The Most important event of the Past Millenium?

Which of these do you think was the most important event of the 2nd Millenium?

  • The Battle of Hastings

    Votes: 5 4.1%
  • The Battle of Manzikert

    Votes: 5 4.1%
  • Pope Gregory establishing supremacy over the H.R.E

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The conquests of Genghis Khan

    Votes: 15 12.2%
  • The Black Death of 1347

    Votes: 18 14.6%
  • The discovery of gunpowder

    Votes: 7 5.7%
  • Columbus' discovery of the New World

    Votes: 23 18.7%
  • Martin Luther founding Protestantism

    Votes: 8 6.5%
  • Henry VIII's Break with Rome

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Thirty Years War

    Votes: 4 3.3%
  • The Glorious Revolution

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • The American Revolution

    Votes: 11 8.9%
  • The French Revolution

    Votes: 9 7.3%
  • The Battle of Waterloo

    Votes: 1 0.8%
  • The opening of the first railway

    Votes: 2 1.6%
  • The Scramble for Africa

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand

    Votes: 12 9.8%
  • Operation Barbarossa

    Votes: 2 1.6%
  • The Final Solution

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The Fall of the Shah of Iran

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    123
I'd go with Genghis Khan. As the Black Plague was spread by his empire, I consider him indirectly responsible for it. The two combined destroyed the old order worldwide and initiated massive changes on almost every continent.
 
Your missing one of the most important events in European History a little thing called the fall of Constantinople.

The Fall of Constantinople did little apart from confirm the inevitable final fall of the Roman Empire, the real death blow came at Manzikert, which IS on the list. Manzikert in turn triggered a chain of events that led to the Fourth Crusade, where the empire's heart was ripped out, leaving final collapse almost unavoidable. The surprising thing about the Fall of Constantinople is probably that it happened so late.
 

perfectgeneral

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Printing with movable type

Movable Type 1040 ad
Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced what is generally regarded as an independent invention of movable type in Europe (see printing press), along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead, tin and antimony—the same components still used today.

I'm amazed that this has to be a write-in (sorry).
 

perfectgeneral

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Black Death because it marks the shift from Dark Ages into the Renaissance which led to the Enlightenment

The 'Dark' ages were when the Arabs in Spain knew more than the rest of Europe. The 'Renaissance' was a small scrap of that knowledge being taken to Italy while most was burnt in the 'Christian' reconquest of Spain. The Enlightenment came from widespread printing.
 
None of these. I would choose Gutenberg's invention of the printing press as the defining moment of the past millenium, being as it caused the Renaissance, the Scientific Method, Protestantism & the Reformation, etc.

As a runner-up, I would pick the sacking of Constantinople in 1204, which was far more significant than the Battle of Manzikert as it effectively marked the end of the supremacy of the Roman Empire in Western civilization and led to the ERM becoming little more than another fiefdom. Manzikert could be recovered from, and very nearly was - the sacking of Constantinople could not be. Some of the ruin resulting from it wasn't fixed until well into the Osman period, for Christ's sake!

As it is, I abstain vocally, but will vote for Genghis Khan's conquests, for their effect of utterly and permanently annihilating the possibility of Islamic Civilization reigning ascendant.
 
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Black Death because it marks the shift from Dark Ages into the Renaissance which led to the Enlightenment

The Black Death was only part of the reason for the shift. The real cause was the fall of the old church and feudal system and the rise of monarchies...which was also helped by the rise of towns, a three field system, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War...just to name a few
 

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I do not mean the Fall of Constantinople in the sense of geographical control, but the utter shock it sent across the Western World. It is one of the defining moments, hell it is the beginning of the Emergence of Western European Civilizartions
 
The Black Death was only part of the reason for the shift. The real cause was the fall of the old church and feudal system and the rise of monarchies...which was also helped by the rise of towns, a three field system, the Great Schism, and the Hundred Years War...just to name a few

These were all spurred on by the Black Death. The Black Death created a labor shortage. Those who survived found themselves having a better bargaining power with their Lords. The size of the urban middle class started growing definitively after the Black Death now that labor was more powerful and brought more wealth to the under class.

The old system depended upon a religious justification. Since everyone, King or slave, lord or serf, priest or layman, was cut down equally by the plague, it undermined the religious justifications for the hierarchy of the day. Old taboos and norms died when what people thought was the "Scourge of God" cut down religious and temporal leaders.

The seeds of doubt in the Catholic church were planted. The Renaissance began, with more people trusting reason over faith. Modern medicine, science and astronomy found their infancy in the quest to understand this cataclysm. The new urban areas that rose up with rising middle class strengthened kings and created the modern nation-state.

The Black Death is absolutely essential for all that you listened to happen as it did.
 
I was torn between black death and columbus. But came down on the side of black death - because likely without black death there would not have been columbus.
 
I do not mean the Fall of Constantinople in the sense of geographical control, but the utter shock it sent across the Western World. It is one of the defining moments, hell it is the beginning of the Emergence of Western European Civilizartions

Hardly, Western Europe had hosted a flourishing and advanced native culture since the beginning of the second millenium at the very latest, arguably even earlier.
 
I voted for the discovery of the new world, which seems obvious to me, and I am surprised it did not get a higher vote total.

While one would want to be hesitant to put too many events from the 20th century in this list because it may be too early to judge their true importance, I was somewhat suprised that the following technologically-related events were not on the list:

The invention of the airplane
The harnessing of atomic power
The moon landing

I also agree the printing press should have been on the list
 
1420's, when the Confucian bureaucrats convince the Ming Emperor to terminate their global exploration missions. Then, decades later, Columbus steps off his boat into a New World...
 
Personally I went for 1066 and all thatfor the following reasons;

1. English being the dominant language which was created by the fussion of after the battle.

2. I'm British/English and it's the largest shift for us in the last Milenium

3. So many others on this list can be seen to be derived from Hastings... alhotugh controversial you could, teniously argue that the Glorious, American and French revolutions all happend becuase of hastings... but its very tenious:eek:

I'm also surprised that the printing press is not on the list, but also the telgraph and maybe, probably to early to tell, the internet... they all revolutionised the spread of knowledge...

As for the splitting of the atom, 'heavier than air' fight etc... although these have had a great impact, the 'ripples' or 'butterfiles' are still not pronounced enough yet to be considered with earlier things like Hastings, the French Revolution or even the The Assassination of Franz Ferdinan, after all the 'recent', in terms of a milenium, has had more time to create 'butterfiles' than the atom....

After all the reason why many people chose early POD's in their writing is that you can make up a totally different world from a different Hastings, but less so from any battle in the second Iraq war...
 
Eurocentric, I was tied between the discovery of America (as a placeholder for the whole age of discovery) and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (which sparked WWI and other stuff in the longer run :rolleyes:) and chose the latter.

I admit I just forgot about the printing press :eek:

Then thinking beyond Europe my mind came across the Hai jin: the chinese ban on maritime activities by the Ming Dynasty in the 15th century (and continued by the Quing until european imperialism happened upon them) which turned the whole country isolationist.
 
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