History Forum / General / What If / April 2004

Cool American Taliban posts earlier.
There actually was an American Base of sorts: the Weathermen.  The local PBS
affiliate ran a 90-minute doc on them the other night.  Sincere enough
revolutionaries, but (a) not even remotely religious and (b) committed only

The Dark ages was a period from the sacking of Rome in 450 AD to approx.
1000 AD.
WI after the sacking of Rome the Byzantium Empire made a concerted
effort to assist the Germanic peoples who took over the former territory

I'm currently considering some changes to the shwi FAQ to bring it up to
date. As you've no doubt noticed I've been unable to participate in SHWI
recently given that my evenings and lunchtimes are now taken up with the
rounded delights of the yield curve and the subtle joys of ...

   I was pondering the reformation and its remarkable division along old Roman
territorial lines--more or less--when it hit me that Poland remained largely
Catholic, now what would change from OTL if the King of Poland, and I as no
scholar of Polish History do not know the then ...

"You say the moon is strewn with seas;
The nightingale is singing.
I'd rather lie with wine at ease,
And hear the goblets ringing.

It is pretty official that the _Alamo_ movie has tanked. It has grossed
64 million pesos but cost 560 millions. Home entertainment versions will
bring  a couple tens of millions more, but hopes of an impressive
foreign boxoffice are not high for a history thriller of significance

'tis well known that Ulyanov did not want Stalin as his successor, and
that the reason why Dzhugachvili became the leader of the USSR was
because he outfoxed and outmaneuvered all his rivals, particularly
Trotskii. WI Trotskii had been smarter than Stalin and had succeeded in

Long May He Reign, Part the Eighth: That Crowned Him With Laurels and
Och! the Coronation! what celebration
For emulation can with it compare?
When to Westminster the Royal Spinster,

A quicky TL
PoD: Early-Mid Thirties, Dr. Hugo Eckner finds alternative funding
for the Zeppelin Company rather than the National Socialist Party.
Merger with Goodyear, Ponzi scheme, finds a Leprechaun's Pot of Gold.

See
http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2004/20040103/default.htm
for Greenspan's defense of Federal Reseve policy during the late 1990s:
"It is far from obvious that bubbles, even if identified early, can be

If you are not a member of the Electoral College,  what do you think you are doing  ?
_______________________________________________________________________
You have no Constitutional right to elect your President.
When this right does not exist,  why should anyone bother to count ...

Suppose you were made a great 22 year old (physically) baseball player at every
position and were time warped back back to the beginning of the 1969 season and
given three choice, play for the Mets, practically guarenteing you would be
palying for the world championship, playing for ...

Suppose John Hinckley's bullet didn't miss Reagan's heart. Bush became
President. What political differences would we see today?
     I'm aware Bush was viewed as even more right-wing than Reagan at
the time, but in OTL he turned out to be more moderate. Also, with

*****
There's an interesting story about a Cold War hero from the former
Soviet Union, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov, who prevented a potential
nuclear weapons launch in 1983:

I am curious what people think Canada would be like if it merged with
the US in four different eras.
What if the war of 1812 went much better for the US and the invasion of
Canada worked?