No problem.
My audience isn't the masses, but people who are interested in history.
Take the Louisiana Purchase, for instance. We all know the story: Jefferson, and his Minister to France Robert R. Livingston, acquired Louisiana (among other places) from Napoleon, paying less than three cents an acre. At the time, he was criticised for not getting a better price.
Nowadays, of course, we know it was a bargain.
But why was the Louisiana Purchase necessary? At the time, the place was controlled by Napoleon Bonaparte. He had dreams of creating a New World Empire, centred on the Caribbean sugar trade. But his failure to suppress a slave revolt in Saint-Domingue, led by by the talented and charismatic Toussaint Louverture, meant that he had to extricate himself from America at almost any price. An even greater enemy --
aedes aegypti, the yellow fever mosquito -- was wreaking havoc on the French soldiers; about two-thirds of Napoleon's soldiers were falling victim to the diseases spread by the tiny mosquito.
Livingston was authorised to purchase only New Orleans, and to pay up to $2 million for it. Instead, he acquired the entire Louisiana Territory - doubling the size of the United States - for $15 million, without war or the loss of a single American life. The entire territory became today's Louisiana, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, most of Kansas, Wyoming, Montana, and parts of Colorado, Minnesota and New Mexico.
Napoleon went on his way, and the rest is history. Saint-Domingue became Haiti, and Louisiana became a state (about 10 years later). All this time later, Louisiana (especially New Orleans) still share a bond with Haiti, especially their shared interest in voudun culture and Caribbean food.
And none of this could've happened without the tiny, disregarded mosquito on a remote island.
History is fun!
Here's the "What If": what if Napoleon insisted on staying in America? What if he took it more seriously -- maybe transported more and more soldiers to suppress the Haitian revolt -- or went there personally? Could he have controlled it? Maybe he could --
and if so, there would not have been any Louisiana Purchase. Haiti would never have existed, and America would have stayed confined to the Eastern Seaboard. Imagine that!
