What’s Your Favorite Event in History?

[Kanadorika]

Battle of Jutland

Take these massive steel behemoths that haven't even see full fleet combat yet, and smash them together. What do you get?

Magazine detonations galore, along with some good ol fashioned brawling between the most state of the art equipment of the day. The battleship arms race was the equivalent of the nuclear arms race in its day, only the weapons actually went to war, and things didn't quite work out the way they were expected to.

Throwing battlecruisers into the line of battle? That's a paddlin.

Failing to utilize wireless transmissions and instead relying on outdated signal flags? That's a paddlin.

Crossing the T not once, but twice? That should have been a paddlin.

[Rojava Free State]

When the Persians freed the Jews from slavery. I always loved how the Persians were so anti slavery, which for their time was progressive as hell.

I just wish Jews and Iranians still got along today like they did back then

[Rojava Free State]

I do not have one main favorite but here are some that I find interesting.
The French Revolution
The American Revolution
Civil Rights Movement
The Industrial Revolution in America
Progressive Era
The Spanish civil war
The Mongols invasions and the Mongols in general
The American civil war
Japanese migration to Brazil
The Norwegian Black Metal scene
Viking and Gothic invasions
A bunch of awesome Thrash Metal albums being released in 1986

Imagine being able to go back to late 1970s England when punk first took off

[The Black Forrest]

The birth of Thomas Crapper

[Rojava Free State]

The birth of Thomas Crapper

Improving the world one new toilet at a time

[Terroristen]

American independence wars and the Cold War

[Nazis in Space]

Battle of Jutland
Throwing battlecruisers into the line of battle? That's a paddlin.

It was less 'Throwing' and more 'Not having a choice'. Sure, Germany lost Derfflinger, but she'd already taken a pounding beforehand.

And the British battlecruisers just weren't thrown into the line of battle at all. Indefstigable and Queen Mary were lost while the battlecruiser scouting squadrons had a go at each other, no actual battleships in sight. Once the German battleships did show up, the British battlecruisers promptly disengaged. Invincible was lost when the German battlecruisers were reengaged by the British ones to avoid them spotting the British battleline.

Not a single British battlecruiser was lost to a battleship. Only a German one (disregarding rhe preceding damage it took from British battlecruisers) and that one wasn't the result of recklessness, but of unavoidability.

The myth that battlecruisers were recklessly thrown into the line of battle needs to die. They weren't.

The concept wasn't even a dead end. While the early British battlecruisers were fairly experimenral and had their issues, the German ones did effectively create the fast battleship, and while the British Nelsons of the interwar period were more of the plodding battleship type, by the late 1930s, only Japan built battleships with a focus of armour over speed. Everyone else went with 28 knots minimum and reduced armour weight relative to total displacement.

Fisher had the right idea, poorly executed. Tirpitz' development of the concept fixed this. Mahan's doctrines on the other hand, didn't survive contact with reality. The idea of battleship superiority enabling one to fight on the shores of the enemy and forcing an amphibious landing/decisive battle died to mines and submarines at the dardanelles and it wasn't until maritime airpower developed sufficiently that something like it (but, y'know... not actually relying on battleships) would be revisited.

[Forsher]

Fisher had the right idea, poorly executed. Tirpitz' development of the concept fixed this. Mahan's doctrines on the other hand, didn't survive contact with reality. The idea of battleship superiority enabling one to fight on the shores of the enemy and forcing an amphibious landing/decisive battle died to mines and submarines at the dardanelles and it wasn't until maritime airpower developed sufficiently that something like it (but, y'know... not actually relying on battleships) would be revisited.

The Dardanelles was a tactical, logistical and intelligence failure. They didn't have enough ships and they were blithely unaware of how close they'd got to breaking through following the biggest "ships only" assault. Of course, why they were going for the ships only approach is entirely questionable and a properly combined operation might have worked even given the aforementioned intelligence failures.

The mines were a huge problem, though.

In hindsight it's an interesting question. Would going all in and risking valuable ships have worked. Creating a useful front that enabled a more direct challenge to the weakest members of the Central Powers within the first year of the war? Would we actually remember it as WWI or would it have become just another European War?

[Risottia]

I also find the Roman Empire to be fascinating! Hope to see some responses!

I would hardly call a State that existed for some 1500 years "an event". Any specific event in Roman imperial history?

Anyway, I would guess that the history of the anti-fasicst resistance in the Interwar and WW2 is one of the events that interest me the most.

[Valrifell]

The fall of Rome

[Risottia]

Rome (27 BC - 1453 AD)

Rome is more like ANNO I AVC - ANNO MMDCCLXXII AVC for now.
Maybe you mean the Roman Empire.

The fall of Rome

Which one?
Just in the last two centuries, Rome fell to the French-Papal alliance in 1848, then to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, then to Nazi Germany in 1943 and to the Allies in 1944.

[Valrifell]

Rome (27 BC - 1453 AD)

Rome is more like ANNO I AVC - ANNO MMDCCLXXII AVC for now.
Maybe you mean the Roman Empire.

The fall of Rome

Which one?
Just in the last two centuries, Rome fell to the French-Papal alliance in 1848, then to the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, then to Nazi Germany in 1943 and to the Allies in 1944.

The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, to be clear.

[Arachkya]

The Amazons being wiped out in Turkey.

[Hakinda Herseyi Duymak istiyorum]

I would like to see the French Revolution and the Turkish War of Independence

[Forsher]

I would like to see the French Revolution and the Turkish War of Independence

I think you want the time travel thread but presumably these are also your favourite historical events?

[Trollzyn the Infinite]

Probably the mass celebrations that occurred after the end of WWII. You'd never see that kinda stuff today, sadly.

[Valrifell]

Seriously, though, my favorite event in history has to be the 1848 Spring of Nations

[The Ether Corporation]

Well, I have two favorite events in history. I love reading about the Titanic and its passengers and the American Civil War.

[Rojava Free State]

Probably the mass celebrations that occurred after the end of WWII. You'd never see that kinda stuff today, sadly.

I wish we could win a war again so we could have these celebrations although the celebrations after bin laden's death were close.

[Bear Stearns]

The story of early parts of Manifest Destiny (1790s to Mexican War) is pretty fascinating. The pioneers and frontiersmen went up against all odds, unlike later settlers who had the backing of railroads, repeater rifles, and US Cavalry.

[Major-Tom]

Well, Jeff Bezos hasn't yet been exiled to a cargo container in the middle of the Pacific, so my favorite event has yet to come.

[Ifreann]

Probably the mass celebrations that occurred after the end of WWII. You'd never see that kinda stuff today, sadly.

I wish we could win a war again so we could have these celebrations although the celebrations after bin laden's death were close.

The problem there is that to have a war that people get that worked up about winning, you first need to have the kind of total war that demands the participation of the whole society.

I'm sure VE Day and VJ Day were great parties, but first they had to have World War 2. Which, you know, bad times all around.

[Kowani]

Well, Jeff Bezos hasn't yet been exiled to a cargo container in the middle of the Pacific, so my favorite event has yet to come.

Why do you hate jellyfish?

[Heloin]

The moment alcohol was invented.

[The Snow-Covered Mountains]

I can't pick just one.

-Writing and passage of the Declaration of Independence
-U.S. Constitutional Convention
-Ratification of the post-Civil War Amendments