There have been many turning points in human history, at which juncture the whole future of the modern world could have easily changed. Here are four points which helped shape the world we live in, and without which the lives we live today would be very different.

1) Henry VIII divorcing Catherine of Aragon

If you live in the English speaking world chances are you’ve heard of the expression ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived’ at some point, well this little rhyme sums up the fact that Henry was a bit of a lech, as well as highly impatient for a male heir to the throne. Quite why this is such an important event, and why it is number one on this list, is the fact that if Henry had not divorced Catherine, and thus broken with the church of Rome, the likelihood is that England, and by extension Britain, would probably not have risen to become the pre-eminent global power in the 18th and 19th centuries. Chances are the French, Spanish, and potentially the Dutch would all have carved out bigger empires in North America, Africa, and Asia, and English would certainly not have become the language of commerce.
The effect of taking England out of the Pope’s domain essentially brought England to loggerheads with the other Catholic powers in Europe, and over the course of the next 200 years anti-Catholic sentiment drove from the Armada, whose defeat signalled England’s rise as a naval power, then the establishment of the American colonies by protesting puritans, and then finally the crushing of the Catholic French the world over in the war of the Spanish Succession which secured British military might in the 18th Century, just in time for global colonisation to begin. So, thanks to a lecherous monarch, you are able to communicate with pretty much two thirds of the rest of the planet who are native or second language English speakers, not bad for a third generation Welshman.

2) Hitler is rejected by the Vienna Academy of Arts

In around 1908 a struggling Austrian painter living in Vienna was formally rejected by the Academy of Arts in Vienna for a second time, ran out of money, and ended up in a homeless shelter. 37 years and two world wars later this same man was burning in a pit in Berlin, having just shot himself and his new wife. This man of course if Adolf Hitler, and quite how he came to nearly rule the world is one of the ironies of modern history. Much of what we now take for granted in the West was firmly established by the events of the war he provoked in 1939-1945, as the rules of international law, the sweeping away of the old colonial order, and much else besides was set in motion by his desires and predilections. Much has been written about Hitler’s life, and it is more than possible that had he been accepted into the Academy his life would probably have gone in a completely different direction.
While it would be easy to blame the examiners of the Academy for what was to follow, it is worth pointing out that while Hitler was not a bad painter, he lacked the flare they were clearly looking for,  and as such he would have struggled regardless. This is one of those big what if moments in recent history, and while it is very easy to suggest alternatives the fact remains that the conflicts he caused brought the modern world into being, and if they had not happened events like the moon landings, break up of the colonial Empires, rise (and fall) of the Soviets and Americans, as well as a whole host of technological advancements would not have been achieved in the time frame they were. In essence it is fair to assume that had the board accepted Herr Hitler the modern world would have been a very different place.

3) Bill Gates drops out of Harvard

In an age of fame, fashion, and celeb culture, one man came to tower everyone else as the richest man on the planet. Not a prince, not old money, or even a financial whiz kid, rather a bespectacled computer programmer from Seattle rose from obscurity to build one of the leviathans of the modern age Microsoft. Together with his friends Paul Allen and Steve Ballmer Bill Gates created a software company that with a lot of luck, cunning, and business savy was able to come to almost completely dominate the home computing operating system market for nearly 25 years with various incarnations of Windows.  Say what you like about Microsoft, but it is highly arguable that had Bill Gates opted to stay at Harvard in 1977 to finish his studies the modern computing market would be far more fragmented and possibly less accessible to the masses.
The near total dominance of Windows as an operating stems from an agreement Gates signed with IBM in the mid-1980′s which put Microsoft software on all new home computers, thus enabling them to in effect have a reach far beyond any of their competitors. The other personal computers around at the time, like Apples and Atari’s, were unable to compete with the reach of IBM, and almost all of Microsoft’s competitors folded by the mid-1990′s. Of course Microsoft has been heavily fined for anti-trust breaches, but the one major impact they have had on the computer market is to provide the same operating software across nearly the entire market, which has meant software firms only have to worry about one universal operating system when programming. This in turn has kept the relative cost of computing low, though with the advent of Google and Linux the Microsoft dominance is slowly fading. Of course Apple have always been there, but it is fair to say that if Microsoft had not been there from the start of the home computing revolution it is very possible that the cost of computing would have been much higher for a longer period of time, and the implications for the internet would have been that it would have taken far longer for computing to become as easily as accessible as it has. So you can thank a  university drop out from the rain capital of America for enabling you to use the computer in the way you do.

4) The death of Annie Darwin

In 1859 Charles Darwin rocked Britain, and eventually the rest of the world, with the publication of On Origin of Species. In one book he neatly presented the origin of life without the need for a creator, and unleashed the hornets nest of religion v science which has been raging ever since. Probably the one singular event that drove Darwin from his religious roots, and down the path that ultimately gave flesh to the bones of evolutionary theory, was the unfortunate death of his beloved first daughter Annie of scarlet fever in 1851. Her death caused him to have a fundamental rethink of his personal faith, which had already come under scrutiny both from his wife and his experiences about HMS Beagle on his trip round the world in the 1830′s. It was this shift away from the religious, and the opening his mind to the world around him, that allowed him the space to consider the evolutionary principles, and eventually put pen to paper. His rage the creator for the death of his daughter finally brought home to him the futility of religion, and in particular the Christian creed.
Without Darwin evolution would have emerged in some form in the latter half of the 19th century, but it probably would have had a far harder fight on it’s hands without Darwin and his friends fighting the theory’s corner. In many respects the science we know today, has it’s fundamental roots in the ability of scientists to think outside of the religious box, and while bad thinks have been done in the name of evolution, and a theory it has had the most profound and overly positive effect on the modern world by ridding us of the scourge of religious intolerance and arbitrary laws based on tribal customs.