I have a mathematical mind. Probabilities and statistical models regularly run through my head. So much of the world is ordered and predictable if you just break down the math and science. Even human behavior is somewhat predictable if you look at known principles of psychology. However, as I read and study, there’s one area where all the models seem to break down — history. I’m constantly amazed at the small twists of fate that have monumental effects on the course of civilization. The math part of me asks, “What are the odds?” That’s where eveything goes off the rails.

A mere split-second turn of the head prevented Donald Trump from being assassinated. Even before thinking about what he may or may do as President in his 2nd term, imagine how the country would have been torn apart had he been killed? Ok, but that’s just one event that could have occured by chance, but consider just some of the other twists of fate through history:

• George Washington survived a serious bout of smallpox at a time when it was killing most of those around him. Later on before becoming President, he had several horses shot out from under him during battle. He had musket balls go through his hat and even through his uniform. He survived them all.
• Andrew Jackson also survived a near-death bout of smallpox, a disease that killed his own brother. Later in life, he was shot an inch from his heart during a duel and was shot again years later in a bar fight. As president, would-be assassin Richard Lawrence had two pistols both fail to ignite the powder. Some experts put the odds of two such weapons malfunctions in succession at 1 in 125,000.
• Abraham Lincoln lived a tragic life filled with poverty, failures, and several deaths of loved ones, including the loss of his first love to typhoid fever. His many bouts of depression drove him to the brink of suicide before people and events in his life intervened. He also survived a separate plot to assassinate him in 1861, two months before the Civil War began at Fort Sumter.
• Before the U.S. Constitution was ratified and he became president, another man driven to the brink of suicide after the tragic death of his wife was none other than Thomas Jefferson. On top of that, he survived near-death illnesses twice with pneumonia and an infected abscess.
• Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley in the first year of his presidency. He barely survived as it happened, but an inch over in the trajectory of the bullet would almost certainly have killed him.

Do you think the history of America would have been any different without Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and Reagan? Would the nation even exist without Washington’s influence on its startup, or Lincoln’s efforts to hold it together? Would the Bill of Rights exist without Jefferson? What if he wasn’t there to stomp early American attempts at tyranny such as the Alien & Sedition Acts? Would India, Canada, and a long list of other former British colonies have went on to gain their independence without the efforts of Washington and Jackson? Would the Soviet Union still exist, and would the American economy have continued its nosedive, without the efforts of Reagan?

The twists of fate go way beyond the near-death experiences of famous leaders. Consider how many errant decisions Hitler made during World War II that might have switched the result had he listened to his generals, such as failure to use his panzer divisions to crush the British at Dunkirk, or to squash the Normandy invasion in 1944 (which he considered a diversion). Germany might also have won the war had it not declared war on both the U.S. and Soviet Union. Hitler’s last ditch effort to defeat the Allies, the Battle of the Bulge, nearly succeeded due to heavy snow and fog hindering Allied air operations. During a key point of the counteroffensive, the weather miraculously improved, allowing Patton’s 3rd Army to defeat the Nazis. Patton claimed he prayed with a chaplain the night before for precisely the weather he got. Who knows how long Hitler could have stayed in power had the Germans won that battle? Quite possibly long enough to kill another million Jews, or maybe finish the weapons of mass destruction they had under development?

I used to love a little known show called Timeless (at least until the story went off the rails in season 2, causing its cancellation). The villain in the show blamed the U.S. government & country for the death of his family. He sought revenge by using a time machine to strike America at its foundation. A small team was sent back in time to stop him. I know it sounds cheesy, but it was intelligently done. For each of the episodes, Flynn, the villain, chose unlikely targets to change events that would derail America. In fact, one of the hero protaganists was a history professor, sent to explain how the course of America could be altered drastically by some small twist of fate. For example, in one episode Flynn went back to the time of the Lincoln assassination, not to stop it, but to help the rest of the plot succeed. Its well known that John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln, but few know he was only one of the targets that day. There were at least 8 people involved in a conpiracy to take out the top of the U.S. government, including the VP, Secretary of State, and future president Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was invited to Ford’s theater to sit in the same booth as Lincoln, but he cancelled at the last minute. Aside from Lincoln, the rest of the targets survived due to a series of improbable mishaps. Each episode of Timeless did a great job of demonstrating how fragile our history is, how one tiny twist can forever alter humanity.

JFK was nearly killed in World War 2 after a Japanese destroyer sank his patrol boat. In 1960, he won one of the narrowest of presidential elections in American history over the more hawkish Richard Nixon, and this was immediately after defeating another warhawk in the democratic primary, Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy was profoundly impacted by a book named Guns of August, which detailed how military planners on all sides of World War I were confident their battle plans would bring easy victory, only to lead to disaster. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Curtis LeMay and other military advisors tried to push Kennedy to invade Cuba and even use pre-emptive nuclear strikes. Would Nixon or LBJ have made the same choice to resist? Would Kennedy, himself, have resisted if not for the influences of his past, or the steady advice through the crisis from his brother, Robert?

But let’s return to the math. Should we run the numbers to determine the odds of all these events occurring as they did, as well as the endless other examples that have shaped our history? Should we believe that chance, randomness, and math determine our fates? Or maybe, should we accept that greater forces are at work?

One Final “What Are the Odds?” with Some Comments from Google AI

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