I'm no expert, so I'll just throw out a few thoughts on these four scenarios.
1. There would be a little less of the attention of the nation focused on the civil rights situation in the South. Not a whole lot less, because there were other violent crimes in the area, but a little less...
I remember reading this when it first came out. It was interesting, if a little dry. (I really loved his stuff of the late 1960's. Stand on Zanzibar is one of my favorite SF novels.) It was certainly not the same old thing, and worth a read.
I remember a similar hoax from some time ago, about a Batman movie that was supposed to have been planned by Orson Welles in 1946. Here's the link.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/columns/index.cgi?column=thecolumn
The casting of the villians is very clever:
2001: A Space Odyssey (USA, 2005)
Acclaimed documentary offers an in-depth look at the brave men and women who made up the first International Mars Mission.
Now I feel like I've been in space twice. -- Sir Arthur C. Clarke, British astronaut (sole surviving member of the first manned flight...
Actually The Island is very similar to an old low-budget sci-fi flick called Parts: The Clonus Horror. (Which has shown up on Mystery Science Theater 3000.) In fact, the Internet Movie Data Base calls it a "remake," although I might not go that far...
Without Star Trek, perhaps science fiction (and the closely related field of fantasy) would remain the interest of a minority, instead of being so dominant in popular entertainment. Maybe this would extent to horror fiction as well. So, possibly Stephen King and J. R. R. Tolkien and Harry...
Interesting. I'm trying to figure out where the line of division would be between North Japan and South Japan. I would assume, like Berlin, nobody would be willing to give up Tokyo. It becomes a divided city, like Berlin. (Lots of Cold War stories about North and South Tokyo? A Tokyo wall?)...
What if horses never vanished from the New World?
What if the Native Americans were very familiar with horses and the use of them at the time that Europeans arrived?
(Here's an interesting article on the hunting of New World horses in prehistoric times as a possible cause of extinction...
For what's it worth, I've heard that "oll korrect" thing is the best explanation.
Without OK, the most common Americanism around the world might be "yeah."
As a repsonse to a request ("Go do such-and-such." "OK.") it might be replaced with "aye."
In the sense of "good" or "I approve" it...
A lot of language changes.
"Sinister" means "good."
"Dextrous" means "clumsy."
"Right" (in the sense of "correct") would be replaced by "left."
You'd say "He's my left-hand man" and "That was a right-handed compliment."
Interesting. I know almost nothing of this time, so I'll just throw out a few thoughts.
Let's say that the Amorites and the Elamites are a little weaker in the region, so that Ur dominates for a longer period of time. Maybe they can prevent the rise of the Babylonians to power. (Goodbye...