As seen in the gospels, Pontious Pilate was not thrilled with the idea of condemning Jesus to death, even though the alternative seemed to be promised widescale riots by the Jewish people. What if he'd spared Jesus?
At least one book has posited that without the crystallizing effect of Jesus's martyrdom — or the subsequent deaths of most of his apostles in similar fashions — Christianity would have been much more fragmented from the start, and likely much more influenced by the Romans.
St. Paul himself posits a What Could Have Been in First Corinthians: if Christ had not been raised from the dead, then there's no point in being a Christian at all (1 Cor 15: 13-19).
Valentinus, founder of his own branch of Gnosticism, had originally been a candidate for becoming a bishop... in Rome. Considering that another so-called Gnostic named Marcion had been at Rome at the same time who had a similar interpretation to Valentinus, the world would've had a very different Christianity had Valentinus become Pope.
Technology
In the technology's infancy nearly all automobiles were powered by electric batteries, with oil imported from the Middle East far too expensive for such a new technology. The Texas Oil Boom and the cheap petroleum it provided triggered the switch to internal combustion engines, leaving electrics to die out for the first half of the 20th century. Would electrics have advanced significantly if the Oil Boom happened as little as five years later? Would they have gained a foothold as an alternative (ala diesel)?
Probably not; even modern batteries aren't really up the task if you plan on driving more than twenty minutes between charges.
