Today is also (depending on calendars) George Washington's birthday. He's proved to be fairly important over the years...
There are plenty of places that American history could have gone sideways throughout his life, should time-meddling aliens want to try something.
Like the time he crossed the Delaware, and the Hessian colonel in charge of a nearby British troop ignored the note from a spotter because he was playing poker. Or, on the next page, of that same article, the time he inadvertently helped to kick off a war between the UK and France. Or the time a British sniper could have shot him in 1777, but didn't like shooting people in the back. Or the nearly successful assassination attempt during the war.
Or even the bolt of lightning that killed the woman sitting next to his mother while he was in the womb. Indoors.
By contemporary accounts something of a berserker as well as a skilled tactician and inspiring speaker, Washington's life definitely qualifies as Interesting Times.
(And if I ever get round to the Benjamin Franklin Celebrity Historical involving killer lightning monsters, I have to mention the story about Washington's mother, don't I?)
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