The biggest historical blunder is when I slipped on a wet floor in front of my crush in seventh grade

I just love the idea of a large team of doctors with the best equipment, looking at a guy smoking 90 cigarettes a day. All scratching their head “ what could it be?”

A young aspiring painter from Austria getting his art school application rejected would prove to be a massive blunder worth 80M+ lives…

the introduction of lead into gasoline could also be mentioned. lead-poisoning, even in small amounts, could have some effect on intelligence. Someone somewhere calculated an estimate of the total amount of "iq" lost due to the release of so much lead into the air, and it was massive. A huge setback for millions of people, and the effects are still present today, all due to one inventor's idea of adding lead to the fuel.

my man created the machine then said "well your the first man to photograph particles" then walked off back to keep observing clouds. what a gigachad

The ballot that Theresa LePore designed was called the "butterfly ballot" because of the names appearing on two sides of the paper. As a result she was nicknamed Madame Butterfly. So this chain of events was literally the Madame Butterfly effect!

I saw a “Glory” while skydiving. Was totally convinced I was dead heading towards a giant target. Never even heard of those. Honestly… was glorious

My favorite is the Soviet radar operator that prevented nuclear destruction. Radar picked up clouds as incoming missiles. Brave man took a second to think before firing back. "If they attacked there would be more missiles". I can't remember his name but we owe our lives to that man

There are almost certainly some huge blunders going on right now. We just won't know what they'll end up being until later 👁️

A little fun fact about what he said on 27:24 the canned food that was provided for that expedition was later found to contain high does of lead which cause lead poisoning, that’s because the Royal Navy decided to buy their canned goods for the voyage from the lower bidder hence the lead

Man, time is such a weird concept. From the present looking back, the gap between 1945 and 1955 feel like a minor span, but 2013 feels like centuries ago from the present

1:04 I like how in this section each segment shows something like explosions or a golf course and the final one label catastrophic is just Florida.

The x-raying of pregnant women reminds me of a memoir titled "Stitches." The primary event was the author's surgery to remove throat cancer when he was an adolescent. The cancer was caused by his radiologist doctor father regularly dosing his head and neck with x-rays to try treating his asthma and allergies.

Pain. Am really sad for the woman who did everything right and people still didn't believe her. We all had this happen to us but this is another level of pain

I think quite a large and underrated butterfly effect was when the Republic of Genoa sold Corsica to France. If Corsica remained a Genoese colony, Napoléon Bonaparte, who was Corsican, would have never become a French Revolutionary general and therefore never risen to power in France. Even crazier, if Napoléon was somehow elected Doge of Genoa in this alt timeline (which would be unlikely, as no one from the colonies was ever Doge), Italian unification could have happened a lot sooner but under the Genoese rather than the Savoyards

In my opinion, the largest, most butterfly effect blunder to ever occur was by Leopold Lojka, the chauffeur of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the day of his assassination. On that day the motorcade Ferdinand was in was bombed, with the device nearly killing him. Once the motorcade arrived at the town hall, they decided to visit those injured by the bombing earlier that day in hospital. To discourage further attacks, the governor of the town (who was also the motorcade) decided to take a longer, alternate route on the way to the hospital. This information was not communicated to Leopold Lojka or the other drivers in the motorcade, so when Lojka took a wrong turn, following the more direct path, the governor shouted that he took a wrong turn. While reversing to perform a u-turn and go back onto the main road, Lojka accidentally stalled the car with an assassin sitting in a nearby sandwich shop, who was there by complete chance, taking his chance to shoot Archduke Franz Ferdinand, killing him. The death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand would start World War 1, which would start World War 2 due to the instability in Germany after the treaty of Versailles. The aftermath of World War 2 as well as the development of nuclear bombs would lead to tensions rising between the US and the USSR, kicking off the Cold War, including many proxy wars from the Cold War like the Vietnam War and the Korean War. The total deaths from these wars totals over 100 million, all because one man took a wrong turn

Saying that the discovery of particle physics is unlucky seems arguable, on top of that even if Rutherford didnt end up discovering it someone else probably would have

17:37 Fascinating how the tobacco industry slipped under the radar while scientists and gov’t were arguing over fat vs sugar. Devious and evil, yet brilliant.

I just want to bring up something I view as a butterfly effect I thought was interesting. Back in the 1920s, Byron Carter was killed by the hand crank used to start cars, this lead to his friend Henry Leland having a starter you push with your foot created, the first car it was used in was Leland's Cadillac Model 30, problem with the model 30 is that it ran lean, basically what this means is that fuel was over combusting and leading to a piston knock, this lead to him reaching out to Thomas Midgley Jr to create something that would cause it to stop knocking, he tried ethenol, but it was expensive, he tried tullurium, but it was pungent, he finally settled on tetraethyllead, tetraethyllead lead to numerous deaths, generational IQ loss, birth defects, and illnesses. The death of one man, not only lead to the death and illness of many people due to an attempt to try to do some good, but it also lead to one of the most significant global environmental disasters in history. Coincidentally, in the 70s, the EPA regulation to remove lead from road fuels also lead to the death of the classic muscle, and one of the biggest oil protests in history. Just wanted to share, thought it was kind of interesting.

an interesting fact about the heart attack study: the placement of each country on the graph depends more on the country's criteria for qualifying a heart attack than the average person's diet

Quality stuff, makes me think. Despite the mild existencial crisis, hope to see more. It's simply fascinating how so many problems can be blamed on one thing.

As a scientist, it´s important to remember that people can manipulate or exclude certain data to make their studies reach basically any conclusion they want. And since we usually start a thesis with a pre-conceived idea/theory, I have seen many great minds go down the path of confirmation bias rather than admitting their theory was way off the mark, basically seeing what they want to see in the data while ignoring the elephant in the room (And let´s not forget that some ignore them on purpose or never intended to do a proper study, just try to prove a theory for the sake of monetary gain)

This video was so well done and informative. This is the EXACT type of video that carries KZfaq every day. This should be recommended to everyone everywhere. Thank you so much for this phenomenal content and teaching me a bunch of stuff i didnt know. This video could not be any more up my alley. I absolutely ate up every single morsel of this video

I think that the one about diet makes great sense as to why it was a huge blunder, but it’s sounds so silly to say that the invention of canned food was a blunder just because it eventually enabled someone else to invent napalm years later. With this logic you could create any narrative about why any human invention is a “HUGE BLUNDER”

7:38 I think calling it a blunder isnt justified. The monumental Effect it had on Physics heavely outweigh the 2 Atomic bombings, as a considerable chunk of our day to day life relies on this discovery to begin with. We should rather be glad it happened

These are crazy. But by far the most insane, most tragic blunder in history, if not THE turning point in history, was the story of Henry Tandey: Henry was a private in the British army during WW1. He had served nearly the whole war, and in his memoirs, he said the war had changed him drastically. Seeing death every day made him become desensitized, and if it meant killing the enemy to save his or his comrade's lives, he gladly pulled the trigger. BUT, as the war raged on, and the final days were realized, at the battle of Paschendale, Henry was tasked with observing the trench near a small town in France. After a brutal struggle and intensive shelling, Henry witnessed a lone german soldier crawl out of the trench. He was rugged, bloodied, and tired, and it looked almost like he had accepted his fate staring down at Henry, and Henry with his rifle held at him, lowered it. He saw shooting a man like that was inhumane, he looked as though he had no chance to survive, so why kill him then? He'd later go on to go home, live his life rebuilding, and becoming a husband. Decades later, Neville Chamberlain, in an attempt to prevent a second world war, visited Adolf Hitler's parliament. There, he spotted a painting of the battlefields of Passchendaele, and there stood a lone British soldier, almost glorified. When asked who it was, Hitler replied, "That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again; Providence saved me from such devilishly accurate fire as those English boys were aiming at us." Henry, in a single moment of sympathy and humanity, had become the man who changed humanity and history forever. That fateful day, Henry Tandey, a single private in the British army of millions, had spared Adolf Hitler.

17:54 He's not wrong. I remember attending a school field trip to Catalina Island off of Long Beach, and came to notice that people didn't say "Hello!" to each other when passing by. I was raised by my parents to do so as a sign of courtesy and respect, especially to elderly people, who occupied most of Catalina. I remember saying "Hello!" or "Good morning!" when walking past the locals, and they would simply stare back at me with incredulity or confusion. About a week passed and suddenly people started doing the same without a serious expression on their faces. It's honestly sad that time has progressed so much that people have forgotten to at least smile at each other without receiving it as being creepy, or at least wish each other a good day as fellow people. It honestly made me wonder at times if I was raised incorrectly or did I have the wrong idea. I still greet people in the States whenever I see them, but the accuracy in that statement really hits hard.

That story about doctors not wanting to admit that they are wrong and they are hurting people just makes my blood boil. Sure, doctors are crucial to us, but not wanting to admit you could be wrong? Too fitting to recent events. Too relevant. You sir, have my attention. And my subscription and like.

I can't believe you didn't mention putting lead in gasoline quite possibly THE biggest mistake any person has ever made

I don't know why, but I had always assumed that Wilson was an American particle physicist. I'd hardly described his cloud chamber as a blunder, though.What a good job he talked to Rutherford, a nice illustration of the importance of communication for the advancement of science, or indeed any endeavour.

Okay but was i just supposed to find out myself that clouds look absolutely gorgeous through xrays? I'm already a HUGE fan of clouds in general, but to see those individual particle swirls and patterns just made me fall in love even more.

My favourite channel I've found this year. Thanks for this informative content.

That fat segment was very validating. My parents always taught that fat was good for you and I and my family were made fun of for it growing up. I'd even argue about it with my friends in middle school, lol.

In a sea of content this is refreshingly unique. Keep doing what you do. This is great.

Thanks. Good video. I'm never 100% sure I can make money. Never place 100% of your savings in just one type or type of investment

Well done. I've watched a few of your videos and found them very informative. Keep up the good work.

The sad part about the Rubber one is the fact that The Vietnam War (the war napalm was prominently used in after its discovery) was started after the French were pushed out of North Vietnam, thus losing their rubber plantations. All of this, because of a single patent.

The reduce the history of particle physics and quantum mechanics to "it produced a bomb" is so incredibly simplifying. And to portrait the the cloud champer as *the* nucleation point for it's discovery leaves so much important stuff out.

i just wanted to inform you (if you didnt already know) that the website "medium" copied your video WORD BY WORD in their article "the butterfly effect". literally WORD BY WORD. considering your video came out before the article did, i'm assuming, they plagiarized your work and not the other way around. I'm not sure if youre aware of this or if you are connected to the website in any way but if you are not: hope you know now. the "funniest" part is, that the whole article is kept behind a pay-wall. so they are literally making people pay money to read your script lmao

Honestly those pictures from the cloud in a bottle thing are amazing kinda wonder how they would look with modern stuff

That napalm one is definitely stretching the concept. Attributing the development of napalm to the patent for canned food is like attributing literally anything else to canned food. But other than that this video was very interesting.

Thank you so much for highlighting the errors of Ancel Keyes! I've been trying to tell everyone about his mistake since I first found out about it four years ago. Even now the NHS still doesn't seem to know this and is STILL pushing the antiquated food pyramid! For covering this subject alone, I've subscribed! Thank you again!

14:45 "...people didn't want to admit their doctors were wrong. People trust doctors. They're figures of authority. [...] Meanwhile, doctors don't want to admit they're hurting people. They become doctors to do the exact opposite." The past few years have shown how relevant this is, even though many people won't want to admit it... which confirms the quote.

Photographing particles and invention canned foods truly were HUGE BLUNDERS

Brounker lying to admiral harman to end the pursuit of the Dutch after the battle of lowestoft is quite a rabbit hole for a “interesting blunder that creates what ifs”

For the canned food one, I'm surprised you didn't talk about the Franklin expeditions in more depth: those explorations of northern Canada you talked about ended with every member of the expedition dying because of poisoning from their canned food.

Superb mix of connections, valuable information, and a little irony. Many thanks! I have subscribed.

This was an amazing video! Excellent format for these. I'm subscribing for sure.

You are genuinely my favourite youtuber. Nobody makes content as captivating, well made, and somehow familiar and "home grown", as you.

I’m Vietnamese and the end of Burning Soup was… haunting, for a lack of better words. I kept waiting for you to delve into the napalm part, but I suppose letting the facts sink in was just as effective. I remember studying about the Vietnam War and the effects pesticides and napalm has on Vietnamese people, even after the war ended. Horrible burns, deformed people, and much more. History textbooks had their restraints, but the occasional TV segments had journalists paying the victims a visit and you get to see the damage on people that are still moving, breathing and living in the present day. It’s so horrible you wish no other human being should suffer the same fate.

this video was genuinely SO intriguing?? Great job, subscribed immediately!!!

I appreciate how your face isn’t plastered anywhere while your narrating. You get it and that speaks volumes. “The little things that f&&@ everything up”

Regarding the Painful X-Rays section: Something a little similar happened in the field of obstetrics. In in the late 1840s, before John Snow closed the cholera-laden water pipe on Broad Street in London, before Louis Pasteur's experiments, Ignaz Semmelweis was trying to improve maternal mortality, specifically from puerperal fever. Births assisted by midwives had significantly lower mortality rates than those assisted by doctors. As it turned out, the doctors were usually coming directly from an autopsy to deliver the baby. Semmelweis made doctors wash their hands in chlorinated lime water between the autopsies and the deliveries. Mortality went from 18% to 2.2%. Doctors were so offended at the idea that they were not clean, offended that they should have to wash their hands, that they ignored him and continued to let countless women die entirely preventable deaths. All because of blowhard machismo nonsense.

"Congrats you helped us make nukes" "But I just wanted to make pretty circle rainbows :( "

26:50 Napoleon is rolling in his grave! A scientists from his country indirectly lead to his biggest enemy taking over the entire world

First time watching your content. Absolute banger of a video. Thank you so much for educating me❤

This dude put small dashes of meme culture and humor in his videos while also being really informative, 10/10. Hearing a random ass everywhere at the end of time song caught me off guard lmao

The butterfly effect is good for pointing out what-ifs and thinking of alternate histories. That said, using it to "blame" someone is both incredibly awful and a complete misuse of what the concept entails. The point is that we can't predict it either, so it's an unreasonable standard to think of it in practical terms.

"I've studied 5,000 people. How many have you studied?" "One, your mum, very thoroughly."

This is a really fun and creative video with many awesome points.

This is basically James Burke’s connections for the 2020s. I absolutely love it. How long until a production company picks you up for a full Netflix/bbc series?! Amazingly well put together video and engagingly presented. Happy New year britmonkey!

Could you please do a video on positive butterfly effects? I’m sure there’s less well known examples but I’m kinda having a crisis seeing all these things that have hurt our world and the quality of life for our generation starting from small or short sighted decisions and that seem insurmountable now thanks to stubbornness and corruption from those above us. Great video however.

Great video and excellent closing one + message, subbed!

So that "glory" rainbow thing at the beginning...if anybody has ever wondered what one visual looks like on an acid trip...it is exactly that...Its so hard to explain in words to someone thats never tried it, also I'm not condoning any drugs use, but that picture totally captures what the aura-like visuals I experienced looking at others in a party. Totally worth mentioning.

How true. As a Radiographer,from the late 70s, I saw the reduction of irradiation of pregnant women via pelvimetry. This was an X-ray with a measuring device to determine if the mothers pelvis would allow the head of the baby to pass through. These were done on most births. Yikes! Ultrasound was just starting up as well as Computed Tomography. We used lead aprons to shield pregnant bellies as the 80s progressed Great story, thank you!👍

In my own life, it was an office administrator sending an email cc., rather than bcc., which fifteen years later means: I'm single, have a major postgraduate qualification, I still live in my home country, and finally I'm still alive.

This is ridiculously interesting, awesome video

My mom grew up in a household that owned and ran a shoe store in the 50's - 70's, and even that little shoe store in central Wisconsin had an X-ray. Her and her siblings and friends used to go downstairs in the shoe store and X-ray each other all the time to play. It wasn't until it became literally illegal that they finally got rid of it.

Now, I consider you the best youtuber. Just pure knowledge with no bs. Content-densed videos with insightful knowledge . Literally better than majority of the movies, podcast or Netflix shows. Whenever you upload video, I sit down and enjoy it fully with some snacks. Keep the videos coming.

I just wanna add that dust does in fact play into the formation of clouds. They can form without it but if its present, it is well accepted that Ice will preferentially precipitate onto it

it's funny just how much an effect Xrays have had on history accidently considering X-rays were also only discovered by accident

You know it's a good day when you don't just get a BritMonkey video, but a 40 minute BritMonkey video. Truthfully one of the highlights of each year.

I don’t think those blunders were that bad. The worst was probably that blunder with sugar it was really avoidable. The canned food blunder probably even saved more lives than killed. Entertaining Video. It’s crazy how impactful some decisions can be even hundreds of years after they happened

The butter fly effect is one of the most interesting effects. Crazy how one action can change billions lf lives

The sheer hubris of this channel calling the discovery of a way to see particles as one of the biggest "blunders" of human history is unfathomable.

I was under the impression this video was about actual blunders, and not cases that degrees of separation apart from a terrible event, invention, or policy. If that is the formula, then a person who walked in front of Princess Diana's car, which forced her to go inside the tunnel she would crash in is one of the worst blunderers. Something just doesn't sit right.

Ultimate blunder in modern day history is that nobody noticed "Florida" at the "Catastrophic"-Level. 01:04

no video in my entire life ever made me this glad to have bluetooth headphones i had to get up out of my chair and pace the room because i was THAT SHOCKED

7:00 That is a very tenuous chain of events. The development of the atomic bomb would have likely happened without the cloud chamber.

The canning bit is one of the best pieces of content I've seen on YT. Subverts your expectations so many times. Excellent writing. The video as a whole was super original which gets harder to find all the time. It is hard to believe this is a 1 man operation. Keep it up and thanks 😀

Learning that a capable hardworking female doctor researched the correlation between x-rays and leukemia and was overridden by a male doctor with a greater reputation is infuriating. My mother had leukemia as a child and knowing it very well could have happened because my grandmother got an x-ray after a study had been out for THIRTY YEARS is beyond infuriating. Her having leukemia ruined many aspects of both their lives to this day.

Very well made video, very nice outro!

It's important to remember that all technology will be discovered at one time or another, and if one person doesn't, someone else will.

I would be interested in looking into the reverse scenarios where blunders turned into potentially amazing advances in the human race

Beautifully written and created video - well done sir. Reminds me of the old 70s BBCTV programme - James Burke’s connections. Definitely time for a relaunch I think! Well done

One of the best entertaining yet motivational video out there

Richard Doll's radiation study likely had political ramifications; Admitting the dangers of X-rays were to put the US under even more scrutiny over the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. Even at the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, the American national medical consensus avoided mentioning the seriousness of the matter, warned by China and other countries, until several months later when it had grown too large of an issue to not be noticed.

Mad props for using the Kevin MacLeod song "The Cannery" on the bit about cans. It's always been one of my favorites.

Please do part 2 this was very interesting. I’ve never heard of the infamous canned food patent story

I love this video its like explaining butterfly effect how it change the world keep it up man❤

“heart attacks were the biggest killer of men in america at the time” *puts away notebook descretely*

#0: I'm surprised it's not been talked about >Some dude is driving in Sarajevo in an open-top car, in 1914 >The driver makes a wrong turn >The dude and his wife are murdered my assassains. *>someone else explain what happens next*

I see literally nothing of blunder in your first example. It's a good thing he showed the photographs that would later advance physics to what we know today.

I find some of the causal lines a bit arbitrary (why not blame Eisenhower's mom for having him? or the Big Bang?) but the history is fascinating all the same, and you do a wonderful job of presenting it. I feel as if a friend is telling me a fun but consequential secret in a library or around a campfire. Excellent work!

This is such a unique/great video

My favorite concept with historical oddities and what ifs, is that if you change something 100 years ago it is entirely possible, even likely, that every single person born from that moment forward is changed.

This video was my introduction to your channel. The subjects of this video and the way the information was presented clearly required a lot of thought and deliberation. You couldn't have left a better first impression so I'm definitely subbing.

4:38 I love this song, it's from a Club Penguin event called Mountain Expedition and I never forgot it. What a great track, I'm glad to hear you use it!

Wow. That's some high quality content!

25:00 I was so sure he had that heart attack because of high cholesterol, but three packs of cigs per day might just beat that.