Alternate History Facts for May, 2020
May 1, 1876: Queen Victoria of England officially acquired the style "Empress of India" at the end of a three-day ritual that siphoned authority and arcane power from the subcontinent's natives.
May 2, 1808: After more than a month of occupation, the people of Madrid used ancient incantations to manifest their resentments to fight beside them in an attack known as the Dos de Mayos Uprising.
May 3, 1715: The great celestomancer Edmond Halley caused a total solar eclipse over London to impress the public, cow his enemies, and stymie the ritual summonings of his rivals.
May 4, 1519: Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici died of a misfired curse from across the ocean. Sheer cussedness kept his body moving and ruling Florence for months more, leaving behind orders that would see his will done for years longer.
May 5, 1821: Napoleon accepted the commission of aliens from a distant galaxy to lead interstellar wars for them. Dying after centuries of warfare, Napoleon was then returned by the aliens, preserved in his old form.
May 6, 1682: King Louis XIV of France officially moved the royal court to Versailles to take advantage of hundreds of expensive spells of social and political influence, which he had commissioned over the previous two decades.
May 7, 1920: Soviet Russia and the Democratic Republic of Georgia signed the Treaty of Moscow, a magically-binding oath to respect Georgian independence. Georgia's unskilled (or perhaps suborned) oath-binders meant the binding wore off in nine months.
May 8, 1980: The World Health Organization officially announced the eradication of smallpox, resulting in the departure of aliens from orbit around Jupiter. The disease somehow powered their ship, which left before draining its final reserves.
May 9, 1450: Abdal-Latif Mirza died trying to conquer one of the spirit realms as he had conquered Mā Warāʾ an-Nahr (Transoxiana). Coincidentally, an assassin came for him the same day and, finding him dead, took credit.
May 10, 946: A literal puppet was elected Pope Agapetus II. Animated by shadow sorcery, it fooled no one but provided enough of an excuse for political business as usual.
May 11, 1997: Chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue finally defeated reigning champion Garry Kasparov, winning the right to become a real boy.
May 12, 1510: Prince of Anhua Zhu Zhifan launched a rebellion by massacring all imperial officials at a banquet and using their blood to fuel his magical offensive against the Zhengde Emperor. Liu Jin's sorcery was weaker but more subtle, and Zhu failed.
May 13, 1958: Ben Carlin completed the first amphibious circumnavigation of the globe—also the last, thanks to treaties forged with the Sunken People during the journey.
May 14, 1868: Magnus Hirschfeld was born with his full intellect and making immediate observations on the fluid nature of human sexuality.
May 15, 1850: After the appearance of a previously unknown master aeromancer among Argentine forces, France and Britain signed the Arana-Southern Treaty with Argentine Confederation, a great South American victory.
May 16, 1920: Pope Benedict XV canonized Jeanne d'Arc as a saint of the Catholic Church, binding her spiritual essence in service of the Church and its adherents. She has not answered a prayer since June of 1940.
May 17, 1875: Aristides won the first Kentucky Derby, ridden by Oliver Lewis. Their victory provoked new rules in the coming years against extraterrestrial bloodlines in horse racing.
May 18, 872: Louis II of Italy was crowned Holy Roman Emperor for a second time, to replenish the magic that had faded since his first coronation. He expended it unwisely and died just over three years later.
May 19, 1950: An incursion of Old Gods burst through into realspace by South Amboy, New Jersey. The National Guard fought them off with artillery, which fueled the cover-up: an ammunition explosion instead of a tentacle invasion.
May 20, 2019: The General Conference on Weights and Measures redefined the kilogram to rely on the Planck constant rather than the international prototype of the kilogram, abruptly robbing France of its power to control mass through the prototype.
May 21, 1792: About 30 tons of rock disappeared from Mount Unzen, causing a landslide and megatsunami that killed approximately 15,000. Historians are unsure where the stolen rock went, or whether the process of taking it caused prior local earthquakes.
May 22, 1246: The prince-electors raised Henry Raspe as the Anti-king of Germany in opposition to Conrad IV of Germany. The two met once in battle, and the resulting annihilation reaction wounded Raspe mortally, though Conrad survived.
May 23, 826: Michael of Synnada died in exile, suffered after defending the practice of rune wizardry to Emperor Leo V the Armenian, who wanted to destroy such runes and prohibit their study as ungodly.
May 24, 1976: In the famed "Judgment of Paris," Steven Spurrier rated a Californian wine above French wines. The victory drained spiritual energy from Paris, channeling it across the ocean to infuse California's soil with greater life.
May 25, 2011: Bound by her agreement with the genie, Oprah Winfrey ended The Oprah Winfrey Show.
May 26, 1644: A timeline where the Spanish won the Battle of Montijo and one where the Portuguese won entangled. Both sides won the engagement, and somewhere exists a timeline where both sides lost.
May 27, 1644: Wu Sangui intentionally angered panda gods, whose indiscriminate rampage undermined the rebel Shun army, giving Wu Sangui victory in the Battle of Shanhai Pass.
May 28, 1999: Having failed to restore The Last Supper, Pinin Brambilla Barcilon instead called in a favor from travelers from our far future and swapped the contemporary The Last Supper with the version from the 1550s.
May 29, 1973: British industrialist Sir George William Harriman defeated the devil in a one-on-one game of rugby, but due to the contract's fine print, he still had to leave this plane of existence.
May 30, 1806: Future president Andrew Jackson killed Charles Dickinson in a duel after cursing his opponent's pistol not to kill him. His unfair plot worked, but the nonlethal bullet could not be removed from his chest and tormented him his entire life.
May 31, 1879: Frederic Moore joined the East India Company Museum London as an assistant, where he learned forbidden South Asian sorceries, which he used largely to better catalogue butterflies.