For Want Of A Nail Type Timelines

Hey Guys! Anyway it occurred to me that no one has made a thread for "For Want of A Nail" kinds of timelines (as far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong). Anyway, the idea is that you can post your timelines ideas that start with very small PoDs but expand into something much larger. The TL's can be the first part of a much larger story that you may want to write, or just a few sentences on your general idea. Either way please post!


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Since we are in the Pre-1900's please come up with a PoD from before 1900.
 
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I'm working on a timeline which is, too the word, "for want of a nail". I don't mean to hijack the thread, but below is the intro/ch1 that I typed up a while back. So, yeah, if you read it and think it warrants its own thread, let me know and I'll go away :) (Oh, sorry Thande, but I stole your format that you stole from Jared :))



Part #1: For Want of a Nail

“For want of a nail a horseshoe was lost,

for want of a horseshoe a horse went lame,

for want of a horse a rider never got through,

for want of a rider a message never arrived,

for want of a message an army was never sent,

for want of an army a battle was lost,

for want of a battle a war was lost,

for want of a war a kingdom fell,

and all for want of a nail.”

-Unknown

*

From: “Little-known men who Changed the World” by Jacob Morley (1995)


In August 1844, a man named James G. Birney went horseback riding around Bay City, Michigan. By a stroke of misfortune, his stable boy forgot a nail when fitting one of the horseshoes. Birney was thrown not too far from the stable and broke his neck. Though only a footnote in history, Birney’s survival might have dramatically altered history. Such a claim may sound preposterous on the surface, but a deeper investigation demonstrates the knife’s edge history lay upon in 1844.

The year of 1844 was an election year in the United States. Whig leader Henry Clay battled Southern Democrat James Polk for the Presidency. The big issue was Texas, which had applied for annexation once that year. Polk supported annexation as part of “Manifest Destiny,” the aspiration that the United States would stretch from “sea to shining sea.” Clay strongly opposed annexation, fearing the expansion of slave power and war with Mexico. The issue of free and slave states was heating up at the time; much of Clay’s support came from the “free” north, while the slave holding south tended to support Polk.

The election of 1844 went down to the wire; any small change could have determined the outcome. James Birney part was a major, if over-looked one. The Liberty Party, a minor political party dedicated to the abolitionist cause, had nominated him the previous year. His death, one month before voting began, threw the party’s electorate into chaos. It was too late to call for another convention, or even to remove his name from the ballot in some states. Most Liberty supporters resolved privately to vote for Henry Clay, who opposed the expansion of slave power. When the votes were tallied, Clay had carried New York and Michigan by the slimmest of margins.

Had Birney survived, a few thousand Clay votes in New York and elsewhere might have defected to give Polk a majority. A world with Polk as president, even only for one term, might have looked dramatically different….

ElectoralCollege1844.png


Clay defeats Polk in 1844; 146-129 Electoral Votes
 
My Up With the Star timeline's produced a very different 20th Century with an obscure political POD. Vice-President Ben Butler produced a Cold War between fascist-Tsarist Russia and a USA more wealthy and prosperous than IOTL, France losing WWI and not becoming a Nazi expy, short-lived failure Chancellor Hitler, butterflying away Communism as we know it IOTL, and the Ottomans surviving into the current phase of the TL as the core of moderate, prosperous Neo-Islam controlling most of the Middle East's oil supplies and the Ploesti Oil Fields, and a democratic Imperial Japan that was not nuked and is a US Ally, Russia as noted is a military superpower, but one ruled by the Romanovs, not the Soviet Union. World War II leads to Imperial Germany having no choice but to democratize, Mussolini is the Scary Bad FascistTM, the happiest, most prosperous, least-paranoid part of the world is South America, World War I with Germany and Austria as enemies, a peaceful Balkans, no Holocaust, no Israel, US apartheid including large quasi-free/quasi-equal castes instead of "rulers-oppressed" and a USA that has a black President in the 1960s (as OTL would see it), and to top it off the most stable parts of Africa are Botswana and Somalia.

All from Ben Butler saying yes in 1864 instead of no.
 
Sweet idea Yelnoc.

Doesn't LTTW sort of count too?
I want to extend the timeline to 1900 and polish it up a bit before I post it, so that I know I will be posing quality material. Hopefully by Christmas I will have something to show for it.
 
Also, The Winds of Fate sees U.S. Grant go south and join the Confederate army, which produces a 19th Century Deep War, the timeline having stopped circa 1865 with a POD in the 1860s for the time being. From a POD having to do with one man's daddy issues the USA winds up in an apocalyptic Civil War much more lethal than IOTL with the USA under George H. Thomas defeating the CSA under U.S. Grant with a proto-20th Century army equipped with repeating rifles and machine guns. That Civil War is far more lethal than the one IOTL and leaves the USA correspondingly more impoverished than IOTL, in both short and long terms.
 
I suppose my timeline counts - sort of - as the first change to events is Manuel I having his son and heir born in 1166 instead of 1169.

But Space Oddity's timeline (the name escapes me at the moment, shockingly) is a better example of that, as the real POD for my timeline is more significant - it just happens to be coupled with the earlier birth of an heir.
 
Check out the history of the Lensman book series. One of the Arisians thought about the future of humanity, and realzied that if we developed transistors, we would not use our brains as much. As a result, he moved a nail in a road to cause a car's tire to go flat. The guy in the car saves a red-haired girl (part of the Arisian breeding program) from dying after falling out of a tree. If his tire hadn't gone flat, he would have driven by, and she would have fallen out of the tree and died.

Twenty or so years later, one of the people working on the concept of a transistor is at a diner, writing on a napkin. He is one step short of thinking of the transistor when a beautiful red-haired woman steps in front of him and says 'hi'. The transistor is never developed, and humanity develops along the path the Arisians have foreseen would allow us to fight the Eddorians.

So moving a nail ~2 inches, causes a ripple 20 years later, that affects the development of humanity in a fight against a cosmic evil.

Or if you want other fictional stuff, try searching "Eldrad is a Dick".
 
I once started (and haven't finished) a TL based on the premise that the winds around Cape Bon act normally instead of going in unseasonal directions in 468 - allowing Basiliskos' Roman fleet to land in Africa and annihilate the Vandal regime, leading directly to the survival of the Western Empire and the collapse of the East in the 480s.
 
I once started (and haven't finished) a TL based on the premise that the winds around Cape Bon act normally instead of going in unseasonal directions in 468 - allowing Basiliskos' Roman fleet to land in Africa and annihilate the Vandal regime, leading directly to the survival of the Western Empire and the collapse of the East in the 480s.

How does success here mean the East collapses?

If the East could afford to fail at great expense OTL...
 
While I loved the book, I found it to be a total Britwank. I believe that the Patriots would've stayed and revolted. But its a great read. I can literally pick the book up and open up to any random page and read the rest of the book from that point.

The only times something on this sight had that effect on me was Napoleon Victory, Lands of Red and Gold and Green Antarctica.
 
The big one I've been working on for over a year fits this type of TL. ;) Essentially, a certain medieval monarch (who I shall not name) doesn't die by falling off a horse as in OTL, stuff happens, history changes. A literal for want of a nail, the horse was lost, if you will.
 
Check out the history of the Lensman book series. One of the Arisians thought about the future of humanity, and realzied that if we developed transistors, we would not use our brains as much. As a result, he moved a nail in a road to cause a car's tire to go flat. The guy in the car saves a red-haired girl (part of the Arisian breeding program) from dying after falling out of a tree. If his tire hadn't gone flat, he would have driven by, and she would have fallen out of the tree and died.

Twenty or so years later, one of the people working on the concept of a transistor is at a diner, writing on a napkin. He is one step short of thinking of the transistor when a beautiful red-haired woman steps in front of him and says 'hi'. The transistor is never developed, and humanity develops along the path the Arisians have foreseen would allow us to fight the Eddorians.

So moving a nail ~2 inches, causes a ripple 20 years later, that affects the development of humanity in a fight against a cosmic evil.

Or if you want other fictional stuff, try searching "Eldrad is a Dick".

I believe that's nothing on the Jonbar Hinge (let's just say that this name very nearly became the most common term for POD :D)
That whole "Eternity" thing in Asimov's End of Eternity is also pretty much built on that as well. :)
 

Jasen777

Donor
A Dropped Pen. Luther drops a pen, which causes him to be delayed by his professor. Thus he isn't close to a lightening strike on the walk home and doesn't pledge to become a monk. Stuff happens (or don't happen).
 
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