Pretty neat! It reminds me a lot of those old "Choose your own adventure" books with a real life historical twist.
It definitely has room for visual improvement, it'd be fun if the background changed to represent the last choice you made or something of that nature.
Not every game has to be played in the same active way, I'm an avid fan of the visual novel genre myself, and with visual makeover I could see this being a neat way to introduce grade school students to some aspects of history.