MechCombat:Timeline

'''1895:''' Pierre Curie marries Marie Skłodowska.

'''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 curator.

'''1930:''' Eve Curie shows the curator 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 Curators, 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 curator.

'''1932:''' Henry Ford dissolves his oil empire, selling its various parts to competitors, and joins Rockefeller and Curie at Standard Curators. The Model E goes into mass production. It runs off of a curator and is affordable for many people. The United States of America signs a military contract with Standard Curators that would have them crafting tanks, airplanes, and powered armor, all powered by curators.

'''1933:''' Standard Curators 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 Curators' 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 curator is licensed to several other manufacturers, including Lockheed, Mercedez-Benz, and Mitsubishi. Marie Curie dies.

'''1935:''' Fiat reverse-engineers the curator 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 curator-powered military. East of France and Belgium up to the Russian border is now Italian lands. Russia attempts to acquire curator technology through peaceful negotiations with Italy but fails. Other powers (namely Canada, France, Portugal, and Britain) acquire curator 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 curator remain with Standard Curators' patent, of which Eve is no longer a part.

'''1939:''' An Egyptian physicist reverse-engineers the curator and discovers he can get a similar effect with a different alloy of phosphate and mercury, but curators 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 curator into mass production. The alloy is called "sehkmetium", after the ancient Egyptian goddess of war.