After "the butterfly effect", "the pangolin effect"? It is still too early to say with certainty that the global Covid-19 pandemic was caused by a customer in the Wuhan animal market who allegedly encountered an infected pangolin or bat.
“The market has played a role, that's clear. But what role? We don't know if it was the source, the amplification factor or if it was just a coincidence that some cases were detected on and around these meat stalls, "said Dr. Peter Ben on May 8. Embarek, food safety expert at the World Health Organization (WHO). One thing is certain: a mundane situation in an average city in the center of China with the name so far little known, provoked a chain reaction with planetary consequences.
VIDEO. Could the pangolin have transmitted the coronavirus to humans?
A phenomenon reminiscent of the famous "butterfly effect", summarized in 1972 by the American meteorologist Edward Lorenz (1917-2008) in one question: "Can the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil cause a tornado in Texas? Originally, this expression means that a tiny modification of a mathematical variable can lead to unpredictable long-term results. It has become a metaphor for everyday life or history, an image to say that "little things, immense damage", as Bénabar sings in "The Butterfly Effect" (2008).
And it wasn't just the pangolin. Showers that participated in Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, up to the blunder of a spokesperson leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, passing through the ecological catastrophe caused by the importation from 24 rabbits in Australia in 1859, here are five “small” events that ended up changing the face of the world.
Indonesian volcano defeats Napoleon in Waterloo
Victor Hugo is convinced of this: “A few drops of water more or less made Napoleon tilt. For Waterloo to be the end of Austerlitz, providence needed only a little rain, and a cloud crossing the sky against the seasons was enough for the collapse of a world, "writes l author in Les Misérables. On June 18, 1815, French troops confronted those of the Duke of Wellington from England in Waterloo, Belgium. The day before, a violent thunderstorm broke out and torrential rains soaked the ground. By notably preventing cavalry and artillery from moving, this flooded battlefield participates in Bonaparte's most bitter defeat. He even signs the fall of the empire and puts a stop to his conquest of Europe.
Newsletter - The essentials of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le ParisienI'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to allow you to receive our news and commercial offers. Find out more
“Napoleon could have won […] if the ground had been dry, write historians Dennis Wheeler and Gaston Demarée, in 2006. There are convincing arguments supporting the idea that the weather, especially that of the night before the battle , was a determining factor in its outcome. "
Damn rain! Especially since, according to recent work, it would have been caused by a volcano located in present-day Indonesia, 12,000 kilometers from Belgium! In the scientific journal “Geology”, in August 2018, Matthew Genge, of the Imperial College of London, explains that the ashes propelled into the atmosphere by volcanic explosions reach much higher heights than previously thought. there, and cause effects on the climate in the short and medium term. He therefore estimates that the eruption of Mount Tambora, on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa would be at the origin of the heavy downpours and the freezing temperatures observed in Europe in the summer of 1815. In particular in Waterloo.
English rabbits ravage Australia
Thomas Austin had a very bad idea when he introduced rabbits to Australian soil. In 1859, this British colonist, a hunting enthusiast, brought twelve couples of these long-eared animals from England to the state of New South Wales. After the fire in their enclosure, they will escape and devastate the whole country. Without natural predators, the 24 rabbits of Thomas Austin reproduce and progress at an average speed of 110 kilometers per year, devouring all the vegetation within their reach. As a result, there were 600 million in the 1910s. They colonized 60% of the territory, to the detriment of other species, and caused a serious agricultural and ecological crisis.
To stem this invasion, the Australian authorities will try everything: build 3000 km of fences, introduce foxes, import the Spanish flea ... In the 1950s, the introduction of a virus, myxomatosis, seems to solve the problem, but five years later, rabbits have become resistant to it. Despite the spread of a new virus, in 2017 Australia still numbers 200 million today, causing damage estimated at more than 120 million euros per year, in the agricultural and horticultural sectors alone . What is expensive hunting.
Ignored letter triggers Vietnam War
In 1919, Nguyen Ai Quoc was a 29-year-old Vietnamese activist who emigrated to France. At the Paris Peace Conference, at the end of which the Treaty of Versailles will be signed, and the League of Nations (future UN) created, he writes with four comrades a manifesto for the American president, Woodrow Wilson, asking him to support the independence of Indochina, a French colony. The letter, addressed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing, remains unanswered.
The young nationalist then engages in revolutionary communism. Fifty-six years later, the war between South Vietnam, supported by the United States, and the troops of Nguyen Ai Quo, now Ho Chi Minh, claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than 1 million Vietnamese soldiers .
Missing key sinks the “Titanic”
On the night of April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg southeast of Newfoundland, off Canada, during its inaugural crossing between the British port of Southampton and New York in the United States. The liner, reputed to be unsinkable, sinks in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic and 1,500 passengers perish. A single pair of binoculars might have avoided the sinking, but it was locked up. The fault of officer David Blair, 37.
"A few days before the Titanic's departure, Mr. Blair had to leave the ship, a decision that probably saved his life," said Alan Aldridge, of the house of Henry Aldridge & Son during the auction of the famous key, in 2007. But, in his haste, he took the key and did not give it to his replacement, Charles Lightoller. He did not realize this until after the departure of the liner and kept it as a souvenir. "
If Lightoller had the key, he probably could have accessed binoculars and saved the Titanic. Even if the causes of the shipwreck are many, this oversight may have precipitated it. During the 1912 American investigation, Frederick Fleet, one of the boat's lookouts, said that binoculars would have made it possible to see and avoid the iceberg.
Three words precipitate the fall of the Berlin Wall
This is called making a dumpling. When he began his press conference on November 9, 1989, the spokesman for the East German government, Günter Schabowski, did not imagine that three unfortunate words would lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall a few hours later. Member of the United Socialist Party of Germany, which then heads the GDR, he announces at 6:57 pm, at the end of the conference, that a new law allows East Germans to travel freely.
" From when ? Asked a West German journalist. Caught off guard and ill-prepared by his superiors, Schabowski replied: "As far as I know ... immediately, without delay! As soon as these three words were spoken, Berliners flocked en masse to the checkpoints between the east and the west of the city.
At 11:30 p.m., border guards can no longer contain the crowd, and the authorities give orders to open the doors. During the night and the following days, thousands of East Germans crossed the wall that had divided Berlin for more than twenty-eight years, paving the way for the reunification of Germany a year later.
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/MB5CRNBM3ZA6POIYEWP5W3RXHQ.jpg)
