what's the biggest mistake of your life and what were the consequences and well not to worry no matter what your biggest mistake was or how embarrassing it seemed at the time it probably didn't play a part in the ultimate downfall of a 1500-year-old empire did it the interesting thing about history is that it's often the blunders rather than the successes that have shaped our world the most of course not all blunders are negative and sometimes happen to be a step on the road to the mass production of penicillin or something on the other hand sometimes
best intentions can result in a mistake that sends an entire country spiraling into years of famine killing millions in the [Music] process hello there before we continue I just want to tell you that this video is sponsored by keeps now even though my hair journey is over until keeps get on that hair cloning technology Chop Chop keeps let's go but look it doesn't have to be over for you thanks to our sponsor today keeps ever wish you could tackle hair loss without leaving your couch well that's where keeps come in don't they say goodbye to
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again to keeps for sponsoring today's video and now back to it the killing of sparrows in China and the Great Famine in the late 50s Communist Party chairman ma zong of the People's Republic of China attempted to eliminate every Sparrow in the country a rather radical step but all part of chairman mau's Great Leap Forward campaign a strategy to evolve China from an agrarian society into an industrialized one thereby ushering in a communist Utopia but as you can imagine attempting to irrevocably ulture an ecosystem doesn't come without serious consequences in this case consequences so severe
that China suffered one of the biggest famines in human history the greatly P was based on chairman Ma's eight elements Constitution a proposed plan to introduce industry to China's agriculture as well as to reform the economy more in line with communist principles it was all scientifically sound according to Chairman Mao and thus his vision was swiftly adopted into the Chinese Communist Party Central committee's resolution National economic plan which is a hell of a mouthful Chief among the reform policies was mandatory agricultural collectivization forced labor and the now Infamous for pest's campaign in regards to the
for pest campaign chairman Mau explained that the new era of communist Prosperity would benefit from a higher standard of hygiene thus there was no place for disease spreading pests like mosquitoes rats and flies the PRC would also need to increase grain output not to surpass a quota hence there was also no room for grain stealing birds like sparrows orders were given and the Chinese Communist party set about mobilizing the population drawing on chairman Ma's slogan rening shengang man must conquer nature as we said it was all in the spirit of achieving industrialization and even as
the Chinese people said about Exterminating tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of sparrows they believed it was for the good of country as it turns out though although The Sparrows did eat some grain the amount was nothing in comparison to the damage locusts can cause if left without a natural predator and you could probably guess what that Predator was Chinese grain Fields were soon besieged by locusts and other insects reducing grain output and resulting in an unprecedented shortage targeting of sparrows was officially Haled in April 1960 swiftly replaced with a campaign to eliminate
bed bugs but the damage had already been done and the Great Famine swept across the country now there is no doubt that attempting to exterminate sparrows was a big part of why the famine occurred but the other communist reform policies were just as much to blame chairman mauo had rushed his reforms into practice had given no thought as to what would be done if the agricultural reforms fails and had even fostered a government atmosphere where officials were afraid to report the devastation if anything the for pest's campaign stands as a microcosm of how poorly thought
out the entire Great Leap Forward was across the board the great Chinese famine devastated the country between 1959 and 1961 seeing a death toll that ranges between 15 million and 55 chairman ma after spending much of his remaining time in government trying to comprehend the extent of the destruction passed on day-to-day leadership in 1959 he officially stepped down in 1976 discovery of penicillin if you were unlucky enough to be living before 1945 you effectively gambled with death every time you suffered a paper cut no antibiotics meant that virtually any bacterial infection could be fatal which
is exactly why living in tier 6s back then was such a challenge not to worry though it's 1928 and Dr Alexander Fleming is here to revolutionize medicine as is fairly well known the bacteriologist at samar's Hospital Dr Flemin left for vacation in suffk although neglected to clean his lab before departing upon his return he discovered that he had made a rather silly blunder a petri dish of bacteria staf carcus orius had been infected with mold namely penicilium narum upon examining the petri dish Dr Fleming discovered that penicilin was actively fighting back the Stafa cockeye thus
prompting the good doctor into frantic research for around 7 months Dr Fleming poured all of his time into understanding The elusive bacteria killing chemical that he called penicillin but penicillin wasn't officially used on a human until 1942 and wasn't put into mass production until 1945 so well what took so long it comes down to the second's much more significant blunder of this particular Story the medical community's apathetic response to Dr Fleming's research the doctor revealed his work at the medical research Club in 1929 only to be met with little to no interest more or less
hamstringing what could have been a much faster adoption of the antibiotics not to put too much blame on the medical research club though since Dr Fleming also published his findings in the British Journal of experimental pathology that same year and again his discoveries got no response now to be fair the research was still in the very early stages at the time with no way to purify penicillin or mass produce it to put it into perspective current medical science is well aware that elephants almost never get cancer but since there's no way to harness that immunity
we aren't exactly celebrating a cure either way I guess we can all be thankful that Dr Fem took the apathy of his peers in his stride and persisted enlisting the help of several specialists in the field including the renowned expert Professor Harold rrick research progress was slow however given Dr Fleming's limited budget in the inferior medical facilities at St Mary's Hospital any attempt to improve conditions was hampered by further apathy including a particularly painful rejection of the second International Congress of microbiology a colleague and co-worker of Fleming Dr VD Allison is quoted as saying Fleming
suggested the possible value of penicillin for the treatment of infection in man again there was a total lack of interest and no discussion Fleming was keenly disappointed but worse was to follow he read a paper on his work on penicillin at a meeting of the international Congress of microbiology attended by the foremost bacteriologists from all over the world there was no support for his views on its possible future value for the prevention and treatment of human infections and discussion was minimal Fleming bore these disappointments stoically by the mid 1930s with Professor rrick declaring that finding
a purified form of penicillin was most impossible Dr Flemin finally lost steam this could well have been an end to penicillin put in medical research back decades but little did Dr Fleming know in Oxford based on the discovery of his work in 1937 a team including erns chain and Edward Abraham under Department's head Howard Flor were working on an official penicillin project thanks to the work at Oxford supported by dozens of researchers and many unnamed contributors from the Sir William Dunn School of pathology penicillin was purified and went into testing in 1940 the team publish
their results and Fleming flew to Oxford to help thus in 1945 penicillin went into mass production though only 17 years after the original Discovery in 1945 Dr Fleming shared the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine with Howard florry and Ernest Boris chain constantinople's unlocked gate according to Legend the sacking of Constantinople the final downfall of the 1500-year old Roman Empire and the official end of the Middle Ages can all be attributed to a gate being accidentally left unlocked locked it isn't clear who left the Kirk port gate open in 1453 thus allowing the Ottoman Empire
to take control of the legendary walls of theodosis but had the gate been locked it is possible the Byzantine Empire may have survived the siege and modern day Istanbul may still be Constantinople or is the story perhaps a bit more complicated than a single gate the ottoman Army led by the 21-year-old Sultan mhmed II sieged Constantinople on the 6th of April 1453 the defending Byzantine city was controlled by Emperor const stantinople the 11th who found himself with just 5 to 8,000 soldiers versus an attacking Army of some 60,000 adding to Emperor Constantine's W was mcmed
II's new super guns or Monster guns enormous cannons capable of Smashing walls to Rubble one of the guns named Basilica was said to be capable of hurling a 270 kg Stone ball over 1 and2 kilm needless to say if nothing else this was the siege that officially made classic castle wall defense obsolete ushering in a new era of gunpowder Warfare looking at Constantinople itself up until that point the legendary City had been viewed as having the most elaborate defenses in the Western World nestled against the ocean on one side and boasting vast triple layed defensive
walls on the other including the double lered 12 km long 12 meter high theodosian walls Constantinople had previously protected the Byzantine Empire against sieges for a more detailed explanation on the walls you can take a look at the dedicated video we've done on this on the mega projects channel the city walls were so wellb built that even mmed II's impressive super guns initially proved to not be the decisive victory that you might assume they would be the reality was that although the super guns were far beyond any other Siege weapon at the time repairs could
be carried out as fast as the super gun's painfully Slow 2 to three- hour reload time all in all the early days of The Siege seemed to suggest that the Turks weren't going to be successful mhmed II was certainly a strategic genius and demonstrated Superior organizing and deployment of his troops but his early efforts saw the Turkish Army suffering terrible losses in particular the commitment of the Turks to not leave the bodies of Fallen comrades out in the open proved very costly as Nicolo Barbaro a Venetian surgeon in Constantinople recounted they found the Turks coming
right up under the walls and seeking battle particularly the janisar and when one or two of them were killed at once more Turks came and took away the dead ones without caring how near they came to the city walls our men shot at them with guns and crossbows aiming at the Turk who was carrying away his dead countrymen and both of them would fall to the ground Dead And Then There came other Turks and took them away none fearing death but being willing to let 10 of themselves be killed rather than suffer the shame of
leaving a single Turkish corpse by the walls so was it a single unlock gate that turned the battle in favor of the Turks well the truth is that the Byzantine Empire had been on a steady decline for a long time really only existing as a fractured disorganized shadow of its former self at the time of The Siege the emperor was forced to divide his attention between defending against the attackers and calming tensions between Orthodox Natives and the Catholic mercenaries that were called in to help this internal conflict was just a hint of the feuding that
had torn the Roman Empire apart emphasized by the fact that Constantinople had not even managed to secure support from other nearby Western Powers thus although the legend of the unlocked gate is fascinating acting as an ultimate demonstration that even an insignificant mistake may have dramatic potentially history altering consequences the reality is that Constantinople would have likely Fallen regardless the Turks were vastly better equipped demonstrated Superior Tactics and discipl in every regard and were more than willing to spend months if not years securing the city the unlocked gate very simply just hastened the final downfall of
a long crumbling Empire Constantinople was conquered by the Turks on the 29th of May 1453 was adopted as the new capital of the Ottoman Empire and officially became present day Istanbul on the 28th of March Russia sells Alaska after suffering a rather devastating defeat in the Crimean War in 1865 Alexander II of Russia needed to Wrangle the situation back into his face to this end he decided that perhaps having a precarious Russian presence in Alaska wasn't a particularly good idea should he ever be at war with the UK again Alexander reasoned protecting Russians in Alaska
would be expensive and very inconvenient thus he sold the entirety of Alaska to the United States for just over $17 million little did Alexander know that in a few decades Alaska would be worth multiple billions at that time the russian-american presence in Alaska existed almost exclusively as a fair trading operation the population in the region was made up mostly of hostile indigenous people under Russian jurisdiction overseen by around 500 Russian colonizers at any given time infrastructure included a handful of trading posts plus the largest settlements and capital new Archangel later named to Sitka SAR Alexander
had declared sovereignty over the North American Pacific Coastline in 1821 insisting that no foreign ship approached within 185 kilm the move had been rather controversial with Secretary of State John Quincy Adams expressing concerns over what that meant for the then expanding United States and middle ground was ultimately reached seeing Russia agree to reduce the size of its claim as well as open ports to us ships the matter was temporarily put to bed until again being raised by Alexander II in 1867 Alexander II decided that a few million doar and clearing the war of Russians in
Alaska was best and so allow negotiations to proceed the United States meanwhile was then beyond the Civil War and ready to start thriving many Americans believed that Alaska could act as a base for trade with Asia thus helping the economy evolve into a new era of prosperity and so talks began between US Secretary of State William H seaward and a Russian Diplomat Edward dooel it wasn't long before a price of 36 cents per acre was settled on and the total sum of $7.2 million was handed over around $129 million in today's money the treaty was
ratified the paperwork signed and Alexander II let Alaska officially become part of the United States in October of that same year reactions to the purchase in the United States were largely positive though some political iCal opponents did refer to the purchase as seawoods folly or seawoods ice box declaring Alaska to be nothing more than a vast empty Wasteland that offered little to no game for the United States those derogatory remarks were silenced though only after another two decades the Clon like gold rush kicked off in 1896 with prospector Skookum Jim discovering gold in the kondik
river near dwson City the discovery transformed the then languishing Alaskan region which had fallen into decline since the initial purchase into a veritable frenzy of activity it's estimated that around 100,000 gold Seekers stampeded into Alaska over the course of 2 years all hoping to get their hands on some of the1 billion dollar worth of gold adjusted for inflation and let's keep in mind that Alexander II had sold Alaska for the equivalent of $129 million and that had Russia discovered the gold the nation would have legal claim over every ounce of course given that Alexander II
was assassinated in 1881 he wasn't around to appreciate the magnitude of his mistake he also wasn't around to see the discovery of more gold in Gnome in 1899 although he would probably passed on one way or another by the time that oil was discovered in the Kenai Peninsula in 1957 and on the Alaskan North Slope in 1968 it's estimated that the oil reserves in Alaska in 2022 were around 3.2 billion barrels at an average value of around $86 per barrel you can do the maths it's a lot of money [Music]
