Missed can go either way. The obvious way to look at it is that humanity would suffer because what they did would not happen. The other way is that humanity would be better off because what they did would not happen.
With that in mind, I nominate the unknown person who, way back at the dawn of time, dreamed up the idea of religion.
In terms of World History, it seems that only a few deserve serious mentioning and none American. Some, in no order:
Jesus of Nazareth
Mohammed
Paul the Apostle
Confucious
Buddha
Isaac Newton
Gandhi?
In any case, every democracy by definintion began with someone leading a revolution and then not setting themselves up as a dictator-for-life.
I don’t think so. The New World was discovered a second time, completely independently of Columbus’s voyage, a mere 8 years after his trip. The Portuguese navigator Pedro Cabral was sailing for India around Africa in 1500, and was blown so far west he hit eastern Brazil - far from the areas that were then known to the Spanish. Besides this, European fishermen may have been visiting the Grand Banks off North America by this time. So many European ships were out there that it was pretty much inevitable that one would have stumbled on the New World eventually, probably sooner rather than later.
If Columbus had never existed, the New World still would have been discovered by the early 1500s at the latest. Columbus’s impact was mainly limited to giving Spain a much bigger role in the colonization of the New World than it otherwise would have had.
I’ll throw out Thomas Paine. I believe it was his writings that truly got the movement for American independence from England going. If he hadn’t weilded his pen so eloquently, American history would be radically altered, which would in turn alter world history tremendously.
Suprised no one has mentioned Leonardo Da Vinci yet!
And what of HG Wells and Isaac Asimov?
Didn’t Newton base his works from Kepler and Kepler based his works from Brahe and Brahe got his start from …uh…Copernicus and eventually leading back to Archimedes? Somehwere in there is Gallileo Gallilee, too. Who, BTW, had a satellite/space thingy I’m so pathetic. named after him. Not bad for being dead a long long time.
I could be talking out of my butt, but really, everyone’s life work aboveforementioned eventually went on to be the foundation of another genius’ lifes work…proving a theory and whatnot. It is the nature of the science feild, IMHO.
What about Crick & Watson and their DNA work?
Jonas Salk and the polio vaccination? ( or any vaccination for that matter?)
Margaret Sanger and introducing women to birth control.
True. Newton did say “If I’ve seen farther it’s because I’ve stood on the shoulders of giants” or words to that effect. Still: takes an effort to climb up a giant, and more so to not only see, but write down accurately what one sees. Dunno if I coulda done it on the same shoulders.
What about Leibniz? He invented calculus at around the same time as Newton, and even got published first. He went about it a different way but we still use bits and pieces of his methods today along with Newton’s.
Ah, something has to be said for the Warlords.
Alexander the Great, followed closely by Charlemange.
Without either of them, I am certain things would be quite different, and likely for the worse.
A couple more recent ones: Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
How about William the Conqueror? Until 1066, he was William the Bastard. Afterwards, England was soverign and united and has been since.
The mysterious sailor who brought the Black Plague was probably responsible for the end of the Dark Ages.
I think that Abe Lincoln is actually a pretty good one. Not that he was as impressive a person as Newton or anything, but you could make a pretty good argument that without him we’d be looking at the United States of America and the American Confederacy. Two seperate nations, which would have monumental implications for the path of the worlds history over the last 2 centuries.
Him, unlike many others discussed, wouldn’t have had the luxury of waiting a few years or decades until the equivalent person came along. I also am not sure that another president saddled with the same challenge would have handled it.
On the first season of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!, they profiled a guy they called the greatest human to ever live. His agricultural work apparently saved the lives of a billion people. Anyone know who they were talking about?
I’d nominate him.
Indeed! That would be the one and only, Johnnie Appleseed. I’ll give him my vote as well. 
I believe you refering to Norman Borlaug
He developed a dwarf disease-resistant wheat variety that did very well in Pakistan and India, thus he was presumed to have saved a billion lives.
I remember ‘President Barlett’ on The West Wing mentioning this story.
Yeah, but could you make an apple pie with what he did? :rolleyes:
Well, I could make a pie crust with wheat flour I suppose
Since Borlaug, Salk and Alexander have been mentioned, I’ll add
Aristotle- for right or wrong, his codification of knowledge and theory majorly influenced knowledge and thought on three continents for more than 1,500 years.
Farn & Sarn: the corporate enemies David Sarnoff and Philo Farnsworth, who separately engineered (or in Sarnoff’s case, caused to be engineered) television, which probably changed the world more than any other household item in history.
Sarnoff and Farnsworth’s legal battles with each other delayed the marketing of a home TV for years, then when it was finally ready to go into mass production WW2 came along, factories were outfitted to the war effort, and America wasn’t ready for a new major invention. Can you imagine how much different history would have been had F & S resolved their disagreements, worked together, and had TV in homes by the late 1930s? Had people been able to see FDR and Hitler and later the war in their own homes it would have to have been a major effect.
And of course the man that I can’t believe nobody has mentioned yet: David Cassidy. Without him there would simply have been no Partridge Family success, and without the Partridge Family we’d never have had Being Bonaduce, and without Being Bonaduce there would be no apocalypse.
Mr.'s Appleseed and Borlaug should have gone into business together, they could have cornered the pie market.
My choice is Karl Marx. Without him, no Lenin, no Stalin, no Mao. I’d be interested in reading speculations about what the world would have looked like without Communism. (And no, I don’t think it would be a USA-led world utopia.)
But really, in general the further you go back the more influence something has. What would have happened if the Roman Empire had not existed? Was there a single person responsible for it? If, in addition, Alexander had lived, would there have been a Macedonian Empire instead?
Uh-uh. The article says he described a system being used in Venice. His part was to spread the knowledge of it. That may have hurried capitalism along somewhat, but the method would have spread eventually.
St. Paul is arguably more important than Jesus. As has been observed before, without Paul Christianity would have remained an obscure Jewish cult. This is different from Pacioli because double-entry book-keeping has concrete advantages over other methods in most circumstances. Are there any concrete advantages of Christianity over other religions?