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Without the fall of Constantinople, knowledge of Greek recensions of Attic and Ionic philosophy, as well as knowledge of Greek scriptural and theological texts, would not have reached western Europe. Thomas Aquinas, who lived about two centuries before Constantinople's fall, received his...

Many of the bishops and periti (experts) at the Second Vatican Council delivered addresses in Latin. Some even spoke to one another in Latin. It's important to remember that the participants in any language exhibit varying levels of literacy, eloquence, and interest. Also, some will speak...

Hold the noisemakers. When the BRD (West Germany) absorbed the former DDR in 1990-91, it faced huge infrastructure projects in the eastern states that were mostly borne by western German taxpayers. The BRD was (and still is) a very wealthy country at the economic centre of Europe. Even twenty...

The Tokugawa shogunate exploited the isolationist nature of Japanese society to its full potential. From the near expulsion of European traders in late 16th century until mid 19th century European and American trade demands, the Tokugawans ran a highly efficient interior intelligence ministry...

Mehmed would probably have no other ideological choice, even if he personally did not care to take Hagia Sophia as a mosque. Conquest in this period almost always meant converting the cathedral/main mosque into the other just to reinforce to the populace the power of the new regime. Also...

I am extremely skeptical that butterflying away the Protocols would have made the early 20th c. any safer for Jews. The absence of the Protocols alone might not have prevented Hitler's rise to power. I do think that an absence of the Protocols would remove a crucial backbone to anti-Semitism...

The Turks would've done better to let Hagia Sophia remain the patriarchal church and the church of the eparchy, akin to St. Peter's and the Lateran in one. This is ASB since both Christian and Muslim conquerors of the period routinely converted a city's most impressive church to a mosque (and...

I find it a bit strange that you'd want to have English-style road signs in New England. Would an ATL New England Commonwealth Realm drive on the left? Actually, people in OTL Boston drive on the left. That's not because they're English. :rolleyes:

This also demonstrates how enmeshed the USA was in Indochina even before the VC gathered significant steam. I suspect that Nixon and other outspoken anti-communist pols wouldn't've painted Vietnam as the next domino between communism and the free world if Truman simply let French Indochina...

The Romans (supposedly) made a taffy out of honey and pepper. My high school Latin class made a batch of this taffy, and it tasted like spicy, sickeningly sweet gloop. The ancient Mediterranean only had honey as a natural sweetner. Unfortunately, the Romans also used "sugar of lead", a...

Equus, the classical word for horse, referred to a thoroughbred. A caballus was nag or a mule.

Even the post-WWII Polish communist regime attempted (and almost completely succeeded) in the late 1960's in forcing the few Jewish people left in Poland to leave. Also, Cdl. Josef Glemp openly preached anti-Semitism and was not censured by his brother Polish bishops or the Vatican in the...

Xwindows, which is still the dominant windowing engine in *nix, has been around since 1983 -- 1984. Granted, it's in its 11th version, but it was quite usable even before the advent of GNOME and KDE. I remember running StarOffice on an early fedora distribution. Where Windows 95 would bsod...

Juche is what has made the DPRK the DPRK. The butterfly away Juche-style autarky is to create another state altogether. Kim Il Sung could've ruled as an Uncle Joe clone over a rubber-stamp Politburo. His choice to create a unique and profound character cult placed NK into a completely...

Butterflies? You're talking huge, 30-foot, man-eating butterflies. There is absolutely no way South Vietnam could exist without a DMZ and pervasive US occupation of the South. That was just not going to happen after 1968 ~ 1970. Yes and no. Yes, as in a formerly continuous region would...

The Jewish Reformation in 19th century Germany already tried to remove Hebrew from liturgy. This move was staunchly opposed by many in the Jewish community well before the Shoah.

No, I wasn't thinking along the lines of the addition of more prejudice/violence to lessen prejudice/violence. Rather, the better race relations in New Orleans could've been a template for a non-violent desegregation elsewhere. However, in the 1920's that could've been ASB. New Orleans was...

Is there any way to title this WI without using slave trader terminology? Creole-Cajun interaction in 19th and early 20th century New Orleans was complex. A good number of Creoles were educated and employed as professionals. Many knew of, and even were friendly with, their Cajun relatives...

What about the Prussian Union? The Austrians ruled over a quite a religiously diverse empire. Catholics, Protestants, and Christian Orthodox, as well as Jews, were all well represented in the Empire. Still, the Habsburg throne was staunchly Catholic, and Catholicism was the religion which...

de Lesseps's underestimation of the difficulty of the Panama Canal project contributed to the original French corporation's failure to complete the Panama Canal. Unlike the flat and sandy Suez, Panama required many locks due to the terrain. Also, the Panama project was plagued with...