In 44 B C, Conspirators Assassinate Caesar and Antony.

Conspirators Assassinate Caesar and AntonyThe rise of Julius Caesar had been meteoric. He was born to a comfortable, but hardly powerful, patrician family in 100 BC and spent much of his youth away from Rome as the dictator Sulla committed his purges. Young Caesar surrendered his title in the priesthood and instead joined the army to further his career in politics. In potentially corrupt elections, Caesar began to win titles such as quaestor, Pontifex Maximus, and governor of Spain. His victories over barbarians there earned him a triumph, which catapulted his fame and earned him spots in the circles of General Pompey the Great and Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome. Caesar managed to bring the two, who had long been opponents, into an informal political alliance known as the Triumvirate. He was made consul for a year and then dispatched to Gaul where his conquests would make him legendary.

A new article by Jeff ProvineCaesar returned to Rome in 49 BC on order of the Senate. Rather than disband his army, Caesar brought with him his most loyal legion, crossing the Rubicon, which was an illegal movement of troops. Civil war erupted as the Senate fled and built up forces to defeat the wildly popular Caesar on the field of battle. Caesar, meanwhile, established himself as dictator and made Mark Antony his second-in-command. Antony came from a famous and powerful family and had served on Caesar's staff in Gaul. He proved an effective administrator of Italy while Caesar traveled abroad, destroying the Senate's armies and conquering Egypt. At the celebration of Lupercalia in 44 BC, Antony won a footrace and offered his diadem to Caesar, who refused it. The political show excited the people, who were overwhelmed by Caesar's humility, but the thinly veiled hubris also infuriated Caesar's enemies. They determined to kill him.

This group of senators dubbed themselves the "Liberators" who would free Rome of Caesar, the would-be tyrant. Conspirators Brutus, Cassius, and Casca met the night before their planned assassination on the Ides of March to discuss the political fallout. Other conspirators suggested wiping out Caesar's whole faction, especially the fiery Mark Antony. Brutus and his cohorts, however, determined that only Caesar should die, which would make clear their just action as protection of the Republic. Casca, nervous about the ordeal, let slip to Antony that Caesar would meet his end the next day at the games at Pompey's theater. Antony immediately hurried to warn Caesar, who accepted his company but refused to appear fearful. Antony suggested carrying weapons and bringing bodyguards, but Caesar again refused. On the way to the games, the Liberators ambushed Caesar and stabbed him repeatedly. Antony attempted to defend him and in fact killed Casca's brother Publius, but the Liberators struck him down as well, practically in self-defense against the raging onslaught of the young veteran soldier.

Chaos came over Rome, and the bodies of Antony and Caesar lay in the Forum for hours before being collected. Days later when Caesar's will was read, the senators were surprised to learn that Caesar had named his eighteen-year-old grandnephew Octavian as his heir. If it had been Antony, Caesar's legacy would have been wiped out. Instead, Caesar's power continued through the new, ambitious boy. Unlike Antony, who seemed the embodiment of Mars, Octavian had little military experience but great cunning and potential. The senators determined that the best way to be rid of him was to proceed with Caesar's plans of a campaign against Parthia to retrieve aquilae standards lost in 53 BC.

Some were fearful that a stunning victory in Parthia would make Octavian even more famous than his predecessor, but the war turned into a stalemate. The Romans made initial gains, but Parthian counterattack pushed them back in 40 BC. Octavian and generals such as Ventidius managed to take back their losses, but nearly a decade of fighting put them back where they had begun. While Octavian was away, the Senate under Cicero allowed Octavian's titles to expire, reducing his political might. When the war finally ended in 20 BC, Octavian returned to Rome with the lost legions' standards, but his triumph did not last long. Octavian served as a reformer in the Senate until his death in AD 14 with a huge expansion of public works projects but would only be known to Roman history enthusiasts.

The Roman Republic continued until 70, when generals fresh from fighting in the First Roman-Jewish War returned and settled unrest in Gaul by establishing a strong central imperator. Military control continued as more and more rebellions occurred in Caledonia, Germania, and Dacia, as well as further issues with the Jews and Parthians in the East. Eventually Rome's resources became stretched too thinly, and it broke apart into a series of kingdoms, smaller empires, and vacuums of power invaders quickly seized.

In 44 B.C., Marcus Junius Brutus betrayed a group of conspirators who had plotted to kill Julius Caesar, whose appointment as "dictator for life" - in Rome of the period, dictatorship was an elective office conferred by the Senate for limited periods during emergencies - had aroused resentment not only among Caesar's many enemies but even among his friends.

Julius Caesar Survives the Ides of MarchIronically, it was the latter from among whom the would-be assassins would come, as did Brutus¹.

Initially a reluctant supporter of the conspiracy, Brutus had come to worry about what might follow. Rome had already endured civil war as a result of the conflict between Caesar and Pompey, whom the Senate had made sole consul in 52 B.C. The prospect of a renewal of internal strife came to outweigh in Brutus' mind the dangers of allowing Caesar to remain in power.

Unfortunately, the plot's failure triggered disaster. Caesar first had the conspirators rounded up and slain, and, to avoid the risk of revenge schemes, their families and friends as well. The dictator's ruthless purge predictably resulted in the growth of new schemes, leading to still further bloodbaths as Caesar suppressed each in turn. Even Brutus, who had saved Caesar's life by exposing the first assassination plot against him, finally fell victim to his suspicions, as did his great-nephew Octavian, whom Caesar feared intended to take his place².

A new article by Eric LippsBy the time of Julius Caesar's death in his mid-nineties in 4 B.C., the Roman Republic was a memory. Influenced by the Egyptian culture of his paramour Cleopatra VII³, the mother of his son Caesarion⁴ Caesar had not only transformed the dictatorship into a hereditary monarchy but had himself declared a god. The Senate remained in place, but only as a shell; all real power now lay with Caesar, who besides claiming divinity had also taken the formal title of emperor. He would be succeeded by his forty-three-year-old son by Cleopatra, Caesarion, born Ptolemy XV Philopator Philometor Caesar, whom Julius Caesar had acknowledged as his issue in 40 B.C.⁵ and who, by reason of his parentage, was already Pharaoh of Egypt by the time he became Roman emperor, having served as co-ruler with his mother from 26 B.C. until her death seven years later at age 50⁶. On assuming the emperorship, Caesarion would formally change his name to Augustus and, like his father, would have himself declared divine⁷.

In 1919, on this day Russian troops crossed the border into Socialist Hungary after the rejection of a Russian ultimatum, marking the beginning of the Ten Week War.
Article continues from Part #3.

The Last Chance for Peace #4 By Steven FisherThe direct cause of the war was establishment of a socialist government in Hungary. Another harsh winter had rocked the Balkan region,and had further harmed the popularity of the Hungarian government. In the bitter cold, radical elements had decided to make their move. On February 7, the Hungarian government was overthrown, and a new government was put in power with the socialist Bela Kun as it's head. In the weeks following Kuns rise to power, he set about establishing his brand of socialism on the Hungarian population.

The Russian government looked on Kun's activity in alarm. A sucessful socialist state in Hungary would surely inflame radical elements in Russia. the decision was made to remove Kun's government through force. the Russian army massed on the Hungarian border, in preparation for the invasion. The Hungarians saw this large marshalling of force, and began their own mass mobilization, and began preparations for fierce resistance of a Russian invasion.

Things finally came to a head on March 1, when the Russian government sent an ultimatum to the Hungrian government, demanding the dissolvement of the socialist government, and the turning over of Bela Kun to Russian authorities for trial on charges of terrorism. When these demands were rejected, the Russians declared war.

Russian troops under Aleksei Brusilov crossed the Hungarian border, but only made it a few miles before Hungarian defenses brought their drive to a halt. As the Russians geared up to crack the Hungarian defenses, they were caught by large-scale peasant uprisings, armed by the hungarians and demanding greater freedom, and by a sharp Hungarian offensive. While Russian troops crushed the revolts, the Hungarian offenasive was skillfully fought to a halt by Brusilov.

With the return of Russian troops who had been dispatched to crush the revolts, Brusilov initiated his offensive. The Hungarian defense lines crumbled under overwhelming Russian force, and the Hungarian Army continually had to fall back. The offensive slowed when the Hungarians drew Brusilov into a devastating city battle in Budapest. However, Brusilov managed to encircle Budapest, mitigating the amount of casualities that the Russians took.

The End came quickly for the hungarians. After a coup attempt against the socialist government, Bela Kun knew that nothing would stop the Russians. Diplomatic efforts to involve the Germans had failed, since the Kaiser didn't want to see a sucessful socialist state either. Kun fled the nation through austria to Switzerland, where he took up residence with Lenin and other socialist exiles. The new Hungarian government sued for peace, and the war ended on May 24.

With peace, a Pro-Russian government was set up in Hungary. This contributed to the increasing polarization of the Balkans, especially when the Balkan Entente between Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Russia was set up later that year. It would be especially important when World War One started in 1921.
The whole thread is available at the Alt History Wikia.

In 44 BC, Gaius Julius Caesar was warned by Marcus Junius Brutus that his fellow senators were planning to assassinate him that very day.

Ides of MarchBecause a corrupt nobility had benefited from Senatorial control of the Republic for the four centuries since the explusion of Tarquin, the last of the seven legendary kings of Rome. But Caesar had changed all that, seizing control with the powerful army that he had formed in Gaul. With the support of the army and the peasants he established a dictatorship. And even if he had declined the title of King, he had no hesitation in declaring himself a God.

Despite this conflict, Caesar and the Senate shared a mutual interest that enabled them to quickly reach a compromise. Within days, Caesar would march on Parthia. Now in his late fifties, this was probably his final chance to revisit his spectacular success as a soldier-general. And there was an aspect of destiny waiting to be fulfilled, because after all he claimed to be descended from the goddess Venus and the legendary hero Aeneas. In short, five years of civilian rule in the Roman capital had bored him to distraction and he meant to bring an end to his salad days.

The nobility had long enjoyed reaping the rewards of Roman expansion and in reality their key interest in political control was but a means to an end. Assured of their continuation of at least the benefits of their kleptocracy, they had little hesitation in agreeing that the eighteen-year old adopted son Octavian should rule in name only while his father launched a glorious military conquest promising to return the material rewards of that enterprise to the nobility.

If the Senators congratulated themselves on converting Caesar into the "cash cow" that they had always dreamt of, then events were to prove otherwise. Hoping to expand the Roman Empire by up to a third and perhaps return in glory via the Persian Gulf, the mission collapsed into farce and the dying Caesar would be forced to concede "we came, we saw, we got our asses whipped".

As soon as this terrible news reached Rome, Octavian's days were numbered, and he was soon replaced by Marc Anthony, a man also grasping his last chance at destiny. In his famous play "Alexander the Great", William Shakespeare would make a disfavourable reference to the two generals attempts to subdue the Persians, rightly describing Caesar's fall as a Greco-Roman tragedy.

In 1983, on this day filming of The Terminator resumed in Toronto with the Dutch actor Rutger Hauer recast in the title role.

Filming of "The Terminator" Resumes in TorontoThe future of the movie had been thrown into jeopardy when producer Dino De Laurentiis applied an option in Arnold Schwarzenegger's contract that would make him unattainable for nine months while he was filming Conan the Destroyer. Director Cameron was then contracted to write the script for Rambo: First Blood Part II and had also initiated a series of intense meetings with producers David Giler and Walter Hill to discuss a sequel to Alien. The Terminator Project was unravelling .. fast.

A tour de force performance in Blade Runner as the replicant Roy Batty made Hauer the natural choice for the role. But a junior executive at Orion Pictures actually made the connection. Because in the "Time to Die" he utters the famous line "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. [pause] Time to die".

In 2012, on this day Palestine exercised it right as a UN member state to raise a motion in the General Assembly condemning the latest security crackdown in the West Bank the area which had become Israeli sovereign territory on January 1st.

Buyer's Remorse By Ed and Bruce Michael AndersonThe guarded optimism which followed the negotiated agreement on a two-state solution had soon been replaced by a sense of buyer's remorse. Because it soon emerged that the $billion dollar buyout of the "occupied territories" included a secret assurance from the International Quarter that attacks carried out by large organized forces of Palestinian-Israelis would be considered an "Act of War" being the assault of one nation upon another.

And resistance to the buyout had been raging for six months such that small scale strikes on the Islamic Gangs had now escalated into batallion-sized counter attacks by the Israeli Defence Force.

In 1865, on this day President Abraham Lincoln sent word to Gen. William T. Sherman, his commander of the Western army, ordering him to "take Atlanta," deep in the heart of the Confederacy.

Take Atlanta!Though he had won the election, the war in the east had come to a standstill. The war Union forces were largely successful in occupying Confederate lands west of the Mississippi, though. Texas, though, had resisted invasion from the north and east, and had succeeded in defending lands to its east from attacks coming from California. On March 4, 1865, Lincoln took the oath of office under heavy guard within the chambers of the Supreme Court building, for rumors of assassination plots were being taken very seriously.

On March 15, 1865, Lincoln had sent word to Gen. William T. Sherman, his commander of the Western army, ordering him to "take Atlanta," deep in the heart of the Confederacy. A plan to amass forces in an assault of major southern population centers was to begin within weeks. Such a threat, aimed at the people of the south and not just the troops along the border, was too much for the Davis administration in Richmond. A direct order from his office authorized the assassination of his rival president. Subsequent investigation would show, however, that Jefferson Davis had not given the order himself.

A new article from the "Two Americas" thread on Althistory WikiaThe services of John Wilkes Booth were procured and the rebel spy network in Washington began to look for opportunities to remove the "threat" to peace, that Lincoln had become. The opportunity appeared to have come when Lincoln took his wife to in a night at the theater. It was a trap, for the Confederate spy ring had double agents embedded deep in its operations.

On the evening of April 14, 1865, Booth at successfully made his way to Ford's Theater and past a surprisingly lax security, into Lincoln's balcony seat. As Booth raised his derringer to take what looked like a sure shot, another shot rang out, striking the would-be assassin in the left temple and lodging behind his left eye. The next day, the body of John Wilkes Booth was hanged publicly as a warning to all other conspirators. Lincoln's anger burned toward the rebel forces as he dispatched new orders to Sherman.
The whole alternate biography is available Althistory Wiki.

In 1965, in a powerful demonstration of the healing power of brahmacharya the African American religious leader Malcolm Little symbolically reconnected the broken chains at the foot of the Statue of Liberty.

BrahmacharyaA religious awakening started with a spiritual visitation in his prison cell.
Click to watch the Scene on Youtube

Determined to find the keys to freedom he became a disciple of Elijah Muhammed and at his master's request, journeyed to India to study the control of the senses in thought, word and deed.

Because the awesome power of brahmacharya had been demonstrated by the soul-deep Master Mohandas K. Gandh when he disarmed a clumsy assassination attempt by Nathuram Godse in 1948.

In 1865, on this day Lincoln sent word to Gen. William T. Sherman, his commander of the Western army, ordering him to "take Atlanta," deep in the heart of the Confederacy. A plan to amass forces in an assault of major southern population centers was to begin within weeks.

Threat to PeaceSuch a threat, aimed at the people of the south and not just the troops along the border, was too much for the Davis administration in Richmond. A direct order from his office authorized the assassination of his rival president. Subsequent investigation would show, however, that Jefferson Davis had not given the order himself.

The services of John Wilkes Booth were procured and the rebel spy network in Washington began to look for opportunities to remove the "threat" to peace, that Lincoln had become. That opportunity came when Lincoln made the ill-advised decision to take in a night at the theater. With the war at a standstill near home, Lincoln had thought it safe to enjoy a night out with his wife. He had been assured by Sherman that Atlanta would be in Union hands by June. They both had been wrong.

From the two Americas thread on Alt WikiaOn the evening of April 14, 1865, Booth at successfully made his way to Ford's Theater and past a surprisingly lax security, into Lincoln's balcony seat. A single shot to the back of Lincoln's head began a day-long death watch in a nearby inn. On April 15, 1865, the sixteenth president of the United States was dead.

In 1783, 500 officers of the Continental Army of the United States met at Newburgh, New York to decide whether to abandon the fight against the British, now nearly won, and either move out West and "mock" the Continental Congress for its refusal to provide back pay and pensions it had promised or to march on Philadelphia.

Newburgh Conspiracy by Eric LippsThe meeting had been called for by two anonymous letters which had appeared on March 10. Originally intended for the following day, it had been delayed four days at the urging of George Washington, ostensibly to allow time for "mature deliberation" on the issues. It would later be suggested that Washington had intended to make a personal appeal to the officers not to go through with either option.

He never did so. On the morning of March 13, the fifty-one-year-old Washington was fund to have died in his sleep sometime during the night, from what is now believed to have been an aortic aneurysm.

The revered general's unexpected death was a body blow to military morale.

Gen. Horatio Gates (pictured) assumed supreme command pending confirmation by Congress, but the officers assembled at Newburgh proved unwilling to listen to his pleas for patience. On March 17, they voted to march against Congress and compel that body to pay at gunpoint what they considered themselves owed, "or take authority unto ourselves to better provide for the needs of the country".

It would prove to be a fateful decision. Although the war with Britain was all but over, offering the foreign foe little opportunity to use the rebellion to salvage victory from defeat, the march on Philadelphia would mark the infant nation from then on. Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey in mid-April ahead of the advancing rebels, who by this time had gathered the support not only of their own troops but of the Pennsylvania militia. Arriving in the capital, the troops established a provisional government under General Gates's unwilling leadership. Gates had agreed to take the position only in hopes of restoring order and returning authority to Congress; however, he quickly found himself riding a whirlwind of military and civil unrest, to which he responded with steadily harsher measures.

No one, of course, was more pleased with these developments than the British, who exploited the turmoil to extract concessions at the peace negotiations in Paris. The eventual peace treaty would leave Britain with a military presence along the Mississippi River which it would use to promote trouble between frontier settlers and the Native American tribes, force the infant United States to pay crippling indemnities to the tens of thousands of Loyalists who presented claims for wartime property losses, and impose restrictions on U.S. trade and foreign relations "in the interests of maintaining the peace," a veiled threat of renewed military hostilities.

The bitterest legacy of the Newburgh insurrection, however, would be domestic. The revolt established the superiority of military authority over its civilian counterpart--ironically, one of the things listed as grievances against the Crown in the Declaration of Independence. That the military in question was American rather than British did little to soften the blow against the democratic ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. Indeed, the Articles would assist the military in retaining control, for the civilian r?gime created under their provisions was all but powerless. That powerlessness, in fact, had helped set the stage for Newburgh: Congress had had few means of raising the revenue it would have needed to pay the army, a fact the rebels discovered for themselves upon taking control.

By 1790, the once bright promise of American democracy was fading, never to be fully regained. Between domestic unrest, the continued threat of British attacks, and the depredations of pirates and privateers upon U.S. Shipping, the military government had plenty of excuses for crushing political dissent and for squeezing the populace for taxes to pay for national defense. Shortly before his death, Benjamin Franklin, who had been forced to flee to France after being charged with "sedition" for criticizing military rule, observed bitterly: "Better we had remained under a king who at least could claim the authority of tradition, than to submit to men whose power erupts from the muzzle of a gun".

In 2008, Hillary Clinton's fading campaign for the White House received an unexpectedly suspicious burst of energy on this day when a close inspection of video footage revealed the presence of Barack and Michele Obama, both cheering enthusistically during the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's infamous "God Damn America " sermon in which he apportioned blame on the U.S. for 9/11.
Click to watch the ABC News Bulletin

In it to win itCandidate Obama had previously dismissed voters concerns by telling a Jewish Group that "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial. [Rev. Wright] is like an old uncle who says things I don't always agree with".

That position was now untenable with the fiery Reverend's sermons being broadcast back to back on the national media. "The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people," he said in a 2003 sermon. "God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme".

"God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme"In addition to damning America, he told his congregation on the Sunday after Sept. 11, 2001 that the United States had brought on al Qaeda's attacks because of its own terrorism. "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," Rev. Wright said in a sermon on Sept. 16, 2001.

After Clinton's inauguration, Obama was able to gradually rebuild his battered reputation through his appointment as Secretary of State. Because during four years of patient negotiation with Israelis and Palestinians, he succeeded in finding a two-state resolution in the Middle East amongst a troubled group of people that might perhaps have a degree of sympathy for the Reverend's opinions.

In 1931, the German Reichstag is bombed. The explosion will kill several people and result in a fire gutting part of the building. The bomber is captured and identified as Walter Stennes, a captain in the SA. Reichstag Bombed by Eric LippsThis terror attack, coming only months after the violence of the Christmas Week riots, further poisons the reputation of the Nazi Party. Top businessmen now fear that aiding the Nazis may lead to social chaos, perhaps even revolution; memories of the Nazis' abortive putsch in Munich in 1923 are still relatively fresh, and it does not escape notice that the Party now has a lot more troops and guns than it did at that time. Military officers, including the aged but still influential General Paul von Hindenburg and his former deputy Erich Ludendorff, also begin to question the wisdom of backing a political movement seemingly unable to maintain internal discipline. Business and military leaders begin quietly considering alternatives to the Nazis.

In 1854, on this day the twenty-ninth President of the United States Thomas Riley Marshall (pictured) was born in North Manchester, Indiana.

President Thomas R. Marshall, Fearless LeaderPart I: The Death of a President

The year was 1919, the world was devastated by the most traumatic war it had ever seen and a subsequent flu epidemic that took the lives of millions. Yet even amidst the trauma hope remained, a new entity unlike anything the world had seen before had been birthed out of the wretched events of the Great War. It was the League of Nations, a unified world body whose primary intention was to ensure that such a war like the Great War before it never came to pass.

This League, this idea of a unified world council all originated from one man, the twenty-eighth president of the United States of America, a man named Woodrow Wilson. Yet the same man who had convinced the leaders of the greatest nations on earth to join such a council was failing to convince his own people. Now seemingly in vain he spent his last years running around the country trying to get his people, his nation, to join the body they fathered.

Yet this task seemed to be too mighty for Wilson to take on as his health began to take a turn for the worse. His final official speech would take place on September 25 1919 as he advocated for the United States to join the League of Nations in front of a crowd in Pueblo Colorado. Shortly after stepping off the stage Wilson suffered a minor stroke similar to the ones he had struggled with for the later part of his life ending his speaking tour designed to convince the United States to join the League of Nations. Unfortunately 7 days later the brilliant life of Woodrow Wilson came to an end as he suffered a much more serious stroke, killing him in his sleep.

Wilson's death meant a number of things, the most important being that the presidency was left to his vice-president, the small and un-assuming Thomas Marshall. In hindsight the prospects of the success of the League of Nations never seemed dimmer, Thomas Marshall seemed to lack all ambition to make such a massive dream a reality. Yet this small ex-lawyer from Indiana was about to do something that would change the course of history.

Thomas Marshall 29th President of the United States of America

Inaugurated shortly after Wilson's tragic death on October 2nd 1919 Thomas Marshall became the 29th President. He definitely had come a long way from running a small law firm in Indiana and from pieces of his memoirs we can ascertain that he certainly felt overwhelmed by his new position. He was so overwhelmed in fact that he made it clear that he was not planning to run in the upcoming election of 1920.

Marshall's 17 month presidency would have been a quiet unassuming affair, with the nation slowly recovering from it's most recent conflict had it not been for one thing. A singular piece of paper known as the Treaty of Versailles would consume Thomas Marshall's presidency and become his legacy that he would leave the people whom he served. In fact it would be the only thing of note Marshall would accomplish during his time in office being too meek and mild mannered to address any other concerns facing the nation at the time.

A number of factors could be contributed to Thomas Marshall's success in getting the United States Senate to sign the Treaty of Versailles and join the League of Nations. For one thing, Marshall lacked Wilson's firm conviction on the articles of the treaty. Marshall had always believed that compromise was needed but never managed to convince Wilson. With Wilson gone Marshall began putting out feelers and began reviewing various compromises put forward by both the Republicans and the Democrats. Another factor that worked to Marshall's advantage albeit quite inadvertently was the death of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was now viewed as a martyr by the American people and indeed a number of members in the United States Senate. As a result of these factors and a few others the United States Senate agreed to sign the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 50-38 on November 19th 1919.

The remainder of Marshall's term would be a relatively quiet affair. Marshall would travel to London in 1920 to participate in the League of Nation's first action of signing the Treaty of Versailles becoming the second President to travel out of the nation during his administration. Marshall would also oversee the complete withdrawal of US troops from Russia ending their ineffective intervention there. Yet nothing was done to undo the problems caused by the intervention, fear and mistrust that would have disastrous consequences later on. Marshall also failed to address any of the failures of his predecessor Woodrow Wilson leaving things pretty much as they were when he was inaugurated.

Yet Marshall had gone far beyond all the expectations lain on him by the members of the Democratic party who wanted him dumped from the ticket in 1916. He had succeeded where everyone thought he would fail and he left a lasting impact not only on his country but on the world as well. Yet the very act that defined him wearied him beyond measure prompting him not to seek re-election in 1920 and return home to Indiana where he settled down to write his memoirs until his untimely death in 1923 upon a visit to Washington D.C. Thomas Marshall left the world a vastly different place, not too bad for a small time lawyer from Indiana..

In 1938, in front of 110,000 fans, Captain Eddie Hapgood's England XI saluted British Prime Minister Arnold Hiller at the Olympiastadion in Berlin.

The Right Honourable Arnold Hiller, M.P
A teaser by Ed & Chris OakleyThe style of salute, with the right arm flung sideways rather than upwards, was delivered in the aggressive manner of the British National Socialist Party. Whilst not quite a declaration of war on Weimar Republic, the display caused a veritable eruption in both the German Cabinet, and also the British dressing room.

The UK's Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Neville Henderson, had ordered the two British officials in charge, Charles Wreford-Smith and the new FA Secretary Stanley Rous to instruct the team to raise a salute to the Prime Minister's box. The FA officials then informed Hapgood, who objected to doing anything more than standing for the German national anthem. When an FA official came into the dressing room to tell the team to give the salute, England's star winger Stanley Matthews recounts "The dressing room erupted. All the England players were livid and totally opposed to this, myself included ... Eddie Hapgood told him what he could do with the National Socialist salute, which involved putting it where the sun don't shine".

In 1783, after years of fighting, the War of Independence for the United States was coming to a close.

Newburgh Conspiracy MarchesThe Battle of Yorktown in 1781 saw the last major British expeditionary force surrender, leaving only strong garrisons in New York, Charleston, and Savannah. Smaller-scale fights continued in some areas, but the war had become a costly stalemate with American victory in sight, and the Peace Party in Parliament wanted to end it before more colonies fell to the Americans' allies overseas. The bulk of the American Army settled in Newburgh, New York, under the command of George Washington, where they held in check the British forces in New York City.

Just weeks away from a formal ceasefire in 1783, the American officers began to fidget with unrest. During the Revolution, many sacrifices had been made, especially by soldiers who often accepted postponement of their pay. Congress had no legal means to raise taxes, meaning that it operated on voluntary contributions from the states. As the states rarely offered to contribute, Congress could not pay the soldiers their due and instead made promises. With the war waning and the promises of pay seeming thinner every day, the disgruntled officers began to look for ways to gain what they felt was rightfully theirs.

A new article by Jeff ProvineAn anonymous letter to the general army was written and distributed by Major John Armstrong, aide-de-camp to General Horatio Gates, the highest commander behind Commander-in-Chief George Washington. The letter voiced the opinions of the officers, who felt that their service during the war had been largely unappreciated and that hopes of "future fortune may be? desperate" when the threat of the British was gone. They felt they had reached "points beyond which neither can be stretched, without sinking into cowardice, or plunging into credulity" in "a country that tramples upon your rights, disdains your cries, and insults your distresses". The letter ended with a call for petitions to Congress to pay out what it had promised and a meeting of officers to discuss action on March 11, which might have very well been following up on the rumor among enlisted men to march on Congress itself.

Congress, meanwhile, was divided between those who were wary of centralized government and those who wanted a stronger, clearer rule in America, such as Gouverneur Morris and Washington's former aide-de-camp, Alexander Hamilton. A commission from General Henry Knox lobbying for pay for soldiers and officers had already been largely ignored. Hamilton wrote to Washington hoping for leverage in his push for a more centralized government, but Washington replied that he trusted in republicanism and would never use the military to threaten civilian Congress. Washington himself sent a general order cancelling the March 11 meeting and calling his own on March 15 after tempers had cooled.

Armstrong and his fellow officers were worried that Washington would hinder their efforts to stir the men to action and even considered overthrowing his command and making Horatio Gates the Commander-in-Chief. As a direct coup would have failed due to Washington's overwhelming political popularity, they decided to take action using a rank Gates already held higher than Washington: president of the Board of War. Created in 1776 and expanded in 1777, the Board handled Army ordinance in a civilian manner, and Gates served there until the end of his career despite it being a severe conflict of interest.

The evening before Washington's meeting, Armstrong managed to persuade Gates to invite (rather than militarily order) officers to a civilian meeting outside of camp, twenty miles away in Poughkeepsie, NY, where the New York State Assembly was meeting. Many of the supporters came to the meeting, which became an Army demonstration and stirred support in the Assembly to dispatch funds earmarked for their pay. Washington held his meeting and gave an impassioned reading of a letter from Congress explaining its lack of funds, but actions spoke more loudly than words. Gates followed Washington's address with an appeal for more lobbying, and General Knox agreed.

Nonviolent demonstrations (which many felt were thinly veiled threats) began occurring wherever the Army was stationed. Orders for furlough were extended, which saved on pay but gave soldiers time to organize more protests. From Massachusetts to North Carolina, legislators were harangued for pay. That June, a mob of soldiers from Lancaster, PA, marched on Congress itself, blocking the door and refusing to allow the congressmen to leave the building until Alexander Hamilton (himself a former soldier awaiting his pension) persuaded them that they would meet again the next day. Using the rabble to his favor, Hamilton managed to push through a bill, to be ratified for the states, for taxation on luxury imports to repay the military. Many of the states balked at the idea of federal taxation, but the pressure of the soldiers suppressed any counterargument. The tax came into effect and easily paid the $800,000 owed to soldiers as well as supplying a national Revenue Cutter Service to ensure the safety of American waters and payment.

The power of the veterans was clear, and Hamilton began correspondence with Armstrong and Gates, the latter of whom became president of the Society of the Cincinnati, a brotherhood of officers founded to preserve the Revolution's ideals. When Shays' Rebellion began in 1786 amid a post-war recession due to a credit crisis, Hamilton used the Society to show the power of his army, which marched under the still-popular Horatio Gates at request of Massachusetts Governor James Bowdoin. This proved that the Articles of Confederation could work, thanks to Hamilton's modifications. Hamilton gained greater political clout, founding the National Bank and creating a sitting executive branch.

As also France itself became a republic baptized in blood, relations fell apart between the nations. After a bribery scandal, Hamilton pushed through the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 and 1799. Jeffersonians reacted with the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which were widely unpopular and became grounds for treason. Hamilton installed federal courts and rigged them to his favor, eliminating many of his enemies. The US gradually became a militarized state as Hamilton prepared to invade Florida and Louisiana. Taxes increased to fund the army, spurring unrest that Hamilton attempted to cure by establishing dictatorial powers for himself. In 1807, Hamilton declared war on France and Spain as they attacked Portugal, and the United States itself fell into civil war as Southern states rebelled. Eventually Hamilton's rule would be overthrown by a popular colonel, Andrew Jackson, who himself would establish a dictatorship that would lead to civil war and dissolution of the United States.

In 1820, on this day the Padre della Patria (Father of the Fatherland) Vittorio Emanuele Maria Alberto Eugenio Ferdinando Tommaso was born in the Palazzo Carignano, Turin. He was the eldest son of Charles Albert of Sardinia and Maria Theresa of Austria, styled as the Duke of Savoy prior to becoming King of Sardinia.
This post is an article from the Good Old Willie thread.

Good Old Willie #4Although an Austrian Chancellor famously discounted the country as "ein geographiscer Begriff" (a geographic expression) it was Napoleon's peninsular campaign that gave Italians the contemporary experience of a national identity. Then the resulting peace settlement at the Congress of Vienna created a new Kingdom of Sardinia with title to the lands of Savoy, Piedmont, Nice, Liguria, Genoa, Cyprus and Jerusalem. And the House of Savoy played a pivotal leadership role in the long process of unification known as the Risorgimento and Vittorio Emanuele II was proclaimed the King of Italy. The statesman Massimo d'Azeglio famously declared "Now that we have made Italy, it is necessary for us to create Italians".

Of course there was no keener observer of the Risorgimento than Wilhelm I, King of Prussia. He hoped that the Hohenzollerns might emulate the success of the House of Savoy, assuming the role of President of the North German Confederation. But his dystopian vision of a Prussian dominated unified Germany was a different order of strategic threat, and the Austrians and French made sure that such a militaristic successor state never materialized. Much of the blame can be apportioned to Wilhlem I himself, who attempted to achieve unification the hard way, through bullying the Great Powers and also the other German states.

The decisive French victories at Metz and Sedan prompted Austria to enter the war and also the South Germans to switch sides. Then Paris and Vienna led a coalition of small German state to dismember Prussia and Russia broke policy to stand aside. The involvement of Russia, a Prussian ally during the later phase of the Napoleonic Wars, was a decisive historical accident caused initially by a scandalous liaison between a Prussian/North German ambassador and a female relation of the Czar. Ultimately, an accidental naval clash enabled the United Kingdom to provide a stand-off to Russian chauvinism. This was due to a failed Russian Navy attempt to intecept the Hohenzollerns fleeing by ship to exile in Great Britain.

In 1854, on this day the twenty-ninth President of the United States Thomas Riley Marshall (pictured) was born in North Manchester, Indiana.

President MarshallA prominent lawyer in Indiana, he became an active and well known member of the Indiana Democratic Party by stumping across the state for other candidates and organizing party rallies that later helped him win election as the 27th Governor of Indiana. In office, he proposed a controversial and progressive state constitution and pressed for other progressive era reforms. The Republican minority used the state courts to block the attempt to change the constitution.

His popularity as governor, and Indiana's status as a critical swing state, helped him secure the Democratic vice presidential nomination on a ticket with Wilson in 1912 and win the subsequent general election. An ideological rift developed between the two men during their first term, leading Wilson to limit Marshall's influence in the administration, and his brand of humor caused Wilson to move Marshall's office away from the White House. During Marshall's second term he delivered morale-boosting speeches across the nation during World War I and became the first vice president to hold cabinet meetings, which he did while Wilson was in Europe. As events transpired this unusual deputisation foreshadowed a smooth rise to the Presidency, because Wilson's obsession with internationalism exhausted him to the point of ruining his health.

Woodrow's achievements in the peace settlement process were recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. But isolationists in the US Congress blocked his proposed membership of the League of Nations. He travelled across the nation in an attempt to gain popular backing. But it was too much for his already fragile health and on 2nd October 1919, he suffered a fatal stroke and Thomas Riley Marshall assumed office. Uncoupled from the grander issue of striking a course between isolationism and internationalism, his immediate focus narrowed to moderating the Democrats enough to triumph in the 1920 election.

In 1792, per the advice of founder Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. Congress amends the country's constitution regarding patent law.

Patent Law"In order to foster innovation," Jefferson says at the passage of the amendment, "the United States shall recognize a patent and copyright period not to exceed five years for a corporation¹, and twenty years for an individual's creation".

America becomes known for its lax laws regarding intellectual property, and creativity and innovation are indeed spurred by the nation's unwillingness to "lock up ideas", as patent-holding President Abraham Lincoln referred to the country's system. In spite of corporate efforts to extend their own patent/copyright periods, America has resisted changing a system that has given the world both innovative machinery and powerful literature.

In 1953, Soviet leader Georgy Malenkov has his arch-rival, Nikita Khrushchev, poisoned.

Poisoning of Nikita KhrushchevKhrushchev was on the brink of toppling Malenkov from his position in the Communist Party, and Malenkov moved first. Although he faced some trouble from Khrushchev's allies in the party at first, a quick purge removed them from power. Malenkov became even more repressive than his predecessor Stalin, and relations with the west soured under his leadership. Relations with the non-aligned nations didn't fare much better, and in 1959, he was ousted and exiled in an attempt to liberalize the Soviet Union.

Leonid Brezhnev assumed the leadership of the USSR, and to show the world that times had changed, called a general election the next year, which he won handily. Although Brezhnev held on to power with a steely grip, he did open the country's re-education camps and release political prisoners. He was hailed by the west for opening the Soviet Union to business ventures from various friendly capitalists, and allowing the Soviet people to elect its leaders (apart from himself). He even set in place the electoral procedures following his death, so that the USSR could finally become a democracy.

In 1807, on the thirteenth anniversary of the issuing of a patent (numbered X72) for his cotton gin that would prove fraudulent, Eli Whitney sought revenge on the Southern planters that had "robbed" him.

Eli Whitney's Revenge The idea for the invention had come to him while he was traveling to South Carolina as a private tutor and then persuaded to visit Georgia by Catherine Littlefield Greene, widow of Revolutionary hero Nathaniel Greene, whose plantation was headed by Phineas Miller, a fellow graduate to Whitney's Yale. While there had been cotton gins before, Whitney's design proved to revolutionize the agriculture of the South. He hoped to keep the device to himself, sending agents to run the machines themselves rather than manufacturing cotton gins for sale. Demand outpaced him, and many people developed their own cotton gins with patents in 1796 going to men such as Hodgen Holmes, Robert Watkins, William Longstreet, and John Murray. Whitney devastated his fortune attempting to defend his patent and hold a monopoly. When his factory burned down and he lost a government contract to produce weapons, Whitney suffered a mental breakdown, never fully regaining his senses.

A new story by Jeff ProvineHe worked as a manager in a trade firm for several years, eventually coming across the "boll weevil", an insect pest from Mexico that endangered cotton crops there. Seeing his opportunity, Whitney traveled to Mexico, cultivated the weevil, and smuggled it back to Georgia, where cotton had become the king of cash crops, having increased in production more than ten-fold. The weevil, seeded by Whitney on a march westward, became an infestation that all but wiped out plantations. The resulting economic devastation went unaided by the presidency of Andrew Jackson, who saw it as God's Wrath against the wealthy who caused the small farmer to struggle. Slavery quickly went out of style as the farmers could not afford to keep more than a few hands.

Gradually, the South would recover and develop along with the West as frontiers of the Union. Eli Whitney would die of prostate cancer in 1825.

In 1938, on this day the British Government's cowardly policy of appeasement was abruptly terminated by Captain Eddie Hapgood's England Eleven who refused to give the Nazi salute at the Olympiastadion in Berlin.

End of AppeasementThe authorities had in fact been keen to avoid a repeat of 1936, when the British Olympic team had caused offence to their German hosts by giving neither the Nazi salute nor that of the Olympic movement (the right arm flung sideways rather than upwards in the manner of the Nazis).

Accordingly, the Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Neville Henderson, a staunch supporter of appeasement, had ordered the two British officials in charge, Charles Wreford-Smith and the new FA Secretary Stanley Rous to instruct the team to raise a Nazi salute to the Fuhrer's box.

The FA officials then informed Hapgood, who objected to doing anything more than standing for the German national anthem. When an FA official came into the dressing room to tell the team to give the salute, England's star winger Stanley Matthews recounts "The dressing room erupted. All the England players were livid and totally opposed to this, myself included ... Eddie Hapgood told him what he could do with the Nazi salute, which involved putting it where the sun don't shine".

In 1973, on a stopover at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, US President William Westmoreland presented lieutenant commander John McCain with a signed copy of his favourite novel, Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls".

Cause GreaterIn the inside cover, Westmoreland entered a handwritten quotation from the protagonist, Robert Jordan - "The World is a fine place, and worth the fighting for".

Sensing the historic paralell with the fascist assault on the Spanish Republic, both Westmoreland and McCain were strongly in agreement with Jordan's philosophy that "if we win here, we win everywhere". Yet neither man had the insight to ask whether Hemingway, a peacenik that moved to Cuba and later committed suicide in despair, might not be suggesting the whole military adventure was a tragic waste of life.

In 2016, on this day of infamy, the Barack X Olympic Stadium in Chicago was blown up in a terrorist attack by the Military Order of the Brothers in Christ (MOBIC).

War on IslamLess than one hour later, drone aircraft smashed into the Twin Minarets that had only recently been erected at Ground Zero in New York City. Needless to say, the Islamic Republic of America's plans for the Summer Olympics were thrown in disarray.

But it soon emerged that both events had been carefully orchestrated to conceal MOBIC's true purpose which was to break Dubya out of imprisonment on Guatanemo Bay. And whilst a number of handpicked Uyghur Fedayeen Guards were killed in the struggle, the mission failed to achieve its central objective. Ironically, much of the military hardware used in the terrorist attacks had been authorised by Dubya himself during the ill-fated "War on Islam".