10 Seemingly Insignificant Choices That Changed The World Forever

10. Joseph P. Kennedy's Decision To Take Part In Operation Aphrodite

Joseph P. Kennedy was being groomed by his father to run for office after the war, which the historically ridiculed dramatisation The Kennedy's illustrates with hyperbolic power. In 1944, he had the opportunity to return home having completed his military service, but instead he patriotically chose to volunteer for Operation Aphrodite. This perilous mission called for unmanned, out of service, planes to be filled to the brim with explosives and flown into Germany; that catch? As the remote control system could only take effect at an altitude of 2,000 feet a crewman had to fly the planes to this height before letting the planes loose. Unfortunately, a premature explosion killed Joseph Kennedy in 1944 during part of this daring campaign. JFK - the last president to be martyred - is the subject of a national cult of amnesia due to the barbaric manner of his death, but imagine how the tumultuous 1960's would have been handled under a different member of the Kennedy clan, or someone else entirely. After all, JFK was a crucial factor in the Cuban Missile Crisis, a time in which the threat of nuclear annihilation hung dangerously close to being unleashed onto the world. JFK's presidency is responsible not only for potentially avoiding WW3, it also saw a domestic revolution in the form of the Civil Rights Movement; it was responsible for the origins of the space race; Cold War tensions sporadically flared. JFK's presidency was remarkable in this sense, and it is impossible to suggest that anyone else would have handled it the exact same way; such a small decision was decisive to the way we know the world today.