Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia

The story of Alexander's incredible conquest is well known, but an interesting facet is usually overlooked. Namely how different the world would have looked today had he not lived his short life. For if - instead of dying from disease at age 32 - he had been killed in the battle at Granikos 10 years earlier - when an axe swinging Persian soldier actually hit his head in a near fatal blow - the Hellenistic culture would never have won over the Persian. This would have had strange consequences for history. Jesus would for instance only have been a local religious figure since there would have been no common world language, Greek, for the first vital spread of Christianity and later copying of the New Testament. And Islam, had it indeed come into being, would also have taken a totally different form.