History Forum / General / What If / July 2008

I was reading an excerpt from Carole Masi's _The Art Lover_ that made
much of the destruction of the _Challenge_ space shuttle as a metaphor
for widely-disseminated death and tragedy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster

One of the reasons why the United States suffered heavy naval losses
in the first two years of World War II was the performance of the Mark
XIV torpedo with the Mark IV exploder. As much as anything the failure
of these torpedoes to detonate when they struck their target was the

POD: sometime well BC, a flu-type virus mutates into something a lot
nastier for gorillas. Populations are substantially reduced, and in
combination with increased human pressure as a result of the Bantu
migrations, the population of both mountain and lowland gorillas drops

On Independence Day, I watched about eight straight hours of the
history of the American Revolution on the History Channel. Most of it
was focused on the various battles that took place, which some mention
of the political, propaganda, and diplomatic efforts.

In 1919, Prime Minister David Lloyd George had told his military chiefs
that his Government intended that there would be no war for a minimum of
ten years. At the beginning of 1925, Conservative Prime Minister Stanley
Baldwin had no dispute with the old Lloyd George assumption, ...

Japan OTL hasn't been a place particularly welcoming to foreign
immigration. (Of course, Japan before WWII was poor enough to not be
very attractive as a destination regardless of Japanese attitudes). So
- with post-Meiji restoration PODs, make Japan at least as immigrant-

What if Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko loses the 1994
elections?
I'm pretty sure that this is a long-shot WI, given Belarus' relatively
strong attachment to Soviet ideals and Lukashenko popularity as an

"...from April to August 1945 the Japanese made a number of official
attempts to secure a
negotiated peace settlement and an end to the war. The major sticking
point was the fate

Who else would be writing endless sagas of fascist Americas and WW2
ginger-junkie aliens? In a no Turtldove timeline maybe President
Gingrich would be the biggest alt-hist writer...

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl
=39&Ses=2&DocId=3529225
"Early in 1969, a memo was discussed in cabinet. There
were all sorts of debates at that time. Originally the
government of the day said no, but people in Canada

What form of government would the territories of Great Britain, what
is now the United States, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay, New Zealand,
Australia and South Africa have formed if the places named had been
united in the middle of the 19th Century? We can assume a monarchy, a

Felipe dies shortly before Carlos's OTL abdication. Does he leave his
undivided posessions to his brother Ferdinand? (It's hard to see the
oversize conglomerate remaining under one ruler for more than another
generation).

The events leading up to US entry into WW1 have been thrashed over on shwi
every which way, but afaik (someone will soon correct me if I'm wrong) this
one hasn't come up as yet.
WI the blood clot, or whatever it was, in President Wilson's brain develops

With the recent passing of former Sen. Jesse Helms, I am surprised to
see no new WIs done
yet on the infamous North Carolina curmudgeon and "last segregationist
in the Senate". Helms

Say Felipe II dies of some disease or other a couple years before
Carlos abdicated OTL. Does he leave the whole undivided empire to his
brother Ferdinand? Decide to retain his position till his death (and
leave it to whom?) Given the size of the Habsburg inheritance and the