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  1. No European Empire?

    So far as I know, there's never been a single empire that's ruled all of Europe. But why not? There have been empires of greater area, empires of equal cultural and geographical diversity, yet nobody made an empire of Europe.

  2. DBWI: World Contact Day flopped?

    Those old enough will likely remember and possibly have participated in World Contact Day. For the rest, I'll summarize: On May 27, 1976, people around the world formed what were called thought circles, sending the following message via telepathy to any aliens in the vicinity. Calling occupants...

  3. The Flying Pharaohs!

    Despite the title, this is not an ASB premise. Let's suppose that during that time of of one the great pharaohs, Rameses II for example, some visionary or just plain lucky inventor manages to build a floating lantern. He shows it at court, and get backing to make a bigger one, one that can...

  4. DBWI: No Great Folk Music Shift

    Back in the late 60s, the record companies were running scared. The new medium of cassette tapes, and the rising popularity of acoustical and folk music, were cutting into their sales in a big way. To simplify, the executives put on a massive push for the kind of music that required full-blown...

  5. Operation Sealion "best" case scenario?

    If Hitler had been mad enough and his commanders oral enough to actually attempt something like Sealion, what would be the plausible "best" outcome, or more accurately, least bad outcome, from point of view of Germany?

  6. WI: King Richard the Lionheart and King John I lived up (and down) to their legends?

    As it says. The legendary and actual versions of t.eh two monarch have very little to do with each other, but how might English and French history have differed if Richard had been the great and good king he's depicted as in legend, and John the horrid and greedy tyrant?

  7. AHC: Majority Female Military

    Under what circumstances, if any, could a country plausibility have majority female combat branches of its military? A majority-female military is relatively easy, given how much of the military, any military, is composed of bureaucrats, mechanics, and other support personnel who never see...

  8. No Bronze Age

    As far as I can find out, there's no theoretical reason the Bronze Age had to happen. So how might history have differed if ironworking had been discovered instead of bronze working, considering that unlike bronze, iron doesn't generally require large scale trade networks?

  9. WI: Americas Without Slavery

    Slavery in the Americas was a uniquely horrible institution, for reasons I do not even pretend to understand. But the start of it is easy enough to grasp, at least in rough outline: Europeans say "Hey, this would be a great place to grow sugar cane!" They learn the locals don't want to work for...

  10. Europe discovers the Americas earlier?

    Is this plausible? Could the European powers (or the African, for that matter) have established regular contact between themselves and the Americas prior to the era of Columbus? Not in technical terms, the Ra expeditions proved that yes, it was doable back in the days of Pharaonic Egypt, but in...

  11. Space Gun Built

    Let's suppose that the initial events of Verne's A Voyage From the Earth to the Moon took place: A great space cannon is built in Florida. It's an immense project, of course, but it wasn't entirely beyond the technology of the time. When the time comes, the capsule doesn't contain people (for...

  12. ODESSA Implementations(s) Question

    Suppose the ODESSA organization had been real and managed to get away with enough wealth to actually get the ball rolling. Where would they have had the best, or more accurately the least bad, chance of success? And even in the best case, how far could they have gotten?

  13. Buddy Don't Complain...

    just go out and get a horse! In the rather obscure SF film Firebird 2015, the intro tells us than on a "black day in August, 1992... Congress said 'Hey buddy, no more oil for you.'" Basically, private driving was outlawed unless you were a high-level politician or a member of the military on...

  14. Space Battleship Yamato!

    Despite the title, this is not a fandom TL, and is not intended to be ASB beyond the admittedly extremely dubious premise. After the Meiji revolution, Japan felt a need to prove its superiority to all other nations. But military conquest wouldn’t work, and economic domination was too quiet, so...

  15. DBWI: Successful February Revolution

    Most people have heard of the St. Petersburg Rebellion, when Tsar Nichols II was very nearly ousted in an attempted insurrection. Students of history know it only failed because Nicholas had reluctantly accepted two things: Russia could not be modernized while remaining an autocracy, and his son...

  16. A quick question about Nazi victories

    What would have constituted a victory for Nazi Germany? I've never been at all clear on this point. For Japan, it's pretty clear: establish political and economic dominance over China, Korea, and possibly some of the other nations of SE Asia, the "Co-Prosperity Sphere" of which they spoke...

  17. Afghanistan as Ally

    Power after power has tried and failed to conquer Afghanistan, usually leaving the country in worst state than when they arrived. But... what if some power decided "We need Afghanistan, but we can't really expect to conquer it. So I want you people to go talk to the local leader, see if they'll...

  18. Cable or Ads

    Back when cable television was coming in, there was a huge pushback from broadcast stations, one hard to imagine today. I came across an anti-cable spot from that time, and it prompted a thought: what if the FCC back then had said, in essence, "You can either run ads, or charge access fees. You...

  19. DBWI: Fleischer Flops, Disney Dominates

    Most people have seen a few of the old Disney shorts, and everybody knows about Fleischer Studios. It's pretty much impossible not to. But back in the early 40s, both studios were in serious trouble. After Disney's Snow White, the Fleischers needed to produce a feature of their own. Several were...

  20. WI: No fractional reserve banking?

    Fractional reserve banking is a very simple idea: A bank decides to lend out money multiple times, relying on the fact that it's extremely rare for all the customers to demand all their money at the same time, so they pretty well never have to actually have all the relevant funds in their...
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