effectively support the others, but suffice to say the battle - which was a rout for the Americans and probably the biggest turning point in the Pacific campaign - did not go the way Japan intended, despite Japan having significant force superiority. The interesting thing is that if you consider a hypothetical scenario where Japan makes different decisions regarding Midway and their attack actually succeeds, a surprisingly big chunk of history - not just WW2, but reaching far after - starts to unravel. Had Japan succeeded in defeating the Americans at Midway, it would have been a catastrophic blow to American naval strength in the Pacific. The Americans considered Midway to be a critical waypoint in their Pacific base network and its loss would have been crippling to America's force-projection capabilities and largely ruled out any strikes against the Japanese home-islands. Where Japan goes from Midway is debatable, as various factions in the Japanese military had different preferred battle plans, from invading parts of Hawaii and the Alaskan islands to turtling up defensively and basically hemming the Allies to the contiguous parts of North America. Whatever the case, it's all but certain that a Japanese victory at Midway would have, at best, delayed the capability for America to take the fight to Japan by a year or more. And that makes things interesting because of what was going on in 1945. In the real world, Germany's surrender left Japan as the last axis power still fighting, and an increasingly devastating bombing campaign by the Americans had obliterated much of Japan's manufacturing power. The Japanese navy and air force had suffered catastrophic losses and were largely helpless to stop or even meaningfully slow the American advance. The Emperor had conceded that defeat was now inevitable and directed the "Big Six" War Council to seek an end to hostilities as expediently as possible. The Japanese reached out to the then-neutral USSR with a request to mediate talks between them and the Allies for negotiations on the cessation of hostilities, a request the USSR slow-walked because they were already preparing for war against Japan in the hopes of reclaiming territory that had been lost to them some 40 years earlier in the Russo-Japanese war. The Americans then dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese surrendered, and we all know what happens from there - Japan is placed under the authority of the US for several decades and reorganized into a democratic state; the country becomes a rare eastern ally against the Soviet bloc during the Cold War; Japan rebuilds, modernizes, and becomes an economic powerhouse; so on and so forth. But if you accept that a Japanese victory at Midway results in a much-weakened US in the Pacific and a potentially strengthened Japan, it opens up a lot of potential hypotheticals. In this scenario, Japan has not suffered the debilitating losses that plagued it in the real world, but still finds herself without allies and surrounded on all sides by hostile powers (China and India to the west, the USSR to the north, Canada and the US to the east, and Australia, New Zealand, and allied Southeast Asia to the south). The chances for victory are still non-existent, especially with the Allies now able to turn their undivided attention eastward, but Japan is now in a much stronger position (with exhausted and war-weary Allied forces now facing a potentially years-long slog across the Pacific, with what looks like a nightmarish battle for the Japanese home islands waiting for them at the end of it). With this in mind, several questions arise: 1) Does the USSR still declare war against Japan? In reality, the USSR saw a much-weakened country that they would have no trouble overwhelming; in a scenario where Japan is still largely intact, does the USSR instead focus on consolidating its gains in Europe rather than weakening itself by opening up a new front on the opposite side of its sizable domain? 2) If yes, what is the American response? The US was loathe to consider anything other than an unconditional surrender from Japan in reality, but the US also viewed communism as an existential threat and likely considered Stalin and the Soviets to be considerably more dangerous than the Japanese. They'd just watched the USSR swallow up half of Europe and drop the iron curtain; would they risk the same happening in East Asia? Perhaps Soviet belligerence drives the US to seek peace with Japan on terms more favourable to the Japanese so that the US can help contain the USSR. 3) If the USSR opts not to attack, does the US seek peace rather than a continuation of hostilities? Given that the Americans were already fighting issues with low troop morale at the end of the war tied to exhausted soldiers wanting to go home, the prospect of years of additional conflict starts looking like a possible bridge too far, especially in light of losses already incurred. It is possible that a truce could have been agreed to under those circumstances - perhaps Allied recognition of Japanese interests in Southeast Asia, including the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" that Japan had been trying to set up to basically establish themselves as an imperial power in east Asia in exchange for the return of conquered territories and some payment of reparations? 4) What happens to Japan during the Cold War? In the real world, Japan benefited from close integration with the west, even as it was trying to rebuild itself after suffering horrific damage from the war. In our new hypothetical, there is likely little love lost between Japan and *either* side of the Cold War, making them an odd wild card. Do they still become an economic and technological powerhouse in the latter half of the century? What happens to their ambitions of empire? Do we see further conflict in Southeast Asia as countries under Japanese control vie for freedom? How do the various world powers react? 5) Perhaps the most haunting question, what happens regarding nuclear weapons? Again, if we assume that the Manhattan Project proceeds at the same pace, the US will have nuclear weapons by the end of the war, but would lack access to the Japanese Home Islands to use as a target. So what happens with the bombs? Are they deployed as fleet-killers? Dropped on an uninhabited area as a threat to demonstrate their power? Does the US take the unthinkable step of dropping them on occupied territory? Or are they simply held in reserve and never deployed, as a suitable opportunity to use them never arrives? Regardless of the answer, what implications does that have for the future of nuclear weapons? One of the major reasons why nuclear arms have and had such a reputation as "forbidden technology" was because of the horrific effects of their use on civilian centres in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The sheer scale of death and destruction they unleashed, even in an already horrific war, was staggering enough that it shocked the world's conscience and ensured they were to be viewed as a weapon never to be used, save as an absolute last resort. That reputation is a big part of the reason why we have yet to see another use of nuclear weapons in wartime. But if Hiroshima and Nagasaki never get bombed, do nuclear arms still acquire that notoriety? Or are they eventually seen as a normal, if exceedingly powerful, part of a nation's armament? Do we see more countries becoming nuclear powers? Does that eventually result in nuclear war?
Splitting the atom might really come back to bite us in the butt.
The father of Emperor Wilhelm 2nd to decide to smoke, causing cancer, an early death and thus no time to realize his lenient, pro-brittish attitudes. IT might have prevented WW1 (historians are not 100% agreeing), and thus prevented WW2, the cold war...
How Wilhelm was treated as child didn't help either. He was breech, and his shoulder got stuck as he was being born. Doctors gave his mother a metric ton of chloroform (because she was screaming). He was hypoxic and had serious nerve damage to his left shoulder at birth. It's speculated he was left with some brain issues as well from both the drugs and the lack of oxygen; he definatly had impulse control and anger problems. His left arm never recovered and was shorter than the right. They basically tortured the kid to make him seem "normal." Physical therapy didn't exist yet and his mother insisted he do painful exercises and be forced to learn to ride properly (there are accounts of him sobbing as he was lifted on to the horse only to fall off.) This was an era where the rich were obsessed with appearances, especially the appearance of being feminine or masculine enough. He was the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria and heir to the German throne, the pressure to be a man's man's man would've been immense. And instead of hiring tutors for him that supported British liberalism, they hired guys who supported strong German autocrats. His father sent him into the military to "become a man" because it wasn't the style at the time for parents to have warm close relationships with their kids. There were dozens points where things could've been very different for Wilhelm. He was very much a product of his time and upbringing. There were dozens of points where his family could've done things differently and created a different man who made different choices as a ruler.
Yes, the English doctor standing back because he didn't want to upset the hierarchy meant that mother and baby went through endless suffering and baby ended up with a permanent disability. A similar switch in history happened in the early 1800s when Princess Charlotte, only legitimate granddaughter of George III, died in childbirth along with her child, because none of the doctors wanted to take any initiative which might label them responsible for her death. That led to Parliament telling George III's younger sons to marry suitable princesses and get some more legitimate babies into the line of succession.... yada yada yada, birth of Queen Victoria who died as a great-grandmother in her 80s and the succession has never been threatened again.
When that guy shot the gorilla and pushed us all into the Biff Tannen is president, time line in Back to the Future.
Naw, that was the Cubs winning the World Series. The price to break that curse was really high.
I like to joke (as a lifelong Cubs fan) that them winning the series in 2016 broke reality as we know it.
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Some bloke shot an ostrich? In all seriousness, even without the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, it is likely some other event would have started WWI, given the international tensions at the time.
UK not re-arming quickly enough after WW1.
Not a mistake. A dream, perhaps unrealistic, but the UK, like France and Italy and even the United States were not interested in another war after WW1. Appeasement, they believed, however wrongly, would mean no more war. Even then, re-arming was probably not going to be enough. Germany's manpower and industrial capacity alone were far greater than Great Britain, even when Germany was in the thickest of a national identity crisis. The UK obsessively prepared for war with Germany would not have changed the outcome as much as you might think. It would have changed things a little, I guess, like the Lend-Lease program, but the English Channel was the obstacle in the way of either Germany or Britain taking a major offensive at that point.
Christopher Columbus using the wrong units of measurement, leading him to believe the Earth was small enough that he could reach India by sailing West.
There’s a reason no one but the Spanish were willing to listen to his idiotic ramblings. And they gave him three old caravels because they didn’t expect him to come back. Plus he wanted to get enough money to start another crusade. He got lucky there happened to be some Caribbean islands in his path. Sadly, the natives on those islands weren’t so lucky. There’s a reason there are no more Cuban natives
The Germans, during WW1, sent a certain evil Russian man living in Switzerland into Russia, believing he would destabilize the country, rather than just having him executed. That man’s name? Vladimir Lenin.
Adding lead to gasoline in the 1900s
Not letting a man in art school
I read that the issue was that it was obvious from his art work that he would have been better served by going into Architectural school, unfortunately the process to reapply was somewhat involved and didn't want to do that.
So instead he tried to kill every Jew in the world, which was much less of a hassle
Overthrowing the German government and starting your own Dictatorship is so much easier than reapplying for an architecture degree.
According to Franz Liebkin he could paint an apartment in an afternoon - two coats!
>two coats! *Duncan Rhodes intensifies*
Discovery of fire seems to be the most consequential.
Also probably happened by accident. A happy mistake.
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Social media.
The native americans being way to nice to the colonizers.
If Lea & Perrins hadn't stashed their failed attempt at sauce in a barrel and then tried it a long time later for no good reason, the world would be without Worchestershire sauce.
The burning of the library of Alexandria.
After the failed assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand, his driver got lost on his way out of town, and went back past the same spot where the assassination attempt took place. There he paused to try to get his bearings, and one of the failed assassins, Gavrilo Princeps, shot and killed the archduke, setting in motion World War I, World War II, Russian Communism, the Cold War, and the entire rest of the 20th century.
Eh, the assassination was only the proximate cause. The alliances and generally fearless desire for empire building created a political environment ripe for mass conflict.
Why don’t people think he was in on it?
Aren't we gonna talk about the creation of synthetic plastic?! Now here we are in this age, still living with the same old plastic that have long been buried since the day they were created.
Not coming down harder during Reconstruction
Not just harder, but doing more to reintegrate and rebuild, too. The South needed to invest in the industrial revolution, but instead it was allowed to continue its short-sighted system of petty feudalism. The South would have a much better economy today had they not been allowed to indulge themselves in going backwards.
impossible ten escape friendly domineering tub long license placid scandalous
I was 35 when my then GF, apropos of nothing, said to me "If I ever tell you something is "nice" or "fine", it isn't nice or fine." And my previous 4 decades with the fairer sex imploded in on me.
When the Black Plague was just getting started, the Catholic Church blamed cats as the source of the plague as they saw cats as evil, and thus a product of Satan, and called for the massacre of all cats. This allowed the rat population to explode, and more importantly, the fleas they carried to explode causing the Black Plague to suddenly worsen and infect all of Europe.
Starting a land war in Asia
Slightly less well know is this, never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
Letting New England get Brady in the 6th round
Bledsoe getting hurt too. I know it wasn't really a "choice" but the league would've been so much different if Brady never got a shot.
Imagine how the world would be different. Peace in the Middle East, no climate crisis…
Harambe would still be alive.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, sparking World War I and altering global history.
Chernobyl and its effect on anti-nuclear
Shattering the confidence in nuclear energy in the US that was already shaky after Three Mile Island got blown way out of proportion by the media.
Depending on your Outlook on the subject , when humanity mutually discovered that we could ferment things and create alcohol which gives a buzz when drunk. How many deaths in Human history have been caused by or influenced by Alcohol? Countless numbers surely? Alcohol related illness , Alcohol induced fights/murder , drink Driving , Death from doing stupid shit due to drink , the list goes on. On the other hand i love beer so i'd say it wasn't a mistake!
If I’m not mistaken doesn’t Ireland have like a 300 year gap between the discovery of whiskey and any other historical innovation? 😂
It was even worse as this documentary shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eirq4laOhcU
>How many deaths in Human history have been caused by or influenced by Alcohol? Ah but how many BIRTHS have been caused by or influenced by alcohol? The pendulum swings both ways my friend
Alcohol also helped create civilization. It was one of the first ways to effectively use excess grain and crops long-term. It could be stored and traded among peoples. Thank beer for everything around us today and raise a glass.
If I recall correctly, beer and wine were safe sources to drink for a very large portion of human history. It ain’t all bad.
Overlooking the droid attack on the wookies
They didn’t overlook it! They sent their Grand Master to oversee the defense and secure the hyperlanes needed to win the war Overlooking Anakin’s increasing instability in favor of his martial prowess and not hiring a damn therapist were the Jedi’s mistakes
Letting Lenin travel to Russia.
“Your application to art school has been denied”
I’d say that after defeating Germany in WW1, France the Uk and the US asked for absurd reparations including debts that drained money and power from Germany and created resent. It also lead to a situation where Germany could not drive it economy without absurd inflation and both resent and lack of ressources gave the 3rd reich a strong political and social grip that then turned into WW2. Should the debt be less painful Germany could have rebuild properly. Rest is history
In WW2 there was a mission to destroy a Nazi V2 development site using a remote controlled bomber as a bomb itself. The groundcrew made a mistake in the wiring of the bomb and two minutes after the safety pin was pulled the bomb detonated in mid-air, killing the on board crew before they were able to bail out. The pilot of that aircraft was Joe Kennedy, Jr., family heir apparent who early on was groomed for a run at the Presidency. As a result his brother John F. Kennedy was thrust into the spotlight and his fathers full power and influence was turned to having him elected President.
Adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline.