Benjamin Percy, writer, Green Arrow and Teen Titans
If the Sons of Liberty, in defiance of the Tea Act, hadn’t boarded those ships in Boston Harbor in 1773 and heaved overboard shipments from the East India Company, then the British Parliament wouldn’t have responded with the Intolerable Acts. The American Revolution might not have erupted into all-out war, and the Constitution might not have been written.
Tana French, author, The Trespasser
Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, precipitated World War I, which reshaped large parts of the world politically, culturally, and psychologically and laid the groundwork for World War II.
Kevin Flynn, editor, The New York Times Book of Crime
Pretext or not, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, in 1914, plunged the world into the first war that fully employed the brutal weaponry of an industrialized society. Millions died and the carnage fed an unvarnished view of war, startling political changes in Russia and elsewhere, and a new cynicism in the arts, as evident in the Dada movement.
Reginald Hudlin, director, Marshall
Some of the greatest crimes are not considered illegal. The African slave trade changed history by forcibly disrupting millions of lives in two worlds—it robbed Africa of its people and perverted the foundation of America with a national sin, while leaving more than 1 million bodies dead in the Atlantic.