# Readers reply: What is the biggest missed opportunity in history?

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts.

I read that , a few years after Covid brought video-calling to prominence like never before. So, my question is: what is the biggest missed opportunity in history? _Quentin, Arizona_

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## Reader's reply

### In the early 1960s, EMI passed on the opportunity to sign , thus allowing them to be snapped up by EMI’s deadly rivals at Decca. **EddieChorepost**

### The Blair government not repealing . The increase in the housing benefit bill and decrease in social housing has had far-ranging political, economic and social effects. **BollyDarling**

### Ignoring the first generation of scientists warning us that  resulted in an atmospheric greenhouse effect. Then ignoring the second generation of scientists warning us that burning fossil fuels resulted in an atmospheric greenhouse effect. Then ignoring the third generation of scientists … We are struggling to constrain a deadly behemoth of our own making. It didn’t have to be this way. **EBGB**

### Failing to spot the danger that the internet could become a massive disseminator of lies, manipulation and propaganda. **hutchmeup**

### It was spotted. The missed opportunity (if it was one) was doing anything about it – maybe by making the “platforms” legally liable as publishers. **leadballoon**

### Bernie Sanders not getting . **Philip_Larkin_Fan**

### Obviously not the biggest, but  before his time when leader of Labour in opposition. **hellyfad**

### One of them is the French not opposing Hitler’s move to . **Chouan93**

### If Hitler had been accepted into art school in Vienna, that might have kept him out of politics. **salamandertome**

### Succession lines going through males. There obviously were women who would have made a good job of it, maybe stopped a few wars? Those medieval types of wars where kingdoms fought to oust the usurper who usurped because no boy was born or survived. Women and girls abounded, but … nope. **Veltatecla**

### Biggest missed opportunity:  after the American civil war. **DrMomPA**

### Sitting back and watching as Putin invaded Crimea in 2014. **AmongstTheWaves**

### Gascoigne not making contact with that cross from Shearer against Germany at Euro 96. **PeteTheBeat**
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