One of the earliest collections of alternate history was published in 1931: If It Had Happened Otherwise: Lapses into Imaginary History. Churchill contributed “If Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg” (written from the perspective of an historian in a world where Jeb Stuart reached the battle in time to support Pickett’s charge). Harold Nicholson contributed “If Byron Had Become King of Greece.”
Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomatox VA took place in the randomly chosen home of a William McLean. Knowing the surrender was to take place, Grant sent a messenger ahead to Appomatox to find a suitable building. The messenger liked the McLean house, for some reason or other, and he asked McLean if they could use his home. McLean, a grocer, reluctantly agreed.
After the surrender was signed, Union soldiers helped themselves to belongings from the McLean home - essentially, they wanted souvenirs from the house. Some soldiers simply took items, while others took items and left some money for McLean. Major General Edward Ord paid $40 (equivalent to $618 in today’s dollars) for the table that General Robert E. Lee used to sign the surrender document.
Mr. McLean was involved in both the first and last major actions of the American Civil War. The initial engagement on July 21, 1861 of what would become the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) took place on McLean’s farm, which was used as a headquarters for the Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard and was damaged by cannon fire. Mc Lean moved farther south to get out of the war zone, which ironically led to his being part of the final surrender at Appromattox.
McLean Stevenson left “MASH" because he wasn’t the star of the show. He fixed the problem by starring in “The McLean Stevenson Show” (1976–77), “In the Beginning” (1978), “Hello, Larry” (1979–80) and “Condo” (1983). All four sitcoms were dismissed by audiences and lambasted by critics, and all aired while "MASH” was still in production.
Elliot Gould, who played Trapper John McIntyre in the original movie of MAS*H, has out-lived his TV counterparts: Wayne Rogers died in 2015, and Pernell Roberts in 2010 (maybe Gould should be very careful in 2020!)
Correction: it is Wilmer McLean, not William. Also, I misspelled Appomattox.
After the Civil War, McLean is supposed to have said “The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor”.
Still in play:
I’ll play off of that - Hot Lips lives! Loretta Swit is still alive, at 78. Here she is in March 1979, Hot Lips on the cover of People magazine: loretta swit people magazine cover - Google Search
Loretta Lynn is the most awarded female country recording artist and the only female ACM Artist of the Decade (1970s).
That’s why we got trouble! Right here in Doper City!
In play:
The 2007 British cop comedy Hot Fuzz was filmed in Wells, Somerset. Wells Cathedral was digitally painted out of every shot of the cathedral city, as the production crew wanted the Church of St. Cuthbert to be the heart of the fictional town of Sandford.
ETA: Loretta Lynn does not appear in the movie, either.
In Boston, on October 2, 1973, 24-year-old Evelyn Wagler, after running out of fuel, was walking back to her car with a two-gallon can of gasoline. Six teenagers dragged her into an alley and forced her to pour gasoline on herself. She complied, and was then set on fire by the teenagers. The teenagers walked away laughing. Wagler was white, and the youths were black, and this murder occurred during a racially tense period in Boston history.
After the incident, the press reported that the made-for-TV movie Fuzz (based on an Ed McBain 87th Precinct’ mystery) had aired the previous weekend, and featured teenagers setting homeless people on fire in the town of Boston. The perpetrators may have re-enacted the fictional arson attack portrayed in the movie. The real life case was never solved.
As Allied forces were closing in around Berlin, on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the Führerbunker after being married for one day. After intense street-to-street combat, when Soviet troops were within a block or two of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler shot himself and Braun bit into a cyanide capsule. Their bodies were carried up the stairs and through the bunker’s emergency exit to the bombed-out garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where the corpses were placed in a bomb crater, doused with gasoline, and burned.
A sabot is a shoe carved from a single block of wood.
In Roald Dahl’s poem based on Cinderella, one of the ugly stepsisters substitutes her shoe for Cinderella’s, but the prince whacks off her head rather than marry her. Ditto Stepsister #2. So Cinderella marries a simple jam maker.
On December 30, 1965, Ferdinand Marcos began his first term as President of the Philippines. He ruled for 21 years (under martial law from 1972 until 1981) and his regime as dictator was known for corruption, extravagance, and brutality. His wife was Imelda Marcos, whose excesses made her infamous in her own right. When Imelda left the islands to go into exile, she was found to have left behind 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 1,000 handbags, and 1,060 pairs of shoes. In 1995 some 10,000 Filipinos won a US class-action lawsuit filed against the Marcos estate. The charges were filed by victims or their surviving relatives for torture, execution, and disappearances. The Swiss government, initially reluctant to respond to allegations that stolen funds were held in Swiss accounts, returned US $684 million of Marcos’ wealth (Imelda’s net worth has been estimated to be US $5 billion).
The Marcos regime made a deal to lend dozens of its helicopters, repainted with U.S. Army Vietnam-era markings, to Francis Ford Coppola for the filming of Apocalypse Now. From time to time, much to Coppola’s frustration, the helicopters would have to leave the production in order to fight nearby Filipino guerillas.
“Give me ten thousand Filipinos and I shall conquer the world!” was Douglas MacArthur’s comment on the resilience and strength of the native guerrilla forces against the Japanese after American troops surrendered at Bataan in April 1942. The U.S. officially recognized 277 guerrilla units and 260,715 individual fighters, mostly those associated with the Philippine Commonwealth. In reality, there were probably well over one million guerrillas resisting the Japanese.
One captain in the Black Army on Leyte was Captain Nieves Fernandez, the only known female guerrilla commander in the Philippines. Once a schoolteacher, Fernandez now commanded 110 men. She specialized in improvised weaponry and even used a homemade shotgun; as a sharpshooter, she killed over 200 Japanese soldiers. The Japanese, in turn, put a 10,000 Peso price on her head.
Ferdinand Marcos launched the first-ever rocket made in the Philippines. Launched in Caballo Island (near Corregidor), the rocket was part of “Project Santa Barbara” which was participated by a group of scientists and the Philippine Navy.
Corregidor is a tadpole-shaped island, with its tail running eastward, is about 4 miles long, about 1.2 miles wide at its widest with a total land area of about 2,200 acres. The highest elevation is 590 feet. The Island is a remnant of a volcanic crater, the Corregidor Caldera, which was last active about one million years ago. However, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology still classifies Corregidor as a potentially active volcano.
On February 19, 1600, Huaynaputina, a volcano in Peru, had the biggest eruption in South America’s recorded history. The eruption killed more than 1500 people, and ash buried ten villages. The atmospheric spike of acid as a result of the eruption was higher than that of Krakatau’s 1883 eruption in Indonesia.
Parícutin, a scoria-cone volcano located in the Mexican state of Michoacán, surged suddenly from the cornfield of local farmer Dionisio Pulido in 1943. By 1952, the volcano left a 424 meter high cone and significantly damaged a 233 km2 area with the ejection of stone, ash and lava. Three people were killed, two towns were completely evacuated and buried by lava and three others were heavily affected. Hundreds of people had to be permanently relocated, with two new towns created to accommodate the migration of people. Although the area still remains highly active volcanically, Parícutin itself is quiet and has become a tourist attraction, with people climbing the volcano itself and visiting the hardened-lava covered ruins of the San Juan Parangaricutiro Church.