On Friday, May 8th, 1657, Oliver Cromwell walked the length of the Banqueting House in Whitehall to tell a committee of Parliament whether he would be King. The Commons had voted 123 to 62 to write that title into a new constitution, and for 5 weeks they had waited for his answer. About 100 army officers had come to Whitehall to say he should refuse it, and only 2 wanted him to accept.

He had 2 choices. Take the crown, or send it back. He told the committee he could not take the government with the title of King, so within 3 weeks the Commons struck out the word and wrote in Lord Protector. He died in September of 1658, and his son lasted less than 9 months. The January after Charles Stuart came home, Parliament had Cromwell’s body dug up and hanged at Tyburn. His head spent more than 20 years on a pole over Westminster Hall.

What if he’d taken the crown?

This week we hit CTRL+Z on the morning in the Banqueting House, and follow the ripple to today: the Speaker of the Commons setting a crown on Cromwell’s head, Richard the Fourth riding out to face his own regiments with the pay chests on carts behind him, a Dutch governor handing New Amsterdam to an English admiral who lets the town keep its name, and 13 American colonies declaring their independence from a king called Oliver. In 2026 Oliver the Fifth reigns under a written constitution from 1657, Dunkirk is an English town on the coast of France, and Cromwell has lain undisturbed in Westminster Abbey for 367 years, because one Friday in May he told a committee of Parliament he would take the crown.

On Thursday, August 21st, 2008, Joe Biden sat in a dentist’s office while his wife had a root canal, and Barack Obama was choosing his running mate. For 2 months Obama had kept Hillary Clinton on his list, though his campaign manager and chief strategist wanted her off it. She had the smarts, discipline, and steadfastness he wanted, he told them, but Bill Clinton was a complication. If he picked her, he said, there would be more than 2 of us in the relationship. By December the former president had agreed to 9 rules on his foundation’s money so his wife could run the State Department.

He had 2 choices. Call Biden at the dentist’s office, or offer the job to Clinton. He called Biden, who said yes. Clinton used a private email server as secretary of state, and the FBI director wrote Congress about it 11 days before she lost Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Biden took the oath as the 46th president in January of 2021.

What if he’d offered it to Clinton?

This week we hit CTRL+Z on the call to the dentist’s office, and follow the ripple to today: Bill Clinton holding the Bible while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg swears in his wife as vice president, Secretary of State John Kerry receiving the coffins from Benghazi, a woman’s victory speech under the glass ceiling of the Javits Center, Donald Trump convicted by a Manhattan jury as his own TV channel covers the trial, and children taking class in tents on high school football fields in the fall of 2020. In 2026 Marco Rubio is the 46th president, Joe Biden is retired in Wilmington, and every public school built with federal money has a classroom outside, because one Thursday in August the call went to the Clintons’ house in Chappaqua.

On January 2nd, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella took the surrender of Granada, and a 40-year-old sailor from Genoa watched from the crowd. For 6 years Christopher Columbus had asked them to pay for a voyage west to Asia, and twice their experts had told them the ocean was too wide. Within days they turned him down again, this time over his price: admiral, viceroy, and a tenth of the profit. He packed his charts on a mule and rode for France. Back in the camp, the king’s finance officer told the queen the whole fleet needed only 2,500 crowns, about a quarter of 1 percent of what the war had cost, and offered to lend it himself.

She had 2 choices. Let him go, or send someone after him. She sent a court officer, who caught Columbus on a stone bridge 4 miles down the road. The contract was signed April 17th, 3 ships left Palos in August, and on October 12th a lookout sighted land in the Bahamas.

What if she’d let him go?

This week we hit CTRL+Z on the bridge at Pinos, and follow the ripple to today: a Genoese chartmaker growing old in a room over the harbor at Honfleur with Japan drawn 2,400 miles west of the Canaries, a Portuguese clerk writing Lisbon a letter about parrots from a beach in Brazil, a Breton captain named Jacques Cartier anchoring off Hispaniola in 1534, a grandson of Moctezuma ruling a city that buys its matchlocks from Norman traders, and a Spanish army marching out of the Netherlands because the king can’t pay it. In 2026 the 2 continents are called Santa Cruz, Portuguese is spoken from the Amazon to the River Plate, and Tenochtitlan is still on its lake, because one January a queen let a sailor keep riding.