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Dr. Alexander Fleming leaving his lab for a two-week vacation without cleaning the lab
This mistake of leaving a dirty petri dish in his lab for 2 weeks led to Dr. Fleming's discovery of the mold which we now know as Penicillin and eventually led to the use of modern day antibiotics.
Crazy to think that Fleming's miracle discovery is going to cause us so much pain in the future if we don't replace antibiotics fast enough.
The amount of pain if antibiotics hadn't been discovered would have been immense. The antibiotic resistant bacteria aren't inherently worse disease causing agents than before antibiotics were discovered; however, what was once reliably treatable, including lethal diseases, will now be an ever increasing challenge. The combination of antibiotics and vaccines were world changing. Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness from natural selection and always had an expiration point, although some of our actions have hastened it. Vaccines are losing their effectiveness because of idiots.
Is the use of bacteriophages to treat diseases going to be a thing? I forgot where I saw it but my understanding is that as bacteria gets more resistant to antibiotics they are less resistant to bacteriophages to some degree and we can go into a cycle of back and forth with the treatments to balance things out.
It might've been that one German(?) YouTube channel with the animated videos and funny name.
This is actually so crazy to me. A world without antibiotics
I believe we will. We've known about this for some time and it's a major area of research. We are also 1000x more technologically advanced at this point where we can manipulate bacteria and cells and map genomes for more productive research
Its more like regression to the mean, pain deferred for a long time by Fleming's work coming back onto the stage, rather then Fleming causing harm with his work.
Probably history’s greatest happy accident.
Bob Ross approves this message
So you’re saying a little bit of laziness goes a long way.
This is my new excuse for when my partner is away for two weeks and comes back to a mess in the house. "Babe, I was just trying to do the world a solid."
Governor of Otrar, Inalchuq, ordering the execution of a Mongol trade caravan sparked the Mongol invasion of the middle east, ending the Islamic golden age and devastating both the population and infrastructure. You can make an argument that the region still feels the pain from the wounds of that conflict.
Why the fuck did people keep murdering Mongol trade envoys and diplomats?
He was really nice if you paid tribute to the khanate.
Why did the Islamic countries execute trade envoys and diplomats?
Iirc Baghdad didn’t recover its pre-Mongol population until the the late 1900s, and then the Iraq war happened and it wasn’t exactly a wonderful place to live
King Wladyslaw III really should have waited for Lord Hunyadi to return from his charge on the flanks before he charged up the centre towards Murads’ command tents.
Had he done so, the 13th Crusade would have been successful and as a consequence we may never have seen the fall of Constantinople, the expansion of the Ottoman Empire or the subsequent maritime exploration of Africa and the Americas in an attempt to find a maritime route to the Indian subcontinent.
Imagine how different the history of the world could have been had that one young King shown just a little bit of restraint…
Well I know what I’m doing on Wikipedia today
Editing to fix it?
Just gotta go see some dodgy Libyan's for some Pu first.
RUN FOR IT MARTY!
Thanks for that answer AnalFanatics !
Way to support the home team, FlamingBungHole!
AppropriateRest is always necessary after a flourish with AnalFanatics and a flamingbunghole.
One might even recommend a relevant tea to enjoy while taking said rest
Some real r/rimjob_steve material here
Yeah, we would have started Europa Universalis IV on a different day in history
It would have changed when those events happened, it likely wouldn't have prevented them.
The Byzantines were a spent force,and Venice wanted them weak. And, Europe was going to go exploring regardless.
Europe contacting North and South America was inevitable.
This is incredibly misleading.. one specific campaign is extremely unlikely to single handedly change the course of history. Turks lost countless wars in the balkans, an ottoman sultan was slain in battle by the serbs and one was captured and enslaved by the timurs and they still rose to dominance. They would be stalled for a decade at most but they wouldnt be destroyed like you suggest. Its like those weirdos saying europe was saved in vienna which is hilariously untrue, since another combined habsburg army would kick the turks out and reclaim the city within a year or two and the ottoman army had no further capacity to advance.
The Khwarazmian Empire, while never quite a world player, was still a considerably-sized nation of the ancient world, with a population of over five million people in the early 13th century. Never heard of it? There's a reason why...
In 1218, a party of Mongolian emissaries sent by Genghis Khan to open possible trade routes was arrested by the local governor, the uncle of the Khwarazmian shah Muhammad II. He apparently suspected it was a trap, though it appears to have been a genuine gesture of negotiation. Displaying a decent amount of patience, Genghis then sent three ambassadors to try and diplomatically resolve the situation. Muhammad II refused to punish his dear old uncle for his actions. Instead, he decided to execute at least one of the ambassadors and sent his head back to Genghis Khan as a lovely little parting gift.
Genghis then decided that the "fucking around" phase was over for the Khwarazmians, and the time for "finding out" had begun. He led an army of as many as 150,000 warriors into the Khwarazmian Empire and did what he did best: unleashed hell. Within two years, the Mongols utterly annihilated the empire, sacking its cities, chasing the shah into exile, and killing possibly as many as 10 million people. Because of Muhammad II's refusal of diplomacy, the Khwarazmians were totally wiped off the map.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_the_Khwarazmian_Empire
It may not quite be the most consequential mistake in history, but not many blunders result in an empire being completely obliterated.
(Edited thanks to corrections by u/Squirrel_Q_Esquire )
Hopping on here to add that the population of that area of the Middle East did not recover it's pre-decimation levels until 1970 or so. It's also speculated that the Black Death's spread was hastened by the Mongol invasions of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe, as they carried it with them from China.
The black plague was determined to be originally from a few buried corpses in modern day kyrgyzstan.
https://www.science.org/content/article/800-year-old-graves-pinpoint-where-black-death-began
Cool! I hadn't heard about this!
Thank you for the additional information! It's a fascinating historical event, to be sure.
"There will be no eyes left to cry for your dead"
That was the only message Genghis sent to the Shah.
"It was at this moment the Shah knew he fucked up."
I need you to summarize more obscure historical events in a book. I will purchase said book, and encourage my friends to do the same.
Listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episodes on The Mongols (Wrath of the Khans) he summarises this event among others quite well.
Glad to see this one was already posted, and should be higher.
It is also produced one of history's most bone-chilling quotes.
Genghis, while sacking the Khwarazmian city of Bukhara, supposedly said to its people (who were in for a very rough time) , "Oh people, know that you have committed great sins. If you ask me what proof I have of these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you!"
I had heard that quote from Genghis Khan, but I didn't know it was in reference to the Khwarazmian Empire. Thank you!
What’s wild is that even though Genghis Khan had a reputation for being over the top violent, he was, for the most part, only that way with cities/nations that refused to swear loyalty.
They almost always gave them a chance to just say “yeah you’re our leader, we’re under your rule now. Here’s gold and treasure as a tribute.” and no one would be killed. The lords would still be “in-charge” but not be at the top of the food chain.
But if they refused it was an all out slaughter. Just so the next people know what the alternative is if they refuse and decide to fight.
I’d hate to be too early on that list, when he was just starting to make that rep.
Some no-name/barely known warlord shows up and demands surrender and tribute, we laugh him away, and then it’s suddenly raining heads and we’re getting pincer maneuvered while our crops burn and women ravished…
Or he just does it anyway to make us an example and then gives the next guy his chance to surrender
Idk if "submit or I'll brutally murder you" is dispelling my notion of violence.
The other thing to consider is that Khan was remarkably egalitarian to the lands under his control. He allowed conquered vassal states to keep their cultures and religions, which was almost unheard of at the time, and he also introduced one of the world's first postal systems (one which was very efficient for the time period).
Basically, he was pretty good at using the "carrot or stick" method of diplomacy, just with really, really big carrots and sticks.
It's the really big stick part that get him his reputation, and I think it's a pretty fair one.
It helps the decision by understanding at the time the Mongols were an unstoppable force. Every nation they conquered they took the smartest people and the best engineers with them to perfect their siege weapons and tactics.
It was suicide to go against them in a head on battle. A horde of thousands of highly skilled cavalrymen and infantry that out number you is not something you want to face in an open field.
They were also very skilled at laying siege to cities and living off the land given their nomadic lifestyle and could wait outside your gates as long as they needed to. There was no outlasting them. If they decided to attack a city their method of choice was using captured prisoners from your nation as the front line soldiers to add a bit of fucked of psychological warfare into the mix because now you have to shoot arrows at your countrymen.
It rarely worked out for anyone who stood against them. I would certainly choose the “You’re the boss now” option every time.
Yep. And one of the things that kept the Mongols from going into western Europe was what I like to call a committee meeting.
Genghis died in 1227. After a couple years of one son ruling, another son of Genghis's, Ogodei, was crowned in 1229. Ogodei shared his dad's expansionist policies. By 1241, the Mongol army had penetrated into Poland and Hungary. Ogodei died in December 1241. His nephew Batu, who had been leading the western campaign, went home for the election* of a new leader. After the election, the Mongol army decided to turn south, instead of returning to the west. Some speculate it was particularly cold and wet in eastern Europe for a few years there, making the land marshy and swampy. Not ideal for lots of horses that need a lot of grassland. And after Ogodei's death, things started to fracture for the Mongols, so they didn't make it back to Europe at the strength they once had.
*I don't know what choosing an emperor warlord was like for Mongols, but to me it sounds more like a meeting than a democracy thing.
Nomadic people were really good at that.
Seems like steppe people from all of history have been like that.
You got the Mongols, avars, Bulgarians, Armenian, seljuks, khagars. Really cool to learn about.
I mean early byzantine hired them to train their horse archers and used similar tactics. They took their composite vow technology too.
They could rapidly fire arrows off their horses at each 90 degree angle and behind them and be accurate.
Its utterly amazing.
Imagine being such a fucking idiot, as a leader, that you start a completely avoidable war over nothing other than your grandstanding, and then that war goes so badly for you that your civilisation of millions is essentially wiped out and seemingly nearly lost to history in just two years.
Apocalyptically smooth brained imbecile.
The Khwarazmian Empire was not considered to be the greatest power at any point in history. It only existed as an independent nation for about 20 years. Before that it was a vassal state with varying degrees of autonomy while paying tribute to the Ghaznavids and later the Seljuks for over 300 years.
They did throw off the Seljuks eventually and rapidly expanded during those 20 years (largely due to diplomatic conquest rather than military), but then as you said they got crushed by the Mongols. They were basically barely a blip on the radar as an actual power.
The source for them being “the greatest power in the Muslim world” is from a single phrase in a CE Bosworth book. Bosworth was a very good and thorough historian of the region, but he was pretty hyperbolic in much of his writing. Basically every person or nation that he wrote about was the greatest ever.
But the reality for the Khwarazmians was a small vassal state for the vast majority of its time. You’ll also notice if you go through the other nations in the area at the time that there are massive overlaps in claimed land. This is because frequently the same groups would pay tribute to multiple nearby empires in the hopes they’d be allowed to continue operating mostly independently, which led to multiple empires claiming control of the land. Khwarazm was one such group doing that, and later for that brief 20 year period was one such empire claiming control of lands that were also paying tribute to other empires. So even in that little blip of expansion, there’s a question as to the actual extent of control they had over the areas beyond the central region.
But anyway, they basically have entered this weird area of internet lore where they’re used mostly as a footnote for the Mongol story (as you do here), and so because of that, their background gets inflated with every retelling.
Lol I love your mention of internet lore. Indeed, random aspects of knowledge become ubiquitous for a time, for various reasons, before vanishing back to obscurity. 10 years or so ago when Neil DeGrasse Tyson was reddit's favorite human because of the show Cosmos, you couldn't throw a cat around here without hitting mention of tardigrades (extremely resilient creatures that have survived trips to space), very probably because he discussed them in the show.
History wise: Cassius killing himself thinking the entire battle was lost. Without him it was all over, but if he would’ve lived to fight another day and him and Brutus would’ve won the civil war it would’ve drastically changed history.
Everything wise: Whenever the last universal common ancestor of all life became whatever came next
Idk that seems like one of those things where the Republic was going to fall no matter what, that would have just delayed it. The people yearned for a dictator and everyone hated the Senate except the Senate.
Nervously looks around
No need to worry. Civilizations rise and fall, but busty redheads are forever.
Don't worry, we're only in our Gracchi phase.
So you're saying we should assassinate Bernie Sanders?
That's a very big 'if'. There's a much better chance that Cassius and Brutus would have bought themselves a few days, at most.
Roman Galactic Empire
An honourable mention: the iron content in spinach was mistakenly assumed to be very high since the analysts put the dot/comma in the wrong place. A lot of people still think spinach is one of the foods the highest in iron content. It’s not
...but Popeye!
…is a consequence of that :)
...and that is why Popeye is now in the chicken business.
So youre saying shoddy record keeping is directly responsible for one of the more forgettable Robin Williams movies... interesting
And Super Mario
Also the statistics show the content for dried spinach. But spinach is 93% water.
Anyone who's cooked spinach knows this. I can put a whole bag on a pan and it disappears into like a couple spoonfulls
I'm not sure how big of an effect this has had, except that maybe more people were unexpectedly defeated by Bluto
Made my anemic childhood suck a bit more as every one tried to get me to eat it.
Carrots improving your vision was also misinformation from the British to keep their radar secret.
An interesting misconception but not even in the running when discussing CONSEQUENTIAL mistakes
Well a lot of people eating spinach and being suggested to eat more spinach in case of iron deficiency is a consequence, I guess. A funny one, though. For those with iron deficiency maybe less fun when it’s not doing anything and their condition doesn’t improve, I guess