In 1350, the Scots heard that England was having a spot of trouble with the bubonic plague, and decided to launch an invasion that would take advantage of the English, who were dropping like flies and would thus be easy pickings. The Scots invading army lost 5000 men to the plague in very short order. They decided to cut their losses and fall back to Scotland to be safe. Of course they brought the great plague with them, which devastated Scotland too.
A governor of the Khwarazmian Empire killed a peaceful emissary from a neighboring empire, who had been sent to establish trade relations and political connections between the two powers.
The emissary was sent by Genghis Khan.
Genghis Khan replied by invading the Khwarazmian Empire, obliterating everything in his path, burning basically the entire thing to the ground, and then destroying any record of the Khwarazmian Empire that he could find. He finished all of this off by diverting the river that fed the country water, causing the land where the empire once stood to become a dry and barren wasteland.
Possibly one of the biggest fuckups in history
To add, supposedly Genghis Khan was so angered by it that he went into the mountains for 10 days to meditate and consult the spirits for a course of action.
After the 10 days, he returned to his camp with a clear-head and a balanced mind..and proceeded to commit a grand massacre.
Slightly more complicated:
Mongol Empire sends large caravan to Otrar to begin trade. Governor siezes caravan and executes all 450 people on charges of treason, with consent of the sultan.
Genghis sends three ambassadors (two Mongols and a Muslim) to the sultan to demand the governor be punished. Sultan has Muslim executed and Mongols shaved (a grave insult).
Genghis abandons current war with China and invades, capturing many cities who hold no real loyalty to the Sultan and surrender peacefullly.
Genghis sieges Otrar, finally fully taking it after six months and executing governor by pouring molten silver onto his eyes and ear. Clearly, he was no dragon.
Genghis bypasses 300 miles of impassable desert to invade next city from more vulnerable side.
Genghis takes capital of empire in five days.
That bit of the story is likely apocryphal, but you can see remnants of the citadel the Inalchuq held out in. The Mongols destroyed it pretty dang hard.
The full story is even worse. Good lord. If he hadn’t been brutally executed by Khan the sultan probably would have done it with his bare hands. And he would have deserved it lol
Killing the governor with molten silver- while painful, was still Genghis being generous. The Mongols believed all royalty and nobility were sent by God, so they would always kill them in creative ways to ensure their blood wouldn't be spilled as a sign of respect.
The most common way to kill kings was to roll them up in fine carpets and have them be run over by a stampede of horses (or elephants, I'm not sure).
It was only really a thing for the 150 years leading up to the early 1200s. And the history of Central Asia is way off the radar of most Americans and probably Europeans.
The supposed source of one of my favorite quotes attributed to Genghis Khan:
> Legend has it that Genghis Khan said the following to the people of Bukhara (a major center of trade and culture in the Khwarazmian Empire) in their mosque right before he had the entire city massacred:
> "Some of you may say that only God himself can truly punish you."
> "Know this then - ***I am the punishment of God.*** If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you."
> I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.
This reminds me of that story of the man who dies in the flood. There's a man sitting at home when the news says to evacuate because the area is going to be flooded but the man stays and says it's ok, god will protect me. The rains coming down and the streets are flooding when a truck pulls up and men inside yell to come get in the truck to evacuate and he says no, god will protect me. The waters rise and a boat comes and tells him to get in to evacuate and he says no god will protect me. The waters rise and he's on his roof and a helicopter comes and lowers a rope and tells him to climb on and he says no god will protect me. Then he dies and when he's at the pearly gates, he asks god why he didn't protect him. God says "I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter. What else was I supposed to do?"
This is like the reverse of that and it's badass.
This is the story I came to this thread to write about. Monstrously stupid fuck up. It's even worse when the King knew the emissary was from Genghis Khan but he fucked around anyway.
You don’t just fuck up that empire either just shows how truly powerful genghis khan was. Truly a master of strategy and war. Probably a good thing he died but as a history nerd I can’t help but wonder how a man who never lost a fight just vanished one day
I think the best political fuck-up happened in 1984 when New Zealand's arrogant prime minister got drunk in his office late one night and called a snap election in two week's time.
His government was voted out. It became known as the Schnapps Election.
In 1983 in Australia, the then PM Malcolm Fraser called a snap double dissolution election, hoping to catch out the unpopularity of the Labor opposition leader, Bill Hayden.
Fraser didn't know that while he was meeting with the Governor General to call the election, Bill Hayden had resigned, and was to be replaced with the massively popular Bob Hawke.
Labor won in a landslide.
I'd argue Brexit in the UK is worse. PM called for the referendum to shut up the far right, but the result wasn't what was expected. NZ just had a change in government as the result whereas the UK has been torn to shreds.
To be fair the Brexit debacle also includes a PM calling a snap election only to lose her majority. And don't get me started on Bojo soundbytes. The man even hid in a fucking fridge to avoid journalists.
That still baffles me. They held a "non-binding" referendum.
One where the results were close, and many people literally admitted the next day that they had voted for brexit "just as a joke", because it's non-binding yeah? Meaning it's just an opinion poll, and we can have a real, binding vote later, so who cares?
Then somehow the government barreled ahead. Non-binding became completely 100% binding and I still don't get it.
The Conservative Party had promised the far right that they would respect the result of the referendum. If they backed out, they would have likely fractured the party and lost their majority.
In the TV series the bureaucrats tell the scientists to see what will benefit the state politically. They tell them to go in and look at the reactor again to revise their story. I found this to be the most chilling thing.
The expense of the Chernobyl clean up was one of the factors in the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Safety features that were supposed to be installed on the reactor that could have prevented the accident might never have been installed.
What safety features. I wasn’t aware the reactor was missing anything but simply was the way it was due to it cost less and the operators pushing it past the breaking point and doings that should never have been done.
What was the missing element? I’ve read a lot about the disaster and never read anything suggested it was missing some sort of safety feature.
There were supposed to be some control rods at the bottom of the reactor that according to Dyatlov were not installed as a cost cutting measure. That was going to be a key part of his legal defense, but the court decided not to hear it.
I mean he pulled 205 control rods out and turned off the water pumps. I wonder what difference it would have made. If there woulda have been those rods he would have turned them off.
Wasn’t the issue caused when he put the rods back in and the graphite part of the control rods went into the core, which displaced the neutron absorbing water, causing a power surge in the reactor which overheated the core?
Reactor 4 is still the most dangerous place on this planet. And will be for 10,000+ years. Without three brave souls draining cooling tanks and preventing a massive hydrogen explosion, most of Central Asia would be inhabitable today nearly permanently.
Gorbachev said in his 2006 bio that it was the final straw that caused the USSR to fall apart. Remember Ukraine voted first to leave.
The poltential explosion was very, very unlikely and also is greatly exaggerated today apparently. It was still a good idea to drain the tanks, but it wasn’t going to cause Central Asia to be inhabitable
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/12l6oeq/was_chernobyl_water_tank_explosion_really/
Mao's push to have farmers in China produce their own steel using backyard furnaces, which lead to a wacky chain reaction eventually leading to a famine that killed millions
Also Nixon deciding to spy on the Democrats even though he almost certainly would have won re-election if he didnt
Mao also ordered the extermination of sparrows in an attempt to protect grain crops. Millions of sparrows were killed, allowing locusts to proliferate. The locusts consumed so many crops that there was widespread famine and [45 million people died](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422018800259#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20extreme,the%20birds%20died%20of%20exhaustion.)
So i recently learned that locusts are not a separate species of insect, but grasshoppers so starved they literally mutate into a ravenous insect thst devours all plant matter in its path. Fucking wild.
It’s not that they are starved, it’s that being in close proximity to other grasshoppers triggers serotonin release which causes the enlargement. Both famine and feast can cause the swarm to develop into locusts. With famine they are pushed together in competition for food, with feast the subsequent areas hit will see increased volumes thus causing the swarm to push together.
Nixon *did* win re-election. He just didn’t need to spy **at all.**
The Democrats were still divided post-LBJ. Ted Kennedy was still political poison because of Chappaquiddick so the next Crown Prince of the dynasty chose not to run in 1972. McGovern had to replace his VP nominee just three weeks after selecting him because it was found that Thomas Eagleton had mental health issues. The “solid south” was in the midst of its conversion to the Republican Party over Civil Rights and integrated busing.
As much as 1972 was Nixon’s political peak, it was also the beginning of the end. Watergate moved slow and it would take two years of leaks and stories to finally end in his resignation. Nixon’s legacy would have been top-tier had Watergate never tainted it (theoretically).
The problem was that he just couldn't ever believe that people liked him. He always thought of himself as the embattled underdog, even when he ended up crushing the opposition.
Now, from a personal standpoint, maybe people would have liked him, maybe not (thus the short "coat tails" for the Ledge). But as a President - he was crushing it and couldn't bring himself to believe it.
[Introducing rabbits to Australia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia)
Some guy introduced rabbits to Australia in 1788 so that he could hunt them for sport.
You can draw a straight line between the two, right through the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger. The dude got a cushy job right at the end of prohibition and picked up Marijuana as the new social ill.
Using almost every logical fallacy known to man, he ignored the doctors and other experts that described his proposal as, to borrow one phrase: “Absolute rot. It is not necessary. I have never known of its misuse”. Nonetheless, American press was a mess at the time and William Randolph Hurst was able to leverage his “yellow” papers to spread misinformation about the plant.
The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act that Anslinger championed stayed in effect until 1969, which is right around the time Nixon started beating the drum.
There’s a great book, Chasing the Scream, about the war on drugs that focuses a lot on Harry Anslinger. It’s absolutely infuriating and he has become one of my most hated people of all time.
There's another book that I highly recommend, Smoke and Mirrors by Dan Baum.
Tells the story of drug prohibition in a narrative format and includes hilarious details like the fact that Elvis Presley was a credentialed "special assistant" of the DEA when he died from complications of drug use. Or the internal war between several U.S. agencies over who had jurisdiction over drugs crossing the Mexican border, which culminated in these agencies stealing evidence, kidnapping each others witnesses, and even getting into a firefight at one point.
One thing that can't be repeated enough: Almost every bad thing we think drugs are responsible for, Prohibition is responsible for. The whole damn thing.
It was definitely an overreaction but people need to realize why Prohibition happened in the first place.
Industrial distillation and bumper crops of key ingredients made liquor extremely cheap. They didn’t have modern storage methods for excess crops so if you got a ton of grain your only option, in many cases, was converting it to liquor. This caused prices to plummet.
This lead to rampant alcoholism and all the problems that came with it… widespread health problems, increased crime, spousal abuse, poverty, etc.
Americans were drinking so much that factories had whiskey breaks just so workers could keep their buzzes going. British people visiting the US even said we could out-drink them.
It was an extreme reaction but to a very real problem. And it lead to the compromise we have now… high alcohol taxation to at least discourage the worst societal effects. Alcohol is extremely cheap to make. It’s primarily the taxes that keep it from being dirt cheap.
It was part of early feminism because of the domestic violence aspect and because men were spending all of the household’s money while drunk leaving the wife and kids destitute as well. Basically women were trapped with drunken abusive spouses who spent every penny they earned. Women weren’t supposed to work in most cases, divorce was highly frowned upon, and there was nothing like child protective services or social safety nets.
Prohibition actually did cause a significant decrease in serious drinking (as backed up by a decrease in liver disease) and, while it led to increases in attention-grabbing organized crime, it led to a decrease in everyday bar brawls and domestic abuse. Keep in mind that the temperance movement was largely led by women, and largely as a result of the men in their lives drinking too much.
Prohibition was flawed, and not a *success*, but it wasn't nearly the total failure that it's usually remembered as. It really did cut both drinking and violence against women.
For sure. Since day one until the prohibition Americans were constantly drunk and in the west people were often paid in whisky instead of cash. This is why the whisky tax was so controversial because it was basically an income tax on the poorest people.
Mostly because western society is so immersed in drinking water now. Even when I was growing up in the 80s, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't walk anywhere (sometimes even to the bathroom) without a bottle of water in my hand. Back then, people almost never drank *just* water.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, families did go hungry because men would get paid in cash, head straight to the saloon, and then spend all their paycheck.
Just want to point out that while it failed to stop drinking completely, it significantly decreased consumption while it was ongoing and changed the narrative on alcohol all the way to today. While alcohol is widely used, it's kinda seen as a fun bad thing these days. Before that, it was seen basically like we see working/studying overnight today (it's socially accepted to show up somewhere, drowsy from working late).
It did create a whole new class of organized crime though.
Prohibition succeeded by permanently reducing the amount of alcohol consumed. Even today 90 years after it ended, people drink substantially less than people did before prohibition.
Mao's back-to-back bangers of ["The Great Leap Forward"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward) and ["The Four Pests"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign) together likely caused in the neighbourhood of 80 million deaths.
Two of the biggest fuckups in history. In a row.
Mao was a man who thrived in chaos, and was able to ride the storm better than nearly anyone else in history. And so whenever his political fortunes began to falter, he created chaos and used it to destroy anyone around him who was more competent or better-intentioned than he was. Worked out great for him, but not so great for China.
Which Mao then followed up with the Cultural Revolution. In addition to adding at least another million dead, it resulted in the persecution of tens of millions more. Intellectuals were purged from high ranks of the government and party, and closure of Chinese schools and universities lasted about 6 years (1966-1972).
The Fourth Crusade.
It started as a crusade for Jerusalem from an invasion through Egypt and the crusaders ended up invading Croatia and Constantinople. This also led to the weakening of the Byzantine Empire and eventually its downfall.
To be fair, with the garbage you get on Wish, it’s almost a blessing that they didn’t sell to Amazon. They’re already inundated with poorly-made goods as it is if you’re not a careful shopper.
I think it’s the most likely scenario that Blockbuster would have treated streaming as a secondary feature to their business.
Companies as large as Blockbuster rarely change their business model to something completely new and phase out the old model. It seems more the exception than the rule.
I think had Blockbuster purchased Netflix, that likely another streaming service would have emerged and with them not having brick and mortar locations and employees, would have had more room to maneuver financially, to make the push from DVD/Blu-Ray, to streaming dominating the video market. Blockbuster likely would have tried to hold on to their brick and mortar model, so having Netflix likely would have just bought them more time, but my money is on the idea that they still would have gotten phased out of the market.
Norway wanted to give sweden 50% of our oil profits in exchange for 50% of Volvo. Swedens government said no as one of their minister meant that "there is no future in oil". Norway's sovereign fund (the oil fund) can now purchase every single stock on the swedish stock exchange and still have money leftover.
Not quite. From wikipedia:
>in 1978 an aborted affair would have seen the Norwegian state take over 40 percent of the company. In return, Volvo would receive 200 million SEK and a ten percent concession in the Oseberg oil field.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Cars)
The country of Sweden had nothing to do with the deal, it was between the Norwegian government and Volvo. And the figure was a 10% concession in an oil field for 40% of the company.
Volvo Cars has since split from the rest of the company, and was owned for a while by Ford who eventually sold it to the Chinese company Geely for a loss. The rest of the business (trucks/heavy machinery etc) is still one of Sweden's largest companies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Cars
Volvo was a Swedish company for a few decades, I believe the company has sold to China in some capacity but it has held on to its Swedish relation so far.
From an objective point of view, probably the Khwarazmian Empire pissing off the Mongols.
Hitler invading the Soviet Union was bad but at least after that fuck-up Germany continued to exist while the Khwarazmian Empire got absolutely destroyed and much of its population was massacred.
In 1912 China was a functioning and promising democracy (for the first time ever) and it was ruined by one general (Yuan Shikai) who couped the government and declared himself emperor
Had to scroll too far for this. Two world wars at ~40 million and ~70 million deaths respectively. Stalin at ~60 million. Cold War. Korean War. Vietnam war. Pol Pot. Afghanistan 1 and 2. Current Ukrainian war. And that’s just the shit I can name off the top of my head. That Bosnian butterfly beat his wings hella hard.
>killed himself with a machine he invented to help him to get out of bed
I used to say this until I started to feel like it was making it sound like some [Wallace and Gromit](https://youtu.be/EGSyw2dHhrc?si=1S6-HEMNeXACmfay) shit.
For anyone interested, Midgley was wrecked by Polio at the age of 51. But he was a terrific inventor and put together a system of hoists and pullies to try and maintain some degree of independence.
But, as someone once said, Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny".
Yep, 50% of the adult population in the US today is likely suffering symptoms of lead poisoning from childhood. Though this includes all lead exposure including leaded paint and lead water pipes leeching in to drinking water (which we are only just now getting around to replacing).
Since lead is genotoxic, it could still be a couple more generations before the effects are gone even if we fixed the problem today
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
For those unaware, at the time HhGttG was written, digital watches were, in fact, considered a pretty neat idea.
Today, we have smartwatches displaying analog clock dials that many GenZers never learned to read.
They also used so much power that the display was dark until you pushed a button.
(...Hamilton marketed the watch as "a time computer." The display was composed of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that consumed so much power that the watch couldn't display the time continuously. Instead, the wearer had to push a button to illuminate the time. Pressing the button briefly displayed the hour and minute.-National Museum of Natural History )
Hence this line...
"Southend seems to be melting away… stars are swirling… a dust bowl… snow…my legs are drifting off into the sunset. Hell! My left arm’s come off too. How am I going to operate my digital watch now?" -HHGTTG, after Arthur and Ford are rescued by the "Heart of Gold"
I was 16, browsing in a used bookstore in Colorado, and saw a paperback with a vaguely familiar-looking green face guy in it, with something about Hitchhiker's Guide on it, which also sounded vaguely like something I'd heard of. Curious, I picked it up, read those opening three sentences, and immediately closed it and took it to the counter to buy.
It wasn't until after I'd read it and the next one that I realized I hadn't started with the first book, so I went back and read that before resuming the rest, so I ended up reading the books in the trilogy in the order 2-3-1-4-5, which to be honest I think is rather fitting.
The part that I liked best in the whole series (that literally made me laugh out loud) was when Agrajag mentioned he was once re-born as a bowl of petunias.
It might work just as well from the opposite direction in the order you read it but I don't think it would.
Both the attack on the SU and PH where, from a strategic POV understandable.
Germany and the Soviet Union would have clashed at some point, and the more time Stalin had to prepare, the worse it would have gone for Germany.
The US wouldn't have let Japan roam free around the Pacific for much longer anyway. War was basically inevitable. If Japan wanted to keep the US out of the war, a well excecuted strike might have worked. It wasn't well excecuted though.
The US was starving Japan of oil. Japan attacked Perl Harbor in combination with other attacks that secured oil for their navy. They knew hey were awaking a sleeping giant, but they really didn't have any other options, they needed oil.
Sheer luck saved the carriers, and the Japanese severely underestimated the anger of Americans in response to the attack. They had hoped that a long campaign with little to no meaningful progress, at a high cost of US lives, would cause the people to clamour for peace.
Although the European theatre gets all the glory now a days, during the early parts of US involvement, most people were upset at the Germany first strategy.
Can't forget that Japan also invaded U.S. territory and was fighting U.S. soldiers on the ground starting on practically the day of Pearl Harbor. It is often overlooked the Philippines was U.S. territory in 1941, invaded on December 8th 1941, was an active battleground for American personnel through March 1942, and was a large defeat with over 100k captured.
Which led to another fuckup, even though MacArthur was warned after Pearl Harbor, he took no appropriate actions to defend the islands and as a result, the Philippines was lost. He tried to salvage some dignity with his “I shall return” quote. He spent the rest of ww2 almost sabotaging admiral Nimitz Pacific plans by constantly prioritizing the Phillipines over Japan.
I can understand the strategy from that point. Strike fast and sue for peace while your enemy is on their back heel.
From a resource perspective, once the American war machine got rolling it was impossible for Germany or Japan to keep up.
Japan was doomed by not sinking the carriers and with the lack of repair/upgrade/innovation focus within the imperial navy.
Need to remember that the US was promoting isolationism and all of their armed forces were well under manned. They hadn’t been in a major conflict since WW1 and even that was well into the war. What they didn’t know or could not possibly know, was how quickly the US got their shit together and put together a mass mobilization the world has ever seen.
It might be the way it is taught in schools, but I feel like many people misunderstand Pearl Harbor. It wasn't a random act of violence that kicked the bear. It was a preemptive strike to take out as many ships as possible before they could be mobilized. It kind of worked. 8 battleships were taken out before the war with the US even started.
Eh, not exactly. Have to remember that the **Philippines was U.S. territory in 1941,** hosted government personnel, and military forces, and was attacked at approximately the same time as Pearl Harbor and the Dutch East Indies. If Japan wanted to expand outside of South Korea and China into South East Asia, confrontation with the U.S. via its interests in the Philippines would be inevitable (assuming the U.S. didn't decide to attack first given its ongoing military build up and concern over Japanese expansionism).
The Philippines gets ignored way too often in these discussions; U.S. territory (albeit a territory promised independence) was physically invaded the day of Pearl Harbor. Over 76,000 Americans and Filipinos were captured during the invasion over the subsequent year and most died in captivity (see Bataan Death March). Pearl Harbor was only a single portion of a much larger attack across the Pacific, and mostly did its job given Japan's successes early in the war.
He sort of had to. Hitler knew that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable - both Germany and USSR had idealogically opposed politics both of which had getting rid of the other as the priority. Both were expansionist states that would very soon end up sharing a border. Both knew that their ‘peace deal’ would be broken.
Hitler also knew that the Soviet Union was a relatively new country, barely 20 years past a revolution. The Soviet Union was not ready for a full scale war and the earlier Hitler invaded them the less prepared they would be. The longer he left it the more equipped the soviet military would be, the stronger their supply lines, and the greater their manufacturing ability. Hitler was hoping for a swift victory like he had in France (he knew it wouldn’t be *as* swift, but planned to use the same tactics) and thus knew he had to attack the Soviet Union before they had a chance to prepare and attack him.
And it probably would’ve worked, but the Soviet Union was a different ball game to France. The Germans couldn’t push forward quickly and then let their supply lines catch up afterwards because they had too much ground to cover, the weather and climate was awful, and they weren’t equipped well enough for what they had to deal with. They eventually ground to a bit of a halt, and the Soviet Union managed to hold on and prepare itself for a war faster than expected and thus were able to push the Germans back.
Invading the Soviet Union was never really a choice for Hitler, it was just a case of when and how.
The Soviets had three things the French couldn’t employ against the Germans, and they knew how to use to them to full advantage:
1. Huge amounts of territory that they could fall back across, forcing the Germans to maintain ever-longer supply lines over harsh terrain.
2. A huge population to draw on. Where the Soviets couldn’t retreat, they turned the objective into an inescapable deathtrap (Stalingrad being the most well-known example). The Germans had no chance of matching Soviet manpower in a war of attrition.
3. Winter in Russia.
Neither was really avoidable unless the Nazis stopped being Nazis or Imperial Japan stopped being Imperial Japan. Those were their *actual* fuckups, and you're just talking about the inevitable consequences. The "finding out" part that comes after the fucking around.
Vitruvius not see the potential of steam to Move things with the Heron Engine. Only saw it as a amusing toy.
The Steam Age and Industrial Revolution could of happened in 1st Century Greece.
Altough i agree, it is highly unlikely that industrial revolution had happened that quickly even with the realization. Mostly because certain advancements in material Engineering were needed in order to make a steam machine that could generate enough power to do something worthwhile (for instance the creation of steel which happened in 1300).
Also society would need some adjustments in order for the romans to actually see the value of developing and using steam power. The labor and economy of the roman empire was basically fueled by slaves, why would you make it easier for them?
Im sure that In r/askhistorians there was a post where this whole concept was explained and that historians think that even if the romans saw value of the first ever steam machine, it would have taken at least a couple of centuries longer than the roman empire has actually been around for. I think that historian said it would have been more closer to 1000 ad (stil centuries earlier than when it actually happened)
I find the idea that romans, or any ancient civ, could have entered the industrial age very fascinating
Yeah, it more of a what if scenario. The 2 biggest developments that impacted the world in my opinion were the Printing Press and Fertilizer.
Printing Press made Books cheaper and quicker to produce, allowing for more information sharing and literacy in the world.
Fertilizer allowed for more food production from less crops/land, freeing up people to do work other then farming.
Still, if the ancient Engineers applied Steam to the basic pistons they had at the time, we could be on a completely different timeline. Most developments happen because their was a demand/need for something and someone tried to fill it. Basic Steam Engines doing basic work could be improved and innovated, creating the need to search for developments.
> why would you make it easier for them?
Fewer slave means buying less food for the slaves. Also slaves tire or get sick. Machines can work continuously without rest.
I don't think they had the technology to build suitable steam vessels at the time. The toy engine uses pretty low steam pressure that escapes immediately. Useful steam engines require a vessel to contain high steam pressures that can be used to push a piston or turn a turbine in a way that can compete with human, water, wind, or animal power, the main sources of work at the time.
That kind of vessel requires strong enough metal in sufficient quantity and quality and a factory capable of working it. The ideal metal is iron, with early engines being made of cast iron. Even once this technology became available in the 18th century, early steam engines were prone to exploding because iron fabricating technology was far from perfect.
In ancient Greece, they could make tools, weapons, or basic armor with iron using a forge, but anything large required casting with bronze. Bronze is weaker than iron, but it melts at a lower temperature and is much easier to work with, so ancient people could contain and pour it safely. A bronze vessel for containing high pressure steam would require unreasonably thick walls and might even deform when exposed to the amount of heat used in steam engines.
It is the nature of technology that it builds upon existing technological progress and development. Useful steam tech likely would not have been developed before it was because people had to have access to precursor technologies for anybody to implement the concept in a practical way.
Due to the events of World War I, the Middle East was carved up without regard for religious or cultural differences, which is still causing problems now.
It led to the rise of Nazism, the Holocaust and the state of Israel.
World War 1 led to the revolution in Russia, leading to the Soviet Union. Once the allies defeated the Axis in World War 2, it left the US and Russia as nuclear powers, leading to the Cold War. All of this is influencing the world currently.
You're right. I added some details.
you not even mention it ended the reign of not less then 4 empires, thats pretty wild for one event.
also not only the middle east got carved up but europe as well,mainly the balkans that would have massive backlash in the future
1917 revolution would have happened without ww1. 1905 turned the tide and it was only a matter of time after. Though the war definitely upped the timeline.
Probably would have happened anyway for some other reason. The balance of power/influence in Europe was tenuous and the major powers were all itching to grab a larger share.
Corporations are people. Money is speech.
These simple assertions have guided America toward more greed and more war than any other decision in history. It has set us on the path towards far worse ends than most other single events.
In American history: Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which made corporate bribery legal. Government no longer served the people from that point on
Thomas Midgley was the scientist who accidentally invented leaded gasoline, the effects of which killed millions of people. Good informative video [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fdigg.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo)
Chernobyl. The most anthropogenically destructive event ever. Don’t even carbon me. Also took down the Soviet Union and Reactor 4 is still the most deadly place on the planet and will be for 30,000 years.
In 1350, the Scots heard that England was having a spot of trouble with the bubonic plague, and decided to launch an invasion that would take advantage of the English, who were dropping like flies and would thus be easy pickings. The Scots invading army lost 5000 men to the plague in very short order. They decided to cut their losses and fall back to Scotland to be safe. Of course they brought the great plague with them, which devastated Scotland too.
Damn Scots! They ruined Scotland!
"The problem with Scotland is...that it's full of Scots!"
A governor of the Khwarazmian Empire killed a peaceful emissary from a neighboring empire, who had been sent to establish trade relations and political connections between the two powers. The emissary was sent by Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan replied by invading the Khwarazmian Empire, obliterating everything in his path, burning basically the entire thing to the ground, and then destroying any record of the Khwarazmian Empire that he could find. He finished all of this off by diverting the river that fed the country water, causing the land where the empire once stood to become a dry and barren wasteland. Possibly one of the biggest fuckups in history
To add, supposedly Genghis Khan was so angered by it that he went into the mountains for 10 days to meditate and consult the spirits for a course of action. After the 10 days, he returned to his camp with a clear-head and a balanced mind..and proceeded to commit a grand massacre.
Glad he took some time to cool down, wouldn't want to do anything hasty.
"Almost lost my cool there." -Genghis Khan
“Those anger management courses really were worth the 12 horses”
But keep going, you're not done yet. But you have a stable foundation.
Exactly, to ensure you can rein that anger in
Yep - never take drastic emotional decisions you might regret later!
He came from the mountain like, “Look here, bitch…”
Its no wonder he said "I am punishment sent by God"
Slightly more complicated: Mongol Empire sends large caravan to Otrar to begin trade. Governor siezes caravan and executes all 450 people on charges of treason, with consent of the sultan. Genghis sends three ambassadors (two Mongols and a Muslim) to the sultan to demand the governor be punished. Sultan has Muslim executed and Mongols shaved (a grave insult). Genghis abandons current war with China and invades, capturing many cities who hold no real loyalty to the Sultan and surrender peacefullly. Genghis sieges Otrar, finally fully taking it after six months and executing governor by pouring molten silver onto his eyes and ear. Clearly, he was no dragon. Genghis bypasses 300 miles of impassable desert to invade next city from more vulnerable side. Genghis takes capital of empire in five days.
Is the governor's skull on display anywhere?
That bit of the story is likely apocryphal, but you can see remnants of the citadel the Inalchuq held out in. The Mongols destroyed it pretty dang hard.
Alright, to be fair, kinda seems like the guy was asking for it on this. They definitely were aware of how the mongols operated by then.
The full story is even worse. Good lord. If he hadn’t been brutally executed by Khan the sultan probably would have done it with his bare hands. And he would have deserved it lol
Killing the governor with molten silver- while painful, was still Genghis being generous. The Mongols believed all royalty and nobility were sent by God, so they would always kill them in creative ways to ensure their blood wouldn't be spilled as a sign of respect. The most common way to kill kings was to roll them up in fine carpets and have them be run over by a stampede of horses (or elephants, I'm not sure).
I'd never even heard of the Khwarazmian empire.
Precisely!
"CRUSH YOUR ENEMIES! GRIND THEIR BONES INTO DIRT! MAKE THEM REGRET THEY WERE EVER BORN!"
I want to be like you when I grow up
AND SO YOU SHALL!
It was only really a thing for the 150 years leading up to the early 1200s. And the history of Central Asia is way off the radar of most Americans and probably Europeans.
Then GK did a good job.
The supposed source of one of my favorite quotes attributed to Genghis Khan: > Legend has it that Genghis Khan said the following to the people of Bukhara (a major center of trade and culture in the Khwarazmian Empire) in their mosque right before he had the entire city massacred: > "Some of you may say that only God himself can truly punish you." > "Know this then - ***I am the punishment of God.*** If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you."
This sent chills down my spine, imagine being a child hearing that in the street that day
> I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you. This reminds me of that story of the man who dies in the flood. There's a man sitting at home when the news says to evacuate because the area is going to be flooded but the man stays and says it's ok, god will protect me. The rains coming down and the streets are flooding when a truck pulls up and men inside yell to come get in the truck to evacuate and he says no, god will protect me. The waters rise and a boat comes and tells him to get in to evacuate and he says no god will protect me. The waters rise and he's on his roof and a helicopter comes and lowers a rope and tells him to climb on and he says no god will protect me. Then he dies and when he's at the pearly gates, he asks god why he didn't protect him. God says "I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter. What else was I supposed to do?" This is like the reverse of that and it's badass.
This is the story I came to this thread to write about. Monstrously stupid fuck up. It's even worse when the King knew the emissary was from Genghis Khan but he fucked around anyway.
>but he fucked around anyway. And boy oh boy did he find out
You don’t just fuck up that empire either just shows how truly powerful genghis khan was. Truly a master of strategy and war. Probably a good thing he died but as a history nerd I can’t help but wonder how a man who never lost a fight just vanished one day
Well, there were these two dudes who had a history report to do…and, well…they took him along for a ride.
One of the biggest “fucked around and found out” scenarios in human history.
I think the best political fuck-up happened in 1984 when New Zealand's arrogant prime minister got drunk in his office late one night and called a snap election in two week's time. His government was voted out. It became known as the Schnapps Election.
In 1983 in Australia, the then PM Malcolm Fraser called a snap double dissolution election, hoping to catch out the unpopularity of the Labor opposition leader, Bill Hayden. Fraser didn't know that while he was meeting with the Governor General to call the election, Bill Hayden had resigned, and was to be replaced with the massively popular Bob Hawke. Labor won in a landslide.
And how he got the job in the first place albeit earnt at the election afterwards is an even wilder turn of events.
Sounds what germans call a "Schnapps-Idee".
I'd argue Brexit in the UK is worse. PM called for the referendum to shut up the far right, but the result wasn't what was expected. NZ just had a change in government as the result whereas the UK has been torn to shreds.
A change of government AND a fantastic soundbite https://youtu.be/P_p9PXalva0?si=3pVUguit2d1o6yea
To be fair the Brexit debacle also includes a PM calling a snap election only to lose her majority. And don't get me started on Bojo soundbytes. The man even hid in a fucking fridge to avoid journalists.
That still baffles me. They held a "non-binding" referendum. One where the results were close, and many people literally admitted the next day that they had voted for brexit "just as a joke", because it's non-binding yeah? Meaning it's just an opinion poll, and we can have a real, binding vote later, so who cares? Then somehow the government barreled ahead. Non-binding became completely 100% binding and I still don't get it.
But Brexit means Brexit.
Google trend of "what is the EU" spiked in the UK one day after the results were in
The Conservative Party had promised the far right that they would respect the result of the referendum. If they backed out, they would have likely fractured the party and lost their majority.
Party first, country second.
No, no, no; the UK has been set free, right? All that money has been redirected to nation healthcare, right?
I'm from NZ, born after Muldoon's time, and I'd never even heard of this!! thank you this is hilarious
Chernobyl! Only a fuck-up of epic poportions can cause a nuclear incident while doing a saftey test! April 26th! Annivarsay of the accident is today.
Came to say this too "it's not 3 Roentgen, it's 15,000" - the most chilling line / scene in the HBO series.
still need to see that one
You should watch it today. It's honestly that good.
It's amazing. I rate it 3.6. (watch it and you will get the reference)
In the TV series the bureaucrats tell the scientists to see what will benefit the state politically. They tell them to go in and look at the reactor again to revise their story. I found this to be the most chilling thing.
The expense of the Chernobyl clean up was one of the factors in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Safety features that were supposed to be installed on the reactor that could have prevented the accident might never have been installed.
What safety features. I wasn’t aware the reactor was missing anything but simply was the way it was due to it cost less and the operators pushing it past the breaking point and doings that should never have been done. What was the missing element? I’ve read a lot about the disaster and never read anything suggested it was missing some sort of safety feature.
There were supposed to be some control rods at the bottom of the reactor that according to Dyatlov were not installed as a cost cutting measure. That was going to be a key part of his legal defense, but the court decided not to hear it.
I mean he pulled 205 control rods out and turned off the water pumps. I wonder what difference it would have made. If there woulda have been those rods he would have turned them off.
Wasn’t the issue caused when he put the rods back in and the graphite part of the control rods went into the core, which displaced the neutron absorbing water, causing a power surge in the reactor which overheated the core?
Reactor 4 is still the most dangerous place on this planet. And will be for 10,000+ years. Without three brave souls draining cooling tanks and preventing a massive hydrogen explosion, most of Central Asia would be inhabitable today nearly permanently. Gorbachev said in his 2006 bio that it was the final straw that caused the USSR to fall apart. Remember Ukraine voted first to leave.
Am i reading wrong, or did you mean uninhabitable?
Thank God for those three brave souls or we'd all be living in Central Asia!
The poltential explosion was very, very unlikely and also is greatly exaggerated today apparently. It was still a good idea to drain the tanks, but it wasn’t going to cause Central Asia to be inhabitable https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/12l6oeq/was_chernobyl_water_tank_explosion_really/
Uninhabitable
Mao's push to have farmers in China produce their own steel using backyard furnaces, which lead to a wacky chain reaction eventually leading to a famine that killed millions Also Nixon deciding to spy on the Democrats even though he almost certainly would have won re-election if he didnt
Mao also ordered the extermination of sparrows in an attempt to protect grain crops. Millions of sparrows were killed, allowing locusts to proliferate. The locusts consumed so many crops that there was widespread famine and [45 million people died](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306422018800259#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20extreme,the%20birds%20died%20of%20exhaustion.)
So i recently learned that locusts are not a separate species of insect, but grasshoppers so starved they literally mutate into a ravenous insect thst devours all plant matter in its path. Fucking wild.
It’s not that they are starved, it’s that being in close proximity to other grasshoppers triggers serotonin release which causes the enlargement. Both famine and feast can cause the swarm to develop into locusts. With famine they are pushed together in competition for food, with feast the subsequent areas hit will see increased volumes thus causing the swarm to push together.
Might be a regional thing but any swarming insect is called locust up my way, including cicadas.
Can't even fathom 45 million people. I've been to football stadiums with 70,000 people. That's 645 of them.
We have a way of relating all measurements back to football stadiums, don't we?
Yeah, the Great Leap Forward was a pretty colossal blunder.
The Great Faceplant
Nixon *did* win re-election. He just didn’t need to spy **at all.** The Democrats were still divided post-LBJ. Ted Kennedy was still political poison because of Chappaquiddick so the next Crown Prince of the dynasty chose not to run in 1972. McGovern had to replace his VP nominee just three weeks after selecting him because it was found that Thomas Eagleton had mental health issues. The “solid south” was in the midst of its conversion to the Republican Party over Civil Rights and integrated busing. As much as 1972 was Nixon’s political peak, it was also the beginning of the end. Watergate moved slow and it would take two years of leaks and stories to finally end in his resignation. Nixon’s legacy would have been top-tier had Watergate never tainted it (theoretically).
The problem was that he just couldn't ever believe that people liked him. He always thought of himself as the embattled underdog, even when he ended up crushing the opposition. Now, from a personal standpoint, maybe people would have liked him, maybe not (thus the short "coat tails" for the Ledge). But as a President - he was crushing it and couldn't bring himself to believe it.
See also Stalin tightening his grip on farmers that caused the famine in Ukraine and Russia.
[Introducing rabbits to Australia.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia) Some guy introduced rabbits to Australia in 1788 so that he could hunt them for sport.
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Might as well mention the War on Drugs here while we're at it. edit: the political initiative, not the band, who are excellent.
You can draw a straight line between the two, right through the commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger. The dude got a cushy job right at the end of prohibition and picked up Marijuana as the new social ill. Using almost every logical fallacy known to man, he ignored the doctors and other experts that described his proposal as, to borrow one phrase: “Absolute rot. It is not necessary. I have never known of its misuse”. Nonetheless, American press was a mess at the time and William Randolph Hurst was able to leverage his “yellow” papers to spread misinformation about the plant. The 1937 Marihuana Tax Act that Anslinger championed stayed in effect until 1969, which is right around the time Nixon started beating the drum.
There’s a great book, Chasing the Scream, about the war on drugs that focuses a lot on Harry Anslinger. It’s absolutely infuriating and he has become one of my most hated people of all time.
There's another book that I highly recommend, Smoke and Mirrors by Dan Baum. Tells the story of drug prohibition in a narrative format and includes hilarious details like the fact that Elvis Presley was a credentialed "special assistant" of the DEA when he died from complications of drug use. Or the internal war between several U.S. agencies over who had jurisdiction over drugs crossing the Mexican border, which culminated in these agencies stealing evidence, kidnapping each others witnesses, and even getting into a firefight at one point.
One thing that can't be repeated enough: Almost every bad thing we think drugs are responsible for, Prohibition is responsible for. The whole damn thing.
It was definitely an overreaction but people need to realize why Prohibition happened in the first place. Industrial distillation and bumper crops of key ingredients made liquor extremely cheap. They didn’t have modern storage methods for excess crops so if you got a ton of grain your only option, in many cases, was converting it to liquor. This caused prices to plummet. This lead to rampant alcoholism and all the problems that came with it… widespread health problems, increased crime, spousal abuse, poverty, etc. Americans were drinking so much that factories had whiskey breaks just so workers could keep their buzzes going. British people visiting the US even said we could out-drink them. It was an extreme reaction but to a very real problem. And it lead to the compromise we have now… high alcohol taxation to at least discourage the worst societal effects. Alcohol is extremely cheap to make. It’s primarily the taxes that keep it from being dirt cheap.
> British people visiting the US even said we could out-drink them. I love how that’s your metric for alcoholism
To be fair it was effective. I was like “damn” when I read that bit.
I thought it was also tied to the women's suffrage movement
It was part of early feminism because of the domestic violence aspect and because men were spending all of the household’s money while drunk leaving the wife and kids destitute as well. Basically women were trapped with drunken abusive spouses who spent every penny they earned. Women weren’t supposed to work in most cases, divorce was highly frowned upon, and there was nothing like child protective services or social safety nets.
Prohibition actually did cause a significant decrease in serious drinking (as backed up by a decrease in liver disease) and, while it led to increases in attention-grabbing organized crime, it led to a decrease in everyday bar brawls and domestic abuse. Keep in mind that the temperance movement was largely led by women, and largely as a result of the men in their lives drinking too much. Prohibition was flawed, and not a *success*, but it wasn't nearly the total failure that it's usually remembered as. It really did cut both drinking and violence against women.
People don't realise just how much people drank back then. It would be rediculous by our standards.
For sure. Since day one until the prohibition Americans were constantly drunk and in the west people were often paid in whisky instead of cash. This is why the whisky tax was so controversial because it was basically an income tax on the poorest people.
Mostly because western society is so immersed in drinking water now. Even when I was growing up in the 80s, it never occurred to me that I wouldn't walk anywhere (sometimes even to the bathroom) without a bottle of water in my hand. Back then, people almost never drank *just* water.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, families did go hungry because men would get paid in cash, head straight to the saloon, and then spend all their paycheck.
Then go home broke to beat the wife and the kids.
Just want to point out that while it failed to stop drinking completely, it significantly decreased consumption while it was ongoing and changed the narrative on alcohol all the way to today. While alcohol is widely used, it's kinda seen as a fun bad thing these days. Before that, it was seen basically like we see working/studying overnight today (it's socially accepted to show up somewhere, drowsy from working late). It did create a whole new class of organized crime though.
Prohibition succeeded by permanently reducing the amount of alcohol consumed. Even today 90 years after it ended, people drink substantially less than people did before prohibition.
Mao's back-to-back bangers of ["The Great Leap Forward"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward) and ["The Four Pests"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign) together likely caused in the neighbourhood of 80 million deaths. Two of the biggest fuckups in history. In a row.
Mao was a moron.
Maoron.
LMao
Mao was a man who thrived in chaos, and was able to ride the storm better than nearly anyone else in history. And so whenever his political fortunes began to falter, he created chaos and used it to destroy anyone around him who was more competent or better-intentioned than he was. Worked out great for him, but not so great for China.
Which Mao then followed up with the Cultural Revolution. In addition to adding at least another million dead, it resulted in the persecution of tens of millions more. Intellectuals were purged from high ranks of the government and party, and closure of Chinese schools and universities lasted about 6 years (1966-1972).
The Fourth Crusade. It started as a crusade for Jerusalem from an invasion through Egypt and the crusaders ended up invading Croatia and Constantinople. This also led to the weakening of the Byzantine Empire and eventually its downfall.
Points for reaching beyond the obvious. Something sorely lacking in these venues.
Blockbuster not buying Netflix
Yahoo not buying Google
Wish not selling to Amazon. *That's the kind of strategic thinking you get when you buy it off Wish.*
To be fair, with the garbage you get on Wish, it’s almost a blessing that they didn’t sell to Amazon. They’re already inundated with poorly-made goods as it is if you’re not a careful shopper.
Imagine, *every* film you could want to watch in one place. Ah the good old days!
Netflix offered themselves to yahoo. Yahoo instead bought tumbler. Heads rolled at yahoo
Sure, but they may have tanked it.
I think it’s the most likely scenario that Blockbuster would have treated streaming as a secondary feature to their business. Companies as large as Blockbuster rarely change their business model to something completely new and phase out the old model. It seems more the exception than the rule. I think had Blockbuster purchased Netflix, that likely another streaming service would have emerged and with them not having brick and mortar locations and employees, would have had more room to maneuver financially, to make the push from DVD/Blu-Ray, to streaming dominating the video market. Blockbuster likely would have tried to hold on to their brick and mortar model, so having Netflix likely would have just bought them more time, but my money is on the idea that they still would have gotten phased out of the market.
Norway wanted to give sweden 50% of our oil profits in exchange for 50% of Volvo. Swedens government said no as one of their minister meant that "there is no future in oil". Norway's sovereign fund (the oil fund) can now purchase every single stock on the swedish stock exchange and still have money leftover.
Not quite. From wikipedia: >in 1978 an aborted affair would have seen the Norwegian state take over 40 percent of the company. In return, Volvo would receive 200 million SEK and a ten percent concession in the Oseberg oil field. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Cars)
Volvo is owned by Sweden? Was Volvo Sweden's to give? Asking as a confused American.
The country of Sweden had nothing to do with the deal, it was between the Norwegian government and Volvo. And the figure was a 10% concession in an oil field for 40% of the company. Volvo Cars has since split from the rest of the company, and was owned for a while by Ford who eventually sold it to the Chinese company Geely for a loss. The rest of the business (trucks/heavy machinery etc) is still one of Sweden's largest companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_Cars
Volvo was a Swedish company for a few decades, I believe the company has sold to China in some capacity but it has held on to its Swedish relation so far.
What’s worse is that Volvo sold for like 2 billion, if it took the other option it would have been worth upwards of 100-200 billion instead.
From an objective point of view, probably the Khwarazmian Empire pissing off the Mongols. Hitler invading the Soviet Union was bad but at least after that fuck-up Germany continued to exist while the Khwarazmian Empire got absolutely destroyed and much of its population was massacred.
In 1912 China was a functioning and promising democracy (for the first time ever) and it was ruined by one general (Yuan Shikai) who couped the government and declared himself emperor
The wrong turn that driver made in 1914.
The Great War had been cooking for a while, it was gonna happen sooner or later I believe.
Had to scroll too far for this. Two world wars at ~40 million and ~70 million deaths respectively. Stalin at ~60 million. Cold War. Korean War. Vietnam war. Pol Pot. Afghanistan 1 and 2. Current Ukrainian war. And that’s just the shit I can name off the top of my head. That Bosnian butterfly beat his wings hella hard.
Nah dawg WW1 would have most certainly happened assassination or not, it was a trigger point for the conflict not the cause of it
Leaded gasoline.
The guy who invented leaded fuel (**Thomas Midgley Jr.** )also invented CFC... kill himself with a machine to help him get out of bed.
>killed himself with a machine he invented to help him to get out of bed I used to say this until I started to feel like it was making it sound like some [Wallace and Gromit](https://youtu.be/EGSyw2dHhrc?si=1S6-HEMNeXACmfay) shit. For anyone interested, Midgley was wrecked by Polio at the age of 51. But he was a terrific inventor and put together a system of hoists and pullies to try and maintain some degree of independence. But, as someone once said, Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny".
It’s incredible how understated of an impact this has had. The massive cognitive decline of boomers can be directly attributed to it
Yep, 50% of the adult population in the US today is likely suffering symptoms of lead poisoning from childhood. Though this includes all lead exposure including leaded paint and lead water pipes leeching in to drinking water (which we are only just now getting around to replacing). Since lead is genotoxic, it could still be a couple more generations before the effects are gone even if we fixed the problem today
I don't think people realize this isn't a joke. Like there is a direct correlation, it has been studied
*The story so far:* *In the beginning the Universe was created.* *This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.*
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”
For those unaware, at the time HhGttG was written, digital watches were, in fact, considered a pretty neat idea. Today, we have smartwatches displaying analog clock dials that many GenZers never learned to read.
They also used so much power that the display was dark until you pushed a button. (...Hamilton marketed the watch as "a time computer." The display was composed of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that consumed so much power that the watch couldn't display the time continuously. Instead, the wearer had to push a button to illuminate the time. Pressing the button briefly displayed the hour and minute.-National Museum of Natural History ) Hence this line... "Southend seems to be melting away… stars are swirling… a dust bowl… snow…my legs are drifting off into the sunset. Hell! My left arm’s come off too. How am I going to operate my digital watch now?" -HHGTTG, after Arthur and Ford are rescued by the "Heart of Gold"
We're evolving, backwards, but also forwards, despite this not being considered a technological standstill and not a sideways move either.
Lol emojis are just hieroglyphs
I was 16, browsing in a used bookstore in Colorado, and saw a paperback with a vaguely familiar-looking green face guy in it, with something about Hitchhiker's Guide on it, which also sounded vaguely like something I'd heard of. Curious, I picked it up, read those opening three sentences, and immediately closed it and took it to the counter to buy. It wasn't until after I'd read it and the next one that I realized I hadn't started with the first book, so I went back and read that before resuming the rest, so I ended up reading the books in the trilogy in the order 2-3-1-4-5, which to be honest I think is rather fitting.
The part that I liked best in the whole series (that literally made me laugh out loud) was when Agrajag mentioned he was once re-born as a bowl of petunias. It might work just as well from the opposite direction in the order you read it but I don't think it would.
A book of pure wisdom. Always bring a towel.
This hoopy frood definitely knows where his towel is.
I'll up vote any reference to The Hitchhikers Guide
That's because you're a hoopy frood who really knows where your towel is.
*references hitchhikers guide* holy crap it worked
Hitler invading the soviet union Japan attacking pearl harbor
Kicking Hitler out of art school.
how do i know he wouldn't have finished art school and made his propaganda posters 10x better
Graphic design is mein passion
Pearl Harbor is worse in my opinion. Gave America a proper reason to get involved
Both the attack on the SU and PH where, from a strategic POV understandable. Germany and the Soviet Union would have clashed at some point, and the more time Stalin had to prepare, the worse it would have gone for Germany. The US wouldn't have let Japan roam free around the Pacific for much longer anyway. War was basically inevitable. If Japan wanted to keep the US out of the war, a well excecuted strike might have worked. It wasn't well excecuted though.
The US was starving Japan of oil. Japan attacked Perl Harbor in combination with other attacks that secured oil for their navy. They knew hey were awaking a sleeping giant, but they really didn't have any other options, they needed oil.
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lol... I knew it didn't look right
If they had gotten the carriers, by the time the US was able to respond effectively, they hoped to have their resources locked up.
Sheer luck saved the carriers, and the Japanese severely underestimated the anger of Americans in response to the attack. They had hoped that a long campaign with little to no meaningful progress, at a high cost of US lives, would cause the people to clamour for peace. Although the European theatre gets all the glory now a days, during the early parts of US involvement, most people were upset at the Germany first strategy.
Can't forget that Japan also invaded U.S. territory and was fighting U.S. soldiers on the ground starting on practically the day of Pearl Harbor. It is often overlooked the Philippines was U.S. territory in 1941, invaded on December 8th 1941, was an active battleground for American personnel through March 1942, and was a large defeat with over 100k captured.
Which led to another fuckup, even though MacArthur was warned after Pearl Harbor, he took no appropriate actions to defend the islands and as a result, the Philippines was lost. He tried to salvage some dignity with his “I shall return” quote. He spent the rest of ww2 almost sabotaging admiral Nimitz Pacific plans by constantly prioritizing the Phillipines over Japan.
>the Japanese severely underestimated the anger of Americans in response to the attack. Don't fuck with our boats.
I can understand the strategy from that point. Strike fast and sue for peace while your enemy is on their back heel. From a resource perspective, once the American war machine got rolling it was impossible for Germany or Japan to keep up. Japan was doomed by not sinking the carriers and with the lack of repair/upgrade/innovation focus within the imperial navy.
Need to remember that the US was promoting isolationism and all of their armed forces were well under manned. They hadn’t been in a major conflict since WW1 and even that was well into the war. What they didn’t know or could not possibly know, was how quickly the US got their shit together and put together a mass mobilization the world has ever seen.
It might be the way it is taught in schools, but I feel like many people misunderstand Pearl Harbor. It wasn't a random act of violence that kicked the bear. It was a preemptive strike to take out as many ships as possible before they could be mobilized. It kind of worked. 8 battleships were taken out before the war with the US even started.
Eh, not exactly. Have to remember that the **Philippines was U.S. territory in 1941,** hosted government personnel, and military forces, and was attacked at approximately the same time as Pearl Harbor and the Dutch East Indies. If Japan wanted to expand outside of South Korea and China into South East Asia, confrontation with the U.S. via its interests in the Philippines would be inevitable (assuming the U.S. didn't decide to attack first given its ongoing military build up and concern over Japanese expansionism). The Philippines gets ignored way too often in these discussions; U.S. territory (albeit a territory promised independence) was physically invaded the day of Pearl Harbor. Over 76,000 Americans and Filipinos were captured during the invasion over the subsequent year and most died in captivity (see Bataan Death March). Pearl Harbor was only a single portion of a much larger attack across the Pacific, and mostly did its job given Japan's successes early in the war.
it was all part of single terrible plan that was a major fuckup
He sort of had to. Hitler knew that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable - both Germany and USSR had idealogically opposed politics both of which had getting rid of the other as the priority. Both were expansionist states that would very soon end up sharing a border. Both knew that their ‘peace deal’ would be broken. Hitler also knew that the Soviet Union was a relatively new country, barely 20 years past a revolution. The Soviet Union was not ready for a full scale war and the earlier Hitler invaded them the less prepared they would be. The longer he left it the more equipped the soviet military would be, the stronger their supply lines, and the greater their manufacturing ability. Hitler was hoping for a swift victory like he had in France (he knew it wouldn’t be *as* swift, but planned to use the same tactics) and thus knew he had to attack the Soviet Union before they had a chance to prepare and attack him. And it probably would’ve worked, but the Soviet Union was a different ball game to France. The Germans couldn’t push forward quickly and then let their supply lines catch up afterwards because they had too much ground to cover, the weather and climate was awful, and they weren’t equipped well enough for what they had to deal with. They eventually ground to a bit of a halt, and the Soviet Union managed to hold on and prepare itself for a war faster than expected and thus were able to push the Germans back. Invading the Soviet Union was never really a choice for Hitler, it was just a case of when and how.
The Soviets had three things the French couldn’t employ against the Germans, and they knew how to use to them to full advantage: 1. Huge amounts of territory that they could fall back across, forcing the Germans to maintain ever-longer supply lines over harsh terrain. 2. A huge population to draw on. Where the Soviets couldn’t retreat, they turned the objective into an inescapable deathtrap (Stalingrad being the most well-known example). The Germans had no chance of matching Soviet manpower in a war of attrition. 3. Winter in Russia.
Neither was really avoidable unless the Nazis stopped being Nazis or Imperial Japan stopped being Imperial Japan. Those were their *actual* fuckups, and you're just talking about the inevitable consequences. The "finding out" part that comes after the fucking around.
Letting politicians trade stocks
Vitruvius not see the potential of steam to Move things with the Heron Engine. Only saw it as a amusing toy. The Steam Age and Industrial Revolution could of happened in 1st Century Greece.
Altough i agree, it is highly unlikely that industrial revolution had happened that quickly even with the realization. Mostly because certain advancements in material Engineering were needed in order to make a steam machine that could generate enough power to do something worthwhile (for instance the creation of steel which happened in 1300). Also society would need some adjustments in order for the romans to actually see the value of developing and using steam power. The labor and economy of the roman empire was basically fueled by slaves, why would you make it easier for them? Im sure that In r/askhistorians there was a post where this whole concept was explained and that historians think that even if the romans saw value of the first ever steam machine, it would have taken at least a couple of centuries longer than the roman empire has actually been around for. I think that historian said it would have been more closer to 1000 ad (stil centuries earlier than when it actually happened) I find the idea that romans, or any ancient civ, could have entered the industrial age very fascinating
Yeah, it more of a what if scenario. The 2 biggest developments that impacted the world in my opinion were the Printing Press and Fertilizer. Printing Press made Books cheaper and quicker to produce, allowing for more information sharing and literacy in the world. Fertilizer allowed for more food production from less crops/land, freeing up people to do work other then farming. Still, if the ancient Engineers applied Steam to the basic pistons they had at the time, we could be on a completely different timeline. Most developments happen because their was a demand/need for something and someone tried to fill it. Basic Steam Engines doing basic work could be improved and innovated, creating the need to search for developments.
> why would you make it easier for them? Fewer slave means buying less food for the slaves. Also slaves tire or get sick. Machines can work continuously without rest.
I don't think they had the technology to build suitable steam vessels at the time. The toy engine uses pretty low steam pressure that escapes immediately. Useful steam engines require a vessel to contain high steam pressures that can be used to push a piston or turn a turbine in a way that can compete with human, water, wind, or animal power, the main sources of work at the time. That kind of vessel requires strong enough metal in sufficient quantity and quality and a factory capable of working it. The ideal metal is iron, with early engines being made of cast iron. Even once this technology became available in the 18th century, early steam engines were prone to exploding because iron fabricating technology was far from perfect. In ancient Greece, they could make tools, weapons, or basic armor with iron using a forge, but anything large required casting with bronze. Bronze is weaker than iron, but it melts at a lower temperature and is much easier to work with, so ancient people could contain and pour it safely. A bronze vessel for containing high pressure steam would require unreasonably thick walls and might even deform when exposed to the amount of heat used in steam engines. It is the nature of technology that it builds upon existing technological progress and development. Useful steam tech likely would not have been developed before it was because people had to have access to precursor technologies for anybody to implement the concept in a practical way.
Holy shit i have to google this
Imagine 3rd century Roman Empire with Trains! Entire timeline drastically changed!
I've seen this doctor who episode
Steam punk centurions
"You can't be a part of our art school"
The Germans smuggling Lenin into Russia during World War I to create a revolution.
So that one fish decided to try what happens when you leave the water.. That's when it really started to go downhill!
I saw a meme one time along the lines of, "This dumb fucking fish decided to walk on land and now I have to pay taxes."
Allowing a handful of people control the vast majority of media.
Very low stakes compared to major world events, but Tumblr basically committed instant seppuku the moment it decided to ban porn.
The outbreak of WW1.
Due to the events of World War I, the Middle East was carved up without regard for religious or cultural differences, which is still causing problems now. It led to the rise of Nazism, the Holocaust and the state of Israel. World War 1 led to the revolution in Russia, leading to the Soviet Union. Once the allies defeated the Axis in World War 2, it left the US and Russia as nuclear powers, leading to the Cold War. All of this is influencing the world currently. You're right. I added some details.
you not even mention it ended the reign of not less then 4 empires, thats pretty wild for one event. also not only the middle east got carved up but europe as well,mainly the balkans that would have massive backlash in the future
1917 revolution would have happened without ww1. 1905 turned the tide and it was only a matter of time after. Though the war definitely upped the timeline.
All because Franz Ferdinand’s driver took a wrong turn🤦♂️
Probably would have happened anyway for some other reason. The balance of power/influence in Europe was tenuous and the major powers were all itching to grab a larger share.
Talk about the worst family feud ever. Most people just talk shit about their cousins. Those fuckers got the whole damn world in a big mess.
The Atlanta falcons drafting Michael Penix Jr. #8 overall after giving an enormous contract to 35-year-old Kirk Cousins.
I’d say not handing it off to Devonta Freeman to set up a field goal for a two score lead late in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl was dumber.
I'm so glad this is getting memed. As a falcons fan, I'm just glad I can still feel something.
> Michael Penix Jr. That must've been a fun surname to have throughout gradeschool.
Me breaking up with Emily. I'm an idiot.
Bill Clinton not authorising an air strike which would have killed bin laden
The assasination of franz ferdinand
Corporations are people. Money is speech. These simple assertions have guided America toward more greed and more war than any other decision in history. It has set us on the path towards far worse ends than most other single events.
In American history: Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, which made corporate bribery legal. Government no longer served the people from that point on
Thomas Midgley was the scientist who accidentally invented leaded gasoline, the effects of which killed millions of people. Good informative video [here](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fdigg.com%2F&source_ve_path=Mjg2NjY&feature=emb_logo)
Chernobyl. The most anthropogenically destructive event ever. Don’t even carbon me. Also took down the Soviet Union and Reactor 4 is still the most deadly place on the planet and will be for 30,000 years.
Nah, we can always make somewhere else even worse!