Yeah, me too. And 20th Century = History.
Anyway I forgot:
Krakatoa!
WTF?
I’m going to have to go with the Black Death or the moon landing.
also important:
18th century invasion of Australia.
Univac predicting the… Lesse. Eisenhower election. Dramatic impact? Well, first, the false front panel with the blinking lights gave life to generations of movie computer.
Second, led directly to the modern poll-based age.
Thirdly… they had to go back and admit the computer was more right than they were. The machine… out-thought… MAN! (Bum bum bumm)
I’m not too sure what the most dramatic event in the history of the world was, but the most important non-military event in the last millennium has got to be:
The invention of a cheap way to manufacture SOAP in 1792.
I mean, look around you! Can you imagine living in a world without soap? Can you imagine how different, and how much dirtier, a world that would have been? Well, prior to 1792, that’s exactly how different things were!
Other candidates:
The assassination of Julius Caesar.
The sudden death of Alexander the Great.
The enlightenment of Buddha. (Just to counter the Jesus posts. Heh.)
The Magna Carta. (Arguably a military event.)
Columbus’s first voyage.
How about Hammurabi’s Code? Certain provisions of that early law-book remain with us today, especially in Texas.
You know, the “he shall be put to death” part.
Hmm, would the collapse of the Soviet Union count as military as there was a coup involved?
Erek
The coup seems subsidiary to the primary event, no? I’d say non-military. Good call.
How about the introduction of smallpox to the new world? No television at the time, but certainly dramatic.
hmm… here’s my list. Most are 20th century items, but I think that the capability to influence world civilization really was the most dramatic in the past century.
The Black Death OR the worldwide flu epidemic of 1917(?)
landing on the moon
the conversion of the roman empire to christianity
the protestant reformation
the bolshevik revolution
the green revolution
the polio vaccine
If you mean, dramatic by its influence on human history (which I guess is not really the Op), how about:
The god Quetzalcoatl travelling to earth on a beam of the Morning Star, bringing to the Aztecs a cacao tree, and teaching them how to grind and roast the beans from that tree?
The discovery of the DNA molecular structure?
Newton’s formulation of the theory of gravity?
Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world?
The conversion of emperor Constantine to Christianity?
The entry of Muhammad into Mecca?
The first woodblock printing of books in China?
If you mean “most popular”, as in, for example most watched worldwide on television, then I think Princess Diana’s funeral still has the record. Either that or some soccer world cup final.
The greatest mass assembly in the history of the world:
The Ayatollah Khomeni’s funeral (~2,000,000).
I’d say the bolshevik revolution was pretty military,but I’ll second the nomination of the Green Revolution.
Was that the one where the Green Party stormed the German Parliament, or something?
The invention of synthetic nitrogen for fertilizing plants. Something like 1/3 of human protein consumption comes from synthetic nitrogen. (Probably other agriculture advancements as well, but that’s the big one as I understand it.)
what about the great Boston Molasses Flood?