Ever run across a fact or an idea and know that it has some kind of Alternate History potential but you’re not quite sure what to do with it?  Here are a few facts or ideas that I’m going to do something with, but I haven’t figured out quite what yet.  

Dacia survives: In one of its last conquests, Rome took out the kingdom of Dacia in what is now Romania.  Dacia had been building up a reasonably powerful army and state, and the Romans feared that growing strength.  The Romans didn’t hold Romania for very long, and their eventual withdrawal left a vacuum in the area.  What if for some reason the Romans didn’t go after Dacia?  Would it become a more and more serious rival?  Would it become a buffer state protecting part of the Roman border against the barbarians?  Would it just disintegrate after a few decades?  Would it conquer one of the halves of the Roman Empire before the Germanic tribes got a chance to?

Bering Strait Stepping Stones: What if the Bering Strait wasn’t as formidable a barrier during interglacials?  Give it a couple of additional island stepping stones that stay above water when the weather warms up.  Closing the strait entirely would muck up the climate too much, although that’s an alternative to be explored too.  Given an island chain that acts as a series of stepping stones that allow less cold tolerant animals and maybe men to cross between the Old World and the New, what changes?

New Madrid Earthquake in 1861:  New Madrid earthquake (massive earthquake in the Mississippi valley with the center in southern Illinois) doesn’t happen in 1811.  It waits fifty years and then really lets loose.  Consequences?

Spanish California in the 1580s:  Spain responds to Drake’s visit to California by planting mission colonies there in the 1580s or 1590s, either in addition to or possibly in place of their settlement of the Pueblo area about that time?  That means that Spain has almost two hundred additional years in California.  What would the consequences be?  How would the Indians adapt to those settlements?  How would the colonies develop?

Early European Colony on the Mississippi: A French or English explorer of the mid-1500s somehow gets information on the DeSoto expedition, reads about the Mississippi River and thinks that it may be the passage to the Indies that everyone is looking for.  They attempt a colony.  It is unlikely that they would be able to hold on to the area due to the fact that the Spanish control too many of the passages to get to the area, but maybe French or English interest pushes the Spanish to plant a colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River to keep foreigners out.  What are the consequences of that?  Some trade goods and some diseases would undoubtedly spread up the river.  On the other hand, the Spanish of the era were not great traders and were pretty good at keeping guns out of Indian hands.  Would horses spread to the plains from that colony as well as from Mexico?  An earlier development of plains Indian culture?

DeSoto Plants A Colony: Speaking of DeSoto, he actually wanted to found a colony among the large populations of Mississippian Indians he found along parts of the Mississippi.  Unfortunately for him his expedition was too beat up from previous battles with other Indians to do a conquest of the desired area.  What if DeSoto had managed to avoid a lot of the earlier battles and actually managed to conquer a heavily populated stretch of the Mississippi?  There wouldn’t be any gold to attract continued interest, but large Indian populations were a good second choice for the Spanish.  

I’m guessing that any colony wouldn’t last more than five or ten years.  Indians in the area would revolt, run away or die of disease in droves and eventually there would be too few survivors for the area to be of any use to the Spanish.  On the other hand, there is some chance that the last stages of the Mississippian Mound Builder culture would be witnessed and written about, which might have preserved a bit more information about their culture.
   
No Holland: Spain applies the right combination of force and persuasion and is able to throttle the revolt that led to the formation of Holland before it really gets going.  No Holland as an independent power in the New World and in Asia.  What are the consequences?

Germans Have a Tougher FIght in Norway: Historically Norway didn’t mobilize its army until the German attack of 1940 was already underway, and then they inexplicably went for a partial mobilization, which meant mailing mobilization notices.  Let’s say Norway mobilizes its army in response to the worrying international situation, starting two days before the German invasion in 1940 and is on high alert when the Germans arrive.  Norway doesn’t have a very big or very modern army, but at least it gets a chance to inflict the maximum possible damage on the Germans.  What are the consequences of that?
 
The Germans Don't Go Into Norway: Speaking of Norway, let’s say that Hitler decides that the invasion of Norway is an unnecessary distraction from the planned invasion of France.  Germany would have a lot more of a navy for any attempt at invading Britain.  They wouldn’t have Norwegian bases for U-boats or planes, but they also wouldn’t have a lot of German division tied up in Norway.  On the other hand, I suppose that an allied landing in Norway in late 1942 would be a possibility as an alternative to landing in North Africa.   One other consequence: Surprisiningly Norway had one of the largest merchant marine fleets in the world.  Historically much of that fleet ended up helping supply Britain during the Battle of the Atlantic.

A Fragmented Microcomputer Market: What would it have taken to end up with a microcomputer marketplace with four or five major players along with several smaller but still significant ones, each with their own proprietary or incompletely compatible operating systems?  That was the pattern in the mini-computer industry and to a lesser extent in the mainframe industry.  Could it have repeated in the microcomputer industry?  If it did, would that have any kind of significant impact outside of the computer industry?  Would the Internet and the World Wide Web still develop on schedule and with approximately the same pattern?  Would it change the way we coped with Y2K?  Would it change anything significant militarily or economically?