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Minor alternative history tweaks that would have had huge impacts

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    Minor alternative history tweaks that would have had huge impacts

    If electricity and the light bulb had been discovered just 150 years before it was, there would never have been the need for, nor the existence of, the whaling industry.

    #2
    If Nigel Farage's plane had been 1000 feet higher we wouldn't have Brexit.

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      #3
      Actually, didn't the First World War kick off because the Archduke's driver, in a panic after the first attempt drive down a too narrow street and end up outside a cafe where the gunman was hiding? Or is that a joke that I've mixed up with the truth?

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        #4
        No, I believe that's true.

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          #5
          There's an entire book of missed assassination attempts on Hitler that failed by just minutes either direction. Bombs going off early....just a bit late....shooters missing important trains by two minutes. Even the bomb briefcase being moved under a heavy wooden table. Any one of which could have had an enormous impact on history.

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            #6
            Originally posted by Rogin the Armchair fan View Post
            If electricity and the light bulb had been discovered just 150 years before it was, there would never have been the need for, nor the existence of, the whaling industry.
            I'm not sure I'd call that minor, and if it did happen, the effects would be considerably broader than that. I think it's fairly safe to say the entire course of 20th century history would have been different.

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              #7
              If Henry VIII's son prince Henry had lived, or if Mary had been born a boy, the entire history of Britain and Ireland would have been completely different.

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                #8
                If Jesus Christ had said "Look, actually, it was all just a joke. That water into wine thing, it was all done with mirrors. Got me into the Nazareth magic circle though" then the next 2000 years would have been a lot simpler.
                Last edited by pebblethefish; 23-02-2021, 15:03.

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                  #9
                  Originally posted by WOM View Post
                  There's an entire book of missed assassination attempts on Hitler that failed by just minutes either direction. Bombs going off early....just a bit late....shooters missing important trains by two minutes. Even the bomb briefcase being moved under a heavy wooden table. Any one of which could have had an enormous impact on history.
                  On assassination near misses, the Brighton bomb and the attack on Downing Street could have panned out differently, with unknown consequences. On the other hand, if the car bomb that killed Airey Neave had failed the 1980s could have panned out differently as well.

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                    #10
                    One afternoon in late March 2010, If I had had the wherewithal to stick out a leg while walking by the Thames near Westminster I'd have tripped a running David Cameron. I rather imagine he'd have gone down heavily, causing him some fairly major cuts, grazes and bruises around his facial area. Perhaps even breaking something.
                    Knowing how facile the UK electorate are, that may have been enough for them to turn their back on the oleaginous cockwomble and thus austerity may not have happened.

                    Curse my poor reactions.

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                      #11
                      If Hobbes had admitted to his criminal lethargy 11 years ago we'd have all known which slow-reacting fucker was really to blame for the miserable decade we've all just endured.

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                        #12
                        If the Big Bang had been smaller....

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                          #13
                          Thatcher was close to giving in at two different points in the miners' strike...

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by hobbes View Post
                            One afternoon in late March 2010, If I had had the wherewithal to stick out a leg while walking by the Thames near Westminster I'd have tripped a running David Cameron. I rather imagine he'd have gone down heavily, causing him some fairly major cuts, grazes and bruises around his facial area. Perhaps even breaking something.
                            Knowing how facile the UK electorate are, that may have been enough for them to turn their back on the oleaginous cockwomble and thus austerity may not have happened.

                            Curse my poor reactions.
                            Not as significant as your encounter, but:

                            Over 20 years ago, I was cycling home on a Sunday evening when some bloke - about 6'6", lanky, thinning hair - stepped out in front of me from between two parked cars. I swerved to avoid him, we exchanged swear words and then went on our respective ways.

                            Only when I got home did I realise that, had I been riding faster and not swerved, I could have offed Ronald B. Schill - at the time known only as "Judge Ruthless" for the severe sentences he passed in court, but later to become the most right-wing Deputy Mayor of Hamburg ever and a major blot on the city's political history.

                            (When I spared him, he was carrying two scabby plastic bags from Aldi. He can't have just been to the supermarket, as Aldi doesn't open on Sundays. Reusing plastic bags is admirable, but carrying your gear around in an Aldi bag struck me as a very un-Hanseatic thing to do.)
                            Last edited by treibeis; 24-02-2021, 09:30.

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