history what ifs 4
History, four
Until the 1900’s, historians primarily studied political events. They wrote almost exclusively about diplomacy, wars, and affairs of state. Today, historians also study many other subjects. Some examine economic and social conditions. Others trace the development of religions, the arts, or other elements of culture.
Hypothetical Questions
15. If you could go back in time and change history, what would you do? If I could change history, I would….
16. What will happen in the future?
17. What were the consequences of the following events? What would have happened if they hadn’t happened or happened differently?
18. King Jaruslaw of Poland decided to send a 10,000 cavalrymen to Vienna in 1689 to help defend the city against an Ottoman siege.
19. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence.
20. On July 14, 1789, a huge crowd of Parisians rushed to the Bastille. They captured the Bastille and began to tear it down.
21. Duke Ferdinad’s car took a detour in Sarajevo, Bosnia in 1914 — right towards Gabril Princep.
22. During World War I, German agents place Vladimir Ilich Lenin in a sealed, armored train bound for Petrograd. What happened later? What would have happened if they hadn’t?
23. Adolf had been rejected by the Vienna Academy of Art. What would have happened he he been accepted?
24. On 10 August 1940, a squadron of Luftwaffe Mescheschmidt dropped a payload of bombs on a residential section of London, causing numerous civilian casualties.
25. How would things have turned out had US President Harry S. Truman not dismissed (relieved) General Douglas MacArthur of his command of United Nations forces in Korea?
26. What would have happened if Oleg Penkovsky admired Nikita Khrushchev (and not passed on Soviet nuclear secrets to the CIA)? What would have happened if John F. Kennedy and his cabinet was not careful in their thinking and behavior?
27. A six-year-old Cuban refugee was denied asylum in the United States and custody with his U.S. relatives in Miami. After a highly publicized S.W.A.T. raid ordered by Secretary of the Interior Janet Reno, he was returned to Cuba with his father in June 2000—not long before the 2000 U.S. presidential elections. In other words what if Al Gore, and not George W. Bush, had won the election?
