Ordinary weather influences the course of history as much as large-scale military operations. Atmospheric phenomena change the plans of conquerors, destroy entire armadas and lead to revolutions. What can a person oppose to the endless power of natural disasters? Unfortunately, even today, with the incredible level of development of science and technology, we practically cannot influence the weather in any way, and history remembers many situations when the weather played its fatal role.
Blessing of the Romans
September 5, A. D. 394 the history of the Roman Empire could have ended. A huge army of barbarians had already defeated several legions: the last skirmish with the ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire, Theodosius I. A powerful storm intervened in the course of history. The storm tore weapons from the hands of the barbarians and literally blew them off the battlefield. Thanks to these vicissitudes of nature, Theodosius became the last person who managed to unite the Eastern and Western empires and ensure the final victory of Christianity in Rome.
Xerxes and the sea
This is just one of the times when the storm intervened in the course of history. In 480 BC. the Persian emperor, Xerxes the Great, sentenced the waters of the Dardanelles to 300 lashes: a sudden storm destroyed the pontoon bridge over which the conqueror was preparing to transport his army to Greece. If not for the storm, the history of the development of the ancient world would have taken a completely different path.
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Great armada
Xerxes was not the only conqueror whose plans were ruined by the storm. When Philip II sent his great armada against England in 1588, summer storms delayed the invasion by two months, allowing the British to prepare for battle. The following storms turned Phillip's defeat into a disaster: dozens of ships and hundreds of thousands of people died in the depths of the sea. Elizabeth I said on this occasion: "The breath of God scattered our enemies."
Divine wind
What the Japanese call kamikaze, the divine wind, twice saved the country from being captured by the descendants of Genghis Khan. The invasion fleets were destroyed by storms in 1274 and 1281 - and if the Mongols had captured Japan, there would have been no Portuguese or Spanish contact with this country.
Breath of revolution
The devastating storms and hurricanes that swept across France on July 13, 1788 destroyed virtually all of the country's food reserves and devastated fields. The decline in tax revenues and the onset of famine forced Louis XVI to assemble the States General, the French equivalent of parliament. The poor king did not know that this was laying the foundation for a future revolution.
The Second World War
During World War II, all participants spent huge resources on weather forecasting. In England, for example, there was the Thunderstorm Location Unit, a secret service whose task was to monitor weather conditions during operations of extreme importance. However, even modern technology did not help the Allied fleets caught by typhoons in the Philippines in 1944 and off Okinawa in 1945.
Hostage death
Thirty-five years later, the inconsistent weather cost the world another international crisis. In 1980, an attempt to rescue American hostages from Iran ended in failure: a sudden storm scattered helicopters. Due to the death of the hostages, the level of tension in Soviet-American relations rose again.