The people behind these decisions, inventions, and discoveries were some seriously smart cookies. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the best and most consequential decisions that humans have ever made.
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00:00 "Stand out of your weapons, keep those actions clear, and I'll see you on the beach."
00:05 Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're counting down our picks for the best
00:10 and most consequential decisions that humans have ever made.
00:14 "Something that's literally in the air could be a bacteria killer."
00:19 Number 20. Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press.
00:25 When it comes to widespread literacy rates, we have German inventor Johannes Gutenberg to thank.
00:31 Born in the Holy Roman Empire, Gutenberg is credited with inventing the printing press
00:35 in the early 15th century. This effectively killed the likes of manuscript and block printing,
00:40 as Gutenberg's inventions spread through the world and brought about the so-called printing revolution.
00:45 "This early period was actually quite revolutionary. There were things changing all the time.
00:51 It took off rather like the internet."
00:53 Thanks to Gutenberg's readily available and easy-to-use invention,
00:57 things like books, pamphlets, and newspapers became commonplace,
01:01 allowing information to spread freely through global societies.
01:04 Furthermore, literacy rates rapidly expanded, effectively bringing an end to adult illiteracy.
01:10 Basically, the modern world would look a lot different if Gutenberg wasn't around to help fix it.
01:15 "Not since Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press,
01:20 which changed forever the landscape of man's destiny,
01:23 has one book reached so many and achieved so much."
01:27 We don't know who was the first person to start a fire,
01:35 but they deserve a posthumous medal or something.
01:46 Basically, we are where we are today, not just as a global society, but as a species,
01:51 because someone decided to harness fire.
01:53 The use of fire long predates Homo sapiens,
02:05 with the earliest evidence of it dating back about two million years.
02:08 To put that into perspective, Homo sapiens have only been around for about 300,000 years.
02:14 The use of fire allowed for all sorts of technological advances,
02:18 making tools, warding off predators, and cooking food being a few major ones.
02:22 We learned that fire was not to be feared, but utilized,
02:26 and with that decision, the course of human history was forever changed.
02:30 Alright, maybe a case could be made that the internet was not a good invention.
02:38 "We're ranking girls."
02:38 "You mean other students?"
02:42 "Yeah."
02:43 "You think this is such a good idea?"
02:45 But putting things into perspective,
02:47 it brought about a lot of positive changes and undeniably altered the world.
02:50 The internet was devised by an English computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee,
02:55 who first thought of the idea in 1989.
02:57 The early internet was private and used between shared institutions,
03:02 including Berners-Lee's own CERN.
03:04 However, it didn't stay private for long.
03:07 "All you need is a computer and a regular phone line.
03:09 They send you the software and give you 10 free hours to check it out."
03:12 After just a few years of tinkering,
03:14 the source code was released to the public on April 30th, 1993,
03:18 making the internet free and accessible to all.
03:21 As of 2021, nearly 8 billion people use the internet.
03:26 It's astounding how much change can occur in just 28 short years.
03:33 The history of the United States is complex,
03:36 filled with treaties, land purchases, wars, and all sorts of different countries.
03:40 Once upon a time,
03:41 Middle America or Louisiana was owned by France.
03:45 Then it went to Spain.
03:46 Then it went back to France when Napoleon traded it for Tuscany.
03:49 But Napoleon eventually shrugged at the prospect of owning land in North America.
03:53 And besides, he had a massive war to fund in Europe.
03:56 Enter Thomas Jefferson,
03:58 who really wanted New Orleans for its strategic location on the Mississippi.
04:02 Through his treasury minister, François Barbet Marbois,
04:05 Napoleon offered not only New Orleans, but the entirety of Louisiana.
04:09 Jefferson couldn't believe the bargain and swiftly agreed,
04:12 effectively doubling the size of the United States.
04:16 Look around you right now.
04:28 Chances are that you can see something made out of metal.
04:30 Well, you can thank our distant ancestors for that.
04:33 Humans have been using metals since prehistory,
04:42 with copper and meteoric iron being favorites.
04:44 But it wasn't until we made bronze that things really took off.
04:48 An alloy of copper and tin,
04:49 it brought about the Bronze Age and swiftly altered human history.
04:53 Beginning in about 3300 BCE,
04:56 the Bronze Age introduced rapid technological advancement
04:58 owing to the sturdiness of the alloy.
05:00 Which was far stronger than straight copper.
05:03 Metalworking became commonplace,
05:04 which in turn led to enormous revolutions in tool and weapon production.
05:08 And that's to say nothing of the massive changes to economics, art and agriculture.
05:14 World War II had just decimated the globe,
05:29 and the world had had enough.
05:31 The League of Nations, which was established back in 1920,
05:34 clearly didn't work.
05:35 So we needed a new international organization to help keep the peace.
05:39 Enter the Dumbarton Oaks Conference,
05:41 which took place throughout the latter half of 1944.
05:44 Held between the US, the UK, the Soviet Union and China,
05:55 it formulated the idea of the United Nations,
05:58 which was officially established in 1945.
06:00 Its reception and success have been mixed,
06:03 but it did one thing that it set out to do,
06:05 and that was to prevent future world wars.
06:08 Who's to say what would have happened had the United Nations not been established?
06:19 Born in 1863,
06:25 Henry Ford's farmer parents couldn't imagine what their son would do for the world.
06:29 No, literally they couldn't imagine it,
06:31 as it simply didn't exist yet.
06:32 Young Ford immediately took to cars,
06:35 and created the Ford Motor Company in 1903 at the age of 40.
06:38 Said company revolutionized mass production and manufacturing,
06:42 with his iconic assembly line changing the world of business forever.
06:45 His innovative techniques became commonplace,
06:48 and continue to be used to this day.
06:54 They also allowed for the rapid production of cheaper goods,
06:57 and therefore cheaper cars.
06:59 Suffice it to say,
07:00 cheap cars have been a monumental factor in the 20th century's rapid technological development.
07:05 Humans first started writing around 3500 BCE.
07:12 This script is called cuneiform,
07:14 and it was used in southern Mesopotamia to document the likes of contracts,
07:17 finances and law.
07:19 - You have the tablet inside. - Yes.
07:21 But gee, that's very destructive,
07:23 just I mean that's an artifact in itself,
07:25 - you're the outer shell. - It is, it is.
07:26 So you're, you only then have half an artifact.
07:29 Yeah, nothing very fun, but hey, it only changed the world.
07:33 Writing then went through many changes,
07:35 including the Phoenician alphabet of the Mediterranean.
07:38 Created in about 1050 BC,
07:40 this eventually morphed into the Ubian alphabet,
07:43 which morphed into the Old Italic,
07:45 which finally gave rise to the Latin alphabet used by the ancient Romans.
07:48 But in the Latin alphabet,
07:50 Jehovah begins with an I.
07:54 J-E-H-O-V-A-N-E.
07:58 And they pretty much perfected it.
08:00 We still use the Romans letters to this day,
08:03 and in 1888,
08:04 they were standardized by the International Phonetic Association
08:07 to create the International Phonetic Alphabet.
08:10 According to alphabetical order,
08:12 you know, A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
08:16 Beginning in 1990,
08:21 the world got together and decided,
08:23 "All right, let's figure this whole DNA thing out."
08:25 A DNA strand like me is a blueprint for building a living thing.
08:31 Called the Human Genome Project,
08:32 it was a massive undertaking in which scientists from around the world
08:36 hoped to identify, map, and sequence our genes.
08:39 And, well, they did.
08:40 Importantly, we found protein evidence for two-thirds of genes
08:46 for which no protein had ever been identified.
08:49 But this was no small undertaking.
08:51 It cost billions of dollars,
08:53 was performed in 20 universities across the world,
08:56 and took 13 years to complete,
08:58 lasting from 1990 to 2003.
09:01 He was working on the Human Genome Project.
09:03 Are you familiar with that?
09:04 Yeah, the mapping of all human genes.
09:06 Maybe the most ambitious scientific endeavor in the history of mankind.
09:11 But all that money and hard work paid off
09:13 as they pretty much nailed what they set out to do.
09:15 Mapping 92% of the human genome,
09:18 they found all 25,000 genes,
09:21 learned to read the code,
09:22 and identified problem genes,
09:24 which in turn created more effective medicine.
09:27 The fruits of the Human Genome Project
09:29 and the incredible progress that's been made in genomics
09:31 in the last 12 years since the end of the Genome Project
09:34 and actually changing how we practice medicine.
09:38 Number 11.
09:39 Newton studies the fallen apple.
09:41 There are many misconceptions regarding the legendary Isaac Newton apple story.
09:45 For one thing, Newton did not "discover" gravity.
09:48 He already knew it existed,
09:49 as did many big thinkers before him.
09:52 Rather, Newton was studying universal gravitation,
09:54 or more broadly,
09:56 the idea that gravity is responsible for a moon's orbit.
09:59 Newton's real genius was not to just stop with the apple,
10:03 but to ask the question,
10:05 "Is the same force that causes the apple to fall here on Earth
10:08 also responsible for the movement of much bigger things out there in the cosmos?"
10:12 Furthermore, an apple did not fall on Newton's head.
10:15 Rather, he was visiting his family farm in Lincolnshire
10:18 when he went for a walk through the garden
10:20 and observed an apple falling from its tree.
10:22 Newton suggested that the apple falls because of a force of attraction
10:27 that naturally exists between the apple and the Earth.
10:31 It was the strike of inspirational lightning that he needed,
10:34 and it allowed him to formulate the three laws of motion
10:37 and his revolutionary theories on universal gravitation.
10:40 And to think, he could have just ignored it.
10:42 Number 10.
10:48 Farming.
10:49 For many, many years,
10:51 humans simply wandered from place to place,
10:53 living off the land and desperately hoping that it provided.
10:56 For 90% of human history,
10:58 this is how we lived.
10:59 And it sucked.
11:01 "There's some lovely fields down here."
11:03 But about 10,000 years ago,
11:05 we had the brilliant idea to begin the practice of agriculture.
11:08 This practice started independently in many parts of the world.
11:11 China domesticated rice and beans,
11:14 Mesopotamia sheep,
11:15 South America potatoes,
11:16 New Guinea sugarcane,
11:18 Mesoamerica maize,
11:19 and Eurasia boars and pigs.
11:21 With this wild idea,
11:23 humanity transitioned from active hunter-gatherers
11:25 to more sedentary civilizations,
11:27 allowing us a much safer and more prosperous future.
11:30 "After a while, I won't be so pretty."
11:33 "But this land will be."
11:35 Number 9.
11:37 Assaulting the beaches on D-Day.
11:39 When it came time for the Normandy landings of 1944,
11:43 it was pretty much do or die for the Allied forces.
11:46 "In any direction you went,
11:47 there would be enemy.
11:49 You knew it.
11:49 And that was all part of what you accepted."
11:53 Germany had successfully occupied France in June 1940,
11:57 and it remained under their control for four years.
12:00 The Allies,
12:04 hoping to liberate Europe from Nazi control,
12:06 launched Operation Neptune and stormed the beaches of Normandy.
12:10 This required extensive planning,
12:12 an entire deception called Operation Bodyguard,
12:15 and studying the phases of the moon to determine the best possible time of attack.
12:19 They even delayed the operation by 24 hours,
12:22 as the weather on June 5th was not ideal and could have led to disaster.
12:26 It was one genius decision after another,
12:29 and the Allied victory precipitated the end of World War II.
12:32 Number 8.
12:34 Making the Magna Carta.
12:35 Medieval Latin for "Great Charter,"
12:37 the Magna Carta was first created in 1215 by the Archbishop of Canterbury
12:42 and signed by King John of England.
12:44 At the time, a group of barons was rebelling against the king's rule.
12:48 "The laws of this land enslave people to its king.
12:54 A king who demands loyalty but offers nothing in return."
12:58 To stifle the political dissatisfaction,
13:00 King John agreed to sign a charter of rights,
13:03 most of them concerning the feudal power of the monarchy.
13:06 The Magna Carta was extensively used in the 17th century against the divine right of kings,
13:10 which basically meant that a monarch lived outside the law and could do whatever he wanted.
13:15 The Magna Carta put an end to that absolute power.
13:18 It also served as the basis for the United States Constitution,
13:22 effectively giving rise to modern democracy and constitutional law.
13:25 Number 7.
13:32 Benjamin Rush writes about the darned mosquitoes.
13:35 And speaking about the United States Constitution,
13:38 let's talk about founding father Benjamin Rush.
13:40 Rush was of paramount importance during the Philadelphia Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793,
13:45 in which 5,000 of the city's 50,000 residents died.
13:49 While most of the citizens fled the city,
13:51 Rush stayed behind to study the disease.
13:53 At the time, no one knew that mosquitoes were responsible.
13:56 In fact, Rush believed that it was caused by garbage and "some damaged coffee."
14:07 However, he also wrote that mosquitoes were "uncommonly numerous during the epidemic,"
14:13 a fact that was noticed by Cuban doctor Carlos Finlay nearly 100 years later.
14:17 Finlay became the first person to deduce that yellow fever came from mosquitoes,
14:22 and he directly credited Rush for the idea.
14:24 Number 6.
14:25 Inventing the wheel.
14:27 It's not very glamorous, but the wheel is arguably the greatest invention in human history.
14:32 Heck, we're still using them, aren't we?
14:37 No one really knows who invented the wheel,
14:39 although it's often credited to Mesopotamia.
14:42 The modern wheel, that is, a circular piece of wood with a hole for an axle,
14:46 is usually traced to the Copper Age, around 3500 BCE.
14:50 The Ljubljana Marshes wheel, found in modern-day Slovenia,
14:53 is the oldest known wheel ever discovered, being about 5,000 years old.
14:57 Someone along the way slapped some wheels on a cart,
15:00 and with that, the entire future of trade,
15:03 agriculture, and transportation was laid out in stark and promising detail.
15:07 Number 5.
15:11 Mikhail Gorbachev tears down the wall.
15:14 It's amazing how much history was packed into the 20th century.
15:17 Heck, even how much history was packed into the latter half of it.
15:20 Construction of the Berlin Wall began in 1961,
15:24 symbolizing the Cold War and the fierce political divide in Europe.
15:27 The wall itself ran through Berlin,
15:29 dividing west from east and containing the east's communist citizens.
15:33 They remained trapped for over two decades,
15:36 until the East German government allowed its citizens to cross in 1989.
15:44 This historic event not only symbolized the end of the Cold War and communism,
15:48 it led to the entire dissolution of the Soviet Union just a few years later.
15:52 For his role in tearing down the wall,
15:59 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
16:02 Number 4.
16:13 Edward Jenner inoculates James Phipps.
16:16 Edward Jenner changed the course of human history when he invented the world's first vaccine.
16:21 Smallpox was a devastating disease in Jenner's time,
16:24 killing up to 10% of the global population.
16:27 But Jenner theorized that the pus from cowpox provided immunity to the far deadlier smallpox.
16:32 Jenner procured some cowpox pus and inoculated his gardener's 8-year-old son, James Phipps.
16:37 This was a huge risk, but the test worked,
16:40 and Phipps was successfully vaccinated against smallpox.
16:44 Jenner later published his findings,
16:46 leading to the eradication of smallpox in the introduction of vaccines.
16:50 Years later, Jonas Salk would prove a similar hero when he refused to patent the polio vaccine.
16:55 Just 25 years later, it was completely eradicated in the United States.
16:59 Number 3.
17:08 Washington decides against a third term.
17:10 On April 30, 1789, founding father George Washington made history
17:15 and became the first president of the United States.
17:18 He ran for two terms, finally leaving office on March 4, 1797.
17:22 But unlike today, this leave of office was not mandatory.
17:26 Rather, it was Washington's idea.
17:35 For one thing, he feared the executive and unchecked rule of a monarchy.
17:39 He also loved the idea of a peaceful transfer of power and was inspired by ancient Rome,
17:44 especially the story of Lucius Quintius Cincinnatus
17:47 and how he relinquished his own power as statesman.
17:50 Plus, he was just really tired.
17:52 Running a country is hard, you know.
17:54 By stepping down, Washington set a democratic precedent that is still in use today.
18:01 And how does he further that power?
18:03 By showing that he doesn't crave power.
18:06 Number 2.
18:07 Alexander Fleming leaves out a petri dish.
18:09 One of the greatest advancements of the 20th century was completely fortuitous.
18:14 Sometimes we catch a break.
18:15 Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming worked in London's St. Mary's Hospital,
18:19 studying the bacteria Staphylococcus.
18:22 One day, he left Staphylococci on a petri dish and left for vacation.
18:25 When he returned, the dish was full of mold.
18:28 Yet the Staphylococci around the mold had been curiously destroyed.
18:32 This mold was penicillium, and it was actively killing bacteria.
18:36 Upon further tests, Fleming discovered its antibacterial properties
18:40 and introduced the world to antibiotics.
18:42 Good thing he didn't throw out that dish.
18:44 As he famously said,
18:46 Nature did that.
18:49 I only discovered it by accident.
18:51 You need to have networks of people with different skills,
18:54 different fields of expertise coming together to solve a problem.
18:57 And in fact, that's exactly what happens in the history of penicillin.
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19:15 Number 1. Khrushchev leaves Cuba
19:19 Nikita Khrushchev was in office during the famous Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962,
19:24 when American forces discovered Soviet missile facilities in nearby Cuba.
19:28 Our official estimate at this time is that this missile system is the SS-4 Sandow.
19:34 We do not believe that the missiles are as yet operational.
19:39 Tensions mounted as the world escalated closer toward nuclear war.
19:43 Luckily, it ended in one of the world's greatest diplomatic victories.
19:47 The United States agreed not to invade Cuba and to remove their nuclear missiles from Turkey.
19:52 In exchange, Khrushchev ordered the removal of his warheads from Cuba.
19:56 While the decision humiliated Khrushchev and led to his political downfall,
20:00 it was arguably the smartest decision ever made in human history.
20:04 Without it, we could all be living in a nuclear wasteland.
20:07 Stanislav Petrov would save the world in a similar manner in 1983,
20:11 when he refused to retaliate against a false alarm.
20:14 And then I made my decision. I would not trust the computer.
20:20 I picked up the telephone handset, spoke to my superiors and reported that the alarm was false.
20:26 Would you have made these same decisions? Let us know in the comments below.
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