Create A Top 10 Events That Changed The World With This Poll

Jonathan1990 · 21-07-2020 12:34am #1

Found a website with information about 16 events that changed the world. However for this poll I've removed the 6 less likely ones I think would get a vote, making it into a top 10. Most are before people's time and some may remember the 1963 event.

https://www.biographyonline.net/events/changed-world.html

uch · 21-07-2020 11:48pm

I Am Nobody · 22-07-2020 12:05am

Covid-19 Pandemic (2020)

How come Live Aid isn't in the poll?

Sheridan81 · 22-07-2020 1:16am

Treaty Of Versailles (1919)

Gavrilo Princip assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

It's the Princip pull and the splatter.

Wibbs · 24-07-2020 11:20am

The control of fire. 1000000 years BC.

Skylinehead · 24-07-2020 12:27pm

Of those? Probably the atomic bomb (not Hiroshima in particular, just the invention of it). It's basically stopped any concept of another world war breaking out without total nuclear annihilation happening.

WW2 was always going to happen after the events of WW1, so none of that, bomb aside.

Trigger Happy · 24-07-2020 12:36pm

Big bang

24-07-2020 1:54pm

Suprised the banking collaspe of 08/09 isnt listed.....world basically been limping along since then

Quantum Erasure · 24-07-2020 2:46pm

Covid-19 Pandemic (2020)

For some reason I think the end of WWI had more of an impact than the start of it, but then, without the start there wouldn't be an end...

Capt'n Midnight · 24-07-2020 5:41pm

Azolla event

Your Face · 24-07-2020 5:46pm

Hogan slamming Andre.

utyh2ikcq9z76b · 24-07-2020 5:55pm

Invention of the pill

Archeron · 24-07-2020 6:03pm

Covid-19 Pandemic (2020)

Godzilla attacking Tokyo for the first time.

Capt'n Midnight · 24-07-2020 6:59pm

Jonathan1990 wrote: »

Found a website with information about 16 events that changed the world. However for this poll I've removed the 6 less likely ones I think would get a vote, making it into a top 10. Most are before people's time and some may remember the 1963 event.

https://www.biographyonline.net/events/changed-world.html

Which Event Do You Think Changed The World Most Of All?

That is a very UK/US centric list.

Many of the events would have happened anyway, in a different form.

Start Of WW1 (1914) - European civil war round I.
It ended the Central and Eastern European Empires.

Treaty Of Versailles (1919) -
"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years".
- Ferdinand Foch. But he got that one wrong. By 2 months.

Stock Market Crash (1929) - not the first or last big bubble. Helped some more dictators rise in Europe.

German Invasion Of Poland (1939) - A bigger event was UK and France NOT coming to Poland's aid.
Invading the Ruhr would have halted the German invasion. Just like Scipio Africanus saved Rome from Hannibal by attacking Carthage in 201 BC.
If they'd done it right off the bat then the Soviets might not have invaded because never forget that the Soviets invaded Poland too.

The Western betrayal of Czechoslovakia was an even bigger event, because it could have been them, Poland , the UK and France vs Germany. Instead it was Poland vs Germany AND Russia.

Pearl Harbour (1941) - A pacific war was going to happen becasue the hawks on both sides were itching for a war. Bad translations on both sides. The Japanese would have handed back the latest territory taken instead of ALL of occupied China. And the US might have understood diplomatic stalling instead of taking insult from the Japanese reply.

Atomic Bomb Hiroshima (1945) - didn't stop any of the proxy wars. Didn't get the Russians to yield any of the territory they took towards the end of the war.

Assassination Of John F Kennedy (1963) - Zero effect.

Fall Of The Berlin Wall (1989) - Or was the split of the USSR into the republics ? , or the EU taking in the new countries.

9/11 Terrorist Attacks (2001) - Background noise against normal violent deaths. Used as an excuse to rollout "reds under the bed" style paranoia again.

Covid-19 Pandemic (2020) - 300 million died from Smallpox in the 20th century. This pandemic might not even have been noticed in the past against the regular waves of cholera or typhus or flu or malnutrition or TB. Before antibiotics cutting your self shaving could have been fatal in as little as a week.

Establishment of Maoist China, 1949 - Apart from some time at the peak of the Roman Empire, China was the main manufacturing centre of the world from about 2000BC to 1700AD. China won't be as inward looking anymore. But they play the long game and are back on track after lots of foreign interference.

Capt'n Midnight · 24-07-2020 7:02pm

The Schuman Declaration which ended the Monnet Plan.

bladespin · 24-07-2020 7:04pm

None of the above?

The wheel
Industrial revolution
Creation of civilisation
Invention of religion
Electricity
Oil
Print

Capt'n Midnight · 24-07-2020 8:33pm

bladespin wrote: »

Print

The Chinese had that yonks ago.

Movable type was only of use when Europeans could afford to buy new clothes and glasses.

Glasses because otherwise most people wouldn't bother learning to read. Clothes because prior to this there weren't enough rags to make cheap paper.

SeaFields · 24-07-2020 8:49pm

Did the assassination of JFK change the world?!

Mad_maxx · 24-07-2020 8:50pm

Fall of the Berlin Wall

Wibbs · 24-07-2020 10:45pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

German Invasion Of Poland (1939) - A bigger event was UK and France NOT coming to Poland's aid.
Invading the Ruhr would have halted the German invasion. Just like Scipio Africanus saved Rome from Hannibal by attacking Carthage in 201 BC.
If they'd done it right off the bat then the Soviets might not have invaded because never forget that the Soviets invaded Poland too.

The Western betrayal of Czechoslovakia was an even bigger event, because it could have been them, Poland , the UK and France vs Germany. Instead it was Poland vs Germany AND Russia.

Sounds great C, but to be fair to the Allies, they simply couldn't have stopped them at that late stage of proceedings. And they knew it. Poland was way out of range of any allied air cover. They had feck all decent bombers at that stage and they were only ramping up fighter production. The French had feck all of an Air Force as the Luftwaffe later showed(even with help from Britain). Their armies would have had to invade overland, maybe try a run at Poland's ports(where they would have faced JU 88's and Stukas doing dive bombing whack a mole). Czechoslovakia? Forget about it. Whereas both were next door to Germany.

I mean look what happened with the British and French combined their forces and closer to home and relying(unwisely) on the Maginot defences and having more tanks and the like and fighting an enemy that had to travel. They were soundly and completely routed in bloody short order. France fell and the British expeditionary force and what French and others could make it, well...

Dunkirk. Earlier.

Germany had the largest most organised tactical military machine on the planet and the modern tactics to back it up, tactics still valid today and were fanatical with it. While the Allies were still thinking it was a rerun of the Great War. Put it another way Cap't, at the end of the war with the combined forces of the UK and her commonwealth and local resistance and the manufacturing might of the US and the manufacturing and sheer weight of numbers of the Soviets fighting on a separate front and Germans losing allies and ground and the place being bombed into rubble on all side, it basically took a year between D-Day and Hitler doing the one decent thing in his life and putting the world out of his misery and Berlin falling. One year to go 600 odd miles. In 1939 they wouldn't have had a hope in hell.

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The Chinese had that yonks ago.

Movable type was only of use when Europeans could afford to buy new clothes and glasses.

Glasses because otherwise most people wouldn't bother learning to read. Clothes because prior to this there weren't enough rags to make cheap paper.

Again kinda, but not really C. Yes the Chinese and others in Asia had printing, but so did Europe by the 14th century albeit in the form of wooden block type. Again yes China had paper for yonks alright, but Europe had it too and by the 13th century paper mills were all over the place and "rag and bone" men were providing the rags. As for there being not enough for paper making, textile production in Europe was a going concern well before the printing press. It was one of the biggest industries in Europe. The English economy on its own depended on it by the 13th century and it was her largest export and money spinner(no pun). The background stuff was already in place at least a century before oul Johnny Gutenburg, silversmith, after a failed venture to flog cheap relics to the faithful/thick, got his printing press together.

His was just one of those providential moments in humanity's history. That had a long existing raw material line. To bring it up to date; personal computers. They started getting big in the late 70's early 80's and by 1990 they were all over the place happy out. So like the rags etc above. Then the internet connects them and they're no longer just for nerds and business types and it explodes in a world changing way. So like Jonny showing up when he did. That metaphor got away from me...

Wibbs · 24-07-2020 10:50pm

SeaFields wrote: »

Did the assassination of JFK change the world?!

I would say likely only in one way; the Apollo missions to the Moon. Kennedy was never particularly sold on the space race and it was him mostly showboating at the start. However his vice president Lyndon Johnson was mad into the whole space thing and pushed hard for it. Before he died JFK had mused about cutting the NASA budget way back. Had he lived he may well have cut the project or delayed it, but because he didn't and Lyndon took over and kept the dream going even in the face of setbacks and budget overruns for two administrations I'd reckon that's why humans walked on another planet(ish). Not long after Nixon got in and Apollo 11 had made it he stripped back their budget.

One eyed Jack · 24-07-2020 11:42pm

I Am Nobody wrote: »

How come Live Aid isn't in the poll?

Because apart from Queen, the rest of it was all just a bit shìte. That 20 minutes alone though -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkFHYODzRTs

I’m surprised Chernobyl isn’t on that list.

Feisar · 24-07-2020 11:53pm

I dunno but Gavrilo Princip has a lot to answer for.

25-07-2020 12:15am

Covid-19 Pandemic (2020)

I voted for all the options except Hiroshima and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. They were only the visible manifestations of earlier groundbreaking moments in human history.

Not even convinced about Versailles. There are other moments even in 20th century history that deserve a place ahead of Versailles on that list, like the Russian Revolution and the Holocaust.

Capt'n Midnight · 25-07-2020 12:16am

Wibbs wrote: »

Sounds great C, but to be fair to the Allies, they simply couldn't have stopped them at that late stage of proceedings. And they knew it. Poland was way out of range of any allied air cover.
...

it basically took a year between D-Day and Hitler doing the one decent thing in his life and putting the world out of his misery and Berlin falling. One year to go 600 odd miles. In 1939 they wouldn't have had a hope in hell. D

The Germans would have had to react to an invasion of the Ruhr. That early in the war public opinion mattered, and the public hadn't had learnt the "Blitz spirit" yet, but they would.
At best it's Stalingrad, specifically the tractor factory.

Had the Poles defended behind rivers and strong points rather than not retreating (Hitler and Stalin were fond of that one too) they might have done better. But then the Russians invaded with the worlds largest army. Even so they still held out for only 10 days less than France.

Gold. The German war machine was supposed to be paid for by captured gold and in part it was. But the Poles and French got their gold out.

600 miles ? the Allies were fighting up through the "soft underbelly of Europe" for nearly a year before D-Day. And the ground campaign in the West was just footnote to the Eastern front.

Aongus Von Bismarck · 25-07-2020 12:18am

The fall of the Berlin Wall, and the popular uprisings in countries like Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania, and Czechoslovakia always struck me as the most important thing that happened in my lifetime so far.

jk23 · 25-07-2020 12:18am

Covid-19 Pandemic (2020)

I voted for the 9/11 attacks, it seemed that the atmosphere around the world changed after that, it was kind of like a downward spiral maybe not financially for a while. But definitely culturally and socially

Ipso · 25-07-2020 12:21am

The Reformation, sinking of the White Ship, McMurrough being a sore loser

Capt'n Midnight · 25-07-2020 12:25am

Wibbs wrote: »

I would say likely only in one way; the Apollo missions to the Moon. Kennedy was never particularly sold on the space race and it was him mostly showboating at the start. However his vice president Lyndon Johnson was mad into the whole space thing and pushed hard for it. Before he died JFK had mused about cutting the NASA budget way back. Had he lived he may well have cut the project or delayed it, but because he didn't and Lyndon took over and kept the dream going even in the face of setbacks and budget overruns for two administrations I'd reckon that's why humans walked on another planet(ish). Not long after Nixon got in and Apollo 11 had made it he stripped back their budget.

One of those things what would have happened anyway once the technology was available.

But the US approach was like the later Shuttle or Star Wars. Up the ante so the Soviets would have to spend more than they could afford.

It was a cold war project. With war being the key world. So the astronauts, mostly military men, accepted the risks. And it was well funded. If it wasn't for the Vietnam war and pork barrelling the US space program could have been very different as Skylab showed.

Limpy · 25-07-2020 12:25am

Miley getting frisky in the hay.

Capt'n Midnight · 25-07-2020 12:34am

The sieges of Syracuse.

Who would dominate the Mediterranean the Greeks, Carthaginians or Romans ?

Capt'n Midnight · 25-07-2020 12:55am

Capture of the Moon. Stabilised the climate.
But with massive tides back when there were 6 hours in the day. Which meant mixing up of the primordial soup and concentrating it in tidal pools. And heat transfer around the planet.

The Great Oxygenation Event which was going to happen anyway once cyanobacteria found a way to use water as an electron donor and excrete oxygen as toxic by product that was neutralised by the iron salts in the brown oceans.

The great extinctions that wiped out the competition.
We got lucky. Especially during the Permian.
An Octopus is smart. What else could have been ?

Christmas Island has crabs instead of mice. New Zealand has the Giant Weta. All very, very different. All make it difficult for newcomers. There is no guarantee that we'd have made it.

s1ippy · 25-07-2020 12:58am

Assassination Of John F Kennedy (1963)

Hiroshima and any other nuclear explosions changed the structure of every metal on the surface of earth.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-dark-matter-depends-ancient-shipwrecks/600718/

Except for sunken lead on shipwrecks.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidbressan/2019/08/06/the-atomic-bomb-dropped-over-hiroshima-created-a-new-kind-of-minerals/

Nuclear testing is frowned upon but nuclear energy is used throughout the world in all sorts of irresponsible ways. Who knows what devastation other countries are wreaking.

https://www.livescience.com/spike-in-radioactivity-detected-above-europe.html

That was detected in June and afaik we're none the wiser in the West as to what [see: who] the hell caused it.

We're only scratching the surface of understanding what the real ramifications of unleashing this toxic havok on the entire planet is.
https://www.businessinsider.com/nuclear-explosion-fallout-cancer-health-effects-2017-8

Birth defects, cancer, neurological damage (possibly autism in its current guise) and unparalleled destruction of the environment and wildlife are the tip of the iceberg. Current human use of radiation ensures that in the event of a much-needed mass extinction event in our population (only a matter of time, given our behaviour and treatment of our environment), nuclear fallout is guaranteed to wipe out any remaining life on the planet and make it completely uninhabitable.

Fuck nuclear radiation.

s1ippy · 01-08-2020 1:28am

Assassination Of John F Kennedy (1963)

I like how Perl Harbour is spelled

I rescind my previous answer and change it to the brewing of a load of beer here in this house which culminated in the state of tonight.

Bill Bryson suggests that beer is either the cause or consequence of civilisation. People drank beer as a way of coming together. Or because they had to gather together.

touts · 01-08-2020 12:14pm

Treaty Of Versailles (1919)

That's a list of things that changed America. In fact some of the events e.g. JFK could be argued not to have even done that. And nothing before 1900. Probably because America was a third world nation prior to that.

I would say Invention of the Internet. But that was by a Brit working for an organization in Switzerland so apparently that doesn't count.

Capt'n Midnight · 01-08-2020 12:43pm

jk23 wrote: »

I voted for the 9/11 attacks, it seemed that the atmosphere around the world changed after that, it was kind of like a downward spiral maybe not financially for a while. But definitely culturally and socially

Not really. It was just a handy way to define a new scare when they couldn't keep trotting out "I'd rather be dead than red"

At most it could be considered a wake up call to the US public that they aren't as loved by the rest of the world as they think they are.

The big change was the wars and deaths in countries where most of those terrorists didn't come from.

Bin Laden's family was allowed fly out of the USA without interrogation during the period when the commercial airliners were grounded and most people were stranded. So no, this was never about leaving no stone unturned in the search for truth and justice.

If you had to go across the old border into Northern Ireland you'll know the difference between security and security theatre. The menace was palpable.

Jimbob1977 · 01-08-2020 12:45pm

If World War I had never occurred, European powers could have continued to dominate and counterbalanced America's rise.

I'm sure the USA would have reached superpower status eventually. They have an abundance of resources and an ambitious streak.

Britain, Germany or France might have sent the first person into space or reached the moon. Scientifically and technologically, Europe was a hothouse of talent.

Instead, Europe lay in ruins twice within 30 years. Its economy broken and its people demoralised.

The natural beneficiary was the United States. Factories at full production. The Continental United States undamaged by any war. Using captured German scientists to reach the moon.

Sarajevo hastened Europe's downfall and stagnation.

There's plenty of other massive "what ifs".... the Ottomans winning the Battle of Vienna and conquering Europe, the Persians defeating the Greeks, Operation Barbarossa being a success and Nazi Germany ruling the globe.

Capt'n Midnight · 01-08-2020 1:02pm

What if Italy hadn't taken Libya from the Turks in 1911 ?

And then Turkey joined up on the allied side against the Austrians ?

The Turks could have finished WWI with most of the worlds oil.

Or blame Churchill for blocking the sale of battleships.
Responsible for Gallipoli and the causes of Gallipoli.

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour-extras/what-about-the-dardanellesq/

The installation of three torpedo tubes at Kilid Bahr was not the result of the bombardment of 3 November, but of a suggestion that Churchill’s own representative with the prewar Turkish navy, Admiral Limpus, had made while he was responsible for advising on the naval defences of the Dardanelles.

quickbeam · 01-08-2020 1:23pm

Wibbs wrote: »

The control of fire. 1000000 years BC.

I was gonna say that the world hadn't fundamentallly changed since the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, but, in fairness, being able to control fire did result in a huge leap forward for homo sapiens that ended up with huge impacts on the world.

While many of the things the OP lists are dramatic events, they probably have little overall effect on the world in the scheme of things.

quickbeam · 01-08-2020 1:25pm

OTOH, if you believe in the butterfly effect, then, maybe he very act me typing the above post will change the world for millenia to come.

banie01 · 01-08-2020 1:39pm

No Congress of Vienna?
No summer of 1848?
No Prussian hegemony of Germany?
No Agricultural revolution?
No peace of Westphalia?
No 95 theses (and the rise of Protestantism and its effects, still felt)
No Charles Martell (or any of the other 15 decisive battles from Marathon to Waterloo)
The German invasion of Russia played far more a role in modern history than the invasion of Poland.
No Russo-Japan war?
No Siege of Vienna?

The OPs list is very US centric and I'm sure Asian and African contributers would point to the slave trade, the race for Africa the Spice trade, the opium wars, the Sino-Japan wars and many others as being far more important than many of the OPs list and to be frank I'd tend to agree.

TheBlackPill · 01-08-2020 3:34pm

The pole is too weighted to recent history.
Instead of COVID19 (the longterm effects are not known yet), i suggest placing the Plague of Justinian in its place.
Up to 40 % of the ROman and Persian's empires died. It stopped Romes attempt to reconstitute its Western empire in its tracks, and indirectly led to the rise of Islam. I contend if these empires had retained their strength the initial islamic raid into Palestine would have been beaten back, or east Africa would have been raided instead as was weaker(an Arab confederation did just this before the plague hit)

sligojoek · 01-08-2020 4:05pm

The day the Ice Age ended.

completedit · 01-08-2020 4:57pm

Treaty Of Versailles (1919)

Everything is interconnected and interlinked. I don't think you can distinguish one event as being more important. Everything happened as it had to for us to be at this time.

Ipso · 01-08-2020 6:27pm

completedit wrote: »

Everything is interconnected and interlinked. I don't think you can distinguish one event as being more important. Everything happened as it had to for us to be at this time.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme a bit.

Edgware · 01-08-2020 6:56pm

Danny Healy Rae reckons that the closure of a factory in Tralee with the loss of 200 jobs was worse than Pearl Harbour ( 2400 deaths and several ships sunk) so can you take Pearl Harbour from the list

RobertKK · 01-08-2020 6:57pm

Covid-19 Pandemic (2020)

The treaty of Versailles created the conditions for WW2.
Sometimes punishment can lead to worse consequences.

The Fall of the Berlin Wall, it is still for me the greatest moment to witness in my life. The sheer joy of freedom we saw in the faces of people as communism collapsed in Europe. One should never forget those scenes. It is a reminder of what we need to protect.

9/11 was a world changer, wars that are still ongoing, uprisings and migrant crisis.
The migrant crisis could be argued as a reason why things like Brexit won.
We are still living in the dust of 9/11.

Capt'n Midnight · 01-08-2020 9:31pm

RobertKK wrote: »

The treaty of Versailles created the conditions for WW2.
Sometimes punishment can lead to worse consequences.

see the quote by Foch

9/11 was a world changer, wars that are still ongoing, uprisings and migrant crisis.
The migrant crisis could be argued as a reason why things like Brexit won.
We are still living in the dust of 9/11.

9/11 was a handy crisis.

Wait long enough and there'd be another one they could have used. Bombing of a plane or base or embassy.

Can't keep promising to fix the potholes if there aren't any

cj maxx · 01-08-2020 9:37pm

Perl Harbour (1941)

quickbeam wrote: »

OTOH, if you believe in the butterfly effect, then, maybe he very act me typing the above post will change the world for millenia to come.

It's already made me type this post.
Which means I've decided not to go out tonight , which has changed some woman's life for the better.
Thanks:(

Create A Top 10 Events That Changed The World With This Poll

Which Event Do You Think Changed The World Most Of All? 133 votes

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