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On 28 February 1844, President Tyler narrowly escaped death while aboard USS Princeton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Princeton_(1843)#1844_Peacemaker_accident What if he has stayed on deck and hadn't been so lucky and died that day? He had no vice president, having himself succeeded...

On 14 November 1943 FDR was sailing aboard USS Iowa to Cairo for a conference with Churchill and Chang Kai-Shek. Accompanying the President were Admiral Earnest King and General George Marshall. One of the escort ships, the destroyer William D. Porter was conducting a drill and accidentally...

Is it possible for there have been an earlier Space Force (or similarly titled service) for the US? Perhaps in 1959 Eisenhower leaves spaceflight in the hands of the military rather than enacting NASA? What would such a service look like now 60 years later?

What if Nixon had chosen Ronald Reagan to be his new VP after Agnew rather than Gerald Ford? Connally gets talked about a lot and was Nixon's preferred choice, but he had issues and enemies on both sides of the aisle. So Nixon decides to go with the lame-duck governor of California instead...

Apparently the Nazis had a plan for this: https://www.yahoo.com/news/nazi-germany-had-plan-win-220000414.html Would this have effectively change the course of the war in Germany's favor?

In 1951 Truman tried to convince Eisenhower to run for the Presidency under the banner of the Democratic party. Of course, in OTL he declined and ran as a republican. But, let's say he accepts Truman's argument and runs for the nomination of the Democratic Party, wins and is the Democratic...

What if in 1959, President Eisenhower does not establish NASA? Instead he charges the military to continue it's work in the area of rocketry and space-travel. How does the space program progress as opposed to OTL? Do we get to the moon sooner? Or does this result in an overall slower...

News this morning that Lee Iacocca, the 41st President of the US (1989-93) has died. What, if anything, will be the lasting legacy of his Presidency? Aside from his surprising win as an Independent presidential candidate (something no one else has managed before or since), how should we look...

In 1952 the nation of Israel offered it's presidency to physicist Albert Einstein. Einstein turned it down saying the didn't have the personality for the job. But, what if he had accepted? How would this change how Einstein is regarded by history? How would this have changed Israel's history...

In a week it will be 75 years since the epic failure of the attempted Allied landing on the European continent at Normandy. Eisenhower nobly accepted full-responsibility for the disaster, was court-martialed, resigned in disgrace and faded into obscurity. We all know how the war dragged on...

A couple British Royal what-ifs: 1) What if Edward VII had remained on the throne - either buckles under and agrees not to marry Wallis Simpson, or the government/church let him do so. So, he reigns until his death in 1972 - would the UK be much different because of this or would the changes...

Suppose Joseph Kennedy Jr. survives WW2 instead of his younger brother JFK. It's known that Joe Sr. had intended that Jr. be the one aimed for high office, and JFK became the family up and comer by default after his brother's death. So, if Joe Jr. survived the war instead how would his...

What if the founders had made the island of Manhattan a federal district separate from New York to be capital of the US rather than the current capital carved out of Virginia and Maryland? New York City was briefly the capital of the US, what if it had remained so? Challenge - with the POD of...

In the early days of the project that eventually became Star Wars, George Lucas wanted to obtain the rights to do a film based on Flash Gordon. However the company that held the rights to the Flash Gordon property wanted more money than Lucas was able to raise. So, Lucas eventually developed...

Let's say the Romans have other stuff on their plate in 33 AD or so and Jesus is not crucified. Perhaps they just ignore him as just another rabble rouser, or if he does get arrested, Pontius Pilate decides to just have Jesus exiled or something. So, in either case Jesus lives the rest of his...

The recent gathering of historians and military experts at UN Headquarters in Melbourne concluded that the so-called "Cuban Missile War" of 1962 was basically inevitable, and there was no way it could have been avoided. Unfortunately, most of what we know comes from the US side of things -...

Sorry - double post.

As today is the 55th anniversary of the infamous assassination attempt on the 35th President, John Kennedy, I thought it might be interesting to speculate on how history would have been different if he had been killed that day? How different would the United States or the world at large have...

With a POD of 4 October 1957 or after can there be an independent "space force" branch of the United States military and how soon? And what culd it look like by 2016?

With today being the 70th anniversery of the failure of the normandy Invasion, i thought it'd be a good time to discuss how WW2 may have been different if that operation had gone the way it was planned. Would the Allies still have used nuclear weapons against the Third Reich? Would it have...