Earlier this year I spent some time at a training school for how to disable explosive remnants of war (I wrote an article and made a video about it). While there, the instructor handed me this interesting “bottle.” It was quite heavy, made of thick metal. It turns out this is a hand grenade. You twist off the cap, bang the pin inside against something solid, and you have around 12 seconds till it explodes. The instructor asked me if I knew what the historical significance was of this device; I had never seen anything like it. Turns out, the explosive is from 1912. This device is identical as the explosive used by the Bosnian Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip. In 1914, Princip made an attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s (of the Austria-Hungary empire) life, but mistimed the delay between striking the pin on the grenade and it exploding. The vehicle Ferdinand was traveling in was missed and the car behind exploded instead. Later that day, the Archbishop decided to visit the wounded driver from the attack, who was at a nearby hospital. In a bizarre historical twist, the Archbishop’s vehicle took a wrong turn and stalled right in front of the assassin, who was still there at where the original attack had happened. The assassin shot the Archduke.

This event set in motion one of the most monumental course of events in human history, Almost immediately after the assassination, various European empires declared war on each other, and in a few short years, tens of millions were massacred in the horrors of World War I. The evils of that war in many ways directly contributed to the unraveling of the world once again, resulting in World War II.

And here I was, holding this piece of history in my hand. Where we were in Kosovo was only about an hour drive from where the infamous assassination had happened (the city of Sarajevo, which is now in Bosnia). The instructor told me they had found a number of these devices in the mountains nearby, apparently left behind by the fighters as they fled. Most of the explosives were destroyed by the EOD team, but they decided to take the effort to “render safe” this one device because of the historical significance.

Never underestimate how much can be done through something small. In this case, someone’s actions led to unspeakable horrors. But it can easily go the other way. One action, one concept, one life committed can make a lasting positive impact on the people around you. Your actions can snowball into incredible lasting change in the world.

Make your life count.