tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87599327917818937672024-03-28T04:22:43.383-07:00This Day in Alternate HistoryShowing events on this day in years past that shaped history... just, not our history.This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.comBlogger645125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-85606815444750963102024-02-08T14:10:00.000-08:002024-02-08T14:10:45.396-08:00Guest Post: Sam Houston Saves the Nationality of Texas<i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=EEH9IEIEW-TEJE">Today in Alternate History</a> with input from Charles K. Alexander II, Robbie Taylor, Brian Hartman, Allen W. McDonnell and Jeff Provine.<br /></i><br />Feb 1, 1861 - <br /><br /><div>Delegates at a feisty state convention in Austin, Texas, voted overwhelmingly to <a href="https://althistory.blogspot.com/2005/02/texas-secedes-from-united-states.html">secede from the Union</a>. This choice was largely driven by the imperative to protect the institution of slavery as well as a general feeling that Washington had failed to live up to promises of inclusion into the country as part of annexation.<br /><br />Sovereignty votes were always prone to other political considerations; notably, the US Senate had voted down the original Texas Annexation Treaty not wanting to add a slave-owning state to the Union. This was despite the sponsorship of President John Tyler, who at that stage was not aligned to any political party, having broken with the Whigs. Conversely, this particular vote in 1861 was taken <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2011/02/01/sam-houston-texas-secession--and-robert-e-lee">against the fervent wishes</a> of Southern Unionist Governor Sam Houston. He had only allowed the special session of the Texas Legislature to sit after it had become clear that the citizens would likely take matters into their own hands. Ultimately his voice would not be without influence. At least his powerful arguments partially succeeded because Texas would not join the Confederacy or send troops (or even sell horses) to aid its cause. If Houston had saved the nationality of Texas then perhaps it was at the cost of dooming the Cotton South to the inevitable defeat that he had predicted.<br /><br />Instead, the reconstituted Republic of Texas fortified its borders and waited out the civil war between the States. Tragic events would subsequently validate this prudent choice. With Union gunboats starting to control the Mississippi River, it would have been logistically impossible for Texas to supply the Cotton South. Similarly, the Union naval blockade would prevent exports of Southern cotton via the port at Galveston. The arguments for annexation had been based on these self-evident facts, a weak economy and a tiny, divided standing army that made Texas defenseless. Indeed, from the very beginning, Houston had felt that the newly independent country, lacking hard currency and still facing threats from Mexico, could not survive on its own. He would die two years later still convinced that he was right because the <a href="https://thisdayinalternatehistory.blogspot.com/2012/01/february-1-1861-texas-delivers.html">Cotton South was facing early collapse</a> as he had predicted. He, like Union President Abraham Lincoln, would be proven to be quite wrong in their prediction of the eventual outcome of the secession crisis.<br /><br />The chief reason was that Virginia had led many border states and joined with Texas in a state of neutrality as the Federal government worked to resolve a compromise. Meanwhile, the Cotton South descended into the long and grinding Civil War from Tennessee to Florida and Louisiana. Paramilitary forces conducted bloody guerrilla combat in neutral states such as Missouri, North Carolina, Arkansas, and, especially, Texas turning most of the white populations in those states against the Confederacy. These factors certainly contributed to the early Southern defeat. Meanwhile, Francis Lubbock, the new President of the Republic of Texas, worked feverishly to keep the calm after massacres of German immigrants and rebelling slaves. On a positive end, the "galvanized Yanks" (Confederate POWs who volunteered to serve in forts in the West) solved the issues of Indian raids with a seeming surplus of willing soldiers.<br /><br />Despite being a root cause of the conflict, the thorny issue of slavery remained unresolved, although perhaps Lincoln was waiting for the right time to issue the <i>Emancipation Declaration</i>. The winner of the 1864 presidential election would certainly have to deal with this matter and also to decide whether to launch a continuation war in order to force readmittance to the union. An invasion of Texas was eminently doable from a military perspective, but the decision boiled down to two overriding political factors: the Union's appetite for a second conflict and the principle of secession, which relied upon legal interpretation of the annexation treaty from 1840. The former Commanding General of the U.S. Army, George McClellan, who had served with distinction during the Mexican-American War, was nominated by the Democrats. He focused his election campaign on plans for the Reconstruction of the Cotton South after the surrender of P.G.T. Beauregard. Ironically, a military man would make a non-military choice.<br /><br />There was a palpable sense that a change of presidential leadership was necessary to reconstruct the Union because it was Lincoln's election that had triggered the secession crisis, and he had extended the reach of Federal Government (e.g. by illegally suspending <i>habeas corpus</i>). Lincoln looked to the lame-duck precedent of Tyler who dispatched the annexation treaty by courier on his very last day in office to avoid his successor James K. Polk having to face resistance when both of them agreed with the decision. Polk could have recalled the couriers but chose not to. Lincoln therefore decided to issue the <i>Emancipation Declaration</i> on his very last day in office. Other weighty calculations were also in process. Understanding the national sentiment of "He got us into a war but couldn't get us out of it," Texas sued for peace and recognition as an independent nation on the very same day. President McClellan, unwilling to spill more American blood capturing another rebel state, formally recognized the Republic and granted their request for independence. Perhaps the greatest significance of these tumultuous events would be the population movement, with many German descendants leaving for the Union, and other anti-Federals arriving in search of a future outside of Washington's control.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In reality, Houston was largely neutral, claiming that if Texas were to secede, it should at most revert to its independent status as a republic.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>Perhaps the most famous "Galvanized Yank" of all would be General Robert E. Lee. While Virginia, like other Border States, never formally seceded from the Union, many Virginians sympathized with the Southern cause. Lee's oaths to the United States, however, kept him from accepting Winfield Scott's offer of being the commander of what some felt was a "conquest of the South." Instead, Lee was sent westward, where he recognized the outrageous misconduct of soldiers and failures to meet the conditions of treaties with Native American nations. Rather than appealing to Lincoln, and then McClellan, for resources that were badly needed on the fronts in the East, Lee set about bolstering trading posts, establishing new ones, and encouraging settlers and tribal representatives toward self-sufficiency in crops and locally manufactured goods. His boldest move was protecting bison herds by labeling them an economic good in the territories and thus under federal governance with the Constitution's supremacy in trade. Proper fencing and years of domestic feeding drops contained the herds against their natural instinct to migrate, leaving many of the estimated two million bison still roaming in the Great Sioux Nation reserve.<br /><br /><b><i>Note:</i></b></div><div><b><br /></b>A popular story <a href="https://americanindian.si.edu/static/why-we-serve/topics/civil-war/">states</a> that Confederate General Robert E. Lee, noticing that Ely S. Parker was an American Indian (specifically, Seneca), remarked, “I am glad to see one real American here.” Parker later recalled, “I shook his hand and said, 'We are all Americans.'”</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-36718112054592677702024-02-01T12:59:00.000-08:002024-02-01T12:59:16.349-08:00Guest Post: President Garner and the Japanese American War 1937-1942<i>This post first appeared on <a href="https://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=MGNQ-PB0BBND">Today in Alternate History</a> by Allen W. McDonnell.</i><br /><br />The side on impact of a drunk driver with the staff car of General Douglas MacArthur on December 7, 1931, put his chauffeur in the hospital and killed the general outright from a broken neck.<br /><br />The ripple effects of this death were subtle but significant nonetheless.<br /><br />When the Armaments Board recommended that the US Army adopt the 0.276 caliber Garand rifle as the semi-automatic infantry rifle and the competing 0.276 caliber Pedersen carbine for cavalry and parachute troops, there was now no prohibition from Douglas MacArthur to stifle the innovation. The Armaments board had made their recommendation after several years of testing and a cost analysis that proved the infantry and cavalry armed with the new semi-automatic weapons would be able to carry more ammunition and kill more of the enemy because, not only was the ammunition itself lighter, the weapon chambered to use that ammunition was also lighter and less fatiguing for the soldiers carrying it. In fact, the 0.276 Garand was fitted to carry 10 rounds of ammunition internally while a heavier duty version chambered for the .30-06 ammunition then-used by the Springfield bolt action rifle would not only weigh nearly a pound more, it would also only hold 8 cartridges in its internal magazine. Arguments that the bolt action rifles had a greater range were dismissed by the board as the larger range was only useful for sniper tactics. Infantry battle ranges rarely exceeded 300 yards effective range, and, on those rare occasions when it extended out to 600 yards, the 0.276 caliber had ballistics almost identical to the heavier .30-06. The kind of tactics that employed blocks of infantry standing shoulder-to-shoulder attacking an opposing infantry with plunging fire at 1,000 yards had gone out of style in the 1880's with the universal adoption of breech loading weapons. World War I had proven the futility of such arrangements of men who would be slaughtered en masse by enemy artillery and machine gun fire if such formations were attempted.<br /><br />The Armaments Board was made up of younger officers who fully grasped that the role of infantry in 1931 was as part of a combined arms force. In the face of enemy artillery and machine guns, the mode of attack was a very loose formation supported by friendly artillery, machine guns, and, in a fully modern arrangement, tanks and aircraft as well. When they made their formal recommendation to the US Army in 1932, it was accepted, but action was slow due to the financial situation of the Army in the midst of the Great Depression. Even with the financial constraints, however, once the decision was made the Army placed a long-term contract with the two manufacturers to purchase 60 Garand and 40 Pedersen 0.276 weapons a month. They also instituted a program to rebuild the vast number of Springfield bolt action .30-06 weapons stored in the Massachusetts arsenal with new chambers and barrels to use the same 0.276 ammunition. For simplicity, the Pedersen version of the ammunition was selected with its thin paraffin coating that sealed the cartridges against moisture while also providing a lubrication effect on both the bullet and brass casing when the cordite ignited, melting it instantly. This not only allowed the shell casing to be ejected easily, it had the side effect of reducing wear on the rifling in the barrel, making it last longer before the barrel had to be replaced.<div><br /><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinw7Pi0LHD9wNZPMFASTJkjxnKyZgdmU1W1N7Pe6scpmuRlYPVKX6cumB-EWakrrhyx9FOIRGjkGhGkvqJ3LaPCUwDiJ716OCGTUbMEypwawW5Dxo-lkDTQtklc4JJ-7hZle9iJ54bWGY/s320/barrles.jpg" /></div><div><br /></div><div>In mid-1932 when the World War I veterans protested in Washington D.C. as the newspaper labeled 'Bonus Army,' cooler heads prevailed, and a peaceful settlement over pension payments was reached with the government. <i>[OTL the 'Bonus Army' was routed by General MacArthur with six tanks, horse-mounted cavalry and thousands of infantry forcibly removing them from the parks of Washington D.C. With the use of military grade Adamsite vomiting gas and fixed bayonets by the infantry supported by cavalry troops acting to corral the sickened civilians, two WW I veterans died of wounds. A pregnant woman overcome by the vomit gas miscarried with her baby stillborn and a 12-week-old infant also died of chemical poisoning.]</i><br /><br />As a negotiated compromise, Congress relented in August and agreed to pay the soldiers of the 'Bonus Army' half of the face value of the bonds immediately and to issue new one-year bonds for the remainder of the face value to be paid in 1933. This peaceful resolution cost the government far less than political costs to Republican President Hoover and Democratically controlled House of Representatives from the OTL action by General MacArthur would have cost them. While the settling of the Bonus Army issues put a positive light on the president, it wasn't enough to win him re-election; the nine states he carried still left FDR with a solid electoral majority and a popular vote win of 52 percent to 47.5 percent with minor candidates soaking up the remainder.<br /><br />FDR's triumph was short-lived, however, when on February 15, 1933 the president-elect was assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara in Miami, Florida, where he was recuperating from his hard-fought campaign. The unemployed bricklayer was a short man of only 5'1" height and had elbowed his way through the crowd during FDR's speech. When the speech ended around 9:30, the crowd eased back, allowing the determined Zangara to eel his way up to the convertible where FDR sat and fire five shots from his revolver at point-blank range, striking him three times before bystanders wrestled his aim away for the last two shots.<br /><br />Never before had a president-elect died between the election and taking the oath of office, and, while some attempted to create a constitutional crisis, vice-president-elect James Nance Garner quickly proclaimed that he would take the oath of office as Vice President and then immediately take the oath of office as President on Inauguration Day to satisfy all the technicalities of becoming president on March 4, 1933, just two weeks after the Assassination. In the meantime, President Hoover and Vice President Curtis would serve out their terms until that same date. This satisfied even the most extreme theoretical issues with Garner becoming president; he had been duly elected vice president, and, by accepting that status on inauguration day, he would automatically become president as the office would be vacant when it came time for Herbert Hoover to step down. Some scholars even proposed that the way the offices changed hands was designed for exactly this scenario by the Founding Fathers because the office of Vice President changes hands first, and then the office of President changed hands.<br /><br />On March 4, 1933, Garner formally accepted the office of Vice President from Curtis; then a minute later, he accepted the office of President from Herbert Hoover, leaving the office of Vice President vacant.<br /><br />While Garner was not in favor of deficit spending on the large scale by the Federal Government, he was a believer in federal 'investments' in big ticket infrastructure projects. Three of these were of major effect.</div><div><br /></div><div>The Hoover Dam in Black Canyon was already far along by the time he took office as President, with construction beginning in mid 1931. The dam was completed and put into service by President Garner on September 30, 1935, just four and a quarter years after ground was broken.</div><div><br /></div><div>The second was the Lockport Hydroelectricity Project. This consisted of deepening and widening the Erie Canal from Lockport, New York, all the way to Lake Erie proper. While that was being done, a large artificial reservoir was dug on the upland side of the Niagara Escarpment north of Lockport, installing pen-stocks to generate power from the fifty-foot difference in water level from the upper and lower canal. The lower canal passed through or over many creeks and several rivers east of Lockport, allowing the additional water to easily drain down slope to Lake Ontario without causing local issues in the process. Most of the added flow proceeded through buried drainage pipes directly to 18 Mile Creek, which flows from Lockport to Olcott, New York, on the coast of Lake Ontario eighteen miles east of the mouth of the Niagara River. Up until this point, 18 Mile Creek had served mostly as the winter diversion flow-way for the Erie Canal water to be drained so that maintenance of the locks and removal of submerged debris could take place with minimal water in the canal bed. Each of the three pen-stocks at Lockport produced 15 MW of electricity and because they passed directly into the diversion channel they could operate all winter even when the sluice gates around the Lockport portion of the canal were closed. The reason the Lockport power project was limited to 45 MW when the Niagara power Queenston-Chippewa set of 10 generators produced 450 MW was directly related to height. While the Lockport plant exploited a 50-foot altitude change, the Queenston-Chippewa generators exploited a 300 -foot altitude change by carrying water 20km down the rim of the Niagara Gorge instead of exploiting just the 160-foot altitude change next to the famous falls themselves.<br /><br />With the Grand Opening of the new Canadian Fourth Welland Canal in 1932, relatively large ocean-going freighters could now transit up the Saint Lawrence River and visit ports like Chicago, Illinois; Duluth, Minnesota; Green Bay, Wisconsin; and Detroit, Michigan; as well as Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio, on Lake Erie. This opportunity to increase trade between the heartland of the USA and the world at large reinforced President Garner's stance that tariffs were bad for business and led him to keep the rates as low as possible in the face of pressure from Congress. In 1935 as an addition to the Lockport Hydroelectricity project President Garner asks Congress to fund the Olcott and Lockport Canal and a new massive ship lock at Lockport in place of the north 'flight of five' to accommodate the largest ocean going freighters which will allow America an independent route from the Canadian Welland Canal. The new 'Laker Locks' will lift ships the same 50 feet as the Erie Canal locks 34-35 but they will be 1,050 feet long, 110 feet wide identical to the Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal. This will give access to the four lower lakes to any cargo or other ship that can pass through the Panama canal. The new canal segment from Lockport to Olcott is less than 13 miles as the crow flies, meaning that the construction of the new 'Laker Locks' would be the most time consuming part of the whole process.<br /><br />Congress approved the new canal-and-lock project the second week of November, 1935, and construction began in May, 1936, completing in July, 1938, with the grand opening on the Fourth of July. While the Erie Canal was a New York State project, the new canal was under the US Army Corps of Engineers all the way from the Lake Erie terminus at Buffalo on one end to Lake Ontario terminus at Olcott on the other. Erie barge traffic was still permitted full access to the system, but the federal government was in charge of maintenance over their portion of the system. The federal government even forced the sale of the Erie locks 34-35 at Lockport so that both sets of locks would be under the care of the Corps of Engineers rather than two competing authorities operating the parallel, but differently sized, lock sets.<br /><br />With the rise of standing armies in Europe and Asia from 1933 onward, President Garner asked Congress to fund a major expansion of the US Army and Navy in September 1935 so that, in the event of a war, the nation would not need months or years to train and equip the necessary manpower. The near debacle of trying to create a professional army from a standing start in 1917 had effectively delayed useful action in the war for nine months. As part of this expansion and realignment in 1936, George C. Marshall was promoted to Brigadier General and assigned to command of all land forces in the Philippine Islands.<br /><br />The Spanish Civil War and the displays of air power by Germany and Italy in that conflict reinforced the idea that the USA was woefully unprepared in the event of an attack. When the Japanese sank the <i>Panay</i> in China in December, 1937, the US Army had grown from 132,000 officers and enlisted in January, 1935, to 650,000 in December, 1937. This not only went a great distance to reducing unemployment; it created a core of manpower to build upon in the event of an active war breaking out.<br /><br />When the Japanese sank the river patrol boat <i>Panay</i> on December 12, 1937, the American public were outraged that 'Nipponese' would dare attack an American ship. The fact that the patrol boat had been armed in 1936 with a 1.1" (28mm) air defense gun did provide the small solace that one of the attacking aircraft was shot down in the incident. The Japanese commander who ordered the attack was enraged by the fact that one of his planes was shot down and ordered the attack to continue against the <i>Panay</i> and the three small oil tankers it was escorting, resulting in over a score of deaths and wounding of nearly all survivors. Those who did survive, including two newsreel photographers with their films, were evacuated by a British patrol boat under cover of darkness that night. The newsreel footage was flown by a relay of aircraft back to the continental USA all the way to Washington D.C. within 18 hours of the British rescue.</div><div><br /></div><div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjHuwGh5yH25rhSQ_BAnQHKm6pVSuBmmGEjefH79uBZNl5x7KOEM7c7qM35SS9abS0A9hqOXHBlMYkV62DSCdPRKrNLRNgL0UWkUBTpnsDhLqV5YbrI-pxTjIj5xqaZe0u4QKUCk6RQKo/s320/ship.png" /><br /><br />American cryptographers had broken the Japanese radio code in use at the time and provided proof to the president that the attack had been ordered deliberately from the very beginning. President Garner in turn had a meeting with the Congressional leadership where the newsreel footage was reviewed. The next day, President Garner followed it up with an emergency address to a joint session of Congress where he publicly released the transcripts of the radio orders to attack the <i>Panay</i> and called for a declaration of war with the Empire of Japan.<br /><br />The joint session of Congress passed the declaration unanimously with several of the members abstaining rather than vote in opposition during the emotionally charged situation. President Garner's speech citing that "December 12th, a date which will live in infamy, the US Asiatic forces were suddenly and deliberately attack by naval air forces of the Empire of Japan" has gone down in history as one of the most powerful speeches by any president. This was of course greatly amplified by the fact that the entire session and speech were broadcast live on radio nationwide and that many news organization recorded the session in its entirety capturing those words for posterity.<br /><br />With all military arms limitation treaties being placed on hold due to the active war declaration, Congress passed the Two Ocean Navy Act of 1937 the next day, pouring financial resources into the US Navy, which had been modernizing at a slow pace since the close of the Great War in 1918. The newest major ship in the fleet was the carrier <i>Yorktown</i> (CV-5), which only went into full commission two months earlier. As part of the expansion, the Navy was authorized to build eight more copies of the design, bringing the total up to 10 Yorktown class carriers, up from the two initially ordered. The second ship, <i>Enterprise</i> (CV-6), was already under construction and nearly finished. For the battleship fleet, the USS <i>North Carolina</i> was already ordered, as is a second unit, <i>Washington</i>, but battleships of such size and complexity will take two or three years to build. The Navy was authorized to build four additional <i>North Carolina</i> class ships and to work up a design for a larger ship as the follow on project. Given that none of the new battleships would be available for a long time, the Navy was also ordered to take the target ship <i>Utah</i> and training ship <i>Wyoming</i> into drydock for a full rearmament. Under the 1922 Naval Arms Limitation Treaty, the <i>Utah</i> had all of her weapons removed and the <i>Wyoming</i> had half of her main guns removed. Both were back up to their former capabilities in six to nine months, a great deal faster than the new ships readied for service.<br /><br />In terms of air power, the US Navy and Army each had an air component. Unfortunately for the Navy, funding had been sorely lacking and almost all of their aircraft were biplanes, though the newest ones were very advanced compared to the types used in the Great War. The Army was not overwhelmingly better, though they started switching to monoplane bombers a decade earlier and monoplane fighters four years earlier. They still had large numbers of biplanes used for training aircrews. The most advanced Army aircraft were the P-35 and P-36 monoplane fighters and the B-18 bomber developed from the successful DC-3 civilian aircraft. The B-17 hoped to become the strategic bomber was still in development because of problems that had arisen during testing, but it would likely go into production within a year. In the near term, however, large orders for the proven B-18, P-35 and P-36 are placed to greatly expand the Army Air Corp. The surviving old B-10 and P-6 fighters still made up over half of the Army Air Forces.<br /><br />For the ground forces of the Army and Marine Corp, things were nearly as grim. The expansion of the prior two years had taught the new recruits the intricacies of the Garand or Pedersen semi-automatic infantry rifles/carbine respectively, but the Garand was not available in large enough numbers to supply the entire expanded Army infantry so half of those new soldiers and nearly all of the National Guard, now federalized, were armed with the older Springfield bolt action rifles the Massachusetts arsenal had rebuilt to fire the new universal 0.276 caliber infantry rounds. Garand and Pedersen weapons would be produced in large numbers now that war had broken out but the Infantry and Marine forces would also be expanding rapidly at the same time necessitating the continued use of the rebuilt bolt action rifles for at least a year, possibly longer.<br /><br />For their armored elements, they were even worse off. The Army had three partially developed "combat cars," all essentially light tanks fitted with various numbers of .30 and .50 caliber machine guns. Sometimes the guns were in turrets that could swivel, while others are in casemate mountings in the hull that allowed them to pivot from 90 to 180 degrees depending on the location. Congress had required in 1920 that all military "tanks" be designed for infantry support and no other purpose, so all American tanks were armed with machine guns, nothing heavier than 0.50 caliber, and the carbines issued to the crew. As an intermediate step, President Garner declared to the Army that 1.1" (28 mm) antiaircraft guns count as infantry support weapons, and the newly ordered tanks were fitted with those units in their turrets. The heavier 28 mm gun gave the tank and effective killing range against unarmored enemy vehicles of 7,000 yards, nearly 7 km. At closer ranges, it could easily penetrate the armor of infantry support tanks, which is designed to stop rifle or machine gun bullets, not heavier shells.<br /><br />The initial contacts of the Japanese American War of 1937-1940 were naval in nature, mostly by the old S-class submarines with their old Mark-10 torpedoes designed in 1918 based on the experiences of the Great War. Though not long range patrol boats, they were able to refuel at forward bases in the Philippine Islands, Guam, or the Aleutian Islands and conduct attacks on Japanese shipping. The new Fleet class submarines designated Sargo Class were still under construction, but, with war priority, they started being delivered within a few months and with many additional copies beyond the 10 already ordered are part of the Two Ocean Navy Act.<br /><br />By the end of 1938, the US Navy was at a post-Great War peak with 17 active battleships and another six under construction with a further six undergoing final designs before construction. The Japanese Navy had 10 Battleships operational and four massive new <i>Yamato</i> class just starting construction. They also have half a dozen aircraft carriers to put up against the same number of American ships, but, while their shipyards are building new units, the American shipyards are also doing so at five times the rate. With the opening of the Olcott-Buffalo Canal and its "Laker Locks" at Lockport in the middle, shipyards all around the Great Lakes could join in on the military construction. Canada politely granted a waiver of the "no warships on the Great Lakes" treaty being more interested in maintaining friendly relations with the USA than Japan. This effectively added 35 percent to the shipyard availability for the war effort. When those shipyards in Chicago were focused on merchant vessels in the Panamax class that could just squeeze through the locks, it freed up shipyards on the ocean coasts to work on more warships. Manitowac, Wisconsin, shipyards start turning out large numbers of small naval ships like Destroyers and Frigates while the shipyards in Detroit and Toledo are dedicated to producing Submarines.<br /><br />President Garner happily took credit for his foresight in pushing for the large ship canal route through New York to the upper lakes, which now redounded as a massive benefit for the war effort.<br /><br />The Japanese military commander who ordered the attacks on the <i>Panay</i> had believed that the USA would meekly withdraw from its Asian outposts in China. From the point of view of the Japanese military officers corps, the USA was a weak decadent power that lacked the strength of will to fight a war against Japan. They had fallen into the trap of believing their own propagandist rhetoric and discovered that, without being distracted by other factors, the USA was fully capable of producing war material at a rate five to six times as great as all of Japan, including their territories in the Korean Peninsula, Formosa Island, and the vast Manchurian province. Even worse, it turned out that three months of boot camp could turn even the dullest witted farm laborer into a proficient rifleman.<br /><br />Though the Japanese ran rampant for the first few months of the war advancing rapidly in China and evicting the Americans there only in small numbers, the 8,000 Marines deployed to Guam held out for the entire war, receiving small numbers of reinforcements and vital supplies from the Navy. Though not flashy, they snuck into port under cover of darkness every few weeks to drop off more Marines and supplies. The Japanese submarine force was simply not up to the task of stopping these convoys though they did pick off an occasional ship. The Guam Campaign as it came to be known lasted 23 months before the USA had enough reinforcements on the island to drive out the last of the Japanese invaders.<br /><br />During those 23 months of grueling combat on Guam, the American and Japanese fleets danced around each other, staying within the air cover provided by its own island airbases. Though the Army had poked fun at the Navy for still using biplane fighters, the F3F-4 by Grumman turned out to be a close match to the three Japanese fighters then in production, one of which was also a biplane. The sturdy Grumman was tough, durable, and highly maneuverable, allowing it to overcome the slight speed advantage of the Japanese A5M 'Claude' monoplane fighters just entering service with the Japanese Navy. For cultural reasons, none of the Japanese planes were heavily armored nor were they equipped with rubber lined "self sealing" fuel tanks. If an American fighter managed to hit the Japanese plane, the aircraft was always damaged, and, if the pilot, engine, or fuel tanks were hit, the plane was almost certainly lost, even if the pilot successfully parachuted away. American culture on the other hand emphasized the value of saving the pilot and his aircraft to fight another day. Fitting new aircraft with rubber lining on their fuel tanks to prevent bullet holes from rapidly emptying them and placing an armor backing in the pilot seat to stop enemy bullets from penetrating easily were seen as simple, common sense improvements.<br /><br />Even with these disadvantages, however, the Japanese turned out to be tenacious fighters. Their soldiers might be small of stature and poorly fed by American standards, but they were culturally more inclined to fight to the death than to surrender, which was considered to be disgraceful and a shame on the entire family.<br /><br />In the wider world, the UK and France continued their program of appeasement to Germany ,allowing Hitler to absorb Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Western Poland without putting up a fight. With peace in the west, Hitler turned to fighting the USSR with his invasion in May 1940. The British and French people heaved a sigh of relief, hoping that the two unpleasant regimes would succeed in destroying each other and saving them the trouble. In the interim, however, both France and the UK put forth the effort to modernize and rearm themselves based on their observations of how the German war machine had rolled over Poland in just weeks in 1939 and was in turn rapidly advancing in the USSR in the summer of 1940. Clearly defense against modern aircraft and Panzers would be mandatory for defense of their nations if Germany should defeat the USSR and turn west. As the American military had abundant semi-automatic Garand rifles and Pedersen carbines by 1940, the president is happy to sell the now-surplus bolt action 0.276 caliber Springfield stockpile to the UK and France to aid their rearmament programs. With the Japanese refusing to retreat and necessitating a grueling war of attrition in the Pacific, the USA has no interest in participating directly in European affairs, but selling surplus arms to Great War allies is considered just good business.<br /><br />With the war still going on, President Garner ran for re-election a second time in 1940 and won in a landslide even larger than that of 1932 setting the three term precedent for presidents from then on in American history. Though at their "high water mark" the Japanese did successful capture half of Guam and several of the Philippine Islands, the well prepared American forces under general Marshall were able to hold out until enough reinforcements arrived to expel them in early 1940. At the same time, the "Clean Sweep" campaign had conducted hundreds of amphibious invasions following an "anaconda" plan of squeezing the Japanese out of their small island garrisons in the central Pacific. The big naval fleet battle off Minami-Tori-shima, called Marcus Island by the Americans, in December 1939 cost the Japanese half of their battleships for the loss of just the USS <i>Pennsylvania</i> and seven destroyers on the American side of the fight. The survivors on both sides needed battle damage repair in the following months.<br /><br />The last stand of the Japanese Navy came six months later when every available ship sailed to meet the American fleet off Saipan. June 17, 1940, effectively ended the existence of the Japanese surface fleet, sinking the last of their battleships and aircraft carriers. This left them with just a few small destroyers and patrol boats and their remaining submarines to defend themselves from the continuing advance of the American military gobbling up one small island and defeating the garrisons with overwhelming force. In July, the American forces captured the Kurile Islands, leaving the Japanese with just the five home islands and Formosa, plus their forces in Korea, Manchuria, and China. The USA had lost four battleships in the war. <i>Pennsylvania</i> to surface combat that included long range torpedo attacks by the Japanese destroyers at the battle of Marcus Island. <i>New York</i>, <i>Arizona</i>, and <i>Utah</i> fell to attacks by submarines, which sank them on separate occasions over the many months of the war. Early in 1941, the USA conducted a two-pronged invasion taking Formosa in the south and Sakhalin in the north, leaving the four core islands and the mainland yet to fight. The Japanese forces continued to fight nearly to the last man, and the USA was faced with the prospect of massive casualties eradicating the rest of the resistance.<br /><br />Then, in May 1941, everything shifted. Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Chinese Nationalists, made an offer President Garner was happy to accept. The USA would arm the Chinese army and train it in the use of the semi-automatic weapons on Formosa, which the Chinese called Taiwan. Once they were ready, US Navy would transport the Chinese to the southernmost Japanese home islands of Kyushu and Shikoku in a massive amphibious invasion. Keeping them supplied with military goods while they defeated the Japanese on those two islands would be one priority. This was expected to attrit the Japanese army faster than they could recall troops from the fighting in China. That in turn would cause the Japanese to draw down garrisons on Hokkaido and Honshu to make up for their losses. The USA could then invade Hokkaido in the north, further depleting the Japanese military starting a month after the Chinese forces were deployed. This one-two punch was expected to collapse the Japanese resistance as they would not willingly allow foreign invaders to occupy any of their four core islands and would waste their last strength attempting to evict them.<br /><br />This seemed to be going well the first day of the invasion of Shikoku on July 5, 1941, right up until the Japanese began shelling the Chinese forces with chemical artillery. The weapons used were mixed barrages of whatever the artillery units had in their local stockpile or could get transported to the lines for use containing vomit gas, tear gas, Chlorine gas, Lewisite gas, or aerosolized Mustard Gas. The first two agents acted to disorient affected personnel, making them easy targets for the Japanese defenders to eliminate, while the latter three agents were deadly to different degrees. Chlorine was strongly attracted to moisture and would attack the eyes, mouth, and nasal passages and any exposed wounds, quickly blinding and then quickly killing the victims if they did not have protective gear. The Lewisite and Mustard were even worse as they would react on contact with skin, breathing passages, and eyes and, if inhaled, would cause serious lung damage usually resulting in a slower more painful death.<br /><br />The new B-17C bomber was finally in production, and hundreds were already in final flight training for their crews when the Japanese resorted to the gas defenses. It took a week to move the first 300 of these aircraft to forward bases in Okinawa, but, once they were in position, they rained chemical death on the cities of the Japanese homeland without remorse. The Japanese had used chemical weapons throughout the war in China, which had no way to retaliate in kind and only rarely had even simple gas masks to protect themselves. They had resisted using gas against the Americans for three and a half years out of fear of the retaliation they would experience, but when the home islands were invaded they decided to use every option in their defense. The bombers each carried three tons of phosgene bombs in that first attack on Hiroshima Arsenal at midnight. The gas bombs were all set to detonate with their small bursting charge at 200 feet above ground dispersing the clear colorless gas in invisible clouds that sank to the lowest area nearby because they were heavier than air. Unlike many chemical agents, Phosgene in threshold lethal concentrations does not cause immediate death. Its mechanism of action is to bind the proteins in the lung tissue that exchange oxygen from the air into the blood. At minimal doses, it could take nearly a full day for enough lung damage to be done for the victim to perish. The higher the dose, the more rapidly the victim suffocated and, because of the bombing raid, most people were in underground bomb shelters: perfectly placed for the phosgene to sink into place displacing the lighter air molecules. The only telltale odor of the gas is a musty smell that is indistinguishable from the smells in most underground shelters.<br /><br />Throughout the rest of the war, gas weapons killed an estimated 123,000 civilians, which sounds terrible until compared with the 373,000 killed by conventional bombs and the untold numbers who died of starvation before the Japanese finally surrendered on March 12, 1942.<br /><br />In Europe, the USSR had shrunk substantially with Germany holding a vast new territory on a meandering line from 40 degrees east in the north to 55 degrees east in the south. Stalin had managed to pull back much of his industry and even a large percentage of industrial workers east of the Ural mountains, but Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, and the Azerbaijan oil fields were all inside the German Occupation zone. Germany was stretched providing garrison troops for its region of control, but the USSR had lost so much manpower that it had no reserves to start any offensives. While there was no formal cease fire agreement, both sides had dug in and stretched a no man's land of landmines, pit traps, barbed wire and actual fencing with guard towers along the static zone. Commandos snuck through on occasion to do damage behind enemy lines, but for the most part both sides were exhausted. Starting in 1940, the Germans had begun laying railroad tracks in their standard gauge, first over the old Russian right of ways by adjusting the existing tracks for German standards and then adding additional trackage to connect nearly every village in eastern Poland and Belarus at a density similar to that in Germany. As time went on, first the Jewish and then the Polish and Belarus civilian populations were forced to relocate eastward, emptying the land for German settlers to move in.<br /><br />German, British, and French forces had all fully modernized their equipment by mid 1942 with new designs of aircraft, stronger panzers, and bigger navies, but neither the French nor the British were eager to start a war with Germany despite the pleas of Stalin. A tripartite meeting tacitly agreed that the western Europeans would not interfere so long as Germany remained focused to the east. The UK and France having passed through the danger period went back to focusing on their colonial empires.<br /><br />America having faced Japan with just the assistance of the Chinese had no desire to occupy Japan themselves and gave the four southern main islands along with Formosa/Taiwan and the mainland territories to Chiang Kai-shek, retaining only Sakhalin island with its oil fields for themselves. A quick deal with Stalin for the purchase of the Soviet half of the island in exchange for a few thousand war-surplus aircraft and trucks delivered to Vladivostok made the transfer formally a sale. The USA also retained the Kurile Islands and the hundreds of smaller islands in the Pacific they had taken from Japan by force. Most of these islands have very small native Polynesian populations related to the Hawaiians by culture and language. Tinian and Saipan, next to Guam, were placed under the administration of the American governor of that territory.<br /><br />Allied strongly with America, Chiang quickly eliminated the remaining Communist Chinese holdouts, executing everyone known or suspected of having a leadership role like Mao. All of the surviving Japanese industrial equipment was shipped to mainland China proper and put to good use rebuilding the country as a modern 1940 industrial powerhouse. The surviving Japanese become a minority population as Chinese are encouraged to move to the islands by Chiang to recreate them as Chinese cultural lands. The Japanese had been attempting to do the same thing in the other direction in Taiwan, Korea, and Manchuria and had planned to do it in China as well. Now Chiang reversed the process and made all the islands Chinese, much as the Mongols had attempted centuries earlier. With so many Japanese men of reproductive age having been killed in the war, half of the surviving Japanese women ended up married to Chinese colonists.<br /><br /><i><b>Author's Note:<br /></b></i><br />Links that inspired this complex scenario include:<br /><br />• <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-51664-6_14">No Retaliation in Kind: Japanese Chemical Warfare Policy in World War II</a><br />• <a href="http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p12_Weber.html">American Leaders Planned Poison Gas Attack Against Japan</a><br />• <a href="https://www.full30.com/watch/MDA0ODkw/t3e2-trials-276-caliber-garand">Trials 276 Caliber Garand</a></div><div>• <a href="http://military.wikia.com/wiki/.276_Pedersen">Pedersen</a>.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>"Cactus Jack" Garner stepped down from the presidency in 1945, handing the office to Charles Lindbergh. Garner would go down in history as one of the nation's greatest presidents, ranking with Washington and Lincoln. His would be the fifth face carved into Mount Rushmore, the first of numerous additions as the American propaganda corps saw fit.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lindbergh had come back into national attention after stepping out of the limelight to find privacy following the tragic kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh, Jr, in 1932. During the military buildup, the Lindberghs returned from Europe, and Lindbergh himself was commissioned into the Army Air Force by the Secretary of War. Lindbergh was treated as a celebrity, yet he still fought combat missions and gained even more fame. By the end of the war, General Lindbergh was a shoo-in for any office he sought. Garner legendarily selected Lindbergh personally and would have endorsed him in 1940 "if he didn't have a war to win" (suggestions differ on whether the "he" winning the war was Lindbergh or Garner himself).</div><div><br /></div><div>Many saw Lindbergh's presidency as a new gilded age. Eugenics became mandated curriculum for public schools and even medical schools. Civil rights movements were met with harsh crackdowns and resettlement with many African Americans fleeing to Canada. Although Lindbergh built strong international relations with China and through Latin America, immigration quotas were mandated to very low numbers. Propaganda remained strong with anti-sedition legislation created during the war becoming normalized under the FCC, which, along with the expansive other departments of the increasingly complex federal government, kept the nation in a tight line.</div><div><br /></div><div>Lindbergh remained in office until 1957, handing the position to the eager young go-getter Richard Nixon.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-79532708604713288132024-01-25T14:41:00.000-08:002024-01-25T14:48:53.744-08:00Guest Post: Wilson's Third Term<i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=DMC9IBIEV-TDVV">Today in Alternate History</a> from Allen W. McDonnell.</i><br /><br />2 October, 1919 -<br /><br />On this fateful day, the 28th President of the United States Woodrow Wilson suffered a second minor stroke. It was a repeat of a medical event thirteen years earlier when he awoke to find himself blind in the left eye, the result of a blood clot and hypertension. Once again this great American was able to make a complete recovery and return to work. In time, he would resume his international leadership as one of the Progressive Era's largest-looming intellectuals.<br /><br />The previous year had been brutal for him. Mid-term elections in 1918 had suggested widespread voter apathy towards the Democrats as war patriotism ebbed. Apart from the complications of his life-threatening health scare, the political fortunes of the Party were down because of the troubled economy and Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Versailles. At that sour moment, it seemed extremely unlikely that he would set the direction for America's transition to peace.<br /><br />1920 would certainly be a Republican year, but surely Warren Harding made a bad mistake in choosing a running mate, selecting Irvine L. Lenroot over Calvin Coolidge. By the time that Harding suffered a fatal heart attack, Wilson was already considering his options: a return to legal practice with former Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby or perhaps a campaign for a historic third term in the White House. In a radio address on Armistice Day, he sharply criticized the victor powers for having made "waste paper of the Treaty of Versailles," a sure sign that he intended to restore his political legacy. Ultimately, it would be a combination of Harding's untimely death, the unpopularity of his lackluster successor, and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teapot_Dome_scandal">Teapot Dome Scandal</a> that sealed his victory.<br /><br />Re-election was an unexpected bonus, but, to those of his <a href="https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-wilson-for-a-third-term.410723/">political enemies</a> that knew the full story, he had not failed because he had a stroke. Rather, he had a stroke because he had failed. Yet the struggles of his final year in the Oval Office marked progress during his previous eight in which he had adopted a <a href="https://www.quora.com/Was-Woodrow-Wilson-the-20th-centurys-first-fascist-ruler">large number of anti-libertarian stances</a>. Wilson was the only president to be born in the Confederacy, and his political philosophy clashed sharply with the Constitution and even American traditions. Fathering the notion of a "living Constitution," his initiatives included the War Industries Board, Committee on Public Information, Palmer Raids, Espionage Act of 1917, and American Protective League.<br /><br />It was certainly true that during the Progressive Era many politicians favored social programs that shared Wilson's own goals. However, the third decade of the twentieth century would see a sharp turn from "enlightened" government. Wilson's triumphant return to office would occur at a decisive moment for the Western World when Fascism was on the rise. The historic state visit to Rome would only be the first step in a new relationship with the emerging totalitarian figures of the 1920s. The long shadows of the Confederacy loomed over Europe in that dark decade.<br /><br /><i><b>Author's Note:</b></i><br /><br />In reality, Wilson's health did not markedly improve after leaving office, declining rapidly in January 1924. He did open a law practice and showed up the first day but never returned, and the practice was closed by the end of 1922. He died on February 3, 1924, at the age of 67. Many of Wilson's accomplishments, including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the graduated income tax, and labor laws, continued to influence the United States long after Wilson's death.<div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>As the end of Wilson's third term approached, it was obvious he would be considered "too old" for the excited voters of the Roaring Twenties. Many Republicans were already abuzz about Herbert Hoover, who had continued as the shining star of the ill-fated Harding administration under Wilson as Secretary of Commerce. Wilson had tapped Hoover to keep the nation on the economic upswing after already having worked with him to work in the Food Administration when the U.S. joined the Great War. The progressive Republican under a Democratic president was lauded by the press as a "New Era of Good Feelings." When Wilson endorsed Hoover for the '28 election, Hoover defeated Democrat candidate Al Smith so handily that it rivaled James Monroe's victory in 1820.</div><div><br /></div><div>Unfortunately, the Era of Good Feelings came crashing down with the stock market in 1929. Hoover's administration took much of the blame of slow relief and the violent repression of the Bonus Army veterans camped in Washington. Wilson again came out of retirement, this time to play kingmaker and assure the victory of John Nance Garner at the 1932 Democratic National Convention. Garner readily defeated Hoover and laid down a firm hand nearing totalitarianism, mirroring many of the major construction programs seen by fascist regimes in Europe and using emergency executive powers to restructure American immigration and minority policies. By the time of the Lindbergh presidency and the Pacific War, many began to question whether America was still the "Land of the Free," but of course their opinions were quashed as radicalism.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-84714399829588742152024-01-18T13:52:00.000-08:002024-01-19T08:56:57.663-08:00Guest Post: Great War stretches into 1919<i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=AMC9IBIEV-THVV">Today in Alternate History</a> conceived by Allen W. McDonnell.</i><br /><br />10 Jan, 1919-<div><br /></div><div>The earliest new-year batch of US-supplied wooden steamships, led by the S.S. <i>Accomac</i>, arrived in British ports. These January deliveries served as a show of strength and resolve, as Anglo-American forces continued to fight the Great War without France.</div><div><br />It was a long and winding road from the German Spring Offensive of 1918, which had captured Paris and convinced France to stand down her exhausted forces and accept a position of strict neutrality for the remainder of the war. In truth, France had been suffering more and more mutinies by front-line troops who saw the lives of their fellow soldiers being thrown away in wasteful assaults on the front lines. German troops remained in control of Paris to convince the government to comply with its neutrality ceasefire agreement.<br /><br /><img height="198" src="https://www.todayinah.co.uk/support_images/normandymap.jpg" width="320" /><div><br /></div><div>In this case, the German offensive had struck just to the south of the American section of the front lines, and, as they widened their breakthrough advance the American and British forces, had withdrawn north and west. Over the following three weeks, the lines had stabilized with the English-speaking forces holding the former Duchy of Normandy and the westernmost sliver of Belgium. Also, the retention of this coastal strip enabled the US-reinforced Royal Navy to maintain complete control of the North Sea.<br /><br />France studiously followed the ceasefire and neutrality agreement and formally requested the Americans and British to vacate Normandy; however, the remaining allies refused to do so as it would have left just the sliver of Belgium in their hands, and that was too small a foothold to be worth keeping.<br /><br />In the USA, the Emergency Fleet Corporation had placed an order shortly after the declaration of war with a score of shipyards to build an emergency cargo fleet to counteract the effects of unrestricted submarine warfare in the North Atlantic. The first step had been to nationalize the 431 cargo vessels of under 5,500 tons already under construction or on order from US building yards. The next step was to face the fact that USA steel industry simply lacked the capacity to build both the navy ships, mostly destroyers, refit the 431 already seized cargo ships, and construct the additional 1,000 ships planned for the war cargo fleet expansion program.<br /><br />To get around this limitation, the maritime architect Theodore Ferris fell back on the techniques of the 1880's, designing a 3,500 ton steam powered cargo ship with a wooden hull reinforced with steel to provide the needed strength with a minimum of metal in the design. These so-called Composite-type ships had been developed in the second half of the 19th century to permit ships larger than a purely wooden frame could support in rough seas. Using steel beams and bracing also reduced the need for extremely large wooden structures that used up a lot of the internal cargo volume of a purely wooden vessel. Best of all, the USA had a surplus of lumber because the war had effectively halted house construction, and all the lumber already seasoned and stockpiled for building construction was now available for emergency ship hull material instead. While it would take a year or two for all 1,000 wooden hull ships to be delivered, there was never any doubt they were within the capacity of many boatyards on both sea coasts and around the Great Lakes.<br /><br />Germany tried three times to break into the "Anglisch Enclave" in Normandy and Belgium but were repulsed by the ever growing number of fresh American troops arriving weekly through the late spring and all the way to Christmas from across the Atlantic. As Christmas arrived in Europe, three new American weapons started arriving in large numbers at Cherbourg in Normandy. The first of these are the Thompson sub-machine gun, which could fire out 75 rounds from its drum magazine in either automatic or aimed fire single shots. The second weapon was the modified 1903 Mark I Springfield Rifle with a semi-automatic pistol mechanism in place of the standard bolt action in the breech. This allowed the rifle to be fitted with a 40-bullet capacity magazine firing pistol ammunition down the long rifle barrel one bullet for every pull of the trigger. This Pedersen device option gave the rifle an immense magazine capacity compared to the 5-bullet internal magazine the rifle had been originally designed to use. The Winchester Model 1897 shotgun fired each time the action closed with the trigger depressed, allowing soldiers to empty the entire 5-shell magazine in "slam firing" with such intensity that it earned the nickname "trench sweeper" and faced international outcry from the German government, saying it violated the Geneva Convention and that any American soldier captured with one would be executed.<br /><br />British tanks in the 1919 Spring Offensive and breakout, however, turned out to be a major disappointment as the German army had spent the winter months perfecting several anti-tank devices mostly in the form of 20mm anti-tank artillery pieces and special heavy armor-piercing sniper rounds for the regulation sniper rifle version of the Mauser.</div><div><br /></div><div>Germany was in much better shape in 1919 as over the fall and winter V.I. Lenin had shipped a million tons of grain west to Germany as part of their peace agreement more than compensating for the food shortages caused by so much of the farm labor being in the service. At sea, the U-boats had considerable success sinking cargo ships causing a loss of almost 2,000 ships in 1918 alone. British, Canadian, American, and third-party countries like Brazil were barely able to replace the number of ships lost. Even as the new wood-hulled freighters were joining the convoys starting in July, 1918, fully a quarter of ships never finished a round trip from North America to the UK and back for a second load of cargo.<br /><br />To combat this loss, allies ramped up the massive production of Wickes class destroyers, which had soaked up most of the ship-building steel with the first being commissioned in April, 1918, and the 125th being completed in March, 1920, a few months after the peace treaty. While they never stopped the U-boat attacks entirely, they did reduce losses to a rate which could be compensated for with new construction. Ironically, the last of the 1,000 composite wooden hull cargo ships joined the convoys just a week before peace negotiations began in earnest in 1920.<br /><br />The "Anglisch Enclave" was a pocket that restored a miniature version of the stalemate on the Western Front before the French collapse. Neither the attackers could occupy, nor the defenders break out. Despite the flood of goods and men from the USA, the British public was tired of the war by 1918 and finally, in November 1919 a return to Status Quo Antebellum was agreed to in Europe and Africa. Anglo-American Forces were evacuated as German forces withdrew, but the reconstruction of French sovereignty, and repair of relations with London and Washington, would take many years to accomplish.<br /><br />Germany lost its colonies in the Pacific and Papua New Guinea to Japan, New Zealand, and Australia but resumed its colonies in Africa. In compensation, and to ensure peace, the Western allies had no choice but to endorse the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. France and Brazil oversaw the vote in the areas allowed to choose their own government mainly in the Ukraine and Belorussia, Finland, Estonia, and Livonia (Latvia). Edward, Prince of Wales, gained international prestige for reaching out to his cousin the future Wilhelm III in back-channel negotiations that led to an acceptable peace.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In reality, Paris did not fall, and it was the exhausted German Army that capitulated.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the consequences of the abrupt end of hostilities was over-supply, an excessively large amount of shipping <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/ghost-fleet-sunken-warships-declared-national-marine-sanctuary">needing to be scrapped</a>. The U.S. Navy did not want the ships, which were stored in the James River at the cost of $50,000 a month. They were soon sold to the Western Marine & Salvage Company. The company moved the ships to the Potomac River at Widewater, Virginia, and, in 1925, they were towed to Mallows Bay. When Western Marine went bankrupt, the ships were burned and remained where they lay. Among the most prominent ships seen at Mallows Bay is the S.S. <i>Accomac</i>. In total, 230 United States Shipping Board Merchant Fleet Corporation ships are sunken in the river.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>With the world at peace, eyes in Europe kept furtive glances to the east as Russia continued its experiment with communism. German support for Lenin dried up as soon as the Western Front fell quiet, leading to a dragging civil war with numerous fronts between Bolsheviks, anti-communist Whites, and separatists seeking to move beyond the historical Russian Empire's grip. In fall of 1920, the Tambov Rebellion of peasants striking out against the Bolsheviks added to the chaos with a new Green Army. Allied leaders like Winston Churchill argued that Bolshevism should be "strangled in its cradle," leading to further volunteer armies coming from the West, many of them veterans of the Great War. Gradually during the severe famines of 1920 and '21, the Bolsheviks lost their momentum, and, by 1925, were driven out of the last strongholds as Kaiser Wilhelm and King George V helped the young George Mikhailovich onto the throne of a rump Russian state, frustrating the plans of Kirill Vladimirovich. The former Russian Empire was considered a new China or Africa with European powers clamoring to gain political influence over newly independent nations like Belarus and Ukraine as well as economic colonies with German railways heading eastward and British influence spreading northward into Central Asia from India. Japan seized Russian territory on the Pacific, sparking turmoil with the United States over sovereignty and laying the groundwork for the next great war.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-30686507144861453962024-01-08T08:06:00.000-08:002024-01-08T08:06:36.780-08:00Weird USA from Recess<p>A while after seeing the <a href="https://thisdayinalternatehistory.blogspot.com/2023/01/weird-usa-from-simpsons-comic.html">weird map of the USA from a Simpsons comic</a>, I noticed another weird map in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recess_(TV_series)">cartoon <i>Recess</i> (1997-2001)</a>. It showed up in a couple of episodes in the background hanging in the school's office.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ZZNvj74Plq-Fsxhna9RR-yJBUlAqsGEth-Z8hd5aNl0djH-oRZ8GdjYK-Y4acav1xseqp4rVkfkRMiXK-AyM-C1k46ivsuhwok-j82a-r0tBULjLdY3FN95fLPlCeIHxlgYvOTRpX2k1m6Zp09MejVdbeuPRf9n3yTmupOyfbCRqKkWzYeMR-rZOJfQ/s681/Screenshot%202023-03-06%20161801%20Recess%20Map.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="681" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ZZNvj74Plq-Fsxhna9RR-yJBUlAqsGEth-Z8hd5aNl0djH-oRZ8GdjYK-Y4acav1xseqp4rVkfkRMiXK-AyM-C1k46ivsuhwok-j82a-r0tBULjLdY3FN95fLPlCeIHxlgYvOTRpX2k1m6Zp09MejVdbeuPRf9n3yTmupOyfbCRqKkWzYeMR-rZOJfQ/s320/Screenshot%202023-03-06%20161801%20Recess%20Map.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>The Lower 48 states can be complicated to draw, and it's just the background, so I can understand why it might look funky as artists try to get the show together. But, this opportunity also leads to a potential alternate history on how it could look that way. I redrew the map for a bit more clarity and did some brainstorming on how it might've happened.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN2w0NTz2u9SxGw83P_2uTsNqW3rt7UCl56WldfhxcdW8SlnPj39T90Ih-E1wN9w1cb2lWeBYnNOq7r534o-w5sDNBdw6Ky2dFnSX1cBgDEwRarWtIVCr4U7m4pvuS5VHSYLyg4ToYXu-cRddRedrXH3mUhC1NSO6-HAwVORe30baXAPshgjw3YWSR_LQ/s900/Weird%20US%202%20colors%20WY%20fixed.tif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="900" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN2w0NTz2u9SxGw83P_2uTsNqW3rt7UCl56WldfhxcdW8SlnPj39T90Ih-E1wN9w1cb2lWeBYnNOq7r534o-w5sDNBdw6Ky2dFnSX1cBgDEwRarWtIVCr4U7m4pvuS5VHSYLyg4ToYXu-cRddRedrXH3mUhC1NSO6-HAwVORe30baXAPshgjw3YWSR_LQ/w400-h254/Weird%20US%202%20colors%20WY%20fixed.tif" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div>November 7, 1685 - James II Orders Survey of the 40th Parallel<div><br /></div><div>From the original charters of Virginia and Massachusetts, the English colonies in North America had a bad habit of their borders crossing one another for overlapping claims. The Virginia Company was promised land north and west in 1609, which eventually fell into land also promised to the westward "sea-to-sea" territory of Massachusetts Bay in 1628. Other disagreements soon broke out, such as New Hampshire breaking up Massachusetts in two and the New York colony having an unclear boundary in territory captured from what was called "New Netherlands" and the well-established English colony in Connecticut. Disputes came to a head in the 1680s when William Penn sent letters to several land owners that they should be paying him taxes rather than Baltimore. Penn had been granted some 45,000 square miles in 1681 by James II in lieu of debts owed to Penn's father, which began west of the Delaware River near where Charles I had granted Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, in 1632. Penn needed access to the bay, so he persuaded the king to also grant him lands southward, creating confusion and turmoil.</div><div><br /></div><div>Penn's legal team argued that the land grant for Baltimore's Maryland had only been for uncultivated land, meaning that portions could be claimed by settlers who made their homes there, such as the earlier colonists of New Sweden and Dutch settlers. Penn now claimed these lands, even though his Quaker sensibilities weren't terribly popular with the established communities in the southern reaches. Exacerbated, the king finally announced that there must be an official survey and that Penn's stakes must be more carefully examined.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the examination, it came to light that Penn's lawyer, Philip Ford, was a cheat. Penn had given power of attorney upon his departure to visit his holdings and encourage the Quaker colonists in 1682. Not a man for details, Penn trusted Ford and others to make his big-picture dreams into reality even to the point that he signed legal documents without reading them. Ford proved to be charging exorbitant legal fees as well as percentages of all money handled. In fact, Ford had effectively taken ownership of Pennsylvania due to mortgaging rules. Penn had realized this earlier and had tried to keep the matter quiet by agreeing that Ford could keep rent money from Penn's lands in Ireland, but now Penn was the laughingstock of London. Fearing that this might harm the Quaker cause, Penn determined to resolve his financial and territorial matters.</div><div><br /></div><div>After wresting ownership of Pennsylvania back from Ford at terrible expense, Penn sold the land west of the Susquehanna River to speculators for cash. This land would later be organized into Allegheny, the first colony without immediate access to the Atlantic. He came to terms with Baltimore, trading the questioned Lower Counties to Maryland for good favor. Pennsylvania then joined the Dominion of New England, the reorganization established by James II and furthered by William III after the Glorious Revolution.</div><div><br /></div><div>The dominion did not last long, and soon the colonies were again reorganized. Thanks to Penn's widely publicized establishment of clear borders, other disputes were determined to be settled. Lobbyists from the Province of New York successfully managed to have Connecticut annexed as it was a royal colony rather than a proprietary one. Massachusetts won its northwestern lands, while New Hampshire also gained a northwesterly angle separating Maine. Pennsylvania was merged into the two Jerseys (east and west) to a single Jersey.</div><div><br /></div><div>Matters settled in New England for a time with settlers pouring into lands in the St. Lawrence watershed. With such numbers by the time of the Seven Years War (or "French and Indian War" in North America), Canada soon fell to British control. It was also during this war that Prime Minister William Pitt encouraged bold expeditions in the Caribbean that took Guadeloupe (1759), Dominica (1761), and New Orleans (1762). The last action interrupted the Treaty of Fontainebleau in which King Louis XV of France secretly promised the territory of Louisiana to Charles III of Spain. Britain was outraged during the discussions for the Treaty of Paris the next year, but all parties came to an agreement with Britain gaining lands east of the Mississippi as well as north of the 30th Parallel.</div><div><br /></div><div>Following the American Revolution, those lands became part of the new United States of America. North Carolina fought to keep its claim all the way west to the Mississippi. Virginia, whose ownership of the Northwestern Territory had already been violated for years by settlers eager to get into the Ohio Valley, gave up its claims past the Appalachian Mountains. The territories grew up into new states like Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Cumberland.</div><div><br /></div><div>West of the Mississippi, settlers made new states of what had been broad territories, first carving out Wisconsin and Minnesota as well as Arkansas. Encroachment into Mexico sparked a revolution in Tejas, becoming Texas and a broad stretch of Oklahoma, where Native Americans from the South were forced to resettle. Missouri served as the gateway to the prairie, which would later be broken into North Dakota, South Dakota, North Nebraska, South Nebraska, and Kansas.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>--</div><div><br /></div><div>In reality, Lord Baltimore was granted land south of the 40th parallel, but neither party bothered making an official survey. Penn did not review Ford's activities until after Ford's death, when he was driven into debtor's prison by lawsuits from Ford's heirs.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-7225779799591059612023-12-22T07:30:00.000-08:002023-12-22T07:30:43.794-08:00Caligula Christianized<p>In October of AD 37, Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus fell ill. He was often known by his nickname "Caligula" ("Little Booties") during his youth growing up on campaign in his own military uniform. As Tiberius sought to continue Roman stability, he determined that Gaius would be, so at age 25 he came to be emperor. Only a few months later, fever plagued him. The illness stretched into weeks, and the Roman public became frantic. After the heavy taxes of Augustus and the strict rule of Tiberius, Caligula's first months had been a godsend. Since being ratified by the Senate in March, Caligula had overturned many of Tiberius's harsh legal decisions, given 75 sesterces to each citizen (~$450 today), doubled the bonuses to the praetorian guard to 1000 sesterces, and overseen weeks of feasts and games with over 160,000 animal sacrifices. Some questioned how benevolent he truly was as Caligula had ensured Tiberius's will was destroyed and purged Gemellus, whom Tiberius had listed as co-heir, along with all of his supporters. The public, however, loved him and feared losing him.</p><p>Crowds thronged outside the gates of the imperial palace, and many held placards asking the gods to take their own lives instead of Caligula's. Sacrifices to the massive pantheon of the Roman gods did not seem to make Caligula any better. Others sacrificed to foreign gods, such as one Caligula had come to known while living in Syria: Mithras with his cult popular among the soldiers. Rumors had reached Rome of another miraculous figure in the east, a Jewish man who had not only healed and resurrected others but resurrected himself three days after being executed by crucifixion. In desperation, people became willing to try anything.</p><p>The palace doctors sent for Pontius Pilatus, the former governor of Judea who had been recalled to Rome near the end of Tiberius's rule for judgement on excessive force when executing Samaritans seeking artifacts of Moses. Tiberius had died before Pilatus arrived back in Rome, leaving his fate in legal limbo. Pilatus was eager to please the court, and he confirmed meeting the man (who was actually from Galilee and technically out of his jurisdiction), allowing the execution anyway, and witnessing the strange events afterward including an earthquake and a lengthy eclipse. He said that there was great contention among the Jewish people that the body may have been stolen while others say he had resurrected and toured the countryside for weeks until ascending into heaven itself while dozens or hundreds watched.<br /></p><p>The palace then sent for Jewish leaders from the numerous synagogues in Rome, which had been established through diplomacy since the days of the Maccabees and Republic. Although the Jewish community in Rome had been favored by Julius Caesar, their position had struggled under Tiberius. Leaders were nervous, since they wanted to be popular with Caligula but they did not want to confirm the radical group that had followed this Jesus of Nazareth. Eventually a Christian Jew (as the Greeks used the term "Christos" rather than the Hebrew "Messiah") named Aquila was found, and he preached over Caligula's sickbed.</p><p>Approximately at that time in November of AD 37, Caligula began to recover. As he came out of his stupors, he embraced the new religion fervently, especially the rituals of baptism and communion. His practice then became more and more extreme. Caligula drank heavily and argued bitterly with anyone who suggested he stop, pointing that it was the blood of a god. Critiques from Aquila and his wife Priscilla, who had become court favorites, caused them to be banished from Rome as Caligula began to rewrite the rites for his own preferences.</p><p>Caligula sent for delegations from Jerusalem, which included Simon Peter and others of Jesus's original disciples. Their message calmed Caligula's madcap twists for a time, but ultimately he would break with the core of the church to develop his own rituals including cannibalism and partial-drowning. Numerous Romans seeking political favor joined his cult, keeping most of their actions as mysteries, while the major temples in Rome were shuttered. Caligula dispatched armed "missionaries" to close other religious centers, such as the famed Temple of Diana ("Artemis" in Greek) at Ephesus. This crackdown spurred riots and contributed to Caligula's guard assassinating him in AD 41.</p><p>The military brought Caligula's uncle Claudius to power, and Christianity fell out of favor while Claudius restored the pantheon. Pockets of Christians survived, but they were disparate in beliefs and generally considered taboo, especially after Claudius ordered the Jewish people out of Rome. Monotheism was seen as the strange philosophy of an esoteric ruler, which historians compare with the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten's founding of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atenism">Atenism</a>. Instead, Rome continued its pantheistic growth, adding gods collected as new realms became part of the empire. Many gods became syncretized with existing gods, such as principles of Isis being adapted to Venus and Mithras to Hercules. Jupiter remained supreme, eventually blending with Odin as Germanic peoples conquered Rome from the north.<br /></p><p>Yet Christianity continued as a religion of the downcast, slaves, and women, teaching that in the next life "the first shall be last, and the last shall be first." Its modern form of humility is a far from Caligula's passions of prosperity and mysticism.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><p>--</p><p>In reality, Caligula recovered. Historians debate what the illness may have been, whether <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9231447/">epilepsy, lead poisoning, encephalitis, or something else</a>. Some scholars even question the illness as one of many legends about the short-lived emperor along with numerous other incidents that may have been taken out of context or even completely fictitious. The story could have been used by those who embraced Caligula's early months as emperor with reforms while distancing them from other legendary acts of cruelty. One legend is that Caligula ordered the executions of those who had offered their lives in sacrifice for his own so that the gods would be appeased, just in case.<br /></p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-30818482022770986862023-12-19T08:39:00.000-08:002023-12-19T08:40:49.171-08:00Guest Post: Inquisitors Root out Witchcraft in Germany<p><i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=EEV9XEIBB-HHGG">Today in Alternate History.</a></i><br /></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="pullout" itemprop="name">December 5, 1484 - <br /></span></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">Pope Innocent VIII issued the <i>Summis desiderantes affectibus</i>
("desiring with supreme ardor"). This papal bull conferred upon
inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenge the authority to prosecute
witchcraft in Germany. The bull was effectively a <i>carte blanche</i>, granting them immunity from "being molested or hindered in any manner whatsoever" during the course of their workings.<br /><br />This
Vatican order to deputize Kramer and Sprenge occurred only after the
Archbishop of Salzburg had denied them episcopal jurisdiction. Such a
central intervention was historically significant because the Vatican
had previously <a href="https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/alternate-history-challenge-create-a-world-where-witch-hunts-come-back-after-1850.469232/">taken a very strong line</a>
and was far more likely to prosecute witch-hunters than alleged witches
in the belief that witchcraft was a form of superstition and therefore
heretical. By 1484, however, <a href="https://tidbits.quora.com/The-1474-Basel-Chicken-Trials">the belief of supernatural intervention</a>
had become so widespread that it was integrated into Catholic doctrine.
Having acknowledged the existence of witches, these German churchmen
would be instrumental in establishing the period of trials in the early
modern period. <br /><br />Writing under his Latinized named "Henricus Institor," Kramer himself <a href="https://twitter.com/DrPnygard/status/1335172075502399488">subsequently wrote</a> <i>Malleus Maleficarum</i>, "The Hammer of Witches which destroyeth Witches and their heresy as
with a two-edged sword" (1486). This witch-hunting manual fueled the
trials, endorsing detailed processes for the extermination of witches. A
misogynist who blamed his lust on women, the idea of witches being
female-only came from the <i>Malleus Maleficarum</i>, a manual that promoted the idea that women are inherently evil and form pacts with the devil.<br /><br />The
actions of Kramer and Sprenge were met with great distaste in some
quarters of the clergy, but it was far too late to stop the Burning
Times. The Vatican had forcefully asserted its primacy over weak local
authorities at a critical moment when heresy was threatening to
undermine the supremacy of the Catholic Church across Europe. Draconian
measures would save Roman authority, and the widespread use of burning at the stake
was used to eliminate heretic thought. Indeed, by 1519 Sprenger was
added as the co-author of
<i>Malleus Maleficarum</i> under the preamble "Thou shalt not suffer a
heretic to live." It was timely, because by this time, the manual was
guiding the execution of leading reformationists such as Martin Luther.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In
reality, there is no evidence any actual witches were tried and
executed in medieval times. A total figure for exterminations is
approximated at around 40,000. Conversely, in the eighteenth century,
Voltaire mentioned a speculative estimate of 100,000 executions for
witchcraft.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><i><b>Provine's Addendum:</b></i></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">As later<i><b> </b></i>described by scholars, Europe fell under a deep shadow of superstition from its own creation. The dramatics of the Burning Times incited many to fear anyone out of the ordinary. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_III_of_Denmark">King Christian III of Denmark and Norway</a> was so terrified by descriptions of those caught dealing with the devil while on his princely tour of Germany as a prince that he instituted witch-hunters into his court. The same notions spread to Sweden, where Gustav I conducted a crusade through his own land to ensure proper conduct in religious services, and England, where Henry VIII suspected witches had hexed the queen in their struggles for progeny. In a surprising move, Henry and Catherine of Aragon made a pilgrimage to Rome for blessings and protection. During Henry's absence, the Church gained oversight on Parliament, reporting back to the king and Pope Clement VII. Their resulting son, Henry IX, seemed to be proof of the royals' need to defend themselves from witchcraft. Others suggested the son may have been the result of the king and queen spending more dedicated time together with Henry having fewer opportunities to be with his mistresses instead.</span></p><p>With inquisitions and witch-hunts periodically rolling across Europe, even Italy faced crackdowns. In Rome itself, Polish canon and apprentice at the Papal Curia Nicolaus Copernicus gave a private critique of ancient astronomy after moon-gazing during the lunar eclipse in November of 1500. Copernicus attempted to flee to Bologna and back to Warmia, Prussia, but he was apprehended and tried for heretical rituals, resulting in his eyes being plucked out that he might no longer be tempted to sin. This sparked a fervor in hunting down "scholars" who attempted to twist man's understanding of God's creation. Through the coming generations many magicians would be burnt, such as Johan Georg Faust, Pan Twardowski, and John Dee. The study of mathematics and alchemy came under close watch of the Church, ensuring that there would not be any chance for the devil to confuse the minds of students.</p><p>Europe boasted huge wealth from its conquests in the New World, but eventually the money ran out. Colonies abroad held advantages for a time with superiority in steel and gunpowder. Without new developments in firearms and exploration viewed with suspicion by the Church who routinely stamped out attempts of religious factions to start their own independent colonies, however, Europe's influence waned. Native populations recovered from introduced-disease and adapted to European techniques for warfare and trade, leading to a balance in power across the globe. </p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-39244653716875664662023-12-07T05:30:00.000-08:002023-12-07T13:27:14.009-08:00December 7, 1884 - Tesla Arrives at Menlo Park<p>When Continental Edison manager Charles Batchelor returned to New York City in 1884, he brought along with him twenty-eight-year-old Serbian engineer Nikola Tesla. Batchelor had been abroad for years, first to oversee the Edison Telephone Company expansions in London in 1879 and then to install electrical lighting in Paris in 1881. While in Paris, Batchelor had hired a brilliant young dropout, Tesla, who had been recommended by Tivadar Puskas, who had and suggested the telephone exchange (an invention later built by the Bell Company from his designs). Puskas also suggested Tesla work for Batchelor as he was hungry to tinker and make improvements on electrical devices and already outgrowing his electrician job in Budapest. Batchelor was impressed with Tesla's skills in physics and soon set him to designing new equipment as well as troubleshooting difficult pieces of equipment.</p><p>Tesla came to New York to continue his troubleshooting and design position in the Edison Machine Works. The shop was notoriously crowded, loud, and hot, but Tesla threw himself into his work with a decent pay of $18/week. It was here Tesla first met his hero, Thomas Edison. Tesla had pulled an all-nighter repairing dynamos aboard the SS <i>Oregon</i>, completing a task that many thought impossible as the equipment had been installed during ship's construction. When the two men saw Tesla walking down Fifth Avenue at five in the morning toward the shop as they were heading home, Edison had, "Here is our Parisian running
around at night." Tesla explained that he had not been out on the town but instead working and now headed back for more work, and Edison met him with a silent look. As the men went their different ways, Tesla overhead Edison comment, "Batchelor, this is a damn good man." Tesla then worked ever harder, with regular hours from 10:30 AM to 5:00 AM for an 18+ hour workday. Edison told Tesla, "I have had many hard-working assistants, but you take the cake."</p><p>Edison nearly lost his man when a manager promised a whopping $50,000 award (~$1.6 million today) if Tesla could design 24 different types of standard machines, making improvements to DC generators and arc lighting. When Tesla showed the improvements, the manager refused to give him the award, saying it had been a joke and Tesla didn't "understand American humor." Tesla complained, although Batchelor was already notoriously stingy and did not have anything like the kind of cash needed to pay such an award. Tesla might have quit, but Edison himself arrived to soothe his wounded pride with promises of payments in installments over years to come. He took Tesla back with him to Menlo Park, thinking that if the young genius could rise to the challenge of sorting out DC generators, there might be no limit to his insights with the right prompting.</p><p>Tesla proved to be the workhorse Edison had dreamed. The two frequently bickered, especially about alternating current and direct current as it came to bringing power to increasingly electrified cities. Tesla argued for transmitting power from large power stations using alternating current, a generator he had invented in 1888 (Edison put both names on the patent). Edison preferred DC with localized generators, despite the massive power loss as it was transmitted only a few blocks. Ultimately Tesla won out as investors sought to build expansive power generators utilizing the forces of nature, namely Niagara Falls. Edison liked the idea of a larger initial investment not needing to pay for fuel, just upkeep. He challenged Tesla to improve transmission even more, which Tesla completed with a "free energy" broadcast through the air itself.</p><p>The term "free energy" was not part of Edison's business-mindedness, but demonstrations at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago showed bulbs lit up without cumbersome wires. Newspapers marveled, and Edison knew good press. He soon began courting city councils with the offer of electrifying an entire area with enough power for public lighting and home machines, paid for by contracts with the Edison companies, which in turn would be paid by taxes. Facilities with larger power needs like factories would have to have their own power stations, likely Edison DC generators. St. Louis became the first "air-electrified" city in the world for its Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904. While anyone with the proper wires could simply tap into the broadcast energy, Edison's legal teams were quick to sue anyone who infringed on the broad patents they used to keep "electro-pirates" from thieving free energy. This put the lawyers into practice for lawsuits against Guglielmo Marconi in wireless telegraphy, creating such a quagmire that the Edison Wireless Telegraph Company gained the upper hand in radio worldwide.</p><p>By this time, Tesla was already dreaming of free energy anywhere on Earth broadcast through the ionosphere, so Edison put him to a different task to keep him occupied. Edison had overtaken the motion picture industry in the US, but he was frustrated by the costly film needed to record images chemically. His phonograph had won him great praise as the "Wizard of Menlo Park" in 1877, so he challenged Tesla to find a way to record electrically. Magnetic recording had already been done with sound by Danish engineer Valdemar Poulsen in 1898 with a wire recorder on the telegraphone, but images were a monumental task. The task required Tesla to invent a slew of new inventions for an electric camera as well as a projector to reinterpret the recordings. These inventions brought in millions for Edison, who was careful to share enough cash and, more importantly, credit with Tesla to keep him loyal.</p><p>When Edison died in 1931 at age 84, the world was very different from the wood-fire-and-candle society he had been born into. People used electricity to light, heat, cool, and operate their homes. They could turn on appliances by radio remote control while they placed televisual calls to family members hundreds of miles away, all without wires in cities that boasted broadcast energy. Outside of electrified zones, most people either passed through on trains with their own wireless broadcast or lived on farms or in villages with smaller, localized generators frequently operated by solar power. Edison's massive corporate holdings even survived the days of Trust-Busting thanks to patents protecting his many products for decades. Rents in free-energy cities skyrocketed, leading to extensive social turmoil as employment rates dropped due to automation.</p><p>Tesla spent his last years working away in Edison's laboratory in West Orange to develop automation. He felt that electrical recording had great potential in "switches" following "dockets" of different tasks. Soon his work on "processor" machines would revolutionize the world again with Edison Automations rivaled only by companies like International Business Machines and Electronic Control Company in creating handheld computing devices for work and play. He died in 1943, and many obituaries in the newspaper commented on who the true "wizard" was.</p><p><br /></p><p>--</p><p>In reality, Tesla quit. One long sentence stretched in his diary from December 7, 1884, to January 4, 1885, "Good by Edison Machine Works." He went on to meet other investors, who helped found the Tesla Electric Lighting & Manufacturing Company. Some versions of the "$50,000 joke" story attribute it to Edison himself, although Tesla maintained it was a manager. </p><p>(Quotes from <a href="https://teslaresearch.jimdofree.com/biography-1856-1943/my-inventions-by-nikola-tesla-his-autobiography-electrical-experimenter-february-june-and-october-1919/my-inventions-by-nikola-tesla-chapter-4-tesla-coil-and-transformer/">Nikola Tesla's autobiography, <i>My Inventions</i></a>.)</p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-75297746266913614872023-11-29T14:41:00.000-08:002023-12-04T06:09:34.263-08:00Guest Post: Ike Saves the American Dream<i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=GHV9XEIKK-BDTG">Today in Alternate History</a> co-written with Allen W. McDonnell.</i><br /><br />January 8, 1956<br /><br />In a press conference held at Key West, Florida, Dwight D. Eisenhower announced that unfortunately he would <a href="https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/eisenhower-doesnt-seek-reelection.332823/">not be seeking re-election</a> in the fall. The sad truth was that the poor health of the once-vigorous Five-Star General of the Army prevented him from running a presidential election campaign, and another mission was simply beyond his frail condition.<div><br />Ike had initially planned on serving only one term anyhow, but he remained flexible in case leading Republicans wanted him to run again. They surely did, mainly because of the GOP's lack of potential candidates, but all calculations had changed after his serious heart attack on September 24, 1955. Former New York Governor and unsuccessful GOP nominee in 1944 and 1948, Thomas Dewey had been sounded out but refused to make a third run for the White House. With Ike unable to make a full recovery, the decision was taken out of the GOP's hands. However, Eisenhower had one last card to play, and, while controversial particularly with Republicans, it would be taken in the very best interests of all of his fellow Americans.<br /><br />For his preferred choice of successor, Eisenhower strongly favored his Deputy Secretary of Defense, Robert B. Anderson, whom he had recently promoted from Secretary of Navy. Ike described him as "just about the ablest man that I know, he would make a splendid President." However, the problem was that Anderson was a Democrat. Had Ike's health fully recovered, he would have attempted to use his authority to steer Anderson into the slot for his running mate. That of course was only if Vice-President Richard Nixon had accepted Eisenhower's recommendation to leave the vice-presidency to serve as Secretary of Defense. This scenario was no longer the worst case for Nixon, because it was highly unlikely that he would be the GOP nominee. This was because there were too many others seeking the nomination in an open primary.<br /><br />Unfortunately, Nixon and Ike suffered a like-hate relationship. Eisenhower noticeably failed to publicly endorse Nixon in his announcement. In an even more shocking development, Anderson then announced that he would enter the race himself. He would contest the Democratic Party's nomination alongside Adlai Stevenson, the 1952 nominee, and populist Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. Nixon would bitterly blame his failure to win the Republican nomination and beat a path to the White House on the "unwarranted influence" of the 34th president. Others argued that Eisenhower was a great son of the Republic who had simply followed in the tradition of Washington, Adams, & company by putting the Office of the Presidency above the petty concerns of party politics.<br /><br />Anderson would fight his way through a crowded field, defeat the Republican nominee, and, at his inauguration, encourage rock and roll artist Buddy Holly to pay gushing tribute to the outgoing President Eisenhower as a great patriot with his barnstorming hit song "Love's for real not Fade Away!" Calling out "How about General Eisenhower? Come out here, sir!" a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBCTJPNC2kk">smiling Eisenhower had sufficiently recovered</a> to join the Hollies on stage and even break character to play the tambourine alongside the Big Bopper, J.P. Richardson.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In reality, Eisenhower announced that he would run again after meeting with his closest advisors. The level of campaigning was curtailed out of health considerations, but even so he won by an even larger landslide, with 457 of 531 electoral votes and 57.6-percent of the popular vote.</div><div><br /></div><div><i><b>Provine's Addendum:</b></i></div><br />Political commentators on the 1956 race between Anderson and Governor William Stratton of Illinois frequently compared the two's similar backgrounds. Stratton had become a Congressman at 26 in 1940 and served stints as the State Treasurer of Illinois both before and after service in the U.S. Navy. Anderson had a busy resume as Assistant Attorney General and member of the House of Representatives in Texas as well as numerous business ventures before becoming a military adviser in the Pacific and ultimately joining Eisenhower's administration. Anderson was criticized as not having been a governor himself, to which he wittily replied that he had already defeated numerous governors in the primary, including Stratton's predecessor, Stevenson.<div><br /></div><div>Anderson's policies laid the groundwork for the next era of the Cold War. Many saw the USSR as a great challenge with the 1955 success of Sputnik and the perception of a major missile gap with Russian superiority in ICBMs. Manned space exploration was massively expensive, and Anderson's treasury mindset saw the Earth's orbit as the farthest a space war could be effective, making a mission to the moon a needless expense. Anderson challenged suspicious numbers from the 1957 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaither_Report">Gaither Report</a> about Soviet missiles and did not agree to the suggestion of increasing military spending by half. Instead, Anderson focused on economic warfare through investment. Rather than supporting individual power-hungry men like Fulgencio Batista in Cuba and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, Anderson's State Department (and covert operations through the CIA) spread the money around to win overall public favor and economic dependence on the United States. The strategy worked in the case of Cuba, where the Popular Socialist Party lost ground as Batista's rivals gained concessions with more local authority.<br /><div><br /><div>By 1960, Anderson had split approval ratings with many fearing he was soft on Communism. This would lead to the election of Republican Barry Goldwater, who promised to bolster conservatism in the US again, a wave that would disintegrate as the Civil Rights Movement expanded.</div></div></div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-62586357956642593172023-11-14T14:03:00.000-08:002023-11-14T14:03:06.160-08:00June 11, 1984 - Walt Disney Company Bought Out by Corporate Raiders<p>The Walt Disney Company, effectively started in 1923 with young Walt Disney promoting "Alice Comedies" (shorts that blended live action and animation), faced a troubling time six decades later. It had peaked in the 1950s with Disney producing the feature-length cartoons that had brought him fame and fortune as well as live-action television programming and a theme park, Disneyland. Ever the dreamer, Walt Disney announced yet another theme park centered on the "Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow" (EPCOT) in 1965, just one year before his death.</p><p>Disney's company continued beyond him, first under the leadership of his brother, Roy. Roy retired in 1971 after the launch of Disney World, handing the reins to a series of CEOs and presidents who would oversee numerous projects in film and real estate, such as another Disney theme park in Tokyo. The 1980s were packed with innovation. A cable "Disney Channel" unique from the long partnership with the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Meanwhile, Touchstone Pictures began to produce films and television not suitable for the family-friendly Disney brand.<br /></p><p>While the Disney company was truly a mainstay of the American zeitgeist, it had suffered through a rough patch of productions. Disney had released three animated features, <i>The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh</i>, <i>The Rescuers</i>, and <i>Pete's Dragon</i> in 1977, but only <i>The Fox and The Hound</i> had been released since, and it was four years later along with the departure of famed animator Don Bluth. The much-anticipated <i>The Black Cauldron</i> faced production issues that delayed it again and again with rewrites and disappointing test screenings deeming it too scary for children. Live-action productions like <i>Condorman</i> and <i>Something Wicked This Way Comes</i> had been box-office flops. One of the most memorable Disney productions, 1982's <i>TRON</i>, was scarcely recognized as a Disney product.</p><p>Without a recent big win, Disney threatened to fade away from prominence, yet there were some who saw potential where others saw a has-been. As <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1987/06/07/raiders-of-the-theme-park/66d84315-05cb-436e-98fc-aadbff8b6370/">journalist Peter Behr later wrote in the <i>Washington Post</i></a>,</p><p>"Disney's stock was languishing at less than $60 a share in November
1983. At that stock price, a raider could acquire the entire company for
a little over $2 billion. But the pieces of the Disney empire were
worth far more than that if sold separately. The Disney theme parks
alone could bring $2 billion, experts estimated. The Disney film library
of 25 animated classics -- Bambi, Pinocchio, Snow White and the rest --
plus hundreds of live-action films, cartoons and television programs
were worth anywhere from $250 million to $1 billion. And that still left
the extensive Disney real estate holdings. Disney was a bargain."</p><p>Saul Steinberg, who owned 12.2% of Disney's stock, found his numbers knocked down to 11.1% due to Disney issuing more stock to cover the purchase of Arvida, a Florida real estate company. Steinberg sued to stop the stock issuance, saying that it would only add to the company's debt and largely served to keep the jobs of board of directors. Federal court allowed the purchase, as well as another Disney bid to buy Gibson Greetings, so Steinberg made a move to seize Disney. Teaming with other investors such as "<a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1984/06/11/Walt-Disney-Productions-ended-financier-Saul-Steinbergs-takeover-attempt/1284455774400/">movie mogul Kirk Kerkorian... the majority stockholder of MGM-UA</a>," Steinberg's Reliance Holdings announced on June 8 plans to buy up 49% of Disney stock, paying up to $72.50 per share.</p><p>Longtime Disney executive Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew who had started at the company as an assistant director for the nature documentary <i>True-Life Adventures</i>, attempted to rally investors to save the company. He had resigned in 1977 feeling that the company was without creative direction under CEO Ron Miller, Walt's son-in-law, but he maintained his seat on the board of directors. Disney's lawyer, Stanley Gold, had warned Roy E. about the undervalued stock and saw potential for a quick profit. Already disillusioned, Roy. E. was happy to sell.<br /></p><p>Steinberg's raid went successfully, and he made tremendous moves slimming down the company. Real estate and publishing were quickly spun off, and the true blow came as Walt Disney Productions was purchased by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, who added it to its acquisitions with 20th Century-Fox in hopes it would challenge Universal Pictures' partnerships with Amblin Entertainment. The mediocre box office response to Disney's <i>Mistress Masham's Repose</i> about Lilliputians in England made the studio an easy sale, especially with DIC Entertainment bristling about potential infringement with their <i>The Littles</i> television series on Disney's former ally network, ABC. Within a few years, the "Disney" name would die away, leaving on the tradition with films such as <i>Don Quixote</i> and <i>The Emperor and the Nightingale</i>.</p><p>Although the theme parks did well into the 1990s, they stymied under the encroachment of other amusement park brands like Six Flags and Universal Studios. Steinberg had attempted to sell Disney World to Universal, but investors found that without the connection to updated animated features, the parks lost ground. Instead, Fox would purchase the Florida properties, retooling Cinderella's Castle into Anastasia's Castle from the groundbreaking animated film. Many other rides were replaced, such as Splash Mountain becoming the infamous <i>Titanic</i> ride with its cold plunge. EPCOT soon became SFX-laden grounds for X-men and Star Wars franchises. Disney characters, eventually collected by Fox, would be relegated to a corner of the park nicknamed "Yesterdayland."</p><p><br /></p><p> --</p><p>In reality, Roy E. Disney, Stanley Gold, and others launched the "Save Disney" campaign, buying up shares for their own internal takeover. The board worked out a deal with Steinberg to buy his 4.2 million shares for $70.33 apiece, fifteen dollars above the stock price, as well as $28 million for "out of pocket expenses." Ron Miller was soon replaced by Michael Eisner from Paramount, who brought along Frank Wells from Warner Brothers and Jeffrey Katzenberg to be the new head of Disney Studios. In 1989, the "Disney Renaissance" began with <i>The Little Mermaid</i>, which grossed $235 million on a $40 million budget. Films like <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>, <i>Aladdin</i>, and <i>The Lion King</i> would do even better.</p><p>Behr also wrote that Steinberg's raid may have just been an act, "buying up a company's stock, threatening a takeover and then allowing
the company to buy back the stock at a premium in a legal maneuver known
as 'greenmail.'"</p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-33613476843491966482023-11-09T13:22:00.001-08:002023-11-14T11:43:53.890-08:00Guest Post: JFK and Nixon Presidencies Swapped<p>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=PR9XBIKB-PPWU">Today in Alternate History</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="pullout" itemprop="name">March 9, 1961 - Pathet Lao Victory Triggers US Intervention</span></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="dropcap"> </span>Shocked by the Lao People's Liberation Army's stunning victory on the
Plain of Jars, Secretary of State Christian Herter issued a stark
warning that the Pathet Lao Communists were on the brink of taking over
the Kingdom of Laos.<br /><br />War hawks in the Nixon Administration led by
Secretary of Defense William Knowland called for military intervention ,
whereas doves led by Herter called for diplomacy, proposing a
neutralization agreement with the Soviet Union. President Richard Nixon rejected this "fig leaf" out of hand but was forced to consider the US role
in the Laotian Civil War in the broader context of the previous
Administration's plans to overthrow the Castros<br /><br />As turbulent
events in Cuba dominated Nixon's early days as president, his closest
confidants were CIA Director Allen Dulles and USAF Chief of Staff
Curtis LeMay. Meeting in Room 108 of the Eisenhower Executive Building, this
inner circle of decision-makers would launch a full US invasion of the
island after the Bay of Pigs operation failed ignominiously. The
inevitable result of this cabal's secret deliberations in Room 108 was
an escalation in the Cold War that would forever be known to alternate
history as the <i>Nixon Doctrine</i>.<br /><br />President Eisenhower's
warning of the undue influence of the military-industrial complex was
completely disregarded. Instead, the calculated belligerency in
Southeast Asia was a dangerous gamble based on the Sino-Soviet split and
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryWhatIf/comments/qmx75h/make_nixon_and_jfk_swap_roles_see_description_for/">Dulles' success</a>
in resupplying anti-Marxist fighters in Cuba. Although Nixon did
successfully manage to avoid direct superpower confrontation, the
American public was appalled by the rising death count in proxy wars
such as Cuba and Laos. The medium of television began to turn the mood
of the nation against the Nixon Doctrine. <br /><br />
Eisenhower had proudly claimed that not a single American soldier died
in combat during his presidency. He had very much wanted to end the Cold
War, but his scheduled summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev was cancelled because of the ill-fated U-2 incident. By 1963,
that peace mantle was passed to a new generation led by Massachusetts
Senator John F. Kennedy. Still only forty-five years old, he prepared to
run for a second presidential race by launching a fateful campaign
drive in the South. Meanwhile, the shadowy Committee for the Re-election
of the President (CREEP) prepared to expose Kennedy's private
indiscretions.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In reality, upon taking office OTL President John F. Kennedy was <a href="https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/books/article/2066808/history-laos-secret-war-and-way-it-transformed-cia">surprised to learn</a> that the US had 700 soldiers and CIA operatives in the country. He <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AlternateHistory/comments/mz8dx0/what_if_the_us_would_have_militarily_intervened/">refused to militarily intervene</a>
preferring to negotiate with the Soviet Union to achieve neutralization
of Laos so that the pro-Western forces, Communists, and neutralists
would all share power there.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><i><b>Provine's Addendum:</b></i></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">With Nixon handily winning the 1964 election, few at the time imagined that he would not last out the next four years. Journalists uncovered numerous misuses of presidential power, in addition to Nixon orchestrating coverups to prevent his enemies from uncovering more. JFK's political backers cleverly bounced back from the election loss by highlighting Nixon's CREEP actions to defame Kennedy, turning the tables on whom could be trusted. JFK used his charms to rally the Democratic Party for his nomination, setting him in perfect position for victory in the election. Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., who had assumed the presidency from the vice-presidency after Nixon's resignation, received scantily few votes.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">Kennedy's first term brought an end to the fighting in Vietnam with an American-allied evacuation and Cuba with a firmly entrenched pro-America local government. He opened up diplomacy with China, weakening USSR superiority among the Communist nations, while also overseeing the Moon landing in 1969, which Nixon had promised in his early, more popular days. Kennedy looked to be a shoo-in for the 1972 election, but he was assassinated</span><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="pullout" itemprop="name"> by radicals seeking vengeance for Cuba. His VP, Hubert Humphrey, assumed the presidency and won in the coming election, saying that Kennedy had "restored the dignity of the highest office in the land." With sweeping social reforms through the 1970s, the Democratic Party remained in power well into the 1980s.<br /></span></span></p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-85404587116022732412023-10-19T09:56:00.004-07:002023-10-19T09:56:55.439-07:00Guest Post: June 24, 1908 - AH obituary for Grover the Good<i>This post first appeared on <a href="https://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=CC9XDIKU-QCGB">Today in Alternate History</a> with input from Allen W. McDonnell and John P. Braungart.</i><br /><br /> Grover Cleveland aka 'Uncle Jumbo' and 'Grover the Good', passed away at his estate, Westland Mansion, in Princeton, New Jersey, aged seventy-one. At the time of his death he remained the only member of the Democratic Party to be elected President since the Civil War.<div><br />In the years before his election as the 22nd and then 24th US President, Cleveland served as the Sheriff of Erie County, where one of his duties was to carry out the hanging of a convicted murderer. Also, he was elected mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York, winning fame as an anti-corruption crusader. His fight against political corruption, patronage, and bossism convinced many like-minded Republicans, called "Mugwumps", to cross party lines and support him in the 1884 election.<br /><br />As the White House incumbent, Cleveland was at the very center of tumultuous events during the contested presidential election of 1888. Cleveland won a plurality of the popular vote, but his Republican opponent Benjamin Harrison handily won the Electoral College by a margin of 65. Most controversial of all was the Republican victory in Indiana, largely as the result of a fraudulent voting practice known as Blocks of Five. The elections in 1888 and 1892 were the first time incumbents were defeated in consecutive elections (the second would be Jimmy Carter's defeat of Gerald Ford in 1976, followed by Carter's subsequent loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980).<br /><br />Dysfunctional government was fueled by the lasting anger at corruption and scandal. The dispute rolled into the 51st United States Congress in which Democrats, supported by Mugwumps, retaliated by electing Cleveland as the first ever non-member Speaker of the House of Representatives. But this dangerous step, only intended as a one-off backlash really created a whole new precedent. The bipartisan convention was changed, and from then on as a matter of tradition, when a party in control of the House lost the Presidential race, they elected the loser as Speaker of House.<br /><br />In the view of bipartisans, this fracture was caused by contradictions inherent in the U.S. Constitution and required widespread reform including the scrapping of the Electoral College. However, naysayers dismissed the national popular vote as outdated and irrelevant.<br /><br /><i><b>Author's Note:</b></i><br /><br />In reality, Cleveland continued his duties diligently until the end of the term and began to look forward to returning to private life. He is the only President to have split two terms with Harrison holding office in between. Today, he is praised for honesty, integrity, adherence to his morals, defying party boundaries, and effective leadership and is typically ranked among the upper half to middle tier of U.S. presidents. Meanwhile, the House has never been led by a non-member and experts such as the Congressional Research Service consider it unlikely in the near future despite speculation surrounding Donald Trump. He is bidding to repeat Cleveland's success in 1892 when he defeated Harrison in both popular and electoral votes, thus becoming the first (and, as of 2017, the only) former president to successfully get his job back.</div><div><br /></div><div><i><b>Provine's Addendum:</b></i></div><div><br /></div><div>The "Speaker from the Shadows" tradition became an important part of Washington social norms, especially as it was not a mandated part of constitutional government but an expectation. Benjamin Harrison himself served as Speaker of the House in 1895 during Cleveland's second term, stepping away from teaching law at Stanford. William Jennings Bryan eagerly accepted the position during the Taft administration in 1911. Charles Evans Hughes, who nearly defeated Wilson in 1916, gained the position in 1919, and expected to ride the popularity to another bid for president in 1920, only to have the nomination seized by Harding instead. Al Smith came into the Speaker position in 1928 under Hoover, hinting the change of public opinion toward the Democrats, who would control both the legislative and executive branches of government until Thomas Dewey famously refused the position to continue as governor of New York (an act that many blamed for his loss again in 1948). Adlai Stevenson accepted the position during the Eisenhower administration, establishing numerous social programs. Former presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter both served terms as Speaker of the House with Johnson seeming much more comfortable back in Congress and Carter eager to advise on social programs in the era of Reaganomics. Johnson turned over the reins to McGovern, while Carter would similarly hand the position to Mondale. The "Democrats in Congress, Republicans in the White House" reversed in the 1990s with George H.W. Bush's short time in Congress before retiring.</div><div><br /></div><div>During the 2000 election, when Al Gore narrowly defeated George W. Bush, some political commentators mentioned the old "electoral college" that had been scrapped in the late nineteenth century and how it could've meant a victory for Bush instead of taking over what had once been his father's seat as Speaker of the House. Most people ignored the dusty old idea or laughed right out at it. After John McCain's service as Speaker of the House during Obama's first term and then return to the senate, Donald Trump became the next Speaker of the House of note during Hilary Clinton's administration. Trump's rhetoric was as fiery as any Speaker before him, and he brought the Electoral College back to the forefront of American thought. With it, he would have won by an enormous margin, and social media fired up with periodic demands to bring it back. Following Trump's second loss in 2020, he returned to the House again as speaker in 2022 with more demands for reform of America's electoral system.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-27120112760209810502023-09-19T14:39:00.000-07:002023-09-19T14:39:06.365-07:00Guest Post: Gore Acts on Terrorist Threats<i>This article first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=BBBB9XBIKG-IVWT">Today in Alternate History</a> based on Robbie Taylor's AH scenario <a href="https://althistory.blogspot.com/2005/09/terrorist-attacks.html">terrorist attacks</a> with input from Allen W. McDonnell.</i><br /><br />July 19, 2001<br /><br />Heads of the Transportation Department, national security agencies, and CEOs of major airlines gathered at the White House for a crisis meeting called by President Al Gore and his Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke.<br /><br />The consensus was agreement upon emergency upgrades to airline security including the banning of knives and boxcutters and the reinforcement of cockpit doors. Of course, all of these infrastructure changes would take several months to roll out; so, in the short-term, Gore was entirely dependent upon his intelligence apparatus to prevent terrorist threats.<br /><br />The top leaders of the al-Qaeda terrorist group had been sending a message of global threat from the USS <i>Cole</i> to the bombings at the embassies in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Spain, and Turkey. Caught out by Gore's initiative, they were forced to bring forward their <a href="https://althistory.blogspot.com/2005/09/terrorist-attacks.html">dastardly plans to crash airline jets</a> into several buildings in New York City and Washington. Not fully prepared, several Saudi Arabians were taken into custody prior to boarding intracontinental flights in Boston, Newark, and Washington, D.C. The F.B.I. had been closely tracking them since Gore had received a briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S."<br /><br />The nation never knew how close to tragedy it came, and this had a serious downside. Covert success created a "chicken-and-egg-style" problem because Gore lacked the political capital required to go into Afghanistan and capture Bin Laden and his cohorts. For justification purposes, he only had the recorded confessions of the terrorists, and Americans were confused by his complicated explanation of the link between Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. However, on the positive side, Fore was armed with the necessary Special Forces capability that had been developed as a result of the Operation Eagleclaw fiasco in 1979. As a result, the Battle of Tora Bora would not be a repeat of the ill-fated Tehran mission.<br /><br />With the isolated exception of strong backing from the belligerent Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, the United States' unilateral action in Afghanistan provoked widespread anger across the Middle East. Even Holbrooke's conciliatory efforts to negotiate a two-state solution to the continuing Israeli-Palestinian standoff came to naught. Fury in the Arab streets over this diplomatic failure ripped open many wounds that President Bush had carefully avoided during the Gulf War by persuading the Israelis to stand aside despite SCUD missile attacks from Iraq. Domestic pressure upon Gore would build as he faced a backlash of public opinion for "his" "days of chaos" as airports slowly adjusted to heightened security. This was an aggravation as the NASDAQ began an epic crash with unemployment rising and the overall economy stalled. The truth was Gore had inherited unresolved problems from Clinton's Boom years.<br /><br />The leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, Ahmad Shah Massoud, provided much-needed operational assistance prior to his assassination by al-Qaeda operatives. News of his bloody murder was relayed to a surprised-looking Gore while he was televised reading a book, <i>The Pet Goat</i>, to students at a Sarasota school. After the inevitable political satire in the tabloids, the subsequent capture of Bin Laden on foreign soil would provoke bitter controversy around the world with the American hyperpower standing accused of imperial overreach. To assuage world opinion, the terrorist mastermind was handed over to the World Court to face justice in the Netherlands. This trial would dominate television channels throughout 2004 as Gore battled for re-election against the foreign policy hardman John McCain, Senator from Arizona.<br /><br />Hawkish republicans labelled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction as an unresolved threat to the safety of the country. Rumours spread that Vice President Joe Lieberman had been engaged in secret diplomacy with Saddam to slowly loosen up some of the restrictions on the Kurds and Shias and even bring them into the Iraqi government. To win in the fall, Gore had to defend himself against the harsh accusation that his decision-making as Commander-in-Chief was sound but he lacked the authority and presidential leadership necessary to forcibly direct a worldwide war on terror and defeat jihadism.<br /><br /><i><b>Author's Note:</b></i><br /><br />In reality, Bush White House Officials argued that the Administrator did not mention a specific time or place and that the threat was similar to the variety of different terrorist threats U.S. intelligence monitors frequently.<div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div>Commentators in the 2004 election said that it was likely Gore's actions in fall of 2003 that tipped the vote against his reelection. Coming out of a bitter economic plunge with the popping of the Digital Bubble, Gore focused much of his attention on reviewing overly earnest investments. As subprime mortgages began to increase, Gore's policies worked to slow down their potentially skyrocketing. Business leaders howled at government red tape slowing an already struggling economy with potential jobs lost in construction, although some economists suggested it may have prevented over-investment in assets that would prove toxic, perhaps even sparking a Second Great Depression when the bills became due.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-33221415672663440732023-09-08T08:12:00.005-07:002023-09-11T05:30:24.363-07:00Guest Post: March 3, 1976 - Board Of Estimate Rejects Donald Trump's Plan to Rebuild the Commodore Hotel<p>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=HH9TBIKG-HVWTCV">Today in Alternate History</a> <span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="FooterText">with input from Allen W. McDonnell and Brian Hartman.</span></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="FooterText"> </span></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="FooterText">March 3, 1976 - Board Of Estimate rejects plan to rebuild the Commodore Hotel</span></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">Budding young
real estate developer Donald J. Trump failed to convince New York City's
Board of Estimate to approve his innovative plan to rebuild the 1919
Beaux Arts brick-and-stone-detailed Warren-and-Wetmore-designed Commodore Hotel.<br /><br />Their
key objection was primarily financial: Trump
had made an audacious request for a forty-year tax abatement. Due to the projected
creation of 1,500 construction jobs, the proposal was strongly backed by
the head of the Economic Development Administration, Alfred E.
Eisenpreis, who hailed it as "a very exciting hope for the City." However,
the stumbling block was the near-bankrupt city forgoing $4 million a
year in real estate taxes in exchange for a share in the profits plus
payments beginning at $250,000 a year and rising, in stages, to 4.2
million after 50 years. The City Council President Paul O'Dwyer had
ominously warned that the Board needed to "look very carefully" at what
the city would get in exchange for its tax forgiveness. Trump had sensed
an opportunity in the city's financial crisis, but his proposal was
simply politically unacceptable to the voters in their current mood.<br /><br />The city's appeals for a bail-out from the state legislature in Albany, and
then personally to President Ford, had been flatly rejected. The
bankrupt owners of the Commodore Hotel had unpaid back taxes
going back to 1970. With occupancy rates of 49 percent, the hotel closed shortly
after the decision was made. Alternative schemes to convert the building
into apartments, or even demolish it, were then taken under serious
consideration. Whatever the solution, the Trump Organization was out of the project due to
the withdrawal of its principal partner, the Hyatt Hotel Group.<br /><br />Trump
had not lost hope in his dream of upscaling his father, Fred's, business
success in Queens and Brooklyn to Manhattan. Not discouraged by this
failure, he relocated to Camden and started an even bigger project.
Still only 29 years old, he attempted to use his influence to cause a
revitalization of the city by replacing the lost industrial wealth with a
new world financial center. In this endeavor, he was greatly assisted by the entrepreneurial talents of his wife and business partner, Ivana. However, when the
diminutive Abraham Beame left the mayoral office, his successor Ed Koch
was far less receptive to his charms, and the bold plan was only
partially successful. <br /><br />The popular and affable Koch glowed in the
celebration of the Statue of Liberty's 100th anniversary celebration ,
but his re-election year of 1989 was a very difficult one for New
Yorkers. Unable to win a historic fourth-term, he was driven from office
with the city beset by racial tension. He would be replaced by
the Manhattan Borough President, former marine David Dinkins, who became
the first African-American to become Mayor of New York. His progressive
views would strongly clash with Trump's over the notorious Central Park Five case.<br /><br />Now
based in New Jersey, the Trump Organization enjoyed greater success
with the barrel-chested Governor Chris Christie. After Christie won the
Presidency in 2012, Trump would finally build an International Hotel in
Washington D.C., which he would open with Ivana. As he approached his
seventieth birthday, his daughter Ivanka prepared to take the reins of
the Trump Organization.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In
reality, after the city government granted a tax abatement for the
renovation, Trump and Hyatt completely remodelled the hotel from June
1978 to September 1980, spending $100 million and removing almost all of
the Commodore's original decorations.</span><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="FooterText"></span></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="FooterText"><i><b>Provine's Addendum:</b></i></span></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="FooterText">The Trump Organization found not just gold mine but a string of gold mines in America's Rust Belt. Improvements in technology such as fax machines made office work traditionally only seen in key centers available anywhere with a telephone line, so Trump built an empire through towns that had been traditionally industrial but now suffered high unemployment and low real estate values. After buying up entire blocks, often with huge local and state government incentives, the organization would use connections to set up clerical services, phone answering banks, and telemarketing.</span></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span class="FooterText">This project initially grew famous in financial sectors, but Trump came to a status as a living legend through the burgeoning internet. Always eager to seize on a new opportunity, Trump was one of the first popular bloggers, first adapting parts of his book <i>Art of the Deal</i> and then writing on nearly every topic that became newsworthy. Some of his legion of followers loudly suggested he should run for president, but Trump joked, "Why would I take the pay cut?"<i><br /></i></span></span></p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-51463541431400086552023-09-02T08:07:00.002-07:002023-09-04T06:31:48.792-07:00Guest Post: President Agnew<i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=GG9TBIKG-HVWTCV">Today in Alternate History</a> with input from Eric Lipps, Brian Hartman, Allen W. McDonnell, and Jeff Provine.</i><br /><br />August 23, 1972 - Spiro T. Agnew Accepts the Republican Nomination<br /><br />Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland (known affectionately to his friends as "Ted") accepted the Republican nomination for the forthcoming 47th quadrennial presidential election. His running mate was Congressman Pete McCloskey of California, who had recently run in the Republican primaries on an anti-Vietnam War platform despite (or because of ) being a former US Marine serving in Korea and awarded the Navy Cross and the Silver Star.<br /><br />The following morning's headlines read "Let us Continue," although these scornful words did not form part of Agnew's acceptance speech. Far from being the makings of an urban myth, it was a sarcastic reference to Lyndon Baines Johnson, whose ascent to the Oval Office had enabled him to avoid prosecution for his shady business dealings. Likewise, Agnew would strenuously deny alleged bribery and kickbacks dating from his time as governor of Maryland. Agnew's speech went further by giving a rambling defense, leading to the most memorable assurance that, "I am not a crook. The President of the United States is not a crook."<br /><br />Agnew's ascent differed greatly from the 36th President and was potentially was even murkier. Events behind this political cataclysm traced back to the immediate exposure of the break-in to the Democrat Headquarters in the Watergate Hotel Complex by members of CREEP, the notorious "Campaign to Re-elect the President" para-political body. In the face of extensive evidence of presidential misconduct, there was a bitter power struggle in the White House led by Chief of Staff General Alexander Haig who infamously declared, "I am in charge." Amidst this government crisis, Richard M. Nixon died from an aortic aneurysm before the end of the primary season, bequeathing Agnew both the presidency and the nomination. 'Ted' selected McCloskey for his running mate but chose not to appoint him Vice President for the remainder of his later predecessor's term. This would prove a weak choice. Rather than stirring the "pity vote," Agnew's predecessor's death in effect left Agnew holding the bag for Nixon's misdeeds. Later, some would argue Nixon had been the luckier one.<br /><br />Agnew would disastrously lose the general election to the equally hopeless but fundamentally honest George McGovern and then face justice with no prospect of a pardon. Agnew of course contested criminal charges of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy; on the same day, he was formally charged with accepting bribes totaling more than $100,000 whilst holding office since 1962 as Baltimore County Executive, Governor of Maryland, and Vice President. Although the prison sentence was suspended, ex-President Agnew would be fined $10,000 and would live out the remainder of his life as a political pariah, shunned even by Republican conservatives who had once looked to him to speak for them.<br /><br /><i><b>Author's Note:</b></i><br /><br />In reality, several major revelations and egregious presidential actions obstructing the investigation later in 1973 prompted the House to commence an impeachment process against Nixon. He resigned from office under Section 1 of the 25th Amendment on August 9, 1974.<br /><br /><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b><div><br /></div><div>The McGovern presidency would work to realign federal programs with LBJ's earlier Great Society policy, a similar switch of opinion that occurs with the changeover of the White House and, indeed, had been seen in the more conservative direction when Nixon was elected in 1968. Many felt that the federal welfare programs and government-supported healthcare came at the right time as stagflation and a recession hit hard in 1973-1975. McGovern ran in 1976 on how he helped heal the economy, but the financial turmoil and widespread patriotism for the nation's bicentennial drove a great deal of force behind the conservative Republican who had come to power during the GOP chaos: former California governor Ronal Reagan. Reagan blamed "welfare queens" for draining the nation's economy and argued to reinstate American world authority after the humbling Vietnam War, planks in a platform that won him the 1976 election.</div><div><br /></div><div>Reagan would win again in 1980 after staring down the USSR's consideration of military involvement in Afghanistan. During his famed speech in 1979, Reagan warned the Soviet Union's General Secretary, "Mr. Brezhnev, don't cross this line." The double-meaning of a political border and Reagan's seeming willingness to step in delighted Americans, especially after the USSR decided to only support the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan by proxy. With expansion questioned, the USSR focused on strengthening its union and revitalizing its economy by reconnecting with China through huge trans-Asian transit construction. Meanwhile, another economic recession would doom the Republicans' 1984 bid, instead ushering Democrat Walter Mondale into the White House.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-25355224911569349012023-08-28T08:07:00.004-07:002023-08-28T08:07:46.985-07:00Guest Post: February 27, 1993 - President Bush Visits Ground Zero<i>This post first appeared on </i><a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=EE9TBIKG-GVWTCV">Today in Alternate History</a><i> inspired by a <a href="https://thisdayinalternatehistory.blogspot.com/2011/02/february-26-1993-world-trade-center.html">This Day</a> post with input from Allen W. McDonnell, Brian Hartman, Robbie Taylor, Thomas Wm. Hamilton and Charles K. Alexander II.</i><br /><br />Leading Republican politicians George H.W. Bush and Rudy Giuliani met under tragic circumstances one day after a <a href="https://thisdayinalternatehistory.blogspot.com/2011/02/february-26-1993-world-trade-center.html">suicide bomber in a Ryder van</a> exploded a deadly incendiary device in the parking garage under the North Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC).<br /><br />The terrorists had worked under tight constraints, understanding that they could not employ the same techniques as the truck bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut ten years earlier. This target was far more massive, but frustration at Bush's victory in the 1992 election pushed the terrorists to strike with all ferocity available. Only a shipping container packed with high explosives and rammed into the building could bring down the two principle towers of the WTC complex. Instead, due to their precise timing, the detonation occurred at peak crowding when employees were just arriving for work. Consequently, the 1,336 lb (606 kg) urea nitrate-hydrogen gas-enhanced device killed hundreds of Americans and left thousands more injured. In a knee-jerk attempt to "close the stable door after the horse has bolted" <a href="https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-1993-world-trade-center-bombings-collapse-both-buildings.225121/">military checkpoints were set up</a> in New York City for the first time. This catastrophe occurred just 37 days short of the WTC's thirty-year anniversary.<br /><br />The timing was also fateful for the two prominent men centre stage. Both Republicans had won narrow victories at the polls but were at the opposite ends of the electoral cycle. Bush had just started his second term (the fourth consecutive office of the Republican presidency), whereas Giuliani would seek re-election in the fall.<br /><br />The present conversation became dominated by terrorist extremism and blundering intelligence failures. Only two days after the explosion, a rebuffed search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch in Texas turned into a gun battle ending in the Waco massacre. Undaunted, Bush, a former CIA Director, and Giuliani, a feisty prosecutor who had put the Mafia behind bars, believed they were the men of the hour. Instead, it would be General Colin Powell who stepped up to the plate at this terrible moment in the history of the Republic. Meanwhile, hawks privately hoped that <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/AlternateHistory/comments/9urd88/what_if_the_1993_world_trade_center_bombing_was/">this was the day</a> that America threw peace out the window and embraced its new role of sole imperialistic superpower.<br /><br />A breakthrough occurred in early March when FBI investigators traced the yellow Ford Econoline used in the bombing to a Jersey City rental outlet. This was only possible because the feed from security cameras was stored at the Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) headquarters located miles away. Agents attempted to peacefully arrest Mohammad Salameh as he retrieved his $400 deposit, but the capture turned to disaster with a running gun battle that killed innocent bystanders. Citing this as a similar missed opportunity to seize David Koresh when <a href="https://althistory.blogspot.com/2005/02/slave-revolt-in-new-york-mosleys-new.html">he was jogging alone in Waco</a>, libertarian elements of the public began to sharply criticize the Federal response.<br /><br />The reaction to this criticism was predictable; Giuliani's decisions were certainly heavy-handed in law and order. His over-zealousness led to claims of police brutality and fuelling racial fears. He arrogantly considered himself a combination of "Untouchable" Eliot Ness and his own predecessor La Guardia. But one of his fiercest critics was ex-marine David Dinkins, a likely Democrat candidate in the forthcoming mayoral election given that Ed Koch had lost in 1989, accused of vote tampering. Pledging racial healing, and famously referred to New York City's demographic diversity as "not a melting pot, but a gorgeous mosaic," Dinkins was seeking to become the first African American to hold the office.<br /><br />Surely without the Waco Massacre, American anger might well have been channelled towards massive retaliation overseas. Instead, it was vented at the incompetence of security agencies who were blamed for their uncoordinated handling of terrorist threats. Under pressure, President Bush hurriedly passed a Patriot Act and appointed the hugely popular and competent four-star General Colin Powell, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the new Cabinet position of Secretary of National Security. Vastly experienced, he was due to retire from the US Army in September after a thirty-five-year military career overseeing twenty-eight crises, including the invasion of Panama in 1989 and Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf War against Iraq in 1990-1991. He had also served as Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor from 1987-9. It would take almost eighteen months to integrate this vast security apparatus requiring the kind of tactical response that had long been his hallmark. His vast inter-agency oversight role would encompass both the CIA and the FBI giving him a degree of power unprecedented even under J. Edgar Hoover. In a masterful repetition of his famous Gulf War press conference, Powell pledged, "Our strategy in going after this terrorist threat is very simple. First, we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it."<br /><br />For his initiatives to "rally 'round the flag," Powell would enjoy a level of public trust that Giuliani could only dream about, but Powell had to get up to speed much more quickly than he did for Operation Desert Storm. In his first notable action in the early days of his tenure, he successfully prevented an assassination attempt upon Bush during a <a href="https://www.grunge.com/306774/the-assassination-attempt-against-george-h-w-bush/">visit to Kuwait</a> to honour his victory in the Persian Gulf War against Iraq. Powell would prove to be highly effective over the course of Bush's second term: terrorist organizations and training camps would be uncovered and shut down while numerous terrorists would be arrested, including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center Bombing as well as the attacks on the Shiite shrine in Mashhad, Iran, and Philippine Airlines Flight 434. The latter led to Yousef's arrest in 1995, the same year a homegrown plot to attack the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was foiled by watchful security.<br /><br />With the sense of America's invulnerability returning, the economy rebounded and then exploded with the introduction of the World Wide Web. The GOP triumphed in the mid-terms and America headed towards the 53rd quadrennial presidential election with a renewed sense of hope. By a huge margin in opinion polls, Secretary Powell would be the most popular Republican candidate, leading a historic attempt to secure a fifth consecutive term of office for the GOP. In his way would be a determined field of potential Democrat candidates including David Dinkins, Jerry Brown, Al Gore, and even the recently divorced Hillary Clinton. There also came a wild card on the ballot in a Ross Perot and Bernie Sanders independent ticket, endorsed by Jesse Jackson, to oppose Powell's national security state and the new world economic order.<br /><br /><i><b>Author's Note:</b></i><br /><br />In reality, the Towers did not collapse because the truck bomb was underpowered for the terrorists' goals, which would be sadly realized eight years later with airplane attacks.<div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>The Dot Com Bubble bursting in spring of 2000 was the death knell for the Republicans' long hold on the Executive Branch. President Powell's efforts to shore up the economy would not have the timeline to make major improvements, and the Gore-Dinkins ticket won handily in the election that fall. While many felt that it would be a new era rolling back many of the Bush and Powell security requirements, such as the mountain of paperwork to rent a truck, only a few minor changes actually took place. The bureaucracy was well entrenched, and not even cries from the National Rifle Association were able to end more than a handful of surveillance actions on gun-buyers. Courts would test whether gun owners were having their Second Amendment rights violated by "checkups" with local officials, but as the ownership itself wasn't in question so much as perceived mental clarity, most of the laws remained intact. Numerous groups would start as self-proclaimed militias for further protection, giving the FBI, ATF, and other agencies clear cells to watch as the average Americans continued with rigorous inspections through metal detectors, background checks, and loyalty oaths.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-30999520832087537462023-08-14T13:51:00.002-07:002023-08-16T13:44:45.758-07:00Guest Post: Reciprocity Treaty Expires<i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=PX9TBIHE-GVWBPV">Today in Alternate History</a>.</i><br /><br />December 9, 1887 - <br /><br />On this fateful day, the defunct <i>Reciprocity Treaty between the United States of America and the Hawaiian Kingdom</i> expired.<br /><br />The end of negotiations denied the U.S. government obtaining exclusive use of Pearl Harbor and the right to maintain a repair and coaling station for ships. In a larger sense, it marked a failure to establish de facto colonial overlordship over the archipelago of Pacific islands. In time, this set-back would refocus American policymakers on the Caribbean, especially the island of Cuba.<br /><br />The ostensibly "free trade" agreement was a trojan horse that had been signed and ratified a dozen years earlier. Within <a href="https://www.quora.com/Would-Japan-have-colonized-Hawaii-if-the-US-hadn-t">a short space of time</a>, Americans controlled the Hawaiian economy, even bringing Japanese migrants over to work in their sugarcane fields. Thanks to pro-annexationalist missionaries, Americans were soon to gain control of its government. With the growing influence of the Annexation Party, King David Kalākaua abandoned his dream of a Polynesian confederation (despite optimistic diplomacy with Sāmoa) and travelled to Tokyo to propose a union with the Japanese Empire in 1881. The deal was sealed by an arranged marriage between his five-year-old niece Princess Ka'iulani and 13-year-old Prince Yamashina Sadamaro.<br /><br />The U.S. reaction to the marriage proposal was strangely muted due to the recent <a href="https://tinyurl.com/559u7nk8">assassination of President James Garfield</a>, which meant that America way too busy to do anything about it at the time. Moreover, the timing of the Tokyo visit was opportune because it was a <a href="https://thisdayinalternatehistory.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-3-1868-meiji-emperor.html">troubling period for Japan</a> also. The new government had just recently put down several peasant and samurai rebellions, and the economy was not in the best shape with extreme inflation. After hundreds of years of the Sakoku ("locked country") policy, Japanese ports were forced open by American Admiral Perry in his 1853 display of Western prowess and demands of a treaty. Although Mutsuhito, the Emperor Meiji, and his government were concerned about the <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Hawaii/comments/yswy4t/its_possible_even_if_the_us_didnt_have_hawaii_as/">reactions of the Americans</a> and British (who wanted a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryWhatIf/comments/55i6cp/what_if_hawaii_stayed_independent/">coaling station with a deep water harbour</a> between Australia and Vancouver), their goal was to transform Japan from an isolationist, feudal state to an industrialized world power. Seemingly for this reason of shared interest, although imperial ambition was a motivating force also, he <a href="https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/japan-unites-with-hawaii.49943/">accepted the offer</a> that one of the Japanese Imperial princes marry a Hawaiian princess.<br /><br />Mutsuhito passed away in 1910, and by then Japan had undergone an extensive political, economic, and social revolution and emerged as one of the great powers on the world stage. Their economic influence and military prestige would become obvious in their defeat of a western nation in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Further 'alliance' marriages had occurred with Korea, the Philippines, and even Sāmoa, a dynastic practice reluctantly welcomed in Japan but long tested in Europe. By this point, there was an international debate as to whether the Empire of Japan actually was a protector of other security-threatened Asian nations or a more fearsome predator. Within four short years, this question would be unambiguously answered. His successor Yoshihito, Emperor Taishō, would be emboldened to take an even more fateful decision to contest Anglo-American control Pacific, joining forces with the Central Powers in the Great War.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In reality, the Japanese government, politely declined the offer. Kalākaua was the penultimate monarch and last King of Hawaiian.<div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>While the mainland American response to Japan's new treaty with Hawaii had been minimal, the Americans on the Hawaiian Islands were panicked as they had anticipated the treaty to be renewed. The Bayonet Revolution by the Honolulu Rifles, a militia made up of members of the Committee of Safety for the Annexation Club, had all but seized control in July of 1887, and young Prince Sadamaro journeyed to Hawaii along with a contingent from the Japanese military to reaffirm the superiority of King David Kalākaua. The resulting crackdowns chased leaders such as Samuel Castle and Sanford B. Dole from the island. Other businesses like C. Brewer & Co. and the British Theo H. Davies & Co. cooperated to maintain their supply of sugarcane for export.</div><div><br /></div><div>Prince Sadamaro felt his clear duty was the defense of this new ally, which in his mind would soon become a vassal-state to Japan. Following his formal introduction to Ka'iulani, Sadamaro went to Europe to complete his education, focusing on naval warfare and construction, until his graduation from France's Ecole Navale in 1890. For the next three years until his wedding to Ka'iulani, he served aboard various Japanese ships. After the wedding, he continued a role in the Japanese navy, even seeing active combat in both the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894 and the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.</div><div><br /></div><div>Upon the announcement of war with the Entente Powers, Sadamaro was "visibly pained" although other military leaders celebrated the early victories seizing British and French ports in mainland Asia. Sadamaro commanded the eastern branch of the naval forces, securing islands such as Tahiti and conducting raids in the Solomon Islands. The bulk of the fighting was conducted against U.S. troops in the Philippines, where Filipino efforts toward independence had dragged on event after the Philippine-American War (1899-1902) left some 25,000 dead. Within time, the Pacific fleets of the Americans and the British coordinated to push back. Sadamaro continued a desperate defense with near-guerilla tactics until his death during the American invasion of Oahu. The U.S. occupied the islands for the remainder of the war, using it as a pipeline for the support of re-establishing control over the Philippines. While the war in Europe ended in 1918, war in the Pacific dragged on into 1922 when Emperor Taisho at last capitulated after devastating naval barrages of Tokyo and other ports.</div><div><br /></div><div>Following the war, Japan was stripped of many of its Pacific colonies, including Taiwan, which were made into independent republics with strong Western military presences. Hawaiian Queen Lili'uokalani had died during the occupation, leaving Princess Ka'iulani as the heir but refused a coronation. Ka'iulani, widowed and childless, died soon after her abdication of several ailments, which commentators at the time said all stemmed from a broken heart. To this day, the US maintains its naval base in Hilo Bay on the Big Island.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-60351855898940895702023-08-03T13:21:00.002-07:002023-08-03T13:26:42.411-07:00Guest Post: Texas Congressman Johnson Lost in the Pacific<p><i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=VF6TVI7B-BXWEDV">Today in Alternate History</a>.</i></p><p><br /></p><p>June 9, 1942</p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">On this sad day
for the Lone Star State, Lieutenant Commander Lyndon Baines Johnson, a
serving Congressman from Texas's 10th district covering Austin and the
surrounding hill country, was <a href="https://www.quora.com/What-was-Lyndon-B-Johnsons-rank-during-World-War-II">tragically killed on duty in the Pacific</a>. His body was never recovered. <br /></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">Johnson had been serving in the Navy Reserves but, tired of inspecting
shipyards in his home state, had opted for a non-hazardous overseas
mission to report on conditions of the Southwest Pacific. However, he
had pushed his luck too far by volunteering to observe an airstrike over
New Guinea; there, his aircraft had been tragically shot down. A brilliant
man, he had his <a href="https://www.grunge.com/310120/why-the-kennedys-couldnt-stand-lyndon-b-johnson/">own feelings of inadequacy</a>
believing his peers in Washington considered him illiterate, rude,
crude, laughing at him behind his back. On the Hill it was rumored that
these reasons cost him his life aged thirty-three.<br /><br />His death was
also a great political loss for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had
found Johnson to be a welcome ally and conduit for information,
particularly about issues concerning internal politics in Texas and the
machinations of Vice President John Nance Garner and Speaker of the
House Sam Rayburn. About a month after Johnson's death, Roosevelt told
all Congressmen who were on active duty to either stay in the service or
Congress. It was too late to save Johnson, but Rayburn's political
future was bright. He would end a fine career by serving as Vice
President during the first year of John F. Kennedy's time in the Oval
Office. Detractors argued that Kennedy had cynically chosen the ageing
Texan only to win Southern votes in the disputed 1960 election.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In
reality, Johnson survived the attack, and General MacArthur recommended he
get a Silver Star. Johnson reported that the conditions in the Southwest Pacific were deplorable
and unacceptable. He recommended that the theater needed to be
prioritized with more funding immediately. Johnson told Congress
that morale there was low and that America's planes were inferior to
Japan's. Congress responded by making Johnson the chairman of the Naval
Affairs Congressional Committee. After Roosevelt's announcement to protect active political figures, Johnson
was among the half that stayed in Congress. Before fully retiring from
the Navy, Johnson was promoted to Lieutenant Commander in 1949.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">The election of 1960 had been won by JFK by just over one hundred thousand votes. Kennedy had chosen wisely in making a long-serving Texan his running mate as the South was hotly contested as the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum. Though Kennedy/Rayburn collected most of the region's votes, Independent Harry F. Byrd had won 15 electoral votes in Alabama, Mississippi, and a faithless elector in Oklahoma. The conservatism in the South had alienated voters from Senator Stuart Symington, the candidate from Missouri who refused to speak to segregated crowds.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">Times changed a great deal by 1964, and Democratic leaders tapped Symington to be the new VP for Kennedy's second term. The office had sat empty for three years, and though some political leaders called for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution">an amendment to clarify the constitutional process to fill vacancies</a>, the public saw no real need. There was concern that Symington wasn't "Southern enough," but leaders decided to focus on a more liberal agenda. Republicans reacted by chasing the conservative vote, securing the South for Barry Goldwater in 1964's election but ultimately losing overall to Kennedy and Symington, who focused on keeping Midwestern voters Democratic while encouraging the drive for African American votes. Symington, who had shown increased productivity in his integrated workforce of the Emerson Electric Company during World War II, brought new respect to the VP office and made headlines for fighting for the firing of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover over clear racial prejudices.<br /></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">JFK's two terms would be the first of many Kennedy presidencies, including his younger brothers Robert and Ted in the '70s and '80s and son JFK, Jr., in the new millennium.<br /></span></p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-53571849976696130272023-07-31T13:33:00.002-07:002023-07-31T14:01:18.295-07:00Guest Post: First Citizen Charles Carroll<p>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=VD6TVI7B-IXWBDV">Today in Alternate History</a> with input from Allen W. McDonnell.</p><p><br /></p><p>September 19, 1737<br /></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">First Citizen of
the American Colonies Charles Carroll of Carrollton was born on this
day in Annapolis, Maryland, British America.<br /><br />A delegate to the
Continental Congress and Congress of the Confederation, Carroll was the wealthiest
and most formally educated of the political body, <a href="https://catholicherald.org/columns/catholic-who-signed-declaration-of-independence-was-flawed-man/">most of whom held theological views</a> influenced more by Deism than classic Biblical theology. For these reasons, and <a href="https://catholiccompany.com/getfed/did-any-catholics-sign-the-declaration-of-independence">being an openly practising Catholic</a>, naturally Carroll was involved in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence <a href="https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/stevenwaldman/2008/04/how-anticatholicism-helped-fue.html">to balance</a> the "Puritan firebrands of the Protestant colonies." Their hostility was born of severe religious persecution that made them <a href="https://catholicherald.org/columns/catholic-who-signed-declaration-of-independence-was-flawed-man/">very suspicious</a>
of the allegiance of Catholics to the power of the Pope. Whether or not a
majority of the colonials genuinely saw the Pope in the same retrograde
anti-libertarian light as King George III, there certainly was a
palpable sense that <a href="https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/stevenwaldman/2008/04/how-anticatholicism-helped-fue.html">anti-Catholicism had helped fuel</a> the American Revolution. Carroll had much work to do to overcome those prejudices, such as </span><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">many Colonial Americans fearing that the
Pope would order an invasion from Quebec to impose Catholicism on them</span>.<br /><br />Consequently,
Carroll's active participation was a bold decision that was vindicated
by the history of the Republic.
His faith-based perspective led to the
proposed modifications to Jefferson's early drafts that prevented the
alienation of French Canadiens and suppressed anti-Catholic urges. By
changing a few words to ensure the Declaration was an <a href="https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/catholic-sources-and-the-declaration-of-independence.html">accurate expression of the Catholic mind</a>
(most significantly, changing "creator" to "Christian God") and drawing
upon the political doctrines of Cardinal Bellarmine, Carroll dramatically
reversed the course of the 1777 offensive. British soldiers soon had uprisings in Quebec stamp out as well as attempting to make headway into New York.<br /><br />Like with many of the
colonial grievances, the causal factors traced back to the French and
Indian War. After taking control of Quebec, the British had taken <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/why-colonial-america-was-so-afraid-of-catholic-quebec">extraordinary measures</a> to protect religious liberty in the Quebec Act
so that Catholics in Canada could simply swear loyalty to King George
III. However, this favoritism had gone too far by extending the
territory of Quebec to the Ohio River, where Connecticut, Massachusetts,
and Virginia colonists had organized the Ohio Company. The Continental
Congress had labelled this an "Intolerable Act" but had shown restraint in denouncing Catholicism.<br /><br />As the Revolutionary War dragged on, one
of the significant factors driving events was the pressing need to keep
Catholic allies onboard. With this consideration firmly in mind,
Washington had forbidden the usual Guy Fawkes celebrations on Nov. 5,
1775, of burning the pope in effigy to avoid insulting the Continental
Army's Catholic allies.
This far-sighted decision ensured that liberty came to Quebec. Nearly a
century later, Quebec's first Irish governor, Thomas D'Arcy McGee, would
formally acknowledge the significance of Carroll's role as First Citizen
in bringing the territory into the Union, famously declaring, <i>"Vive le Québec libre!"</i><br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In
reality, Carroll was only a signatory of the Declaration (also the longest
surviving, dying 56 years after its signing). Despite being one of Maryland's most
famous sons, Carroll was technically not allowed to hold office in the state
due to his religion. Only three of the 13 colonies allowed Catholics to
vote. Thomas McGee succeeded in helping achieve the Canadian Confederation in 1867,
but he was assassinated by the Fenian Brotherhood, which considered McGee
guilty of Shoneenism (a pejorative term for snobs and Anglophiles).</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">Historians frequently debate whether Quebec's declaration of independence from Britain to join the growing United States ended the revolutionary war more quickly or caused it to be prolonged due to the resulting panic in London. Many feared the demands of independence might continue to be contagious, especially after the swift evacuation of the Loyalists in Canada, who were outnumbered by the French-speaking colonists nearly ten-to-one. Having lost everything north of the Gulf of Mexico, <b><i></i></b>the British Empire could potentially lose colonies in the Caribbean if the war spread. Attempts at campaigns in the Carolinas proved expensive and stagnant, so London finally chose to bring an end to the war.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">The young United States found that the Articles of Confederation were insufficient, and the resulting Constitutional Convention became the field of thought for political theory. Following Carroll's lead, the representatives from Quebec refused any document that did not assure basic freedoms of religion, firmly establishing a formal separation of church and state. Others added to the push for freedoms, establishing the article of Fundamental Rights that included speech, press, petition, peaceful assembly, self-defense, and more. Future amendments would install other rights or clarify political process, such as the official end of slavery with the Ninth Amendment in 1831.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">With Quebec and later the Republic of Vermont soon annexed to the original United States, there became a strong tradition of growth. Much of the expansion went into westward territories, such as the Louisiana Territory purchased in 1803. This led to conflict along the border with the Empire of Spain, which later prompted American support in the Mexican War of Independence. There were efforts to bring Mexico and even Haiti into the United States, but these would fizzle under fears of white American voices losing their overwhelming majority in Congress.<br /></span></p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-70431699744357387962023-07-17T13:37:00.008-07:002023-07-17T13:54:36.133-07:00Guest Post: Everyman President<i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=BD6BJI7G-HXWBBV">Today in Alternate History</a> with input from Mark Taylor, Allen W. McDonnell, Robbie Taylor and Thomas Wm. Hamilton.</i><br /><br />July 14, 1913 - Birth of Two-Term Everyman President Gerry Ford<br /><br />The 38th President of the United States, Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr., was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr., in Omaha, Nebraska. His name had been changed informally after his mother remarried in 1917, and he changed his name legally in 1935 to match. An Eagle Scout with three younger brothers, Ford played football at the University of Michigan before going on to law school at Yale. He served in the Naval Reserve during WWII and began a career in politics with a win as Congressional representative in 1948.<br /><br />A long-term, well-respected Congressman from Michigan's 5th district, Ford served on the Select Committee that drafted the legislation creating NASA in 1958. This enabled President John F. Kennedy to pledge America's intention to land a man on the moon before the end of the Sixties. Ford's career at age 50 in national politics took a dramatic turn when President Lyndon B. Johnson <a href="https://www.quora.com/Who-was-on-the-Warren-Commission-and-why-was-it-created">appointed him to the Warren Commission</a>, a special task force set up to investigate the Kennedy assassination. During this time, he closely coordinated with Cartha "Deke" DeLoach, deputy associate director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was assigned the task of preparing a biography of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and, alongside Earl Warren, interviewed Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer, in prison. During this fateful meeting, Ruby conspiratorially stated, "I want to say this to you .. a whole new form of government is going to take over our country, and I know I won't live to see you another time."<br /><br />Warren and Ford knew that there was a great deal of credible evidence that a conspiracy had indeed occurred. Nevertheless, their brief was to make two key determinations in the broader national interest - that Oswald was the sole assassin, and there was no conspiracy. For men that had been in their maturity on the day of infamy in Pearl Harbor, both fully understood the importance of the nation moving on from tragedy.<br /><br />Even if Ruby's dystopian prediction proved to be wildly exaggerated, an improbable series of events followed resulting in Ford becoming president. From the heady heights of the moon landing, Ford inherited a series of crises in Vietnam and at home that meant the ship of state was headed for the rocks. Chief Magistrate was not a position he had sought; indeed, his real ambition was for Speaker of the House, for which he had campaigned hard on the so-called "Rubber Chicken Circuit." In the Oval Office, he would have to confront <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNZPnseRmaE">a critical judgement</a> with a remarkably similar decision framework, this time with complex legal dimensions whether to pardon his disgraced predecessor, Richard M. Nixon. The business of the Federal Government had to move on, overcoming the stench of corruption in Washington. Needing to find an off-switch from the distraction of Watergate, Ford risked his popularity and good name. He bravely took the plunge in an early morning announcement to the American people. Very few members of his staff agreed with this decision, and even Ford himself had previously rejected Chief of Staff Alexander Haig's corrupt offer of a resign-for-pardon deal with Nixon. To cynics, there was even some question of whether Haig had <a href="https://www.americanheritage.com/secret-coup-white-house">forced Nixon out in a secret coup</a>. Ultimately, the majority of American people accepted that he had ended the "long national nightmare" of Watergate so that America could get back on track.<br /><br />Ford really had no choice but to pardon Nixon, and he accepted his chances of election in 1976 were very slim. One major problem area that could have even further revelations had been the <a href="https://www.winterwatch.net/2023/01/nixon-threatened-to-reveal-the-cias-involvement-in-the-kennedy-assassination/">CIA's clandestine involvement</a> in both Watergate and Dallas. Seeking protection, Nixon told CIA Director Richard Helms, "I know who shot John," and threatening "to bring everyone down." Despite this negative calculation, and having never sought the presidency, Ford courageously took it upon himself to lead the Republican Party into the election. At sixty-three years old, he was a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_history_of_Gerald_Ford">highly experienced campaigner</a>, having won elections for nearly thirty years. His tireless efforts as an everyman who knocked on doors and chatted with workers coming off shift as well as his robust campaign plan paid off for the GOP. Thanks to just a few thousand votes in Ohio and Wisconsin, Ford won a narrow victory. This was partly because of a serious error by Christian Democrat candidate Jimmy Carter when his campaign base disintegrated after an <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/interview-playboy-magazine-nearly-torpedoed-jimmy-carters-presidential-campaign-180975576/">ill-advised interview with Playboy Magazine</a> in which he admitted that God had forgiven him even though he had committed "lust in his heart." "Four months ago most for the people I knew were pro-Carter," one of Carter's fellow Southern Baptists, the television preacher Jerry Falwell, told the <i>Washington Post</i> several weeks later. "Today, that has totally reversed."<br /><br />With Nixon, the era of the Imperial Presidency had ended. It seemed to many that America's national leaders had lost their sense of good judgement, and less well-known politicians on Capitol Hill stepped into the gap as they had to halt spending on the Vietnam War with the official end in 1976. Unfortunately, during his second term of office, Ford would be dragged off course into the drama surrounding the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_Select_Committee_on_Assassinations">House Select Committee on Assassinations</a> of JFK and also Martin Luther King. Due to a twist of fate, Ford had to defend his record as a member of the Warren Commission from the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0Kks5qtlOs&t=141s">uncomfortable position as a sitting president</a>. Labelled the <a href="https://www.deseret.com/2008/8/10/20268447/ford-was-the-fbi-s-spy-on-the-warren-commission">FBI's spy on the Warren Commission</a>, he was even accused of <a href="https://rogerstone.substack.com/p/how-warren-commission-member-gerald">altering the official autopsy diagram and report to conceal the truth about Kennedy's murder</a>. While neither charge was proven, the Committee's conclusion that Kennedy was probably assassinated due to a conspiracy became a major distraction to the Ford Administration. He seriously considered resigning in favour of his Vice President Bob Dole but ultimately decided to avoid further political circus by selflessly accepting the criticism. Because Ford was ineligible to run for a third term in 1980 due to the 25th Amendment, Dole was the Republican nominee. He was challenged by JFK's youngest brother, Ted, who promised to reopen the case file on Dallas.<br /><br />Despite these dramatic events, Gerald Ford is considered one of the greatest presidents in the mold of John Adams. Unusually, this is not for his achievements but, like Adams, for his service as a statesman for the Republic and for restoring trust in the Oval Office. In Ford's own words, "Truth is the glue that holds government together." He died in 2006 at the age of 93 having used the truth to navigate the ship of state from disaster and ensure the continuity of the American century.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /><br />In reality, in a 1999 interview with Bob Woodward, Ford noted that Watergate issues were consuming 25 percent of his time in the Oval Office and he needed to fully focus on needs of 230 million Americans.<div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Jack Ruby's prophecy about a new form of government presumably came true, or perhaps was avoided, as American voters wearied of the "same old politics" with one side bashing the other on scandals, whether real or imaginary, and thinking more about next election's polls than reaching across the aisle for complementary goals. Though <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Anderson">Independent John Anderson</a> did not win, his impressive showing proved that many Americans were considering a third party. In fact, many commentators suggested that it was his actions as a moderate that shifted the election from a narrow victory for Dole to Kennedy. Republicans, especially conservative Ronald Reagan, lambasted Kennedy for years, building his own vocal platform to take him on in 1984. Reagan, in turn, was criticized for being too old to serve effectively, even though his famed "Tear Down This Wall" speech in 1987 arguably contributed to the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The infamous <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/us/politics/bush-willie-horton.html">"Willie Horton" ad of the 1988 campaign</a> further divided voters and led to numerous protests through Election Day as well as a much wider turnout for third party candidates. The stage was set for Ross Perot's Reform Party victory in 1992.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-19168451130355215352023-07-11T08:34:00.000-07:002023-07-11T08:34:55.949-07:00Guest Post: The Signal by Allen W. McDonnell<p><i>This post first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=FDH58-Y9">Today in Alternate History</a>.</i></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><span itemprop="description">In January, 1878, David
E. Hughes was working on his improved Carbon Microphone, which was
intended to surpass the scratchy voice quality of the microphone
developed by Emile' Berliner in 1876 for the Bell Telephone. Before
long, Hughes discovered that by adjusting the size of the carbon rod in his prototype device, he can pick up a mysterious sound. Over
several hours of painstaking adjustment, he finally zones in on the "The
Signal." In truth, it closely resembles the Morse code sounds hear d
when a speaker is attached to a telegraph line: sequences of dots
and dashes. For the first few seconds, he believes he is intercepting
the telegraph communication being sent over the wires not far from his
laboratory in London.<br /><br /></span>However,
Hughes is familiar with the simple Morse Code, which covers the English
alphabet plus the numerals zero to nine with code groups ranging from a
single 'dit' "." or 'dah' "-" to a series of six ". . . . . ." The
signal Hughes detects is very different because every series adds up to
exactly seven.
<br /><br />
Hughes sets up a paper tape recorder to capture the message, which seems
endless as dots and dashes. After listening to the signal for over an
hour, it suddenly begins a new cycle starting with ". . . . . . ."
immediately followed by "- - - - - - -". The third and fourth groups are
". . . . . . -" followed again by "- - - - - - -". The cycle repeats
over and over with the first group being one binary number higher and
the second group repeating the "- - - - - - -" until after 127 distinct
groups the last set is "- - - - - - -" "- - - - - - -"
<br /><br />
Hughes remembers a conversation with a mathematics professor about how
telegraphy code could be perceived as a binary code system of counting,
and the odd number groups at the start of this sequence seem to exactly
follow his lecture. The professor wrote on the chalk board 0=0, 1=1,
10=2, 11=3, 100=4, 101=5, 110=6, 111=7, 1000=8 with the "." =0 and "-"=1
in the telegraph code. If the mysterious signal was a uniform code in
binary, then it could be said to symbolize 128 different meanings
starting with decimal and binary zero and ending with decimal 127 or
binary 1111111 aka "- - - - - - -"
<br /><br />
The Morse Code developed by Samuel Morse in 1835 only had 36 code groups
covering the American standard alphabet plus numerals 0-9. The
Continental Morse system added four additional emblems to add in the
Umlaut vowels and CH sounds used by the Germanic languages, but it still
only contained 40 emblems in total. The signal being received by the
Hughes device has over three times as many emblems as the Continental
Morse system in use in Europe.
<br /><br />
The only comparable code Hughes can think of is the Chinese Telegraph
Code introduced just six years earlier. The Chinese code consisted of a
list with 10,000 Chinese character symbols numbered 0001 to 9999. To
transmit the symbols, the sender would list the symbol number, and the
receiver would look up the sequence of number sets in the code book to
translate from numbers back into traditional Chinese characters.
<br /><br />
Not knowing any language that would use 128 distinct symbols, Hughes does
the best thing he can think of: he publishes his discovery including
detailed descriptions of his 'receiving mechanism' both via the media
and through letters to experts in the fields of mathematics and
telegraphy.
<br /><br />
Soon the universities of Cambridge and Oxford have competing groups
listening to the mysterious signal and attempting to decipher its
meaning. Initially the series of symbols is arbitrarily assigned values
of 0-9 for the same numbers in binary code and the "- - - - - - -"
symbol is assigned the value of a space with nothing in it to separate
the other symbols. After a few weeks, however, the research teams
including mathematicians reluctantly conclude that the signal dose not
use a decimal number set but rather an octal or base eight set of
numbers being 0-7. This is determined when a long series of number groups
is deciphered and determined to start with 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 15, 21,
23, 27 and finishing with 467. The list is 64 numbers long, and the Mathematics department soon determines that this is the list of the
first 64 prime numbers counting in base 8, or Octal. The accompanying
text is presumed to give a description of what prime numbers are and how
they are calculated. Another passage is determined to be an array of
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, square root and cube
root tables also arranged in sets of 64. Once it is determined which
symbols are numbers 0-7 and which symbols represent each type of common
arithmetic operation, another section of the Signal is deciphered to
cover the concepts of Algebra, Calculus, Geometry, and Trigonometry, which
branches into quadratic functions, analytical geometry, differential
calculus, and ultimately into concepts like the Butterfly Effect and
Chaos Theory, all described in mathematical terminology with blocks of
undecipherable accompanying text.
<br /><br />
Every 21 hours and 23 minutes in the Signal, it restates the 0-127 symbol
series as if to mark the beginning of a new information set. After
several cycles of ever more complex and advanced mathematics, the
information transitions into a new set of information. This time the
sequence lists a set of numbers from zero to ninety-four (decimal) each
combined with a number sequence and an undeciphered symbol group. The
first of the series is translated as 1 = 1.01, and the last of the list
translates as 94 = 244.06. Fortunately, one of the undergraduates
assisting on the project soon realizes that the list is a set of
chemical elements from 1, Hydrogen, to 94, an unknown element humanity
has not yet discovered. The first number is the position on the table of
proton masses in the nucleus, and the second number is the average mass
of the same nucleus. By subtracting the first number from the second,
chemists can determine how many neutrons a typical nucleus has. For
some types of matter, like element 50, Tin, the number of neutrons in
various isotopes is not a single stable result but actually a set of ten
discrete isotopes. The blocks of text that goes with each element on
the "next page" of the Signal after the simplified list of 94 has a lot
more to say about Tin with ten subsets of data one for each stable
isotope than Hydrogen, element 1 and Helium, element 2, with just two
stable isotopes each. A few elements like Fluorine, element 9, only has
a single stable isotope while Technetium, element 43, has no stable
isotopes. The text for Technetium and the other unstable elements with
83 or more protons has more than the average amount of text describing
their most stable isotopes radioactive half lives described in units of
time based on the length of the pause between code groups in the Signal
or about 0.5 seconds. This leads to additional information about how
the producers of the Signal think about time.
<br /><br />
Once each of 94 elements, a number of which have not been discovered yet
by humanity, are all described in detail, the Signal shifts into
chemistry. First, very simple chemistry like the formula for Carbon,
Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen molecules followed by Water (H2O), Carbon
Dioxide (CO2), Ammonia (NH3), Methane (CH4) and Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN).
From there, it grows more and more complex with acids
(HNO3)~(HCl)~(HClO3)~(H2SO4) and bases (CaCO3), (Na2CO3). After organic
chemistry comes metallurgy with metallic alloys of hundreds of formulas
from simple carbon steel (98Fe2C) to highly complex alloy steels with
(3U8W2V1C86Fe), aka Uranium Tungsten Vanadium Carbon Steel. It also
includes alloys like Aluminum Bronze (1Al9Cu), which had been created and
tested on a bench top batch level because chemist and metallurgists
were a curious lot despite the fact that aluminum was worth its weight
in gold, if not more.
<br /><br />
Further on were chemical processes for refining alumina into aluminum
and leaching urinate ore to separate out the uranium. There were also
chemical descriptions of many styles of battery, as well as descriptions
of fuel cells, dynamos, and fully rectified AC generators producing DC
current. Electrolytic refining of copper, which had only been invented
in Wales in 1869 less than a decade earlier, is discussed in chemical
detail showing how the process can be improved and how the slime that
results can be additionally refined to recover gold, silver, platinum,
and several other base metals depending on the particular copper ore
used in the process. For the production of Technetium, Element 43, there
is a complete, step-by-step set of instructions for building an
electromagnet particle accelerator to bombard molybdenum in a vacuum
chamber with hydrogen ions to transmute it into technetium for special
corrosion resistant steel alloys. Unfortunately, the text for many of
these methods of working on metallic refining are completely
indecipherable even though the chemistry and mathematics behind the
processes is clear enough once it is translated from the original
symbology to conventional mathematics and chemistry language.<br /><br />
The simple fact is that even with multiple university teams working on
the translation of the information provided by the Signal, which has soon
passed around to world to every university capable to generating the
small amount of electricity needed to power the Hughes receiver, constantly shifts to a different subject area every 21 hours
and 23 minutes. Mathematics, Chemistry, Electromagnetism, Metallurgy,
Astrophysics, Electronics... The problem is, while a great many things
can be learned or compared to existing knowledge in the topics that
include a lot of mathematics or chemistry because those areas are most
easily translated, other things prove to be completely opaque pages and
pages of written text without a single mathematical or chemical equation
taking place anywhere. Without translation, it could be deep philosophy,
poetry, or pornography, because nobody really understands it, at least in
those first few months. Wealthy sponsors and companies are more than
willing to fund translations of new techniques of refining, developing
processes for new materials and so on because they believe the results
will be highly profitable. However, the lack of understanding leads to
some quirks like metallurgists knowing that Technetium is a valuable
alloy agent for steel and that it can be made by bombarding molybdenum
with hydrogen ions of a certain range of energies without understanding
that ion-bombardment technetium is normally produced for medical
diagnostic testing while technetium for alloy purposes is generally
refined from nuclear fission products as a value-added commodity
resulting from fission energy production. The ion-bombardment technetium is expensive but worthwhile for medical testing. On the other
hand, the metallurgical technetium is a byproduct of an already
profitable completely separate method of production, which makes it
nearly free to the producer. However, fission-product Technetium is not
useful for medical testing.
<br /><br />
By the end of the year, a new series of pages are deciphered showing the
mathematical underpinning of electronic manipulation of the
electromagnetic spectrum. The basis of the knowledge starts with the
fact that all electromagnetic waves are the same kind of photons as
visible light, just shifted to other frequencies. The very highest
frequencies are photons of such energy that they can penetrate the earth as
Cosmic rays and pass right out the atmosphere on the opposite side and
travel on into space for incalculable distances. Then are the Gamma rays
that can pass through thick pieces of metal and expose film on the
other side or pass through food to completely sterilize it as a form of
preservation. Next come the X-ray frequencies that can pass through
flesh but not bone, allowing exposed film to show damage to a person's
skeleton or locate bullets without exploratory surgery. Then is the
Ultraviolet spectrum that feeds plants energy from sunlight to make
glucose molecules and power all their cellular energy needs. Finally, the
relatively narrow band where all the colors of the Visible spectrum fit
before trailing off into Infra-red. Below the lowest Infra-red are the Microwave and ever longer Radio wave frequencies. Mathematical
descriptions of microwave radar frequencies and communication radio
frequencies along with many other useful technical ideas appear in this
section starting with piezoelectric crystal radio diagrams, flame diode
and triode amplification, vacuum tube diode and triode diagrams, rare
earth diode and triode designs, semiconductor amplifier board designs,
analog computers, digital computers, semiconductor chips on smaller and
smaller tolerance chip designs.
<br /><br />
At that point, one of the teams of linguists has a breakthrough. All
along, the diagrams with math or chemistry applications have been
understood to some degree. Now it has been determined that each change
in topic begins with the same two words followed by a word presumed to
be the title of the topic being transmitted. The Linguists have decided
that the first two words in each title are "History Of" and the third
word is the topical name. The Mathematics topic starts "History Of
Numbers" and starts with counting out the same zero to seven emblems in
order from zero to two hundred in Octal base, then moves into addition
and subtraction, then multiplication and division, then squares and
square roots, cubes and cube roots, Algebraic manipulations,
Trigonometric operations, basic quadratic coordinate systems, polar
coordinates, matrix algebra, calculus, differential calculus, tensor
calculus and on and on until you get chaos theory of number sets and the
butterfly effect. The mathematicians of the universities are often not
as advanced as the final few pages of the "History of Numbers" gets to
eventually.
<br /><br />
The "History of Elements" starts with a list of the 94 discrete
chemical elements and their properties and then goes into great details
on chemistry both organic and inorganic of how these discrete elements
combine in various forms to make molecules, starting with the very simple
O2 and N2 and Ar molecules of the atmosphere and continuing on through
the structures of 23 distinct amino acids and some larger protein
molecules that incorporate those amino acids. The organic chemistry
portion of the signal starts with the very simplest hydrocarbon, Methane
(CH4), and goes up to the very complex hydrocarbons that incorporate
benzine rings, aromatic chains and incredibly complex fatty acids like
Arachidonic Acid that has a twisted 20 carbon long chain and and Alkane
molecules with up to 70 carbon atoms that mostly come from sources like
coal tar or asphalt seeps like the La'Brea tar pits in California or
the Asphalt Lake in Trinidad. The most complex molecules shown are a
double helix molecule of Threose nucleic acid.
<br /><br />
The inorganic chemistry section gives a history of metals, ores including
methods for reducing tin and copper ores to their metallic forms then
mixing them to produce primitive bronze. The copper section goes on
through a long list of copper alloys completing with various aluminum
bronzes, many of which include additional alloy agents. The iron section
starts with reducing bog iron to wrought iron through forge working the
ore all the way to multiple alloy elements in uranium tungsten vanadium
tool steel. This section goes into detail on where to find every one of
the 94 elements in natural minerals except for the special list for
products of fission reactions. It also includes many very useful
technologies like thorium mantle lanterns. These put out a bright white
light source from burning a fuel where thorium in a fine mesh
arrangement around the flame promotes complete high temperature
combustion. The final part of the inorganic chemistry portion details
how to combine fissile and fertile element salts with beryllium salts to
form a critical mass generating very intense heat and fission products.
<br /><br />
That description leads into electromagnetic effects, of "The History of
Electronics". The electromagnetic spectrum and electronics for
manipulating the photons of each energy range to do something useful
like transmit information wirelessly, build centimeteric then millimetric radar to spot other ships when weather reduces visibility
for visible light observation and weather radar to track storm patterns.
Of course, until the translators manage to build the first generation
diode and triode devices to rectify and amplify each effect, the text has
little impact on 19th century life.
<br /><br />
"The History Of Machines" starts with wind power from sails describing
square, lanteen, sprit, gaff, and lug sail arrangements and variations.
Next are shapes and designs for oars covering blade shapes, balance
points and even reversing rig systems so a person rowing a small boat is
facing the same direction the oars are pushing the craft instead of
facing the opposite direction and needing to constantly turn to confirm
the boat is aimed correctly.
<br /><br />
Also included are the concepts of leverage, center of balance/gravity,
and mechanical advantage in the form of single pulley, block and tackle
pulley systems, and inclined plane vs deadlift energy requirements for
moving mass around. The final part of the block and tackle lift section
included automatic arrestor gear for elevators where, so long as the main
cable is supporting the weight of the elevator box, the brake clamps are
held open, but, if the cable goes completely slack, the brakes clamp
closed. This is also described as an air pressure system for railroad
and vehicle brakes where pressurized air holds the brakes open, but
pressing a pedal or opening a relief valve lets the pressure escape,
clamping the spring loaded brakes closed. These developments are both
recognized by engineers as operationally similar to the Otis Safety
elevator patented in 1853 and the Westinghouse Air Brakes developed in
1867 for locomotives.
<br /><br />
From there, the text moves on the windmills using sailcloth blades and
water mills using undershot and overshot water pressure to turn paddle
wheels. As part of this portion, also discussed are fish wheels for
harvesting smelt or salmon migrating to breed with carefully designed
net bladed wheels that scoop up the fish and dump them into a live
holding area or directly into a cleaning area. It describes both wind and water
mills using belt and shaft systems to provide power to machine tools
like drills, drop hammers, bellows for forging work, sanders, planing
tables, and even precision lathes. Of course, this leads inevitably
into detail description in how each machine tool is constructed and
calibrated. After the wind and water wheel systems comes water turbines
that operate using water flowing down to a much lower level to generate
electricity or turn the shaft and belt system with greater efficiency.
Also in this section is the combination commonly called a Trompe air
compressor. Trompe's uses water-entrained air to fill a deep cavern or
mined space with high pressure air that can operate a wide range of hand-held machine tools powered by turbines turned by escaping pressurized
air.
<br /><br />
The next step in machinery is steam pressure and starts with very simple
crude steam pumping systems, then low pressure cylinder steam engines
that develop into double-acting and uniflow steam cylinder systems,
steam turbine systems, and finally flame augmented steam turbine systems.
These last system uses a separate pipe feeding into the steam turbine
that injects a mixture of pressurized air and fuel that is ignited right
before leaving the injection pipe. This additional energy source
reduces the demand for steam and prevents the steam in the first stage
of the turbine from cooling and condensing at all before it exits all
the way through the low pressure turbine. In the most complex designs,
the flame injection also takes place in the intermediate pressure
turbine stages. This leads to a detailed explanation of Bernoulli's
principal of pressure changes leading to temperature changes and vice
verse'. Using cold, dense Trompe pressurized air and a gaseous fuel like natural gas or vaporized gasoline adds a considerable efficiency to the
steam turbine in the last description.
<br /><br />
After the finish of the steam power section comes the internal and external combustion engines. Internal engines use several methods
including hot oil engines that compress air and spray oil on a hot
surface, raising its temperature to the ignition point, Diesel engine
designs using much higher compression, and the Bernoulli principal to
heat the air to incandescent temperatures and ignite oil injected into
the compressed gasses and the spark ignitions systems that compress
flammable gasses or vapors like town gas or gasoline vapor with air and
then ignite the mixture with a spark plug.
<br /><br />
The external combustion engines direct readers back to steam engines for
boiler-based systems and for closed systems gives detailed descriptions
of how a Stirling engine system works. Naturally Stirling had patented
his engine in 1816, so engineers recognized it immediately just as they
had recognized the Watt steam engine and Knight impulse water wheel as a
step in the process of increasing mechanical capabilities. While an
undershot water wheel might by 10-20 percent efficient at capturing the
energy of a stream and an Overshot wheel 30-40 percent efficient, the
Knight impulse water wheel was 75 percent efficient, and the next more
advanced design from the Signal data stream was 90 percent efficient.
<br /><br />
In the same fashion, the Stirling engines in the text start out as low
efficiency with heavy material weights and fixed location or low
mobility and go through a series of evolutionary changes as the
materials used in construction and tweaking the design parameters
increase efficiency step by step ending with a design that is light
weight and highly efficient, but which materials are needed for
construction are not yet available.<br /><br />
<img align="right" class="thinborder_right" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKWi7-QhGuu-R_6zsETwmAQCjQMOBpmRHK4GTIOYoGYC-RQOa7emoR_CMFWaoC6Ao9HqlB34bXqZTeDVecNcEF5k3PSH4PdGFL6wWLS15lQIFX_c1wIXw7e063AFHzvqf2AIp1KgQTkjc/s1393/thumbnail_Electromagnetic+Spectrum.jpg" />One
version of the Stirling engine described is for remote deployment and
uses a radioisotope thermal heat source. The same radioisotope is also
described in another section as element 94, mass 238, as a heat source for
a bimetallic thermal generator using the Seebeck Effect discovered by
John Seebeck in 1821. Seebeck discovered that certain combinations of
metals would, if heated on one end and cold on the other, produce a small
electrical potential that could be tapped as electric current. By
placing a radioactive thermal source in the middle and deploying the
Seebeck metals as vanes around the heat source, a temperature
differential was created that generated electricity. Using that heat
alternatively to power a Stirling engine was a more efficient was of
producing current at least in theory. However, the Seebeck effect
required no moving parts, so it was extraordinarily reliable in working
as expected whereas the Stirling engine would require periodic maintenance
or repairs.
<br /><br />
Next came the section on "The History of Trapped Supernova Energy". This
section started out with a description of astronomy and astrophysics
describing how, based upon the temperature and diameter of a star, what
frequencies and densities of electromagnetic effects could be calculated
for each distance. It used the Sol system for an example giving the
age, size, and composition of the star for a complete description of how its
thermonuclear fusion process worked at converting four ionized hydrogen
protons into a Helium 3 or Helium 4 nucleus depending on which pathway
was followed at key stages of the process. It also revealed how much
energy was generated by each step and how this in turn caused the
sunlight to be in a very broad spectrum of frequencies in the
electromagnetic spectrum. From there, it went into describe how the
energy of those emissions was absorbed by bodies like planets, asteroids,
and dwarf planets or planetoids at various distances. This data covered
everything down to and including the 3:2 orbital resonance of Mercury,
the superheated dense atmosphere of Venus and its retrograde rotation,
the concept of the "Goldilocks Zone" where liquid water would be common
on planets of certain distances from this energy level star depending on
factors like how thick the atmosphere was, what greenhouse gasses were
present and so on. Next it described the planetoid Ceres and discussed
how it differed from smaller asteroidal bodies, how Jupiter swept many
dangerous small bodies up with its gravity field reducing the risk of
Earth collisions by such bodies and how the gas giants Jupiter and
Saturn were fundamentally different from Neptune and Uranus. It then
went on to describe objects in the Kuiper belt where solids were often
the same molecules that served as gasses and liquids in the inner solar
system. From there, it branched into the mathematics of stellar evolution and
how stars much bigger or smaller than the Sun would evolve differently.
Finally, it described stars that were so massive that they exploded in
tremendous supernovae and left behind as their ashes all the elements
heavier than iron including the Actinides. The Actinides were then
described as element capable of being fissioned to release more stored
energy than initiating the fission required. In essence, they had
captured tiny bits of the tremendous energy released by their parent
supernova in the arrangement of their nucleus cores and fission released
some of that energy where it could be used for useful work. This was
followed by descriptions of nuclear fission devices from the most
primitive natural uranium reactors to the most advance liquid salt and
liquid metal based breeder reactors that would consume any actinide and
return fission products like technetium or neodymnium, useful for
industry, and higher actinides like Plutonium 238 for radiothermal
sources to supply energy to remote or isolated locations. Oddly enough ,
nuclear fission explosives were neither described in detail nor much
remarked on, other than in the sense that if too much fast fissionable
material was allowed to accumulate in a small enough volume, the
resulting pulse of energy would release deadly levels of energy and more
or less vaporize your expensive material dispersing it.</span></p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-73908913054127180742023-07-07T07:08:00.001-07:002023-07-07T07:08:50.077-07:00Interview with Hal Johnson of 'Impossible Histories'Hal Johnson is author of <i><a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250809674/impossiblehistories">Impossible Histories</a></i>. Check out <a href="https://blogcritics.org/book-reviewimpossible-histories-by-hal-johnson-from-odd-dot">my review on Blogcritics</a>!<br /><h4 style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhalRqzW2NQABalvpzhrxhc_CND6jjVZHT8839_RdSoFWIjl9fJ5mEoV-PHS6zc2Nh-9hbC2oyWXYa8tB1XrCf0E1KSZM2mnNjYOteVrHIB6lLOXrS8YR7mcNFq9CoYJHLXTIuczZ_b8Iq_-VrkdbJVdSt8LGJvqFkFCB49PTp5qJeYp50l3Ag58kdCCA4/s897/ImpossibleHistoriesCover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="897" data-original-width="594" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhalRqzW2NQABalvpzhrxhc_CND6jjVZHT8839_RdSoFWIjl9fJ5mEoV-PHS6zc2Nh-9hbC2oyWXYa8tB1XrCf0E1KSZM2mnNjYOteVrHIB6lLOXrS8YR7mcNFq9CoYJHLXTIuczZ_b8Iq_-VrkdbJVdSt8LGJvqFkFCB49PTp5qJeYp50l3Ag58kdCCA4/s320/ImpossibleHistoriesCover.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Tell us a little about your background</h4>I’m mostly just a guy with a brain problem that forces me to read more or less continually. There are downsides to this brain problem, in the sense that I am not so socially ept, but it served me well when I wanted to pressure an editor into letting me write a book of alternate history scenarios. In the sense that I’ve always been a reader, I’ve always been a writer. I man, I read more books than I write, but I’m always writing something, or I guess I’ve always got an incessant narrating voice running in my head, and at times I find it easiest to write down what it’s saying. I’ve got several books out (Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods is the reigning fan favorite), and if Impossible Histories is the only one that’s all about alternate history, all of them stretch the truth in one way or another. In less than a month, I’ll have a new book coming out for young readers (or “the young at heart” as they say), Apprentice Academy: Sorcerers. If you like myths and legends, or magic, or witnessing the bad influence that is me corrupting the young, please preorder it.<br /><h4 style="text-align: left;">What got you into alternative history?</h4>I hope I don’t sound like too much of a goon if I say it was Dungeons & Dragons. Many years ago I started running a game, and because I always found it hard to keep track of geography in The Forgotten Realms, I set the campaign in the real world in the tenth century—or at least a slightly more fantasied-up tenth century, with giants in the mountains and high-level clerics in the Vatican. Once I decided to use the tenth century, though, I was more or less trapped: Not only did I have to keep reading about the local circumstances of wherever the party traveled (civil war in Byzantium; a puppet caliph in Baghdad) I had to figure out how past historical figures would have stocked these dungeons people are hacking with monsters, traps, and treasure.<br /><br />Perhaps this would not have seemed like a logical pickle to most people, but I found myself essentially “doing” alternate history backwards—given a tenth century that is slightly different from our own, how would Alexander the Great’s conquests (for example) have had to have been different to get us here? Given the logic inherent in a world with magic, why would Alexander have led an army into Persia in the first place? A quest? An artifact?<br /><br />The more I wrestled with these conundra, the more I started wondering about what changes in the past would ripple through history and make changes in the present. Maybe that’s a crazy way to come about it, but it was the first time I’d “messed with” history, and the habit stuck.<br /><h4 style="text-align: left;">What are some of your favorite time periods to play with?</h4>Even though ethically I think empires are terrible, esthetically I think they’re really cool, so I enjoy reading especially about the Macedonian and Mongolian empires. But empires tend to splinter, so the temptation is to try to figure out what could hold them together and what kind of world would we live in with fewer, larger states. A world in which Alexander’s empire grows and grows and lasts as long as, say, the Roman Empire did is one of my favorites, because I like thinking about a Dark Ages that follows, one with an Imperium that stretches from the Greek settlements in Spain to Hellenistic India.<br /><br />I also like (although I’ve never written about) absurdly big-picture changes. Something like: What if ocean water was potable? Suddenly transoceanic exploration in even small boats becomes a lot easier, even trivial. The size of the ancient world contracts! Contact between the Old World and New made by Egyptians or Phoenicians. Not even fear of storms could keep people from launching out into the unknown.<br /><h4 style="text-align: left;">Are there any time periods you don't particularly enjoy tampering with?</h4>The problem—not a bad problem, but a complicating problem—with constructing an alternate history is that unless you’re willing to play fast and loose, you need to know not only the little bit of history you’re altering, but all the background, origins, and current events of the countries and peoples around it.<br /><br />There are huge stretches of history—I mean both times and places—that are not completely opaque to me, but are mostly isolated facts. I read a biography of Frederick the Great once, but before I felt comfortable messing around with his timeline, I’d want to be more familiar with eighteenth century continental history, which I’m not.<br /><br />I’m a nervous type, and I’m always afraid of getting caught out, so I like looking at time periods I think other people don’t know enough about to catch me in an error! I could never do a Civil War timeline, just because I think everyone else knows more than I do!<br /><h4 style="text-align: left;">What have you learned about humanity and history from your alt history projects?</h4>One thing history teaches you is that people really like to murder each other. Perhaps I have a reputation for being overly cynical about human nature, so let me not pursue that one. Instead…<br /><br />Hey! Another thing I learned about history, and which is useful in writing alternate histories but also in writing in general, is that whenever and wherever you go, there’s always something happening. Every remote Medieval village had some kind of interesting local festival or legend or folk custom. Some of this hyperlocality has been erased by mass media, but it’s still around: I live in Connecticut, and I can drive for forty minutes and be someplace where no one knows what a package store or a tag sale or a grinder are.<br /><br />But also, in every medieval village, something happened there: someone was martyred or there was a battle or the scenery inspired a poet. Part of the fun of alternate history is that wherever you look there’s something that influenced someone, and so there are an effectively infinite number of moments to choose from, to alter and play with and see what happens.<br /><h4 style="text-align: left;">If you had an inter-reality portal, is there a particular timeline you would want to move to, and why?</h4>I have to imagine that a timeline in which we dodged World War I would be less messed up—after WWI, the twentieth century was doomed to be split between fear of totalitarian conquest and fear of nuclear annihilation, and surely we’d be better off without that. Of course, there’re no more Nazis and no more Cold War nowadays, and it’s not like we’re not anxious, so maybe that doesn’t help. Maybe we’re doomed anyway.<br /><br />So I’ll just pick a timeline where Robert E. Howard didn’t kill himself at the age of thirty and instead spent a long fruitful lifetime churning out Conan stories.<br /><h4 style="text-align: left;">Where can people find you online?</h4>I post annotations to Impossible Histories, other alt-history scenarios, and collections of “inspirational” quotes here: <a href="https://haljohnsonbooks.substack.com/">https://haljohnsonbooks.substack.com/</a><br /><br />You can preorder my next book here: <a href="https://bookshop.org/p/books/apprentice-academy-sorcerers-the-unofficial-guide-to-the-magical-arts-hal-johnson/18588355?ean=9781250808356">https://bookshop.org/p/books/apprentice-academy-sorcerers-the-unofficial-guide-to-the-magical-arts-hal-johnson/18588355?ean=9781250808356</a><br /><br />I am bad at social media here: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ImmortalLycanthropes">https://www.facebook.com/ImmortalLycanthropes</a><br />This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-87736446345120735572023-06-28T11:00:00.000-07:002023-06-28T11:00:05.284-07:00A World Without Lithium-ion Batteries<p>June 25, 1979 - Fire Breaks Out at Oxford Laboratory<br /></p><p>In a tragedy that rocked the academic world, a laboratory researching battery advances was consumed by flames at the University of Oxford's Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory. Numerous researchers were injured and several killed, including visiting professor Koichi Mizushima from the University of Tokyo and John B. Goodenough, head of the laboratory. Professor Goodenough had been a research scientist at MIT previously, contributing to efforts in random access magnetic memory (RAM) that would be fundamental to breakthroughs in computing.</p><p>The laboratory had been making efforts to improve upon the research of chemist M. Stanley Whittingham, who had through the 1970s experimented with using lithium ions for a new, and much more energy-dense, rechargeable battery. Exxon had worked with Whittingham to make the batteries commercially available, but the batteries proved too dangerous in overheating and even bursting into flame. Although many hoped for a solution using something other than titanium disulfide in the structure of the lithium-based cathode. The fire soured the international mood on lithium for rechargeable batteries, even overshadowing Rachid Yazami's discoveries with graphite in a lithium battery anode shortly thereafter. The chemistry world turned toward nickel-metal hydride (NiMH) batteries for practical rechargeability.<br /></p><p>Meanwhile, the world at large was changing radically from a widespread surge in electronics. Improvements in automation caused manufacturing to grow, which supplied an insatiable demand for the next big thing. In music alone, boomboxes gave way to Walkmans, which were eclipsed by disc players, which in turn gave way to MP3 players in the early new millennium. The Internet and gaming fueled a need for more powerful computers, many of which gained portability through adding battery power sources. Although "laptops" today are not uncommon, most computers remain plugged in and situated on desktops. Cell phones are perhaps the biggest game-changers in recent history, allowing people all over the planet to be instantly connected, although they remain fairly large hand-held devices.<br /></p><p>Through all of the technological growth of electronics, energy to power them is a major concern. Visionaries like Steve Jobs hoped for a world like something out of Star Trek with readily available portable devices, but length of usable time was a constant battle. Jobs, who led Apple during its heyday, did well competing with other MP3 players with the iPod and promoting additional functionality in cell phones with the iPhone. The iPad, introduced shortly before his passing, however, proved to be a flop as it was too heavy to use comfortably. Later, more efficient tablets became used for gaming, streaming, and social media, but they are most often plugged in during use.<br /></p><p>By 2023, most technology remains wired. Most devices abandoned having enough batteries to last for an entire day when people could plug them in overnight while sleeping. Instead, large, multi-battery chargers may be found in many homes and automobiles where people constantly swap out batteries for their handheld devices. Ultimately the rechargeable NiMH batteries become worn out, and they themselves must be replaced, leading to concerns about landfills and recycling.</p><p> <br /></p><p>--</p><p>In reality, there was no fire, and John Goodenough's efforts in energy-storage chemistry helped revolutionize the technological world. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/science/john-goodenough-dead.html">Goodenough passed away June 25, 2023</a>, as the oldest living Nobel Prize winner. He shared his prize with Whittingham and Askira Yoshino, who used a carbonaceous anode for the first commercially successful lithium-ion battery. These batteries, with a specific energy density nearly half-again, almost double the lifecycle, and a fraction of the discharge of Ni-MH, made compact, portable electronics much more feasible.<br /></p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-63329858623847711902023-06-26T09:09:00.007-07:002023-06-26T13:23:32.800-07:00Guest Post: Slippery Sam Signs the Unequal Treaty of Munich<p><i>This article first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=NB6BDI7F-HXWOKV">Today in Alternate History</a>. </i><br /></p><p>30 September, 1938:</p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">Samuel Hoare, o</span><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">ur greatest prime minister, though cruelly known to his
detractors as "Slippery Sam," was the British Empire's man of the hour
once again.<br /><br />His rise to international statesmanship began three years
earlier when he had joined with Pierre Laval, the prime minister of
France, to resolve a nasty colonial dispute in East Africa. It was his
brilliant partition plan that had averted an <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sir-Samuel-John-Gurney-Hoare-2nd-Baronet">Italo-Ethiopian War</a> and, more importantly, kept Benito Mussolini's regime firmly inside the Stresa Front.
Due to this overseas policy success, Hoare was the logical choice to step
up from Foreign Secretary to enter Number Ten Downing Street after the
retirement of Stanley Baldwin. With Europe on a collision course between
the Great Powers, he was the ideal candidate for the job because of his
masterful diplomatic skills. A prominent member of the pro-appeasement
group, the Cliveden Set, his primary mission was to prevent the outbreak of another Great War.<br /><br />With
an ear perfectly attuned to the public mood, he knew two things very
well: neither was the Armed Forces ready for such a conflict nor was
there any appetite to fight in the electorate that had voted in the
National Government. Perhaps the shameless old war-monger Winston
Churchill would have railed support from the back-benches, but he was
long gone, having died in an unfortunate automobile accident in New York
in 1931.<br /><br /> Fortunately, there would be no car crash in Europe because it turned out that the Hoare-Laval Plan
was a perfect diplomatic blueprint for settling the festering dispute
over the Sudetenland. German Dictator Adolf Hitler was only interested
in an agreement, but Hoare insisted upon a formal treaty in the
knowledge that an <a href="https://www.quora.com/Given-that-Hitler-broke-a-treaty-with-Chamberlain-why-did-Stalin-not-believe-he-d-ever-break-the-treaty-with-him">agreement is not legally binding under international law</a>.
In theory, this diplomatic instrument was a robust legal barrier that
would prevent the Nazis from occupying rump Czechoslovakia and becoming a
pariah state.<br /><br />On 10 March, 1939, Hoare, <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/PRhoareS.htm">addressing Imperial Citizens on the BBC World Service</a>,
predicted that the policy of appeasement would lead to a new "Golden
Age." Yet only five days later, Hitler violated the treaty and sent the
Wehrmacht into Bohemia and Moravia. Unlike the Rhineland or the
Sudetenland, this occupation was not a territorial readjustment of the
Treaty of Versailles but conquest, an unmistakable act of expansionist
aggression in Eastern Europe. The Nazis had fallen into a trap
carefully laid by Hoare because this egregious act of bad faith created
doubt in Stalin's mind and led to his last-minute decision to back out
of signing the proposed Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Hitler was
stubbornly determined to invade Poland alone, but his generals were
strongly opposed and overthrew his regime as Hoare had correctly
anticipated.<br /><br /><b><i>Author's Note:</i></b><br /> <br />In reality, the
proposed Hoare-Laval Plan for the partition of Ethiopian land between
Italy and Ethiopia drew immediate and widespread denunciation, forcing
Hoare's resignation on 18 December, 1935. He was seen as a leading
"appeaser," and his removal from office (along with that of Sir John
Simon and the removal of Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister) was a
condition of Labour's agreement to serve in a coalition government in
May 1940.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article"><i><b>Provine's Addendum:</b></i></span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">All eyes in Europe watched Germany as Hitler sought to return to power against the military regime he had led. Many suspected it could go as far as civil war, but fresh parliamentary elections in 1940 kept the turmoil political other than a few riots between the different parties. The Nazi establishment continued to dominate with its effective propaganda, which could drown out even the efforts of Hitler's hastily constructed Freiheit (Freedom) Party. Hitler's health was wrecked by the campaign, though conspiracy theorists suggest he may have been poisoned. Others maintain his regimen of "energy pills" and other drugs caused nonfatal overdose.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">With the German issue largely settled, international diplomacy turned back to the questions of ongoing imperialism. Much of the world had been carved up, but new players wanted to enter the game, as seen with Italy's wars in Africa. The Empire of Japan, which already controlled much of China, threatened to move southward and even into French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies. India sought independence from the UK, which had dominated the subcontinent after centuries of wars elbowing out other European powers. The Soviet Union, recovering from Stalin's purges, had begun efforts to retake what it saw as lost territory in Finland and the Baltic.</span></p><p><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">Hoare and his political followers kept up the policy of appeasement, trying to find common ground for all. He staved off Indian independence with offers of more local rights by rolling back the Rowlatt Act and ultimately breaking up the Raj into several states to discourage cooperation in non-violent protests. Elsewhere in the world, the empires butted up against each other and watched for signs of weakness where rebellions could be encouraged and then later stamped out by another empire coming in to "assure peace."<br /></span></p><p> </p>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8759932791781893767.post-49660193225034258472023-06-22T11:00:00.002-07:002023-06-22T11:00:49.240-07:00Guest Post: JFK Survives, Lee Goes Free<i>This article first appeared on <a href="http://www.todayinah.co.uk/index.php?story=EB6BDI7F-HXZNKV">Today in Alternate History</a>.</i><br /><br />Nov 27, 2017 - Passing of Robert Oswald<br /><br />Korean War veteran and former U.S. marine <a href="https://www.nbcdfw.com/local/dfw-morningnews-robert-oswald-brother-to-jfks-assassin-dies-in-wichita-falls/48854/">Robert Edward Lee Oswald</a>, whose brother Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for shooting John F. Kennedy in Dallas, died on this sad day aged 83.<br /><br />Fortunately for all concerned in 1963, first-year surgical resident <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jul-30-me-carrico30-story.html">Dr. Charles James "Jim" Carrico</a> saved the precious life of the president on the operating table of Parkland Hospital. Meanwhile, the suspected would-be assassin was arrested on a local street corner by Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit and taken into custody. Upon hearing the shocking news on the radio that it was Lee Harvey Oswald, his elder brother rushed to the Dallas Police Headquarters, promising to find him a lawyer.<br /><br />After a protracted legal process, and largely thanks to Robert Oswald's efforts in building a strong legal team, it was finally determined within reasonable doubt that Lee Oswald was not the real shooter. The only beneficiary was their mother, Marguerite Oswald, who wrote a best-selling book <i>Brother's Keeper</i> named after biblical Chapter Genesis 4, verse 9. This publication cleared the legal fees and allowed her to comfortably retire to Wichita Falls, where she died in 1981.<br /><br />Unfortunately, many historians argue the tragedy averted in Dallas unfolded into an even worse tragedy in South Vietnam. Kennedy's campaigning in the Southern states paid off handsomely, but the main reason for his electoral victory was that the country wasn't quite ready for <a href="https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/kennedy-vs-goldwater-who-would-win-really.82646/">Barry Goldwater's conservatism</a> and preferred Kennedy's diplomacy and military adviser approach. Over the course of the next turbulent five years, however, the political landscape rapidly changed mainly due to the unwinnable war in South Vietnam. In late 1963, JFK had himself admitted it was beyond his crisis management skills to resolve, "We don't have <a href="https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/kennedy-lives-how-does-1968-election-go.527259/">a prayer of staying</a> in Vietnam.... But I can't give up a piece of territory like that to the Communists and get the American people to reelect me [in 1964]." This dreadful conflict, and its deep societal consequences, would result in a shift to the right and the election of a Goldwater protégé, the conservative war-hawk Ronald Reagan in 1968.<br /><br /><i><b>Author's Note:</b></i><br /><br />In reality, he moved away and died in Wichita Falls. Marguerite Oswald wrote a booklet titled Aftermath of an Execution: The Burial and Final Rites of Lee Harvey Oswald which was never published.<br /><br /><i><b>Further Author's Note:</b></i><br /><br />In this scenario, a surviving JFK does not pull out of Vietnam as he intended (and per the conspiracy theory in Oliver Stone's movie) due to fears he would not be re-elected in 1964, and after re-election he's committed, its too late - but the Vietnam tragedy prevents a Democrat win in 1968.<div><br /></div><div><b><i>Provine's Addendum:</i></b></div><div>Reagan came into office in 1969 vowing to be "tough on Communism" and to "clean up that mess" in Vietnam. The Tet Offensive of 1968 had been utterly humiliating for the Kennedy administration, although advisers suggested it was a desperate effort that largely exhausted the North Vietnamese forces. As early as 1965, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1984/04/22/when-reagan-was-being-reagan/f6b2531c-9348-4761-aaa4-1d086afd1039/">Reagan was suggesting</a>, "We should declare war on North Vietnam. We could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home by Christmas." Voters hopeful to end the war drove Reagan ahead in the polls.</div><div><br /></div><div>The diplomatic situation in Southeast Asia was delicate, however. China had made clear that they would enter the war if there were any invasion of North Vietnam. Cambodia had sworn passive neutrality, allowing Vietnamese military camps and supply routes in the east along with American bombing of camps and routes, although Chief of State Norodom Sihanouk publicly denounced any Cambodian injuries. Laos was in civil war between the royalists and Pathet Lao, backed by the Soviets, Viet Cong, and People's Army of Vietnam.</div><div><br /></div><div>While the American public still did not support outright war with China, Reagan pushed his state department to lean heavily on Laos and, especially, Cambodia to drive communist forces from their borders. By 1970, Cambodian neutrality effectively ended, and US troops conducted "hot pursuits" and systematic bombing as far as the central regions of the Mekong River. Without supplies, the Viet Cong in the south began to collapse, abandoning the Mekong Delta. The war in Laos was much more of a seesaw with land constantly being handed and back and forth between the sides. Reagan maintained distant relations with China, mostly focusing on encouraging them to stop supporting military efforts in Vietnam. With the growing Sino-Soviet Split separating USSR and Chinese interests, China became more hesitant to expend resources.</div><div><br /></div><div>Death tolls and military spending climbed, but overall the American public remained supportive as Reagan's office ensured as much censorship as possible, even in fictional accounts. Following the success of the film <i>M*A*S*H</i> in 1970, Regan leaned on producers to ensure the 1972 television program that continued the story of doctors in the Korean War portrayed their efforts as heroic and the overall environment as something of a "summer camp" rather than allowing any major critique of American military action.</div><div><br /></div><div>Reagan won reelection in 1972 and focused on "Americanization" of South Vietnam and Cambodia. Aid poured in, as did efforts to encourage American business and trade. While the efforts arguably stabilized the region and repaired much of the literal and figurative damage of the millions of tons of bombs dropped, it became heavily criticized by the American public. Many joked that people in Southeast Asia were living off welfare dollars while hardworking Americans struggled in the growing decline of American manufacturing. Voters decided to turn toward Democrats for 1976, who promised a package called the "Great New Society" with improved worker relations and social programs.</div>This Day in Alternate Historyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10126960997601177897noreply@blogger.com0