Hello Internet,
Here at Step Back we have been focusing on historical events that do not lean on singular important people to understand.
Often, historians tend to overemphasize the roles of individuals in the overall course of humanity.
But hell, I think it’s time e shook things up a bit.
I decided to put together a list of five people you might have never heard of, but had a huge impact on our history.
Simply going from oldest to youngest.
Number one, Cyrus the Great,
Those of you who study the deep past, or the bible might already know this chap, but he was the emperor over the largest empire in history.
This Achaemenid empire spanned from Bulgaria to the Indus river.
But it was one simple act of mercy, not his conquests that make Cyrus so interesting.
The Jews in the book of Isaiah loved Cyrus, making him the only non-Jew referred to as messiah.
What could Cyrus do to get the Jews to love him so?
Cyrus formed his massive, diverse empire on religious tolerance, and under him the Jews, living in exile at the time, were allowed to return to Judea.
This quickly followed with the construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and a restoration of the influence of Judaism in the region.
This is the 6th century BCE, so Jesus would be over 500 years away, Muhammad over 1,000.
Without this migration back to Jerusalem, we likely would have seen the Jews fade out like so many middle-eastern religions of the time, and the Abrahamic faiths would cease to exist.
Imagining a world without Judaism, Christianity, or Islam is extremely difficult, just showing how an act of tolerance can be more significant than a million conquests.
Number two, Fritz Haber,
Fritz Haber was a Jewish scientist in Germany at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
He has a complicated legacy.
His most famous invention is the Haber-Bosch process, which is possibly the biggest innovation in farming technology.
He’s also known for one of the deadliest weapons of war ever used.
Our atmosphere is made mostly of nitrogen, and has a good amount of hydrogen in it to boot.
Haber figured out how to take these two gasses and make ammonia.
Ammonia is a key component in the creation of artificial fertilizers.
Before this farmers used things like guano, and countries literally went to war over islands covered in bird poop.
With this process, we can make fertilizer literally out of thin air, and he is why we have a planet that can feed 7 billion people right now.
This process was not, however without a dark side.
Haber is also famously called the father of chemical warfare. He found a way to develop weaponized chlorine for gas attacks during the First World War.
He was even personally present at the Second Battle of Ypres where it made its dark debut.
Feeding the world and chemical weapons showing the extremes of scientific progress.
Number three, Thomas Midgley Jr.,
Just a heads up there are a lot of scientists in this one.
Thomas Midgley was an American chemist, known for two of the worst inventions for public health and the environment.
Tetraethyllead, and chlorofluorocarbons.
One of Midgley’s projects was to find a solution to engine locking.
Regular gasoline could not produce enough pressure in an engine to make the pistons work just right.
To increase engine performance and get more out of each ounce of fuel, Midgley invented tetraethyllead.
his additive would give gasoline that extra power it needed.
Here’s the problem, burning leaded gasoline would dump tonnes of lead into the atmosphere.
This would build up in people’s bodies and lower people’s IQ and increase anti-social behavior.
There is an actual, measurable increase in IQ levels in countries as they stopped using leaded gasoline.
How could he possibly have topped that?
Well his next project would be to create a new refrigerant.
He put together a compound called chlorofluorocarbons, which on top of use as a refrigerant, would act as a propellant in aerosol cans, and as an industrial solvent.
The nickname for this compound was CFCs, which some of you might be familiar with.
CFCs in the atmosphere did one really impressive thing, which was corrode ozone.
Our ozone layer in the atmosphere does small things like prevent the sun’s rays from giving us skin cancer.
The Montreal protocol of 1989 banned these from use, but even today nearly 30 years later the ozone layer hasn’t completely recovered.
Nice work Tom.
Number four, Norman Borlaug
I know, I know, a third scientist.
These people tend to do amazing things and then get their names forgotten.
You can probably name more theoretical physicists and mathematicians than agricultural scientists or chemists. Well, this biologist might just make you want to change your mind. Norman Borlaug has been called the father of the green revolution, and credited with saving a billion lives. After getting his PhD in plant pathology and genetics in 1942, Borlaug moved to Mexico to work on their food crisis going on at the time.
Through his work, Mexico introduced high yeild, disease resistant forms of wheat, as well as pushing for modern farming techniques.
After Mexico, he would go to replicate this again in Pakistan and India.
This led to Mexico actually becoming a wheat exporter in 1963, and doubling yields in Pakistan and India.
This revolution in food security is collectively called the Green Revolution, and Borlaug received the Nobel peace prize for it.
After which he went to Africa and Asia to make even more food possible.
We are now discussing new ways to grow and distribute food that might be healthier but less efficient, whether it be farm to table, organic, or non-GMO crops.
I think we need to remember the histories of huge food shortages when pursuing our legitimate desires for a healthier and better world.
In the future we expect more people to feed, not less.
Number five, Stanlislav Petrov,
Many of these people listed above are known for saving, feeding, or poisoning millions of people, but Stanislav Petrov might actually be the only person who literally saved the world.
The year was 1983, and the Cold War was alive again after nearly a decade of detente.
3 weeks after the Soviet Union shot down a Korean Airlines flight, Petrov was working at a nuclear weapons early warning system.
He saw what the Soviet Union had spent decades fearing and preparing for.
One missile, then two, then seven were launching from the United States.
Given the tense situation between the countries, Petrov had every reason to panic.
However, he didn’t.
He kept his cool and reported it as a false alarm.
The USSR credited Petrov with preventing a retaliatory strike, and starting a nuclear war.
The satellite system he was working on had indeed malfunctioned.
The craziest thing about this guy is that he’s still alive today, and I don’t think I’m alone by saying dyakuyu Stanislav!
I think the main lesson we can take from this, is that even though the world is big, and there are a lot of people out there.
It is possible for one person to make a difference.
And even if our textbooks are lined with conquerors and kings, sometimes the chemist, the biologist, or even the duty officer in a massive bureaucracy can change the face of the world.
So what do you guys think?
Is history made by great men, historical trends and forces, or random crap?
Let me know down in the comments, and for more history videos subscribe to Step Back.