(May 18, 2015 at 12:08 pm)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:Min, is there any historical event that are of the strange but true variety that had a major impact on history?
Nothing comes to mind. I guess the problem is the term 'major impact.'
There's one I came across which would qualify. After Hiroshima, the original list of Japanese targets for the second atomic bomb included Kyoto (seat of Emperor Hirohito), Kokura and Niiagata. Nagasaki was only added to the list after Kyoto was removed for "religious associations" (though allegedly a certain General had spent his honeymoon there and thought it was a shame to blow up such a lovely city).
On August 9th, the bomber "bockscar" found its primary target, Kokura, obscured by cloud. Three runs over the city couldn't find a break; and radar guidance had been disallowed, so the crew were dependant on visual sighting.
Now low on fuel and fearing they wouldn't make it back to Tinian, the crew decided to go on to the next available target - Nagasaki, and the rest is history. The ultimate cruel irony is that Nagasaki had been bombed before and they had good bomb shelters, but the populace had become so blasé about another air raid that when the sirens went off nobody thought much of it.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
