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Um, I thought the Maginot Line, like the French fortifications in the Alpine passes to Italy, hung on until ordered to surrender. IIRC, a very senior French general had to go into the Alpine forts under a flag of truce and personally convince them it was no ruse, that France really had fallen...

Above a certain size of waterway, sailing barges. Below that, horse-drawn. Some cross-over for locks, contrary wind etc...

Um, isn't that why they had fail-safe release codes ?? Or did those come AFTER those 'Broken Arrow' incidents ?? At least Dr. Strangelove had a rogue ground commander who was in 'chain of command' in-extremis issue the go-codes.//

Um, don't the Zoroastrians have temples built around natural fire-pits with 'perpetual flames' ?? IIRC, didn't the Ancient Greeks & Romans have something similar, but burning sulphuretted fumes, at the notorious Phlegrean Fields just West of Naples ?? ( FWIW, is or isn't the rather arcuate...

IIRC, H didn't forget the bombastic speech he'd made promising that for one bomb falling on Berlin, a hundred would fall on London. RAF promptly dropped some small bombs on the very outskirts of Berlin. Luftwaffe was ordered to switch from attacking the RAF airfields, to Blitz London instead...

There's another possible POD. IIRC, back in the Sixties, 'Imperial College', London, ran a project on improving coal mining. They proposed 'tele-operation', with most of the equipment run by remote control from the safety and comfort of surface offices. The mine shafts & galleries would be...

The problems, IIRC, with the extended version --More rotors etc-- were the increased set-up time and distributing the set-up code books. Part of its security was obscurity. With many, many more sets 'in the field', there would be a lot more data to work from... Wasn't the naval variant broken...

There's lots and lots of minor Royals who could step up. Abdicated Edward had no way back unless a pro-fasc**st coup installed him as a puppet...

Uh, if you want to stretch a point, you might say the high-silica reeds covered in pitch of Utnapishtim's 'Flood' boat (*) was the first *recorded* resin-mat... ( Yeah, yeah, he's the guy who saved his extended family from a really, really bad river flood, and later told Gilgamesh how it was...

Looks like the Clovis Point happened. The wielders seem to have taken down all the mega-fauna they met, plus possibly the earlier waves of settlers who'd come down the 'West coastal shelf' during the glacial low-stand... Cue ecological collapse...

Consider the difference between an air-boat and a speed-boat. Provided you don't have to skim over weeds, a propellor in water is so much more efficient than one in air...

"If someone had the idea to build train tracks every kilometre or so through a big city..." AKA Trams, no ??

Don't know about earthquakes, but there's a big, bad volcano *possibly* stirring on the border with China. Think 'Cascade Range', due similar subducting tectonics, similar grumbling then explosive geology. You've seen what Mt St.Helens can do. Rainier is within striking range of Seattle etc...

A compressed air trench mortar has the advantages of surprise and low acceleration. IIRC, it was quiet enough compared to a regular weapon to catch entrenched squaddies by surprise. At first... The low acceleration certainly lent itself to chemical weapons... Either way, you'd need a...

Um... No Churchill ?? POD would have him forget Yanks drove on the right, step under that New York bus... OT: This causes almost as many toxic butterflies as when AH fled to his step-cousins in Liverpool to avoid the German police. Had he met a nice Irish lass, there could been little vans...

Is this the guy who got into HM's bedroom ? IIRC, she had a revolver aimed at him beneath the bedding and, given she was a disconcertingly good shot...

There's some indication that Columbus *knew* there was land at his predicted distance / longitude thanks to taciturn Basque fishermen who'd explored the 'Grand Banks' and ventured further South. His desperate gaffe was assuming this land was Japan / China etc, therefore the Earth *must* be...

IIRC, one of the problems with that Morris was *terrible* quality control. I remember an uncle buying a new one. He drove it directly from show-room to his local garage, paid them to remove the front suspension and fit hefty reinforcement plates, so corrosion would not wreck the car's front end...

IMHO, you've two issues; quality and metallurgy. The early Chinese weapons were seriously clunky because the processes to make 'good' gunpowder are non-trivial, and getting your projectile to fly predictably while your gun remains intact is hard. IIRC, this was why the Chinese did a lot with...

You could allow *static* electricity, as a fun toy, like that Alexandrian steam turbine. & see... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper Even the Voltaic pile is nothing more than a curiosity without Faraday to pursue electromagnetism... { Power going as I*I*R, static can't do much...