HAistoric — Histories That Almost Were

— That’s one small step for a man, one giant grift for the paranoid. —

— How one pope’s logistical oversight cultivated a new, extremely profitable kind of transubstantiation. —

— The Achaemenid Empire’s last, best hope involved three eunuchs, a folding ladder, and a truly heroic quantity of horse-dung. —

— Bermuda’s premier training academy for lighthouse keepers boasts a 97% vessel disappearance rate, and the alumni reviews are absolutely glowing. —

— The North Atlantic shipping lane just gained a permanent, deeply inconvenient tourist attraction. —

— One KGB Major, one NATO General, and one very expensive pack of cigarettes. —

— A misplaced telegram sees OPEC accidentally bankroll a Marxist revolution, and the Conquering Lion of Judah discovers his credit has been cancelled. —

— One Hollywood exile, one stolen print, and the 7,000 Soviet actors who learned to act with their mouths shut. —

— The plan was to catalogue every lewd-looking orchid in France. The result was a peasant uprising that knew exactly which windows to smash. —

— One man’s quest to circle the globe runs aground on a continent he wasn’t looking for, with predictable results. —

— Jackie Robinson tells Branch Rickey to stick his contract where the sun don't shine. The Negro Leagues never looked stronger. —

— On the eve of disaster, the Titanic’s First-Class passengers cared about only one thing: winning the inaugural North Atlantic Pickleball Invitational. —

— Some said it was the sound of progress. Most just said it was a bloody racket. —

— One simple job, one master key, one very long night in November. —

— One woman’s crusade to apply several thousand invertebrates to every available soldier. —