We are all the products of the decisions
that we and others make every single day
of our lives but some decisions have
repercussions that are sometimes so
far-reaching but they can affect
everybody on the planet in this video
we've picked out five decisions that
changed the world.
The cuban missile crisis is probably the
closest we have come to a nuclear
conflict and many thank Kennedy for
facing down the Soviets by blockading
Cuba and turning away the Soviet supply
ships but the more important decision
was for Kennedy to ignore the advice of
general Curtis LeMay the air force chief
of staff. General Curtis LeMay clashed
with Kennedy and said that the blockade
was a weak political action that would
lead to war, he suggested he should be
allowed to bomb the Cuban nuclear
missile sites and that would force
Moscow to back down instead of facing a
nuclear shootout but what he and others
in the U.S. didn't know at the time was
that the Soviet field commanders in Cuba
had been given the authority to launch
nuclear weapons independently of Moscow.
There were at least 20 nuclear warheads
each with a one Megaton capability and
medium-range missiles that could reach
as far as Washington as well as nine
tactical nuclear missiles all stationed
on Cuba that time.
This meant that if Lemay have
gotten his way and it attacked the
missile sites there was a very high
probability that the Soviet commanders
would have launched a nuclear attack on
the US mainland before Moscow could have
reacted. This would have led to millions
of US casualties and ensuing
retaliation by the US Strategic Air
Command again led by Lemay would have
killed upwards of a hundred million
Soviets. In the end
Kennedy's hunch was right and the
blockade worked
and after secretly removing US missiles
from Turkey and Italy the Soviets backed
down and removed their missiles from
Cuba. If you celebrate Christmas or you
enjoy having sunday off of work then
you've got to thank one man almost 1,700
years ago for his decision to adopt a
minor religion that had been persecuted
for almost 200 years and it's not Jesus
Christ. That man was the Roman Emperor
Constantine and his religious conversion
took place during the Civil War when the
Roman Empire was effectively in two
parts with Constantine coming from
Britain in the west and Maxentius ruling
the east and holding on to Rome.
Christianity back then was a banned
religion because amongst other things
Christian's refused to participate in
the Imperial cult, this cult regarded
the Roman emperors and members of their
families as God's, anyone who refused to
acknowledge this was committing treason
which was punishable by death. In 312 AD
Constantine was about to fight a key
battle in the war and prayed for divine
help,
afterwards he claimed see a burning
crossing the sky and later that night he
dreamt that God told him to use the sign
of a cross on his soldiers shields and
on the standard to safeguard all his
battles. Constantine defeated Maxentius
in the Battle of Milvian bridge and
became the Western Emperor and continue
to wear across to safeguard him against
his enemies. Constantine became a
Christian and became a great patron for
Christianity. Shortly after he became
Emperor issued the "Edict of Milan" which
allowed Christians to freely practice
their faith and he went on to overturn
hundreds of years of Roman pagan beliefs
he combined some of the old pagan
worship rituals with Christian ones. He
made December the 25th which was the
birthday of the pagan Sun God into a
celebration of Christ's birth and thus
it became
christmas day he, also made Sunday an
official roman holiday so people could
attend church. He abolished taxes on
christian churches and funded Christian
leaders and built new church buildings.
By 394 ad Christianity was the official
religion of the Roman Empire and the
Roman version of Christianity went on to
become hugely powerful Roman Catholic
Church which dominated much of europe
for well over a thousand years before
spreading around the world. It's
difficult to say how the world would
look if Constantine hadn't become a
Christian but one thing is for certain
without the monolithic power block of
the Catholic Church it would look very
different to how it is today.
Sometimes the actions of a single man's
conscience can make a decision that can
affect the future of a whole nation on
September 11th 1777, 12,500 british
troops had landed on the northern end of
chesapeake bay and we're heading to
Pennsylvania towards the Patriot capital
of Philadelphia. Guarding their flank and
hiding in the woods were detachment of
green plaid British marksman on the
lookout for American forces led by
General George Washington. The marksman's
commanding officer was Captain Patrick
Ferguson, a 33 year-old
Scotsman who was said to be the finest
shot in the British Army. Ferguson and
three of his main spotted the cavalry
officer dressed in the colorful uniform
of a European husar and followed by a
senior American officer wearing a high
cocked hat. They crept forward with the
intention of picking off the offices but
then Ferguson had a sudden change of heart
and felt disgust at the thought of
shooting the officers in the back as
they rode by which would also have been
dishonorable in the 18th century. Instead
Ferguson shouted at the men to dismount
they turned to see him and rode off.
A few days later Ferguson was shot in
the arm and seriously wounded
it was at this point that he learned
that the American officer he let ride off
was most probably General George
Washington. Washington won the war
he was repeatedly outmaneuvered in
battles by the British. Had Ferguson shot
Washington on that day
it's possible that without Washington at
the helm co-ordinating the army, Congress,
the state governors and their militias
and supplies that the revolution may
well have failed and America would have
remained a british colony. What could a
decision made by a single random person
about 6,000 years ago have on the whole
of human history?.
Well quite a lot because that one person
be it a man or a woman was the first to sit
and ride on a horse and that would
change the course of human history
completely and give us the first
transport system that will continue for
the next 6,000 years. At the time
horses have been hunted for about
100,000 years for their meat
and skin, no one would have imagined that
sitting on a 1,000 pound beast that can
kill you with a single kick would
transform humans from hunter-gatherers
could only travel as far as fast as they
could walk into travelers that would
spread across continents and at speeds
that would have seemed unbelievable. it's
allowed human culture to grow from
isolated pockets into the interconnected
world we have today. it was in the huge
Eurasian steppe between hungary and
Mongolia where the first Horseman arose
some 6,000 years ago. Why someone decided
to try and ride a horse for the first
time we will just never know.
Humans are often predisposed to doing
some pretty weird things and whether it
was just a dare or an idle thought by
someone thinking what would it be like
to run as fast as a horse,
whichever way it happened
they managed to tame it and control it.
You can only imagine what other people
would have thought when they saw them
riding at speed on a horse and of course
just like today they all wanted one.
it wasn't long before horses started
showing up in places like Turkey and
Switzerland well away from the grassy
plains of a steppe and showed the
beginnings of the main mode of human
transport that would last until the
invention of the internal combustion
engine almost 6,000 years later.
China is now the number two power in the
world after the United States but if it
weren't for the decision of the new
Chinese Emperor in 1424, things could have
worked out very differently with China
being the first to discover new world
long before the Europeans. We know that
Columbus had discovered the new world in
1492 but over 80 years earlier the
Chinese had created huge treasure fleets
and on seven occasions between 1405 and
1433 they set out to find new lands and
trade. These expeditions were led by the
Chinese equivalent of Columbus a great
navigator called "Zheng He". He created
trading links from Taiwan to the Persian
Gulf and to the East coast of Africa or
under control of the Chinese Court. They
were also a show of force to the
Barbarian nations that China and once
again become the middle kingdom of the
world. The naval technology was far in
advance of that of the Europeans with
the largest vessels called the "Treasure
Ships" being nine masted junks
measuring 400 feet long by a 150
feet wide with four decks and
watertight bulkheads and a crew
complement of over 400. Compare that to
Columbus's voyage is over 80 years later
where the largest ship, the "Santa Maria" was
just 90 feet by 30 feet and with a crew
of 90. It took the Europeans
hundreds of years before they built
ships as large as the Chinese treasure
ships. Each of the Chinese expeditions
consisted of over 300 ships with over
27,000 crew soldiers, horses, supply ships,
water tankers and patrol boats. With all
these advantages but Chinese were
ideally placed to colonize the new
undiscovered world
well before the Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese
and British but for the decision of the
new Chinese hong-chih emperor in 1424.
Along with him came a new wave of
Confucianism, he ordered the overseas
voyages to stop as it violated the
long-standing Confucian principles and
the new thinking that the enlightened
Chinese had nothing to learn or gain
from the barbarians. By 1500, the Chinese
fleet was reduced to a fraction of its
previous size and so began the hundreds
of years of Chinese isolationism and the
colonization of the new world by the
Europeans. Thank you for watching I hope
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it's goodbye from me