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Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s Escapades, and Other Lesser Known Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan January 21, 2020 33 min

William Carver - Butch Cassidy — Butch Cassidy, far right, The Sundance Kid, far left, and other members of the Wild Bunch gang. Wikimedia

8. The Little Known Functionary Who Saved the World

The world could have experienced a nuclear holocaust in 1983. YouTube

Not that many people know who Stanislav Petrov is. However, everybody alive today, anywhere in the world, irrespective of race, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, political persuasion, or any other distinction, owes him a huge debt of gratitude.

Acting on a gut instinct and placing a huge responsibility upon his own shoulders, Petrov saved the world from a full-blown nuclear holocaust. In short, if not for Petrov, most of us would not be alive today. The relative few still living would be struggling to survive in some barbarous and radioactive post-apocalypse environment.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.