10 examples of the "butterfly effect" that completely changed the world

Sometimes, a small and seemingly meaningless decision can change a lot. Some of the most significant events of the last century were the result of minor decisions. Minor things like leaving a copy of the Reader's Digest at the barber's, or a wrong turn made by the driver, triggered a chain of events that changed the course of the presidential election and led to the outbreak of wars.

As Saddam Hussein stood near the gallows awaiting execution, he could not have imagined that all that had happened to him had begun when a small Cuban boy decided to go to the United States by boat. However, it was Elian Gonzalez who indirectly caused the war in Iraq.

No, Elian Gonzalez was not the man who told George W. Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but he was the man who made Bush win the election. This election was one of the most difficult in the history of the United States, Bush won in Florida by a margin of only 537 votes – and he became president only thanks to the victory in Florida.

Bush got the extra votes thanks to Elian Gonzalez. The Cuban diaspora in Florida was so outraged that the Democrats returned the boy to his father in Cuba that 50,000 Cuban-Americans in Florida voted Republican.

This means that if Elian Gonzalez had not been in this boat sailing to the United States, Albert Gore would have become president, and, most likely, the war in Iraq would not have happened, and the world today would look different.

Saddam Hussein may not have realized that Elian Gonzalez was responsible for his death, but when Barack Obama sat in the Oval Office as the first black president, he probably fully realized that Geri Ryan – known for her role as the Seventh-of-Nine in the TV series "Star Trek: Voyager" - should be thanked for this.

Barack Obama's path to the presidency began as a senator. To become a senator, Obama needed to win the election to the post from Jack Ryan, the husband of Geri Ryan. It is difficult to say whether Obama would have been able to defeat a competitor if Jack Ryan had behaved differently towards his wife.

During the election, the press got documents about the Ryan couple's divorce, from which it followed that Jack Ryan tried to drag his wife into a rather dubious club.

According to her, Jack asked her if she wanted to have sex with him right there, in front of another couple. Geri refused. In the ensuing scandal, Jack Ryan lost the election, and Obama became a senator. As a senator, he began his ascent to the presidency-and all because someone tried to drag the Seventh-of-Nine into a sex club.

In 1919, Woodrow Wilson arrived in Versailles to attend the Paris Peace Conference. There he received a letter from a young socialist asking for a meeting. Wilson had a very busy schedule and ignored the letter, leading to a chain of events that ended with the Vietnam War.

This young specialist was Ho Chi Minh, and at that time he was still quite open to various ideas. All he wanted was Vietnam's independence. He was delighted with the American Declaration of Independence and hoped that the American president would show sympathy for the hard-pressed Vietnam and help it gain independence from France.

However, Wilson ignored him, and Ho Chi Minh became disillusioned with America. He went to the Soviet Union, where he began to study Marxism, met with Trotsky and Stalin, and became an ardent supporter of communism.

When Vietnam achieved independence from France, Ho Chi Minh became the head of the Communist Party, as a result, Vietnam split in half. There was a war in Vietnam that might never have happened if Woodrow Wilson had given the young man some of his time.

When the United Kingdom decided to hold a vote on leaving the European Union, everyone in the world began to break their heads over the question of how such a thing could have happened. However, the answer lay on the surface, and it was linked to a small drinking establishment in the Palace of Westminster called the Stranger's Bar.

It was there in 2012 that Labour MP Eric Joyce got drunk, started shouting that there were "too many Tories" in the bar, and started hitting everyone he could reach. The case ended with his arrest, while at the police station Joyce yelled:

Labour understood that Joyce needed someone to replace him. Joyce's drunken outburst set off a chain of events that eventually led to the country's exit from the EU.

At first, the Labour Party was accused of allowing generous backers to decide who would win Joyce's seat. Then, to get rid of these accusations, Labour leader Ed Miliband announced that anyone who paid £ 3 could join the party and vote. Thousands of people did this, and as a result, the party has a new leader – Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn would never have taken office if it weren't for the new "£3 rule," and many people claim that he is to blame for Britain's exit from the EU. This is blamed on Corbyn and members of his party, who declared their no confidence in him after the UK voted to leave.

However, it was already too late. As a result, the UK left the EU-due to the fact that one drunk guy waved his fists in a bar.

You probably know the speech therapist Lionel Logue from the movie "The King Speaks". He helped King George VI get rid of his stutter. He must have thought that he was helping the monarch to have a greater impact on the world, but he didn't even know that he had done something else along the way. He is responsible for modern American politics.

Before working for the King, Logue helped an aspiring reporter named Keith Murdoch overcome a severe stutter. Thanks to Logue, Keith Murdoch went on to have a successful career as a journalist and newspaper magnate. When Keith died, he passed his company on to his son, Rupert Murdoch. Rupert created News Corporation and eventually Fox News.

It is now much more than just a news station – it is a force that has changed the way Americans think. According to one study, about eight percent of people who watch Fox News have switched from Democrats to Republicans. The channel was named the" most important player " in the US election.

Without it, the "Tea Party Movement" would never have emerged. And George W. Bush would have lost the 2000 election, so it would be unfair to hold Elian Gonzalez solely responsible for the Iraq War – Lionel Logue should also be blamed for that.

The murder of Franz Ferdinand triggered the First World War, one of the greatest examples of the "butterfly effect" in human history. This would not have happened if Ferdinand's driver had checked the map.

It was a bad day for Ferdinand. Everyone he saw in Sarajevo tried to kill him, and Ferdinand began to feel that he was not very welcome here. Earlier, a bomb was thrown at him, and although he was not injured, many of his entourage ended up in the hospital.

Perhaps he should have taken this as a signal to return home, but Ferdinand insisted on visiting his wounded friends. However, his driver, who was not familiar with the route, made a wrong turn and led the car directly to the cafe, near which one of the attackers, Gavrilo Princip, was sitting.

The principle, dazed by his own luck, leaped to his feet and raced through the crowd to take his shot. He got there just in time and fired a shot that was heard all over the world.

When thousands of people flooded the checkpoints near the Berlin Wall, it was the end of an era. The years of a divided Germany were coming to an end, and the time was not far off when the Soviet Union would collapse. And all this happened because a man named Gunther Schabowski made a mistake.

Schabowski was the information secretary of the Communist Party of Germany, and on November 9, 1989, he was presented with a document on significant changes in political life. As a temporary measure, East Germans were going to be given the right to visit West Germany, but only after submitting a corresponding request and its approval. The launch of the program was planned to be carried out a little later.

However, not everything was clear in this document. Schabowski read it out in a way that gave the audience the impression that anyone with a passport could cross the border whenever they wanted. When a reporter asked what time the new rule would take effect, Schabowski looked through the paper and, finding no answer, made his guess:

Thousands of people flooded the checkpoints. The border guards, not knowing what to do and not wanting to use force, eventually just let them pass. The Berlin Wall has effectively fallen, and the days of division between East and West Germany have come to an end.

In 1962, a young man named Ross Perot sat in a barbershop waiting for his turn and leafed through a copy of the Reader's Digest that would later change his life.

Working at IBM, he felt that his ideas were not supported, and it did not bring him pleasure. Suddenly a quote from Henry David Thoreau caught his eye:

Ross Perot would later say that when he read the phrase, he had "a life-changing epiphany." The next day, he said goodbye to IBM and soon founded his own company, EDS. Perot became fabulously rich and in 1992 became the most successful independent presidential candidate in American history.

He ran against George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he received 18.9 percent of the popular vote. Most of these votes belonged to potential Bush supporters. We can't say for sure that this changed the outcome of the election, but it is certain that Perot's constant attacks on Bush played a role.

Not only did it change eight years of American history, but it was also the end of the careers of presidential candidates Albert Gore and Hillary Clinton. It is possible that if the barber had done his job faster, the last 25 years of American history would have been completely different.

In 1918, Henry Tandy served in a contingent of British troops in France. There, he made the decision to spare the life of one person, and this led to the deaths of more than 60 million other people.

He fought during the capture of Marcouin, when the Germans began to give up their positions. The enemy soldiers ran, and one of them was in his line of fire. Tandy took aim at the fleeing German, but the man was wounded and was running for his life. Tandy couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. He lowered his rifle, and the German nodded his thanks, and Tandy let him go.

Tandy's steadfastness and conscientious service were later celebrated on a propaganda poster, and twenty years later one of these posters was discovered in a completely unexpected place: in the country house of Adolf Hitler.

When Neville Chamberlain visited Hitler and saw the poster on his wall, he asked how the British propaganda poster got there. In response, Hitler pointed to the image of Tandy and said:

This story is so incredible that some people doubted its veracity, but years later, the staff of the Green Howards Museum discovered the proof. They found a letter from Hitler's aide, written in 1937, thanking the museum staff for sending the poster. He explained that he had been looking for this poster for a long time, because "the Fuhrer, of course, is very interested in subjects related to his personal stay at the front."

In 1933, a Texas council member named Charles Hazard was fed up with his neighbor's dog. The little dog was constantly urinating on his flower garden. Hazard decided to take action. He put shrapnel in the dog food, thus killing the dog and changing the course of history.

This dog belonged to 13-year-old Charlie Wilson, and he vowed revenge. Hazard's re-election was coming up soon, and Wilson went door-to-door telling people what Hazard had done to his dog and offering to take them to the polls.

He managed to deliver 95 of the voters who voted against Hazard, in the end, he was not enough for re-election by 16 votes. So Charlie Wilson changed the political situation for the first time in his life.

This incident inspired Wilson to become a politician. He grew up to become a representative of the US Congress, and when the Soviet-Afghan war began, he changed history. He campaigned for the provision of American aid to the Afghan Mujahideen and the supply of Stingers, which changed the course of the war.

Thanks to Wilson, the Afghan Mujahideen won the war, and this was one of the main reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda were formed, and Osama bin Laden was able to carry out the largest terrorist attack in history. The era of modern terrorism has begun. And all because a petulant council member poisoned a child's dog.