14 Gifts That Changed the World

Although some people see gift-giving as overly commercialized—particularly when tied to holidays like Christmas and Valentine’s Day—for many, giving and receiving presents is an essential part of certain celebrations. Gift-giving actually has a range of psychological benefits, including strengthening the bond between giver and receiver and providing a hit of oxytocin for both (not to mention the specific benefits of whatever the present is!). But some gifts throughout history have had a much larger impact than simply bringing joy to a couple of people—in fact, they’ve changed the world.

1. Octavia E. Butler’s First Typewriter
2. The Statue of Liberty
3. Christopher Robin Milne’s Stuffed Bear
4. The Homestead Act of 1862
5. Anne Frank’s Diary
6. Louis Armstrong’s First Cornet
7. Chadwick Boseman’s Theater Program Tuition
8. The Resolute Desk
9. The Cherry Trees in Washington, D.C.
10. Steve Jobs’s Heathkits
11. Carl Sagan’s Chemistry Sets
12. Elvis Presley’s First Guitar
13. Dolly Parton’s First (Proper) Guitar
14. The Christmas Truce

Octavia E. Butler’s First Typewriter

When Octavia Butler was just 10 years old, she begged her mother for a typewriter so that she could write her own stories. Although Butler’s mom didn’t have much money, she indulged her daughter. “What does she need with a typewriter at her age?” one of her mother’s friends asked. “It will soon be sitting in the closet with dust on it. All that money wasted!” But the money was far from wasted; the young Butler “pecked stories out two fingered.” Thanks to that childhood present, Butler was able to cultivate her writing skills, and as an adult she went on to pen science fiction and fantasy classics such as Kindred (1979) and Parable of the Sower (1993). Not only was Butler the first Black female sci-fi author to be published, but she’s also called the “mother of Afrofuturism” for her pivotal role in the creation of the genre.

The Statue of Liberty

New York’s Statue of Liberty is one of the most recognizable American landmarks, but the copper sculpture wasn’t actually created in the States: It was a gift from the French to the Americans proposed by poet and historian Édouard de Laboulaye in 1865. Sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi designed the statue—officially called Liberty Enlightening the World—with help from Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (the engineer later responsible for Paris’s Eiffel Tower) when it came to the structural framework.

In addition to being a symbol of friendship between the two countries, Laboulaye wanted the colossal statue to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and America’s recent nationwide abolition of slavery. These elements are represented in the tablet that Lady Liberty is holding, which is carved with the Roman numerals for July 4, 1776, and the broken shackle and chains that lie at her feet. The statue would also become a symbol of hope for immigrants coming into America due to the fact that it was the first landmark they saw on their way to Ellis Island for processing. Author Emma Lazarus foresaw this symbolism taking hold, and in her 1883 sonnet “The New Colossus”—which was written to help fund the statue’s pedestal—she spoke of Lady Liberty being a “Mother of Exiles.”

Standing 305 feet (93 meters) tall including the pedestal, the Statue of Liberty was officially dedicated on October 28, 1886. The statue has changed over the years: Its copper coating has tarnished to a blue-green color, and the original torch was frequently altered, with various glass installations and lighting systems giving it a fiery glow. In 1984, the torch was retired (it can now be seen in the Statue of Liberty Museum) and Lady Liberty was given a replica of Bartholdi’s original torch to hold aloft.

Christopher Robin Milne’s Stuffed Bear

On August 21, 1921, A. A. Milne gave his son, Christopher Robin Milne, a stuffed teddy bear for his first birthday. Originally called “Edward Bear,” the toy went on to inspire A. A. Milne’s hugely popular Winnie-the-Pooh stories. The bear’s name change is owed to two different animals: Winnie came from Winnipeg the black bear at London Zoo, while Pooh is what Christopher Robin calls a swan (which may have been based on a real swan) in the 1924 poetry collection When We Were Very Young (this collection also introduces Edward Bear for the first time).

Most of Pooh’s on-page friends—Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga, Roo, and Tigger—also had real-life counterparts as stuffed toys given to young Christopher over the years (Owl and Rabbit are the purely fictional exceptions). These toys are now on display at New York Public Library—except for Roo, who was sadly lost during the 1930s.

Winnie-the-Pooh has had enormous worldwide success: Not only was he voted the most popular children’s book character in a 2016 poll conducted by the Reading Agency, but Forbes ranked him as the most valuable fictional character of 2002 after he generated almost $6 billion. Pooh even has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Homestead Act of 1862

During the 18th and 19th centuries, parceling out unsettled land was a difficult task for the U.S. government. Boundaries between plots were hazy, which led to border disputes; not only that, but the plots were too expensive for most settlers. The Land Ordinance of 1785 standardized how boundaries were measured, but the price tag for land was still too high for many. Throughout the 1850s, homestead legislation was passed three times by the House of Representatives but was always kicked back by the Senate. In 1860, Congress passed a homestead bill, only for President James Buchanan to reject it.

Finally, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, which allowed people to claim 160 acres of surveyed land for free. After filling out an application, all people had to do was live on the land and improve it (which sometimes proved to be easier said than done), and after five years—and a small registration fee—the title deeds would be theirs. By 1934, around 1.6 million homesteaders had taken advantage of the act, resulting in 10 percent of land in the U.S.—more than 270 million acres—being owned by individuals. The Homestead Act was eventually repealed in 1976 (except in Alaska, where homesteaders could still claim land until 1986).

Many subsequent presidents praised the act, with John F. Kennedy declaring that it was “probably the single greatest stimulus to national development ever enacted” and George H.W. Bush saying that it “empowered people, it freed people from the burden of poverty.” But the policy also had a dark side: The lands the United States was giving away were already occupied by Native peoples, who, according to the National Park Service, “found themselves pushed farther from their homelands or crowded onto reservations.” Further down the line, the Homestead Act had environmental and economic effects. Rexford Tugwell, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s undersecretary of agriculture, argued in his 1935 essay “No More Frontiers” [PDF] that it “signed the death warrant of the prudent use of our land resources” and led to the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. In the words of Greg Grandin, author of The End of the Myth (2019), the Act led to ecological and economic disaster by “accelerating the practice by which farmers farmed until depletion and then moved on to a new plot.”

Anne Frank’s Diary

On June 12, 1942, Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager living in Amsterdam, received a diary—well, actually an autograph book repurposed as a dairy—from her parents for her 13th birthday. She had chosen it herself a few days earlier and in her second diary entry described it as “maybe one of my nicest presents.” Less than a month later, Anne and her family moved into a secret annex to hide from the Nazis, where they lived until the annex was raided in August 1944. Anne died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp just a few months later. Her diary was published as The Diary of a Young Girl in 1947.

Although Frank thought that “later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl,” her diary has sold more than 30 million copies in 67 languages and become one of the best-known books about life during the Holocaust. John F. Kennedy later said that “of the multitude who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank.”

Louis Armstrong’s First Cornet

When celebrated jazz musician Louis Armstrong was a boy, he had a job working for the Karnofsky family. One day, he was asked to drum up business for the family’s junk wagon, but instead of simply yelling like a paperboy, Armstrong decided to play a small tin horn. The Karnofskys were more supportive of Armstrong’s budding musical talent than most employers would be. “They could see that I had music in my soul,” Armstrong later wrote. In addition to offering verbal encouragement, when Armstrong spotted an old cornet in a pawn shop, Morris Karnofsky gave him a $2 advance on his pay so that he could buy the instrument, giving him the start needed to propel him to musical stardom down the line.

Dr. Stephen Lewis, curator of music and performing arts at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, calls Armstrong “one of the single most important—if not the most important—figures in American music history,” adding, “his music had such an important effect on jazz history that many scholars, critics, and fans call him the first great jazz soloist. … Today he is revered as one of the founding geniuses of American music, and his recorded performances are studied by scholars and treasured by his fans worldwide.” Armstrong’s distinct vocal style also influenced artists who came after him, including Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.

Chadwick Boseman’s Theater Program Tuition

While studying at Howard University in 1998, Chadwick Boseman and a group of classmates were accepted into a renowned summer theater program at the University of Oxford. The only problem was that they couldn’t afford to go, so one of their teachers, actress Phylicia Rashad, leaned on her friends in the business to help the students out. Boseman didn’t initially know who his sponsor was, but once he was back in the U.S. he found out that it was Denzel Washington.

Boseman wrote Washington a thank-you letter at the time, but after making it big in Hollywood himself, he wanted to thank the actor face-to-face. On The Tonight Show, Boseman explained that when he finally got the chance thank him in person, Washington jokingly replied, “Oh, so that’s why I’m here. You owe me money! I came to collect!”

With the information now public knowledge, Boseman also directly shouted out Washington in a speech at the 47th AFI Life Achievement Award in 2019, saying, “There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington.” The impact of Black Panther was massive: It was a box office hit—grossing $1.34 billion globally—and it was the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards (it lost to Green Book, but it did take home three Oscars in other categories). The NAACP writes that in his career, Boseman—who played iconic Black Americans like James Brown, Jackie Robinson, and Thurgood Marshall in addition to T’Challa/Black Panther—“helped to reverse generations of silver-screen stereotypes with an authenticity and dedication to the Black culture, fostering culture and pride to an entire community of people.”

The Resolute Desk

Since 1880, the majority of America’s presidents have used the Resolute Desk in some capacity, and since the 1960s the desk has often taken center stage in the Oval Office. But the magnificent oak and mahogany desk wasn’t always a piece of furniture. In 1852, the HMS Resolute sailed to the Arctic to search for John Franklin’s lost expedition. When the ship became icebound—the same fate that befell Franklin’s HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—the crew was forced to abandon the vessel. In 1855, the American whaling ship George Henry stumbled across an adrift Resolute. The ship was fixed in America and sent back to Queen Victoria as a gesture of friendship, one that she returned when the ship was decommissioned: Rather than just scrapping the wood, some of the timber was used to construct a desk, which Victoria sent to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880.

Over its many years in use, important legislation has been signed on the Resolute Desk, including the Treaty of Paris in 1898, which ended the Spanish–American War, and Proclamation 3504 in 1962, which put Cuba under naval quarantine during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The Cherry Trees in Washington, D.C.

Another iconic wooden gift in Washington, D.C., are the Japanese cherry trees planted around the Tidal Basin, on the grounds of the Washington Monument, and in East Potomac Park. The idea to plant trees was first suggested in 1885 by writer Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore after a visit to Japan. In 1909, Scidmore finally made some progress after first lady Helen Herron Taft responded positively to a letter about the proposal. Japanese chemist Dr. Jokichi Takamine happened to be visiting the States at that time and, when told of the plan, he asked the mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, to donate the trees. Ozaki was happy to send them over, but the shipment was infested with bugs and had to be burned.

In 1912, 3020 Japanese cherry trees were finally successfully planted in D.C., and since then, the U.S. has sent cuttings of the trees back to Japan whenever the parent stock has been in need of replenishment. These days, around 1.5 million people gather throughout March and April to celebrate the pretty pink blossoms during the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, which started back in 1935, and since 1939, official cherry blossom princesses have appeared in the parade and at other ceremonial events. While the title may sound beauty pageant-esque, the princesses are selected not for their looks, but for their academic and professional accomplishments. A few princesses have gone on to have high profile careers—one notable example is Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Steve Jobs’s Heathkits

When Apple founder Steve Jobs was a child, he received a few gifts that helped him on his way to becoming a tech titan. His father introduced him to electronics, but his passion really caught fire thanks to Larry Lang—a neighbor who happened to be an engineer at Hewlett-Packard. Lang gave the young Jobs Heathkits, which were build-it-yourself kits for electronics like radios and TV receivers. In addition to teaching Jobs practical skills, he later said in an interview that the kits “gave one the sense that one could build the things that one saw around oneself in the universe. These things were not mysteries anymore.”

Jobs wasn’t shy about asking for things that he wanted, either, and when he was 12 years old he even cold-called Bill Hewlett of Hewlett-Packard to ask for a favor. “I am a student in high school, and I want to build a frequency counter and I was wondering if you had any spare parts I could have,” he recalled saying. Hewlett gave Jobs the parts—plus a summer internship on the frequency counter assembly line.

Jobs and Apple’s legacy extends well beyond giving the world the first successful personal computer and the iPhone. In 2018, seven years after Jobs’s death, Apple became the first American company to be valued at $1 trillion. Jobs is also still one of the tech CEOs who people are most fascinated by—along with the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk—and he even left a mark on the fashion world with his black turtlenecks. He also served as an inspiration for the likes of Disney CEO Bob Iger, Theranos founder (and convicted felon) Elizabeth Holmes, and more.

Carl Sagan’s Chemistry Sets

In 1939, a 4-year-old Carl Sagan was taken to the New York World’s Fair, an experience that sparked his scientific curiosity. Sagan later wrote that his parents “were only one step out of poverty. But when I announced that I wanted to be an astronomer, I received unqualified support.” Part of that support was gifting their son chemistry sets, which served as a small—but important—stepping stone on his journey to becoming a famed astronomer who, as it’s often said, “made the universe clearer to the ordinary person.”

Elvis Presley’s First Guitar

“King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” Elvis Presley played many different guitars throughout his career, the very first of which was a present for his 11th birthday. It’s sometimes reported that Elvis was hoping for a bicycle, while others say it was a rifle; either way, his mom ended up buying him a guitar (the price is given as either $7 or $12.50). It was on this Kay acoustic guitar that the King learned how to play and it’s thought that he may have recorded his first songs at Sun Records on the instrument.

Dolly Parton’s First (Proper) Guitar

Another musician who was gifted a guitar is country star Dolly Parton. Technically, Parton’s first guitar was a mandolin that had been strung with piano strings, but when her Uncle Louis took notice of her interest in music, he gave her a Martin guitar and taught her to play properly. “This was like manna from heaven to me,” she recalls in her 1994 autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. “At last I could play along with the songs I heard in my head.”

In 1988, after having firmly established herself in the music industry, Parton launched the Dollywood Foundation, a charity that aims to help young people succeed in life. In addition to funding college scholarships, the charity also runs the Imagination Library, which was inspired by her own father’s illiteracy. The library provides books for kids in North America, the UK, Ireland, and Australia (as of 2023, a staggering 226,964,860 books had been gifted), and studies of the program have shown it has a positive impact on early childhood literacy [PDF]. According to the library, a book is mailed out every 1.3 seconds [PDF].

The Christmas Truce

Although World War I was still raging over Christmas 1914 (many had thought that the fighting would be done by then), the festive spirit was still alive—even in the miserable trenches on the front lines. On Christmas Eve, British and German troops started carol singing, which led to them chatting back and forth. British Army Private Marmaduke Walkinton recalled that a German solider eventually shouted, “Tomorrow you no shoot, we no shoot.”

Although the spontaneous ceasefire wasn’t unanimous up and down the Western Front—French soldiers understandably didn’t have festive feelings toward their country’s invaders—in many areas the fighting was put on pause. Some soldiers merely took the opportunity to collect their dead and fix the trenches, but others leaned into the Christmas spirit. German Lieutenant Johannes Niemann was amazed when he saw “our soldiers exchanging cigarettes, schnapps, and chocolate with the enemy.” In addition to trading small gifts, soldiers played games of soccer in No Man’s Land.

The Christmas Truce didn’t exactly have an impact on the outcome of the war—commands to resume fighting came hot on the heels of the Christmas celebrations—but the event likely saved some lives. The ceasefire showed that Christmas-inspired goodwill can spring up in the most unlikely of places, and it’s been depicted in media many times, from British supermarket Sainsbury’s 2014 Christmas advert to Doctor Who’s 2017 Christmas special “Twice Upon a Time.”

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