A strange mix of the historical and factual:

1930 Eliot Ness teams up with James Malone to take on Al Capone in Chicago (The Untouchables)
Washington - The Republican-controlled House of Representatives wrongly raise tariffs to alleviate The Great Depression (Ferris Bueller's Day Off)
Howard Hughes produces 'Hell's Angels' (The Aviator)

1931 Sally Bowles makes a splash on the Berlin cabaret scene (Cabaret)
Winter - Michael Sullivan Jr joins his father for six weeks of assassination and repayment (The Road To Perdition)
Apollonia (later to become Corleone) born (The Godfather trilogy)
Hill Valley, Ca - Emmett Brown first reads Jules Verne (Back To The Future Part III)

1932 Howard Hughes branches into aviation (The Aviator)
Royal O'Reilly Tenenbaum born (The Royal Tenenbaums)
To Kill A Mockingbird

1933 Adolf Hitler appointed German Chancellor, and granted dictatorial powers (The Pianist, etc)
Depression; Noodles released from prison (Once Upon A Time In America)
Philip Marlowe becomes a private investigator (The Big Sleep)
Fay Wray stars in King Kong (King Kong)
December: King Kong is discovered on Skull Island and set loose in New York (King Kong)

1934 May 23: Texas - Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are gunned down (Bonnie & Clyde)
September 5: Hitler flies to Nuremberg to review the assembly of his followers (Triumph des Willens)

1935 John Coffey is executed on Death Row for a crime he didn't commit (The Green Mile)
Rick runs guns to Ethiopia (Casablanca)
Indiana Jones escapes Chinese gangsters in Shanghai before falling into the Thuggee cult's plot in India (Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom)
There is a murder, on the Orient Express (Murder On The Orient Express)
Ed Murrow begins at CBS (Good Night, and Good Luck)
Tom Baxter steps down from the movie screen and into the life of Cecilia (The Purple Rose of Cairo)
September 6: Top Hat opens in cinemas (The Purple Rose of Cairo)

1936 Indiana Jones races against the Nazis to find the Ark of the Covenant (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
Spain - Rick fights with the Loyalist Spaniards (Casablanca)
German troops reoccupy the Rhineland (Angela's Ashes)
Alvy Singer born (Annie Hall)

1937 Francesca and Kathryn Corleone born; Johnny Fontaine released from contract to bandleader Les Halley (The Godfather trilogy)
China and Japan begin a state of undeclared war (Empire of the Sun)
Hitler joins the Thule Society, a collection of German aristocrats obsessed with the occult (Hellboy)
O Brother Where Art Thou
Arkansas - Johnny Cash's father floats his family out from their home after a flood (Walk The Line)
March 26: Hill Valley, Ca - Biff Tannen born (Back To The Future Part II)
May: The passenger zeppelin makes its last voyage from Frankfurt, Germany to Lakehurst (New Jersey) Naval Air Station, where it crashes and bursts into flames (The Hindenburg)

1938 Indiana Jones travels to Venice to find his father, kidnapped by Nazis while searching for the Holy Grail (Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade)
Hitler acquires the Spear of Longinus that pierced the side of Jesus, increasing his power greatly, as it gives its holder invincibility (apparently) (Hellboy)
Alien invasion lands on Mars, before sending a test mission to Earth (The War of the Worlds)
The Keys of the Kingdom
Nazis enter Austria and Czechoslovakia (Memory of the Camps)
Lithunia - Hannibal Lecter born (The Silence of the Lambs)
Lorraine Baines born (Back To The Future)
April 1: George McFly born (Back To The Future)
September: Tom Marvolo Riddle, aka Voldemort, starts first year at Hogwarts (Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets)

1939 New York is attacked by flying robots, and famous scientists vanish from around the world (Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow)
Hitler annexes Poland (Memory of the Camps)
Four children travel through a wardrobe and discover Narnia (The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe)

Via Boing Boing.

M E-L posted this on March 27, 2006
It is filed under Odds & Ends

It is also indexed with the following tags: 1930s | Counterfactual History | Lists |