Which is the greatest world history event?

Biggest event in world history

  • End of WWII

    Votes: 7 70.0%
  • The first manned lunar landing

    Votes: 2 20.0%
  • Fall of the Berlin Wall/Communism

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 9/11 Terror attacks

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • COVID-19 pandemic

    Votes: 1 10.0%

  • Total voters
    10

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
There are 5 choices to pick, they happened within recent memory in the last 75 years, and these world history events were indeed world-changing. But, the poll is which one is the greatest one. Note I cast the first vote (the 2nd choice), feel free to vote for one.

1. The end of WWII (May 7 and Sep 2, 1945) vs Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. WWII was marked with violence and horror: D-day, the Holocaust, Japanese vs Chinese, Nazis vs Soviets, atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japanese-American internment.
2. The first of 6 moon landings (Jul 20, 1969 and 1970-72) by US NASA - the first man was Neil Armstrong. But the space race began on Oct 7, 1957 with the Soviet space agency's launch of Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite.
3. The end of the cold war (Nov 9, 1989) by the fall of the Berlin wall to unify a city, country, continent, world and humanity, along with the fall of the Soviet Union (Dec 26, 1991), the USSR had the Chernobyl accident (Apr 25, 1986).
4. The terrorist attacks (Sep 11, 2001) on the World Trade Center in NYC and the Pentagon near Washington DC began the war on terror with the US armed forces in Afghanistan and then Iraq to deposed Saddam Hussein's regime.
and 5. the COVID-19 pandemic (Jan 1, 2020-) started in Wuhan, China and it spread globally over the course of 5 months, the biggest disease outbreak since the 1918 flu pandemic and the HIV/AIDS pandemic first discovered in 1981.
 
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CapAquaPis

Well-known member
A honorable mention to the list is the invention of the internet, Aka world wide web in the 1980s...and indeed we're using it right now to post on this forum.
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
The eradication of smallpox in 1980 was a global history event in human scientific abilities, this can inspire us to eliminate and contain other diseases whether they are ancient (polio and the worst strains of influenza) or new (SARS and MERS, relatives to COVID).
 
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CapAquaPis

Well-known member
Jan 1, 2000...or Jan 1, 2001...2 dates are when a new year, decade, century, millennia or I guess, astrological age began. The time for humanity to make it from one stage to another, what we need to focus on is uniting all nations and races together and hopefully, we'll have world peace. The mass hysteria over May 20, 2011 (An Evangelical Christian cult) and Dec 21, 2012 (Ancient Mayan calendar) should taught us life is short, the world could end in any moment and honestly, nobody can predict when will be the last day for all of humanity.
 
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CapAquaPis

Well-known member
3 big events in my 40-year lifetime: 1. The Los Angeles race riots (Apr 29-May 4, 1992), 2. Hurricane Katrina flooding of New Orleans (Aug 30-Sep 2, 2005) and 3. economic shocks leading up to the Great Recession (Sep 11-29, 2008). Other big events are the Apr 19, 1995 domestic terrorist bombing of the federal government building in Oklahoma City and the Jan-May 2011 "Arab Spring" to reformed or destroyed multiple governments throughout the Arab world or Middle East.
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
For Americans, the date Nov 22, 1963 was when the country left 18 years of its peak and entered 18 years of crisis: the assassination of the 35th president John F Kennedy. It was a shocker in the 20th century, assassinations of 3 US presidents: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and gunshot-related infection deaths of James Garfield in 1881 and William McKinley in 1901 were distant memories from a politically tumultuous era of the late half of the 1800s. 4-term/12 year president Franklin D Roosevelt in 1945 and Warren Harding in 1923 both died of natural causes and John F's brother Robert running for president was later killed in 1968 not long after civil rights activist Rev or Dr Martin Luther King Jr.

Another date in mind is Nov 3, 1979 when during the first year of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the US embassy in Tehran's staff were taken hostage and held in captivity up to 444 days, coincidentally (?) when Ronald Reagan, the 40th president was inaugurated. He was the 4th president in 7 years to replace resigned Nixon over the Watergate scandal 1974, Gerald Ford 1977 and Jimmy Carter 1981 in their disastrous only 4-year terms (Nixon had 5 in 2 terms). Fortunately, Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt in Mar 30, 1981 to broke a 2-decade cycle curse of presidential deaths along with William Henry Harrison after only 30 days in office in 1841 and Zachary Taylor but in 1850.
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
Previous generations before me had memories of great historic events not in my life time or close enough to have a noticeable impact in the current year. My maternal greatgrandpa (born 1888-died 1967) was alive in the year 1900 to witness a new century, his wife (greatgrandma) was born in 1905 and died in 1999, Sep 23rd to be exact.

The beginning of WWI (June 28, 1914) caused by the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie by a Serbian gunman Gavrilo Princip. Serbia and Austria-Hungary declared war on each other, then they get their allies on each side: the Serbs were assisted by the UK and their British commonwealth (Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand), France, Russia and finally the USA; the Austrians (2 co-empires) had Germany and Ottoman Turks on theirs to only get defeated by Nov 11, 1918 - Armistice day when the remaining Prussians (German empire) surrendered to the allies, the empire was replaced by a weak democratic Weimar Republic and Europe went through 7 decades of limitations of peace, progress, prosperity and the sense of stability. WW1 was called both "the Great war" and "the War to end all wars" until WW2 came in the early 1940s to devastate Europe again.

And the Great Depression began by a sharp decline in daily stocks on Oct 29, 1929. The US and other national governments worldwide failed to repair a collapsed economy, then came massive poverty and unemployment rates in its highest on economic records, and the side effect of the Great Depression was positive: the New Deal in 1933 devised by president Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration...and negative: The election of Adolf Hitler as fuhrer of the failed Weimar Republic to later become Nazi Germany or the "third reich". The Nazis later allied with Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini and Imperial Japan's militarist regime under General Hideki Tojo formed an alliance originally against the communist government of Soviet Russia with Joseph Stalin in power, but the Nazis invaded Russia in 1941 after they conquered almost all of Europe (one notable exception is the British isles, the others Switzerland and Sweden) and later the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor to get the US into the war, the result is the Allies (US-UK-Canada-France-China-Australia) defeated the Axis by 1945: first the Nazis surrendered on May 7th, then the Japanese on Sep 2nd; and the post-war alliance (the USSR turned against them) ended up into a 46-year Cold War.
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
Leading the poll is WW2 followed by the first lunar landing. It could extend 5 more to include: 1. The Great Recession, 2. Hurricane Katrina, 3. the LA Riots, 4. the Iran hostage standoff situation and 5. JFK's assassination. But the top 5 has the most global significance, implications and lifestyle or cultural changes.
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
The Peloponnesian wars were when the ancient Greeks unified to defeat the invading Persians and the starting point of our modern, western and global civilization we have today was a result of the Europeans in the Greek peninsula being able to successfully defend themselves: the world would be a different place of being ruled by Iran in an alternative timeline: no Greek civilization, no Roman empire, no Christianity, no Protestantism, no British Empire and no USA.
 

Vulcan

Active member
I'd say the Fall of Atlantis, it's been conjectured it even affected the Earth's tilt. Science does support that the last Ice Age ended surprisingly abruptly, with a trigger event in the North Atlantic area.
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
And overall in US history: 3 events would be a lot more significant and everlasting (in other centuries and millennia): 1. The foundation of the separate first colonies of Jamestown and Plymouth (1607 and 1620 respectively), 2. the American Revolution (1770-80s) as well the war of 1812, and the worst at 3. the US civil war (1861-65) and reconstruction lasted a decade afterward. Other important events are the Texas Revolution and Mexican-American war of the 1840s period, and the Spanish-American war at the turn of the 20th century made the US a global power of pre-WW2 past colonial rule of the Philippines and continued territorial rule of Puerto Rico.
 
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CapAquaPis

Well-known member
100 biggest world historic events (one per year from 1920-2020, starting from one pandemic H1N1 flu of 1917-19 to end a world war, along with taking down the Russian Tsar by the Bolshevik Revolution, the worst economic panic, and high political or ethnic/racial tension all in 1918 alone). Note 2014 repeated itself in 2022...and 2016 led up to Jan 6, 2021, and 2023 is expected to be very divisive in the USA with the worst recession in living memory combined with distrust in government and ideologies, science skepticism from global warming denial to continued mass ignorance of the now endemic COVID-19, and open hatred between many groups of people in American society and culture, esp. fighting marginalization of BIPOC, LGBTQ and Women in general, Anti-semitism, Islamophobia, Xenophobia, ageism (generation conflict) and ableism (the rise of neurodivergents - a new minority group in our social consciousness), and ultimately: the non-rich getting poorer. https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...ortant-event-every-year-since-1920/113604790/
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
2019-soon 23, like 1989-93, 1963-68, 1942-45 and 1918-22 are cyclical every 20-25 year and 3 or 5-year long periods of race riots, political demonstrations and high levels of civil unrest - like a generational cycle, as well the 1960s-early 70s itself is the worst...and the early 10s (Arab spring, Occupy vs Tea Party), the 2 world wars earlier, post-cold war early 90s, and where we are now: 100 nations - half the world in 2019 and now all 200 - even the US and the Vatican had strikes, protests and clashes, or intense distrust of all of their governments and economic policies that fail or benefit the corporate top and whether social ethics or morals need to change.
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member
And in this decade's end, humanity realized it can make world place, save itself and the earth we live on: April 13, 2029 will be bigger than January 1, 2000 and July 20, 1969: the USA and Russia among 200 other nations worked together as an international asteroid diversion force to prevent an impact of the asteroid Apophis. The USA who was the only nation to conduct 6 manned Lunar landings had an equal role in a scientific project with Russia, the first nation to send an astronaut out of...and safely return to Earth during its USSR era (the Soviet [Union] now Russian Space Agency), developed a gigantic magnet (imagine the size of a produce truck) to catch, relocate and release a 27 billion kg asteroid with a complete degree of success.
 

sentR89day

Well-known member
WWII. Strange that it started in early September of 1939, a Virgo War. Ended around August of 1945, a Leo ending. Some say it didn't officially end until early September of 1945 (something was signed, I forgot), so it ended as a Virgo too.
 

CapAquaPis

Well-known member

I copypasta this from my Google search: Greatest Events in human history - From sources across the web (in 20th century to the year 2020)

1. WW2, 2. Cold War, 3. 9/11, 4. WW1, 5. Great Depression, 6. Vietnam War, 7. Cuban Missile Crisis, 8. The Holocaust, 9. Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 10. Russian Revolution of 1917.

 
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