In 244 AD, on this day Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus was born into slavery in Salona, an ancient Illyrian Delmati city in the Roman Province of Dalmatia.

Hedges of the Night
Article written by Ed, Scott Palter & Jeff ProvineFrom freedman he rose steadily through the ranks of the military, serving in Gaul before the appointment as Dux Moesiae, cavalry commander of forces on the lower Danube. After the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on campaign in Persia, Diocletian was proclaimed Emperor. The title was also claimed by Carus' other surviving son, Carinus, but Diocletian defeated him in the Battle of the Margus. With his accession to power, Diocletian ended the Crisis of the Third Century.

Diocletian appointed fellow officer Maximian Augustus his senior co-emperor in 285. He delegated further on 1 March 293, appointing Galerius and Constantius as Caesars, junior co-emperors. Under this "Tetrarchy", or "rule of four", each emperor would rule over a quarter-division of the Empire. Diocletian secured the Empire's borders and purged it of all threats to his power. He defeated the Sarmatians and Carpi during several campaigns between 285 and 299, the Alamanni in 288, and usurpers in Egypt between 297 and 298. Galerius, aided by Diocletian, campaigned successfully against Sassanid Persia, the Empire's traditional enemy. In 299 he sacked their capital, Ctesiphon. he led the subsequent negotiations and achieved a lasting and favorable peace.

His life experience provided Diocletian with a broad understanding of the operation of the power structures in the Roman Empire. And from his lowly birth status grew the germ of a compelling vision for meritocracy that would secure the future. Clearly to survive the centuries, the Empire needed to devolve into a symbiotic grouping of self-sustaining admnistrative provinces which could draw from local resources (the Rhine and Danube had the good recruiting grounds, whereas the East and to a lesser extent Italy/Africa had the money). But such a structure was always vulnerable to a powerful general whose ambition was to rule the whole Empire.

The answer to this conundrum was the progression of offices under which a Count of Britain picked in York by two Caesars and two Augusti could rise to higher order roles in Trier, Antioch, the Danube and finally Rome. As a further safeguard against dictatorship, Diocletian introduced a formal separation of powers, with a strong Senate and controls to keep the Praetorian Guard in check. It was these "hedges of the night" that would sustain the rule of four in the long centuries to come, preventing the civilized world from plunging into a dark age.

In 1979, on this day an unmarked private jet was given special authorization to land at the Cairo International Airport.

Presley ends American Malaise Part #2
By Ed & Stan BrinThe sole passenger on-board was the terminally ill Elvis Aaron Presley who was returning from a prayer vigil that had brought much-needed hope to the hostages at the American Embassy in Tehran. And yet this final mission of the King's was even more audicious: to try to persuade the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to accompany him to Jerusalem.

Because Presley had a personal stake in the peace negotations that had begun at Camp David. Before he left Jerusalem, he would reveal the secret of his Jewish identity. A "sabbath boy", he spent Friday nights at a Jewish home where he was treated as a member of the family in exchange for turning out the lights. As an adult, he became one of the largest donors to the Nashville Jewish community. But through all this, he never knew he was, by tradition, a Jew himself.

In 1849, on this day the political martyr Fyodor Dostoyevsky (pictured) was shot by a firing squad in St. Petersburg.

Political Martyr Dostoyevsky Shot Fyodor Dostoyevsky's childhood led his great mind into the only option for its escape: revolution. His father, a raging alcoholic, was a retired military surgeon who moved his family into a small apartment on the grounds of Moscow's Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor, where he practiced. The hospital was surrounded by bitter poverty such as an orphanage for the abandoned and an asylum for the insane. Such conditions would be forever impressed upon the young Fyodor. Suffering from epilepsy himself, Fyodor would defy his parents' wishes and explore the hospital gardens, visiting with patients and building a sense of hope out of such bitterness.

A new story by Jeff ProvineAt age 16, after the death of his mother, Dostoyevsky was sent to military engineering school, and his father died soon after. He fell in love with literature and suffered through mathematics enough to manage a commission, eventually becoming a lieutenant. Dostoyevsky left the military in 1843 and turned fulltime to literature, translating Balzac and creating his own fiction. His first published work came in 1846 as a novella entitled Poor Folk, and Dostoyevsky was thrown into literary fame. Fame was fleeting; his next work, The Double, met with frowns of disappointment.

His explorations of schizophrenia and literary experimentation were given up after The Double, and Dostoyevsky pushed himself toward the trials of poverty that he had known so well. He joined the Petrashevsky Circle, a reading and discussion group of progressives in St. Petersburg. While they made some movement, there was no great organization for change beyond theory.

Across Europe in 1848, however, there was much action for change. The Revolutions of 1848 spread across the continent, and Czar Nicholas feared an uprising in Russia. He had easily quashed the 1825 Decembrist Revolt and ended Peter the Great's ideals of Westernization, instead turning back toward orthodoxy. With challenges to autocracy rising in many other empires, Nicholas decided to end the revolution before it could take place by rounding up any progressively minded intellectual. The Petrashevsky Circle was among the groups arrested and put through public mock execution rituals, displays in which the populace could see the might of the Czar's will but also his grace at giving reprieves.

Dostoyevsky himself was arrested April 23, 1849, and, on November 16, sentenced to death by firing squad. After the mock execution, he assumed this would be another of the Czar's displays, and it was generally agreed that he would receive a reprieve. However, due to bureaucratic bungling in the delivery of the reprieve, Dostoyevsky was shot by order of a zealous commander.

Shock settled over St. Petersburg, and Dostoyevsky's writings spread through the city and, then, the country. Many historians suggest that not all of the writings were his, but his depictions of the lives of serfs and the poor are recognized as genuine. Propaganda or not, the works ignited the Russian people as they discussed around fires and over glasses of vodka. Nicholas, refusing to appear weak, repressed those calling for government apology on what was increasingly viewed as a terrorist assassination.

That spring, Russian Mikhail Bakunin escaped from imprisonment while being handed over to Austrian authorities for his organization of the Dresden Uprising the year before. Aided by Russian revolutionist leaders, the 1850 Rising began as Bakunin arrived and announced the liberation of the serfs. Pandering to Slavophile ideals and collectivism, the bureaucracy was overthrown, aristocracy and Jewish farmers alike around the country were slaughtered, and Nicholas was violently ushered off the throne in favor of a much weakened Alexander II constitutionally bound by a council of advisers, Bakunin among them.

Monarchs in Europe debated sending military aid to the Czar, but renewed troubles with revolts in their own empires kept them from assembling a campaign. New stability would be founded in nationalism, citing the best for one's people and country. Strong, central leadership struck both the West and Russia, but the return to the mir, or collective village, style of living would create a sharp ideological division between the two. As the West modernized, Russians settled into orthodoxy, ultimately preparing for swift military defeat by Imperial Germany after the turn of the century.

In 2008, outgoing US Vice President Richard B. Cheney was appointed the next Chief Executive Officer of the United Mining Companies (© Stephen R. Donaldson, 1991-1996). A student of warfare makes the most of his Gap Years

In the gap years between the Bush administrations, Cheney had served as Chairman and Chief Executive of UMC's predecessor organisation, Halliburton Company, already a Fortune 500 company and market leader in the energy sector.


Of course, as a former Secretary of Defence, and member of both the American Enterprise Institute and Council on Foreign Relations, Cheney had a business rolodex that was second to none.


Officially headquartered in Houston, Texas, Cheney would spend the majority of those five years networking his contacts to engage in highly profitable business development activities with Middle Eastern governments.

To "promote American global leadership". Cheney founded a neo-conservative U.S. think tank (the Project for the New American Century) with Donald Rumsfeld, William Kristol and others in 1997. Just three years later, he chaired a selection committee for Vice President, wisely determining that Dick Cheney was the most suitable candidate. To removed any conflict of interest, he resigned his post at Halliburton. At this stage, his net worth was estimated to be between $30 million and $100 million, largely derived from his post at Halliburton, as well as a gross income of nearly $8.82 million.

Throughout the Bush43 Presidency, and due to the inconveniently resource intensive nature of these plans for global domination, the business of warfare was largely outsourced to private security contractors (pictured) such as Blackwater International, Global Risks, Vinnell Corp. More than 15,000 employees of private military contractors, from giant Halliburton to tiny commando firms worked, fought and died alongside U.S. Soldiers in Iraq. There were more private military contractors on the ground in Iraq than troops from any one ally, including Britain. One single company, Global Risks, reported 1,100 employees in Iraq, including 500 Nepalese Gurkha troops and 500 Fijian soldiers, ranking it sixth among troop donors.

Due to the American success in the Second Gulf War, Halliburton's contracts in Iraq generated more than $13 billion in revenue by the time they started to expire in 2006. Thereafter a merger with other energy giants led to the formation of the United Mining Companies, and the consolidation of private security contractors into a quasi-autonomous security division, the United Mining Companies Police (UMCP). As expected, Mr Erik D. Prince, the founder and sole owner of the private military company Blackwater Worldwide was named the first Director of the UMCP.

The two organisations would pursue global domination for some five centuries until finally Captain Sixteen Vertigus presented a bill of severance to the Governing Council of Earth and Space (© Stephen R. Donaldson, 1991-1996).

In 1860, on this day Yankee soldiers quit the United States Garrison at Fort Moultrie in South Carolina just two days after the State had seceded from the Union. At the Charleston Convention that had ratified that historic decision, ardent secessionists had predicted that the Union would commit an act of "hostility and coercision". Because it was widely expected that troops would occupy Charleston Harbor, perhaps decamping for the artificial island of rubble upon which the Union had constructed the as yet unfinished Fort Sumter.

Cooler Heads Might PrevailThe hidden hand of the President-elect was behind the wise decision to pull Yankee Troops. And rightly so because the mood in the South had turned bloody ever since John Brown had begun to fuel a slave revolt with weapons seized from Harper's Ferry.

The citizens of South Carolina had welcome the secession decision made at the Charleston convention. "[South Carolina] had acted nobly and history will accord to her the noble part she had plated. We have been grossly cheated by the North and I would rather that every soul of us would be exterminated then we should be allied to her again. When our Southern Confederacy is formed and in full operation, we will be the gainers and the North the losers" said T.H. Spann of Woodlawn.

"Let them Commerce the war and we will wage it with them until the last drop of blood is spent before we will submit". ~ T.H. SpannQuite who would be the winners and who the losers was a decision that hung in the balance during the nightmarish US Government transition period of 1860-1. The election of Abraham Lincoln - with less than forty percent of the popular vote, and an electoral college result recording not a single state in the south - had been the catalist for the secession. And yet Lincoln was dead in the ground with an assassins bullet in his head, and maybe, just maybe, cooler heads might prevail and allow both sides to back off long enough to avoid a costly conflict.

In 2001, on this day Ursula K. Le Guin finally relented and endorsed a movie adaptation of her epic 1968 fantasy novel "A Wizard of Earthsea".

Deed of GedThe author had previously rejected screenplays that simply followed the book's structure by depicting a strong central protagonist leading the Shadow Quest. Instead the inner construction of the film would be built around the story-within-the-story, the narration of the "Deed of Ged" by his companion Estarriol of Iffish.

If this inside-out perspective was not enough to offer something new and compelling, then the alternative ending was a further surprise for long-term fans of the Earthsea Quartet. As depicted at the climax of the book, the Archmage Ged embraces his evil self on a boat in the open sea. For a moment Estarriol is unsure who has won out, but when the wizard bursts into tears, it is clear that he is in the reassuringly safe presence of his friend from the school for wizards on Roke. Whereas in the movie, his sister Yarrow suspects that the Archmage has actually been possessed and is bent upon the domination of Earthsea.

In 1984, on a cold Saturday afternoon, five gunshots rang out on the New York City Subway, heralding a new age of vigilante justice in major American cities. Bernard Goetz, carrying electronics in transport for his business, boarded the No. 2 Express bound for downtown, where he ran across four young men.

Goetz Resolves to Fight Vigilantism After exchanging signals, they approached him, cutting him off from the rest of the passengers, and one, Troy Canty, told Goetz, "Give me five dollars".

Goetz stood, put his hand into his jacket, and asked Canty what he had said. Canty said again, "Give me five dollars".

Controversy continues as to whether the young men were panhandling or preparing for a mugging, but Goetz took the demand as that of a robbery. He had been mugged before in 1981, when three men jumped him and threw him into a window while trying to get to his valuables. Though he managed to assist an officer in making an arrest, Goetz spent twice the time at the station than the would-be robber did, being charged only with "criminal mischief" and would suffer chest and knee pain for the rest of his life. Never wishing to be a victim again, Goetz applied for a handgun permit, but was denied (possibly on his faking of mental illness some fifteen years before to escape the Vietnam War draft). He purchased a revolver anyway on a trip to Florida, and now he made use of it.

A new story by Jeff ProvineGoetz fired five shots, wounding all four of the young men, Darrell Cabey permanently when the bullet pierced his spinal cord. The other passengers made a terrified dash out of the car, leaving two women behind, nearly trampled. Goetz spoke with them to see that they were uninjured, then met with the conductor, who asked if Goetz was a police officer. Goetz replied simply, "No".

He hurried home, rented a car, and began to drive through New England to clear his head. On December 26, an anonymous tip gave Goetz's name as matching the description of the gunman and mentioned that he had been mugged before. Goetz learned from his neighbor Myra Friedman that the police had been by his apartment, and, on December 30, he returned to New York City. He prepared to leave again to turn himself in somewhere peaceful when he came across a copy of the Marvel comic book Punisher at a newsstand in New Hampshire. Goetz suddenly felt vindicated in what he had done.

New York City at the time had more than 170 percent the crime rate of the rest of the United States. Some thirty-eight crimes were committed each day on the subway alone. A New York Times poll showed that 25 percent of New Yorkers knew family who had been victims of crime in the last year and that "Two in five said muggings and holdups had become so bad that New Yorkers 'have a right to take matters into their own hands.'"

Goetz returned to New York City and began his campaign of masked crime-fighting, combing the city streets, maiming would-be muggers, and leaving calling cards encouraging other New Yorkers to join him. Word spread through front-page newspaper articles despite police and city leaders urging the city to remain calm. The famous Guardian Angels community watch group became split, many holding to their programs of nonviolent outreach while others turned to guns. Pimps and cocaine-dealers were brought down all over the city by covert "heroes" or snipers from apartment rooftops. The New York crime wave came to an abrupt halt and traffickers fled elsewhere.

While crime itself froze, New York became a city on edge, what Mayor Edward Koch referred to as, "some kind of Wild West town". Police attempted to maintain order with record numbers of shootings while the DA's office was lambasted with claims of self-defense. Some citizens called for tight gun control, others applauded the new peace, and political leaders decried the statistics on injuries as being a huge step backward in race relations (though others reported ).

That March, Goetz was brought in by a special police task force that had studied his patrols through the city. His trial for the initial shootings became a circus as support and opposition poured out from across the nation. While he was acquitted of attempted murder, he was found guilty of reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon, 200 hours community service among his sentences. Goetz asked to perform his service as a volunteer with the police, but his request was denied, citing his references to the justice system as a "joke", "sham", and "disgrace". As more of his shootings became known, he would attend trial for years to come.

With its most influential case setting precedence, masked "superheroes" have been seen throughout the United States and even other countries in the past 25 years, soon earning the nickname "Reals". Recently, they have been applauded by President Barack Obama (famously a comic book geek) as "active citizenry". Though armed with legal weaponry such as stun guns, mace, and self-defense training, their casualty rate is notoriously high.

In 1940, on this day the American author of Jazz-age novels and short stories Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald died in Hollywood, Los Angeles.

Happy Endings Part 9a
Death of F. Scott FitzgeraldA decade before he had been committed to a mental hospital at the urging of his wife, Zelda (pictured). It was a shocking but somehow suitable ending to the Roaring Twenties. The Fitzgeralds had been the very essence of the Jazz Age, which Scott had immortalized in now-classic novels like This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby. He had, in fact, termed his wife "the first American flapper".

But now he had decided to commit her to the hospital. Having overheard his intentions during a phone call to his friend Ernest Hemingway while all three are living in Paris, she knew she must strike first. Selling her jewels to pay the required two doctors to testify against her husband, she also used all the charm she acquired as a Southern belle back in Montgomery, Alabama to win them to her side.

That included her helpless weeping over her poor husband's plight .. backed up by the photos she secretly took of his attacks of fury, that included throwing chandeliers. She manages to be away from home when the ambulance comes, leaving her with no need to answer his wild charges that she is the crazy one.

But she still had one danger to overcome. During that fatal phone call, Hemingway assured her husband that "She is a bitch and she is crazy". Now she had to prove that neither charge was true, in case Hemingway used his own growing influence as a popular author to turn those charges against her.

So she hurried to Ernest's side, turning on the charm and the tears once more. He cannot resist putting his arms around her as she wept on his shoulder, and soon they were joined in a much more intimate embrace. It leads to his divorcing his second wife Pauline and making Zelda into Mrs. Hemingway.

The happy couple is still married when he dies of natural causes 30 years later, leaving her with his rich stock of literary royalties, along with their luxurious Florida and Cuba homes.
An article from the Happy Endings series.

In 1974, on this day funeral services were held for James Duncan's son-in-law, Roger Simmons (pictured), as questions about safety lapses in the construction of Duncan Tower and the untimely death of one of Simmons' business associates continued to swirl throughout San Francisco.

En Fuego, Part 3 by Chris OakleyConspicuously absent from the memorial service were James Duncan and Simmons' widow, the former Patricia Duncan; relations between the two Duncan family members and Simmons had been deteriorating even before the tower fire, and in the aftermath of the fire rumors surfaced that safety issues with the tower had sparked a confrontation Simmons and James Duncan just before Simmons plunged to his death in a botched attempt to save his own skin.

In 75 BC, as recorded by the Roman poet Suetonius in his historical morality lessons, pirates murdered a mouthy and ambitious young aristocrat from the Caesar family.

Young Julius Caesar Killed by Pirates Julius had fled Rome as the dictator Sulla began his purges of all those he found treasonous, including Julius' uncle Marius and his father-in-law Cinna. He was stripped of his titles and wealth and may very well have been executed upon refusing to divorce his wife Cornelia, but intervention by his maternal relatives allowed him to escape into hiding. He joined the military and served in the alliance with King Nicomedes of Bithynia, in whose court he remained until he heard of the death of Sulla and determined it was safe to return to Rome.

On his way across the Aegean Sea, however, Julius and his companions were captured by pirates. As per custom when they ran across wealthy travelers, the pirates would hold him for some ransom and then planned to let him go. The pirates demanded twenty talents of silver, and Julius replied with a laugh. He told them they had no idea who he was, and he suggested they demand fifty. While his servants went away to borrow the money, Julius entertained the pirates with stories and promised, upon gaining his freedom, to raise up a fleet, capture the pirates, and crucify all of them. The pirates had a turn at laughing at such a proud young man.

A new story by Jeff ProvineHowever, as the winter solstice approached, the pirates began to become nervous as the young Julius insisted he would carry through on the promise. In a violent disagreement, the pirates became divided, and several stormed the "too ambitious" Julius' cell, stabbing him only once, but enough to kill him. The pirates left the body with Julius' remaining servants and fled, never to be captured. The body would be returned to Rome, where it was received by the remainder of the Caesar family, which continued as minor nobility among the Romans for some time to come.

Rome itself continued for several centuries under heavy bureaucratic rule until invasions from Gauls displaced by Germans eventually toppled the city, breaking the empire into various pieces, many under the influence and authority of the Kingdom of Egypt.

In 1916, with the Great War suspended by the global medical crisis, European leaders risked infection from the Spanish Flu to gather in Versailles and attempt to forge a peace settlement that might save civilization from imminent collapse.

Spanish Flu
By Ed, Jeff Provine and Scott PalterOf course it was no coincidence that the deadliest natural disasters in human history had occured in late 1916. Because the spread of the influenza pandemic had been fanned like wildfire by the unprecedented troop movements of millions of soldiers across the continent. Unbelievably, over five hundred million people from the Arctic to remote Pacific islands were now infected.

Death had surely arrived on a truly apocalyptic scale that even dwarfed the unimaginable slaughter of the recent conflict. U-boats had died at sea that their entire crews succumbed to the disease. Whole armies were pulled out of their trenches to more sanitary conditions with soldiers threatening to lynch politicians trying to put them back in theatre. And the Tsar's Armies returned to St Petersburg infected with much more than the seeds of rebellion.

And so the worlds leaders were forced to accept reasonable terms that they might otherwise have rejected. The Great War was concluded by a Papal mediated seven years truce which commenced on Bastille Day, 1917. Under this agreement, the Ottomans retained Jerusalem, Damascus and Mosul/Kirkuk but not Baghdad. The Germans evacuated northern France (except the Lorraine iron ore fields) but not Belgium. And the Russian Empire imploded with Baltic States, Ukraine and Czarist "South Russia" as German protectorates. The Caucasian republics became British protectorates. Japan grabbed Manchuria and everything up to Lake Bikal. At the end of this mad chapter in human history, only time would tell whether civilization had actually received some benefit from a forced development, or whether the seeds of a second Great War had just been sown.