Your Point of Divergence

[Spiral Sun]

I like playing around with the idea that the Mongols keep rolling. Makes for some interesting hypotheticals.

They would need to run out of momentum eventually, lest Mongolia is emptied. Then again, the Turks did well for themselves doing that...

[Rambhutan]

I like playing around with the idea that the Mongols keep rolling. Makes for some interesting hypotheticals.

They would need to run out of momentum eventually, lest Mongolia is emptied. Then again, the Turks did well for themselves doing that...

They would need some sort of bureaucracy to administer the territory they conquered in order to keep it.

[Morrdh]

1945; Britain pre-empts the US' Operation Paperclip and capture key German scientists such as Van Braun, with help from the British Interplanetary Society a space station is built in orbit in 1953 and the Union Jack is planted on Lunar and Mars by the early Sixties. Reaping the benefits of winning the Space Race, technological advances and being world-class builders of jet engines the British Commonwealth remains strong as the perfect balance to both the US and Soviet Union.

Maintaining an edge over everyone else, Britain does not join what would become the EU and insteads focuses on the Commonwealth.

Besides, who doesn't want Cricket on Mars?

[Wisconsin7]

1945; Britain pre-empts the US' Operation Paperclip and capture key German scientists such as Van Braun, with help from the British Interplanetary Society a space station is built in orbit in 1953 and the Union Jack is planted on Lunar and Mars by the early Sixties. Reaping the benefits of winning the Space Race, technological advances and being world-class builders of jet engines the British Commonwealth remains strong as the perfect balance to both the US and Soviet Union.

Maintaining an edge over everyone else, Britain does not join what would become the EU and insteads focuses on the Commonwealth.

Besides, who doesn't want Cricket on Mars?

The fuck's cricket?

[Bears Armed Mission]

Go back to the Reconstruction period and hand the Radical Republicans the political clout they need to run Reconstruction the right way.

Stomp on every racist's face for a couple of decades, and maybe you wouldn't have civil rights issues in America a full century later.

Fixed.

[Morrdh]

1945; Britain pre-empts the US' Operation Paperclip and capture key German scientists such as Van Braun, with help from the British Interplanetary Society a space station is built in orbit in 1953 and the Union Jack is planted on Lunar and Mars by the early Sixties. Reaping the benefits of winning the Space Race, technological advances and being world-class builders of jet engines the British Commonwealth remains strong as the perfect balance to both the US and Soviet Union.

Maintaining an edge over everyone else, Britain does not join what would become the EU and insteads focuses on the Commonwealth.

Besides, who doesn't want Cricket on Mars?

The fuck's cricket?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket

Its a popular sport in much of the former British Commonwealth, recalling hearing that attempts were made at getting a cricket league up and running in the US fairly recently.

[Spiral Sun]

Go back to the Reconstruction period and hand the Radical Republicans the political clout they need to run Reconstruction the right way.

Stomp on every racist's face for a couple of decades, and maybe you wouldn't have civil rights issues in America a full century later.

Still would exist everywhere else, though. Racism in the United States lessened partially because of groups melding, allowing Indians, Hispanics, and Europeans to join the main body after a generation or two in which to lose the accents. Blacks came a bit later, in areas outside the South where they could mingle instead of staying segregated against the Scotch-Irish. Still of course the issue of racism in East Asia.

[Bears Armed Mission]

If Europe never colonized America

I think it would be awesome to still be able to live like my native ancestors!!

You mean... without the Internet?!?

[Ifreann]

I'd have worn a different pair of socks this morning.

[Nazis in Space]

I'd have worn a different pair of socks this morning.

Ifreanns in Socks.

New meme~

[Ifreann]

I'd have worn a different pair of socks this morning.

Ifreanns in Socks.

New meme~

It could be the new Birds With Arms.

[Bears Armed Mission]

Jesus Christ is never born, and the world is spared two millenniums of crusades, inquisitions, and imperialism.

No, they just happen in the name of some other messiah -- John the Baptist, Brian, Simon the Magus, Simon Kochba, Mani, or whoever -- instead...

[Wisconsin7]

The fuck's cricket?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket

Its a popular sport in much of the former British Commonwealth, recalling hearing that attempts were made at getting a cricket league up and running in the US fairly recently.

I didn't know it was possible for an even lamer version of baseball to exist.

[Ifreann]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket

Its a popular sport in much of the former British Commonwealth, recalling hearing that attempts were made at getting a cricket league up and running in the US fairly recently.

I didn't know it was possible for an even lamer version of baseball to exist.

It's just a scam by the British to hide their binge drinking behind a sporting event.

[Bears Armed Mission]

In context, it's just odd. The only vaguely convincing explanation I've heard is that Germanicus' victories in 15 and 16AD were so conclusive that it simply wasn't worth the effort of turning the region between the Rhine and the Elbe into a full province given there was no longer any military threat from Germany. If so, it was one of history's more short-sighted decisions.

I've seen it explained on economic grounds. The argument goes that just about everywhere else along their frontiers, except where the Parthians/ Persians were able to hold them off, the edges of the empire were fairly close to the outer limits of where reasonably productive agriculture was possible with the methods that they knew... and the German forests, marshes and heaths -- whose occupants weren't even as semi-civilised as Gaul had been before Caesar, either -- might simply have struck the Romans as not worthwhile in those terms.

[Morrdh]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket

Its a popular sport in much of the former British Commonwealth, recalling hearing that attempts were made at getting a cricket league up and running in the US fairly recently.

I didn't know it was possible for an even lamer version of baseball to exist.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinions but bare in mind that Cricket is a completely different sport to Baseball and has been around for much much longer.

[Ratateague]

Vladimir Lenin wouldn't have those second or third strokes. After his first, he eventually evokes enough of a response for Stalin to step down from Secretary-General.

[Wisconsin7]

I didn't know it was possible for an even lamer version of baseball to exist.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinions but bare in mind that Cricket is a completely different sport to Baseball and has been around for much much longer.

Well it still seems similar to baseball. But worse. It looks to me like a cross of baseball and bowling.

[Melas]

-the greeks won the greco-turkish war as such saving the lifes of MILLIONS of greeks living in asia minor.propably having a dfferent outcome in ww2 since greece would have bigger points and key cities (izmir and istanbul as the turks call smyrna and constantinople) thus making a more powerful greece that could hold even longer and delaying Barbarosa plan even longer,likely forcing Hitler to not attack the USSR or having way more casualities thus ending the war sooner.
-4th crushade never happened.byzantium was never weakend so the Ottoman empire never took constantinople and stopped its campgains towards europe and a lot of war.that way the humanity is way more advanced today.
-russia never backstabbed napoleon OR it never rained before the Waterloo battle
-USSR never broke up (more ww3 threats than normal)
-Tesla was still alive or his inventions were open to the public and s**t(1000 years more advanced humanity)

[Nazis in Space]

the greeks won the greco-turkish war as such saving the lifes of MILLIONS of greeks living in asia minor.propably having a dfferent outcome in ww2 since greece would have bigger points and key cities (izmir and istanbul as the turks call smyrna and constantinople) thus making a more powerful greece that could hold even longer and delaying Barbarosa plan even longer,likely forcing Hitler to not attack the USSR or having way more casualities thus ending the war sooner.

Considering that Germany and Greece were on noticeably friendly terms (Greece was explicitly counting on Germany serving as a negotiating bridge to end hostilities with Italy), it'd seem more likely that a stronger Greece could scare Italy to the point where it refrains from attacking Greece at all, resulting in an earlier attack on the Soviet Union, Moscow falling, the Generalplan Ost killing another 25 million Russians before American productivity forces a German defeat, and a monopolar post-war world.

[Farnhamia]

I didn't know it was possible for an even lamer version of baseball to exist.

Everyone's entitled to their own opinions but bare in mind that Cricket is a completely different sport to Baseball and has been around for much much longer.

And it remains a decadent, elitist "sport" fit only for the inbred population of small islands off the coast of Northern Europe. Seriously, a "googly"?

[The Archregimancy]

Everyone's entitled to their own opinions but bare in mind that Cricket is a completely different sport to Baseball and has been around for much much longer.

And it remains a decadent, elitist "sport" fit only for the inbred population of small islands off the coast of Northern Europe. Seriously, a "googly"?

This is clear ethnocentrism, Farn. I'm appalled; appalled, I say. Even a cursory examination of a map will show that cricket's current primary base of support consists of brown-skinned people with elaborate caste systems, not inbred insular northern Europeans.

[Serrland]

Oh, and answering the question in the OP, I would avoid the Battle of Manzikert, thereby avoiding (or at least delaying) the collapse of the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia, and also avoiding the Crusades - which were called in response to Alexius I's attempt to ask Urban II for western mercenaries to help fight the Turks in Anatolia.

Or even just have the Byzantine ambassadors at the Council of Piacenza be more clear and less dramatic in their appeal for Latin aid. As I understand it, their tactic was basically to do the old: "Jerusalem is in Muslim hands, pilgrims are being defiled, and now the barbarians are at the gate and if we don't stop them Christendom will fall!!!"

[Farnhamia]

And it remains a decadent, elitist "sport" fit only for the inbred population of small islands off the coast of Northern Europe. Seriously, a "googly"?

This is clear ethnocentrism, Farn. I'm appalled; appalled, I say. Even a cursory examination of a map will show that cricket's current primary base of support consists of brown-skinned people with elaborate caste systems, not inbred insular northern Europeans.

All that means is that the inbred insular northern Europeans did an excellent job indoctrinating the brown-skinned people with the elaborate caste system. If those people had truly wanted to make a clear break with their colonialist masters, they would have banned cricket.

[Melas]

the greeks won the greco-turkish war as such saving the lifes of MILLIONS of greeks living in asia minor.propably having a dfferent outcome in ww2 since greece would have bigger points and key cities (izmir and istanbul as the turks call smyrna and constantinople) thus making a more powerful greece that could hold even longer and delaying Barbarosa plan even longer,likely forcing Hitler to not attack the USSR or having way more casualities thus ending the war sooner.

Considering that Germany and Greece were on noticeably friendly terms (Greece was explicitly counting on Germany serving as a negotiating bridge to end hostilities with Italy), it'd seem more likely that a stronger Greece could scare Italy to the point where it refrains from attacking Greece at all, resulting in an earlier attack on the Soviet Union, Moscow falling, the Generalplan Ost killing another 25 million Russians before American productivity forces a German defeat, and a monopolar post-war world.

OK so italy never attacks greece cause its scared?(musollini actually attacked greece without telling hitler,but he screwed up and was forced back to albania so he had to call hitler to help him thus delaying oporaton barbarosa) correct me if im wrong.i ve never heards of greco-german negotiations during ww2.but you are kinda right.italy would most likely not attack greece if it was strong but still,there was the Rhode dispute (a greek island of the aegean belonging to italy back then,it was given t greece as a price after ww2 ended)