History Forum / General / What If / February 2004

According to a survey by Fuji Research, Japanese consumers considered
instant ramen to be the most influential Japanese contribution to the
C20th. Having just eaten some for my tea - although mine were made in
Wuxi - I wouldn't disagree. No instant ramen = dystopia.

If the Romans don't make the grade, what are the chances of the Chinese ?
They used coal since around 400 BC.
The only major obstacle is their tendency to do nothing much with
innovations and forget them as soon as a new administration sets up shop.

The history of the last 500 years has been a slide from monarchy to
it's alternatives.  It's not an isloated or European trend; it's a worldwide
phomenon.  As far as I know there are no PODs that can reverse
this trend without radically changing the nature of our world.

A lot of things that changed between Henry VII's death and the
ascension to the throne of James of Scotland can be traced to the
reign, and influence, of Mary Tudor.  Although deeply overshadowed by
her half-sister Elizabeth, she was greatly influential, even though

On 12/6/1941 an ASB switches the positions of Cuba and the Hawaiian
Islands.The Hawaiian islands  ,along with all the ships at a base
called Pearl Harbor, extend from where Cuba was up along the Atlantic
coast of the US. In the Pacific Ocean a group of Japanese aircraft

Clinton vs. Dole. But not Bob Dole; ELIZABETH Dole.
She's a better speaker/campaigner, and her candidacy eliminates the
gender gap. Does she win? Who is her running mate (it will be a man,
but not her husband).

Greetings and salutations.
In the rather entertaining discussion of a rather-more-imperialistic
UK started by Lothian and others, it has been suggested that this is
Bad News for Hitler. But what about the other Evil Moustache of the

To my mind, the reason the South felt threatened by the prospect of
abolishing slavery is that they felt it was vital to their economy, as
well as supposedly to their "way of life."  Fast forward to the 1950s
and 60s and you don't see southern states suceeding, the reason IMO

Al Franken's 1996 political satire book, *Rush Limbaugh is a Big
Fat Idiot*, has an AH short story, called "Operation Chickenhawk,"
in which future GOP figures--those who, in OTL, didn't serve in
Vietnam (for various reasons, which won't be repeated here, to

Greetings and salutations.
On a previous discussion on the likelihood of the Soviet Union
developing atomic weapons early in the absence of a Manhattan Project,
I suggested we need to explain why the Soviet leadership makes so

    Seed: Epsilon Endi has not one but two distantly orbiting
brown dwarfs, unnamed (aside from "Ba and Bb) as far as I know.
Interestingly they appear to orbit each other, which would I
think make them the first such double brown dwarf known. Epsilon

    Can we start it decade earlier, using the Russo-Japanese
War or rather the voyage of the Baltic Fleet? As it was the
voyage did not precede without one or two minor diplomatic
hiccoughs along the way. Is it within the realm of possibility

November 4 1999  Today Russian scientists identified a mysterious silvery gray
metal found in Siberia.  After exhaustive tests on it they found that it is
technetium, which was predicted in the periodic table and previously produced
only artifically.

Background:
UN forces succeed in the first northern push to bring the Korean War
to a victorious end by the end of October 1950. The Soviets provided
less aid than OTL (which wasn't that much anyway) and the PRC decided

No, nothing about vampires really existing.
In the beginning of the third chapter of Stokers novel "Dracula", we
read:
"We Szekelys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the