Moments when a single email changed history

01

Einstein–Szilard letter

Two physicists — Einstein and Szilárd — mailed Roosevelt a single page in August 1939. Roosevelt read it, wrote 'This requires action,' and set in motion the Manhattan Project, which employed 130,000 people.

02

Balfour Declaration

Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote 67 words to Lord Rothschild in 1917, promising a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Those 67 words are still quoted in international courts more than a century later.

03

Zimmermann telegram

German Foreign Secretary Zimmermann telegraphed Mexico in January 1917, proposing a wartime alliance and the return of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. British codebreakers intercepted it; Congress voted for war within weeks.

04

Ems dispatch

Bismarck received a routine diplomatic telegram in 1870, redacted it to read as a deliberate insult, and released it to the press. France declared war within days, and the German Empire was born from the fallout.

05

J'Accuse...!

Zola's open letter, published across the front page of L'Aurore on 13 January 1898, named eleven army and government officials by name. The editor printed 300,000 copies; Paris sold out before noon.

06

Letter from Birmingham Jail

Written in margins of smuggled newspaper and on scraps of paper, King's letter from Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963 answered eight clergymen by name. It circulated in millions of copies within the year.

07

Climatic Research Unit email controversy

In November 2009, roughly 1,000 private emails from the University of East Anglia's climate unit were leaked online. Within weeks, coordinated campaigns cited them to freeze climate policy negotiations at Copenhagen.

08

Columbus's letter on the first voyage

Columbus wrote his letter aboard ship in February 1493, before landfall in Europe. It was translated, printed, and reprinted 17 times across the continent within a year — the first mass-media account of a new world.

09

Hillary Clinton email controversy

FBI Director Comey sent an 11-sentence letter to Congress on October 28, 2016 — eleven days before the election. Analysts later measured a 2-to-3 point polling swing in the days that followed.