Abraham Lincoln accepted the King of Siam's offer of war elephants for the Union cause. They got loose and have become an invasive species across the Upland South. Now Hohenwald, TN (home of a real-life elephant sanctuary) is rebuilding itself in Reconstruction with elephant labor to assist construction and plowing the corn fields.
The Red Bandit was a real-life apparation of Arizona. The Union introduced camelry, they got loose, went invasive. Had to hunt them down. One had a rider on him that died suddenly, probably a heart attack or something. He decayed in such a way - probably a mummy-like state from the dry heat - that his corpse remained sitting atop that camel for decades, occasionally observed by fearful farmers that considered an apparition.
Dragons of Dixie. Bing is a FUCKING BITCH so I can't make it with a white-suited Southern knight slaying it with a cavalry saber.
Buddhist sohei (warrior monk) Lasagnyan reporting to his liege Tokugawa Ieyasu before the Battle of Sekigahara.
Edo-era woodblock print of Lasagnyan at the grounds of Osaka Castle, beseeching his lord to expel the Jesuits.
A very rare photo of Colonel Sanders (1890-1980) dining with Mark Twain (1835-1910) on a Mississippi riverboat.
After near-extinction at the hands of zeppelin whaling expeditions, the invention of new petrochemicals by Rockefeller and DuPont relieved hunting pressure on sky-whaeils and ctuhlukraken. By the 1930s, the populations had recovered so much that attendees of the Empire State Building's grand opening were treated to the spectacular sight of a spontaneous migration of whaeils and kraken across Manhattan island.