Things that look like alternate history but aren't

[LSCatilina]

I like how there is no explanation whatsoever in the Wiki article about why an elephant. My first thought was some sort of strained Carthaginian reference to Hannibal crossing the Alps as Napoleon also did that, but that's clearly meant to be an Indian elephant and howdah.

Even the French Wikipedia article basically offers about a dozen different explanations (a proposal for a statue of Louis XV on Place de l'Étoile, a royal symbol adopted by the republic, a carriage clock in Berlin, the stories of Alexander the Great, the Danish Order of the Elephant, a fountain in Rome, pure artistic Oreintalism etc.) as to why.

It's basically one massive *shrug*

Doesn't help that it was preceded by this Fountain of Regeneration.

 

[Time Enough]

"Private Canadian law enforcement for railroads" feels like a thing in a Wild West AH where something's gone very bad for Washington

It’s 1896, the Washington Government has fallen but still in Minnesota, Canadian Trains run on time. But when a series of bandit raids occur, it seems for CP Officer, Lloyd Barnes his work is cut out for him, as Honoré Jaxon prepares his revenge against the Canadian State.

 

[Charles EP M.]

It’s 1896, the Washington Government has fallen but still in Minnesota, Canadian Trains run on time. But when a series of bandit raids occur, it seems for CP Officer, Lloyd Barnes his work is cut out for him, as Honoré Jaxon prepares his revenge against the Canadian State.

Northman's Law (1951)

 

[RyanF]

Northman's Law (1951)

Featuring John Wayne as Louis Riel.

 

[napoleon IV]

Featuring John Wayne as Louis Riel.

"Je suis un cowpoke, pilgrim."

 

[RyanF]

Continuing our series of weird almost AH uniforms I encounter in museums, we have this one from the Hockey Hall of Fame:

​

Can someone tell me when the Soviet Union went through their Loyalist phase, or when the NY Rangers were investigated by HUAC?

 

[Alex Richards]

Doesn't help that it was preceded by this Fountain of Regeneration.

That's doing a remarkably good job of obscuring the fact that she's squirting water out her breasts.

 

[Roger II]

Railways and national sovereignty are complicated. Heard of a case a while back where a guy got injured in a rail yard in St Louis and had to sue in Mexican court for damages because some rail treaty meant that Mexican law applied on the site.

OK I need to know more.

 

[LSCatilina]

That's doing a remarkably good job of obscuring the fact that she's squirting water out her breasts.

And with crossed streams.

 

[OHC]

OK I need to know more.

I'll admit I don't have a source for this one - heard about it from a friend whose father used to be a railcar dispatcher for Weyerhaeuser in the Midwest. I'll ask him for details next time I see him.

 

[SpanishSpy]

There was a Moroccan general in the Spanish Army - under Franco I might add - until 1957.

 

[Stikfigur]

100th anniversary of the Xinhai revolution, 2011, Beijing, People's republic of China.

 

[napoleon IV]

The Foreign Workers' Club of Moscow baseball team in Gorky Park, 1934. The team was formed by Americans who had emigrated to the USSR and was popular enough that Soviet Supreme Council of Physical Culture announced the introduction of baseball to the Soviet Union as a national sport. Sadly most of the people in this picture were either shot or sent to the Gulag during the Great Purge.

 

[Thande]

View attachment 70464

The Foreign Workers' Club of Moscow baseball team in Gorky Park, 1934. The team was formed by Americans who had emigrated to the USSR and was popular enough that Soviet Supreme Council of Physical Culture announced the introduction of baseball to the Soviet Union as a national sport. Sadly most of the people in this picture were either shot or sent to the Gulag during the Great Purge.

There's lots of odd stuff with baseball in the 1930s, like the fact that GB beat the USA at the Amateur World Series (retroactively considered the first Baseball World Cup) in 1938:




Got to love how our meedja still refer to it as a Test match (and seem a bit hazy on the distinction between England and GB).

I once suggested the joke conspiracy theory that Roosevelt secretly engineered WW2 just to kill off baseball in the UK before we made a habit of beating the Americans at it.

 

[RyanF]

Got to love how our meedja still refer to it as a Test match (and seem a bit hazy on the distinction between England and GB).

Too that the indeterminate scope Atlantic archipelago side were managed by a multi-disciplined baseball/ice hockey player/manager born in... Nova Scotia.

It's like that ice hockey world championship the UK won in the 30s with a team largely composed of Canadians.

 

[Thande]

Too that the indeterminate scope Atlantic archipelago side were managed by a multi-disciplined baseball/ice hockey player/manager born in... Nova Scotia.

It's like that ice hockey world championship the UK won in the 30s with a team largely composed of Canadians.

IIRC cricket was technically part of one early Olympics but it consisted of a GB team and a "French" team that was comprised of the staff at the British Embassy in Paris.

 

[RyanF]

IIRC cricket was technically part of one early Olympics but it consisted of a GB team and a "French" team that was comprised of the staff at the British Embassy in Paris.

Cleverly disguised in false moustaches?

 

[Hendryk]

This Taiwanese statue commemorates the Dutch surrender to Chinese forces in 1662, and it could easily be repurposed if one wants to have China win a war against a Western power in the early modern era.

 

[RyanF]

Star Trek Party intensifies.

​

 

[Thande]

Star Trek Party intensifies.

​

The Toronto 'new' city hall is definitely one of the most Star Trek Matte Painting buildings to actually exist in real life.