Very Minor PODs

Workable Goblin

neopeius said:
Very minor. The turbopump mechanism on the early Thor IRBM is not faulty. There are fewer launch failures.

In November 1958, America sends the first photographing satellite into orbit around the moon...

Result:

We win the Space Race in the first year. USAF in control of manned space shots. No man on the moon.
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This seems unlikely to me. First, I don't think this is going to "win the space race". Both the US and USSR had a number of "firsts" early on (admittedly, the USSR had more of them), and the USSR will just shrug and do something else (like...say...launch a man into space; the Vostok program was certainly underway by late 1958, if only because it was closely related to their spy satellite program!). "Winning" the space race requires doing something that your opponent is incapable of matching with the resources he is willing to put forward; not necessarily landing a man on the Moon, but that's the best choice overall. Simply launching a tiny orbiter to the Moon (which would likely fail, given that no area of space technology was very reliable back then) hardly fits that criteria.

Second, whether or not it does the Air Force is not going to be in charge of all human spaceflight programs. NASA was already being formed by the time Pioneer 0 launched (the relevant legislation had been passed about a month earlier), and preliminaries of the Mercury program had already been started. Eisenhower was strongly against military dominance of the space program, and would not have allowed the Air Force to take leadership in that area. Assuming for the moment (incorrectly, I believe, based on the first paragraph) that the space race would actually have cooled down from this success, then there would actually be even less reason to allow the Air Force to lead US human spaceflight. After all, the urgency of the situation doesn't demand that Something Be Done Soon.

Now, it's possible that the Air Force does have a human spaceflight program in this timeline; greater US successes in space could easily tip the balance of the 1960 election, preventing McNamara from entering office. This, in turn, could very plausibly lead the X-20 program to see actual human flights by the late 1960s. But the Air Force wouldn't be the US space agency, by any means.

I've been thinking about a no-Space Race timeline (to follow ETS) for a while, and I think you need to have essentially a series of minor PoDs to actually avert it. Basically the USSR being a little less lucky and the US being a bit more.
 

PandaRosa

Long time, no Sheen

What if in 1895, Peoria, IL, Delia, mother of Peter John Sheen, better known as Fulton J. Sheen, had lost her parents just before her son’s birth? In OTL, the baby was often sent to his mother’s parents, John and Mary Fulton, due to his incessant crying from tuberculosis, just to give his mother a rest; he spent enough time with them that he came to be known as “Fulton’s child”.
In this TL, Delia’s parents are killed in a tragic carriage accident just before the birth of her first (and here only) child. The news sends her into shock, and a decline that proves fatal within a few months. Faced with full responsibility of the tiny, screaming child, father Newton Sheen sends his only son out into the country for a proposed “health cure” set up by a new doctor, Russell Thrush from Philadelpha, a regimen of diet, exercise, and exposure to country life designed to build up the body. Though rather harsh in treatment, it serves to almost force the young Peter John to thrive, and to find an appreciation of nature and of the soil, learning that “a life of honest toil tilling the earth is the closest thing to sainthood a good man should aspire to.” His illness is detected and treated in infancy, and he grows into a strapping young man full of vigor.
With the death of his wife and in-laws, Newton Sheen grows disillusioned with the Catholicism he’d embraced in his marriage, and reverts to a more Protestant lifestyle (In OTL, Newton’s family were lapsed Catholics, but he returned to the faith in order to marry Delia, the couple remained devout all their lives.) He continues to run his farm and his hardware store, always looking out for his young son, aiding Dr. Thrush in treatment and being converted to the virtues of rural living. He ends up courting and later marrying sweet Gretl Federson, daughter of a Peoria baker, and they ultimately retire to one of the family farms. Both Newton and Gretl join the local Methodist Church, where young Peter John, or “PJ” and their later sons and daughter would be christened, and grow up in that faith. Delia’s name was never mentioned again, not even to her son, and the family’s brief fling with “popery” is forgotten.
PJ Sheen himself devotes himself to farming, and to “Muscular Christianity”, which celebrates the virtues of strength, work, vigor, that a Christian needs to be active, not just pious. Despite his father’s urging to get a decent education, PJ says his real schooling comes from “God’s own classroom of fresh air, and His own textbook, the Bible”, a position the nearly-illiterate Gretl supports. Yet at the same time he also is gaining respect in his church, as he does often speak on Bible verses, on faith, on the duties and joyful sacrifices of the Christian life, looking down on the “bells & smells” and elaborations of Roman Catholicism. Despite his chosen vocation as farmer, PJ becomes known as “The People’s Parson”, due to his honest simplicity in speaking. He becomes a firm advocate of temperance and Prohibition, declaring, “If simple water is good enough for Adam, then a man has no business sullying himself with champagne.” He marries Lucynell Crater, daughter of a pastor, fathering several strong sons.
Consider the differences: No red cape, no Catholic Hour, no “Life Is Worth Living” to compete with Milton Berle, and most of all, no passing on of the name to Martin Sheen.:cool:
 
Lavanya Six

Lavanya Six

Justice Breyer February 2012 mugging goes wrong, Breyer ends up dead or incapacitated, and Obama gets handed a Supreme Court nomination fight ahead of contentious negotiations over the debt ceiling. Obama's "win" in appointing his nominee hardens Tea Party opposition to any deal over the debt.
 

Kevin C. Smith

Related to the above* and to the OP's TL making Chicago larger:
  1. Make the standard gauge for US railroads 5' 0" instead of 4' 8.5". Originally, many railroads in the south had a 5' gauge but were converted to 4" 8.5" in the 1880's to allow traffic to move without trasshipment. Some Ohio River cities such as Louisville and Cincinatti actually preferred the break of gauge because all traffic (freight and passenger) would have to stop there. Remove these and you can shave some of the economic growth of these places relative to Chicago, and/or
  2. Make the break of gauge occur not between north/south at the Ohio River but east/west at St. Louis and Chicago. The lines entering Chicago from the east were built from the eastern seaboard. The lines west originated in Chicago and began as local enterprises. Have them adopt a different gauge and everything not only goes through Chicago but stops. (Yes, that is also the case OTL but, this way, even more so.)
All in all, everything in the world is still the same but different.
*Related because 4' 8.5" converts to 1.435 meters, while 5' 0" makes a more easily converted 1.524 meters. In places that adopt the metric system it will almost assuredly be rounded to 1.5m and done.​
 

Colin

Some fun ones from britpop

1962 Brian Epstein decides that the Beatles should play some of their original material at the DECCA audition, the Beatles are signed and don't form their partnership with George Martin.

circa 1966 Syd Barrett suffers an allergic reaction to his first ever LSD tablet. He is rushed to hospital and nearly dies, but then makes a full recovery. On leaving hospital he is heard to say "I'm never touching any of that weird shit again".

1969 A young off duty policeman attending top of the pops discovers Jimmy Saville having sex with a clearly underage girl who is also distressed.

1977 On leaving Morton's drinking club Marc Bolan and his companion notice that the back tyre of their mini has gone completely flat (it was underinflated contributing significantly to the crash), while they argue about what to do a taxi comes down the street, Bolan hails it and gets home safely.

1976 Queen don't cancel their appearance on the Grundy show and he never gives the Sex Pistols the time of day.

1964 Cliff Richard passes on that invitation to church; he dies a few years later from a drug overdose.

1986 At Live Aid Bono gets caught in the crowd and never makes it back to the stage to finish U2's set before they are moved on by the revolving stage.

1997 One of the members of D Ream turns out to be a lifelong conservative and veto's the Labour party's use of "Things can only get better" for the election.
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

Here's one: Weaker Copyright Laws. Copyright has gone absolutely insane in how far it can reach, how long it lasts, and what can be copyrighted, and it benefits only these major corporations at the expense of the common person just trying to go about their business. Music is copyrighted for centuries, things like genetically engineered crops which can feed the world are copyrighted by corporations and made so that they can't reproduce seeds and so you have to keep buying seeds, and even the damned dollar sign on a bag of money is copyrighted (by Gene Simmons; one of the few people prickish enough to dare to do that). You don't even have to have invented something to copyright it (as noted by Gene Simmons owning an image that's been around forever).

It's a minor thing, but with grand, grand results.
 
Meadow

Meadow

The commissioning editor of Channel 4 is having a particularly bad day when he is presented with the idea of a surreal sitcom, shot like a film, set in a bedsit. He angrily dismisses it and as a result, Edgar Wright, Jessica Stevenson, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's futures are immeasurably altered.

James Gordon Brown decides to go into politics using his actual first name, not caring about the name's more famous holder.

British armoured tractors are shipped to the Western Front in containers marked 'turbines' instead of 'tanks'.

William Shakespeare decides The Prince of Denmark is a snappy enough title for his latest tragedy.
 
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metastasis_d

metastasis_d

Meadow said:
The commissioning editor of Channel 4 is having a particularly bad day when he is presented with the idea of a surreal sitcom, shot like a film, set in a bedsit. He angrily dismisses it and as a result, Edgar Wright, Jessica Stevenson, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's futures are immeasurably altered.
Click to expand...

That would be a terrible loss.
 

jkarr

Pope Julius II's family doesn't try to get Michelangelo to complete his tomb (nor constantly trying to sue him for it, leading to him constantly being buggered for money) so hes able to be free to continue with other works, without the stresses of the past.
 

Meepy

Asnys said:
A minor change in the budget allows the US Forestry Service to keep an additional Junior Forester position. As a result, Norman Borlaug remains in forestry instead of going to graduate school and ultimately ending up in agronomy.

Forty years later, millions of people starve to death as a result.
Click to expand...

Somebody should write this...
 
Lavanya Six

Lavanya Six

NBC, worried about their investment, pushes Gene Roddenberry a little harder on the fact that Mister Spock's ears make him look satanic. He caves, and later the fact that the famous Spock once had pointed ears becomes a trivia factoid.
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

Here's one:

To psychologically fuck with North Korea, the South blasts K- and J-Pop across the border. J-Pop and K-Pop are like Boy Bands and what not in the West; vapid corporate crap that's unbelievably shallow and of limited quality. However, in Japan and Korea, they are huge.
Because they suck, the point was to annoy the North Koreans and torture them with Bubblegum Pop. But it had the opposite effect (given this was the only non-government or folk music they ever heard) and that Bubblegum pop became insanely popular in North Korea.

So blast some other genre of music into Korea, and you can start a national craze for it.
 

PandaRosa

Minor? to newfoundlander

<Hitler rather achieves a majority in the Reichstag and is properly elected, or is elected President in 1932.>

Interesting, but just how minor is that? Ramifications certainly aren't, but anything with Hitler isn't just minor.:confused:
 
Emperor Norton I

Emperor Norton I

PandaRosa said:
<Hitler rather achieves a majority in the Reichstag and is properly elected, or is elected President in 1932.>

Interesting, but just how minor is that? Ramifications certainly aren't, but anything with Hitler isn't just minor.:confused:
Click to expand...

But, what if he did it...with a different mustache?
 
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