Original TL ideas!

I always wondered how the Continental Siege of Boston would have played out if the colonists had sufficient ammunition and held off the assault on Bunker/Breeds Hill.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
British 60's Timelines but from the perspective of another Party, be it Conservative or Liberal. Here's one off the top of my head:

As we know, John Profumo, rising star of the Conservative Party and Secretary of State for War under Harold Macmillan, was revealed to have had an affair with Christine Keeler, an aspiring model. Christine also had an affair with a Soviet Navel Officer. Due to the security risk this posed, as well as the scandalous and damaging nature of having an affair, Profumo was forced to resign. The revelations of the Scandal, and Profumo's resignation, would ruin Macmillan, who resigned less than six months after Profumo on health grounds. The Scandal is also regarded as being a contributing factor to the Conservative Party defeat in 1964.

On the 8/9th July, 1961, Keeler and Profumo had met at the Cliveden Cottage during a meeting to honour General Ayub Khan. Profumo met Keeler whilst she was skinny dipping in the Cottages pool, and Keeler- not knowing that Profumo was a Government Minister- decided to 'have some fun with him'. Had they not met under these circumstances, they may not have had an affair.

On the 14th of December, 1962, Johnny Edgcombe fired several shots into the front door of 17 Wimpole Mews. The house was at that moment occupied by Mandy Rice-Davies and her friend, Keeler. Edgcombe was arrested shortly after and charged with attempted murder, but as a result of the shooting Keeler began talking openly about her affair with Profumo, which resulted in its discovery. Had Edgcombe killed Rice-Davies and Keeler, then the revelation of the affair would have possibly remained a cryptic gossip column in a magazine. However, if the letter to Keeler was uncovered by more public hands (MI5 and the Cabinet Office was likely aware of the affair as early as August 1961), then the affair would have still been revealed with the added fact that one of the participants had been violently murdered.

During late 1960/early 1961, whilst visiting the stables of Kingham, Liberal Party politician Jeremy Thorpe met a young man who would later rename himself Norman Scott. Thorpe was interested in Scott, and said that if Scott wanted anything, he should meet him at the House of Commons, which Scott did on the 8 November, 1961. Had Thorpe never made that offer, Scott may have not gone to the House, and they are unlikely to have began the affair that would ruin Thorpe and nearly ruin the Liberal Party.

In December, 1962, Scott intended to shoot Thorpe and himself over Scott's paranoia that Thorpe had stolen his National Insurance Card. Scott was only stopped when he told his friend about this and he was arrested. Had he not done so, he would have likely killed Thorpe and himself.

Any period between 1965-1968 Scott has an accident and dies, with the knowledge of the affair dying with him and letters he had in his possession. Notably he seriously hurt himself in 1963 in a riding incident. In the former random accident, if Peter Bessel, Thorpe's close friend, had been in Dublin during this period, he would have had the opertunity to recover the letters and remove the loose ends of the affair.

In 1968, Thorpe told Bessel that he wanted something done about Scott, with him outright saying he would want Scott killed if he could (suggesting that David Holmes, best man at his wedding, would be suitable for the job). According to Bessel, a meeting was even held over the matter with Holmes. This conspiracy ended when Scott announced he was going to marry. If he didn't Holmes may have done what he later did eight years later, or, had he announced it earlier, Thorpe may have never held the meeting and Holmes wouldn't have been aware of the plot.

Scott never makes his statement in the Magistrates Court in 1976, resulting in public knowledge of the affair never being made at that time.

Now the following enters the alleged part and diverges into two stems: Holmes states that Thorpe, in 1974, insisted that they should eliminate Scott. This is contested as only Holmes provided this information, and was crucial in Thorpe not being found guilty for Conspiracy. None the less, it is known that Holmes, unsure what to do over the matter, through business contacts hired Andrew Newton in 1975 to 'frighten' Scott, which Newton contested was false and he had been hired to kill Scott. Thorpe would funnel some £20'000 of Party funds to Holmes for the purpose of hiring Newton to either frighten or kill Scott. Had the intention to frighten been clear from the get go, or had the Sir Jack Hayward been more reluctant to funnel the money though, then the shooting would have never happened. However, the revelation of the affair would have likely come out at some point in 1976/1977, as Scott had begun to be less discreet in telling people about it.

And those are two things I can extract off the top of my head, in a sort of mental vomit kind of way. I've likely gotten details wrong about the cases (and if I have, yeah whatever given how I'm just sketching out PoD's and TL's I'd worry about that once an actual TL is written), but broadly speaking those are the PoD's that I feel that deserve more exploration in TL's.
 
I sometimes think of a TL with either a different Russo-Japanese War or none at all, which leaves Russia as a purely absolutist monarchy and most of the moderates and reformist Russian politicians that got jailed or deported after the unsuccessful 1905 revolution stay for WW1. (which probably starts in 1908 with Bosnia)

Leaving Russia much different than it ended up as.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
I had no idea he considered it. That would have been amazing.
Well, he didn't consider it, the Conservative Party as a whole did. Cameron approached him with an offer to run, but Major turned him down, his spokesperson citing that Major considered politics to be behind him in the front line sense. Had Major been feeling a different way about his career at that time, maybe he would have accepted.
 
I have one based on the Metal Slug games and still working on it (but am taking a break for Christmas); granted they originally weren't meant to be taken seriously, but trying to make a believable TL based off of them (at least post 1945) is pretty hard with said universe being pretty ASB to begin with.
 
I sometimes think of a TL with either a different Russo-Japanese War or none at all, which leaves Russia as a purely absolutist monarchy and most of the moderates and reformist Russian politicians that got jailed or deported after the unsuccessful 1905 revolution stay for WW1. (which probably starts in 1908 with Bosnia)

Leaving Russia much different than it ended up as.

It's sounds like a big Russian screw in itself.
 
If I ever go with that plan, I'd try to avoid that.

Well, no war with Japan, or Russia winning the war is going to do that. No reforms at all, no lessons learn, and the UK will distrust Russia to the point of not joining the Entente, so the French gets mess up as well.
 
Well, no war with Japan, or Russia winning the war is going to do that. No reforms at all, no lessons learn, and the UK will distrust Russia to the point of not joining the Entente, so the French gets mess up as well.
Such is life.

You win one war, you get rekt in another.
 
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