AH Cultural Descriptions

[The Professor]

God’s Breath Device

Born to Puritans Josiah and Anne Device, God's-Breath became a prominent member of Cromwell's Council eventually rising to Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of the British Isles. His unusual name, inspired a rash of similar biblical translations in the period such as landscape artist Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By Smith and General Yea-Though-I-Walk-Through-Shadow Nelson.

The Great Big Lever

 

[Joe Bonkers]

Born to Puritans Josiah and Anne Device, God's-Breath became a prominent member of Cromwell's Council eventually rising to Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of the British Isles. His unusual name, inspired a rash of similar biblical translations in the period such as landscape artist Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By Smith and General Yea-Though-I-Walk-Through-Shadow Nelson.

The Great Big Lever

Name given to the Great Atlantic & Pacific, the railroad resulting from the 1896 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, which resulted in the first true transcontinental railroad in America. The nickname was given by the Chicago Tribune and refers to the railroad as being the "great big lever" that opened up the possibility of single-line service from coast to coast.

The invisible dividing line of the Mississippi River having been breached, the other railroads terminating from either east or west in Chicago, St. Louis, or New Orleans quickly scrambled to catch up. The New York Central, the PRR's biggest rival, was the next to take the plunge, purchasing and then merging the Union Pacific. By 1910 seven coast-to-coast systems stretched across the United States.

Home Depot

 

[Joe Bonkers]

Name given to the Great Atlantic & Pacific, the railroad resulting from the 1896 merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, which resulted in the first true transcontinental railroad in America. The nickname was given by the Chicago Tribune and refers to the railroad as being the "great big lever" that opened up the possibility of single-line service from coast to coast.

The invisible dividing line of the Mississippi River having been breached, the other railroads terminating from either east or west in Chicago, St. Louis, or New Orleans quickly scrambled to catch up. The New York Central, the PRR's biggest rival, was the next to take the plunge, purchasing and then merging the Union Pacific. By 1910 seven coast-to-coast systems stretched across the United States.

Home Depot

Come on, it can't be THAT hard...

 

[Ganesha]

Home Depot

Home Depot, Kansas, is the second-largest city in Kansas. Founded in 1847, Home Depot was originally known as the last major supply station of the Western & Pacific Stagecoach Company, a major coach-and-rail corporation.

As it supplied cattlemen and pioneers alike, the way station initially called Homer's Depot became known as "the home Depot", which eventually resulted in the city's incorporation as "Home Depot" in 1859. Today, it has a population of 300,000 people and is notable for being headquarters of the All-American Coach Union (AACU). Although founded to represent employees of Western & Pacific Stagecoach Company, AACU today represents blue-collar workers in many industries, and has over 8.2 million dues-paying members. Home Depot is known as a city that has strong elements of both America's corporate tradition, and America's labor movement. It is also known as a rail hub.

The Horse Who Came In From the Cold

Cheers,
Ganesha

 

[ennobee]

(Nope, this thread is not yet dead....)

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The Horse Who Came In From The Cold
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the story by Edgar Allan Poe. For other uses, see The Horse Who Came In From the Cold (disambiguation).

The Horse Who Came In From the Cold is a short Story by Edgar Allen Poe, published in 1842. Today it is considered as the first example of the Alternate History literary genre.

In the story, the year is 1812 and the narrator finds himself on a snowy night at a roadhouse at the western border of Georgia where he and the fellow patrons are enjoying a nightcap while discussing the latest news. Suddenly they hear a commotion in the in's courtyard. when they went to look, they find a horse, saddled and loaded with provisions, but without a rider. However from one of the stirrups hangs a flask of brandy, stabbed with a dagger, so it is dripping. Attached to the flask is a note "Pour l'amour de Dieu et pour la prosperité du Louisiane, aidez-moi!". The narrator, having studied French translates the text as "By God's love and for the benefit of Louisiana, help me".

The other patrons of the roadhouse want to help, but find it safer to wait for the morning. The narrator however figures that the brandy of the flask has left a trail, sets his hunting dog on the trace of the liquor and goes out on his own. After half an hour of walking, he finds a dying French soldier who implores him to take a letter to an address in Saint Louis. After patching the man up so that he will survive at least until the next morning when the patrons of the roadhouse will arrive, the narrator sets out on the Frenchman's horse and after some adventures delivers the letter. After the recipient reads the letter, he hands the narrator another letter and asks him to deliver this one to the Continental Congress at present underway in Philadelphia, which again, after some adventures, the narrator does.

Over the course of the story, we learn that apparently all this plays out in an alternate timeline where the Louisiana Purchase never happened. Instead, in 1889, just after the French Revolution took place, Louis XVI sent his wife Marie Antoinette to New Orleans to be out of harm's way until the 'unrests' would calm down. Soon she was followed by almost the complete French nobility, running from Robespierre's Reign of Terror and escaping the Guillotine. This somehow butterflies away the rise of Napoleon and as a result in 1812, there are two Frances: a revolutionary republic on the continent and a royalist 'New France' in America, ruled by an ageing and increasingly infirm Queen Marie Antoinette. Also, in this timeline, Washington D.C. was never built and the congress still resides in Philadelphia.

In the end the narrator learns that the letter he and the unnamed French soldier risked their lives to deliver contains a message from a group of Louisiana 'nobles' laying the groundwork to establish a republic modeled after the American example when the old queen Marie Antoinette dies - which would probably happen this same winter. The letter he has to deliver to Philadelphia contains an offer by the soon-to-be Louisiana republic to join the United States. The story ends in 'the present' (1842) in which the US, as OTL, has annexed Louisiana and the situation in Europa resembles the historically accurate one as well.

In the last chapter it is revealed that the narrative might just be a tall tale that the narrator tells his grandchildren on a freezing winter night, "not unlike that one thirty years ago".[1] and at least one of the grandchildren flat-out refuses to believe "Grandfather's fantasies"[2]. Nevertheless, the short story itself is today regarded as an example of Alternative History. Although there have been some other literary works of that genre before Poe (examples needed) the short story is often cited as the first example of alternative history in the English language or even the first printed example of alternate history worldwide.

See Also:

• Edgar Allan Poe
• 1842 short stories
• Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe
• Alternative History in fiction
• Works originally published in American newspapers

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(Okay, that's it for now. Let's see if anyone else can continue this thread. No need to go into so much detail as I did here, though. just a few lines and a new challenge will be enough. )


Next up:
Magnum '44

 

[Whitewings]

Magnum '44

One of the more unusual science fiction and fantasy magazines of the pulp era, Magnum '44 premiered in, naturally enough, 1944. What set it apart from other such magazines was a combination of racy, if not downright fetishistic, content, with an emphasis by editors Farnsworth Wright and Howard Lovecraft on consistency with either known scientific principles or with clearly delineated non-scientific principles, referred to as "world laws." In the latter case, the principles did not need to be explicitly explained to the audience, but had to be adhered to. In consequence, Magnum went on to become famous for serialized stories and for story sets sharing a given world, as the amount of work required to create a set of world laws that would satisfy the editors was often more than a single writer could manage. The magazine lasted in text format until 1964, at which point the new editor and occasional contributor Roy Thomas announced that due to falling sales, Magnum '44 would change its name to simply Magnum and would be publishing fantasy comics, using the setting and characters developed over the previous two decades of collaborative efforts. This required a slightly toning down of some of the racier content, but also increased sales. Over the next thirty years, sales remained high, with Magnum's parent company allowing Thomas to largely do as he saw fit. The Comics Crash of the 1990s resulted in dropping sales, and several lean years for the company, which has since recovered under the stewardship of Anne Groening and Sonja Mathers, who have taken advantage of modern mores to re-introduce some of the more openly sexual aspects of the original stories, to the intense displeasure of certain groups but the great delight of fans both male and female.

Solarman

 

[The Militant Doberman]

Solarman

Name of the mascot for the joint ESA-JAXA robotic mission to Mercury. The mascot would be painted on the side of the robotic probe and depicted a muscular, sunbathing humanoid male. A “sungirl” was also painted on the carrier rocket and resembled a lewd anime female in a bathing suit.

The Miracle of Minsk

 

[FrolicsomeQuipster]

The Miracle of Minsk

The first and largest in a series of sinkholes that happened in that area durring the second world war putting quite a dent in the German advance east.
"I was staring at a Tank battalion when I blinked, and then I wasn't"

The Principality of Antarctica

 

[The Professor]

The Principality of Antarctica

A satirical editorial by Sir Michael Palin after he was mocked in PMQs by Deputy PM Boris Johnson as "that travelling python has-been". Written in the style of his travelogues it frequently referred to a windy portly buffoon who claimed to be heir to said principality. It's widely credited as provoking the reshuffle that removed Johnson from Portillo's cabinet.

Penguin of Terror

 

[ennobee]

Penguin of Terror

The nickname for the US Marine Corps multihull carrier Zeppelin USS Belleau Woods. Originally designed in 1922 as the first of a new class of rapid deployment airships able to deliver a squadron of Marines plus support aircraft to any point of the globe, the LCZ-1 was plagued by manufacturing delays, engineering setbacks and massive cost overruns. The ship that was finally delivered to the USMC in 1933 was a lumbering overweight and underpowered monstrosity that ended up, as a pundit pointed out: "As fearsome as a penguin and almost just as good a flier". Hence the moniker.

Tellingly the Bellow Woods remained the only airship of its class and no further LCZ were built until 1965 when advancements in lightweight plastics and automated propulsion and navigation systems allowed for the highly successful "Tarawa class" LCZ to be deployed over Vietnam

Next up:
We will, We will Rock You

 

[Cytokine Pioneer]

We will, We will Rock You

The furious last words of American General Benedict Arnold before being killed by cannon fire outside of Miami in the Spanish-American War of 1802. The full sentence is as follows:
”And to those that dare to threaten the sanctity of this great Union, and bear arms against our homes and our families, we will, we will rock you from your ships, from your beds, and from your thrones!”

——
Justice for Justice

 

[Mooze17]

Justice for Justice
The motto of the Desencadenado resistance movement in Mexico following the American Conquest of Mexico of 1839-1844. This motto was inspired by the American declaration that the conquest of Mexico was “Justice” for the supposed crimes committed during the Texan War Of 1837, when really they were motivated by the acquisition of more slave states to balance the free states of Canada. This group, which was viciously opossed to the U.S domination of the region, used the opposition to many in the state to slavery as a rallying cry, and managed to launch a revolt from 1854-1858 that successfully seized the Coahuila, Nuevo Reino, and Santandar territories and took small parts of Texas and Vizcaya. Although ultimately unsuccessful, the revolts large success and brutal suppression served as a major rallying cry for the Mexican Independance movement for Decades to come, with Justice for Justice, originally said in English specifically so the occupiers would understand it and be insulted, echoing as its motto for a long time period.

Ludwig the Boxing Day Sheep

 

[The Professor]

Ludwig the Boxing Day Sheep

The subject of an English Boxing Day Tradition where kids would hunt for Ludwig's droppings, i.e. chocolates, and thus similar to an Easter Egg Hunt.
Apparently a reference to when the ceremonial mascot of one of the Royal Hannoverian regiments escaped his London paddock during Alexander I's reign and caused mayhem in the streets before disappearing. The London Press was full of sightings for weeks afterwards and every Boxing Day since Marble Arch would be adorned with wool.

The Fountain of Yellow Delight

 

[Whitewings]

The Fountain of Yellow Delight

Perhaps the most peculiar royal display of all time, the Fountain of Yellow Delight was a fountain built in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1888. As a symbol of both the reach and unity of the British Empire, and of the value of the new completed Canadian Pacific Railroad, the fountain, which is now connected to the local water supply, originally pumped pineapple juice from a concealed tank. Though pineapples were not nearly so expensive as they had once been, they were still quite costly, and the Fountain was praised for its elegant design and beautiful carvings and criticized heavily for the cost of the juice. People were permitted to dip from the fountain, provided they used clean cups, and the Fountain has been credited with establishing pineapple juice as a preferred Canadian summer drink.

Lumberjanes

 

[ArchimedesCircle]

The Fountain of Yellow Delight

A controversial book written in 1970 by the Qing princess Yukun. The allegedly autobiographical text related tales of Yukun's childhood and adolescence during the Qing's transition to a constitutional monarchy, with the controversy mostly stemming from Yukun's descriptions of her awakening sexuality, relationships with men and women in the court and the various antiquated traditions that women of the imperial family were held to. The book gained Yukun fame and infamy, as well as prompting the royal court to become far more transparent to the public. Nowadays Yukun's work is studied as the foundation of feminist Chinese literature.

Edit: Ninja'ed! Oh well, I didn't have a good idea for a prompt title anyway.

 

[samcster94]

Perhaps the most peculiar royal display of all time, the Fountain of Yellow Delight was a fountain built in Ottawa, Ontario, in 1888. As a symbol of both the reach and unity of the British Empire, and of the value of the new completed Canadian Pacific Railroad, the fountain, which is now connected to the local water supply, originally pumped pineapple juice from a concealed tank. Though pineapples were not nearly so expensive as they had once been, they were still quite costly, and the Fountain was praised for its elegant design and beautiful carvings and criticized heavily for the cost of the juice. People were permitted to dip from the fountain, provided they used clean cups, and the Fountain has been credited with establishing pineapple juice as a preferred Canadian summer drink.

Lumberjanes

A failed Tarzan spinoff TV series in the 2000's that tried modernizing the concept of the story, including making gorillas more realistic and docile.

Sixpence None The Richer

 

[MusuMankata]

Sixpence None The Richer

Created in 1908, Sixpence None the Richer was originally concieved for the Sunday Times, Sixpence is a scruffy short man that always walks around with his trademark gray coat full of patches, and it originally represented the working class in general, but overtime it became a caricature for "welfare leeches".With the spread of the Internet, the character has recieved a new interpretation as the representation of people refusing to work as they entrust their entire fortunes to cryptocurriencies or at least "get rich quick" schemes".

The View from the Taigo.

 

[Mooze17]

The View from the Taigo

The famous autobiography of the acclaimed Author Chokzay Mingyur written in 1996, at the age of 67. It mainly records his life and experiences in his Native Tibet, under the infamous dictator of the country at the time, Tashi Phuntsok. it has been critically acclaimed by many for its great writing and willingness to critasize all sides, both the Indian-Supported Phuntsok (who was installed as an allied regime by the Indian government as part of the Cold War and battle for influence bettween the Indian Raj and it’s British Royal Family and the Republic Of China that is still ongoing today, Alibit under a different Indian Government) The Chinese supported rebels, and the regular people caught between. Although it was banned in Tibet for its critasizim of the regime, it became extremely popular overseas, becoming a New York Times bestseller, and following the fall of the Phuntsok regime became a classic their as well.


Joseph Sullivan

 

[The Professor]

Joseph Sullivan

Joseph Sullivan is the founder of Sullivan's and creator of the modern take away food business. His iconic moustache emblem still adorns all major Sullivan's outlets and most children still recognise the Uncle Joe character that was based on him.
Controversy still abounds over his company's hiring policies and food sources but Sullivan's still holds the #1 position of Take Away Diners in the western hemisphere.

The Long Stink

 

[The Militant Doberman]

The Long Stink

The media-name given to the war-of-words between the governments of Norway and Russia in the mid 1990s. With the son of the Norwegian PM being caught in a sex-scandal the country’s leadership tried to divert media attention and avoid a PR black-eye. Their choice of an alternative attention-grabbing headline? The noxious and toxic gases wafting into northern Norway from Soviet-era metallurgical plants in Russia’s Kola Peninsula. Norway began to take a more and more aggressive stance on the issue, demanding the Russians shut the plants down with the PM even stating in one TV interview that “the military option is not off the table”. This did not please Moscow and despite the army troubles of the 1990s the military was mobilized on the Kola Peninsula. To prevent further escalation, US and UK had to mediate environment talks between Russia and Norway.

The Oily Doily