Alternate History Facts for March, 2020

March 1, 1852: Having defeated the animate stone centaur guardian, Archibald Montgomerie became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

March 2, 1657: A battle between a priest and the spirit possessing a cursed kimono sparked the great fire of Meireki, sweeping Edo and killing over 100,000.

March 3, 1923: Henry Luce and Briton Hadden published the first issue of Time Magazine. The title was part of a slow ritual to diminish those parts of the world not governed by the ticking of the clock, strengthening Luce's time-based magic.

March 4, 1152: The prince-electors elevated Frederick Barbarossa to King of Germany after he demonstrated his mastery of the six demonic commands.

March 5, 1868: Arrigo Boito released the opera Mefistofele. It was a critical failure, both with audiences and in its primary purpose, to summon and bind the demon Gusion. Boito immediately set on revising it, but it never accomplished his goal.

March 6, 1953: Joseph Stalin transitioned into his second identity as Georgy Malenkov. Though he could not hold onto the same power he had before, he preserved his life.

March 7, 1967: Alice B Toklas crumbled to dust at the conclusion of a wizard's duel in which she sealed away a hostile invading dimension.

March 8, 1658: The Treaty of Roskilde ceded a third of the Dano-Norwegian Realm to Sweden and another fifth to the distant dimension of Essvall. That fifth vanished entirely from land, making Denmark-Norway and the entire world smaller.

March 9, 2011: The Space Shuttle Discovery made its final landing of 39, over 27 years of service. A replica is on display in Virginia, while the original was donated to an adjacent timeline with less-advanced space travel.

March 10, 1804: The American flag rose over St. Louis, concluding the Lousiana Purchase and the Three Flags Ritual that weakened for generations those native spirits that might have resisted the American possession.

March 11, 1784: The Treaty of Mangalore ended the Second Anglo-Mysore War, in which Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of the Kingdom of Mysore used cunning illusions and brilliant tactics to trounce the British East India Company's forces.

March 12, 1930: Mahatma Gandhibegan the Salt Satyagraha, a 24-day protest march that granted Gandhi the spiritual power of thousands. Rather than using this to attack the oppressors, Gandhi returned it to the people in the form of confidence and pride.

March 13, 1988: The underwater Seikan Tunnel opened between the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. Still unknown to most, the tunnel burrows not through the Tsugaru Strait but through an adjacent dimension, deemed both cheaper and safer at the time.

March 14, 1757: The British Navy executed Admiral John Byng by exposure to the cthonic realms, for the crime of failing "to do his utmost" in combat against the French. Despite wide support for Byng, King George II enforced the sentence.

March 15, 963: Romanos II of the Byzantine Empire did not die, as widely believed, but fell through a wormhole to 2063 Poland, where he lived the rest of his life as a moderately successful CPA.

March 16, 1660: Members of the Long Parliament finally managed to break the arcane seal preventing them from ending their session.

March 17, 1891: The SS Utopia collided with the HMS Anson in the Bay of Gibraltar as the Anson returned through unspoken paths in a new government program. To protect the research's secrecy, they blamed captain of the Utopia John McKeague.

March 18, 1965: Alexei Arkhipovich Leonov conducts the first extravehicular activity in space, after the Russians were the first to attain permission from the Voidlords.

March 19, 1649: The British House of Commons locked away all magic of the House of Lords in a silver heart in a gold-beaked goose. It would remain so bound until King Charles II found the goose and slew it.

March 20, 1970: Lt-Col Arthur Heywood-Lonsdale became Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire after predecessor Maj-Gen Robert Bridgeman contracted a slow-acting, incurable poison saving Shropshire from netherwasps in the line of duty.

March 21, 1954: The All England Badminton Championships concluded with a sweep by the fey competitors, who then vanished into their realms. Unsportingly, the British instead recorded winners from the human realms.

March 22, 1996: Space Shuttle Atlantis launched on its 16th mission, docking with Space Station Mir and, with permission of the Voidlords, Void Station Ircth IV, before landing on March 31.

March 23, 1884: The ship John Wickliffe at Port Chalmers in New Zealand. Though the passenger manifest doesn't mention it, several surviving accounts from the time include the first known mentions of Bringer of Death John Wick.

March 24, 1387: The Battle of Margate began between England and a joint continental fleet. While the small gods of wine held prisoner by the continental fleet had called to the English, the English victory did not, in the end, benefit them.

March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory's half-ifrit slave burst free of its arcane containment. Having never been taught to control her power, she torched the entire building.

March 26, 1839: The town of Henley swore to forevermore hold a regatta in the height of summer. Fail to uphold the agreement and their descendants would vanish from this Earth. The royal family endorsed the regatta to protect their subjects.

March 27, 1794: President George Washington signed into law an act creating the USA's first six warships. Congress passed the law in part to legally accept the gift of a ghost frigate from a neighboring nation of the dead, which was lost shortly after.

March 28, 1920: The unprovoked murder of a half-spirit daughter of the plains winds triggered a rage in the wind spirits of middle America, causing the 1920 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak and hundreds of deaths.

March 29, 1882: Michael J McGivney successfully overcame the angel Yumiel, binding it to lend its divine energy to the nascent Knights of Columbus.

March 30, 1973: Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, 14th Duke of Hamilton collapsed inward into his heart, which crystallized into a ruby now held in the Tower of London's secret chambers.

March 31, 1822: Ottoman troops began the slaughter and enslavement of inhabitants of Chios. Kara-Ali Pasha hoped the slaughter of an estimated 52,000 would propitiate the god of death, but said entity regarded him as little as he regarded the Greeks.