Implausible PODs that would make an interesting world?

a formal schism would require one party to excommunicate the other

John Lackland was excommunicated in OTL, but patched things up four years later. If ITTL he didn't and claimed headship of the Church of England, but as a middleman between the Pope and the English clergy rather than doing it Henry VIII style, how implausible would it be for England and Rome to drift apart gradually and without much fanfare to the point that, by the time the actual schism happened, the Pope's first reaction to the news would be akin to a rather bland "Well, that was bound to happen sooner or later, I'm just surprised the situation boiled over due to English king's marital problems"?
 
John Lackland was excommunicated in OTL, but patched things up four years later. If ITTL he didn't and claimed headship of the Church of England, but as a middleman between the Pope and the English clergy rather than doing it Henry VIII style, how implausible would it be for England and Rome to drift apart gradually and without much fanfare to the point that, by the time the actual schism happened, the Pope's first reaction to the news would be akin to a rather bland "Well, that was bound to happen sooner or later, I'm just surprised the situation boiled over due to English king's marital problems"?

If he didn't patch things up, presumably he'd still be excommunicated, in which case the actual schism would date from then, rather than Henry VIII's time.

And I think you're underestimating just how seriously schism would have been considered. Remember, according to Catholic doctrine schismatics go to Hell, so by committing schism Henry was doing the equivalent of committing spiritual suicide. And just as regular suicide is always seen as a bad and tragic thing, even if you saw it coming, so Henry's schism would have been seen as bad and tragic, even if it was obvious before the time that it would happen.
 
If he didn't patch things up, presumably he'd still be excommunicated, in which case the actual schism would date from then, rather than Henry VIII's time.

And I think you're underestimating just how seriously schism would have been considered. Remember, according to Catholic doctrine schismatics go to Hell, so by committing schism Henry was doing the equivalent of committing spiritual suicide. And just as regular suicide is always seen as a bad and tragic thing, even if you saw it coming, so Henry's schism would have been seen as bad and tragic, even if it was obvious before the time that it would happen.

You know, until I talked with you I never really noticed how biased the portrayal of schisms is in a lot of history books. They end up sounding like a theological version of Game of Thrones.
 
Distinct Frisian identity and nation forms and persists. Consist of West-East Frisia and North Frisian islands. West and East Frisia don't seperate mentally. And they have even a naval relevance on the North Sea.
Mali Empire "colonizes" Spain, takes over from the Arab/Berbers. Takes also the Azores and Canary islands.
 
two more of your favourite drive-through-without-noticing-you-been-there country:

1) In 1914 Belgium successfully halts the German advance, preferably before it reaches Brussels. I know this is almost ASB just because of the numbers, buy let's just imagine the Von Schliefen plan somehow calls for taking on the Belgian forts in an head-on attack instead of just bypassing them, or so...

2) in May of 1940, Belgium manages to halt the Nazis or at least slow them down until France gets its act together....
 
The closest you'd get would be a situation where the English Church is like one of the non-Latin-rite Churches IOTL, independent in its day-to-day running but still in communion with the pope.

Which isn't going to happen in the 16th century, when heresy was a real all-or-nothing deal. The Maronites were a lot easier to accept back when the Rite itself was barely codified and the Church was still more of a "phenomenon" than an "entity", but anything resembling a theological break from Rome is going to raise eyebrows and light bonfires all across Europe by Henry's time.
 
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two more of your favourite drive-through-without-noticing-you-been-there country:

1) In 1914 Belgium successfully halts the German advance, preferably before it reaches Brussels. I know this is almost ASB just because of the numbers, buy let's just imagine the Von Schliefen plan somehow calls for taking on the Belgian forts in an head-on attack instead of just bypassing them, or so...
Well Moltke already decided to go with his obviously stupid plan of a flanking maneuver through Belgium which was only ever seriously considered in a war against France only instead of the actual far better Schlieffen Plan for a war against France and Russia(described in the spoiler below) which would have worked wonders so given the extreme levels of idiocy there I don't think you need much more in comparison to get something like your scenario. If not for the fact it happened in OTL I am pretty sure everyone would consider that itself implausible, but as it did people think it as the norm and you just have to build a TL's events the right way to take advantage of people's bias in that regard.
If Moltke had followed Schlieffen’s real intentions for the counter-offensive conduct of a two-front war, the first great battle of 1914 would have been fought in Lorraine in the third week of hostilities, on terms much more favourable to Germany than they were at the battle of the Marne. We can reconstruct this alternative scenario because we know exactly what the French chief of staff Joseph Joffre intended to do if the Germans did not invade Belgium.

French war planning was constrained by two political imperatives. In the first place, France was committed by agreement with her Russian ally to launch an ‘all-out and immediate’ attack against Germany as soon as possible after the outbreak of war. Moreover, the French government had resolved not to encroach on Belgian territory unless the Germans did so first. Joffre was therefore obliged to incorporate in his war plans a variant which allowed for a full-scale offensive avoiding Belgian territory altogether, and that would have come into effect in 1914 if the Germans had stayed on the defensive and not entered Belgium. For this eventuality Joffre decided that three of his five armies, comprising some 60 percent of his first-line troops, should invade Lorraine on 14 August, aiming initially to reach the line of the river Saar between Sarrebourg and Saarbrücken (Doughty 2010, 146-8, 155-8, 168). Ominously, that position was flanked at both ends by the German fortresses of Metz and Strasbourg.

Schlieffen had long before outlined how the Germans should exploit a massive French incursion through ‘the relatively narrow space between Metz and Strasbourg’. The aim must not be to push the enemy back to his fortified border. Rather, he had to be engaged on three sides, ‘from Metz, from the Saar and from Strasbourg’, and brought to a standstill there, which would give the Germans an excellent chance of decisive victory by means of envelopment attacks out of Metz and Strasbourg. The ultimate aim of this ‘attack on the enemy’s flank and rear’ would be to surround the French invasion forces and ‘not just defeat them, but lay them low and as far as possible annihilate them’ (Boetticher 1933, 260).

Joffre himself was acutely aware of the perils attending a French offensive in Lorraine. He said that the object would be to rupture the German front, but he conceded
that:
"in the course of this operation our forces would be liable to be taken in flank by attacks coming in all probability from both Metz and the region of Molsheim-Strasbourg. By penetrating like a wedge into the midst of the enemy’s lines we would be more or less inviting envelopment (Joffre 1932, 74-5)."

But a German defensive posture in 1914 would have compelled Joffre to embark on that hazardous course of action — that was precisely what he was committed to if the Germans refrained from attacking through Belgium and waited instead for the opportunity to counter-attack. In that event, the war would have started with a great battle of encirclement as soon as the French First, Second and Fourth Armies had completed their short advance into the danger zone between Metz and Strasbourg. Speaking in 1904 of the strategic importance of these fortresses, Schlieffen once again emphasized their role in counter-offensive operations: ‘I do not mean a Metz and Strasbourg that are to be besieged and defended, but rather a Metz and Strasbourg in which armies are assembled and through which they march in order to attack the enemy by surprise’ (Zuber 2004, 160).
 
What are some unlikely, ridiculous points of divergence... that you would still like to see anyway because the results would be interesting?

I'm thinking things like:
  • Tang Dynasty sending a military expedition into the Near East and creating a Sinicized Empire in Persia
  • England and Morocco ally to partition the Spanish Empire, vast Moroccan colonial empire formed in Central and South America.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte invading England and succeeding, establishing total hegemony of the First French Empire over Europe.
They don't necessarily have to be conquests though. They can just be any implausible scenario that isn't "fully ASB".

What are your ideas?
This is kind of a lame PoD, but anyway, here goes:

If Merrick Garland would have been confirmed in 2016 and Anthony Kennedy would have also retired in that same year and been replaced with Sri Srinivasan, then the U.S. Supreme Court would have been made up of 4 Jews, 1 Hindu, and 4 Catholics. Thus, a Jew-Hindu alliance would have been the majority on the U.S. Supreme Court! :D
 
Germany was on a course to collapse long before the Allies, thanks to the British naval blockade. Without US entry you might see the war drag on into 1919, but absent a major upset the Germans weren't likely to win.
This is quite wrong. The British blockade was having a substantial impact, yes, however it by no means was a pure war winner. A collapse of Italy or France would end all German food troubles.

No US intervention means Germany is likely to win, not the Entente. Italy is likely taken out next and the Spring Offensive will likely be much less haphazard. This is all not to mention that absent US intervention means absent Entente unsecured loans which means the Entente runs out of money at the very latest by 1918, likely much before that.

Germany was more likely to win WWI than lose.
 
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Well Moltke already decided to go with his obviously stupid plan of a flanking maneuver through Belgium
I know this is kind of a favorite, but IMO it meets the "implausible" part of the OP: WI the German invasion of France 1914 actually takes Paris?

It's implausible because Heer, still mainly horse-drawn, didn't have the freight lift to move enough fodder to move much farther from railheads than they did, so they couldn't move much (any?) faster, so... (How you fix this short of Karl Benz inventing the deuce-and-a-half in 1890, IDK.:openedeyewink: )
 

Driftless

Donor
I know this is kind of a favorite, but IMO it meets the "implausible" part of the OP: WI the German invasion of France 1914 actually takes Paris?

It's implausible because Heer, still mainly horse-drawn, didn't have the freight lift to move enough fodder to move much farther from railheads than they did, so they couldn't move much (any?) faster, so... (How you fix this short of Karl Benz inventing the deuce-and-a-half in 1890, IDK.:openedeyewink: )

Hmmm... If the war hasn't bogged down to a trench stalement, then the roads of northern France shouldn't be artillery and rain churned boggy messes. A mix of as-yet-to-be-invented Benz 1Mg trucks and steam traction engine "trains": or is that too steampunky?
 
Hmmm... If the war hasn't bogged down to a trench stalement, then the roads of northern France shouldn't be artillery and rain churned boggy messes. A mix of as-yet-to-be-invented Benz 1Mg trucks and steam traction engine "trains": or is that too steampunky?
Maybe a bit.;)

If you're doing it, tho, let me throw this back: what happens when a/c can observe everything you're doing? I've heard a claim a/c led directly to trench stalemate, because secret movement wasn't possible. If you've got anybody working on *6x6s, it doesn't take a genius to think about strafers... (And that could include light bombs, around 25pdrs, belly-mount MGs, &/or wing strut-mounted rockets...)
 

Driftless

Donor
Maybe a bit.;)

If you're doing it, tho, let me throw this back: what happens when a/c can observe everything you're doing? I've heard a claim a/c led directly to trench stalemate, because secret movement wasn't possible. If you've got anybody working on *6x6s, it doesn't take a genius to think about strafers... (And that could include light bombs, around 25pdrs, belly-mount MGs, &/or wing strut-mounted rockets...)

Too true, but even those strafers take weeks to months to sort out and have available in numbers. If you're running a "Marschkrieg" of breakout warfare, the Germans might be to the Paris suburbs by the time the aerial assault is ready. In the immortal words of Dr. Frankenstein (that's pronounced Fronk-en-steen) "It.... Could..... Work!...";)
 
The series of genetic mutations that resulted in light-colored (blue, green and gray) eyes had been distributed beyond western Eurasia; in summary, significant populations with light-colored eyes were also been found in northern Africa, most parts of the Asia (although the distribution varied by specific region) and among the indigenous inhabitants of the Americas.
 
Too true, but even those strafers take weeks to months to sort out and have available in numbers. If you're running a "Marschkrieg" of breakout warfare, the Germans might be to the Paris suburbs by the time the aerial assault is ready. In the immortal words of Dr. Frankenstein (that's pronounced Fronk-en-steen) "It.... Could..... Work!...";)
You may be right. However, I have to think engine-driven things don't develop in isolation. A lot of the goodies that make *trucks practical also apply nicely to *strafers (providing IC is in play, & if it's not, there are ways around that, too;)). If the *trucks are all akin to steam tractors (c1910 vintage), & nothing like IC is conceived of, maybe it's a no-go to fly...

Zo, Meine Herr Doktor, you needn't invoke Frau Blücher. ("Roll, roll"...:openedeyewink: )
The series of genetic mutations that resulted in light-colored (blue, green and gray) eyes
Or increase the prevalence of brown-eyed blondes?

If you're going to get into genetics, & you're prepared to go back far enough, what about having one or more (all?:eek:) of the 16 or varieties of human ancestor not go extinct?:eek: Even sharing the planet with just Neandertals would be a huge deal (if it didn't lead to mutual assured extinction, & the rise of anthropoid ostriches, or something, in 60 million or so years...:eek::rolleyes: ).
 
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