Every so often something happens in human history that has massive repercussions, implications and effects out of all proportion to what it seems to be in itself, and which might be described as a turning point in history or, indeed, one of the most important events in history. Such is Bastille Day.
There is an apocryphal story about Mao Zedong that when he was asked about whether the French Revolution had been successful, he replied that it was too early to say! That is always the danger in assessing contemporary or more recently historical phenomena; we have a sort of proximity bias. Because it is near us, therefore it must be important. We cannot turn on the news today without learning that some woman winning a tennis match is a historical moment or that some man running a tenth of a second faster is making history, or that a rock band is getting together again after 20 years, and this too is a history-making moment.
