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From miscalculated military strategies to overlooked warnings, human errors have dramatically shaped our world. Join us as we explore the most impactful blunders throughout history, including infamous military campaigns, technological disasters, and political miscalculations that altered the course of civilization forever.
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00:00At three in the afternoon, the Germans were shown in.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the most consequential mistakes ever made by humans.
00:09Well, we'll go to St. Petersburg, and have them burn that too.
00:16France's Maginot Line
00:18After World War I, France was understandably anxious about a second German invasion.
00:22This led them to fortify the French-German border, which became known as the Maginot Line.
00:27This is what would take the brunt of any German advance if ever an attack occurred in this area.
00:32It was a huge strategic blunder, since Germany decided to simply walk around it.
00:37This allowed them to invade France in less than two months, also due to brutally efficient blitzkrieg tactics.
00:42Germany had already invaded through the Low Countries in World War I, so their plan could have been predicted.
00:48It also expected World War I-era trench warfare, when in reality, warfare had changed significantly.
00:54It cost France billions, convincing many that it was a major factor in Germany's initial wartime success.
01:00The Maginot Line, this architectural feat, built to protect the borders, became a symbol of the French defeat of 1940.
01:08Alexander the Great leaves no heir.
01:11When it came to carving out an empire, Alexander was unsurprisingly great at it.
01:15What he did for the world was just absolutely extraordinary.
01:19He was the king of Macedon, who extended his kingdom from Greece to India.
01:24He learns that the world is so much bigger than he ever thought it was, and it makes him determined to keep pressing on in order to conquer the world.
01:32After mysteriously dying at the young age of 32, no one could agree on who would inherit his empire.
01:38This led to the Wars of the Dyataki, where his generals fought for control for 41 years.
01:43In the end, it was split into multiple rival states.
01:47They would ultimately decline due to infighting, paving the way for Roman conquests.
01:51The longest-lasting one was the Ptolemaic Kingdom, which ruled Egypt until the Roman invasion in 30 BC.
01:58Hiring Anglo-Saxons
01:59Take this next entry with a grain of salt, as it comes from a period particularly lacking in sources.
02:05The cost of building the kind of imperial power Rome has in the Mediterranean world were enormous.
02:11The costs on Roman society were incalculable, and the bill had to be paid.
02:15While the Western Roman Empire was grumbling in the 5th century, it supposedly hired Anglo-Saxons to defend the nation.
02:21Their threats were mainly Picts, Scots, and Saxon pirates.
02:25When Rome couldn't help, an unnamed Romano-British tyrant enlisted Saxons for help in the 440s.
02:30This tenuous alliance supposedly went south when they weren't properly supplied.
02:34The Britons rallied to a new leader, Ambrosius Aurelianus.
02:38Eventually, in 500, the Britons were successful at a monumental battle.
02:42The only sources we have for this lived decades after these events, making their authenticity questionable.
02:48Empires are bound to go up and down, to rise and to fall.
02:52Remaining idle after Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy.
02:55The 2008 financial crisis was a major economic stressor, affecting the entire globe.
03:01One contributing factor was the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy.
03:03I don't think anyone really expected a bank as big as Lehman to, you know, be in a position that it's in now.
03:09They held over $600 billion in assets, making it the largest bankruptcy filing in American history.
03:15Importantly, the U.S. government chose not to bail them out.
03:18I never once considered that it was appropriate to put taxpayer money on the line in resolving Lehman Brothers.
03:26It triggered a domino effect.
03:28Banks stopped lending, markets crashed, and then entire financial systems collapsed.
03:33Millions of people lost their jobs due to the economic crisis.
03:36It was part of the larger Great Recession, which caused huge GDP declines in the Western world.
03:42Many economists believe that a controlled bailout of Lehman Brothers could have prevented the panic.
03:47It's important to note here, Katie, that one reason the Fed and the Treasury did not inject government money in a deal to try to save Lehman,
03:55was that they thought many of their clients had time to anticipate all this.
03:58The Exxon Valdez oil spill.
04:00In 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil supertanker hit a reef off the coast of Alaska.
04:05This caused a monumental disaster, spilling over 10 million gallons of oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound.
04:12Were alarms going off?
04:14When I got up to the bridge, they started going off, yeah.
04:16Over 1,300 miles of shoreline were devastated.
04:20Estimates say over 250,000 seabirds were killed, alongside 2,800 otters and billions of salmon and herring eggs, among other species.
04:29He's lovely, this one.
04:31But he's been so sick.
04:32It was extremely difficult to clean, since the Prince William Sound isn't easily accessible.
04:37Exxon spent more than $3.8 billion in cleanup costs.
04:41But the effects still linger today, and are likely to persist for decades.
04:45We need advocacy, because if we're not watching over and protecting ourselves, no one else will do it.
04:52Engineers working in inches.
04:54Among the scientific community, imperial units are often considered a joke, only really used by the United States.
05:01We interview scientists, engineers, and other researchers, but they live in a metric world.
05:05Compared to the metric system, it's a headache to convert between units.
05:09This difference in units eventually led to disaster in 1999.
05:13NASA tried to launch a $125 million orbiter to probe Mars, but the engineers at Lockheed Martin used imperial units.
05:21Everyone else involved used metric, the default among scientists.
05:25The error caused the probe to be permanently lost when entering Mars' orbit.
05:29In the end, NASA blamed itself for the miscommunication, rather than the engineers.
05:33So while we know the root cause of just what went wrong, we'll never know exactly what happened to the Mars Climate Orbiter.
05:38The Battle of Teutoburg Forest.
05:41Our next entry is one of the most important disasters in Roman history.
05:44On September 9th, 9 AD, Roman general Publius Verus led three legions straight into a trap by the Germanic peoples.
05:52They were led by a Roman-trained chieftain, Arminius.
05:55Of the 50 free Germanic tribes, about 10 lend their support to Arminius, as he carefully outlines a plan to crush the Romans.
06:02This marked the end of Augustus' outward expansions.
06:06It happened near the Rhine River, which made this Rome's permanent boundary with Germany.
06:10Had Rome conquered Germania, it may have expanded the Latin language deeper into Europe.
06:15Germanic tribes developed independently, and later played major roles in the Western Empire's collapse.
06:21Alternatively, it could have caused Rome to over-expand harder, thus triggering an earlier fall.
06:26Rome would venture west of the Rhine twice more on campaigns of vengeance, but it would never successfully colonize the free peoples of West Germany.
06:34Japan screws up Pearl Harbor.
06:35In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, an American naval base in Hawaii.
06:42A date which will live in infamy.
06:46Their main goals were to neutralize America's fleet, by time to conquer territories like the Dutch East Indies, and then to finally shock them into a peace deal.
06:55This was because Japan knew they couldn't win a prolonged war.
06:59The attack had the opposite effect.
07:01It unified a divided America, which soon entered the global conflict.
07:05They've now awoken this, what many people call, sleeping giant.
07:09It also missed key targets like aircraft carriers, fuel depots, and repair yards.
07:13The navy recovered quickly, then went on to ultimately destroy the Japanese Empire once and for all.
07:20The Fourth Crusade
07:21The goal of the Fourth Crusade was to reach the Holy Land and recapture Jerusalem from the Ayyubid Sultanate.
07:27Instead, they besieged the Catholic city of Zara in 1202.
07:30Then, they went on to get mixed up in a Byzantine succession crisis, which did not go their way.
07:36With no emperor, the Byzantine nobles decided to reinstall Isaac II and the young Alexius as co-emperors.
07:41But the empire was bankrupt, and Alexius couldn't repay the Crusaders.
07:45In response, they destroyed its capital, Constantinople, the heart of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
07:50It's widely regarded as the most catastrophic of all the Crusades, which were all fairly chaotic.
07:55It didn't even reach the Holy Land, destroyed a Christian city, then fatally weakened the only Christian empire standing between Europe and Islam.
08:03This empire fell to the Ottomans, meaning the Crusaders only worsened the issues they sought to solve.
08:09The Byzantine Empire was then divided up.
08:11The Burning of Baghdad
08:12For most of the medieval period, Baghdad was one of the greatest cities in the world.
08:17One of the most desired attractions to see once these foreigners arrived would be the Bayit al-Hikmah, or the House of Wisdom.
08:26It was the largest library in the entire city, and served as a remarkable influence for the contemporary advances in artistry, literature, astronomy, medicine, and more.
08:39That was until 1258, when it was destroyed by the Mongols.
08:43Genghis Khan's grandson Hulegu had an army 138,000 men strong, which he used to pacify Persia.
08:50It was catastrophic for the Persians, with their capital Baghdad getting decimated.
08:54The siege and subsequent destruction of Baghdad in 1258 was more than a loss for the Abbasids.
09:02It was more even than a loss for the Muslim world.
09:06It was the heart of Islam's golden age, home to thousands of scholars, scientists, artists, and philosophers.
09:12The Mongols burned libraries, killed scholars, and destroyed centuries of information.
09:16We'll never truly know how much was lost, but we'll always remember it as one of humanity's greatest tragedies.
09:22The fall of Baghdad was the fall of the center of a growing world, and life for people around the world,
09:30who trekked for days on end just to study at its House of Wisdom, and one that sadly, too many of us, have now forgotten.
09:41Kim Jong-nam goes to Tokyo Disneyland.
09:43Why would the young dictator of North Korea want to kill his own brother?
09:48Well, to understand North Korea, you really have to think of it as being an absolute monarchy, the Kim dynasty.
09:55The dynasty was founded by Kim Il-sung after the Second World War.
09:59When the old man died in 1994, his son, Kim Jong-il, ascended the throne.
10:06Kim Jong-nam was once the heir to the North Korean dictatorship until 2001 when he made an embarrassing attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
10:14Traveling on a fake Dominican Republic passport bearing a Chinese name, Kim was arrested upon arrival in Japan and deported to China.
10:21The incident deeply embarrassed his father, Kim Jong-il, and caused him to be shunned by his family.
10:26Ultimately, his younger half-brother Kim Jong-un took over from their father.
10:29In 2017, Kim was assassinated in Malaysia, and it was later revealed that he had been a CIA informant.
10:36Why he killed? You don't know?
10:39Because his power is not stable.
10:43Last time, Kim Jong-il, his father, he never killed people.
10:46But now, I don't think so. That's why he killed all the people.
10:53He cannot trust the people, right?
10:54He also supported reform and free market policies, which apparently contributed to him being passed over.
11:01Had he never attempted that fateful trip, perhaps North Korea's trajectory might have been different.
11:05After Jang Sang-ta executed, killed it, after that, one year, one and a half years, only one time, I saw him.
11:15I was waiting for him, but he never came.
11:17This means that his situation completely changed, be it dangerous, and then the suffering for the money.
11:26Byzantine refusal to hire Orban.
11:29Praise to all of you, Engineer Orban.
11:31Thank you, my Sultan.
11:36Have a safe journey.
11:38The Roman Empire's final two centuries were their most difficult.
11:41By 1452, the Ottoman Empire already had its eyes on Constantinople, which prompted Hungarian siege engineer Orban to offer his cannons to the Romans.
11:51Unfortunately, they couldn't afford his services or provide the materials needed to construct his weapons.
11:56So, Orban took his business to the Ottomans, who happily took him on.
12:00To free from his fortune, do not fail us in our mission.
12:05Let our courageous soldiers be victorious on the battle of hell.
12:08He crafted the Basilic, one of the largest cannons in history, requiring 90 oxen and 400 men to transport it.
12:16Its cannonballs, each weighing 1,200 pounds, devastated the Theodosian Walls, which were impenetrable for about 800 years prior.
12:24The Ottoman Sultan also carried warships across the land, bypassing the harbor's Great Chain and giving them another huge advantage.
12:30Somebody hold the rope!
12:35Top of the ship!
12:37Come on!
12:37Titanic Sinks After Iceberg Warnings Are Ignored
12:40Why aren't they turning?
12:42Is it hard over?
12:44It is, yes, it's hard over.
12:52I need to turn.
12:54Many mistakes were made that caused the Titanic to sink, so it's difficult to pinpoint just one.
12:59Perhaps the most consequential, though, was turning hard to starboard when they spotted the iceberg,
13:03which extended the collision, creating a large gash that flooded five compartments.
13:09Had they struck the iceberg head-on, the bow would have been crushed, but only one or two compartments would have flooded.
13:14Note the time I entered in the log.
13:22What was that, Mr. Murdoch?
13:25An iceberg, sir.
13:27I put a harder starboard and ran the engines full of stern, but it was too close.
13:32I tried to port around it, but she hid.
13:33In such an event, the ship could have survived, as it was built to still float with up to four flooded compartments.
13:40Also, it only carried 20 lifeboats, enough for about half its passengers.
13:44The primary mistake that night was ignoring iceberg warnings and maintaining a high speed throughout.
13:49Changing just this one decision could likely have prevented the accident.
13:53The pumps, if we opened the doors...
13:55The pumps by your time, but minutes only.
13:59From this moment, no matter what we do.
14:02Titanic will founder.
14:04Mexico attacks the Alamo.
14:05If you could oversee menning the walls, it would be a help.
14:08We should have six men to a cannon, 18 tubes, which works out to...
14:11108 men.
14:13And we should have a man with a musket every four feet of walls.
14:17We're gonna need more men.
14:18In 1836, the Texas Revolution was underway, with the Anglo-American residents of Texas
14:24fighting for independence from the Mexican Republic.
14:27They were successful, winning 10 years of independence before joining the United States in 1846.
14:32During the war, Mexican forces under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana laid siege to the Alamo.
14:38You said you wanted to see him.
14:40There he is.
14:42The Napoleon of the West.
14:44Which one?
14:45That's Santa Ana.
14:49Yeah.
14:51He's quite the peacock, isn't he?
14:53After 13 days, roughly 1,500 Mexican soldiers launched a decisive attack,
14:58overwhelming the garrison of about 200 Texians after three attempts.
15:02It was a pyrrhic victory, though, as the merciless bloodshed inspired many to join the army,
15:07hoping to take revenge for the loss of their fellow Texians.
15:09Mere weeks later, a now-fortified Texian army attacked the Mexicans by surprise in the Battle
15:15of San Jacinto, decimating them in just 18 minutes.
15:18At this very moment, our soldiers are held in the Alamo against a force of thousands.
15:23They put their hopes in Colonel Fannin, who, despite his pedigree,
15:25has proven himself ill-equipped to lead, much less march an army.
15:29This is from Colonel Travis.
15:32I call on you, in the name of liberty, to come to our aid with all dispatch.
15:37Trojans bring in the horse.
15:38What is this?
15:40An offering to Poseidon.
15:42The Greeks are praying for a safe return home.
15:46This is a gift.
15:48We should take it to the Temple of Poseidon.
15:51I think we should burn it.
15:53Burn it, my prince.
15:54It's a gift to the gods.
15:55This was a mistake so monumental, it became a metaphor for deception that is still widely used today.
16:01The ancient city of Troy was first destroyed around 1200 BC,
16:05and again by archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in the 19th century.
16:08According to legend, the Greeks built a giant wooden horse, hid soldiers in it,
16:13and presented it to the Trojans as a gift.
16:15Helen, I must go.
16:17Where?
16:18I'll show you.
16:19Now.
16:19Hurry.
16:20Paris.
16:20Paris.
16:21It's a long way.
16:22Quick.
16:22We must go now.
16:24Believing it to be a symbol of victory, the Trojans brought it into their city,
16:27only for Greek soldiers to emerge and decimate Troy.
16:30The tale's authenticity remains heavily debated, with no direct evidence.
16:35However, oral history played a central role in the ancient world,
16:38which preserved surprisingly truthful elements,
16:41suggesting that this tale may have been inspired by real-life events.
16:45Let Troy burn!
16:48Burn it!
16:50Burn it all!
16:52Burn Troy!
16:53Caesar ignores warnings.
16:57Senator Verinus, I come about your grandson, Lucius.
17:03You are the heir of the Julia, and what I tell you now is the truth.
17:07Julius Caesar is most famous for sowing the seeds of the Roman Empire,
17:11enslaving and slaughtering millions of Gauls,
17:13and giving the month of July its name.
17:15He was eventually assassinated in 44 BC,
17:19which shouldn't have come as a surprise,
17:20since he was given several warnings about it.
17:22If I may, Greater Caesar,
17:24you were going to consider revoking my brother's exile.
17:28I'm still considering it.
17:31Take your hand off me.
17:40What are you waiting for?
17:42Now!
17:43Now!
17:44Now!
17:45All of these were dismissed,
17:46leading to his death in the Senate,
17:48where he was stabbed 23 times.
17:50A soothsayer warned him to beware the Ides of March,
17:53the eventual date he was killed.
17:55His wife, Calpurnia, had a dream of his death,
17:57and insisted he stay home,
17:59but he dismissed her fears.
18:01Ultimately, his trusted friend, Brutus,
18:02convinced him to come in,
18:04which turned out to be the dictator's final mistake.
18:06So, you see, the tyrant is dead,
18:08the Republic is restored,
18:10and you are alone.
18:15Would you like some honey water?
18:16I won't.
18:23Mao's great leap forward.
18:24I saw Russian cars,
18:26which the Chinese have begun to make.
18:29There were wood-burning buses of the type
18:31I had seen in Europe during the war.
18:34Vehicles of all kinds.
18:35Mao Zedong was the founder of Communist China,
18:47who became leader of the CCP during the Long March,
18:49a pivotal event in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
18:52After Japan's defeat,
18:54he sought to industrialize China,
18:55and finally recover from the century of humiliation.
18:58He believed rapid industrialization
19:00would help them catch up to the West,
19:02but it turned into a catastrophic failure.
19:04Here, oil is extracted from coal.
19:07Built in 1928 by the Japanese,
19:09destroyed during the war,
19:10it was restored and enlarged.
19:12The Japanese produced 225,000 tons of petroleum
19:15in their best year.
19:171957 production was 320,000 tons.
19:211958 gold, 440,000 to catch up with Britain.
19:25The plan was overly optimistic,
19:27and resulted in mass famine and an economic collapse.
19:31By 1962, Mao faced criticism for his policies
19:34and was sidelined at the 7,000 Cadres Conference.
19:37This didn't last long, though,
19:39as just four years later,
19:40he kick-started the Cultural Revolution,
19:42which allowed him to reclaim full control of the nation.
19:45Coal comes from the Fushun Mines.
19:49The plant also has its own department store,
19:52canteen and club.
19:54Built during the Japanese occupation,
19:56the plant has been restored and enlarged,
19:59following wartime destruction.
20:01All kinds of steel products are made.
20:05NASA ignores Challenger warnings.
20:07Three, two, one, and liftoff.
20:12Liftoff of the 25th Space Shuttle mission,
20:15and it has cleared the tower.
20:17In 1986, NASA launched the shuttle Challenger,
20:21which tragically exploded only 73 seconds after liftoff.
20:25The event occurred during a cold morning,
20:27which caused the ship's rubber O-rings to stiffen,
20:29leading to a fuel leak that ignited the vessel.
20:32All seven crew members perished,
20:34marking one of the darkest moments in the history of space exploration.
20:37Engines at 65%, three engines running normally,
20:40three good fuel cells, three good APUs.
20:44Engines throttling up, three engines now at 104%.
20:46Challenger, go at throttle up.
20:48Months earlier, several engineers, including Roger Beaujolais,
20:52had warned of an impending failure due to the O-ring's vulnerability to cold.
20:55Beaujolais even wrote a memo outlining this issue,
20:58but his concerns were completely ignored.
21:00Although a team was formed to address the problem,
21:03they lacked adequate support,
21:05and the launch proceeded,
21:06only to end disastrously, like Beaujolais predicted.
21:09America escalating tensions in Vietnam.
21:12It was a serious mistake for Kennedy to get involved, as he did,
21:16with American force in that part of the world,
21:20thinking that this great monolithic Soviet-style communism
21:23would rule the roost,
21:26when he could have played it differently,
21:28I believe,
21:29and fought it more subtly.
21:31The United States entered the Vietnam War
21:33following the Gulf of Tonkin incident,
21:35where North Vietnamese forces allegedly attacked the U.S. Navy
21:38in international waters.
21:39The event was framed as an unprovoked attack,
21:42but later evidence showed otherwise.
21:44The great word that the Vietnam War gave us was escalation,
21:50because it starts off with Kennedy sending in just 400 military advisors
21:55who are actually special forces,
21:57organizing and controlling the action,
22:02and then more go in.
22:03While the first attack remains debated,
22:05the second one was entirely fabricated.
22:08It devolved into a brutal war,
22:10which dragged on for years,
22:11causing thousands of American and Vietnamese deaths.
22:14Along the way,
22:15the United States committed atrocious war crimes,
22:18such as the My Lai Massacre.
22:20Ultimately, the war ended in failure,
22:22all spurred on by an incident with very little evidence.
22:25He should have fought it with the limited aid he gave it initially,
22:29with the development of the special forces,
22:30the Green Berets, as they're called,
22:32and other small tactical units,
22:35and not created this great surge of North Vietnamese resentment.
22:41Angering Genghis Khan.
22:42You still sing the same song, Temujin.
22:47Many voices carry it now.
22:48Not the Merkits!
22:50Outcast!
22:54I ask for this meeting in the hope that Mongol would not shed Mongol blood.
22:59Also that you might still join with me to spread the name of the Mongol nation.
23:02Many words can be used to describe Genghis Khan,
23:05one of history's most successful conquerors,
23:08but cool-headed isn't one of them.
23:09In less than two years, Genghis annihilated the Khwarazmian Empire.
23:14While there were a variety of factors that contributed to this invasion,
23:17the main one was an insult to his ambassadors.
23:20I promise you this, Jamuda.
23:23The Merkits will ride as part of the Mongol nation,
23:28or their land will be razed to the ground,
23:32razed so that not even a lame horse would stumble walking across it.
23:36In 1218, the Khan sent a caravan to the empire,
23:39who were arrested and executed on suspicion of being spies.
23:43When Genghis sent diplomats to deal with the situation,
23:46the Khwarazmians refused to comply and beheaded the chief envoy.
23:49By 1221, their empire was shattered,
23:52and they had suffered somewhere between 2 and 15 million casualties.
23:56Maybe think twice before you insult one of history's most ambitious conquerors.
24:01I have lived to see it.
24:05That the tribes come together as one people.
24:16But it is my sons who will make our nation great.
24:20Forgetting about time zones hamstrung the Bay of Pigs invasion.
24:23During the Cold War, the U.S. backed numerous coups d'etat around the world.
24:27While several of these succeeded in installing new regimes,
24:30attempts in Cuba failed spectacularly.
24:33Worried about Prime Minister Fidel Castro's communist policies,
24:36in 1961, the CIA orchestrated the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion,
24:40landing Cuban counter-revolutionaries on the country's southwestern coast.
24:43However, an obvious paint job on a B-26 bomber, disguised to look Cuban,
24:48gave away U.S. involvement to the world,
24:51leading President Kennedy to pull back air support.
24:54A few days later, a last-ditch bombing raid flying out of Nicaragua was botched
24:58when bombers were caught without their escort of fighter jets.
25:01Embarrassingly, someone had forgotten the one-hour difference between Nicaragua and Cuba.
25:06Fleming left bacteria out on his bench.
25:09Scottish physician Alexander Fleming was a brilliant researcher,
25:12most famous for his work on bacteria, as well as this accidental discovery.
25:17While researching the bacteria Staphylococcus in 1928,
25:20Fleming left out culture's plates on a bench in his workshop over the weekend.
25:24When he returned, he observed that fungus had grown on the dish.
25:27In the areas close to the fungus, the bacteria had been eradicated.
25:31The mold led to the creation of the first antibiotic, penicillin.
25:35Without Fleming's mistake, the history of medicine in the last century would look very different,
25:40and many who lived may have died instead.
25:42The Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
25:44There has been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union,
25:47and the Soviets have admitted that it happened.
25:48The Soviet version is this.
25:50One of the atomic reactors at the Chernobyl atomic power plant near the city of Kiev was damaged,
25:55and there is speculation in Moscow that people were injured and may have died.
26:00Chernobyl's meltdown was the most destructive nuclear disaster in history,
26:04and could have been completely avoided if the proper procedures were followed.
26:08The disaster was immediately caused by a safety test,
26:11which was meant to be carried out during the day with a trained crew.
26:15Instead, the untrained night crew did the test,
26:17with very little time to prepare and properly carry it out.
26:21The TMI accident was nothing compared with this.
26:23I would speculate that it was very serious,
26:26and the reason for that is that they've observed radiation levels 10 times normal
26:31from Finland all the way down to Stockholm.
26:34The Soviets were also secret about their nuclear technology,
26:38withholding important information from operators and engineers,
26:41who should have understood them.
26:42After the explosion, further mistakes were made,
26:45like the nearby town of Pripyat not being evacuated until over a full day later.
26:50It was the perfect storm of mistakes,
26:52leading to one of humanity's worst disasters.
26:54You can be sure that the decision to disclose was made at the very highest level,
27:00undoubtedly by Gorbachev himself,
27:02and probably it took several days for the Soviet leaders to decide how to handle it.
27:06A B-Day helped lose D-Day.
27:08On June 6th, 1944,
27:10the Allies launched an ambitious operation to retake Western Europe.
27:14Known as D-Day,
27:15the first landings occurred on the beaches of Normandy, France.
27:18The casualties were high,
27:20but the operation granted the Allies a foothold
27:22that would eventually lead to victory on the Western Front.
27:25However, things could have gone very differently.
27:27The Germans' most accomplished general,
27:30Erwin Rommel,
27:31was in charge of defending the Atlantic Wall against an invasion.
27:34However, he had decided to take leave,
27:36as the 6th was his wife's birthday.
27:38And German meteorologists had mistakenly predicted storms for another few weeks,
27:43making a seaborne invasion unlikely.
27:45Had Rommel been in command,
27:47the Allies may never have gotten a beachhead to retake France.
27:50Russia sold Alaska.
27:52During the 19th century,
27:53the Crimean War caused several countries to begin exerting pressure on Russia
27:57through blockades of their sea routes.
27:59Because of this,
28:00they were unable to properly supply their largest overseas territory, Alaska.
28:04To offset this,
28:06in 1867,
28:07Russia sold the territory to the United States for $7.2 million.
28:12While it may have been a smart move at the time for Russia,
28:15in retrospect,
28:16it's often seen as a mistake,
28:17as the gold and oil discovered in Alaska far exceeds the value it sold for.
28:22Not only that,
28:23but Russia having a foothold in the North American continent
28:26would have caused the Cold War to play out very differently.
28:29Hitler's invasion of Russia
28:31A British soldier's choice to spare the future Fuhrer's life during World War I
28:35turned out to be a huge blunder.
28:37But we'd argue that the most dramatic mistake involving Adolf Hitler
28:40was one he made himself.
28:42Despite signing a non-aggression pact with Russia,
28:45Hitler still considered Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union his enemies.
28:48In June of 1941,
28:51the Germans invaded Russia.
28:52Despite committing the largest invasion force in history,
28:55the Germans were unprepared for the Soviet scorched earth tactics
28:59or the bleak Russian winter,
29:00and they experienced over a half a million casualties.
29:04The offensive split and depleted the German forces,
29:07and put Russia on the side of the Allies,
29:09which likely lost Hitler the war.
29:12A wrong turn started World War I.
29:14One of the most famous killings of all time.
29:17The assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand
29:20is usually credited with being the catalyst for World War I.
29:23But what some may not know is that it could have been avoided,
29:26if not for a wrong turn.
29:29The Archduke had already survived one assassination attempt
29:31with a bomb by the same group while visiting Sarajevo.
29:34On the return journey,
29:35the Archduke's drivers, who spoke Czech,
29:37couldn't understand their directions for a new route,
29:40and took a wrong turn.
29:41When they stopped to reorient,
29:43it was right next to one of the assassins,
29:46who promptly pulled out a gun
29:47and shot both Ferdinand and his wife.
29:50Treaty of Versailles harsh terms.
29:52If you think of September the 11th,
29:53but then you think of September the 11th-style casualties
29:55every day for four years,
29:58then you begin to get some kind of feeling
29:59of what the sort of trauma was that existed
30:01in the Western countries and the Allied countries at the time,
30:04particularly in Britain and in France,
30:05which had never known levels of casualties
30:07of the kind that they'd experienced between 1914 and 1918.
30:11The Treaty of Versailles was a deal signed in 1919
30:14at the end of World War I,
30:16which mainly focused on weakening the German Empire.
30:19Despite the Austrian-Hungarian Empire
30:20being the main instigators,
30:22sending a harsh ultimatum to Serbia,
30:24the victorious powers primarily blamed Germany.
30:27We were journeying to Paris,
30:28not merely to liquidate the war,
30:30but to found a new order in Europe.
30:33We were preparing not peace only,
30:35but eternal peace.
30:37There was about us the halo of some divine mission.
30:39We must be alert, stern, righteous, and ascetic,
30:43for we were bent on doing great, permanent, and noble things.
30:47They had to accept full responsibility for starting the war
30:50and were made to pay enormous reparations.
30:53This crippled their economy
30:54and fostered resentment towards the victorious powers,
30:57which eventually led to Hitler's rise to power and World War II.
31:01If the Allies had adopted a less punitive approach,
31:04like the U.S. did to Japan after World War II,
31:06the devastating Second War and the rise of Nazi Germany
31:09might have been alternate history.
31:12Six months, it was the closest we have ever had to a world government,
31:14and I don't suspect we'll ever have anything like it again.
31:17You can imagine all the most powerful people in the world here,
31:19prime ministers, kings, presidents, foreign secretaries,
31:24plus all the people who came because they were here.
31:26Napoleon invades Russia.
31:27I must wipe away my melancholy and begin the march to Moscow.
31:32I've convinced the heads of Europe of this resolution,
31:35and so I command the combined forces of France, Austria, Italy, Germany, and Poland.
31:42I see nothing but success in my future.
31:45In 1812, Napoleon famously declared war on Russia,
31:49citing their refusal to comply with the continental system.
31:52He brought around half a million soldiers from all across Europe to the border
31:55and proceeded to march them to Moscow.
31:57The Russian defense was confused with no planned resistance,
32:01with their eventual scorched earth tactic being largely improvised.
32:05I'm writing to you because I've just won a great battle today.
32:09Tomorrow we will resume our advance.
32:12Moscow is now only 200 miles away,
32:15and I think of you all the while.
32:17All yours.
32:18At the Battle of Bordino,
32:20Napoleon abandoned his usual cunning tactics and ordered a direct assault instead.
32:24The French won and Moscow was taken,
32:26but little Boney never received the peace deal he expected.
32:29Eventually, winter took hold,
32:31and Napoleon embarked upon one of history's most disastrous retreats,
32:34costing him his army and ultimately his empire.
32:37Fortune has abandoned me.
32:39I know that it is what fate has for me.
32:43Your words rattling my head.
32:47I am nothing without you.
32:49Before we continue,
32:50be sure to subscribe to our channel
32:52and ring the bell to get notified about our latest videos.
32:55You have the option to be notified for occasional videos or all of them.
32:59If you're on your phone,
33:00make sure you go into your settings and switch on notifications.
33:03Christopher Columbus was bad at math.
33:08This Italian explorer was long portrayed as a hero
33:10and the discoverer of the Americas.
33:13Nowadays,
33:14a lot more attention has been paid to his brutal treatment of indigenous peoples.
33:18But his most celebrated feat,
33:20sailing across the Atlantic Ocean in search of Asia,
33:22actually came about due to his mistaken belief
33:24that the Earth is a lot smaller than it really is.
33:26He arrived at this conclusion by using a mishmash of different estimates,
33:30as well as his own erroneous beliefs.
33:32If not for Spain's dire need for spices,
33:35he probably never would have gotten a single ship,
33:38much less three.
33:39What do you think was history's biggest blunder?
33:41Let us know in the comments section below.
33:42In Paris, the celebrations began.
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