The Second Defenestration in Prague, May 23, 1618. Three people of the catholic church were thrown out a window and dropped 17 meters below on a pile of manure,

The Second Defenestration in Prague, May 23, 1618. Three people of the catholic church were thrown out a window and dropped 17 meters below on a pile of manure, all the survived, one with head trauma. What followed was the 30 Year War, a topic that I know is sadly a but underdeveloped in US/UK history class, since the US didn't exist then and the UK didn't really do anything on account of it's own internal problems at the time. The 30 Year War was pivotal for religious rights in Europe as well as one of the most devastating wars in history (up to 40% of the population perished either in war, famine or plagues). Another big point was that as a result of this war, german cities and the rest of europe experienced a big uplift in trade. Especially France, Spain, Netherland and England got a huge boost to their ship trade, which I would argue at minimum indirectly lead to financing the expeditions that discovered the Americas. Sadly it is a rather complex topic that many historians still fight over, since in most cases if you open history books about it, you see a map of the HRE + Europe with about 2 million arrows labelled "attacks" or "leads to" or "defends" or "defeats".