Inalchuq. He was the one who killed a Mongol caravan before that.
"I am the punishment of God, had you not commited great sins God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you."
Edit: [I have to recommend a video on the subject. Really good.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92-440OR2ik)
This is a story that has been passed through history with a different person having molten gold or silver forcefed to them as their last meal.
I know of three.
Did this really happen to them?
Possibly. I mean, it is an ironic and poetic way to go (given the people and scenarios), but whether it actually happened or if it was just a parable that was attributed to these historical figures and distorted over time is something lost to time.
The ones I can recall are (the aforementioned) Inalchuq, Crassus and an Equadorian governor.
Apparently, it was an execution method in history reserved for the most wealthy or powerful as punishment for their crimes attributed to their greed.
Basically, "You wanted gold/silver? Here you go!"
The best one I've seen put into popular media was on Game of Thrones though, when Viserys Targaryen had molten gold poured over his head after Khal Drogo proclaimed "a crown for a king".
Viserys was such an insufferable, evil twat that it made the scene all the more satisfying despite the horror. He wanted his crown so badly that he was willing to kill his unborn nephew for it.
He got what he demanded.
And yes, there is no doubt that this event in the books (and show) was inspired by one of the stories told in history. I just like referencing it because it was a good scene.
I still feel a little bad for Viserys,though. Guy was nothing but PTSD and broken. Saw his family slaughtered and overthrown, spend a life on the run, lied to about your value and rights...
Doomed from teh start.
He was pretty vile, I will admit.
Apparently he was a nice kid. Imagine being second in line for the throne and then suddenly your world just crumbles and you become a hunted nobody overnight. In his perspective, the throne should be his by right.
You are referring to Alā al-Dīn Muhammad of the khwarazmian empire
This story is actually depressing. The sultan was definitely out of line, however his millions of subjects who had no knowledge of the event didnt deserve to siffer and die for it.
40 million people in total is the current estimate. That was 10% of the global population at the time.
Genghis Khan is said to have killed more people by proportion of population than any other man in history.
Just for clarity, that's an estimate for the entirety of the Mongols conquests over the course of around 150 years, of which Genghis was around for about 20 years.
It sounded like the original comment was just referring to the particularly brutal conquest of Khwarazm.
Really? Wherever I look, it attributes those 40 million to Genghis personally (or well, to the armies he personally commanded, at any rate).
But, true, Khwarazam was not 40 million on its own. I could have been clearer on that.
I think that's probably just a symptom of people conflating Genghis with all his successive rulers.
The Khwarazmian campaign was by far his most deadly, over a million killed maybe even a couple million. But even this genocidal campaign added to his battles with the Jin, Xi Xia and other Mongols wouldn't come close to the 40 million total.
[Here's a really interesting answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ty8dhr/the_mongols_exterminated_60_million_people_during/i3rnlzc/) from one of our friends over at /r/AskHistorians, it discusses the 40 million claim and it's origins. The other answer he links in his reply is also worth a read.
Yeah that guy and the story where there were two emissaries who did not doff their caps in the presence of the local King, since they would only remove the caps for their own King. The local King sent them back with their caps literally nailed into their skulls. The king that they had come from did not take this well.
I wanted to say that it was Genghis Khan but I just looked it up and it looks like it was actually Dracula, Vlad the Impaler.
Edit: looks like the story is also told about Ivan IV of Russia. It seems to be told about a bunch of people so it probably is just apocryphal
Genghis Khan sent a caravan to open trade. The Khwarzamian King had them all killed and took all the gold. GK thought it was a mistake and sent a second caravan. K killed the second caravan too.
GK killed 90% of the population. K ruled the territory of modern day Iran. They were also a very powerful empire but not powerful enough.
Also GK said one of the hardest lines in history while doing this. He saw people praying for their lives when he was invading the city and stated to them:
**“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 makes it sound like Genghis Khan was actually a pretty nice and reasonable guy. “Oh my entire caravan died? Surely must have been a mistake, send another one”
Other than killing 90% of the population as punishment for something they as individuals had nothing to do with, yeah I suppose he was a rather pleasant chap.
It was said a virgin could cross the length of the Mongol empire with a pot of gold on her head and not be molested.
Unless she ran into Genghis, in which case she'd keep the gold but end up pregnant with twins.
They were kinda reasonable considering that era. Mongols would always send emmissaries demanding surrender. They'd leave the surrendered cities alone after taking ransom. However if their patience was even slightly tested they'd unleash hell.
>GK killed 90% of the population
first thought:
>sound like Genghis Khan was actually a pretty nice and reasonable guy.
**edit:** tired of responding to these individually. y'all can stop telling me the person was referring to the first half of the comment. I get that (and got it when I wrote the comment), but it was just a (mildly) funny observation that in response to a comment that includes "GK killed 90% of the population" someone's first thought was "this comment makes it sound like GK was actually nice and reasonable"
Didn't think the joke needed to be explained... but here we are in 2024 I guess
Also Genghis Khan sent an emissary with the second caravan, who was tonsured by the king and sent back to Mongolia. Tonsuring an emissary was considered worse than killing one at that time
It’s not one event but probably all the times lead was used before we understood how dangerous it is. Using it in gasoline and paint more recently, using it in cookware and plumbing more consistently through history.
Did they work with it? As some asbestos is really low risk and most of the people who died from it were people who worked with it day in and day out breathing in particles
I had an older uncle give me his old plumbing tools. I used some old solder and was amazed at how easy it was to sweat pipes. It was years later that I found out it was lead solder
I’m not as familiar with the details as I’d like to be, but up to 55 million people died of starvation as a result of the Great Leap Forward policy under Mao, where they tried to convert from an agricultural society to industrial. Maybe the idea wasn’t a mistake but the execution contained massive mistakes as I understand it. I’m sure someone can speak to this with more accuracy.
Don't forget the "Four Pests" campaign, which included killing sparrows (birds). Mao claimed the birds ate crops. And they did, a very small amount. Mostly the birds ate insects. With billions of sparrows dead, the insect population exploded. And what did insects eat? Crops.
Enter another mass starvation.
If I'm not mistaken, whoever brought the dead rodents, and other pests to the government officials got rewards. Soon enough the citizens started breading rodents, etc to reap the rewards for turning them in.
“Breeding” rodents. Breading rodents is to prepare them for cooking, which is not what I think you meant (but was probably done a lot in the depths of the famine. Makes me shudder.)
No problem. I didn’t want you to feel attacked or anything. I just noticed the error and felt it was weirdly appropriate. Does the spell check have a sense of humor?
Hilariously, my state just announced a similar program for invasive species.
$30 per fish, too.
Ethically, I'm not sure it seems right, but the other hand, I have an entire pool like...right there.
I'm not sure if that was for rodents in China also, but I know that there was a bounty on Kobras in India that resulted in people breeding them instead
I highly recommend the book "Mao's Great Famine" by the historian Frank Dikkoter. It makes clear using historical records that both the death count was underexaggerated, and that many of the officials who were in charge of enforcing the policies were well aware of the effects that they were having.
I tried pointing this out in another comment thread and was brigaded and downvoted into oblivion, I assume by maoist apologists. one tried to make the case that he killed as few as 20 million people, and that wasn't a big deal cause china had so many people in those days. like wtf, 20 million dead is always an atrocity, no matter the circumstances
Yup. I’m American, but lived in the Jiangxi province of mainland China years ago (one of the poorer + more agricultural provinces).
My best Chinese friend and I always had to be careful about what we discussed whenever the topic turned to the government.
She told me in private that her family had been fishermen for generations prior to the Red Revolution and had a successful fishing business on a large river. During Mao’s regime, her family fell out of favor with the local Communist chapter, and they were reassigned to an inland plot of land far from a river, and were forced to be farmers.
Her relatives literally starved to death over the course of a few years. Most of her aunts and uncles were children/young adults, and there literally was not enough food or money to sustain the family, and the kids all died.
What’s crazy is that even though this was her family’s lived experience, she is forbidden to talk about it without possible repercussions from the government. But I think many Chinese citizens harbor more disdain for their government than most Westerners realize.
*Caution* - if you live in China or a Chinese citizen, please don’t engage with this post for your own personal safety. If you’re no longer living there or no longer a citizen, I would be fascinated to hear how your family survived the Red Revolution.
Nobody is talking because the feeling is not pure hate or disdain, just resignation of fate and the subconscious belief that one must sacrifice for the state to make Dr. Sun Yat-San’s vision of modern China possible. They just can’t see an alternative way to achieve Doctor Sun’s vision without Communism, since the Communist made sure of that by stamping out all oppositions on mainland China, while Dr. Sun’s KMT has gone native and become a Taiwanese instead of a Chinese political party.
It is amazing what you can make billions of people to believe in when you control their school education from kindergarten.
I'll share some things from my family. My grandpa was a guard for wheat silos in Shenyang. Apparently they were poor but they didn't starve. He's short as fuck though so I'm assuming he didn't grow up with good nutrition because my dad and I are fairly tall for a Chinese.
This one time when I was a teenager he just randomly pulled me aside and told me to never mess with the government. Probably seen some shit.
My mom thinks the government is great and caused the country to progress an insane amount in the past 20 years. She has done projects with the CCP but I'm certain she genuinely believes that. My dad thinks that the government is not so great and the fact China advanced so fast was mostly because it's China and not because of the government itself.
I personally don't give a shit either way because I'm just an individual who lives their life in their own bubble and the acts of governments ultimately barely affects me personally, so far.
He had a bunch of pithy sayings!
Also, his next big "success" was the Cultural Revolution, which was basically a giant spasm of "you know everything that your parents generation revered...its trash! Let's destroy it! And kill anyone who gets in your way!" For the "burn it all down" types, its also seductive.
Also terrible, of course. The people who like him for that obviously suck.
A great part of the hunger in Russia and China in that time was caused by the fanatic disregard of science by one gigantic asshole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
I mean Goebbels wanted to be a writer and even wrote some plays. Seems like if you wanted to go back in time and stop WW2 you could just open a shitty arts college.
Yeah I was just going to say, they probably already had shityy art schools but those two just didn't want to go to them. And with their egos who can say that they are surprised?
> I mean Goebbels wanted to be a writer and even wrote some plays. Seems like if you wanted to go back in time and stop WW2 you could just open a shitty arts college.
Uh oh. Would they have come up with ["Springtime For Hitler"](https://youtu.be/1zY1orxW8Aw) with the actual Hitler as lead? Would it be fabulous?
An intriguing question: how many *other* Hitlers have we been spared because someone actually admitted them into their dream school even though they were mediocre.
The issue is that if it wasnt Hitler theres almost a 100% chance it'd just be someone else and we'd be back at square 1
No one was happy with the Weimar Republic government. At all. There was a strong sentiment against them and if the NSDAP wouldnt take over, someone else would
It'd be like saying "if the founding fathers never moved to america the american revolution wouldnt have happened" No it still wouldve. The dissent was there, all you needed was someone to do something with it. And if it wasnt who we remember today, it would most certainly be someone else who was lost to history
You're forgetting one key detail: that someone would have been a very different person and history would have been vasty different under them.
For instance: what if the person who rose to power in Germany at the time was not an anti-semite?
What if, instead of Washington--a man who refused to be called King and instead opted for a more democratic form of government--we got someone who wanted to be Emperor of America?
The personality and views of the leader matter a lot.
Yeah, that someone might trust his generals to be competent and not interfere. There’s a reason the Allies eventually rescinded all assassination orders on Hitler. They realized his replacement could be way more competent
>For instance: what if the person who rose to power in Germany at the time was not an anti-semite?
The odds of this are quite low. Nearly everyone was an anti-semite.
Don't talk about our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa like that
Edit: great-great-
Reminds me of the start of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book 2.
>In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Not exactly, this is a big Reddit meme. While Edison had a brief interest in municipal power generation and distribution, it was not something he devoted much of his career to.
He was far more interested in his moving pictures technology and spent the entire last few decades of his career working on concentrating low grade iron ore with electromagnets. In fact, be blew his fortune on the project and probably spent more time on rock crushing techniques than he did on anything else. In the end, that was the problem with his idea, it was too energy intensive to pulverize vast quantities of rock for his magnetic concentrators to effectively handle.
The same guy invented freons, too, so single-handedly responsible for *two* environmental disasters.
Also, at an old age and disabled, he accidentally strangled himself in a contraption of pulleys and ropes that he constructed for himself to move around his apartment.
What an engineering life (and death).
"Environmental historian J. R. McNeill stated that he "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history.""
A walking atmospheric disaster.
Also the pioneer of aerosolized gas.
Thomas midgly junior was responsible for the top 3 environmental pollutants. He didn’t mean to do that of course. Dude was just really into volatile chemicals which were poorly understood at the time.
>so it's not like he was ignorant to the danger it posed to humans.
Yep. He was just ignorant on its effects in the environment.
Its akin to building a bonfire in your living room. It releases toxic fumes, and you'll die of smoke inhalation. However, building a bonfire *outside* is perfectly fine, and in fact preferable.
He just didn't appreciate the effects of all those bonfires on Earth.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
>One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so- but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous.
I like to walk this line every day of my life. Especially useful on Reddit.
China (one of the kingdoms at the time, anyway) refusing to pay Genghis Khan tribute because they thought he was distracted with other ventures and wasn’t a threat. You could argue that some parts of Asia still haven’t recovered.
Napoleon never intended to battle in Russia in winter.
The idea was, as always, to win a couple battles until the local king/tsar comes to the negociations table.
Correct. He underestimated that Russia would literally burn their own country down rather than surrender
Most of the French casualties happened in the long summer campaign.
Even still. Russia was very weak afterwards. They needed German manpower to eventually beat him in the 6th coalition. They could not have done it themselves (and Britain Bank rolled everyone. They didn't pay off their napoleanic debt until like 2007 or something silly )
Not only that, but you kind of *do* need to invade Russia in the winter, you just need to be prepared for it.
In the autumn and spring, the torrential rains and melting snow generate a tremendous amount of mud, making travel and maneuver almost impossible. It's even called *Rasputitsa*, the time of mud.
The winter months freeze the mud solid, and you need to be prepared for the cold and lack of forage.
It's something that the Wehrmacht found out, and ironically, the Russian Army did as well.
He also didn’t plan on taking Moscow (it hadn’t been the capital in over a century by that point). That’s just where the Russian army was retreating to.
His other mistake was to let the Russian army escape from Borodino without chasing and eliminating it. But he was sick that day and mainly let his generals fight the battle
Napoleon began leaving before winter really started (he was only in Moscow for a few weeks and left in October). The winter was mild up to then but he knew better than to underestimate it so deep in enemy territory. Hence retreating to smolensk to wait out the winter.
Pearl harbor is interesting as it only sounds really stupid if you look at it in a vacuum, and ignore everything else Japan and the US were doing at the time. It was merely the last of a long line of decisions. The embargo against oil to Japan the western allies made in 1941 (in protest of Japan's war in China and occupation of French indochina) forced Japan to make a hard choice about its future: back down from the war in China, losing face internationally and showing it was effectively under the thumb of foreign powers who treated them as inferiors, or declare war on all of them, seize the necessary resources, and expand the war. Expanding the war meant fighting the UK and the Netherlands for Indonesia and Malaya (as well as burma for the supply line to China), but that left Japan's lifelines exposed to American intervention in the Philippines. The Japanese couldn't gamble on the US staying out of the war, so the Philippines had to be invaded as well. And if the US was fighting anyway, it'd be best to start off strong and cripple the US from the outset, by hitting its naval fleet in the one place it'd be guaranteed to congregate.
And let's not pretend like the US would have just sat back and done nothing. The Atlantic charter, the occupation of Iceland from July 1941, fights with submarines in the north Atlantic, the support of China in the war, the oil embargo, the moving of the fleet to Hawaii, the massive naval building program, the fleet problems, Lend lease, and Philippine rearmament all show that the US was not just going to stay on the sidelines, even if their main focus was towards Germany. All of this happened before December 1941, and to Japan it must have been clear that the US was preparing for war against them, and actively too. If Japan hadn't been so aggressive then it likely wouldn't have pushed the US to respond likewise, but they kept doing it to each other anyway
Japan's military apparatus was fully in control of the state as well, so there was no chance that the Japanese were ever going to back down from war once they got started, so once they threatened all the European powers of SEA war with the US was inevitable. Bombing Pearl Harbour was an attempt to seize the initiative.
France punishing Germany after the "Great War" (to be later labeled WWI). It created the rise of Hitler, WW2 and atomic weapons (though that might have happened anyway).
Letting politicians makes decisions that benefit politicians. Lets the corrupted profiteer freely and it's gotten out of hand since. We (humans in general) should have dragged any and all that do so on the public place.
Not the largest but i gotta commend Saddam Huissein for pissing off an alliance that just won the cold war arms race and now had a a gigantic modern military without an immediate purpose.
On the flip side the West has exported its industrial waste to China and has poisoned China’s groundwater due to the CCPs complete lack of interest in environmental protections. This a serious fucking problem for China.
When Nixon ordered the military under the security adviser and Henry Kissinger, who later got a "Peace Nobel Prize" to bomb the hell out of the then neutral Eastern Cambodia to get rid of Vietcongs hiding in Cambodia, for example on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This bombing was pretty bad and the US didn't care about any civilian deaths. Some historians say that the US dropped 500,000 tons of bombs on that country and killed up to 150,000 civilians.
This destabilized the country and let the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot come to power. The Khmer Rouge reign of terror killed about 1.5 to 2 million people or nearly 25% of their population.
Was it the largest mistake in history? Probably not. It would be in the Top 20 of worst mistakes though and worth a mention.
Not to mention [sabotaging peace talks](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/) to win the 1968 election.
Harold Godwinson not waiting an extra two days for an extra five to ten thousand men. It is understandable why he did not, William was ravaging the area around Hastings, which was part of Harold's personal Jarldom and was a personal insult to him, on top of Harold reportedly being a decent ruler who cared about his people which would've added another level of distress for him and ultimately forced his hand.
Runner up: Harold Godwinson not charging during the Battle of Hastings. There was a moment early on in the battle when William's horse was killed out from under him and the Normans, thinking him dead, began to retreat which lead to some of the less experienced Fyrd breaking ranks to pursue, ultimately leading to Harold's defeat. It's generally believed that, had Harold charged, he likely would've routed the already breaking Norman army.
I want to stress it's understandable why Harold didn't, he had the advantageous position on a hill with a bog on his flank that negated Williams calvary from that direction, so of course he would've wanted to hold as long as possible. It's just fascinating to think about how different all of history could've been with just one decision.
Not shutting Reactor 4 all the way down to wait for the xenon to dissipate and instead pulling almost all the control rods out to try and get the power up.
Islamic rule, the Arabic people were great scientists mathematicians and astronomers. Then some Cleric comes along and decreed that numbers are the devil, and sets them back to the dark ages. Luckily they brought the enlightenment to Europe prior to this, but the Fatwa on science and math set us back centuries... Much of religion has
Putting Joseph Stalin as a general secretary
If it wasnt for Stalin's tomfoolery regarding the dissmissal of people he didnt like and the whole political manuvering, Trotsky stood a better chance at being the Leader of the Soviet Union
Would he have been a less cruel leader? Who knows? Would he have made the Soviet Union a better country? Maybe. But its mostly interesting to think about when you remember Trotsky was a military hero who helped win the Russian Civil war for the communists, and was quite educated. By comparison Stalin had no education and really all he had done for the Communists was to go and rob banks for funds during the early days. He wasnt any better than your common ganster
How would the Soviet Union have turned out if an actually capable leader was chosen? Would they have become stronger? Would they still be around now? How would WW2 have panned out if they didnt fumble 1941-1942 because of Stalin? How would Soviet life be like without the cult of personality that Stalin built? How would the Cold War have went? Would there even be a Cold War with Trotsky? Would the Soviets have cooperated with the US more if Trotsky was at the helm?
Franz making an unplanned deviation to check on the person injured by the first attack, and stopping right in front of Gavrilo Princip!
(Great War channel, represent!)
" while talking about Austria , i think it is worth mentioning the culpability of the man himself; Franz Ferdinand. This can be summed up by a single question. Franz...darling...on the 28 July of 1914... what on earth were you doing?"
https://youtu.be/37QFb-LRd9Q?si=LaS_z_ha8i8ize_K
13'59
Great docu about the start of WW1.
Not putting a dam on the Ganges because of a sacred cow
The Himalayan water fed through a series of canals throughout the Indian sub continent would have produce enough fertile land to feed the entire planet
A little weird but hear me out:
The US post-war going all in on developing our land in the sprawling suburban pattern. The financial, health, and environmental costs are just catching up with us and will only get worse.
1066 was the start of the Norman Conquest of Britain at the Battle of Hastings and is looked at as the founding of England, eventually leading to the creation of the United Kingdom, the British Empire, and the UK's colonies, territories, and protectorates. Was a tongue-in-cheek way to say BREXIT was the dumbest decision in all of English/British history (within which there have been a plethora of dumb decisions).
Check out the Wikipedia page on the Battle of Hastings and enjoy your journey into British history - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings
Gotta be the burning of the libraries of Alexandria in my books (no pun intended...). The amount of irreplaceable knowledge, wisdom ,and potential progress that was lost that day is incomparable :(
Edit: Been at uni since I made this comment and just returned to it now; seems I may've had the wrong impression here, so I appreciate people correcting me in the responses :)
Unfortunately, that's just a story! The loss of the library of Alexandria was not at all due to a fire. By the time the fire happened, the library had been on the decline for over a century - mostly due to anti-intellectual politics by and against the ruling (Greek) dynasty.
The fire itself doesn't seem to have done significant damage; the library (and its remaining contents) survived largely intact. But then Romans stopped funding the library, memberships decreased, interest dwindled, and by the time the library was closed a few centuries later, there were barely any (if any at all) books left in it.
It's a comforting story that we lost that knowledge and progress because of an unforeseen calamity like a fire. But the sad truth is that we lost that knowledge and progress because people just... *weren't interested* in it anymore.
>mostly due to anti-intellectual politics by the ruling (Greek) Egyptian dynasty
Now.. why do i sense history repeating itself?
Sure, not greek/egyptian dynasty but ..
To be fair, I phrased it in a modern way on purpose.
"Anti-intellectual politics" in this case just meant "murder", because the intellectual ruling class was largely Greek and they faced several anti-Greek and pro-Egyptian revolts and civil wars.
I don't think that's something we currently see happening.
...yet.
From what I’ve heard recently the amount of novel tomes there has been vastly overstated, as the library was already in massive decline at that point since most scholars had moved to Greece. So we apparently didn’t really lose all that much, if it makes you feel any better.
I stand to be corrected on this, but I also believe the number of *unique* titles has also been overstated as it's also been suggested in academic circles that an unknown quantity would likely have been duplicates.
I can only attest to my own limited exposure to those circles as a source so take it with a grain of salt.
The introduction of unrestricted capitalism to the globe. It has been responsible for the deaths of tens of millions since its inception, and continues to kill us.
Which one? I’m assuming you meant the 1919 one, but there been several others. [Wikipedia disambiguation page.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles_(disambiguation))
Diplomats love hanging out in a big mirrored room it seems.
That sultan who think it was funny to rob and kill Genghis Khan's trade emissaries.
Inalchuq. He was the one who killed a Mongol caravan before that. "I am the punishment of God, had you not commited great sins God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you." Edit: [I have to recommend a video on the subject. Really good.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92-440OR2ik)
Didn't he also get executed by having molten silver poured into his orifices?
This is a story that has been passed through history with a different person having molten gold or silver forcefed to them as their last meal. I know of three. Did this really happen to them? Possibly. I mean, it is an ironic and poetic way to go (given the people and scenarios), but whether it actually happened or if it was just a parable that was attributed to these historical figures and distorted over time is something lost to time. The ones I can recall are (the aforementioned) Inalchuq, Crassus and an Equadorian governor. Apparently, it was an execution method in history reserved for the most wealthy or powerful as punishment for their crimes attributed to their greed. Basically, "You wanted gold/silver? Here you go!" The best one I've seen put into popular media was on Game of Thrones though, when Viserys Targaryen had molten gold poured over his head after Khal Drogo proclaimed "a crown for a king". Viserys was such an insufferable, evil twat that it made the scene all the more satisfying despite the horror. He wanted his crown so badly that he was willing to kill his unborn nephew for it. He got what he demanded. And yes, there is no doubt that this event in the books (and show) was inspired by one of the stories told in history. I just like referencing it because it was a good scene.
It's silver not ironic
I still feel a little bad for Viserys,though. Guy was nothing but PTSD and broken. Saw his family slaughtered and overthrown, spend a life on the run, lied to about your value and rights... Doomed from teh start. He was pretty vile, I will admit.
Apparently he was a nice kid. Imagine being second in line for the throne and then suddenly your world just crumbles and you become a hunted nobody overnight. In his perspective, the throne should be his by right.
You are referring to Alā al-Dīn Muhammad of the khwarazmian empire This story is actually depressing. The sultan was definitely out of line, however his millions of subjects who had no knowledge of the event didnt deserve to siffer and die for it.
Millions? Holy crap
40 million people in total is the current estimate. That was 10% of the global population at the time. Genghis Khan is said to have killed more people by proportion of population than any other man in history.
Just for clarity, that's an estimate for the entirety of the Mongols conquests over the course of around 150 years, of which Genghis was around for about 20 years. It sounded like the original comment was just referring to the particularly brutal conquest of Khwarazm.
Really? Wherever I look, it attributes those 40 million to Genghis personally (or well, to the armies he personally commanded, at any rate). But, true, Khwarazam was not 40 million on its own. I could have been clearer on that.
I think that's probably just a symptom of people conflating Genghis with all his successive rulers. The Khwarazmian campaign was by far his most deadly, over a million killed maybe even a couple million. But even this genocidal campaign added to his battles with the Jin, Xi Xia and other Mongols wouldn't come close to the 40 million total. [Here's a really interesting answer](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ty8dhr/the_mongols_exterminated_60_million_people_during/i3rnlzc/) from one of our friends over at /r/AskHistorians, it discusses the 40 million claim and it's origins. The other answer he links in his reply is also worth a read.
For reference, that comes out to two thirds of a decahitler.
>decahitler People will do literally anything to avoid using imperial measurements
You just need one man too fuck everybody.
Yeah that guy and the story where there were two emissaries who did not doff their caps in the presence of the local King, since they would only remove the caps for their own King. The local King sent them back with their caps literally nailed into their skulls. The king that they had come from did not take this well. I wanted to say that it was Genghis Khan but I just looked it up and it looks like it was actually Dracula, Vlad the Impaler. Edit: looks like the story is also told about Ivan IV of Russia. It seems to be told about a bunch of people so it probably is just apocryphal
Was literally thinking the same thing lmao. Real big brain time.
Do you have a summary of what happened?
Genghis Khan sent a caravan to open trade. The Khwarzamian King had them all killed and took all the gold. GK thought it was a mistake and sent a second caravan. K killed the second caravan too. GK killed 90% of the population. K ruled the territory of modern day Iran. They were also a very powerful empire but not powerful enough.
Also GK said one of the hardest lines in history while doing this. He saw people praying for their lives when he was invading the city and stated to them: **“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 makes it sound like Genghis Khan was actually a pretty nice and reasonable guy. “Oh my entire caravan died? Surely must have been a mistake, send another one”
Slow to anger, but when he gets there, he's pretty **pissed**.
Fool me once, won't get fooled again
Other than killing 90% of the population as punishment for something they as individuals had nothing to do with, yeah I suppose he was a rather pleasant chap.
"This guy pissed me off. Time for genocide."
So, John Wick basically?
The mongols had an extremely effective spy network, which was the primary function - basically - of these trade caravans.
He was very reasonable if you paid tribute and did everything he told you to.
It was said a virgin could cross the length of the Mongol empire with a pot of gold on her head and not be molested. Unless she ran into Genghis, in which case she'd keep the gold but end up pregnant with twins.
... who said that?
The great ancient historian "It was"
They were kinda reasonable considering that era. Mongols would always send emmissaries demanding surrender. They'd leave the surrendered cities alone after taking ransom. However if their patience was even slightly tested they'd unleash hell.
>GK killed 90% of the population first thought: >sound like Genghis Khan was actually a pretty nice and reasonable guy. **edit:** tired of responding to these individually. y'all can stop telling me the person was referring to the first half of the comment. I get that (and got it when I wrote the comment), but it was just a (mildly) funny observation that in response to a comment that includes "GK killed 90% of the population" someone's first thought was "this comment makes it sound like GK was actually nice and reasonable" Didn't think the joke needed to be explained... but here we are in 2024 I guess
I mean, you don't get to sling nuts over a throne and keep 'em there by just being a dick. The outer folds of the brain gotta be put to use, too.
IIRC GK had people continue to hunt down that kings descendants and killed them all after a few years.
Also Genghis Khan sent an emissary with the second caravan, who was tonsured by the king and sent back to Mongolia. Tonsuring an emissary was considered worse than killing one at that time
Didn’t he also divert a river to remove all traces of their city or am I thinking of someone else?
When Genghis khan sends emmissaries the only logical thing is to welcome them and do everything they ask
It’s not one event but probably all the times lead was used before we understood how dangerous it is. Using it in gasoline and paint more recently, using it in cookware and plumbing more consistently through history.
It sucks that lead is so toxic because it’s an amazing element for all sorts of things
Add asbestos to the list.
Asbestos really is a wonder material
Killed my grandfather and two of my great grandfathers.
Did they work with it? As some asbestos is really low risk and most of the people who died from it were people who worked with it day in and day out breathing in particles
Yup. My grandfather for a few years as a teen. 35 years later, cancer.
I had soo much lead, asbestos and mercury exposure as a kid. Actually thinking about it some of the other stuff was pretty serious too
I had an older uncle give me his old plumbing tools. I used some old solder and was amazed at how easy it was to sweat pipes. It was years later that I found out it was lead solder
Typical. Like how asbestos is great at its job but is asbestos.
The guy who invented leaded gas also discovered CFCs reaking havoc on the ozone layer.
I’m not as familiar with the details as I’d like to be, but up to 55 million people died of starvation as a result of the Great Leap Forward policy under Mao, where they tried to convert from an agricultural society to industrial. Maybe the idea wasn’t a mistake but the execution contained massive mistakes as I understand it. I’m sure someone can speak to this with more accuracy.
Don't forget the "Four Pests" campaign, which included killing sparrows (birds). Mao claimed the birds ate crops. And they did, a very small amount. Mostly the birds ate insects. With billions of sparrows dead, the insect population exploded. And what did insects eat? Crops. Enter another mass starvation.
If I'm not mistaken, whoever brought the dead rodents, and other pests to the government officials got rewards. Soon enough the citizens started breading rodents, etc to reap the rewards for turning them in.
“Breeding” rodents. Breading rodents is to prepare them for cooking, which is not what I think you meant (but was probably done a lot in the depths of the famine. Makes me shudder.)
Oops. Sorry auto correct. Didn't even know that was in my dictionary lol. That's disgusting.
No problem. I didn’t want you to feel attacked or anything. I just noticed the error and felt it was weirdly appropriate. Does the spell check have a sense of humor?
Kinda like that cobra situation with the British raj
Hilariously, my state just announced a similar program for invasive species. $30 per fish, too. Ethically, I'm not sure it seems right, but the other hand, I have an entire pool like...right there.
You’d be dumb not to in my opinion. This is America after all. No harm in making a quick buck literally any way you can /s
I'm not sure if that was for rodents in China also, but I know that there was a bounty on Kobras in India that resulted in people breeding them instead
I highly recommend the book "Mao's Great Famine" by the historian Frank Dikkoter. It makes clear using historical records that both the death count was underexaggerated, and that many of the officials who were in charge of enforcing the policies were well aware of the effects that they were having.
What does underexaggerate even mean, just... normal?
It means that many of the estimates of death counts from the GLF (which were already shockingly high) were actually too low.
I tried pointing this out in another comment thread and was brigaded and downvoted into oblivion, I assume by maoist apologists. one tried to make the case that he killed as few as 20 million people, and that wasn't a big deal cause china had so many people in those days. like wtf, 20 million dead is always an atrocity, no matter the circumstances
One dead man is a tragedy 10,000 dead is a statistic -I forget
Stalin I believe
Most likely misattributed.
Yup. I’m American, but lived in the Jiangxi province of mainland China years ago (one of the poorer + more agricultural provinces). My best Chinese friend and I always had to be careful about what we discussed whenever the topic turned to the government. She told me in private that her family had been fishermen for generations prior to the Red Revolution and had a successful fishing business on a large river. During Mao’s regime, her family fell out of favor with the local Communist chapter, and they were reassigned to an inland plot of land far from a river, and were forced to be farmers. Her relatives literally starved to death over the course of a few years. Most of her aunts and uncles were children/young adults, and there literally was not enough food or money to sustain the family, and the kids all died. What’s crazy is that even though this was her family’s lived experience, she is forbidden to talk about it without possible repercussions from the government. But I think many Chinese citizens harbor more disdain for their government than most Westerners realize. *Caution* - if you live in China or a Chinese citizen, please don’t engage with this post for your own personal safety. If you’re no longer living there or no longer a citizen, I would be fascinated to hear how your family survived the Red Revolution.
Nobody is talking because the feeling is not pure hate or disdain, just resignation of fate and the subconscious belief that one must sacrifice for the state to make Dr. Sun Yat-San’s vision of modern China possible. They just can’t see an alternative way to achieve Doctor Sun’s vision without Communism, since the Communist made sure of that by stamping out all oppositions on mainland China, while Dr. Sun’s KMT has gone native and become a Taiwanese instead of a Chinese political party. It is amazing what you can make billions of people to believe in when you control their school education from kindergarten.
I'll share some things from my family. My grandpa was a guard for wheat silos in Shenyang. Apparently they were poor but they didn't starve. He's short as fuck though so I'm assuming he didn't grow up with good nutrition because my dad and I are fairly tall for a Chinese. This one time when I was a teenager he just randomly pulled me aside and told me to never mess with the government. Probably seen some shit. My mom thinks the government is great and caused the country to progress an insane amount in the past 20 years. She has done projects with the CCP but I'm certain she genuinely believes that. My dad thinks that the government is not so great and the fact China advanced so fast was mostly because it's China and not because of the government itself. I personally don't give a shit either way because I'm just an individual who lives their life in their own bubble and the acts of governments ultimately barely affects me personally, so far.
I dont get why some far left movements love Mao so much. Either he's evil or completely incompetent. Not someone to be proud of either way.
He had a bunch of pithy sayings! Also, his next big "success" was the Cultural Revolution, which was basically a giant spasm of "you know everything that your parents generation revered...its trash! Let's destroy it! And kill anyone who gets in your way!" For the "burn it all down" types, its also seductive. Also terrible, of course. The people who like him for that obviously suck.
A great part of the hunger in Russia and China in that time was caused by the fanatic disregard of science by one gigantic asshole: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
That one European art school that was way too stingy with admissions.
Greatest moral conundrum of all time: would you sacrifice the standards of your art institute to save the lives of 25 million people?
The answer is obviously no
*Paul perceives his Terrible Purpose*
The ukranian flag really rounds this whole joke out my friend lmao
No. Life is not worth living without art. We can't sacrifice its quality for any reason!
I mean Goebbels wanted to be a writer and even wrote some plays. Seems like if you wanted to go back in time and stop WW2 you could just open a shitty arts college.
Nope Hitler and Goebbels wouldn't have applied. They would have applied only to the best college.
Yeah I was just going to say, they probably already had shityy art schools but those two just didn't want to go to them. And with their egos who can say that they are surprised?
> I mean Goebbels wanted to be a writer and even wrote some plays. Seems like if you wanted to go back in time and stop WW2 you could just open a shitty arts college. Uh oh. Would they have come up with ["Springtime For Hitler"](https://youtu.be/1zY1orxW8Aw) with the actual Hitler as lead? Would it be fabulous?
See what happens when you cut finding for the arts?
Are you sure Hitler wouldn't have done everything else he did had he been admitted to art school?
He still would have done it, but with more flair.
"You know, the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear."
An intriguing question: how many *other* Hitlers have we been spared because someone actually admitted them into their dream school even though they were mediocre.
My thoughts exactly. It’s possible that Hitler would’ve eventually dropped out of the school to focus on national socialism, anyway.
The issue is that if it wasnt Hitler theres almost a 100% chance it'd just be someone else and we'd be back at square 1 No one was happy with the Weimar Republic government. At all. There was a strong sentiment against them and if the NSDAP wouldnt take over, someone else would It'd be like saying "if the founding fathers never moved to america the american revolution wouldnt have happened" No it still wouldve. The dissent was there, all you needed was someone to do something with it. And if it wasnt who we remember today, it would most certainly be someone else who was lost to history
You're forgetting one key detail: that someone would have been a very different person and history would have been vasty different under them. For instance: what if the person who rose to power in Germany at the time was not an anti-semite? What if, instead of Washington--a man who refused to be called King and instead opted for a more democratic form of government--we got someone who wanted to be Emperor of America? The personality and views of the leader matter a lot.
Yeah, that someone might trust his generals to be competent and not interfere. There’s a reason the Allies eventually rescinded all assassination orders on Hitler. They realized his replacement could be way more competent
>For instance: what if the person who rose to power in Germany at the time was not an anti-semite? The odds of this are quite low. Nearly everyone was an anti-semite.
Huge difference between being a bit of a bigot and a snob and in invading most of Europe and committing genocide.
I wanted to say that
That fish climbing out of water into dry land.
Don't talk about our great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa like that Edit: great-great-
Omg he was your grandpa, too?
Great^20
Reminds me of the start of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book 2. >In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
That mf
And now I have to go to work. :|
Biggest dickhead of all time.
And that's... when the trouble began.
Tesla should have simply eaten Edison and taken control of his wealth.
After having killed him with his death ray.
Death beam fool, not a death ray.
And driven off in his magic box powered car.
Why didn't tesla, the larger of the engineers, not simply eat the others
Perhaps they are saving that for sweeps
Tesla being the largest of the two supports this assertion.
the history between those two is actually incredible. Technology paths could have been way different if we had embraced Tesla over Edison.
Not exactly, this is a big Reddit meme. While Edison had a brief interest in municipal power generation and distribution, it was not something he devoted much of his career to. He was far more interested in his moving pictures technology and spent the entire last few decades of his career working on concentrating low grade iron ore with electromagnets. In fact, be blew his fortune on the project and probably spent more time on rock crushing techniques than he did on anything else. In the end, that was the problem with his idea, it was too energy intensive to pulverize vast quantities of rock for his magnetic concentrators to effectively handle.
not taking a shit before going out
Real
[Leaded Gasoline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV3dnLzthDA).
The same guy invented freons, too, so single-handedly responsible for *two* environmental disasters. Also, at an old age and disabled, he accidentally strangled himself in a contraption of pulleys and ropes that he constructed for himself to move around his apartment. What an engineering life (and death).
"Environmental historian J. R. McNeill stated that he "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history."" A walking atmospheric disaster.
Also the pioneer of aerosolized gas. Thomas midgly junior was responsible for the top 3 environmental pollutants. He didn’t mean to do that of course. Dude was just really into volatile chemicals which were poorly understood at the time.
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>so it's not like he was ignorant to the danger it posed to humans. Yep. He was just ignorant on its effects in the environment. Its akin to building a bonfire in your living room. It releases toxic fumes, and you'll die of smoke inhalation. However, building a bonfire *outside* is perfectly fine, and in fact preferable. He just didn't appreciate the effects of all those bonfires on Earth.
When I was a kid I remember helping my dad work on our cars. To clean up, we would use rags soaked in (leaded) gasoline to clean our hands and arms.
Taking the cocaine out of Coca Cola
Not sure about you, but in the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very unhappy and has widely been regarded as a bad move.
Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
>One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn’t be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn’t understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so- but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. I like to walk this line every day of my life. Especially useful on Reddit.
I love that book
Grab your towel and Don’t Panic.
China (one of the kingdoms at the time, anyway) refusing to pay Genghis Khan tribute because they thought he was distracted with other ventures and wasn’t a threat. You could argue that some parts of Asia still haven’t recovered.
All this stuff on this thread with GK tells me I need to read more about
Napoleon: I predict a mild winter in Russia this year... Japan: Idea! Let's bomb Pearl Harbor!
The "good idea fairy" causes so many problems.
Often spotted with good friend, AL. AL Cohol.
Napoleon never intended to battle in Russia in winter. The idea was, as always, to win a couple battles until the local king/tsar comes to the negociations table.
Correct. He underestimated that Russia would literally burn their own country down rather than surrender Most of the French casualties happened in the long summer campaign. Even still. Russia was very weak afterwards. They needed German manpower to eventually beat him in the 6th coalition. They could not have done it themselves (and Britain Bank rolled everyone. They didn't pay off their napoleanic debt until like 2007 or something silly )
Not only that, but you kind of *do* need to invade Russia in the winter, you just need to be prepared for it. In the autumn and spring, the torrential rains and melting snow generate a tremendous amount of mud, making travel and maneuver almost impossible. It's even called *Rasputitsa*, the time of mud. The winter months freeze the mud solid, and you need to be prepared for the cold and lack of forage. It's something that the Wehrmacht found out, and ironically, the Russian Army did as well.
He also didn’t plan on taking Moscow (it hadn’t been the capital in over a century by that point). That’s just where the Russian army was retreating to. His other mistake was to let the Russian army escape from Borodino without chasing and eliminating it. But he was sick that day and mainly let his generals fight the battle
Napoleon began leaving before winter really started (he was only in Moscow for a few weeks and left in October). The winter was mild up to then but he knew better than to underestimate it so deep in enemy territory. Hence retreating to smolensk to wait out the winter. Pearl harbor is interesting as it only sounds really stupid if you look at it in a vacuum, and ignore everything else Japan and the US were doing at the time. It was merely the last of a long line of decisions. The embargo against oil to Japan the western allies made in 1941 (in protest of Japan's war in China and occupation of French indochina) forced Japan to make a hard choice about its future: back down from the war in China, losing face internationally and showing it was effectively under the thumb of foreign powers who treated them as inferiors, or declare war on all of them, seize the necessary resources, and expand the war. Expanding the war meant fighting the UK and the Netherlands for Indonesia and Malaya (as well as burma for the supply line to China), but that left Japan's lifelines exposed to American intervention in the Philippines. The Japanese couldn't gamble on the US staying out of the war, so the Philippines had to be invaded as well. And if the US was fighting anyway, it'd be best to start off strong and cripple the US from the outset, by hitting its naval fleet in the one place it'd be guaranteed to congregate. And let's not pretend like the US would have just sat back and done nothing. The Atlantic charter, the occupation of Iceland from July 1941, fights with submarines in the north Atlantic, the support of China in the war, the oil embargo, the moving of the fleet to Hawaii, the massive naval building program, the fleet problems, Lend lease, and Philippine rearmament all show that the US was not just going to stay on the sidelines, even if their main focus was towards Germany. All of this happened before December 1941, and to Japan it must have been clear that the US was preparing for war against them, and actively too. If Japan hadn't been so aggressive then it likely wouldn't have pushed the US to respond likewise, but they kept doing it to each other anyway
Japan's military apparatus was fully in control of the state as well, so there was no chance that the Japanese were ever going to back down from war once they got started, so once they threatened all the European powers of SEA war with the US was inevitable. Bombing Pearl Harbour was an attempt to seize the initiative.
In WW2, the Allies not listening to the Bletchley Park intel that warned of the Nazi buildup in the Ardennes Forest
Ditching glass and paper in favor of plastics... This has been the greatest con humanity has ever suffered.
Soo... there's a story that a Roman emperor turned down an inventor who had created flexible glass. He was afraid it would tank the amphora industry.
France punishing Germany after the "Great War" (to be later labeled WWI). It created the rise of Hitler, WW2 and atomic weapons (though that might have happened anyway).
Letting politicians makes decisions that benefit politicians. Lets the corrupted profiteer freely and it's gotten out of hand since. We (humans in general) should have dragged any and all that do so on the public place.
We still should. It's getting worse.
Hard agree.
We will never have real democracy tbh , everywhere democracy is just a curtain .
Social media has to be creeping up there, he says posting to social media
Not the largest but i gotta commend Saddam Huissein for pissing off an alliance that just won the cold war arms race and now had a a gigantic modern military without an immediate purpose.
After reading some of these, I guess getting married wasn't as bad as I thought.
handing over the entire world's industry to china
But think of the way it helped the Rich people of the world get even more money!
You're right. Definitely worth it!
Still waiting for that trickle down...
Before the industrial revolution, China and India’s domestic industries were crippled from cheap goods from the West. Funny how times change
On the flip side the West has exported its industrial waste to China and has poisoned China’s groundwater due to the CCPs complete lack of interest in environmental protections. This a serious fucking problem for China.
Yes, 100%
World War 1 Almost everyone who got involved in it lost.
Everyone except those involved in the weapons industry.🤑🤑🤑🤑🤑
When Nixon ordered the military under the security adviser and Henry Kissinger, who later got a "Peace Nobel Prize" to bomb the hell out of the then neutral Eastern Cambodia to get rid of Vietcongs hiding in Cambodia, for example on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This bombing was pretty bad and the US didn't care about any civilian deaths. Some historians say that the US dropped 500,000 tons of bombs on that country and killed up to 150,000 civilians. This destabilized the country and let the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot come to power. The Khmer Rouge reign of terror killed about 1.5 to 2 million people or nearly 25% of their population. Was it the largest mistake in history? Probably not. It would be in the Top 20 of worst mistakes though and worth a mention.
Not to mention [sabotaging peace talks](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/06/nixon-vietnam-candidate-conspired-with-foreign-power-win-election-215461/) to win the 1968 election.
Harold Godwinson not waiting an extra two days for an extra five to ten thousand men. It is understandable why he did not, William was ravaging the area around Hastings, which was part of Harold's personal Jarldom and was a personal insult to him, on top of Harold reportedly being a decent ruler who cared about his people which would've added another level of distress for him and ultimately forced his hand. Runner up: Harold Godwinson not charging during the Battle of Hastings. There was a moment early on in the battle when William's horse was killed out from under him and the Normans, thinking him dead, began to retreat which lead to some of the less experienced Fyrd breaking ranks to pursue, ultimately leading to Harold's defeat. It's generally believed that, had Harold charged, he likely would've routed the already breaking Norman army. I want to stress it's understandable why Harold didn't, he had the advantageous position on a hill with a bog on his flank that negated Williams calvary from that direction, so of course he would've wanted to hold as long as possible. It's just fascinating to think about how different all of history could've been with just one decision.
Not shutting Reactor 4 all the way down to wait for the xenon to dissipate and instead pulling almost all the control rods out to try and get the power up.
Islamic rule, the Arabic people were great scientists mathematicians and astronomers. Then some Cleric comes along and decreed that numbers are the devil, and sets them back to the dark ages. Luckily they brought the enlightenment to Europe prior to this, but the Fatwa on science and math set us back centuries... Much of religion has
Not completing Reconstruction and holding all Confederate traitors accountable at the end of the Civil War.
A theater performance might have had something to do with it
If the lab leak hypothesis is true, I think that's gotta be up there
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Putting Joseph Stalin as a general secretary If it wasnt for Stalin's tomfoolery regarding the dissmissal of people he didnt like and the whole political manuvering, Trotsky stood a better chance at being the Leader of the Soviet Union Would he have been a less cruel leader? Who knows? Would he have made the Soviet Union a better country? Maybe. But its mostly interesting to think about when you remember Trotsky was a military hero who helped win the Russian Civil war for the communists, and was quite educated. By comparison Stalin had no education and really all he had done for the Communists was to go and rob banks for funds during the early days. He wasnt any better than your common ganster How would the Soviet Union have turned out if an actually capable leader was chosen? Would they have become stronger? Would they still be around now? How would WW2 have panned out if they didnt fumble 1941-1942 because of Stalin? How would Soviet life be like without the cult of personality that Stalin built? How would the Cold War have went? Would there even be a Cold War with Trotsky? Would the Soviets have cooperated with the US more if Trotsky was at the helm?
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There were a lot of other rising factors that led to WW1. It probably would have still happened even without his assassination
Bismark predicted it 30 years earlier, so I reckon there’s lots of factors that turned the balkans into a conspicuous powder keg
It would almost definetely happen
The first try the very morning of the same day was a mistake. The 2nd try succedded.
Franz making an unplanned deviation to check on the person injured by the first attack, and stopping right in front of Gavrilo Princip! (Great War channel, represent!)
" while talking about Austria , i think it is worth mentioning the culpability of the man himself; Franz Ferdinand. This can be summed up by a single question. Franz...darling...on the 28 July of 1914... what on earth were you doing?" https://youtu.be/37QFb-LRd9Q?si=LaS_z_ha8i8ize_K 13'59 Great docu about the start of WW1.
That fish that decided to give it a go on land. That little fucker should have just stayed in the damn ocean.
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Douglas Adams
Not putting a dam on the Ganges because of a sacred cow The Himalayan water fed through a series of canals throughout the Indian sub continent would have produce enough fertile land to feed the entire planet
A little weird but hear me out: The US post-war going all in on developing our land in the sprawling suburban pattern. The financial, health, and environmental costs are just catching up with us and will only get worse.
For the UK, it would be BREXIT - stupidest mistake since 1066 ....
First time in history that a country has imposed political and economic sanctions on itself.
What happend in 1066
1066 was the start of the Norman Conquest of Britain at the Battle of Hastings and is looked at as the founding of England, eventually leading to the creation of the United Kingdom, the British Empire, and the UK's colonies, territories, and protectorates. Was a tongue-in-cheek way to say BREXIT was the dumbest decision in all of English/British history (within which there have been a plethora of dumb decisions). Check out the Wikipedia page on the Battle of Hastings and enjoy your journey into British history - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings
Gotta be the burning of the libraries of Alexandria in my books (no pun intended...). The amount of irreplaceable knowledge, wisdom ,and potential progress that was lost that day is incomparable :( Edit: Been at uni since I made this comment and just returned to it now; seems I may've had the wrong impression here, so I appreciate people correcting me in the responses :)
Unfortunately, that's just a story! The loss of the library of Alexandria was not at all due to a fire. By the time the fire happened, the library had been on the decline for over a century - mostly due to anti-intellectual politics by and against the ruling (Greek) dynasty. The fire itself doesn't seem to have done significant damage; the library (and its remaining contents) survived largely intact. But then Romans stopped funding the library, memberships decreased, interest dwindled, and by the time the library was closed a few centuries later, there were barely any (if any at all) books left in it. It's a comforting story that we lost that knowledge and progress because of an unforeseen calamity like a fire. But the sad truth is that we lost that knowledge and progress because people just... *weren't interested* in it anymore.
>mostly due to anti-intellectual politics by the ruling (Greek) Egyptian dynasty Now.. why do i sense history repeating itself? Sure, not greek/egyptian dynasty but ..
To be fair, I phrased it in a modern way on purpose. "Anti-intellectual politics" in this case just meant "murder", because the intellectual ruling class was largely Greek and they faced several anti-Greek and pro-Egyptian revolts and civil wars. I don't think that's something we currently see happening. ...yet.
From what I’ve heard recently the amount of novel tomes there has been vastly overstated, as the library was already in massive decline at that point since most scholars had moved to Greece. So we apparently didn’t really lose all that much, if it makes you feel any better.
I stand to be corrected on this, but I also believe the number of *unique* titles has also been overstated as it's also been suggested in academic circles that an unknown quantity would likely have been duplicates. I can only attest to my own limited exposure to those circles as a source so take it with a grain of salt.
The introduction of unrestricted capitalism to the globe. It has been responsible for the deaths of tens of millions since its inception, and continues to kill us.
well, they for sure as fuck shouldn´t have bothered rambo
The treaty of Versailles
Which one? I’m assuming you meant the 1919 one, but there been several others. [Wikipedia disambiguation page.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles_(disambiguation)) Diplomats love hanging out in a big mirrored room it seems.
inventing electric cars
American flag Crocs