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  1. Leon Blum killed in 1936

    Leon Blum served as Prime Minister of France 3 times--1936-1937, again in 1938, and in 1946-1947. He was the first socialist PM, and PM during the first big German step toward aggression--the remilitarization of the Rhineland. He made a number of foreign policy moves--cultivating alliances...
  2. Louis Philippe in the Vendee

    This idea was prompted by something Napoleon said, when royalist agents approached the then-consul asking whether he could be brought to support a Bourbon restoration a la General Monck in England. Napoleon answered that, despite his own preference for rule by one man, he could not respect any...
  3. Red Poland, White Russia?

    Jozef Pilsudski, famously, "took the red tram of socialism to the stop labeled independence." Left-wing movements in pre-WWI Poland were divided on the question of whether to seek independence through armed force, and post-independence Polish leftism was often coopted by Soviet agents, leading...
  4. “Free birth” instead of hereditary slavery from Late Antiquity onward

    IOTL, Free Birth laws were passed as steps to the abolition of slavery in the 19th century, overturning a tradition going back to Roman times of slaves inheriting their low status from their mothers. What if the concept is instead implemented in civil and ecclesiastical law much, much sooner...
  5. MacArthur killed at Los Negros

    On February 29, 1944, Douglas MacArthur made the (rather foolhardy) decision to accompany a recon-in-force operation on Los Negros island, coming ashore with the 1st Cavalry division. He was warned about the presence of Japanese snipers near the beach--in fact, just minutes before his arrival, a...
  6. Yugoslavia in ESRO and ESA

    At its founding, the European Space Research Organization was modeled on CERN, a supposedly apolitical international scientific cooperation project. CERN, however, had two more founding members than ESRO--Greece and Yugoslavia. The latter two, primarily for budgetary reasons, were not invited...
  7. Drone Warfare for Night Bombing: Allied V-1s

    The US is known to have reverse-engineered the V-1 IOTL, of course, but this idea is for an earlier use of such weapons. Specifically, swarms of them as night bombers, where their relative inaccuracy isn't so much of a concern as it would be for daylight 'precision' bombing. The concept of...
  8. Nuclear Reactors in American City Centers: Ravenswood and Beyond

    In 1962, Con Ed (NYC's power utility) proposed to build a 1 GW nuclear plant on the east river, at the Ravenswood site in Queens. If completed, it was planned to go into service in 1970. The plan was part of a larger argument that nuclear plants should be built in big cities to reduce the cost...
  9. Adama on the Enterprise: EJO Plays Picard

    So, instead of Patrick Stewart, Edward Olmos (who IOTL would play Commander Adama in the BSG remake) takes the role (whether Picard stays French ITTL or is rewritten to a different background is negotiable). What changes does this make to the show's first season? How does his different acting...
  10. Union Victory at Fredericksburg?

    During the Battle of Fredericksburg, Union forces experienced some initial success south of the city with a breakthrough against Jackson's forces there. However, this was not exploited due to the reluctance of Franklin and Reynolds to commit their reserves to the gap opened there. WI they...
  11. President Thomas Marshall in 1913: Effects on US Entry to WWI?

    On July 3, 1913, a 14" gun was being test-fired at the Dahlgren, VA proving ground for the US Navy. The lieutenant in command of the gun, having received a notice from the lookout that a yacht was anchored roughly 1,000 yards off the shot line in the Potomac river, ordered the gun fired...
  12. Stalinist Purge of the CCP in the late 1940s?

    Suppose the atomic bomb isn't dropped until a few weeks later, or that the Manchuria operation starts sooner--leading to the Red Army occupying a larger part of China than IOTL, including the communist bases of operation in the northern part of the country. Given the degree of Stalin's distrust...
  13. Speculum Telescopes in Antiquity

    The use of parabolic mirrors to concentrate light was known in antiquity, as the apocryphal incident of Archimedes setting Roman ships on fire attests. Speculum metal, an alloy of copper and tin, was used for reflecting telescopes before the invention of silvering techniques. What if some...
  14. The Romanovs in Poland in 1918: Exile or Punishment?

    Nicholas and his family were, of course, executed months before the formal beginning of the Second Polish Republic. But suppose events had gone a bit differently, and Nicholas had attempted to flee in 1918, evading Red forces in an effort to reach territory under German rule and throw himself...
  15. Staten Island to NYC Subway Connections

    IOTL, the NYC subway system stimulated the development of the Bronx, upper Manhattan, and Brooklyn, driving real estate values in the vicinity of (then-new) stations up dramatically. Alone of the five boroughs, Staten Island did not reap any benefit, since its railway is not linked to that of...
  16. Maghreb Great Power?

    From the sixteenth century on, the Maghreb (sans Morocco) was largely dominated by the Ottomans, and the economy of the region is most known for piracy and extortion. Could that have gone differently, with an independent Maghrebi state forming an important power in the western Mediterranean with...
  17. Australia as a Sugar Planting Colony in the 17th Century

    IOTL, the Spanish came close to the Australian continent when Torres passed through the strait that now bears his name. If they had discovered and claimed the continent, could they have set up a sugar planting economy in what’s now Queensland? The Great Barrier Reef makes navigation a bit...
  18. Second Sino-Japanese War without Allied Intervention

    Suppose the Pacific War never breaks out and the international relations in that region remain frozen in their 1940 configuration a few years longer—Britain and France supplying Nationalist China by way of Burma and Vietnam, American neutrality, no embargo on Japan, modest Soviet support of the...
  19. A Woman wins the Orteig Prize

    The Orteig Prize IOTL famously went to Charles Lindbergh, for his solo transatlantic flight, and no woman even competed for it. But woman aviators were not unknown at the time. WI a woman won this prize instead of Lindbergh? Maybe a precocious Amelia Earhart (who IOTL took up solo flying after...
  20. Regia Marina operations in the Pacific?

    Suppose that Mussolini’s options for expansion in Europe were closed off for some reason. With Ethiopia subdued and the British and French not showing signs of weakness, what’s left for his New Roman Empire project? While contemplating this question, I began to wonder if the Italians might take...
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