# most significant single event in the 20th century **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 19, 2019, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021 "2019-10-19T23:46:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/41 "2019-10-22T00:14:38Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It is hard to pick from [these 20 times we almost started World War Last,](http://nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm) but if I had to chose it would be November 9th, 1979, when a computer exercise tape caused a panic: “The President had not been informed, perhaps because he could not be found” How could the President not be found? ---
**Author:** ![Isosleepy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/isosleepy/32/479_2.png) [@Isosleepy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isosleepy)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/42 "2019-10-22T01:33:19Z")
What takes the archdukal assassination out of contention for me is that one way or another, a casus belli would be found, and WWI would start regardless of the assassination. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/43 "2019-10-22T01:33:51Z")
It’s true that Bismarck predicted war would come from “some damn fool thing in the Balkans” years before it happened, but no one could predict the chain of events that led to Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, so that’s #1 on my list. I’ll go with **Stainless Steel Rat** on Sputnik being #2. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/44 "2019-10-22T01:47:15Z")
> [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](#): > > One other item for consideration. 4 October 1957. A beach-ball sized hunk of metal with batteries and a transmitter that went ‘beep-beep-beep’ suddenly changed the world and ushered in the space race, the moon mission, and eventual cooperation in space. > > Sputnik I. The important concept being, if the USSR could put a satellite into orbit, could they put an atomic bomb into orbit and drop it wherever they pleased? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_stainless_steel_rat/32/5727_2.png) [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stainless_Steel_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/45 "2019-10-22T03:53:13Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The important concept being, if the USSR could put a satellite into orbit, could they put an atomic bomb into orbit and drop it wherever they pleased? That certainly played a role. It also served notice to the USA (along with the Soviet nuclear program) that there was now a credible threat to the US Homeland. Not to mention that 'The Great and Powerful Americans who won WWII all by Themselves and had The Greatest Science" belief suddenly took a jolt. Especially when our first satellite launch…didn’t [https://www.youtube.com/watch?time\_continue=2&v=JK6a6Hkp94o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=JK6a6Hkp94o) It changed US perceptions, made for some changes in teaching science in schools, and concentrated politics on the ‘space race’. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/46 "2019-10-22T13:23:33Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > Invention of the desktop computer. Plus a way to connect it to the world. Back around 1985 I attended a talk by James Burke (the _Connections_ guy) at a fundraiser for KTEH, Silicon Valley’s PBS station. He had been the BBC’s reporter for the Apollo-Soyuz missions a decade before and said that he’d interviewed the head of the Soviet space program. One of the questions he’d asked was technologically speaking, what did he fear most about the West. The guy said that if someone were to invent, and went on to describe what amounted a PC, he didn’t see how the Soviet Union with all its top-down bureaucracy and blocks to information exchange, could keep up. ---
**Author:** ![bizerta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3be4f8/32.png) [@bizerta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bizerta)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/47 "2019-10-22T14:28:02Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Why not July 16, 1945? Perhaps we should go back even further to the Einstein–Szilárd letter of 02-August-1939 to FDR that kick-started the US nuclear program which begat the Manhattan Project. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/48 "2019-10-22T14:44:35Z")
> [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](#): > > One other item for consideration. 4 October 1957. A beach-ball sized hunk of metal with batteries and a transmitter that went ‘beep-beep-beep’ suddenly changed the world and ushered in the space race, the moon mission, and eventual cooperation in space. > > Sputnik I. This may be movie history, but wasn’t the US in the process of putting up a much more advanced satellite before Sputnik, but it got delayed for some reason? Seems to me that this was, again, something that was going to happen at one point or another. Unless you mean that by doing so, the Soviets had raised the threat meter and put themselves squarely on the US’s radar, sparking us to greater action. Certainly, I think that the space race as well as the cold war were key to the US ever putting a man on the Moon. Without that we probably never would do it, as there would always be something easier to spend the money on at home and folks just weren’t into (and aren’t into today) spending vast amounts on these sorts of things. We’d rather spend vast amounts on other stuff. And no one else could or would do it, so without those events man wouldn’t have been on the moon in the 20th century. Maybe not even today. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/49 "2019-10-22T15:40:30Z")
> [@XT](#): > > This may be movie history, but wasn’t the US in the process of putting up a much more advanced satellite before Sputnik, but it got delayed for some reason? The USA had difficulty getting the first satellites into orbit. I don’t recall if it was Vanguard or Explorer that blew up a couple of times. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/50 "2019-10-22T15:48:35Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Something that DIDN’T happen: the soldier whose nationality escapes me who had an opportunity to kill Hitler in WWI, and didn’t. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > It is hard to pick from [. . .] 20 times we almost started World War Last, but if I had to chose it would be November 9th, 1979, when a computer exercise tape caused a panic: In the category of Things That Didn’t Happen, I’m going to nominate [Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov) for savior of The World As We Know It. It’s quite possible that the only reason most of us are alive is because he disobeyed protocol and by so disobeying may well have prevented a nuclear war in 1983. – there may, of course, have been something else that Didn’t Happen that deserves the position even more. However, because it didn’t happen, we’re unlikely to ever know about it. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/51 "2019-10-22T15:57:20Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > The USA had difficulty getting the first satellites into orbit. I don’t recall if it was Vanguard or Explorer that blew up a couple of times. Sure, but a lot of that was because we were suddenly in rush mode. Also, for reasons that often baffle me, all of the services were trying to put up rockets. I believe that the Air Force had planned a launch, but for some reason either the Army or Navy had the pull to get their’s tried first, then when they had issue it pushed back the Air Force team (or which ever one Von Braun was on). So, there were several failures, but not necessarily because we couldn’t do it…it’s because we had too many teams working at cross purposes. And that let the Soviets get a march on is, where we were playing catch up from then on, with them being always one jump ahead. My narrative here though is really History Channel history, so grain of salt…some, most or all of it might be wrong. I do think that, eventually, the US would have put up satellites regardless of what the Soviets did, and that it would have been fairly clear (it was already, really, as I think Arthur C Clark had produced a paper on the potential for satellites in the 40’s, and there were even earlier ones than that IIRC). I do agree that with the Soviets challenging the US and pushing us (and vice versa), it definitely helped propel manned and unmanned space exploration and was key to a nation putting a man on the moon. So, yeah…it was a significant event that changed history. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/52 "2019-10-22T16:38:21Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Arthur C Clark had produced a paper on the potential for satellites in the 40’s, and there were even earlier ones than that IIRC). At some point, Clarke proposed Geo-synchronous satellites that don’t move in relation to the surface of the Earth; the satellites we use in various ways to watch TV. I believe Telstar was just a reflective surface to bounce signals off from one ground station to another. ---
**Author:** ![spifflog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@spifflog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/spifflog)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2019, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/53 "2019-10-22T20:01:04Z")
> [@The\_Stainless\_Steel\_Rat](#): > > Sputnik I. As others before me, I’m torn in choosing items that would have taken place in the normal course of human events. The first satellite was a long time coming and would have taken place one way or another. WWI could be another. Item such as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, were avoidable or at least not inevitable. I’d think that inevitable events would generally not be the most significant. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/54 "2019-10-23T16:08:12Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > At some point, Clarke proposed Geo-synchronous satellites that don’t move in relation to the surface of the Earth; the satellites we use in various ways to watch TV. I believe Telstar was just a reflective surface to bounce signals off from one ground station to another. No, [Telstar 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar) was a real communications satellite with amplifiers and everything. What you’re thinking of is the aptly named [Echo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo). ---
**Author:** ![sweepkick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/87869e/32.png) [@sweepkick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweepkick)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/55 "2019-10-23T16:27:36Z")
This has got to be up there: fall of 1972 when Bob Kahn demonstrated ARPANET at the International Computer Communication Conference, which was described as “the watershed event that made people suddenly realize that packet switching was a real technology”, and ultimately lead to Kahn and Vint Cerf working together to create the TCP/IP protocol standard that the internet leverages today. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2019, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/56 "2019-10-23T17:42:44Z")
> [@DesertDog](#): > > No, [Telstar 1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar) was a real communications satellite with amplifiers and everything. What you’re thinking of is the aptly named [Echo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo). Thanks, DesertDog. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2019, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/57 "2019-10-24T10:23:58Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > I’ll go with a different event during WWI - von Kluck’s turn South leading to the Battle of the Marne. I think Germany had a very good chance of fulfilling the Schlieffen plan and knocking France out of the war had the series of mistakes and brilliant French/British counterattacks not happened. It’s hard to imagine how the 20th century would have played out if WWI ends in September 2014 with a victorious Germany the primary power on the continent. The Schlieffen Plan has been largely discredited by the efforts of Terrence Zuber (I think that is correct) an American researcher. The plan was in the possession of his elderly sisters and the concept was revived by the right as a reason Germany lost. The murder of Arch Duke Ferdinand and his morgiantic wife was a pretext. He was pretty well disliked in Austria and they were pariahs from the court- he was more use to Vienna dead than alive. Although there were many ways the Great War had to happen there were as many reasons why it did not need to happen. I could say the same thing of the Russian Revolution. For me, most of the events listed have roots earlier on- as is my suggestion. How about the Great Depression? The USA calls in all loans, the workforce has massive disruptions, and it ends the flirtation with democracy in Germany. The UK defaults on loans- and the beat goes on. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2019, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/58 "2019-10-25T01:39:16Z")
Floyd Collins’s entraptment and eventual death in Sand Cave, Kentucky, in 1925. Biggest news story in the U.S. between the first and second world wars. > **[Floyd Collins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Collins)** > > William Floyd Collins (July 20, 1887 – c. February 13 (Estimated), 1925) was an American cave explorer, principally in a region of Kentucky that houses hundreds of miles of interconnected caves, today a part of Mammoth Cave National Park, the longest known cave system in the world. > In the early 20th century, in an era known as the Kentucky Cave Wars, spelunkers and property owners entered into bitter competition to exploit the bounty of caves for commercial profit from tourists, who paid to se... Well…it kept ME from spelunking in Sand Cave. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2019, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/59 "2019-10-25T13:45:54Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > Floyd Collins’s entraptment and eventual death in Sand Cave, Kentucky, in 1925. Biggest news story in the U.S. between the first and second world wars. > > [Floyd Collins - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Collins) > > Well…it kept ME from spelunking in Sand Cave. The Kirk Douglas film, [Ace In the Hole.](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043338/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv) "Actor Victor Desny brought a lawsuit against this film while the script was being written. He claimed the film was an unauthorized version of the Floyd Collins story. Collins was actually stuck in a cave years earlier, as mentioned in the film. Since Desny owned the rights to the Collins story, he claimed copyright infringement. Desny prevailed, although Wilder appealed. The California Supreme Court ruled in Desny’s favor. (‘Desny v. Wilder’, 46 Cal. 2d 715, 299 (Cal. Sup. Ct. 1956).) Wilder’s attorneys settled, paying Desny $14,350. " ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2019, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021/60 "2019-10-25T20:54:13Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > Floyd Collins’s entraptment and eventual death in Sand Cave, Kentucky, in 1925. Biggest news story in the U.S. between the first and second world wars. > > [Floyd Collins - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Collins) > > Well…it kept ME from spelunking in Sand Cave. Ahem, your own cite says it was the _third_ biggest media event between the two wars. Number one, I’m certain was Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. I’d wager number two was the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Although the Lindbergh story didn’t keep me from crossing the Atlantic, so I’ll concede your point on that. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-significant-single-event-in-the-20th-century/842021.md?page=4)