Alternate Careers of Notable People Thread

[Bolt451]

A while back I did a Collab list over on my test thread which ended.at 1960 following a second US Civil War, Imperial Germany as Hegemons over Europe and various other things.

I asked people to give me OTL figures and id write an alternate biography. These are some of my favourites but feel free to check others out on my test thread and pleased suggest more people. Basically anyone who was famous from the 1930s onwards

Douglas Adams (1952-Present) is a British humourist and writer. He is famous for various novels including the absurdist work "The Teabag of Destiny," and the science fiction novel "Booking a holiday Last Year," the latter of which won him a Saturn Award and was later made into the Television Series "Check in Time" (2001-2007)

His one man play "Last Man Under Earth" which satirised the ongoing political situation in the former United States which lead to him being widely condemned within several American states, notably from President Maddox upon its West end run in 1982. This lead to an attempted assassination on him when the play opened in Los Angeles, PSA in 1984 and the subsequent diplomatic crisis between the Savannah Government and the Cooperative Coalition.

He lives with his wife and daughter and splits his time between Vancouver and London. His own dealings with mental health lead to his 2008 Book "The Diary of Smedley Butler, Aged 19 1/2" about a young man who is sectioned when he professes the belief that he is the American Warlord-Era General. It was later turned into a Academy Award winning film.

Richard Feynman (1918-1963): An American (and later Pacifican) theoretical physicist. His studies at Princeton were delayed by the outbreak of the Second American Civil War. Initially a refugee he fled to the west coast where he ended up being recruited by Wallace Akers to Operation Willow, Commonwealth (and later Anglo-American nuclear weapons project. With this he would spend much of the 40s in British Columbia working alongside other American refugees such as Robert Wilson and Robert Oppenheimer. Their work would eventually bear fruit in the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on a White-American staging area North of Nashville in 1949 which would end the Second Great War

Feynman would continue to work on particle physics for the budding Coalition nuclear weapons program in Canada while also continuing studies at Caltech. However he was kidnapped by United states Forces while at a scientific conference in Chicago in 1959 and forced to work on their own nuclear program. He was later released but would die from health complications of his time in captivity.

Colonel Jacqueline Cochran

(1906-1980) was a Warlord and Second Civil War Era pilot and military officer. She alongside fellow aviatrix Amelia Earhart are considered "the mothers of US Aviation" for their role in postwar America supporting women in the forces. Already a relatively experienced pilot just prior to the outbreak of war in 1935 she petitioned California Governor Upton Sinclair to allow her and other experienced women pilots to serve in the air forces of the democratic factions of the Civil War. She first served as a courier and then later as a combat pilot first along the Rocky Mountains and later the Great Lakes front of the war rising to Command the all-female 101st Fighter Squadron

Following the war she was promoted to the rank of Colonel, being the highest ranked woman in the newly formed PSAF where she would continue for the integration of women into all branches of the armed forces of the Pacific States. She also served as a consultant for Coalition Space Program and was a vocal supporter of Amelia Earhart's successful candidacy in the manned space program

Sgt Joe "Slugger" DiMaggio was a soldier in the United States (Sacramento Govt) Army. A Semi-Pro career in Baseball was cut short by the break down in society that lead to the American Warlord period. DiMaggio was recruited into the California National Guard. He fought in the Great Plains and Mississippi campaigns of the Second Civil War (later the Second Great War) and was award the Purple Heart by President Sinclair in 1948 for his actions in the siege of Tulsa

This one got away from me. maybe a bit improbable given sexism but sod it. It was fun.

Amelia Earhart (1897-1980) was an American Aviation Pioneer, wartime pilot and Astronaut. Already being a celebrity prior to the Second American Civil War she headed up the wartime efforts to get women into the armed forces of the United States (Sacramento Government, later the Pacific States of America) and was the first commander of the 101st Fighter Squadron. Shot down by White-Government Forces over North Dakota she eventually made her way across the Canadian border but not before she was injured. Earhart was promoted to Major and put in command of The Women's air Training School at CAF Boundary Bay and later McCarran as well as promoting women in the war effort throughout "Democratic" territories.

Following the war she became a test pilot at Muroc Air base in California. She also served as a test pilot for Avro-Gloucester in their efforts to break the sound barrier. She would eventually do so at RAF Brockworth in 1952, although she was not the first Coalition pilot to do so.

Earhart's most famous flight however would be in 1962 when she was picked as a surprise compromise candidate for the first manned flight of Project Javelin, the Coalition's space program. Following the launch of the Stern satellite in 1958 the Coalition had rushed to put someone in space as quickly as possible. Being a multilateral effort there were arguments between the British, French and SAR candidates but in the end it was decided that Earhart (not even the PSA's first choice) would go up (it has been suggested whoever flew second would still get to say "First coalition MAN in space amongst other unproven claims about her flight). It has also been suggested that Earhart was chosen so the Coalition could say they put the first woman in space given Germany's "Valkyrie-1" launched from German East Africa almost a full year before Javelin-1 did.

The Javelin-2 launched from Woomera in Australia on 9th July 1961. Earhart orbited the Earth 3 times before crashing into the north Atlantic where she was picked up by the HMS Plymouth.

Earhart wouldn't fly into space or as a test pilot again but would continue to train astronauts and promote women in the military, sciences and spaceflight.

Jean Baker (Born Norma Jean Mortensen, later Norma Jean Hartman 1926-2002) was a model and actress in the post war Pacific States of America. After spending the war working in an arms factory she was scouted and hired as a model to promote various products as the P.S.A rebuilt itself. She would then appear in dozens of films such as "The Summer of San Joaquin," (1954) and "the Great White North" (1955) and quickly built up popularity as "The Quintessential American Beauty" of the 1950s. She was heavily involved in the actors strike of 1956 and a public figurehead for the labour movement and the subsequent change in laws in the PSA. It was here she met her future husband, set designer and crew member Bill Hartman (1918-1987)* and they'd become a well photographed couple with people commenting on her starring role and his relatively low key position in the industry. This stress would affect her health and Baker would have several stints in rehab in the late 50s and early 60s. However she returned to acting with her appearance in the 1965 war film "What a Day," and the following year played Amelia Earhart in the biopic "Javelin" which would win her an Academy Award.

She continued acting throughout the 70s and 80s, moving into more supporting roles and spending. Her final role was in 1997's "The Kings of New York,". She died at her family home in Palm Springs, P.S.A in 2002. Her daughter Mary Hartman has an ongoing successful career as an actor, notably in the long running NBC medical drama "Union Hospital" as Dr Alice Miller

 

[Luke_Starkiller]

Paul Martin Simon
Editor-publisher of the Troy Tribune: 1948-1951
Army Counterintelligence Corps: 1951-1953
(saw some harrowing stuff in Korea, decided to cope through a newfound love of guitar)
Carbondale, Illinois area local folk musician: 1953-1957
Session musician: 1957-1964
Songwriter: 1961-1967
Collaborator and Producer with Bob Dylan: 1964-1970
Manager to Bob Dylan: 1965-1977

Paul Frederic Simon
Student at Brooklyn Law School: 1963-1966
Assistant District Attorney, Manhattan District Attorney's Office: 1966-1975
Attorney, Private Practice: 1975-1980, 1986-1994
New York State Representative from the 45th District (Democratic): 1981-1986
Candidate for Democratic Party Nominee for New York State Attorney General: 1985-1986
New York City Public Advocate (Democratic): 1994-2000
Candidate for United States Senate: 1999-2000
United States Senator for New York (Democratic): 2001-present

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (1926–1970)

• Cuban Representative (1952–1964)
• Cuban Senator (1964–1968)
• President of Cuba (1968–1970) (overthrown in a coup d'etat)

 

[theflyingmgoose]

Elizabeth Holtzman (1940-)

U.S. Representative: January 3, 1973 - January 3, 1977
U.S. Senator: January 3, 1977 - January 3, 1989 (Excluded from January 1983 to March 1987)
President: January 20, 1989 - January 20, 1997

 

[Luke_Starkiller]

Elizabeth Holtzman (1940-)

U.S. Representative: January 3, 1973 - January 3, 1977
U.S. Senator: January 3, 1977 - January 3, 1989 (Excluded from January 1983 to March 1987)
President: January 20, 1989 - January 20, 1997

What happened from January 1983 to March 1987?

 

[theflyingmgoose]

What happened from January 1983 to March 1987?

This was part of a "Reagan killed and Pat Buchanan is president and then tries and fails horribly to do a dictatorship" project I did a while back.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Jerry Lon Litton (1937–)

• United States Representative for MO-6 (1973–1977)
• United States Senator for Missouri (1977–1989)
• 41st President of the United States (1989–1993)

 

[Wendell]

Giuseppe Buonaparte, known in France and the United States as Joseph Bonaparte, was a Corsican-born French politician and diplomat who later became the inaugural President of the Italian Republic at the behest of his brother-in-law, French First Consul Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who succeeded Giuseppe's brother Napoleon Bonaparte in that office following the Infernal Machine of 1800 and the machinations that followed in its immediate aftermath.

Called to the Italian presidency at the Consulta of Lyon while negotiating the end to the War of the Second Coalition on behalf of France, his appointment ultimately proved to be a catalyst for the War of the Third Coalition that saw his newly consolidated Padanic polity grow to dominate the entire peninsula in what is also known as the Italian Revolutionary War. Buonaparte built an administrative model based on that in republican France but reflective of local conditions and terminology. The Italian civil code adopted under his leadership is nearly identical to that implemented in France under Bernadotte but largely devised under his predecessor's auspices. Buonaparte twice reached concordats with the Church, one initially concerning northern Italy, then a later agreement pertaining to the rest of the peninsula. He also issued the Edict of Ravenna defining the relationship between the Italian Republic and the Most Serene Republic of San Marino.

His service to the Italian state he built extended beyond his ten-year presidency, as Buonaparte chaired the committee under his successor that made reforms to the Italian constitution accounting for its territorial gains and relationship with the papacy. Following the Spanish and Polish revolutions, Buonaparte also led the negotiations on behalf of Italy to permanently define the parameters of the temporal papal domain, leading to the creation of the State of the Patrimony of St Peter and the Vatican and Leonine Cities.

Perhaps most noteworthy is a quirk in the Italian constitution allowing for his presidency that nonetheless endures to this day. The Italian Republic allows anyone 'born the subject of an Italian state' of sufficient age and other factors to become president or vice president. In modern terms, this has been interpreted to mean anyone born in San Marino, the State of St Peter, or Italy itself to lead the latter. Historically, however, this meant that those born elsewhere, such as the Genoese Republic, or the Kingdom of Naples, for example, could be chosen to lead Italy.

President of the District of Ajaccio, 1790
French Commissioner of Wars, 1793
Deputy for Liamone in the French Council of Five Hundred, 1797-1799
French ambassador to Parma and the Papal States, 1797-1799
French Minister Plenipotentiary, 1799-1802
Member of the French Council of State 1799-1802
Member of the French Legislative Body for Golo, 1799-1802
President of the Italian Republic, 1802-1812
President of the Committee to Revise the Constitution, 1812-1814
Minister Plenipotentiary for the Italian Republic, 1812-1815
President of the Italian Court of Cassation, 1812-1844

 

[theflyingmgoose]

Bayard Rustin (1912-2007)

Harvard University (BA): 1930-1934
-Editor in Chief of the Harvard Political Review - 1932-1933
-Member of the Porcellian Club - 1932-1934

United States Department of Commerce: 1934-1936
-Special Advisor to the Secretary of Commerce for Disadvantaged Groups - 1934-1935
-Deputy Administrator of the Public Works Commission for Detroit-West Michigan - 1935-1936
Executive Office of the President of the United States: 1936-1937
-Senior Advisor to President Floyd B. Olson - 1936-1937
-Senior Advisor to President Frank L. Wright - 1937-1937
United States Department of Defense: 1937-1940
-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Procurement - 1937-1939
-Assistant Secretary of Defense for Procurement - 1939-1940
Executive Office of the President of the United States: 1940-1941
-National Security Advisor to President Frank L. Wright
United States Department of Defense: 1941-1948
-2nd Lieutenant, United States Marine Corps, Pacific Command - 1941-1942
-Major, United States Marine Corps, Pacific Command - 1942-1944
-Lieutenant Colonel, United States Marine Corps, Southern Command - 1944-1946
-Lieutenant Colonel, United States Marine Corps, "Rustin's Raiders" - 1946-1947
-Colonel, United States Marine Corps, "Rustin's Raiders" - 1947-1948
-Colonel, United States Marine Corps, Washington Command - 1948-1948
Executive Office of the President of the United States: 1948-1949
-National Security Advisor to President Upton Sinclair - 1948-1949
United States Department of Defense: 1949-1951:
-Administrator of the Southern Territories for the Nat Turner District (Formerly Georgia) - 1949-1951
Congress of the United States of America: 1952-1965
-Member of the U.S. House of Representatives for New York's 11th District - 1952-1953
-Member of the U.S. House of Representatives for New York's 13th District - 1953-1957
-Member of the U.S. Senate for New York - 1957-1965
--Chairman of the Congressional LGBT Caucus - 1954-1963
Executive Branch of the United States of America: 1965-1967
-White House Chief of Staff to President Hubert H. Humphrey - 1965-1967
United States Department of Defense: 1967-1976
-United States Secretary of Defense - 1967-1972
-Military Governor of the Southern Territories - 1972-1976
Executive Branch of the United States of America: 1976-1977
-Vice President of the United States of America - 1976-1977

Georgetown University: 1977-1980
-Tenured Professor for Political Science - 1977-1980

Executive Branch of the United States of America: 1981-1999
-President of the United States of America - 1981-1989
-Special Advisor to President Ronald W. Reagan - 1989-1997
-Special Advisor to President Birch E. Bayh - 1997-1999

Georgetown University: 1999-2005
-Interim President of Georgetown University - 1999-2000
-President of Georgetown University - 2000-2005