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Lesser-Known Near-Deaths and Near-Misses

Related to Charles' JFK example, George HW Bush's plane crashed in the Pacific and both of his fellow crew members died. Other aviators who were shot down nearby were captured, executed, and eaten by cannibalistic Japanese soldiers (not kidding).

Bob Dole was also extremely lucky to survive a German shell that shattered his collarbone and spine; he almost died also from numerous life threatening infections in hospital and spent years in rehabilitation before he started his political career.

Makes you wonder about all the talented young people who died in the Wars and would have shaped the world if they had stayed alive.
 
And linked to that, Gene Roddenberry almost died in three plane crashes, two during the war and one in '47.
Ceausescu also nearly died in a similar manner in 1957,which would have led to Maurer inevitably becoming Secretary General In ‘65 after he and Bondăraș would fail to find a compromise candidate to beat Drăghici and Apostol.

A Maurer regiment would be interesting,as it would still be a National Communist one that goes third way and tells the Soviets to get fucked,but less extreme and obsessed with austerity and Dacism,that still doesn’t want that much reform though and would,like Ceausescu,try to go on and on and on.

Another interesting consequence is Iliescu’s career never really happening,since his rise happened only because his uncle was best mates with Ceausescu and Nicu wanted to reward his old mate who helped rig the 1939 Workers beauty contest for Elena.
 
PS, that Doctor Zebra site is fascinating, you could plausibly kill off Lincoln, Taft and BOTH Roosevelts before their political careers even start.


Or you could have Taft being the first President killed in a car accident in 1910, after the Presidential automobile was hit by a trolleybus.
 
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Actually, I'd be remiss not to mention my boy in this thread too. In 1967, the newly elected Governor Tom McCall was drafted as one of LBJ's election monitors for the South Vietnamese presidential race. He and North Dakota Governor Bill Guy were staying in the ambassador's residence when they were thrown out of their beds in the middle of the night by a car bomb going off right outside.

They were uninjured (although McCall reported being so shaky at breakfast the next day he couldn't spread his jelly), but what if the bomb had been a little more powerful? The deaths of two state governors and Ellsworth Bunker all at once would have been a propaganda victory for the North Vietnamese, not quite on the level of the Tet Offensive but close - and a potential excuse for Johnson to escalate the war further.

And setting aside the huge local implications it'd have here, McCall's term being over before it's really begun means that policy ideas he popularized nationally (bottle deposits, urban growth boundaries, odd-even gas rationing) would have to wait for another champion. Dystopia lovers, here's a POD to make both Vietnam and the energy crisis slightly more unpleasant.

(McCall was also the target of an apparent assassination attempt in August 1973, when, during his prostate surgery, nurses found a nitroglycerin bomb in the bathroom directly below his hospital room. No perpetrator was ever identified, though, which makes it a bit of a dud as a POD; in that era it could have been anybody. This was also after most of his signature accomplishments were already law.)
 
Reagan must have had something on a film set where he might have been injured or killed.

Blank-firing guns only ruined his hearing (on-set gun safety was pretty good in those day, mainly thanks to the safety-conscious NRA :rolleyes:), but the only major threat to his health was the John Hinckley assassination. His injuries were many times worse than Garfield's or McKinley's

I like this anecdote
"Dr. Zebra was told that a medical student at the George Washington University School of Medicine, doing a rotation in the emergency room, had earlier that day seen a chest tube inserted. Furthermore, the resident supervising the student told him, "OK, you get to put in the chest tube on the next case that comes in." Shortly thereafter, an ashen Reagan walked through the door and collapsed. The resident immediately looked at the student and said: "No!"

Harold Macmillan had a near miss during the First World War, but I suppose there plenty of politicians his age who served in the First World War who had near-misses. He also survived a plane crash in 1943.

Also; On 21 April 1943, Général de brigade Charles de Gaulle was to be flown in a Wellington bomber to Scotland to inspect the Free French navy. On take-off, the bomber's tail dropped, and the plane nearly crashed into the airfield's embankment. Only the skill of the pilot saved them. On inspection, it was found that aeroplane's elevator control rod had been sabotaged, using acid.
 
Great thread idea. As the OP alludes to with Obama's hypothetical grand piano, I've always been disappointed by the number of (often otherwise good) TLs that resort to 'lol random heart attack' rather than using a real-life near-disaster.

As I used in The Unreformed Kingdom, Lord Palmerston was nearly killed in 1818 when he was shot climbing the stairs of the War Office by a mentally ill veteran, Lt Davies - the bullet only grazed his back, and he went on to be an incredibly influential Foreign and Prime Minister.

Similarly, Sir Robert Peel was nearly assassinated in 1843 by an insane Scottish wood turner, Daniel M'Naghten, who instead shot his secretary - these being the days before everyone knew what the Prime Minister looked like.
 
Great thread idea. As the OP alludes to with Obama's hypothetical grand piano, I've always been disappointed by the number of (often otherwise good) TLs that resort to 'lol random heart attack' rather than using a real-life near-disaster.

Young Barry Soetoro lacerated his arm badly on a barbed-wire fence while mud-sliding in Indonesia. Blood-loss and/or infection could have prevented Barack H. Obama's irresistible rise to the top.

Similarly, Sir Robert Peel was nearly assassinated in 1843 by an insane Scottish wood turner, Daniel M'Naghten, who instead shot his secretary - these being the days before everyone knew what the Prime Minister looked like.

I always falsely remember M'Naghten (of M'Naghten's Rules fame) as one of Queen Victoria's attempted assassins, not Peel's.

I think there is plenty of scope for a Suffragette assassinating Churchill, Asquith or Lloyd-George, maybe if Theresa Garnett had a gun or a knife at Bristol Temple Meads, instead of just a dog whip.
 
Franz Ferdinand (the archduke, not the band) nearly died in 1913 in Worksop when game shooting, when a shotgun accidentally discharged, the shot passing close by.

This is an interesting one, because in a world where he had died in 1913, the author of a TL that spared him only to kill him in 1914 to spark a global conflict would swiftly find piss and their face in alignment.
 
Montgomery was shot by a sniper in October 1914, the bullet hit him in the right lung. This could very easily have been a fatal injury.

Something I have run with in WIAF: De Gaulle was stabbed in the thigh by a German bayonet during the Battle of Verdun. In OTL he survived and was taken prisoner, but if the blade had hit the femoral artery, he would have bled to death on the spot, and the history of France from 1940 on would have been noticeably different.
 
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