Derek Gould

When viewed from above the galactic plane, do all objects revolve clockwise, ie stars around the galaxy, planets around stars, moons around planets?

If so, why?

1. What event would you change?

2. Why and how would you change it?

3. What difference would you expect that change to make to the present-day world?

History books say the the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on the orders of the Serbian army intelligence chief triggered WW1 because the allies and the central European powers were each bound by a system of mutual defence treaties. When Austria declared war on Serbia, the treaties caused a chain reaction which set all the European powers up against each other.

But these treaties existed before 1914 and there had been two earlier Balkan wars in 1912-13.

So, why didn't the earlier two Balkan Wars trigger WW1? And what made the assassination different that it triggered WW1 instead of just a Third Balkans War?

History is written by the victors, which holds that the Empire of Japan attacked US bases in the Pacific without provocation on 7 December 1941.

The background is that US forces imposed an embargo on Japan after Japan invaded China in 1937, even though USA was neutral at that time. Japan regarded this as a provocative act since it needed oil to continue its war.

The closest alternate source was the oilfields in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). But if it attacked the East Indies, it would have left its flanks exposed to US forces based in The Philippines and in Hawaii. So it attacked these at the same time as it invaded the East Indies and the British colonies in Hong Kong and Malaya (now Malaysia) where there was rubber needed for the war effort.

My questions is this - if Japan had just invaded the East Indies and Malaya (without attacking The Philippines and Pearl Harbor), would USA have declared war on Japan or remained neutral?