On a winter night in 1931, 57-year-old Winston Churchill stepped off the curb of 5th Avenue & 76th St. in New York City and was hit by a car.
SPOILER: He survived. But I think 1000 writers could probably do a lot with what could have happened if he hadn't. Now, the job of speculative fiction authors everywhere has become somewhat easier, thanks to Here Is Where, a project to locate and map the sites of little-known, relatively unimportant historical events in the United States.
Technically, the possibilities for alternate history are just a happy side-effect of Here Is Where, which is really about preserving tiny details of history for people who want to geek out over the parking garage where Bob Woodward met Deep Throat, or the baseball diamond where U2 spy plane pilot Francis Gary Powers died in a helicopter crash. According to the New York Times, it was inspired by…
a story founder Andrew Carroll read 15 years ago about a dramatic rescue that occurred during Abraham Lincoln's first term as president. The president's son Robert Todd Lincoln was about to board a sleeping car at Exchange Place in Jersey City one night when he fell between the platform and the train as it started to pull out of the station.
"My coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform," Lincoln recalled years later. "Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name."
Mr. Carroll hopes to install a marker at the site, now a PATH station.
That would be Edwin Booth, older brother of John Wilkes, btw. Right now, Andrew Carroll is traveling cross-country, collecting stories for the project. You can read about what he's found on his blog. Whether you turn what you read there into a best-selling novel is up to you.
