I mean, it has to be Egypt, right? IOTL, it survived as a coherent culture (under your terms) for three thousand years. Prevent it from being Christianized, Islamicized, and Arabized, so that it continues to speak the Egyptian language and follow some variant of its traditional polytheistic...
The NPR was chartered in 1864 and was constructed from 1870-1883. During this time period, the whole region in question is very sparsely populated both north and south of the 49th parallel, with Minnesota alone having a larger population than the entirety of British Columbia, Alberta...
But the principal purpose of the Northern Pacific is not to pass through as much good farmland as possible, it is to connect the Great Lakes to the Puget Sound. In order to accomplish that end as cheaply and effectively as possible, you will want to take as short and direct a path as you can...
The point of the NPR was to provide a rail connection from the eastern US to the Pacific. Why divert that line hundreds of miles north, especially given that, if the NPR and the settlement of the Prairies are both proceeding more or less per their OTL timetables, the whole region is sparsely...
I think you underestimate how diverse fantasy is and overestimate how diverse sci-fi is. Like, look at the three examples you give of obviously incompatible sci-fi franchises, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor Who. Are they so different? All take place in expansive soft sci-fi universes in which...
You postulate a US with a population greater than 30 million c. 1800 (actually, it would probably be significantly more than that, because if you did somehow manage to get ten times as many European immigrants as IOTL, the demand for slaves would increase accordingly). This is a) a population...
I'm not saying that slavery is going to be a deal-breaking issue immediately--if it was, then the North and South would've never agreed to share a country IOTL. If the Federalists lose them immediately, it'll be because they lost them in the war. What I am saying is that sectional issues might...
Should be noted that Vermont is not going to be held by the Anti-Federalists unless they also hold upstate New York. I'm not sure the Anti-Federalists would be able to manage that, though--the Federalists did alright there historically, and it's going to be difficult for Anti-Federalists to...
It's hard to say without a more specific scenario. Such a Japan would probably be heavily Westernized... but so is OTL Japan. A European government might force Japan to accept more missionary activity, producing a larger Christian minority, or it might restrict missionary activity to keep the...
The US space shuttles were mostly named after exploration and research vessels, and that seems as good a tradition to draw on as any, perhaps with a focus on Arctic exploration if you want it to have more of a distinctively Canadian theme. Erebus and Terror are probably a bit too grim (even...
This would probably be too radical for the North, nevermind any part of the South--most of the Northern states, when they abolished slavery during this time period, preferred schemes of "gradual abolition" that banned the importation of new slaves and made children born to slaves indentured...
Most English nationalists would be loath to abandon modern English, partly for reasons of practicality and partly because, well, that's the language that Britain spoke when it was at its absolute apex of global power and influence. Why abandon the language of Shakespeare and the Victorians when...
The closest OTL equivalent to this is probably the Republic of Ireland's attempt to revive Irish Gaelic. Notably, said attempt has not been very successful. TTL's attempt to bring back Middle English will be better off in some ways (Middle English is, unsurprisingly, much more closely related to...
Okay, if we are open to changing borders to such an extent as to possibly admit California as a Canadian province, this becomes easier. My first thought is to have the US get wrecked in the War of 1812 and have the border west of Lake Erie set at 42 N, leaving most or all of Michigan, Wisconsin...
This is very difficult without significantly changing the US-Canada border (if for no other reason than that a much larger Canadian population would lead to Britain/Canada being more aggressive about pushing their own territorial claims). Perhaps you could have the British government take...