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Last Minute Decisions That Changed History · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's changing your jacket just before you leave the house or booking a spontaneous weekend getaway, we make last-minute decisions every single day.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: But crazy as it sounds, did you know there are some 11th-hour calls that have literally changed the course of history?
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: From a last-second change of personnel that cost over 1,500 people their lives to one
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Join me as we discover some of the craziest last-minute decisions that changed history.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Titanic has gone down as the most infamous shipwreck in history.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's no wonder with more than 1,500 passengers tragically losing their lives, as the near 900-foot long cruise liner crashed into a giant iceberg in April 1912.
• 1:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: But well-known as the Titanic is, Little is known about the fact the ship was doomed by a last-minute change of personnel.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shortly before the ship embarked on its journey from Southampton to New York and Officer shake-up from the White Star Line, meant the second officer David Blair was swapped out with Charles Lightholder.
• 1:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: No big deal, right?
• 1:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, as he was removed from his position, Blair accidentally carried a crucial key off the ship with him.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Blair and his rush to leave had unwittingly taken with him the key to a locker containing binoculars for the ship's lookout.
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: For the first four days of the Titanic's voyage, no one even noticed the key was missing.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, that all changed on the night of April 14th.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the Titanic sailed its way towards an iceberg, the ship's lookout Frederick Fleet was none the wiser.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: After all there were foggy conditions and of course he couldn't get his hands on the binoculars.
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't until the Titanic was bearing down on the iceberg that Fleet noticed it.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Immediately, the ship's engines were stopped as the captain attempted to steer the vessel around, but given the distance to the iceberg, disaster wasn't evidentable.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just moments later, the Titanic struck the 400-foot-long iceberg sending the supposedly unsinkable ship and most of its passengers down into the Atlantic Ocean.
• 2:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: At an official U.S. inquiry following the shipwreck, Frederick Fleet stated that had he had access to the binoculars, he reckoned he'd have been able to see the iceberg earlier, allowing the Titanic to avert the collision.
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, the Titanic disaster could have all been avoided if Blair had just bothered to check his pockets.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Martin Luther King Jr. is heralded as a legendary social rights activist, leading the Civil Rights Movement in an attempt to end racial segregation in the United States during the 1950s and 60s.
• 2:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: His most recognized moment came in August 1963, while speaking in front of 250,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. King delivered his famous,
• 3:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet, those four words nearly weren't muttered at all if it wasn't for a last second change of plans.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: King has used the phrase, I have a dream in several speeches at least nine months before.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, his advisors discouraged him from repeating the phrase, thinking it was too cliché.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: So during the first few minutes of his speech in Washington, DC, King read off his notes in a formal format.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then during a brief 10-second pause came the moment that changed history.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: During the silence King's close friend, singer Mahalia Jackson shouted, tell him about the dream Martin.
• 3:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Presumably, he heard the message as almost instantly he rousingly delivered the famous segment.
• 3:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: The stirring speech was an instant success, captivating the millions of people who heard it.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, so captivating was King's I have a dream speech.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Within two years, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed, both of which were pivotal in the fight for racial equality in the US.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Who knows what would have happened if Mahalia Jackson didn't tell King to talk about the dream?
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: After serving as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909, theodore Roosevelt fancied another stab at the whole presidency gig, putting himself in the running for the 1912 election.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: In an attempt to sway votes Roosevelt gave a speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium, his first words were uninspiring.
• 4:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Friends, I shall ask you to be quiet as possible, then he shocked the audience.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: He then unbuttoned his vest to reveal a bloodstained shirt underneath.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out, as Teddy made his way to the auditorium, he was shot in the chest from a woodbee assassin standing just a few feet away.
• 4:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Somehow Roosevelt finished his 90-minute speech before receiving medical attention?
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: The question is, how?
• 5:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: How could he survive an hour with a gunshot wound?
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: As much as I'd like to say, Theodore Roosevelt was the Terminator, it turns out, a last-minute stroke of fortune saved his life.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: tucked into his breast pocket was his folded 50-page speech along with a metal eyeglass case.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Presumably just before rushing out of his hotel room for the auditorium Roosevelt folded up his speech and placed it into his breast pocket, and it's just as well he did.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Together the folded paper and metal eyeglass case absorbed the bullets impact, meaning the ammunition only reached his fourth right rib, failing to penetrate any of his vital organs, saving his life.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Terminator Teddy would go on to live until 1919 when he passed from natural causes.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: Crazy to think it would have been way sooner if the former president didn't decide to fold up his sizable speech.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of presidents, that brings us on to Abraham Lincoln, one of America's most influential figures.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: But arguably what Lincoln is most remembered for is his tragic end.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: After Lincoln's Union Forces won the American Civil War over the Confederate South in 1865, the president knew he was a wanted man.
• 6:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite that, both Lincoln and General of the Union Army, Ulysses Es Grant were due to watch a play at the Ford's theater less than a week after they'd won the war.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, at the last minute, Grant had a change of heart.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It turned out his wife had fallen out with the first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, so neither decided to go.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: In truth, Lincoln was reluctant to go himself.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even reportedly saying, I know I am in danger.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, Abe was weighing up whether to go right up till the last minute.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet Lincoln, seeing that the newspapers announced his attendance felt obliged to go, not wanting to let down the general public.
• 6:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: For some reason Lincoln felt confident enough to send his closest bodyguard, Ward Hill Laman, on an assignment in Richmond, just one day before the president's visit to the theater.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: In his absence, Laman warned Lincoln not to go out at night when he was gone, particularly to the theater.
• 7:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not that the president listened.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: On April 14th, just before the play began, Lincoln and his wife got seated in their box.
• 7:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: John Parker was the bodyguard drafted in.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Parker was seated outside Lincoln's box, but from his position he couldn't see the stage so he apparently decided to move to the gallery to watch the play.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, that's one super secure bodyguard.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: At Intermission, Parker made another even bigger blunder, deciding it was a good idea to head to a nearby saloon for some drinks.
• 7:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: So now, thanks to Parker's rash decision, Lincoln, who was already a high-risk target, was left unprotected in his box.
• 7:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And surprise surprise, John Wilkes' booth was able to walk into Lincoln's box untrubbled before pulling out his pistol and taking out the president.
• 8:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, one of America's most tragic tales, which all came down to a bunch of last-minute decisions.
• 8:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nearly 100 years before Lincoln's avoidable demise, the fate of the United States was altered by yet another 11th-hour event.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: From 1775 to 1783, the country was gripped by the American Revolutionary War, where American Patriot Forces commanded by George Washington, where battling it out with the British Army.
• 8:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the end of 1776, the British forces had the upper hand, and were driving Washington and his troops out.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Low on ammunition supplies and food, Washington planned a daring assault in December 1776.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the 25th of December, Washington, along with over 2,000 troops, improbably crossed the icy Delaware River.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a problem, though, a local who was sympathetic to the British cause spotted the American troops.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: On the night of December 25th, Johann Rawl, a German Colonel given command of a garrison at Trenton, was celebrating Christmas by playing cards at his headquarters.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the game was interrupted with one of the Colonel's servants delivering him a message from a courier.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The message would have informed Rawl about Washington's forces imminent arrival, but for some reason, Rawl didn't read it.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he made the fatal error of stuffing the note into his coat pocket and continued on with the card game.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: The very next day, Washington's forces arrived and the Battle of Trenton took place.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unsurprisingly, Roll and his unprepared troops proved no match for the reinvigorated American forces.
• 9:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though it's never been verified, it was rumored Roll still had the note in his pocket when he passed away on the battlefield just hours after the warning was handed to him.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's more certain is the battle's massive impact.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: After success at Trenton, Washington's men then went on to a decisive victory at the Battle of Princeton.
• 9:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: By 1783, America had won the war seizing political independence from Britain and forming the United States.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Golly!
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, if old-roll wasn't so crazy on cards, maybe we Americans would be speaking like this now.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tally Ho Governor.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: With a population nearing 10 million, and sights like Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, London is one of the world's most famous cities.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But believe it or not, this place hasn't always looked so polished.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there was once a time when this city was little more than a pile of ruins, and even crazier, it was all down to one man.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the early hours of 2nd September 1666, Thomas Farrenner was woken up by smoke-wafting under the door of his bedroom.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: His house was on fire, though he managed to escape out of the window the fire kept burning.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even worse, it was a hot summer, and most of London's infrastructure was built out of wood serving as fuel to the blaze.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the mid-17th century, London didn't have a fire brigade, instead it was up to the city's citizens, as well as a few policemen, to put the fire out.
• 11:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you can imagine, that didn't end too well, the city burned for five days, by which point roughly a third of London was destroyed, and 100,000 people were made homeless.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yet the craziest part is, it could have all been avoided.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see the fire was caused by Thomas Fariner himself.
• 11:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fariner was a baker who used a wood fire oven.
• 11:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now he claimed to have extinguished the fire before bed.
• 11:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it's believed a spark from his oven fell onto the flammable mixes of flour and wood he kept nearby.
• 11:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now one house on fire alone wouldn't have been so bad, but Thomas's bakery was on putting lane, an area surrounded by warehouses containing other flammable materials like rope, timber, and oil.
• 11:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: The bakery was just the match that started the great fire of London.
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: If Farrenner had made the decision to properly check his oven, rather than head off to bed, then the fire might never have started.
• 12:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: But obviously Old Tommy was more interested in sleep than safety.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I bet those 100,000 homeless were over the moon.
• 12:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: He got his shut eye.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of fire, that brings us to the work of Buddy Holly, the artists behind Flame and Tunes like Peggy Sue and every day.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, a lot of you young pups won't know Buddy Holly, but, back in my day?
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I mean, back in the day, Holly was taking the musical world by storm.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: In February 1959, Holly and his tourmates were on the 11th night of their tour in the snowy Midwest of America.
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: After the show, they were tired and to top things off, all their clothes were dirty.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, at the last minute, Holly called to hire a charter plane to fly to the next show, from Iowa, to Minnesota.
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: By catching a flight, Holly and his mates could arrive early, do their laundry, and get some much-needed rest.
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: A 21-year-old pilot named Roger Peterson agreed to fly the singer.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: A snowstorm was on its way, and the young pilot was fatigued from a 17-hour workday.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But still, it's not every day you get to fly a rock star to their next gig.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Holly's bass player, Whalen Jennings, was scheduled to fly on the plane, but gave his seat to fellow musician Big Bopper, who was suffering from a cold.
• 13:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: While Holly's guitarist Tommy alls up, agreed to flip a coin with the singing star Richie Valens for a seat, Valens 1.
• 13:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite the conditions, the plane took off from Iowa around 1230 AM.
• 13:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, the plane only stayed in the sky a few minutes.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: No one knows for sure exactly what went wrong, but most likely Peterson flew straight into a blizzard, losing sight and crashing down.
• 13:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unsurprisingly, with the four passenger plane plowing into a nearby cornfield at over 170 miles per hour, there were no survivors.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sadly, we'll never know how big buddy Holly Bigbopper and Richie Balans would have got to be.
• 14:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Saying that, considering Don McLean referred to the crash as the day the music died in his 1971 song, American Pie, it's fair to assume they would have made it pretty big.
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, think of all the songs we missed out on, and all because of some dirty laundry.
• 14:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the same year, as Holly's fateful last-minute plane ride, another seismic event was taking place in Cuba.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But El Castro was one of the 20th centuries most recognized men.
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you didn't know, he was the central figure behind the Cuban Revolution.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 1959 Castro came to power in Cuba, overthrowing dictator Fogensio Batista in an armed revolt.
• 14:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: As Prime Minister of Cuba Castro implemented a communist regime, forging closer ties with the Soviet Union, enemy number one for the U.S. during this period.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the same year that he took charge of Cuba, he met a 19-year-old woman named Marita Lorenz.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's fair to say Marita fell head over heels for Castro.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, according to her, their fling didn't end in the best circumstances.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, things ended so sourly, Lorenz joined an anti-Castro operation.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: She was willfully hired by the CIA as a contract agent back in America and handed the task of taking out Castro.
• 15:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lorenz was given two pills containing a deadly botulinum toxin that she'd drop in Castro's drink.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: With that, she was sent on a flight to Havana, Cuba, where she'd meet Castro in a hotel room to carry out the deadly deed.
• 15:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything was going to plan, she arrived in Ivana and met Castro at the hotel room.
• 15:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: But then, at the vital moment, she got cold feet.
• 15:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether out of love or fear, Maria threw the pills down the toilet rather than into Castro's drink.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And with that, the CIA's best hopes of taking down Castro went up in smoke.
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Much to their anguish Castro would rule Cuba for another 56 years, until he passed from natural causes back in 2016.
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, things would have paned out away differently had Marita stuck to her guns, or should I say, stuck to her pills.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So after Marita Lorenz failed to topple Fidel Castro, the US hatched another plan.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: They decided to just invade Cuba, so in 1961, 1,400 Cuban exile sponsored by the United States launched an invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba, but within days they were crushed by Castro's forces.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still, Fidel asked the Soviet Union to place nuclear missiles in Cuba to deter any future attacks leading to the Cuban missile crisis.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: After American spy planes spotted the presence of the Soviet nuclear missile site, a tent standoff ensued between the two forces.
• 16:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: In October 1962, during the height of the tension, the American destroyer, USS Beel, began dropping depth charges on the nuclear arm Soviet submarine B59, which was lurking in the waters near the coast of Cuba.
• 16:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though the charges were non-lethal warning shots intended to force the B-59 to surface, two of the sub-senior officers wanted to launch the nuclear torpedo.
• 17:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The grave misunderstanding could have resulted in nuclear warfare.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully, a crucial contingency plan was in place.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: requiring all three of the sub senior officers to sign off on a nuclear launch.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, for the sake of the planet, Vasily Archipov, the second in command, wasn't so hotheaded.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he refused to consent to the firing of the nuclear torpedo before Kooley convincing his fellow officers at the last possible moment to bring the B59 to the surface.
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: That nerve-jangling close calls sobered both leaders, John Kennedy, and Nikita Krushev Krushev, leading to a cooling of tensions.
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And to think if only Vasily Arkopov had been a little more trigger-happy, you might not even be listening to this episode right now.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: But Vasily Arkopov isn't the only super-soviet to have saved the world from total disaster.
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stanislav Petrov was a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet air defense force.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: He'd led in a accomplished but unremarkable life.
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, that all changed on one fateful day back in September 1983.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Petrov was on duty at a Soviet control center when all of a sudden the screen in front of him turned bright red while a screeching alarm went off.
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was the Soviet Union's missile attack warning system, informing Petrov that five American intercontinental ballistic missiles had been launched, and were heading straight for the Soviet Union.
• 18:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was Petrov's job to call the alarm, likely leading to some Russian retaliation and a full-on nuclear war.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: After sweating over what to do, Petrov came to a decision, for some reason Petrov despite professionally being required to do so, made the last gas call to not ring the alarm.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he treated the warning as an error message and alerted his higher-ups of a system malfunction.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: He reasoned that if the United States really were to start a nuclear war, they'd do it with more than five missiles.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And incredibly, he was right.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Turns out Soviet satellites mistook the Sun's reflection off the top of some clouds for a missile launch, so how bad would the situation have been?
• 19:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, for some context, the two rivals possess nearly 60,000 nuclear missiles between them.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's just say a Petrov wasn't as cool as a cucumber?
• 19:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Things would have got pretty ugly.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you've ever seen Steven Spielberg's classic saving private Ryan, you'll know just how monumental D-Day in the Battle of Normandy War.
• 19:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's not shown in the movie is the fact that this invasion could have easily failed before it started.
• 19:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: By 1944, Irwin Rommel was one of the most respected commanders in the German Army.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: He had the vital job of defending the North French coast against an allied invasion.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: In early June 1944, Rommel was convinced that bad weather made crossing the English channel and impossible task.
• 19:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, presuming there was no threat of an oncoming invasion, the general made the split decision to attend to a more personal matter.
• 20:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: His wife's birthday.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: After the storm broke out, Rommel decided to head back to Hair Lingen in Germany, but to Rommel's horror as he made his way eastwards the storms around the English channel started to subside.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: United States President Dwight Eisenhower made the late decision to set the invasion for the early hours of June 6th.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the morning nearly 156,000 American British and Canadian forces landed on Normandy Beach.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Without rumble, the German reaction to the landings were slow and confused.
• 20:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even worse for the Germans, less than a week after the invasion began, the Allies secured the Normandy beaches.
• 20:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: From there, the Allies fought their way across through France.
• 20:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the aftermath of D-Day, Germany was fighting a two-front war it couldn't win, and less than a year later, Germany surrendered.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yikes, fair to say rumble probably regretted the decision to celebrate his wife's B-Day on D-Day.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It goes without saying that World War I was one of the most significant conflicts in history.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Between 1914 to 1918, more than 100 countries around the world became involved in the war that claimed some 40 million casualties.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But did you know it all could have been avoided if it wasn't for a minor mishat by a driver?
• 21:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me explain.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: In 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was visiting Sarajevo to inspect the Imperial Armed Forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country annexed by Austria Hungary six years earlier.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: The annexation had angered Serbian nationalists in the country who believed their territories should be part of Serbia, not under the rule of Austria-Hungary.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: One group of nationalists known as the Black Hand were especially angry.
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of them members threw a bomb at Ferdinand's car as it drove through Sarajevo, but the vehicle sped away before detonated, injuring people in a trailing car.
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Undeterred Ferdinand went on to deliver a speech at Sarajevo Town Hall.
• 22:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then following his talk, Ferdinand decided to visit a hospital to check on the wounded.
• 22:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: As noble a decision as it was, it'd be a fatal one.
• 22:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: For security reasons, it was decided the car would take a quieter route out of the city.
• 22:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, for Franz, his driver could only speak Czech, so he wasn't able to actually hear the change of plans instead, choosing to drive on the original route.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a result, the car took a turn onto the busy Franz Joseph Street.
• 22:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately for Ferdinand, the car swirves straight in the direction of one of the black hand members, Gavrilo Princep.
• 22:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Princep, who gave up on the assassination attempt apparently decided to head to a cafe to grab a sandwich.
• 22:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: As he recognized Ferdinand's car coming towards him, Princep pulled out his pistol and, well, the rest, as they say, is history.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just days later, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, triggering a series of declarations that led to World War I.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just one month after Franz Ferdinand's assassination, one of history's deadliest conflicts had begun, all because someone wanted a sandwich.
• 23:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just over 20 years after the horrors of the First World War, another major conflict had begun.
• 23:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: World War II.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the end of the war in 1945, the U.S. wanted to force a quick surrender by the Japanese.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, horrifyingly, they decided they'd achieve that by dropping atomic bombs on several Japanese cities.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: In May, a list of potential target cities were drawn up, including Hiroshima, Kokura, and Kyoto.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: After the devastating bombing of Hiroshima on 6th August, the next target was set, Kokura, a city of 130,000 people, and the home to one of Japan's largest military arsenals.
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plains were dispatched to scope out the weather on 9th August, reporting minimal cloud coverage with a forecast of improving conditions.
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, by the time pilot Charles Swinney made it over Kokura later that day, conditions had drastically changed.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now there was thick cloud cover, meaning Sweeney couldn't see what was beneath his plane.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: This being an atomic bomb you can't exactly drop at blind, the target has to be seen visually, as the US didn't trust radar assisted bombing for such a weapon.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: This lack of visibility for Sweeney to change his course at the last moment.
• 24:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of obliterating Kokura, he'd move on to the secondary target, Nagasaki.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Clearer conditions allowed Swiny to gain sight of the city below, and with that, he dropped the Fatman Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki, taking the lives of nearly 40,000 with it.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Any of you bright sparks might be wondering, what happened to Kyoto?
• 24:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: After all, it was drawn up on the list of cities to be taken out.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well much like Kokura, this place got a late blessing.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't decided until late July, just days before the attack, that Kyoto was taken off the list.
• 25:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why?
• 25:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not because of clouds, but due to the city being viewed as the cultural heart of Japan,
• 25:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So the United States not wanting to provoke a Japanese rally, gave it a miss all together.
• 25:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if anyone is listening from Kyoto, man, how lucky do you feel right now?
• 25:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that rounds up the last minute decisions that changed history.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you think of any other monumental events that were decided by a last gas change of plans?
• 25:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me know in the comments if the platform allows it, and thanks for listening.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for watching.