In 1984, in the first of three scheduled debates among the Republican presidential contenders, former California governor Ronald Reagan delivers an oddly disjointed closing statement musing about what one might see driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in a hundred years' time. Even some pundits sympathetic to Reagan are taken aback, and there is talk that, at age 73, the conservative stalwart may simply be too old to serve as president.

In 1982, all 10 planets align on the same side of the Sun as the Syzygy occurred on this day.

For the first time, all of humanity can see the counter-earth postulated by Galileo through deductive logic in 1610.

In 2004, the crew of the ship carrying the Huygens, just crash-landed on its return from Titan, begin seeing strange things moving around the ship. Scientist Jacob Sheridan, brought in to investigate the Huygens, sees a huge crab-like creature while examining the hold; the creature disappears into the water before Sheridan can alert anyone.

In 1952, Mikhail von Heflin and Velma Porter emerge from the cave where they had taken refuge from pursuit two days before. Miss Porter is unconscious, and the Baron is worried that the strange encounter has damaged her. He carries her and starts traveling east. He hopes that he can find Heflin again, and that his ancestral home can help Miss Porter.

In 1948, the Foreign Secretary of Venezuela, Hugo Martinez, dies in an apparent suicide. Senor Martinez had been a capitalist inside the American-supported Communist government, and had opposed the close relationship the government had with the Soviet States of America. Many of the European monarchies remarked at how strange it was that a man with no signs of depression or mental stress should choose to commit suicide.

In 1704, Conquerors of the Speaker's Line burn down the library in Kenya that held most of the research being done on fulfilling the Speaker's Dream. Centuries of knowledge were lost in moments. When news of this reached the rest of the Speaker's Children, the Conquerors quickly disavowed those who had done it, and asked for forgiveness. Their support among the Line faded for some time after this.

In 2008, in Islamabad Benazir Bhutto called upon President Pervez Musharraf to convene parliament immediately.

February's parliamentary elections delivered a crushing defeat to parties loyal to President Pervez Musharraf. Mr Musharraf has urged the incoming government to leave politics aside and concentrate on good governance. The new administration will be led by Pakistan People's Party, with Mr Nawaz Sharif's PML(N) acting as a junior coalition partner in a government of national unity.

The defeat of parties loyal to Pevez Musharraf surprised no one. However, the miraculous survival of Mrs Bhutton from multiple assassination attempts was a matter of such deep unease to many, that it had overtaken her husband's alleged corruption as a question over her candidacy for prime minister. The national trauma had forced the postponement of the elections until February 20th 2008.

On 27 December Benazir Bhutto addressed a rally of thousands of supporters in Rawalpindi's Liaqat Bagh Park. As her convoy was leaving the park via the rear gate onto Murree road, an attacker opened fire on her car. Shortly after, a bomb exploded, killing at least 20 other people. Ms Bhutto was taken to Rawalpindi General Hospital, but was pronounced dead at 1816 local time, only to discharge herself from the hospital at sunrise the following morning.

The explanation was of course a simple matter of brahmacharya, control of the senses in thought, word and deed. The Brahma himself had survived a a similiar attempt on his life on January 30, 1948, when he was shot and temporarily discorporated having his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla Bhavan in New Delhi. His chela Indira Gandhi had more impressively survived a hail of bullets from her Sikh bodyguards in New Delhi in 1984.

In 1783, turmoil in the Continental Army caused by the Newburgh Conspiracy enabled the British to use the opportunity to attack and re-establish control over their former colonies.

With the end of the war and hence likely the resultant dissolution of the Continental Army obviously approaching, there seemed to the soldiers, many of whom were now deeply indebted from their term of service, a strong chance that Congress would not meet previous promises on back pay and pensions.

Congress, at the mercy of the states for all revenue, did not seem to have any way of meeting these promises. The result was that by March 1783, officers launched a coup, setting up martial law to secure what had been promised to them.

The winter of 1783 had seen the end of hostilities between the young nation and Britain, but a formal peace treaty had not yet been signed.

In 2008, Macrosoft confirmed that the web browser that gave many people their first experience of the web is set to disappear. The decision mirrors an announcement Friday 29th February by AOL that Netscape Navigator will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, suggesting users upgrade to either Flock or Firefox. Firefox has an 88% market share, according to some statistics. The open source browser's development is coordinated by the Mozilla foundation, set up by Netscape staff made redundant in 2003.

Flock describes itself as 'the social web browser' and allows people to see feeds from community websites, such as Flickr and Facebook, and post to blogs without having to navigate to the page. 'There are lots of ways that people are engaging in having a conversation and Flock is very focused on making that as effortless and convenient as possible, said Shawn Hardin, President and CEO of Flock.

In 1999, the Seattle Weekly newspaper reported ~ the gunman called Silas Cool has taken any clear explanation of last year's Metro bus shootings to the grave with him. Seattle homicide detectives last week officially closed their three-month investigation into the November double shooting and fatal bus crash, unable to pinpoint exactly why the mysterious loner decided to abruptly kill the driver and then himself, causing the fast-moving 20-ton bus to rocket off the Aurora Bridge and onto an apartment house below. Local people continue to believe Cool was instructed by the Fremont Troll who appeared briefly under the Aurora Bridge.