50 Moments in History That People Think Most Don't Realize How Important They Were

People seem to forget the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 when listing the most significant events of the 21st century. It's right up there with 9/11, Covid and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

When Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News in the USA, diminishing the value of truth and cementing the rise of fascism.

Diego de Landa's burning of Mayan libraries.

Henry VIII separating from the Roman Catholic church and having government rule over religion. It put power into the secular authority.

Jeri Ryan getting cast as Seven Of Nine on *Star Trek Voyager*.

Her character is popular, her role is extended, she has to live in Los Angeles, straining her marriage with the up-and-coming Republican politician Jack Ryan in Illinois. They divorce in 1999.

In 2004, Jack Ryan is running for the Illinois senate seat(already held by a retiring Republican, Peter Fitzgerald). A judge decides to release the records of Ryan's divorce, which reveal that he'd repeatedly asked his then-wife Jeri Ryan to perform public s*x acts with him at B**M clubs in multiple cities in the mid-90s.

Ryan withdraws his candidacy for Senate over the scandal(because optics mattered back then), and his opponent, a little-known Democrat named Barack Obama is waved into the Senate unopposed.

The rest is history - Obama goes on a meteoric rise as the Senator from Illinois, culminating in being elected President just four years later; not only becoming the first black President in U.S. history, but defeating the very popular Republican John McCain who almost certainly would've defeated any other opponent whatsoever.

So the reason that Obama was President from 2008-2016 is because Jeri Ryan was cast as the cool Borg lady in a leotard on *Star Trek Voyager* in the '90s.

BackToWorkEdward
And it gets even more interesting the longer history dominoes onward from there too - without Obama, McCain's opponent almost certainly would've been Hillary Clinton(whom Obama defeated in the 2008 primary). If McCain had indeed defeated her, there's a good chance the Dems would've run a different candidate in 2016, and potentially beaten Trump. More likely, Trump doesn't run at all, because Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin have been waiting their turns to run in 2016 instead of the entire Republican base having become a witch's brew of racial hatred and conspiracy under Obama for eight years.

Alternately, without Obama, Hillary wins in 2008 and serves two terms, and a different D candiate runs in 2016 and actually defeats Trump(or whoever runs as the R instead).

The entire thing makes the mind boggle and like, it's literally all just down to the fulcrum of Jack and Jeri Ryan's marriage not falling apart in the late 1990s due to Star Trek commitments and sexual antics.

Kid falling into a gorilla enclosure in 2016.


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Fly high, Harambe

I feel like the internal combustion engine does not get enough love. It actually shapes the infrastructure of modern cities or what academics like to call the built environment.

It also helped lift a lot of people from poverty back in the day in the western world because it was linked to many industries that provided much needed jobs. Even today its doing the same in some African and Asian countries.

Chinese loom and spinning wheel caused a chain reaction that lead to an abundance of paper and books.   -connections with james burke.

I'm guessing Adobe Flash shutting down, it got rid of all the childhood media we had...

Not to mention, **Adobe Flash itself**, it played an *extremely important* role in the early days of the internet, it was used for interactive webpages, advertising, animated videos (e.g Homestar Runner, Happy Tree Friends) and video games! (e.g Club Penguin, The World's Hardest Game).

The 99 day reign of Frederick III of Prussia. WWI and everything after may never have happened if he'd not been fatally ill when he ascended the throne.

The downing of Korean Airlines Flight 007 by the USSR in 1983.

A passenger airliner that flew over restricted Soviet airspace due to a navigational error and was shot down. Afterwards, among many other things Reagan ordered the GPS system be released to the civilian world as a common good. Before then GPS was a US military technology and it being released to the public was intended to prevent something like this from ever happening again.

So a couple pilots in a cockpit f*****g up is why we have the ability to look up directions on our phone.

When the mitochondria stop being symbiotic bacteria in living bodies and became a naturally occurring organelle in the cells of living creatures.

The siege of Szigetvár. Basically Suleiman the Magnificent was on the war path into Europe with an army of 50-100k Ottomans. They had to deal with the fortress of Szigetvár first to make sure they didn’t get flanked later. The fortress only had around 2-3k soldiers manning it. They managed to cause 20-30k casaulties over the span of a month holding out against the Ottomans, during which Suleiman died and the fortress was lost but it knocked the wind out of the Ottomans sails and they went back East. This battle and the 3000 Hungarians and Croatians are considered by some historians to have saved Western civilization.

In Ancient Greece the Pythagoreans were a secret religious society who kept their discoveries (mathematical and otherwise) to themselves. Then one of their members publicized their teachings, earning their wrath (I think he got expelled or sentenced to death or something.)

This was a huge, momentous thing, because unlike in Egypt or Persia where the astronomers and "scientists" closely guarded their secrets, it ushered in a new age where people shared their scientific or mathematical findings with the world, accelerating intellectual progress.

(I read this in a book years ago, so it may not be completely accurate, but that's what I remember.)

**Edit:** it was Hippasus, the man credited with the discovery of irrational numbers. As [legend says]

> Despite his many contributions, Hippasus is also remembered for his death. According to legend, he was cast into the sea by the Pythagoreans because he revealed their secret teachings to the outside world. This was seen as a betrayal of the Pythagorean way of life and was considered a serious offense.

Facebook creating the share button. It created the whirlwind of misinformation that we have today.

Eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. It Caused volcanic winter in parts of Europe with food shortages and famine. Scared aristocrats were barred in their manors and were entertaining each other with stories. Thanks to them we have Frankenstein and Dracula. Horses moved from transport to food category, and people were forced to find other means of transportation and invented velocipede. People who starved in that time invented fertilizers that allow food to grow in horrible conditions.

How close the 2008 crash came to actually fully crashing the market, like full on worse than the crash of the Great Depression. If I remember it came down to several hours.

A wrong turn, ultimately started The Great War (WWI).

The Spanish-American War. It's a footnote for most people, but it set the US on the path it's on today.

The "White Ship Disaster" had a big impact on England. November 1120 on a trip from France to England, from the harbour of Barfleur the ship sank. Many members of English/Norman nobility died, approximately 300 people, including the Heir to the English Throne. This then caused a succession crisis in England, with Empress Matilda being named Heir. However on Henry I death his Nephew Stephen seized the throne causing a civil war known as "The Anarchy" (1135-1153). Big part of early English History, just a generation after William the Conqueror, had a large political impact on the country and its not widely known about.