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The premise: Alexander Severus, rather than be assassinated in AD 235, lives to about 70 years old, dying somewhere around AD 278. Which other Roman Emperor from history - and feel free to pick anyone from 31 BC to AD 1453 - would he most closely resemble? And why do you think that? A few...

This is going to be a very broad topic, so feel free to take it in any general direction: What might the Modern Olympics look like in an alternate universe? You have two restrictions: - The POD must be after the end of the ancient Olympic Games (AD 393). - The Olympics actually do have to be...

Assume that WW1 is averted - no assassination to provide a spark, and no other point of conflict rises to the level to ignite a war. There are smaller wars in the Balkans, but nothing major. None of the major powers collapse in the time frame we're discussing. The world, as a whole, stays...

Pretty much, once the respective islands (Canaries, Madeira, Cape Verde, and the Azores) were conquered, they never changed hands at all, except when Portugal and Spain were in a personal union. The islands were clearly strategic. What gives?

I’ve been listening to a biography of Calvin Coolidge (bias alert: my favorite president for reasons both political and parochial) and I was struck at how durable his candidacy was in the 1920 Preaidential election. He was always a dark horse candidate, but that was, in part, by design. His team...

In September 1902, Teddy Roosevelt was in an accident that killed ome of his secret service agents and injured him. His wounds were infected but he recovered without too much trouble and life went on. Suppose he dies. He has no VP, so his sec of state, John Hay, becomes President under the...

Assume the following: - Quebec joins the ARW and becomes a state - The US Constitution (with Bill of Rights) is effectively identical to its historical form - Quebec establishes Catholicism as their state church - The idea of incorporation of the Bill of Rights proceeds, more or less, as it did...

What it says on the tin. MA’s kids had a habit of dying young, except for Commodus. If he followed his siblings’ example, who might MA tap?

If anyone has good sources on this topic, I’d appreciate them. Anyway, my general question is focused on the value of slaves compared to serfs, inasmuch as we can contrast the two. Beyond social reasons (the Church frowning on enslaving Christians) and political reasons (serfs migt fit the...

What if, during the Space Race, either the US or the USSR got it in their heads that building a space station with a proper rotating artificial gravity section was a prestige project worth pursuing? So, here are the parameters: - POD after 1960 - Both sides need to make a reasonable effort to...

On paper, its a simple challenge: Napoleon still attacks Russia on schedule, and wins. You even can be flexible with your definition of winning. So long as its historically regarded as a French victory, it gets my stamp of approval. Possible ideas to incorporate: - Don’t go chasing after the...

So, Siemens has been developing a system that they call an ‘eHighway’ and it looks like a really cool technology. If you’ve ever see a trackless trolley/trolleybus, you know the basic idea, a bus that draws its power from overhead lines, like trolleys and (some) subways do. This technology has...

Basically, I'd like to have a discussion of some various improvements to agriculture that pre-industrial humanity could implement, without too much of a stretch. Different under-utilized crops, crops that we've only recently discovered are useful, plants that could be domesticated with minimal...

First, a quick forward: I wasn't sure whether to put this in FH or Post-1900, and settled on this forum because a) I am posing this happens prior to the present and b) I'm more interested in the impacts in our general time, rather than decades out from now. But I won't protested too loudly if a...

I’ve been listening to the audible version ‘Napoleon: A life’ by Andrew Roberts and an interesting little detail popped up that I found quite fascinating. Though Napoleon adopted a classically Colbertian Mercantalist economic policy, he did, in fact, read Adam Smith, according to Roberts...

A long title, I know. Anyway, given how mich of antebellum US national politics was driven by the desire to maintain a balance between slave states and free states, and that balance was maintained until 1850. What if, prior to 1850, one or more of the classic slave states (so not a northern...

I’ve been binging the Civil War Podcast, and have been quite struck by how (justifiably) hard the hosts come down on Mac. Of course this is gold fodder for some speculation, and I’ve been pondering what the smallest change we could make to Mac without just turning him into the ideal general...

Byzantium was a member of the Delian League, and, due to its strategic location, punched above its weight, so to speak, with Athens being particularly afraid of losing them. What if Byzantium either came to dominate the league or forming a new league as Athens declined (perhaps with Spartan...

Constantinople is still the capital of a large Mediterranean empire in the modern day. Your pick, Byzantine/Roman, or Ottoman. How might its urban development proceed, compared to modern Istanbul's? Obviously, there will be many differences between a Byzantine and Ottoman version, hell, even...

As the 4th Crusade started to go off the rails, the populace of Constantinople began to resign themselves to their fate, and figured that Boniface would likely be declared Emperor. That wasn’t so bad, he had strong dynastic ties to the Angeloi, so they could grudgingly accept him. The Venetians...