Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
“It Lowered IQs Worldwide”: 30 Historical Events That Left Everlasting Scars On Society
Americans might have been a whole lot more intelligent had it not been for lead-based gasoline. Lead was first added to gasoline in 1923, apparently to keep our car engines 'healthy.' But the move came at the expense of our own well-being.
Leaded gas was banned in 1996. But a 2022 study revealed that exposure to car exhaust from leaded gas during childhood stole a collective 824 million IQ points from more than 170 million Americans alive today. To put it into perspective, that's about half the population of the United States. But we should also remember that the U.S. was not the only country to use lead in gas. And some countries still did so right up until 2021.
If this is the first time you're hearing about this, it might be because the lead-gasoline era was one of the most downplayed, damaging events in history. It left a lasting impact on society, the effects of which are still being felt today.
Someone recently asked, "Which historical event induced more damage to society than people realize?" and the answers came pouring in faster than a car's tank being filled with gasoline... From leaders who wiped out millions of people, to Chernobyl's contribution to climate change, netizens dug deep to draw attention to the incidents and eras that they believe need to be shamed.
Bored Panda has put together a list of the best answers for you to scroll through while you contemplate how different the world might have been today. We also unpack the findings of the leaded-gasoline research paper a bit more. You can read that info between the images.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I would say the arrival of Tatcher/Reagan in power. They managed to lower the tax rate for the wealthiest individuals from 70% to 30%, with the biggest nonsense ever proposed in economics, the trickle-down theory.
It was supposed to boost the economy, but in reality it only made the state and its citizens poorer, widening inequalities like never before. In fact, there is a consensus among economists, which is rare, that trickle-down economics does not work.
But now we find ourselves with a society where the tax burden was shifted from the richest to the middle class, which has been stagnating ever since. The rich are getting richer, the middle class is being strangled, and the poor are getting poorer.
Forty years later, we are still suffering from this s****y model.
Millions of people around the world put fuel or gas in their cars' tanks without giving it too much thought. But up until 1996, in America, gasoline contained lead...
According to health experts, there is no safe level of lead exposure at any point in life. That's because lead is neurotoxic and can erode brain cells after it enters the body.
“Lead is able to reach the bloodstream once it’s inhaled as dust, or ingested, or consumed in water,” says Aaron Reuben, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology at Duke University. “In the bloodstream, it's able to pass into the brain through the blood-brain barrier, which is quite good at keeping a lot of toxicants and pathogens out of the brain, but not all of them.”
Reuben adds that one major way lead can get into people's bloodstreams is through automotive exhaust. This means that anyone born before 1996, when leaded gas for cars was banned, was exposed to "concerningly high" levels of lead.
RELATED:
#2
The historical event that did more damage to society than anything that came before it was the re- election of orange donny. i fear that the US will not recover from what he has already done and it isn’t over. well, it isn’t over unless he has a heart attack and drops dead tomorrow. and it is those warm and fuzzy thoughts that keep me going.
#3
Mitch McConnell refusing to allow Obama's supreme court nominee get a hearing a full year before Obama's term ended. This was the start of the end of the Republic.
Reuben was among a group of researchers who investigated the effects of leaded gasoline on Americans. Their paper, titled “Half of the US Population Exposed to Adverse Lead Levels in Early Childhood,” was published in 2022 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The team used publicly available data on U.S. childhood blood-lead levels, leaded-gas use, and population statistics to determine their findings. "From this data, they estimated lead’s a*****t on our intelligence by calculating IQ points lost from leaded gas exposure as a proxy for its harmful impact on public health," explains the Duke University site, adding the researchers were "stunned" by the results.
“I frankly was shocked. And when I look at the numbers, I'm still shocked even though I'm prepared for it," said co-author of the study Michael McFarland, a professor of sociology at Florida State University.
#4
The exportation of radicalized evangelical Christianity from the USA to Africa.
It turned dozens of countries aggressively homophobic that weren’t that way before, and it’s also the leading cause of people being persecuted for alleged witchcraft… in 2025.
It was an American preacher, Scott Lively, who was the main sponsor of Uganda’s infamous “K**l the Gays” bill.
#5
Invention of social media, specifically Facebook. It was weaponized and single handedly swung an election in Trump's favor. And now, we're here during the sunsetting of democracy in the U.S.
Social media continues to be a weapon for strategic political disinformation and fueling division, not just in the U.S. but also Ukraine post-2014 and several other countries.
#6
Citizens United. This ruling guaranteed we would be where we are today. Owned by oligarchs, with laws bought by the highest bidder. Two separate systems of Justice, and no checks and balances for those in power. Foreign agents running rampant. Zero accountability...
The researchers noted that as of 2015, more than half of the U.S. population (over 170 million Americans) had "clinically concerning" levels of lead in their blood when they were children.
"Leaded gasoline consumption rose rapidly in the early 1960s and peaked in the 1970s," Duke Today reported. "As a result, Reuben and his colleagues found that essentially everyone born during those two decades are all but guaranteed to have been exposed to pernicious levels of lead from car exhaust."
This means they're at higher risk for long-term health impairments like reduced brain size. They also have a greater likelihood of mental illness and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease in adulthood.
But it doesn't stop there...
#7
The decision to allow children schooled at home to have accreditation as if they went to a public school with a controlled curriculum has done irreparable harm to the world and we'll be feeling the impact of it for generations.
#9
The No Child Left Behind policy. It’s lead to the dumbing down of our country and the lowering of standards for education.
On average, 79% of U.S. adults nationwide are literate in 2024. 21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024. 54% of adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level). link.
Childhood lead exposure may have blunted America’s cumulative IQ score by an estimated 824 million points – nearly three points per person on average, the researchers found.
They calculated that at its worst, people born in the mid-to-late 1960s may have lost up to six IQ points. "Children registering the highest levels of lead in their blood, eight times the current minimum level to initiate clinical concern, fared even worse, potentially losing more than seven IQ points on average," reports Duke Today.
And while dropping 3-6 IQ points might not seem like a lot, the experts warn these changes are "dramatic enough to potentially shift people with below-average cognitive ability (IQ score less than 85) to being classified as having an intellectual disability (IQ score below 70)."
#10
The Treaty of Versailles (1919). I think it fueled further conflicts for much of the 20th century.
#11
The introduction of microplastics to our ecology.
It is said that the average American consumes as much microplastics in a week as there is in a credit card.
Every biome is littered with microplastics. They are in our rainclouds. In the deepest jungles. In the permafrost of both poles. Scientists have found microplastics in the brains of still-born children. It could be our world-ender if we don't stop.
Many countries started adding lead to gasoline in the 1920s. While it improved vehicle efficiency and engine performance, it was proven to be a toxic pollutant, particularly for children. Despite knowing this, governments took a while to act.
Japan became the first country to ban leaded gasoline in cars completely in 1986. Three and a half decades later, in 2021, Algeria became the last country to ban it. And, if you think about it, that really wasn't too long ago.
#13
COVID. A whole generation of kids were locked indoors during their formative years, and academic performance is really starting to show it.
#15
*The Oprah Winfrey Show*
The show and the media empire it eventually created became a creduluous, uncritical platform for some incredibly stupid and frequently dangerous people/ideas for FOUR F*****G DECADES, like an aircraft carrier that launched a million bastards.
I absolutely despise Oprah and everything she stands for; genuinely believe the modern world would be a better place if Oprah™️ (the media phenomenon, not the person) had never existed.
“Millions of us are walking around with a history of lead exposure,” warns Reuben. “It's not like you got into a car accident and had a rotator cuff tear that heals, and then you’re fine. It appears to be an insult carried in the body in different ways that we're still trying to understand, but that can have implications for life."
#16
I only recently learned about the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. Apparently it caused the 'year without a summer,' leading to famine and all sorts of knock-on effects, but it’s not something people really talk about much.
#17
The 1918 Spanish Flu is one of the most underrated historical events in terms of damage to society. It k**led more people than World War I, wiping out entire communities, overwhelming healthcare systems, and leaving long-term scars on economies and families. What’s wild is how little attention it gets in schools or conversations compared to wars. It reshaped public health, medicine, and even politics in ways we’re still feeling today, but most people barely know the scale of its impact.
#18
Vietnam war ig,a section of Vietnamese still deals with birth defects and other complications.
#19
The rule of Genghis Khan. Estimates differ, but his rule wiped out around 30-40 million people and entire cultures. Those that were left had their countries effectively set back a millennium. The death he caused also regenerated enough forest to allegedly cool the planet.
#21
The Clinton administration not signing the Rome Statute. A lot of the bad s**t we're seeing in the 2020s is only happening because authoritarian leaders don't have any fear of the International Criminal Court.
#22
Chernobyl: I wonder what the climate change projections would look like now if that didn’t (rightfully) fuel the anti-nuclear energy fire.
#23
GamerGate. It seemed like silly online discourse about video game reviews to a lot of people back then, but it was the ground zero for many people (especially young men) down the alt-right pipeline and shaped an environment that would help Trump win the first election.
#24
A storm in the English Channel in 1066. It delayed William the Conqueror's invasion by a couple of weeks, meaning that Harold Godwinson, the King of England, fought the Danes under Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge first and was weakened when he faced William. If Harold had faced William first, he might have beaten him and the Normans would not have ruled England. Instead, either the Anglo-Saxon Harold or the Danish Harald would have been king, and the world and the English language would both be very different today.
#25
Honestly, the US presidential election of 1912. When you consider the ramifications of that election going differently, the entire world changes.
Had Teddy Roosevelt not run third party, the Republican candidate likely wins that election. While Taft wasn't as supportive of entering World War 1 as Roosevelt was, Taft likely would have entered the war faster than Wilson.
The United Statea entering the war earlier probably brings a faster end to the war, which means less deaths. Less deaths likely means the Versailles treaty isn't nearly as nasty to Germany as the one in the present timeliness.
Without Germany getting hit as hard by the peace treaty, it's less likely that a certain painter rises to power... and if that doesn't happen, World War 2 takes on a completely different appearance. And considering how much of modern foreign policy is based off what happened during World War 2, the entire world looks vastly different.
Also, we don't have a Lost Cause mythologist in the White House giving that mythology more credence...
The more and more I've read about history, the more and more I consider that election a linchpin in the timeline.
#26
The internet. It's considered a great leap forward but it's harmed more than it's helped. The information age was supposed to herald a new era for humanity, a compendium of all humans knowledge at your finger tips.
No one could've predicted that facts would become optional. People now choose the truth that suits their world view. The irony that a tool designed to educate humanity actually had the opposite effect and spread ignorance to the gullible instead.
#27
The 1976 US Presidential Election. It’s the most overlooked US election of the 20th Century.
Jimmy Carter narrowly defeated Gerald Ford, in fact Ford came close to carrying the Electoral College. Ford famously pardoned Richard Nixon dinging his popularity and leading to a strong primary challenge from Ronald Reagan. Carter oversaw an economy in full stagflation from the 1970s and the failure to rescue the hostages from Iran.
Had Ford won that election, it’s very likely that a Democrat wins in 1980 as Ford would’ve been ineligible to run again, the economy would’ve been poor, and Reagan couldn’t have run against an unpopular incumbent.
Reagan’s conservatism would’ve been looked at as an electoral failure and the entire past 40+ years of US and global politics are changed.
#28
Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain. Changed Britain significantly and the empire made those changes go global.
#29
The burning of the library of Alexandria. Pretty much had the history of the old world in its volumes. There may not even been the Dark Ages. Who knows?
#30
The fall of Constantinople. Before that Europe had no reason to look west, and the best sailors were focusing on the Levant as the gateway to Asia and its markets. 1453 changes everything.
What do you think ?
Yrral Spavit 6 months ago
I think it all started going south when a bunch of primates decided to come down out of the trees and wander the savanna.
Zig Zag Wanderer 6 months ago
Some people say that even the trees were a bad idea! (h/t Douglas Adams)
Load More Replies... Yrral Spavit 6 months ago
I think it all started going south when a bunch of primates decided to come down out of the trees and wander the savanna.
Zig Zag Wanderer 6 months ago
Some people say that even the trees were a bad idea! (h/t Douglas Adams)
Load More Replies...
Related on Bored Panda
