Dive into a riveting exploration of pivotal moments that shaped American history. From wartime decisions to political scandals, we uncover the mistakes that dramatically altered the course of the nation's trajectory and left an indelible mark on global events.
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00:00It took about 45 seconds from the time the bomb left the airplane until it exploded.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're breaking down the actions that unintentionally set
00:11the wheels of American history into motion.
00:14Eisenhower finally came to the view, reluctantly, that Castro was an adversary and a danger.
00:24Prohibition
00:25Looking back on it now, it's impossible to comprehend how the U.S. government thought
00:50that a ban on alcohol would be met with no resistance.
00:53The Eighteenth Amendment, ratified in January 1919, was proposed as a way to cure societal
00:59ills and somehow stimulate the economy.
01:02The amendment thus outlawed the production, transport, and sale of intoxicating liquors
01:07such as wine and beer.
01:09It could start with simple moral suasion, and of course that was very effective.
01:13But also they had newspapers.
01:15They had illustrations.
01:20They had many, many forms of reaching the public.
01:24They had handbills.
01:25They had posters.
01:28They had cartoonists who worked exclusively for prohibitionists.
01:33Almost immediately, an alcohol black market was established, and those willing to bootleg
01:38the stuff not only profited, but essentially became folk heroes in the process.
01:42Eventually, in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made good on his promise to end
01:48prohibition and restore the desperately needed tax dollars from alcohol sales as a means
01:53of combating the Great Depression.
01:55Prohibition claimed that it would alter America in such ways that all sorts of reforms and
02:01social benefits would accrue, and they didn't.
02:06Prohibition proved that you can't legislate morality.
02:09It is the only amendment to the U.S. Constitution that tried to control people's behavior and
02:15tell them you can't do this.
02:18At this time, it was necessary for the Mexicans to negotiate because they were afraid of losing
02:29all of their territory, or even more territory than that already occupied in the North.
02:35The relatively short-lived Mexican-American War belied its length to generate important
02:40ripple effects over U.S. history.
02:42The war stemmed from tensions over the 1845 American annexation of Texas, and President
02:48James K. Polk's failed attempts to buy the desired territory.
02:52The 1848 signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo saw Mexico ceding California, Nevada,
02:59Utah, and more to the United States, for which Mexico was paid $15 million.
03:05When the war between Mexico and the United States was over, it left a profound frustration
03:10among the Mexican people because common people, everyday citizens, had seen their neighbors,
03:19their brothers, and ordinary soldiers die in a war that, for all the bloodshed, had
03:27resulted in the loss of half of Mexico's territory.
03:31While this all sounds diplomatic enough, unforeseen consequences most prominently included political
03:36infighting over whether the new territory would be slave states or free states.
03:41These debates contributed to the growing tensions between the American North and South, and
03:46played a major role in the onset of the American Civil War.
03:49There were others who shared Grant's opinion that the United States had been at fault.
03:55And if not at fault, that it did not fully live up to its ideology as expressed in the
04:06noblest of the American writings on democracy and freedom.
04:12The Great Depression.
04:13It was produced, the Great Depression was produced by a failure of government, by a
04:19failure of monetary policy.
04:21It was produced by a failure of the Federal Reserve System to act in accordance with the
04:26intentions of those who established it.
04:28The tragedy of World War I was quickly offset by the indulgence of the Roaring Twenties.
04:34During this prosperous period, the United States became the world's richest country.
04:38Its wartime economy was bolstered by victorious soldiers rejoining the workforce and a consumer
04:44goods boom, among other factors.
04:46Of course, as the old saying goes, all good things must come to an end.
04:51The facts were that from 1929 to 1933, the total quantity of money in the United States,
05:00the amount of currency, the amount of bank deposits, what Mr. Eccles referred to as M2,
05:07that total amount of money declined by one third.
05:10While the Depression's exact causes are still hotly debated by historians and economists,
05:15the 1963 book A Monetary History of the United States argues that the Federal Reserve's iron
05:21grip on the money supply and subsequent refusal to lend brought the Roaring Twenties to a
05:27screeching halt.
05:28There just simply wasn't enough money to go around.
05:32And why did the quantity of money decline?
05:35It declined because the Federal Reserve System failed to prevent the decline.
05:40The Federal Reserve System could have prevented the decline at all times.
05:44There never was a moment during that period when the Federal Reserve did not have the
05:48power to prevent the decline in the quantity of money.
05:51My Lai Massacre.
05:52A South Vietnamese official, the military chief of Quang Ngai province, today denied
05:57charges that American soldiers on the ground executed several hundred villagers in March
06:02of 1968.
06:04The province chief said the civilians died in air and artillery strikes that leveled
06:09the village after a number of Americans had been killed there by Viet Cong snipers.
06:13It probably goes without saying that the Vietnam War remains one of the most historically unpopular
06:18war efforts of all time.
06:20Beginning as a Cold War proxy between Soviet-supported North Vietnam and the American-supported South,
06:26the U.S. put soldiers' boots on the ground from 1965 until a humiliating 1973 withdrawal.
06:33The villagers' version of the incident was given by survivors yesterday.
06:37They said a patrol of 100 Americans stormed into the hamlet, drove all the residents out
06:42of their huts, then opened fire with automatic weapons.
06:46Two American soldiers, one an officer, the other an enlisted man, are being held in this
06:51country in connection with the case, but neither has been brought to trial.
06:55In those eight years, it's inarguable that the U.S.'s most shameful moment was the
06:59March 1968 My Lai Massacre, in which American forces brutally murdered as many as 504 civilians,
07:07mostly women, children, and the elderly.
07:10Despite an attempted cover-up by the U.S. Army, news of the senseless killings reached
07:14the public in November 1969, resulting in massive backlash against U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
07:21I wanted to see action taken.
07:22I wanted to see the people who are responsible arrested.
07:27I think that the people who are primarily responsible have not been arrested.
07:31I think the people who are being arrested now are merely the pawns of the game.
07:34They're the people who, unfortunately, lack the presence of mind to refuse to execute this order.
07:42George Washington's crossing of the Delaware River.
07:45The key is absolute secrecy.
07:50We do not really have enough men for the task, but we have no choice.
07:56Coordinate with Griffin and attack on as many of their posts as possible.
08:01The more confusion we can spread, the better.
08:04Some of the entries in our video today have been revealed as mistakes in a historical context.
08:09However, in the case of the Founding Fathers' surprise military operation,
08:13the attack was only possible because of a Hessian mistake.
08:16Hessians were German soldiers who worked on behalf of the British Army,
08:20and Johann Rahl was a colonel stationed in Trenton, New Jersey.
08:23We don't need trenches or fortifications.
08:26The rebel soldiers, those country clowns, they're almost naked, dying of cold,
08:32have no provisions, no blankets.
08:34Let them come.
08:36We shall welcome them with our bayonets.
08:38The overconfident Rahl failed to heed the word of a British spy
08:42who had a foreknowledge of Washington's planned attack,
08:44dismissing the Americans' wartime capabilities.
08:47Ultimately, Washington's troops emerged victorious in the Battle of Trenton,
08:51and Rahl soon died of injuries sustained during the fight.
08:55Well, in military terms, it isn't a big deal.
08:59You lost a thousand Germans, but you can always go hire another thousand Germans.
09:04But it's extremely important on the American side.
09:08As the news spreads to all the colonies,
09:10there is a feeling that it may indeed be possible to reverse the course of this war.
09:16Trail of tears.
09:18The promises of the United States government were that if the Cherokees,
09:23the Creeks, the Choctaws, the Seminoles, the Chickasaws,
09:26could somehow assimilate ways of living that were more like their white neighbors,
09:36that they could be the political and social equal.
09:42Whether you categorize the forced displacement of the quote-unquote five civilized tribes
09:47as Native American genocide or an example of ethnic cleansing,
09:51it's impossible to deny that the Trail of Tears
09:54stands as one of the United States' most shameful chapters.
09:57Taking place over the course of two decades in the first half of the 19th century,
10:02the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole nations
10:06were systematically removed from their ancestral homelands
10:10in favor of government-approved Indian territory.
10:13Passed as a result of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, approved by President Andrew Jackson,
10:19the displacement saw 60,000 people uprooted,
10:22with as many as nearly 17,000 dying of disease and starvation along the way.
10:27The state of Georgia basically said to its citizens, this land is yours.
10:34They divided up with a land lottery and basically told their people to have at it.
10:44Bay of Pigs invasion.
10:46There is a limit to what the United States in self-respect can endure.
10:51That limit has now been reached.
10:53I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear
10:56that this government will not hesitate in meeting its primary obligations,
11:02which are the security of our nation.
11:04A defining moment of John F. Kennedy's all-too-short presidency,
11:08this now legendary blunder set the stage for relations between Cuba, the U.S.,
11:12and the future Russia for decades to come.
11:15Following the Cuban Revolution, as led by the revolutionary Fidel Castro,
11:19the Bay of Pigs invasion was an effort by the U.S. government to remove Castro from power,
11:24as well as his socialist government.
11:26The invaders had to hold a small piece of territory for a couple of days.
11:31Then the United States would recognize them
11:34as the new provisional democratic government of Cuba.
11:38This new government of Cuba would immediately call upon the President
11:41of the United States to give them military support.
11:44Once the invasion was discovered by the greater international community,
11:48the faltering military operation was swiftly defeated
11:51by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces.
11:53The painfully public fallout from the Bay of Pigs incident predictably soured relations
11:58between the U.S. and Cuba and drove the latter into the arms of the Soviet Union.
12:02The Cubans were desperate to find some way to get the Soviet Union
12:06to guarantee their survival and their independence.
12:10Accepting Soviet missiles, for them, seemed like a guarantee.
12:14Watergate scandal.
12:15I have never obstructed justice.
12:18And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life,
12:23that I welcome this kind of examination, because people have got to know whether
12:27or not their president is a crook.
12:29Well, I'm not a crook.
12:30I've earned everything I've got.
12:33Richard Nixon openly aspired to the presidency for years after serving
12:37as vice president, even weighing early retirement following humiliating losses
12:41in the 1960 U.S. presidential election and 1962 California gubernatorial election.
12:47However, his second term in office was cut short
12:50in 1974 following the explosive revelations of the damaging Watergate scandal.
12:56The Democratic National Committee is trying to solve a spy mystery.
12:59It began before dawn Saturday when five intruders were captured by police inside the offices
13:04of the committee in Washington.
13:06The five men carried cameras and apparently had planted electronic bugs.
13:10One of them had several crisp new $100 bills in his pocket.
13:13The work of Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward determined
13:18that Nixon had authorized the planting of illegal wiretaps
13:21at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C.
13:25The unveiling of the vast conspiracy led Nixon to become the only U.S. president
13:30to resign from his post.
13:32I have never been a quitter.
13:35To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body.
13:43But as president, I must put the interests of America first.
13:50America needs a full-time president and a full-time Congress, particularly at this time
13:58with problems we face at home and abroad.
14:01Ignoring Pearl Harbor warning signs.
14:03On December 7, 1941, Japan, like its infamous Axis partners,
14:08struck first and declared war afterwards.
14:11Costly to our Navy was the loss of war vessels, airplanes, and equipment.
14:16But more costly to Japan was the effectiveness of its foul attack
14:20in immediately unifying America in its determination to fight and win the war thrust upon it.
14:25While most historians caution against falling too deeply
14:28into a Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory rabbit hole, there is evidence to suggest
14:33that the U.S. government could have taken possible threats more seriously.
14:37Yugoslavian businessman Dosko Popov worked as a double agent for the XX Committee of MI5
14:43and for the German Abwehr.
14:46The latter sent Popov on an American work trip with a questionnaire
14:50about Hawaiian military facilities with specific questions about Pearl Harbor.
14:54It just so happens the Germans were doing a little bit of work for the Japanese.
14:58The Japanese had asked the Germans to collect some data.
15:02The Americans had the equipment to actually magnify the microdot
15:08and to read the questionnaire.
15:10And wouldn't you know, the questionnaire included questions about Pearl Harbor.
15:15FBI head J. Edgar Hoover dismissed Popov's claims,
15:19and it should be noted that the questions did not specifically allude to the possibility of such an air attack.
15:24However, it seems fair to say that Hoover could have taken Popov's warnings more seriously.
15:30First to feel the sting of Japanese steel are the USS Oklahoma and Utah,
15:34the latter a 33-year-old target ship.
15:37Accurate hits by the enemy bombers make short work of these two naval bulwarks.
15:42Now, with their keels practically out of water,
15:44they lie helpless wrecks and a sad reminder of cowardly strategy.
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16:04Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
16:06I instantly recognized it as an American plane,
16:11as no Japanese aircraft could fly at that altitude at the time.
16:17It was just one plane, so I assumed that it was passing by as usual.
16:21Like perhaps no other moment in American history,
16:24the August 1945 atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
16:29forced the world to stand back in stunned silence and take notice.
16:34The only ever usage of nuclear weapons in combat,
16:37the strikes almost immediately resulted in Japanese surrender
16:40and ended World War II in just under a month.
16:43Altogether, up to nearly 250,000 were killed,
16:47almost all of them civilians,
16:49from radiation poisoning and other effects brought on by the detonations.
16:53While some have declared that the bombings were necessary to end the war,
16:57detractors have argued that the war was already on track for an Allied victory
17:01and that they were overkill.
17:03I think when you play a meaningful part
17:07in bringing about the death of over 100,000 people
17:12and the injury of a comparable number,
17:15you naturally don't think of that
17:22with ease.
17:23Are there any historical blunders we missed?
17:26Be sure to let us know in the comments below.
17:28Therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.
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