Help please - randomness of history

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classic33

Leg End Member
Had the germans more fuel/better fuel supply would the Battle Of The Bulge have been won by them.
 

classic33

Leg End Member
Suppose Kennedy had leaned forward (or back) at just the right moment?

(That'll be this year's big anniversary, won't it?)
Does this indicate a shot fired from the front!
 

Mad Doug Biker

Banned from every bar in the Galaxy
Location
Craggy Island
Had King Alexander III not fallen off his horse and broken his neck in 1286, leaving no heirs, Scottish history might have been vastly different.
 
I recall seeing a documentary in which a kamikaze pilot was required to put a photon torpedo (or similar) into a waste-duct outlet, at speed and while evading defensive fighters on his tail.

His voice-activated computer-targetting system was disabled and he had to trust to faith to get the job done. That he did it (and in doing so destroyed a major asset of the ruling Empire) is a testament to both his faith and his courage.

Had he failed, the distant past a long way away might have been very different.

A remarkable piece of film of a truly staggering and completely true sequence of events. There was a big monkey, too, but I forget what he was doing there.
 

slowmotion

Quite dreadful
Location
lost somewhere
The Florida election debacle could have gone another way. Al Gore as US president? Not very appealing really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_election_recount#Background
 
you could attribute many military victories to an element of randomness - it is that which makes the story.

Trafalgar - a hollow victory that meant nothing, tactically or historically (really). there was no need for the French fleet to sail, but Admiral Villeneuve found out he was to be fired and figured it couldn't be done if he was at sea, so they set sail straight into Nelson's waiting fleet.
Waterloo - there are many incidents that could have turned the battle
El Alamein - it could easily have gone very wrong as the allies tried to cross the minefields, but it worked out and was a pivotal point in the war.
WW1 - the assassination of an Arch-Duke that led to millions dying. the treaties signed by the countries involved forced them to act and the whole thing snowballed.
Battle of Britain - the bombing of London instead of the airfields gave the RAF time to recover and turned the battle.

interesting part of Napoleonc history is that has choices for military schools were the French Artillary or the British Navy. how history would have been turned on its head had he gone to the latter.
 

ayceejay

Guru
Location
Rural Quebec
This reminds me of all that boring 'history' I suffered at skool, as if nothing beyond dates and kings mattered, since then I have learned to love Tony Judd.
It is a common belief that it is only the whims of the plutocracy that has shaped history, therefore who we (the plebs) are? In case I reveal my Marxist credentials can I say that I think it is the random resistance to the status quo, that is people standing up for themselves, that has had the most influence on the natural tendency for bullying.
 

srw

It's a bit more complicated than that...
Life is random not matter how organised we try to make it.

Randomness can be found wherever we look providing that we are open minded.
This.

After the event we're inclined to make up stories about how it must have been the way it was. In fact, an awful lot of events are contingent. If tiny micro-detail X had been slightly different, we cannot know whether history would have been almost identical or radically different - think buttterflies in the Carribbean.

On counter-factual history, there's a Will Self novel (I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to remember which one) in which a wayward time-traveller kills Hitler's father just before he would have inseminated Hitler's mother; someone else born about the same time rises to become a rather more successful fuehrer of a third German Reich than Hitler ever was.
 
you could attribute many military victories to an element of randomness - it is that which makes the story.

Trafalgar - a hollow victory that meant nothing, tactically or historically (really). there was no need for the French fleet to sail, but Admiral Villeneuve found out he was to be fired and figured it couldn't be done if he was at sea, so they set sail straight into Nelson's waiting fleet.
Waterloo - there are many incidents that could have turned the battle
El Alamein - it could easily have gone very wrong as the allies tried to cross the minefields, but it worked out and was a pivotal point in the war.
WW1 - the assassination of an Arch-Duke that led to millions dying. the treaties signed by the countries involved forced them to act and the whole thing snowballed.
Battle of Britain - the bombing of London instead of the airfields gave the RAF time to recover and turned the battle.

interesting part of Napoleonc history is that has choices for military schools were the French Artillary or the British Navy. how history would have been turned on its head had he gone to the latter.

...and that dreadful Abba tune might not have seen the light of day.:thumbsup:
Good thread, and Vernon is quite right for now...
 

Archie_tect

De Skieven Architek... aka Penfold + Horace
Location
Northumberland
There weren't any Kamikaze pilots at Pearl Harbour. They came much later when the Japanese were defending their Home Islands.
You are right green: Without the Japanese bombing the American ships at Pearl Harbour, would the Americans have entered WWII when they did?
 
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