Our Defining Days

[poisonedpure]

According to Hywel Williams the 50 defining events that have changed the course of world history are as follows:

1. The Battle of Salamis- 28th September 480 BC

2. The Assassination of Julius Caesar- 15th March 44BC

3. The Crucifixion of Jesus-Good Friday c.30AD

4. The Dedication of Constantinople- 11th May 330

5. A Confederacy of German Tribes Crosses

Comments

[poisonedpure]

Finding this book caused a hour long discussiong with myself and a fellow work-mate. One of the things brought up was the discovery of penicillin and the advance in medical technology that resulted from that fact.

Without the discovery of penicillin we would not have had so many of our troops come home in the war and the common cold would still be killing us.

Along that line, the update of sewerage removal systems (ie: not throwing the fuckers out of the window) and the discovery of bacteria would be a handy thing to note as without it we would still be having Plagues.

Sorry, I can't give more precise examples. My brain has not quite woken up yet :S

[mercurial_realm]

where is the dissolution of the slave trade, the death of Emily Pankhurst, Nuremburg , the concentration camps of Auswitch, D-Day, the assassinations of John F Kennedy or Martin Luther King, or the electronic balloting debacle that helped the Bush administration win the election? I could go on. Some very odd choices there.

[poisonedpure]

Good examples. One of the noted things that should have been included, as I stated in a long discussion with a fellow co-worker was the Abolishment of Apartheid (is that how you spell it?), the Chernobil accident, D-Day, the assassination of John F Kennedy...

One major one for me was how the First World War began, which was touched on by the Assassination of Franz Ferdinand, but what "actually" precluded that and should have been noted was that he was assassinated by the Serbian Nationalist secret society "The Black Hand". THAT is what started the war, not the assassination in itself.

[poisonedpure]

You know, it is very sad that the abolition act was passed yet did not stop slavery.It is sadder still that the Apartheid was not released until 1991.

Makes you wonder about the state of the world.

[kristijaan]

Nothing about the Gutenberg printing press? Gee, I guess he mustn't value the printed word.....

[poisonedpure]

An irony in itself.

[reverancepavane]

Being a fan of alternate history SF for a long time (well, since I first read Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen), and being a long enthusiast of role-playing games where I can practice what I preach, the thing that strikes me about the list is that they are all footnotes of great moment in history (at least in the opinion of the person that holds them), rather than nexus points where history will alter and take a different path. In most of the list, as given, the consequences of a change in the event would not actually cause a change in the subsequent history.
This is especially true of invention, since I am a firm bliever of "steam-engine time" (a reference to the fact that when it is time for a development to appear it will appear nearly simultaneously within that level of the social-technological matrix. As Leibnitz and Newton showed, this even occurs when the nature of the invention is a paradigm shift such as calculus. Thus the appearance of most technological innovations is a natural consequence of attaining that level of knowledge (

[poisonedpure]

"the thing that strikes me about the list is that they are all footnotes of great moment in history (at least in the opinion of the person that holds them), rather than nexus points where history will alter and take a different path."I noted that, and was wondering how long a person would take to bring that subject to fore. These are moments that are catalysts for a cause of change, not the point that the change occurred. These are based on the opinions of the author and his views of a time-line of events that if they did not happen would not have caused these changes to come about

[vasillis_childe]

In most cases I'll agree with you about the footnote issue, with at least one, major exception.

35. The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo- 28th June 1914

This single act set the stage for World War One, World War Two and the everlasting hostilities in the Middle East (at least those involving Israel). WW1 and 2 were the hubs of the single greatest leaps in technology of all of recorded time and between them killed almost as many people as had been alive at any given point of time prior to 1700.

Hell, the assassination of Franz Ferdinand should be about three items on the list.

[reverancepavane]

Would it have though? The stage was set for a conflict well before the assassination occurred. The fundamental cause was the Serbian Unrest, the assassination was simply that Casus Belli that allowed the Austro-Hungarian government to finally do something about it. The dominos were already poised to fall in a trditional "extention of politics by other means." This is especially poignant because the general staffs of most of the European powers steadfastedly refused to believe the casualty figures that the Americans came up with for the Civil War (and the Franco-Prussian War was rather inconclusive in that regard – an often underlooked cause of pre-war tensions). I think you'd have to go back a bit further to prevent the occurrence of WWI.
Although I agree that England reneging on it's wartime (both WWI and WWII) agreements wrt Palestine really was a moment that changed the world. Although the root cause of that was embarrasement about being a passive participant in the Holocaust. After all, they're just "damn wogs" and we are