Historical Events with Underestimated Societal Impact

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Historical Events with Underestimated Societal Impact
Historical EventsSocietal ImpactInventions
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A compilation of historical events discussed in a Reddit thread, exploring instances that caused more damage to society than commonly realized. The examples touch upon inventions, political decisions, wars, and pandemics, highlighting their far-reaching consequences on various aspects of life, including public health, language, politics, and education.

asking,"Which historical event induced more damage to society than people realize?" I was definitely intrigued. The examples people gave were all so weird, intriguing, or just plain true, I just had to share.

So, here are some of the best:is practically a supervillain based on the sheer amount of human suffering he caused with his inventionism, and he knew it and lied about it."public health, medicine, and even politics in ways we’re still feeling today, but most people barely know the scale of its impact.". I really wonder how different the US would be if he hadn't enabled the South to essentially just do slavery with extra steps via sharecropping and Jim Crow laws."in the English Channel in 1066. It delayed William the Conqueror's invasion by a couple of weeks, meaning that Harold Godwinson, the King of England,"If Harold had faced William first, he might have beaten him, and the Normans would not have ruled England. Instead, either the Anglo-Saxon Harold or the Danish Harald would have been king, and the world and the English language would both be very different today.", dinging his popularity and leading to a strong primary challenge from Ronald Reagan. Carter oversaw an economy in full stagflation from the 1970s, and also suffered the failure to rescue the hostages from Iran. Had Ford won that election, it’s very likely that a Democrat would have won in 1980, as Ford would’ve been ineligible to run again, the economy would’ve been poor, and Reagan couldn’t have run against an unpopular incumbent. Reagan’s conservatism would’ve been looked at as an electoral failure, and the entire past 40-plus years of US and global politics would have been changed." "COVID. A whole generation of kids was locked indoors during their formative years, and academic performance is really starting to show it.""The butterfly effect of COVID is so mindblowing to me. There were people who met, didn’t meet, did or didn’t make certain decisions, or were or weren’t in certain places because of the way lockdown altered the course of our lives."Just look at a map of Europe in 1914 and then another in 1920. It brought about the dissolution of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires, and was a catalyst for the later dissolution of the British and French empires. Gavrilo Princip is probably the most important person of the last 120 years, and no one knows who the fuck he is." "I would say the arrivals of Thatcher and Reagan in power. Reagan managed to lower the tax rate for the wealthiest individuals fromlike never before. In fact, there is a consensus among economists, which is rare, that trickle-down economics does not work. But now we find ourselves with a society where the tax burden was shifted from the richest to the middle class, which has been stagnating ever since. The rich are getting richer, the middle class is being strangled, and the poor are getting poorer."This middle passage trade of African people has profoundly damaged not only the people who were enslaved, but also the societies and individuals who perpetrated it, and anybody caught in between. From Portugal and England to theUnfortunately, these scars have permeated our psyche, silently working in the shadows, affecting how we even live our lives today.". I wonder what the climate change projections would look like now if that didn’t fuel the anti-nuclear energy fire."Before that, Europe had no reason to look West, and the best sailors were focusing on the Levant as the gateway to Asia and its markets. 1453 changed everything.""The internet. It's considered a great leap forward, but it's harmed more than it's helped. The information age was supposed to herald a new era for humanity, a compendium of all human knowledge at your fingertips."People now choose the truth that suits their worldview. There's irony in that a tool designed to educate humanity actually had the opposite effect and spread ignorance to the gullible instead."Tell me what you think; or, feel free to share your own historical event down in the comments. Or, if you want to write in but prefer to stay anonymous, you can write in to this anonymous form. Who knows — your story could be included in a future BuzzFeed article!

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