Photos from Alternate Worlds II (read FAQ first)
The Royal Marines disembark off barges on the shores of Galicia, Spain as part of the Galicia Campaign (1914)
In an attempt to outflank the Franco-Spanish defensive lines near the Spanish-Portuguese border, the Royal navy authorized a daring plan to land on Galicias western shores with the Marines, with manpower assistance from the Portuguese and the Dominions. The bold plan was a tremendous success, facing little resistance in gaining a foothold. Not wanting to risk an encirclement and being thrown into the Atlantic, French high command authorized a total retreat from Galicia, calculating the Coalition wouldn’t be able to make much headway on a large front consisting of the entire length of Continental System home turf. They were proven correct. The Iberian lines wouldn’t meaningfully change until the Madrid Revolution in the winter of 1916 caused the complete collapse of the front.
The legislators of the Serbian National Assembly cheer as a vote to formally rename the Serbian nation to “The People’s Republics of Yugoslavia“ and to rename the Assembly to the “Pan-Slavic Workers Congress” passes with near unanimity. (1914)
Ever since the Serbian Revolution in 1883 against the fledgling Ottoman Empire resulted in the creation of Europe‘s first Gracchist state, the initial Serb leaders were careful to not openly try to formet revolution in the rest of the Balkans, fearing Russian or Hapsburg intervention that would destroy the fledgling state. However, the new generation of Pan-Slavic radicals in the 1900s and 1910s would openly incite unionism, arming Gracchist partisans in Hapsburg Croatia and Bosnia. With the Great War having bogged the Austrians down in Italy and border tensions with the Russians forcing most reserves to be kept in the east, Serbia took its chance with the Illyrian Revolt in the winter of 1913 following prolonged food riots. The Serbian assembly made its final ambitions known, renaming themselves to The People’s Republics of Yugoslavia on New Years Day of 1914. A declaration of war on the Austrian Empire would come the following day, forcing the formation of an awkward alliance between the conservative and capitalist Continental System, and the radical socialistic Yugoslavian state.
Crimean Peninsula Music and Arts Festival (2024)
In a world where the USSR never fell and successfully liberalized...
The Crimean Peninsula Music and Arts Festival (often referred to as just "Crimea Fest") was founded in 2004 by Melodiya as their answer to the wildly popular and growing Coachella by their international rival, the United States, and a place where Soviet music acts new and old can show off their talents to the wide masses. Crimea was chosen as the location due to the ideal climate and scenery being roughly comparable to that of Southern California, as well as the close proximity to the many resorts and hotels that already existed in the area to begin with.
Crimea Fest was a major success, thanks in part due to its appeal to younger audiences and being highly affordable. Originally, Crimea Fest consisted entirely of domestic acts within the USSR, but in the following years expanded to include non-Soviet acts. While other artists and bands from the Eastern Bloc were most prominent at first, such as from the Warsaw Pact nations and even places like Mongolia, Vietnam and Cuba, as well as the occasional Third World musician, acts from the Western Bloc started to appear as well by 2009.
As of 2024, Crimea Fest plays a mix of Soviet, Eastern Bloc, Third World and Western Bloc acts that draws tourists from all over the world each year.
What is especially notable about Crimea Fest compared to Coachella is the near total absence of drugs... by design. The KGB is known to patrol the festival disguised as concertgoers, and they issue extremely harsh punishments to anyone caught doing or dealing drugs.
Because the USSR liberalized, there's more freedom of expression for music acts, but they still have to follow some strict guidelines. Nothing that makes the USSR look bad. As such, in the underground Soviet punk scene, it's viewed as "selling out" if you perform at Crimea Fest. Western acts performing at Crimea Fest have to have all of their setlist pre-screened before they can play live, to filter out any songs or lyrics potentially "dangerous" to Soviet state ideology. Infamously, when Muse headlined Crimea Fest in 2016, they were forbidden from performing their iconic song Uprising for that reason.
Overall, Crimea Fest is a well-known music festival and the most iconic one of it's kind within the Eastern Bloc.
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Kingdom of Bavaria diplomat Franz Weber and North German Confederation diplomat Wilhelm Schulz seal the deal on a framework for German unification, to be set in motion upon the inevitable conclusion of the Great War. (January 1915)
Despite Northern Germany being unified under Prussia upon the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war in 1875, Southern Germany had stubbornly remained out of reach for full unification. The Confederation of the Rhine remained a rump puppet state of the French, reduced to the west of the river Rhine. Other southern German states such as Baden chose to stay under French or Austrian protection, fearful of being reduced to mere vassals of the militaristic Prussian kings. With the Great War putting Austria and North Germany on the same side , Austria gave the go ahead for North Germany to unify all of Germany in exchange for the keeping of trade and economic prerogatives, as well as guaranteed state protection of Catholics, in the region. Despite most of the small states in the South not controlled by France by folding to North Germany by early 1914, the considerably larger and neutral Bavaria was the last holdout. After almost a year of fraught negotiations between all parties, the framework for a unified German Empire was created, guaranteeing political and social freedom of all Christian denominations, autonomy for local rulers, free trade, and more representation of other German kingdoms besides Prussia in the German officer corps. The framework is known to history as the Treaty of Ulm (1915). Germany would officially unify under Kaiser Frederick IV a week after the Armistice of Verdun, which ended fighting in the Great War. (October 1917).
Speaking of The Flintstones...
Artistic reconstructions of remains found at the archaeological site commonly called "Bedrock"
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A promotional image of Seth MacFarlane's reboot of The Flintstones (2013-present).
The show began production in early 2011. Working together with Fuzzy Door Studios (MacFarlane's production company) Warner Bros.' Animation (who owned the rights to The Flintstones following Hanna-Barbera being absorbed into WB following William Hanna's death in 2001), The Flintstones would debut on Fox in September 2013, shortly after the cancellation of The Cleveland Show.
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Promo image found on the Lost Media Wiki
Teaser poster for Ant-Man (2007), starring Ewan McGregor as Hank Pym.
Part of @SakuraFoxBlossom's ongoing Scraping the Barrel Shared Worlds game.
Why does he kinda look like William Randolph Hearst in military uniform?
I dunno, the AI probably didn't have a lot of good reference images. He's one of those people which at this point probably are better known for showing up in hoi4 mods than what they actually did OTL and not really documented, which is a bit unfair to Smedley Butler.
Vermont Border Guards on patrol near Rupert, VT in 1956. After the secession of Vermont in 1932, relations with the Republic of Vermont and neighboring countries like New England and Adirondack were never altogether that hostile, and the Vermont-Adirondack border is not as militarized as some of the others between the U.S.'s successor states.
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The iconic photo of Vasily Zaitsev, the famous sniper in the Lake Marshall (Then known as Lake George) area of the Southern Adirondacks during the Canadian Intervention of 1938-1939 in the Second American Civil War (1936-1942). One of the more famous foreign volunteers in the armed forces of the Combined Syndicates of America. He had initially, like many left-wingers in the aftermath of Boris Savinkov's rise to power, fled to France. With the outbreak of the SACW the Third Internationale called for volunteers, so he joined the People's Liberation Army and quickly gained distinction as a sniper, getting 46 confirmed kills in the Battle of Buffalo (1938) and 174 during the Hudson Campaign (1939). After the armistice and Canadian "handover" of New England to the CSA by on Nov. 14, 1939 with the Treaty of Burlington, he participated in other battles such as the Battle of the Shenandoah (1940) and the Battle of Denver (1942). In the place where he was photographed there is now a small memorial in Bob Marshall Park.
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Photograph of an American tank during the Berkshires War, above, and photograph of United States infantry on a search-and-destroy mission in Vermont , below.
Great Northeastern War (1957-1965) (sometimes called the Berkshires War) was fought between the NETO alliance and the United States of America over the Berkshires Region, which had during the initial Wave of Successions of 1932 been preemptively seized by the Federal Military during the chaos of the Boston Coup (1932) as a buffer between New England and their lands in the Mid Atlantic. The population of the Berkshires were mostly against being kept in the USA, with elections in the new state of Berkshire being either boycotted or won by independence parties (many of which were really comprised of members of the Commonwealth Party) until they were suspended in 1952, making federal rule in the Berkshires all the more hated.
Under the pretext of several border guards being found dead (in what would later popularly be called "Operation Canned Chowder"), the Federal Army invaded the Commonwealth in 1957, hoping to begin a reunification process. As the war dragged on, public support virtually disappeared and desertions became common, even though from a strategic standpoint the war was going in favor of the Federals, with Providence falling in 1961.
The Federal's war of attrition and U.S. domestic unrest meant that Adirondack, Vermont and Appalachia continuously ramped up their support for the Commonwealth. At first, the famous Green Mountain Trails were opened to allow Commonwealth Guerillas to be supplied and reinforced. Adirondack and Appalachia both supplied advisors and equipment while aiding dissidents within Federal territory. In 1963, the U.S. declared war on Vermont in order to begin Operation Thundering Pines, which caused Vermont along with Adirondack and Appalachia to found the North Eastern Treaty Organization or NETO in partnership with New England. What followed was the long collapse of the U.S., as it was unable to withstand the resurgent commonwealth and its new allies as well as rebellions occurring in Philadelphia and New York in 1964. After the 1965 fall of Washington, the U.S. was effectively dissolved although several exile governments have since been formed.
Great Northeastern War (1957-1965) (sometimes called the Berkshires War) was fought between the NETO alliance and the United States of America over the Berkshires Region, which had during the initial Wave of Successions of 1932 been preemptively seized by the Federal Military during the chaos of the Boston Coup (1932) as a buffer between New England and their lands in the Mid Atlantic. The population of the Berkshires were mostly against being kept in the USA, with elections in the new state of Berkshire being either boycotted or won by independence parties (many of which were really comprised of members of the Commonwealth Party) until they were suspended in 1952, making federal rule in the Berkshires all the more hated.
Under the pretext of several border guards being found dead (in what would later popularly be called "Operation Canned Chowder"), the Federal Army invaded the Commonwealth in 1957, hoping to begin a reunification process. As the war dragged on, public support virtually disappeared and desertions became common, even though from a strategic standpoint the war was going in favor of the Federals, with Providence falling in 1961.
The Federal's war of attrition and U.S. domestic unrest meant that Adirondack, Vermont and Appalachia continuously ramped up their support for the Commonwealth. At first, the famous Green Mountain Trails were opened to allow Commonwealth Guerillas to be supplied and reinforced. Adirondack and Appalachia both supplied advisors and equipment while aiding dissidents within Federal territory. In 1963, the U.S. declared war on Vermont in order to begin Operation Thundering Pines, which caused Vermont along with Adirondack and Appalachia to found the North Eastern Treaty Organization or NETO in partnership with New England. What followed was the long collapse of the U.S., as it was unable to withstand the resurgent commonwealth and its new allies as well as rebellions occurring in Philadelphia and New York in 1964. After the 1965 fall of Washington, the U.S. was effectively dissolved although several exile governments have since been formed.
Photos of the Battle of New York, the largest urban battle of the Fourth Rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies.
Colorized photo of the sun rising over Manhattan after the city lost power, September 1977.
Colorized photo of a building in Brooklyn in flames after an arson attack by the New Sons of Liberty, September 1977.
Photo of firefighters in a store in the Bronx borough of New York, ca. August 1977.
Colorized photo of the sun rising over Manhattan after the city lost power, September 1977.
Colorized photo of a building in Brooklyn in flames after an arson attack by the New Sons of Liberty, September 1977.
Photo of firefighters in a store in the Bronx borough of New York, ca. August 1977.