I’m glad you were. At least I was whoosed by someone intelligent. 
A short-lived stunt.
And guess what, every Jazz chord was used in Classical music long before “Jass” was coined as a term, but that doesn’t make Classical music Jazz, nor does it make African slave music Jazz. Jazz was invented, using influences including African music, European Classical music, and various folk music from all over the world. It was invented here.
The USA’s biggest contributions to human history is trashy Hollywood shlock. That stuff will be remembered far longer than anything else. Avengers 3 will be our Gilgamesh.
The Marshall Plan.
But another poll option left me incredulous:
“Supported the Green Revolution in so many countries, directly and indirectly”.
Really?
The United States consumes a vastly disproportionate amount of the world’s hydrocarbons and releases the waste into the world’s water and atmosphere. Furthermore the US is seen as a nation which utterly rejects climate change.
To add to that, it is American agrichemical companies which push genetically modified plants/products onto other nations and then threaten to sue if they do not have control.
I don’t doubt that individually there are Americans who embrace green technologies but as a nation, the United States is about as anti-green as you can get.
China comes to mind.
Doesn’t half their population live on farms and ride bicycles?
Star Trek and The Beach Boys.
As Grumman points out, “Green Revolution” refers to the hugely successful agricultural revolution that brought food self-sufficiency to many countries, notably India. This effort is directly credited with saving one billion people from starvation.
It also had (and continues to have) severe environmental adverse effects, but that does not / should not detract from its great successes.
I disagree; the US led the world in assessing the environmental impact of industrial technology, and led the world in discovering climate change. There are other massive polluters (such as China, with India fast catching up) that do not know or care very much.
Had the (primarily) US-based scientific community not driven environmental and climate research, the world would have remained oblivious to the danger. Do you think China/India/Brazil/Russia have the scientific caliber to undertake this kind of first-rate science?
The US is also by far the largest polluter, but this thread is about the positive things the US has done.
The US succeeds in not being a whiney bitch about other countries accomplishments. When asked what those countries added to the world there may be some head scratching but usually something presents itself because the US has taken so much of other countries into itself. The US embraces the world. The US IS the world. Should a thread about other countries accomplishments be presented the OP would be seriously considered without rancor. Not so the world. At every opportunity it sees a chance for criticism. Where the US expects other countries to be proud of thier accomplishments those countries belittle and thus belie the concept of the ugly American. They themselves prove ugly and are so egocentic they cannot see it in themselves.
Ah - my misunderstanding. And thanks for the link, its a fascinating and complex subject upon which it seems the jury is still out. But a billion people gained life.
I believe you missed the point there- the above were examples of continental sized bits if the English Empire. No need to imagine them.
If you want to measure a nation’s contribution to the war effort, don’t count the losses. Count the kills. The Russians played a bigger part by killing more Germans.
R&D in general. The US spends more than Europe, we spend about 3% of GDP vs about 2% in the EU.
The R&D that occurs here helps innovate a lot of fields, but if I had to pick one I’d probably pick medicine first, then IT/communications second.
But realistically that is just a handful of intelligent americans who do that.
Being de facto hegemon of the Western World since 1945 which has succeded in preventing major wars since that time especially within Europe. As part of that, ensuing that the Western Allies would have a non-trivial involvement in the defeat of the Third Reich and actually be able to liberate Western Europe including most of Germany.