From Carthage to Pearl Harbor, world history includes a lot of visible turning points that everybody knows. But there are some hidden turning points too, less famous but as important. According to U.S. News & World Report, the economic revolution that W. Edwards Deming launched in Japan is one of the nine hidden turning points in world history . They are :

1. The Apostle Paul, whose preaching and eloquent writings led to mass acceptance of Christianity.

2. The bubonic plague, which killed one-third of Europeans in less than four years, ended serfdom, and made way for the Renaissance.

3. Christopher Colombus. He didn't discover America, but he opened the way for colonization.

4. Napoleon Bonaparte for his hand in giving rise to a middle class, which led to flowering of democracy.

5. The Japanese rejection of an invention - firearms - in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Samurai preferred sword.

6. Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckelberry Finn, pioneer of realism, the first to tell it like it is.

7. The public's love affair with Madame Chiang Kai-shek in the 1940's, which clouded U.S. foreign policy for more than 30 years, helping to spark involvement in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

8. The sexual revolution of the 1960's and 1970's and the pill.

9. W. Edwards Deming, who launched the economic revolution in Japan after the WWII.