What's the biggest beef to erupt from the smallest seed?

I like the genre of stories/anecdotes/semi-bullshit where history turned on something inconsequential like 7of9 from star trek's weird scandal of apparently humping her own husband led him to lose his seat, leading to obama's presidency, or some comedian's ghost-written jokes for obama roasting trump leading to the trump presidency. What's your favorite? Have you ever been the unwitting fulcrum on which the axis of history turned?

i just shouted something out of my car once

maybe not what you're looking for but it still blows my mind that Richard Branson's whole Virgin empire stemmed from the fact that he was the only guy interested in signing Mike Oldfield, and that Tubular Bells somehow became one of the best-selling albums in history. like that thing would struggle to sell 500 copies today

That was a beefy soundtrack to a beefy movie

I know there was more going on behind the scenes, but what about President Kennedy deciding to stay at Bing Crosby's house during a 1962 visit to California instead of at Frank Sinatra's house, leading to Sinatra turning against the Kennedys, then later supporting Ronald Reagan for the California Governorship, then later becoming a full-blown Republican against all his apparent principles.

but being Chairman of the Beef is totally in character!

also tough to beat some nobody named Archduke Ferdinand getting wasted

the cow in chicago that kicked over the lantern

Vordul getting sonned—>> the great North American famine of 2065

I always think of the War of The Stray Dog, when a Greek soldier ran after his dog which had strayed across the border into Bulgaria. Bulgaria opens fire, and after a couple of back and forths, more than 50 people are dead.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_at_Petrich

I am not sure if we're giving any creedence to the "lab leak" theory but if some random worker accidentally set off the most significant global pandemic in 100 years that would be pretty fucked up. that would be a pretty crazy secret to have to keep like you obviously couldn't tell anybody

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_War

lol boring

7of9 from star trek's weird scandal of apparently humping her own husband

to be clear, the scandal was that he tried to make her have sex in public against her wishes

when the monolith told the monkey man to pick up a bone and attack the other monkey man tribe

Eternal question as to whether the performance of La muette de Portici actually set off the 1830 Belgian revolution or if it was just the "go" signal to kick it off.

I am not sure if we're giving any creedence to the "lab leak" theory but if some random worker accidentally set off the most significant global pandemic in 100 years that would be pretty fucked up. that would be a pretty crazy secret to have to keep like you obviously couldn't tell anybody

Being some cunt who was determined to eat a pangolin or raccoon dog and ending up with millions dead is just as bad.

Over the weekend of 23-24 November 1962 Jack Ruby decided to close his strip club as a mark of respect for John F Kennedy, who had been killed on the Friday. This meant that one of his employees, Karen Carlin, found herself short of money - she was expecting to work over that weekend. So on the Sunday Ruby popped off to his local Western Union to wire her some cash, as a favour.

While there he spotted a crowd outside Dallas City Hall, so he ran over to have a look and managed to sneak up the exit ramp just as Lee Harvey Oswald was being transferred to a police van, at which point he shot him dead. It was an incredibly tenuous chain of events, but if Oswald had never been murdered the JFK conspiracy industry would have fizzled out, or at the very least taken a different course.

And so if JFK had visited Dallas earlier in the week, or if Jack Ruby had woken up slightly earlier or later on 24 November, there wouldn't have been a JFK conspiracy industry as we know it. Oswald planned the killing in advance, but everything that happened afterwards was just incredibly bad luck. The knock-on effects would have been devastating for baby boomers. Oliver Stone would nowadays be remembered as the baby boomer film director who did The Doors in 1991 and then retired, having said everything he wanted to say. Literally every American man who lived during the 1970s and 1980s would have spent their entire adult lives standing at the foot of their bed, not moving, like a broken NPC in Oblivion. Specifically Rimalus Bruiant. That's who I was thinking of. Periodically their limbs would spasm for Ronald Reagan, but their bodies would remain motionless otherwise.

There would have been no Challenger disaster, and as a consequence my generation would have had a happy, care-free 1980s. Colin Baker would not have been Doctor Who. I could go on.

yerra and i just happened to walk into a supermacs on the way home too at which point i ate a chicken sandwich meal with a strawberry shake

otm

i ate a chicken sandwich meal with a strawberry shake

the butterfly effect

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_600,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.substack.com%2Fmedia%2FFD4mdMjXoAMCzXf.jpg