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  1. Would the USA have bothered with such high investment in the sciences if they were ahead in every stage of the space race?

    I'm reading Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education and it argues, quite elaborately, that Sputnik 1 triggered an immense panic among the 85th Congress, spurring the creation of DARPA-precursor ARPA and boosting funding such that the USA had over 4...

  2. Are there any modern timelines where a single country has multiple currencies?

    This is kinda niche, but I've been reading some of Jane Jacobs' books and she suggests that second-tier cities in a nation are crowded out economically by having to share a currency with first-tier cities in the same way that an oil boom destroys the other sectors of an emerging economy. e.g...

  3. What if OBOR was proposed to be a joint US-China endeavor?

    I watched a recent talk John Thornton (currently at Tsinghua University, formerly director of Goldman Sachs) gave at the University of Texas (link here, the anecdote is from approx 21:00-23:00). He tells an interesting story at one point: It must have been shut down because of either fears of...

  4. Would some combination of central/eastern European states go nuclear if NATO never expanded past Germany?

    Let's, please, for the purpose of this thread, stick to the thread topic instead of discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As early as 1991, many central/eastern European countries expressed an interest in joining NATO. In the 1990s there were referendums which returned majorities in favor...

  5. What was the last point in time that the Roosevelt administration would have accepted something other than unconditional Japanese surrender?

    Peter Zeihan's first book, The Accidental Superpower, strongly implies in it's first chapter that, from the American perspective, total Japanese defeat was taken as a given by June 1944. Regardless of the military long-term projections available to the Americans at that point, what was the last...

  6. Could Japan have purchased Guam? Would the US have accepted?

    Obviously this question doesn't apply to some point in time after 1930 but what about much earlier, say 1917/18/19?

  7. What's the earliest that daguerrotype, ambrotype or tintype photography could be invented?

    These processes rely on a few chemical products that are beyond most conceptions of pre-industrial technology but, if, say, an experimenting alchemist discovered one of these by chance in Renaissance Italy, Ming China, Constantinople or Abbasid Baghdad could the technology continue as an artisan...

  8. In a hypothetical wind power-wank TL is WW2 any different?

    A quick search for details on the history of wind farms finds that the basic theory was popularised by the Danish scientist Poul la Cour from about 1898 to 1905, small wind farms of around 100 KW per turbine were sporadically introduced in the 1930s and a 1.25 MW turbine comparable in efficiency...

  9. In the AH's where Germany was carved up after WW2, what is the earliest that the complete carving plan could be arranged?

    For the purpose of this thread, assume an AH that diverges at a point of your choosing after January 1st 1940 but includes the stipulation that by June 1944 all of Churchill, Attlee, Viscount Halifax, Eden, Stalin, Molotov, De Gaulle, Roosevelt, Stimson, Morgenthau and Hull (or their relevant...

  10. WI Huge Swedish humanitarian intervention in the 1994 DPRK famine?

    Suppose, per the POD, that the famine gets wider media coverage and a huge movement of people with humanitarian intentions arises in Sweden, campaigning for huge amounts of food aid and other assistance like Live Aid (but proportionally bigger) with some Swedish (and maybe some Norwegian)...

  11. WI a canal was built from Thessaloniki to Belgrade?

    The river Vardar flows south to the Aegean sea near Thessaloniki and near it is the Morava river which flows north to the Danube near Belgrade. Widening and dredging the rivers, combined with an 80km canal to link them, could let ship traffic bypass the Bosphorus. What if the governments of...

  12. Can Libya Balkanise (De Jure) with a 2010/2011 PoD?

    I hope it's not considered too soon to ask this. The population of Libya is sharply divided into two big chunks, one near Tunisia and the other near Egypt and the 2011 civil war was strongly split between a mostly-loyalist west and a rebellious east. Ultimately the rebels won the war by...

  13. What if private negotiations between George V and Wilhelm resulted in Germany respecting Belgian neutrality in attacking France?

    I've wondered how WW1 would go if the UK stayed out physically out of it, if materially supporting France. Suppose that King George V and Kaiser Wilhelm have some private discussion at some point in 1914 and the rest of the year goes as OTL until the end of July when the Kaiser vetoes any plans...

  14. Is it possible to build a canal/make rivers navigable to connect Thessaloniki to the Danube in the 1900s?

    I recently saw a youtube video talking about a Danube-Morava-Axios canal project that the governments of Greece, North Macedonia and Serbia are hoping to have built with Chinese investment and I'm wondering if such a thing could be done in the 1900s within 15 years of a POD. Any ideas?

  15. Earliest Magdalene Laundries outrage?

    POD: A major British newspaper investigates the institutions and sensationally publishes the findings on their front page for day after day, causing witchhunts/outrage similar to OTL. What's the earliest this could concievably happen?

  16. Could Polaris have been based in Wales?

    Apparently the list of potential Polaris bases (back when it was drawn up) included Milford Haven in SW Wales. It was apparently snubbed in favour of Faslane because Milford Haven was a village instead of a proper town back then, and it couldn't be done now because it has LNG facilities. But...

  17. Why can't we speed up the mesolithic?

    I'm sure there are many reasons why sedentarism and agriculture took so long to come about, but they elude me so. For example, assuming an earlier desertification of Upper Egypt around 20-15k BCE, why wouldn't we see a Neolithic level of civilization by ~12k BCE? I'm curious as to why many...

  18. Cienfuegos survives?

    Camilo Cienfuegos' plane avoids its mysterious crash in late 1959 and he survives. What becomes of Cuba?

  19. Italian-Yugoslav war in 1934?

    I've been reading up on Romanian history (for mostly unrelated reasons) and was reminded of the assassination of Alexander 1st by members of Ustaše. Assuming some POD that sparks an Italian-Yugoslav war, how would France and Austria respond?

  20. Has anybody done anything with Transnistria?

    Transnistria is an interesting quasi-stalinist nowhere. Search doesn't work today, so I ask of you guys if you know of anything involving it. The same goes for post 1990 Somaliland.
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