In 1999, on this day an amazing discovery was made by a US expeditionary team operating at the summit of Mount Ararat in Turkey.
An installment from the Miracles thread.

Fourth MiracleThe wreckage of Noah's Ark had been located by a satellite. But amongst the debris, the American scientists discovered the skeletal remains of humans, animals and Nephilim, the giants who inhabited Canaan according to Numbers 13:33.

The mission was immediately upgraded from top secret to ultra secret. Because the US Government intended to reverse engineer the DNA in order to construct the super-soldier of the future. Ironically, the first deployment would be in Iraq, within close proximity of the location of the Garden of Eden.

In 1720, on this day the Jacobite Pretender Charles Edward Stuart was born in the Palazzo Muti, Rome.
This article is a reversal of the Jackie Rose story Hard Man which focuses on Captain Francis O'Neill

Happy Endings Part 17
Hard Woman saves the Forty-Five RebellionAged twenty-five he launched a bold attempt to restore the House of Stuart. Because in 1745 a five thousand man Jacobite army landed at Moidart in the Outer Hebrides. But of course it took a woman to save the forty-five rebellion from abject failure - the incomparable Highland rebel Flora MacDonald.

Hopes had built up rather quickly; at the Battle of Prestonpans they had soundly defeated the only government army in Scotland. But their hapless commander General John Cope would soon be replaced by the murderous Duke of Cumberland and the mood in the camp would drastically change. In despair the Young Pretender had left the still undefeated Jacobite Army in the hands of his trusted companion, Captain Francis O'Neill. Planning to flee Scotland forever, the Prince sought the incomparable Highland rebel Flora MacDonald for her assistance only to discover that the MacDonalds were secretly sympathetic with the Jacobite cause. She convinced the Prince to rejoin the Jacobite Army by promising to organize reinforcements from her own Clan. With fresh resolve, he inspired the "forty-five" rebels with a fiery new leadership that turned the tables on the Hanoverians.
The full novel is available for download at the Extasy Books web site.

In 1548, on this day an extraordinary meeting of the Privy Council ordered the imprisonment of the vice-treasurer of the Bristol Mint, Sir William Sharington.

Baron of Sudeley
By Ed and Jacquelyn FriedlanderBut they had caught the monkey and not the organ-grinder. Because via the word of an informant, the Lord Protector Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset had received a second-hand intelligence report that led him to suspect the possible involvement of his scheming brother, Thomas Seymour the Baron of Sudeley (who was currently serving as the Lord High Admiral). However, he was hesitant to openly accuse his brother at a Council meeting. Because their relationship had soured as Edward had received the more senior position as a result of their sister Anne's marriage to King Henry VIII in 1536. But Edward fatally misjudged the extent of Thomas jealous resentment, not able to believe that he had stumbled across the final stages of a dastardly act of high treason.

Sharington had indeed been debasing the currency and also fiddling the books for some time. When these acts of malfeasance were discovered by Thomas Seymour, he extorted monies from the Bristol mint. Initially these were small sums which he redirected to the eleven-year old King Edward VI who had childishly complained of receiving inadequate pocket money from the Lord Protector Edward Seymour. But events during the latter half of 1548 had forced the Baron to accelerate (and also expand) his plans to replace his brother Edward as Lord Protector. As a result, he was forced to extort much larger sums that he would use to finance an overthrow of the entire government.

In 1543, Thomas had developed a romantic interest in the widow Catherine Parr, but had been sent away from the Court by the jealous Henry VIII who then married her himself. After the King's death, Thomas secretly married Catherine, and this wedding gave him guardianship of the teenage Lady Elizabeth. At their Chelsea home, an inappropriate relationship developed with the forty-year old Thomas assuming the role of master.

The increasing likelihood of Sharington's arrest (and the discovery of his complicity in the corruption at Bristol Mint) forced Thomas Seymour to think bigger. He now decided that his interests were best served by installing Elizabeth as monarch as well as replacing his brother as Lord Protector. On the night of 16 January, Thomas broke into the Royal apartments at Hampton Court Palace and shot the King. The ruthlessness of this act of regicide set the tone for Elizabeth's rule, because Thomas Seymour had set his sights even higher - the mastery of Europe.

In 1916, in the early hours of the morning Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was imprisoned at Yusopov's Moika Palace by the five noblemen who had spent the last twelve hours attempting without success to assassinate the holy devil who was planning to overthrow the Czar and establish his own satantic regime.

Cursed Muzhik 2The previous evening Prince Felix Yusupov, the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich and the right-wing politician Vladimir Purishkevich had lured Rasputin to the same Palace cellar where they served him cakes and red wine laced with a massive amount of cyanide. Rasputin was unaffected, although Vasily Maklakov had supplied enough poison to kill five men.

Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, leaving the conspirators no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to get one, and, while at the palace, he went to check up on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes and lunged at Prince Yusupov. When he grabbed Prince Yusupov he ominously whispered in Yusupov's ear "you bad boy" and strangled him. At that moment, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him.

After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and after binding his body and wrapping him in a carpet, they threw him into the icy Neva River. But somehow he worked his way loose and swum to a hole. And the conspirators decided to imprison the weakened Rasputin in the hope that a better plan would emerge.

In 1880, on this day the sixteenth President of the Confederate States George Catlett Marshall, Jr. was born in Lexington, Virginia.

George Marshall
16^th Confederate President
March 4, 1952 - 1958He was a Confederate Army officer, former Secretary of State, under President Byrnes and the last Whig Party candidate to be elected president before the party broke up.

As President, Marshall kept up the pressure on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, made nuclear weapons a higher defense priority, began the Interstate Highway System and saw the start of the Confederate Civil Rights Movement.

At a time when the majority of the Whig party had grown more fiscally and socially conservative, Marshall was a Leeian Whig who gained support from moderates of both the Democrat and Whig party's. A new article from the "Two Americas" thread on Althistory WikiaHis push for an Interstate Highway System and his passing of the Confederate Civil Rights Act of 1955 were both popular with Liberals; however, these acts would eventually lead to a complete political realignment, with Conservatives from both the Whig and Democratic party's breaking away to form the Confederalist Party, while the remaining Democrats would eventually reshape themselves into the Liberal Party.
The whole alternate biography is available Althistory Wiki.

In 1980, Marxist leader Rob Mugabe published his controversial auto-biography The Great Betrayal. The central event in the memoirs was a decision taken at the dissolution of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation, in which Great Britain abrogated the principle of No Independence Before Majority African Rule. The Great Betrayal

Then Deputy Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Douglas Smith met with Rab Butler, the Foreign Secretary, at Victoria Falls in December 1963. Butler grandly declared that Britain was "very happy to agree" to independence for Southern Rhodesia, at least at the same time as Zambia and Malawi. Smith asked Butler for the undertaking in writing. Butler demurred with: "There is trust between members of the British Commonwealth". Smith wagged his finger at Butler, and said: "If you break that, you will live to regret it".

There was no cause for concern in London or Salisbury, and Smith was being characteristically belligerent. Smith, who became the Prime Minister shortly afterwards, was of Scottish ancestry, and a war hero that had fought bravely for Britain during World War 2.

Ian Douglas Smith was born in the village of Selukwe in central Rhodesia, of a Scottish father, Jock, and Rhodesian-born mother, Agnes. He was educated at Chaplin School nearby with moderate academic achievement, captaining the first XV and running the 100 yards in 10 seconds. He began a bachelor of commerce degree at Rhodes University in South Africa in 1938, establishing an impressive academic record and rowing for the university.

War broke out in 1939 and in 1941 he joined the RAF Empire Air Training Scheme at Guinea Fowl in central Rhodesia. He was posted to 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron in the Middle East, flying Hawker Hurricanes.

Taking off from Alexandria on a dawn patrol in 1943, his throttle malfunctioned, he lost height and clipped the barrel of a Bofors gun. He crashed and rammed his face against the Hurricane's gunsight. He suffered severe facial injuries, broke his jaw, a leg and a shoulder, and buckled his back. Surgeons at the 15th Scottish Hospital in Cairo reconstructed his face and, after only five months, he rejoined his squadron in Corsica. He realised his dream to fly Spitfire Mark IXs, carrying out strafing raids and escorting American bombers.

In mid-1944 Smith was leading a raid on a train of fuel tankers in the Po Valley when he made the mistake of going back for a second run.The Spitfire was hit by an anti-aircraft shell, caught fire and he baled out. He was soon picked up by the partisans. The five months he spent with them near Sasello, learning Italian, reading Shakespeare and working as a peasant, he regarded as one of the best times of his life.>Near the end of the war, he and three other Allied fugitives made their way through occupied Italy to the Maritime Alps. At one point the conspicuously tall, fair-haired Rhodesian strode unhindered through a German checkpoint. He led his tiny group over the mountains, walking barefoot on ice, until they reached an American patrol on the other side.

In 2012, on this day President George Weaver issues a cryptic order, in Latin: "Rex Mundi delenda est" - "The King of the World must be destroyed".

The King of the World must be destroyed by Eric LippsFollowing the order, a U.S. fighter-bomber armed with nuclear missiles is launched, flying across several U.S. states before heading out over the Atlantic Ocean.
Several hours later, horrifying reports come in that Rome has been destroyed by a nuclear explosion. Hundreds of thousands are feared dead, among them Pope Benedict XVI and many members of the College of Cardinals, which had been meeting to discuss improving relations with Egypt's Coptic Christian church.

Weaver had assumed the presidency following the death in July of 2009 of President John McCain from a heart attack. Weaver's ascendancy had come as a shock to many: an obscure member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Idaho, he had seemed an unlikely choice as McCain's running-mate in the 2008 election. Peculiar rumors had swirled around him, claiming he was associated with a shadowy survivalist group known as the Remnant of the Pure, which conspiracy theorists link to the medieval Cathar schismatics who had been nearly destroyed by Catholic crusaders. Nothing had been proven, however, and McCain and Weaver had gone on to win that November. In the wake of the Rome disaster, it will be charged that Weaver plotted the destruction of the Vatican in service to a modern-day Cathar movement dedicated to destroying the Catholic Church.

In AD 1, warned of the impending massacre of the innocents, Joseph and his wife Mary took flight to Egypt with the baby Jesus.
An installment from the Miracles thread.

The Second MiracleBut they are captured and casually executed by Herod's soldiers. The orphaned infant was then passed to the Roman trooper Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera [1]. His orders were to update the detailed records required by the Roman Client King Herod. Because he wanted to make absolutely sure that the baby king did not slip through the net, grow up to become a rival and supplant him.

But instead an angel spoke to Pantera and he fled with the child. His fellow officers only uncovered his absence because of a mysterious note he had left on the child register - Pantera wrote that something had been missing in this harsh world, but finally, it had been fulfilled [2].

Little is known of the fate Pantera although his tombstone was found in Bingerbrück, Germany in 1859. But the coming of Jesus to Western Europe was a different matter altogether, it was quite simply the greatest story ever told.

In 1499, on this day future Queen of England Mary Boleyn was born in Blickling Hall, the family seat in Norfolk. But she grew up at Hever Castle, Kent alongside her less famous siblings Thomas and Anne (the wife of Percy of Northumberland).
An installment from the Happy Endings thread

Happy Endings Part 15
Henry VIII's Second Wife: Mary BoleynBecause the Tudors was locked in conflict with elements the nobility, her origin amongst the "new men" of self-acquired wealth played well in the Royal court. Accordingly she was sent to the French court in the household of the queen, Henry VIII's younger sister Mary Tudor who was betrothed to King Louis XII.

A blond, blue-eyed, curvy beauty that was the era's belle idéale, she was greatly desired by the Valois monarch's son François I. However in 1515 Louis died, and the Tudor Household was recalled to England. And François's loss was King Henry VIII's gain. They remained happily married until her tragic death age just forty-three, having two children Henry and Catherine. Surely there was some irony in this choice of names, because of course the Pope refused to grant Henry a divorce for Catherine of Aragon, and their relationship caused a schism in the English Church that lasts until today. But then you can't have everything..

In 1896, on this day the life of Filipino patriot José Rizal was spared by the firing squad of sympathetic indigenous soldiers at Fort Santiago who turned their weapons on the backup force of regular Spanish Army troops standing ready to shoot the executioners should they fail to obey orders.

Part 1 of 3: José Rizal Escapes the Firing SquadHe escaped, but the patriot cause soon took the oddest of turns because only two years later the hated Colonial Overlords ceded the islands to American Imperialists. Following the payment of the $20m in compensation set down in the Treaty of Paris, Teddy Roosevelt replaced Queen-Regent Maria Cristina of Spain as principal hate figure of the patriots.

But of course this contextual change in the Colonial era presented few doctrinal problems for Rizal who immediately refocused on the task of preventing the Philippines from becoming a territory of the United States. And his amazing escape from death turned him away from reform towards a new militancy. Alongside Emilio Aguinaldo, he soon became a vital figure in maintaining the survival of the fledgling Philippine Republic. They are only partially successful; instead of a Colony, the Philippines becomes a protectorate that gains full independence during the 1920s.
This blog is an article from the Neutral Philippine thread conceived by Ed, Mike McIlvain and Scott Palter.

In 1942, on this day Subhas Chandra Bose raised the flag of Indian independence at Calcutta.

Quit India, Part #2
Return of the Leaping Tiger, by Ed & Scott PalterAn unstoppable Japanese drive through Burma had made the occupation of the former Imperial Capital possible, if not quite inevitable due to logistical constraints and rivalry in the Imperial Japanese Army. And even though the rebel Indian National Army (INA) never completed their "March to Delhi", the fatal blow to British prestige had been struck. Because the Axis partition of the Raj would forever change the destiny of the Indian subcontinent. One that even Bose himself could never have imagined.

Of course the Fall of Calcutta transformed the fates of all engaged parties. After the fatal heart attack of Winston Churchill on 26th December 1941, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden had wisely re-focused the Government on sustainable war objectives that would not bankcrupt the home nation. A younger, less sentimental man than Churchill, he had no interest in British punching above its weight for a few short years only to become as impoverished as a defeated nation. Whereas Churchill had sought to ensure that the British Empire be "preserved for a few more generations in all its splendour", a phrase that surely excluded the famine in Bengal. And so Eden now downgraded the Far Eastern Campaign to a lower priority (with a restated future-proof objective of the defence of Australia and New Zealand). He called for the Allies to concentrate resources in Western Europe and North Africa, bringing forward an amphibious invasion of Normandy to 1943. And this decision would usher in the Fall of Vichy France, which ironically was one of the two Axis Puppet Governments that promised to send ambassadors to Calcutta.

But of course the largest consequence would be for the India people themselves. The door to this dramatically altered future had been opened by the revocation of a single, faulty command decision: to bypass the heavily defended town of Kohima. This encirclement forced the British commander Field Marshal William Slim to abandon the strategic towns of Dimapur and Imphal. The British withdrawal to positions on the western bank of the river Brahmaputra abandoned a huge area of Eastern Indian that would eventually become the territory of the two Muslim successor states.

This altered reality forced the imprisoned leadership of the Indian National Congress to suspend the non-violence campaign. And because they never actually endorsed an armed rebellion, Nehru and Gandhi unwittingly placed more power in the hands of the iconic figure of Bose, and also strengthened the arm of the Muslim separatists led by Jinnah. In short, sub-contintental belligerence received a welcome shot in the arm, which despite the widespread perception otherwise, had always been present throughout two centuries of British occupation.

Of course the headquartering of the Azad Hind government in Calcutta was fleeting. As the Japanese War Effort started to collapse, Bose was forced to retreat to Burma and face a horrible moment of truth. However his willingness to peacefully disband the INA saved him from being hung from a British noose. By mutual agreement, he withdrew to Port Blair, a tiny island in the Indian Ocean.

But five years later, he was recalled by an Indian Government unable to resist an invasion from its northern Muslim neighbour. Ironically, the man who had done most to integrate the ethnicities in the INA was being asked to rescue the Hindu successor state from destruction. Finally, he would complete his March to Delhi.

In 1947, in the singular event that began the conflict that would become known as World War III, King Michael of Romania gave an international appeal to stop the Soviet takeover of his country.

King Michael Calls for AidThe closing days of World War II saw the Russian occupation of Eastern Europe swallowing up Poland, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and East Germany. While the West had agreed to occupy until stability and then withdraw, the Soviets looked to stay and expand their power. Beyond occupation, the Soviets pressed remaining countries to join them by preying on them politically. In 1947, Hungary, having already abolished its monarchy, conducted a plebiscite manipulated by Soviets to bring about the People's Republic of Hungary. The same year, it looked as if Romania would be the next to fall.

A new story by Jeff ProvineKing Michael was unnerved by Soviet clout, but he had seen enough suffering from his people and gradually gave way in March 1945 when he appointed a government dominated by Soviet sympathizers. In 1947, he traveled to London to attend the wedding of his cousins Princess Elizabeth and Philip. There, rumors circulated that he did not wish to return to Romania, though Michael refused any offers of asylum. Seeing his plight, Winston Churchill encouraged Michael with, "above all things, a King must be courageous".

Michael returned to Romania and immediately felt the pressures of Soviet take-over. But, he was the same Michael that, at a mere 26 years old, had rallied with the pro-Allied leaders of Romania and overthrown the Nazi camp's stranglehold. The coup had invited in the Soviets, and now it was time for Michael to rebel again. He found his capitalist supporters, locked down the palace, and, on December 30, sent out by radio and telegram an appeal to the United Nations and individual governments of the United States, Britain, France, and others for support against what he called an invasion from the roots.

The diplomatic gamble would pay off as Stalinists overreacted. Prime Minister Groza had threatened to murder 1,000 students who had been arrested for speaking out against the Soviet Union. The massacre began and rallied the Romanian people against Soviet supporters. Declaring a state of unrest, the Prime Minister called for Soviet military aid, and an invasion began that sparked action from Western nations in early 1948. Dwight Eisenhower, again Supreme Commander in Europe, led his generals in the heaviest fighting in eastern Germany, then joining up with the Polish Resistance and sparking revolutions in the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Romania itself would be filled with guerrilla warfare against a vastly superior force until Allied tanks led the liberation of Bucharest in 1949. Michael, who had been spirited out of the country just after the Soviet invasion, returned from his government-in-exile in London shortly thereafter.

Meanwhile, Italy invaded the Julian March in 1948, which was ceded by Yugoslavia, and Tito sued for a separate peace. Mao Zedong in China was defeated by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Army, who made certain that Communism was stamped out in the East. Socialist upstarts in India had been put down by Britain's agreement of independence, though French Indochina would see much bloodshed before native Vietnamese were given self-rule.

The Allies pressed into Russia through liberating Ukraine. From experience, they knew Stalin would never give up, despite the use of atomic weapons on his bases. The Cold War portion continued as the stalemated Allies waited until Stalin was finally assassinated and Moscow fell into civil war. Russia was Balkanized, and the exhausted Allies fell into retirement, letting loose their colonies over the '50s and '60s and settling into a new era of capitalistic rule under the American superpower.