Improbable Historical Events That Read Like Time Traveler Intervention

Author image for Eric Lund
Eric Lund
Oct 26, 2021 5:00 PM EDT

To put it in glaringly obvious and almost stupid terms, a lot of things have happened. And when a lot of things happen, the probability of incredibly improbable events occurring increases. So naturally, it would make sense that in all of human history, some extremely improbable things have happened. But damn if it doesn't really feel like someone with access to a DeLorean with a working flux capacitor would make it easier to accept these wild historical moments that are too bizarre to seem real.

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  • 01
    Font - Wadsworth_McStumpy · 21h 9 6 e & 9 More The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Somebody throws a grenade at his car, and it blows up behind him. That's the first incident of time travel, stopping the assassination. Later, as he goes back, the driver realizes that he's on the same route where the grenade was thrown, and they try to turn around. The whole procession of cars stalls, and a guy who just happened to be sitting there, goes over and shoots him. That's a second time travel
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  • 02
    Font - Attention_Some · 20h Fidel Castro's assassination attempts being dodged is so unrealistic (really, he dodged about 600) that it feels like a time traveller went back and foiled every single one of them 20.7k 5 Reply Share Doctor-Nemo · 18h To be fair, a good number of those were pretty goddamn stupid. I think there was one in which the CIA literally booby trapped a particularly beautiful Oyster shell near one of Castro's favorite diving spots
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  • 03
    Rectangle - rgrtom · 23h O 2 3 The American Civil Wars first real battle was at Bull Run on land belonging to a Mr. McLean. After that he said "Screw this, Ima move to the country and avoid this war". He moved to Appomattox Courthouse, VA where Lee surrendered to Grant..in the McLean's living room.
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  • 04
    Font - smokeyman992 · 22h The russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to death by firing squad and just as they were preparing the groups to be shot, a messenger came with a letter from the Tsar "forgiving" them and the sentence was changed to prison labor. He later went on to write some of the most influential novels of all time.
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  • 05
    Font - plopsaland - 20h · edited 5h O A Belgian businessman was instrumental to the Manhattan Project's success. Realizing uranium's importance, he shipped 1,200 tons of it to Staten Island. When Lieutenant Colonel Nichols contacted him, he simply responded: "You can have the ore now. It is in New York. I was waiting for your visit"
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  • 06
    Font - Jakkzzyy - 19h Da Vinci. The mad man designed a tank in the 1500s.
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  • 07
    Smile - OlympusJMoosecock · 20h Tsutomu Yamaguchi Survived both the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reads like a satirical time-traveler story where the protagonist screws up his dates.
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  • 08
    Font - pezz4545 - 13h The Germans spent a lot of time and money developing a magnetic sea mine that probably would have significantly reduced England's ability to stay in the war, except they dropped a single one of the mines accidentally on an English beach, and also failed to arm it so none of the booby traps were active and the British basically found out straight away how it worked and we're able to cheaply build magnetic mine sweepers
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  • 09
    Font - Two_Bears_HighFiving - 18h When Andrew Jackson's assassin attempted to shoot him, both of his flint lock pistols misfired. Andrew Jackson had to be restrained after almost beating the assassin to death with his cane. The two flintlocks were examined after the incident and found to be in good condition.
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  • 10
    Smile - pm_me_gnus · 15h There was a shipwreck in 1664, a shipwreck in 1785, and a shipwreck in 1820. Each had 1 survivor. Each survivor was named Hugh Wiliams.
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  • 11
    Font - SPOOFE - 19h Not really "an event" but more of a couple of subtle, though significant, influences: Eli Whitney, the guy who invented the cotton gin, helped cement cotton as a major cash-crop which drove even further demand for slaves. He, infamously, made no money off the development, as it was a simple and easily- copied machine, but cotton helped drive the economic growth of the South. Frustrated, he eventually abandoned efforts to profit off it and went into the industrial world, where
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  • 12
    Font - randyfromm · 20h Tesla's AC Polyphase System. One minute, we're in the stone age of electrical distribution, and the next, Buffalo, NY is being powered by the Alternating Current being generated at Niagra Falls by Telsa's genius system.
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  • 13
    Font - Zeppekki · 19h · edited 19h S During the war of 1812, seems like a time traveler with weather control capabilities started a freak tornado that effectively ended the British occupation of Washington. "More British soldiers were killed by the tornado's flying debris than by the guns of the American resistance."
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  • 14
    Font - Phosphoron - 21h · edited 15h Stanislav Petrov was a Soviet lieutenant known as "the man who saved the world." Tensions were riding between the Soviet Union and the United States, so on the 26th of September in 1983, he was on duty for a nuclear early-warning system. The system detected multiple missiles launched by the United States, but Petrov broke protocol, following his instincts by choosing not to report the danger to his higher-ups. The missiles turned out to be a false alarm, as h
    via AskReddit
  • 15
    Font - TuckerMouse · 16h Edgar Allen Poe writes about an event 40+years in the future. Basically, Poe writes about four people who are starving at sea, draw straws, and kill and eat the loser, cabin boy Richard Parker. 40 odd years later four people are adrift at sea in a lifeboat, one drinks seawater and goes into a coma. When they draw straws for who will be eaten, the coma guy gets the short straw in a development that surprises no one. And so the three other men kill and eat the cabin boy. R
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  • 16
    Font - sekscat - 21h a book that predicted the sinking of the Titanic Futility: The Wreck of the Titan
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  • 17
    Font - willmac28 - 18h - edited 5h e2 S Mendeleev, who created the periodic table, was struggling to order the elements in a specific order/pattern. He then was able to order them like we see today after having a 'dream' where all the elements fell into place, even leaving gaps for elements that hadn't yet been discovered. I know it's not exactly a major historical event, but it's been the foundation of science for over a century but when I first heard I thought it was a bit suspicious how it al
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  • 18
    Font - Namika · 23h When the Persians/Muslims were about to invade Europe, they were suddenly and inexplicably stopped as their invasion fleet fell to "Greek fire". Artists of the era made paintings showing a small number of "Greeks" destroying hundreds of ships with what clearly looks to be some sort of portable flamethrower. No one in antiquity had ever mentioned or used "Greek fire" before that event, and no one since has ever used it again. We still have no idea wtf it was, all we know is it
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  • 19
    Human body - snoweel · 19h If the time traveler can control weather, the "divine wind" that stopped the Mongol invasion of Japan.
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  • 20
    Font - Idkeepplaying - 12h Cyanide Gas Attack Thwarted in Tokyo Subway 20,000 people could have died but a worker found a burning gas bag in a toilet just before it mixed with another poisonous another gas bag - just in time - and put them out. That was in Shinjuku station. I was in that station that day, and that person might have saved my life. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-05- 06-mn-62968-story.html
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