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From Fax Encyclopedicus

Deviations from our own timeline: '''1880:''' Pierre and Jacques Curie demonstrate the direct piezoelectric effect. '''1884:''' Under the prompting of Gabriel Lippmann, the Curie brothers demonstrate the converse piezoelectric effect. '''1890:''' '''1895:''' Pierre Curie marries Marie Sklodowska. '''1897:''' Irene Curie is born to Pierre and Marie Curie. '''1900:''' '''1904:''' Eve Curie is born to Pierre and Marie Curie. '''1906:''' Peter Curie dies in a cart accident. '''1910:''' '''1914:''' World War I begins. '''1917:''' Irene Curie is killed in action during an experiment with weaponized x-rays. Eve Curie is distraught and decides to give up her dreams of becoming a journalist and biographist to follow in her father's footsteps. '''1918:''' World War I ends. '''1920:''' '''1925:''' Eve Curie graduates from the Collège Sévigné in Paris with two bachelor's degrees: Science and Philosophy. '''1929:''' The Great Depression begins. Eve Curie, continuing her father's experiments with piezoelectricity, attempts to demonstrate piezoelectric effect with gallium. Due to a laboratory accident, the experiment is tainted with mercury. She is astonished to discover that gallium immersed in mercury creates more electricity than it consumes using this method. However, the fuel is far from perfect, and the crystals do degrade over time. She experiments with this further and develops a device she calls a curio. '''1930:''' Eve Curie shows the curio to John D. Rockefeller, who sees that it means the end of the oil market and who immediately sells his entire oil empire to Henry Ford for a fraction of its worth. Rockefeller starts a new company, Standard Curios, with Eve Curie which is entirely dedicated to perfecting this new fuel source. '''1931:''' The first evium, an alloy of mercury and gallium, is synthesized. Rockefeller and Ford, now close friends, use one of Ford's factories to produce a working prototype car that runs off of a curio. '''1932:''' Henry Ford dissolves his oil empire, selling its various parts to competitors, and joins Rockefeller and Curie at Standard Curios. The Model E goes into mass production. It runs off of a curio and is affordable for many people. The United States of America signs a military contract with Standard Curios that would have them crafting tanks, airplanes, and powered armor, all powered by curios. '''1933:''' Standard Curios creates its first powered armor. It is nine feet tall and can hold a man inside of it. The United States of America military commissions 141. '''1934:''' With the help of a battalion of Standard Curios' powered armor, the United States of America occupies western South America in a matter of weeks, incorporating Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the Falkland Islands into the newly-rechristened United States of the Americas. The curio is licensed to several other manufacturers, including Lockheed, Mercedez-Benz, and Mitsubishi. Marie Curie dies. '''1935:''' Fiat reverse-engineers the curio device and begins manufacturing their own variant. Mussolini acquires the technology from Fiat and uses it, along with stolen documents from the United States of the Americas' powered armor plans, to create a new Italian army. '''1936:''' Italy occupies most of Europe with the help of its new curio-powered military. East of France and Belgium up to the Russian border is now Italian lands. Russia attempts to acquire curio technology through peaceful negotiations with Italy but fails. Other powers (namely Canada, France, Portugal, and Britain) acquire curio technology and begin development of their own military forces. '''1937:''' Aggressive imperialism, driven by desire to find and make use of the ingredients necessary for evium, begins, prompted by the expansionist steps taken by Italy and the United States. The Dominion of Canada occupies the Alaska territory, and the United States of the Americas, occupied with its new South American states, lets Canada annex it. John D. Rockefeller dies, bequeathing his industrial empire to Eve Curie. His children, upset by this betrayal, sue Eve Curie. The American courts find in favor of the Rockefellers. The rights to the curio remain with Standard Curios' patent, of which Eve is no longer a part. '''1939:''' An Egyptian physicist reverse-engineers the curio and discovers he can get a similar effect with a different alloy of phosphate and mercury, but curios crafted with this alloy put out less power, are less durable, and have a shorter lifespan. Egypt does not wait for further experimentation and immediately puts the Egyptian curio into mass production. The alloy is called "sehkmetium", after the ancient Egyptian goddess of war. '''1940:''' Egypt takes over most of northern and eastern Africa as well as a significant portion of the Middle East: rather than attack British-held India, Egypt stops short and designates a demilitarized zone between the two regions. Egypt and Italy hold peace talks about use of the Mediterranean. http://i.imgur.com/2Nt5o.png '''1943:''' The United States of the Americas, bitter over their loss of the Alaskan territory, begins annexing Dominion lands in South America. The Dominion pushes southwards, annexing the Great Salt Lakes and much of the wilderness on the northern border of the United States. '''1944:''' Distracted with their own troubles with the United States, the Dominion of Canada pulls out of southwestern Africa, leaving a lawless anarchy behind it. The Royal British Empire begins humanitarian efforts to settle the area, but is largely unsuccessful. The Japanese Empire seizes the French-Indochinese colonies. French residents are forced to either learn a startlingly different language and culture or leave everything behind. Most stay, but are not very well accepted into their new culture. '''1945:''' In a startling display of military ineptitude and beleaguered by technological malfunction after technological malfunction, the Imperium of Italy loses much of the Middle East but gains the heartland of Africa after peace talks with the United Egyptian States go sour. The Ukranian and Russian territories secede from the Imperium and join with the Commonwealth of France. '''1947:''' Henry Ford dies. The United States of the Americas occupies New Zealand but abandons Indonesia to the encroaching Japanese Empire. '''1950:''' The Dominion of Canada occupies part of Italian-held north Africa. Italy does not put up much of a fight, as the territory is mostly Saharan desert. The Royal British Empire, frustrated at its stymied attempts to peacefully cultivate southwestern Africa, hosts a military occupation of the area and annexes it as a British colony. http://i.imgur.com/pbuqG.png '''1960:''' '''1970:''' '''1980:''' '''1990:''' '''2000:''' '''2010:''' '''2020:''' Present day.

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