In 1924, on this day the tenth President of the Confederate States, Thomas Woodrow Wilson died in Richmond, Virginia.

Woodrow Wilson
10^th Confederate President
March 4, 1915 - March 4, 1921Thomas Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 - February 3, 1924) was the 10th President of the Confederate States. A leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, he served as President of the University of Virginia from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of Virginia from 1911 to 1913. In a surprisingly close race against Constitution Party candidate Oscar Wilder Underwood. Wilson was elected as a Democrat in 1914.

A new article from the "Two Americas" thread on Althistory WikiaWilson persuaded a Democratic Congress to pass the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission, the Clayton Antitrust Act, the Federal Farm Loan Act and a progressive income tax in the Revenue Act of 1917, as he saw the inevitability of the Confederacy entering into the hostilities in Europe. Though much of his election campaign around the slogan "he will keep us out of the war," CS neutrality was challenged in early 1917 when the German government proposed to Mexico a military alliance in a war against the CS, and began unrestricted submarine warfare, sinking without warning every American merchant ship -- both Union and Confederate - its submarines could find. Wilson in April 1917 asked Congress to declare war.

He focused on diplomacy and financial considerations, leaving the waging of the war primarily in the hands of the Army. On the home front in 1917, he began the first draft since the war for Confederate independence, raised billions in war funding through Liberty Bonds, set up the War Industries Board, promoted labor union growth, supervised agriculture and food production through the Lever Act, took over control of the railroads, enacted the first federal drug prohibition, and suppressed anti-war movements. Though national women's suffrage was already achieved in the U.S., Wilson was unable to persuade Congress to consider a similar amendment to the C.S. constitution.

In the late stages of the war, Wilson took personal control of negotiations with Germany, including the armistice. He issued his Fourteen Points, his view of a post-war world that could avoid another terrible conflict. He went to Paris in 1919 to create the League of Nations and shape the Treaty of Versailles, with special attention on creating new nations out of defunct empires. Largely for his efforts to form the League, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1919, during the bitter fight with the Constitutionist-controlled Senate over the C.S. joining the League of Nations, Wilson collapsed with a debilitating stroke. He refused to compromise, effectively destroying any chance for ratification. The League of Nations was established anyway, but the Confederate States never joined. Wilson's idealistic internationalism, now referred to as "Wilsonianism", called for the Confederate States to enter the world arena to fight for democracy.

While "making Europe safe for democracy," back home Wilson's administration was occupying much of the Caribbean in attempts to put democratically minded leaders in unstable areas. Decisions made in Nicaragua, for instance, would lead to Communism - which arose as an indirect result of the "Great War" in Europe - getting a stronghold in the western hemisphere. The stress of the peace process worsened the president's health, and he spent several months out of the public eye after his stroke. He was assisted by his second wife through this tough time.

After leaving office, Wilson retired to his home in Richmond, where he died on February 3, 1924. In his six years he had lead the Confederate States onto the world scene as a powerhouse militarily and economically. Though the CSA had not become a member of the League of Nations, he died knowing that his nation had made a difference in the world.

In 2011, to mark the recent admission of the 51st State, inaugural Governor Ronald E. Paul was pleased to welcome the historian Newton Leroy Gingrich to the Moon (pictured).

Lunar Liberty Part 3Inevitably cynics viewed the payment of the archivist's services as a thinly disguised attempt to increase funding for the Lunar Colony during a period of budgetary austerity. Nevertheless, Gingrich's multi-part publication would provide an insightful exploration of space flight history that was well received by the academic community.

Part one reviewed the Soviet-America rivalry of the nineteen fifties, a challenge to national prestige that drove President Kennedy to make a pledge to land on the moon before the decade was out. And yet manned space flight had to complete with another program that was simultaneously draining national resources - the Vietnam War.

Part Two addressed the subsequent challenges of President Hubert Humphrey who was both a beneficiary and a victim of the hard-fought victory won by General Creighton Abrams. Overbold due to a misreading of American triumphalism, the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered a preemptive strike at the outset of the Yom Kippur War. The resulting Arab backlash forced America to develop alternative energy sources.

And Part Three outlined the accelerated development of Solar Power Satellites, the fundamental technology breakthrough required to transport humanity en masse to the moon. Surely without this invention of sustainable accelerated G-Force, modern rocketry would never had permitted thirteen thousand men and women to staff the Lunar Colony and reach the magic population number that would had triggered a consideration of Statehood.

In 1959, as it progressed, the Winter Dance Party Tour became worse and worse of an event.

Winter Dance Party Tour Nearly Crashes Although it seemed greatly promising with numerous stops around the Midwest in three weeks and brought together some of the greatest talent in the music industry, logistics plagued all involved. The heating on the tour bus broke, which caused Buddy Holly's drummer Carl Bunch to be hospitalized with frostbite. Sick of discomfort and reportedly needing laundry done, Holly and his band chartered a plane to take them to their next destination of Moorhead, MN.

A new story by Jeff ProvineThe night went on to shift the passengers on the plane. "J. P". Richardson, the "Big Bopper", was coming down with the flu and asked if he could have a seat on the plane, to which Waylon Jennings agreed. Eighteen-year-old Ritchie Valens, who had never ridden in a small plane before, asked for a seat as well. He and Tommy Allsup flipped a coin for it, and Valens won. Holly joshed his bandmates for giving up their seats, and the plane piloted by twenty-one-year-old Roger Peterson took off shortly before 1 AM. As he was preparing to leave, his boss Hubert Dwyer mentioned to Peterson that the weather ahead was looking very foul. Peterson, who had not yet passed his instrument tests, became nervous but did not wish to give up the job.

Holly noticed Peterson seemed off, but the pilot assured him things were fine, despite repeatedly checking his instruments. Shortly after takeoff, Peterson realized the Sperry Attitude Gyro was registering his pitch attitude in reverse of the artificial horizon indicator he had trained on. He decided to make an emergency landing and gather his senses, but the stormy weather upset the plane, and Peterson was forced to make a water landing, skidding across nearby Rice Lake, just short of the Lake Mills Municipal Airport. All four occupants survived though were hospitalized with bumps and bruises, and Buddy Holly had broken his left hand. Rumor holds that he broke it punching Peterson's face, but it is more likely that it was catching himself on the dashboard.

Despite losing three of its headliners, the tour went on, giving local talent Bobby Vee a chance to perform. The Big Bopper's flu knocked him out of the rest of the tour, as did Holly's hand, and so Ritchie Valens became the sensation of the Midwest as spring came in 1959. Valens, who would in 1964 release an album over his actual name Ricardo Esteban Valenzuela Reyes, would be instrumental in launching the Chicano Rock craze of the mid-1960s, eclipsing the "British Storm" and giving a major addition to the growing Latino voice in the United States. He would later leave music to pursue a career in politics on the behalf of the Hispanic populace and be elected a congressman from California in 1976 and Senator in 1991.

With his position as a disc jockey before his rise to rock fame, J.P. Richardson became part of the proceedings of the Payola scandal in the Supreme Court. He reportedly denounced big business and the studios who would deprive genuine artists of playtime by stuffing "factory hack down the ears of listeners". Richardson enjoyed a successful musical career and then returned to deejaying, guiding new voices and setting up his own brand of label that would reportedly listen to any submitted record. The wide diversity of music caused numerous new crazes throughout the 1960s and ?70s, giving every new kind of genre a chance and the audience to reply with critiques. He is credited with coining the term "music video," which he would use to expanding his radio work onto television.

Holly, meanwhile, bemoaned that he would never play as well again, though he still sold numerous records and served as one of the most creative artists of the twentieth century. Many suggest that he alone kept "pure rock" alive and often mentioned what he could do with full use of his left hand, a topic observed in folk singer Don McLean's "The Day the Music Cried". Holly would eventually accept Elvis Presley's invitation to Hollywood, where he would star in a series of films before disastrously experimenting with Surf music. He would come back to stardom as a blues and old rock singer, seeming to personify the aging of rock as it became eclipsed by more energetic disco.

Notably, none of them ever flew again.

In 2011, Michael Sklatch wrote ~ In the future from which I'm writing this letter, the United States has become a totalitarian Christian fundamentalist state.

A brief letter from the future to the United StatesOf course, there's no such thing as a letter from the future. The future doesn't really exist, except as choices to be made in the present. If you who are reading this can respond in your own way to what's happening in your time, then this letter will remain an empty piece of fiction.As you've probably already supposed, it all began when the US government created a Department of Homeland Security, which became one of the fastest growing government agencies in US history.

It quietly and steadily expanded its jurisdiction to cover any activity that it judged to be a threat, direct or indirect, to national security. At first this was done in the name of blocking terrorism, but eventually expanded to areas much further afield.

One of those areas was censorship. The Homeland Security Department began to reserve the power to censor the press for any ideology that it judged to threaten national security.

In a few exemplary cases the Homeland Security Department seized assets and suspended operations of media entities.

Lawsuits were filed, but the Department resolutely flouted legal pressure and public opinion.

The effect of those showcase incidents was enough to neatly chill the press. Most media firms complied voluntarily just because they didn't want to risk attracting the attention of the Homeland Security Department.

The next move had hugely significant consequences. Within the Homeland Security Department a committee called the Council for the Defense of Christian Family Values was created.

The underlying motive for the council was a belief that if a nation was God-fearing it would invite divine favor and protection, and if not, God would punish the nation for its lack of faith. For that reason, Christian faith was seen as intrinsic to national security. No real justification for this was given publicly.

The Christian Family Values Council began working to systematically align the Homeland Security Department with the interests of radical fundamentalist Christians, who had for many years been gaining immense political power in the Republican Party by playing down their radicalism.

Although the threat of censorship had largely muted the mainstream press, the country was deeply divided over the Christian Family Values Council. Many people naturally began seeing parallels with the rise of the Nazis during the 1930s.

There was trouble at the polls as a result. Despite the fact that the Republican Party, which had always been the principal sponsor of the Christian Family Values Council, had itself begun to splinter and appeared to have lost, election results still showed Republicans to be hands-down winners.

Suspecting outright election fraud, the public demanded an official investigation into the election. When the investigation began to uncover evidence that the election had been blatantly tampered with, the Homeland Security Department abruptly halted the investigation.

That provoked large demonstrations and isolated instances of civil unrest. The Homeland Security Department stepped in vigorously to suppress the unrest, using its now formidable surveillance network and the national police force that it had been building.

The Christian Family Values Council had meanwhile been building up alliances with the US military. Several high-ranking officers were now associated with the Council, and the Council itself had become a bastion not only of the religious right, but of a rapidly growing culture of militarism, also a reminder of Nazi Germany.

As the general population began to understand that the Christian Family Values Council was a threat to democracy, large numbers of people began to organize themselves to oppose it across the nation.

Supporters of the Christian Family Values Council also organized themselves, however, meeting in churches and schools in communities that were sympathetic to what the Christian Family Values Council stood for.

They set up local and regional councils for the defense of Christian family values, mirroring the national Council, and those amounted to a de facto political party.

Civil unrest grew as organized supporters of the Christian Family Values Council occasionally clashed with organized opponents.

In the South, where the Christian Family Values Council has strong local roots, any opposition to the Christian Family Values Council was dealt with in a few highly publicized incidents by local thugs using the sort of violence reminiscent of the Nazi brownshirts.

As the situation deteriorated, the nation was so deeply divided and the threat of civil unrest had grown so acute that the presidential administration, which was by then completely dominated by the Christian Family Values Council, took advantage of the situation to preemptively suspend the upcoming congressional elections, to dissolve Congress, and to declare martial law.

The coup was accomplished. The US constitution was rendered useless.

The military was thrown into crisis after the coup. Many high-ranking military professionals were still loyal to the US constitution and considered the Christian Family Values Council to be treasonous.

A power struggle ensued and at first it looked like the coup would be rolled back.

A second American Civil War between the military partisans loyal to the Christian Family Values Council versus those loyal to the US constitution briefly seemed likely.

Ironically, this second civil war would essentially have cut across the same regional boundaries as the first one did.

In the end, the Christian Family Values Council and their partisans prevailed, mainly due to their brutal determination. Professional officers and troops still loyal to the US constitution were required to swear allegiance to the Christian Family Values Council or else be expelled from the military.

Immediately the Christian Family Values Council established a set of regulations similar to Islamic sharia but based on the Judeo-Christian bible.

Among other changes, that meant that women's rights outside the home were dramatically curtailed.

The First Amendment rights to peaceable assembly and free speech were of course vigorously suppressed. Likewise any armed resistance by citizens loyal to the constitution was ruthlessly put down by forces loyal to the Christian Family Values Council.

The threat of civil war had provoked the Christian Family Values Council to demand that all citizens surrender their arms unless they had a license from a local Christian family values defense council.

The First Amendment was now thoroughly defeated.

Almost four years have now passed since the constitutional coup, and the US is a completely different nation. Today it is in precipitous economic decline.

The infrastructure is rotting due to neglect, disorganization, and lack of capital. Roads are becoming unusable in many places, electric power shortages are routine, communications networks are failing, bankrupt municipal governments are unable to provide many essential services, and the medical system is breaking down.

Even before the Christian Family Values Council overthrew the constitution, Wall Street saw trouble coming and began paving the way for quickly moving capital out of the US to safer havens.

After the coup, US treasury bonds sank to junk status, which briefly caused financial turmoil internationally. The dollar is weaker today than some Third World currencies.

The torrent of capital fleeing the United States during the past four years has significantly reshaped the world's economy, to the detriment of the United States and the American standard of living.

China has become the new center of enterprise and technological achievement as well as a source of new military might. Europe and Japan provide a cultural counterweight to a wounded America with its still potent military.

As China has grown more powerful, old conflicts in Asia between China, Korea, and Japan still flare up, and all-out war has been narrowly avoided on several occasions. China has already seized its opportunity to re-annex Taiwan.

Since the Christian Family Values Council first began to strangle the cultural and spiritual life of the US, the brightest and most vibrant citizens have have been fleeing to Europe, Asia, and even Latin America.

Because open dissent has been extinguished in American universities, many top academics have migrated to Europe, where universities have taken the opportunity to regain the preeminence they lost to the US during the 20th century.

Many of the best engineers and scientists in the US, many of whom are Asian anyway, have moved to Asia and to China in particular.

The only nations friendly to the new regime are the fundamentalist Islamic ones, such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq (which became fundamentalist shortly after US troops withdrew), and Israel (where orthodox fundamentalists have also completely overwhelmed the liberal secular democratic roots of the Jewish state).

Ironically, Iraq and Saudi Arabia were countries from whose quarters allegedly came the terrorist threat that led to the creation of the Homeland Security Department.

Our only hope today is for some kind of counter-revolution that will restore the US constitution, with its wise separation of church and state, and with its First Amendment protections that the religious fascists rescinded the moment they seized power.

A counter-revolution seems nearly impossible at the moment. The military is present everywhere, on guard for any whiff of resistance to the regime.

Fully armed soldiers patrol the streets and quickly break up any public gatherings not approved or orchestrated by officials of the Christian Family Values Council.

All males are conscripted into the military at age 17 (women have been expelled from military service) where they are indoctrinated to think along the lines of the Christian Family Values Council. They have daily prayers and sermons by thought leaders of the religious regime.

Television and radio now pump out Christian propaganda. Even what's left of Hollywood cooperates with the propaganda requirements of the Christian Family Values Council.

Only the internet is relatively free, although websites inside territorial US are strictly censored. The Homeland Security Department confiscates web servers at the slightest hint of anti-Christian sentiment. IP addresses blacklisted by the Christian Family Values Council intelligence apparatus of Homeland Security are blocked on internet trunklines running into or through the US.

The Christian Family Values Council has taken aggressive steps to purge American culture of anything that it deems to be "secular humanist". Obviously public schools are strictly managed by fundamentalist Christians at every level.

The professional class in America has been greatly affected, cowed into submission by Christianized thugs.

Corporations have been moving out of the US as quickly as is practical and allowable. Employees of those corporations still operating in the US hold mandatory morning and afternoon prayer sessions to appease the Christian Family Values Council apparatus.

The middle class is disappearing. Among the lower class, the face of abject starvation has appeared in the United States for the first time.

Meanwhile, global climate change has been causing serious disruption for this new Christian Republic of America, along with much of the world, with frequent floods and hurricanes. The interior of North America has become increasingly arid.

Christian fundamentalists interpret all those events to be signs of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. The United States is in the grip of apocalyptic panic and millenarian fever.



How could a constitutional coup have happened in the United States, whose government had been a model of stability in contrast to the paroxysms caused by fascism, Stalinism, Maoism, and other extremist political regimes during the 20th century?

The answer seems partly to be that the stability itself was a major cause. It gave rise to a politically stultified population that was easily overwhelmed by the focused determination of a relatively small group of zealots.

As with fascism and other rightist political movements, the Christian Family Values Council is backed by people who yearn for the "One Truth" in the face of an otherwise bewildering diversity of choice.

Many people in the United States had simply grown tired of freedom. They were uncomfortable with the ambiguity and the cacophony of voices that make up a healthy democracy.

The Christian fundamentalists offered simplicity. Even easier than offering it, they imposed it.

In a society that had grown fat and flaccid in a cocoon of hyper-consumerism, the raw energetic appeal of unconditional truth foisted by the Christian Family Values Council proved irresistible.

The Christian Family Values Council also benefited from having a ruggedly disciplined and charismatic leadership at a time when conventional politicians were largely opportunistic and insincere.

Here I send to you this letter from the future, from your future, or at least one of your possible futures.

If you've somehow come across this little message in a bottle, I hope it stirs you to make a difference in your time and place, so that my letter will someday seem quaint and silly to people living in a different, much better future than the bleak one I've written about here.

In 1923, on this day in alternate history the Austrian Emperor Franz Ferdinand abdicated.

The abdication of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
by Scott PalterHis attempt to bridge the divisions between the ruling Germans in Austria and the various Slavs and other nationalities resulted in first constitutional gridlock from 1917 onwards [Hungarian secession took place at the same time, followed by a nasty war of devolution as Croatia broke free with help from Austro-German Frei Korps under the patronage of the Papacy; this caused Franz Ferdinard to lose the title King of Hungary but keep that of Duke of Croatia] and finally reached civil war in the Kingdom of Bohemia over competing claims of Sudeten Germans and Czechs.

Faced with civil war between competing ethnic militias in every major city of the realm the army intervened to restore order under the banner of his brother Charles. Franz Fredinand left for exile in Portugal leaving Charles to sort out the mess. Charles was negotiating with the Polish and Czech national committees but war with Italy threatened over Istria. In his last speech Franz Ferdinand morbidly commented that history would have thought better of him had the botched 1914 assassination attempt in Bosnia killed him.

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson severed diplomatic relations with Great Britain.

US/UK diplomatic relations severed by Eric LippsFollowing the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, pitting Britain, France, Italy, Russia and Japan against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Japan, Britain had instituted a policy of interdicting neutral shipping to the Continent to choke off trade with its foes. This had led to repeated seizures of U.S. merchant vessels on the high seas, actions denounced in steadily stronger terms by the President, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, and a number of influential Midwestern newspapers.

The President did have a strong pro-British adviser, Col. Edward M. House, who had declined a Cabinet position but remained so close to Wilson that he was provided White House living quarters. However, in April 1915 House died unexpectedly in a traffic accident. With his influence absent, Wilson gravitated toward an "a plague on both your houses" attitude regarding the European conflict, condemning Germany - especially after the May 7, 1915 sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania - for its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare while growing increasingly hostile to the British as well over their refusal to cease what he considered "piracy" against American shipping.

In his communication to the British ambassador, Sir Cecil Spring-Rice, informing him of the break in relations, Wilson insisted that he did not intend to join Germany's side in the war. "America," he informed Spring-Rice, "has no interest in becoming a combatant in the present conflict. She wishes only to maintain her neutrality unharassed by either side. Your nation's refusal to honor this desire is the cause of the present break". Challenged by the ambassador as to why he has not also severed relations with Germany, Wilson responded, "Be assured, sir, that your German counterpart shall be hearing from me as you have done".

Wilson proved as good as his word. A week later, on Feb. 10, 1917, Wilson severed relations with Imperial Germany as well, citing that country's submarine warfare practices as well as his desire to remain "a genuine neutral in a conflict to which the United States is not, and does not wish to become, a party".

The United States remained neutral until the European war ended in March 1919 in what came to be called the "peace of exhaustion". At that point, the idealistic Wilson saw an opportunity to guarantee a lasting peace through a set of proposals which included a policy of "self-determination" for small nations such as Serbia, whose nationalist aspirations had helped ignite the conflict, and the creation of a "league of nations" to arbitrate among countries. However, his determined non-involvement in the war, popular as it had proven at home, had left him with no leverage in Europe. As a result, his audacious "Fourteen Points" went nowhere. Europe at the dawn of the 1920s would be a darkened version of its 1914 self, with Britain and France enriched at Germany"s expense, Russia in the throes of civil war following its 1917 Bolshevik revolution and a bankrupt Italy teetering on the edge of anarchy, while from across the Atlantic the U.S. played spectator.

In 2012, on this day at the Mukataa in Ramallah, and accompanied by his son Abdullah (pictured), Dr Izzeldeen Abuelaish was inaugurated as the first Palestinian deputy President of Israel, pledging to arm the new multi-faith nation with love and education. Armed with love and education

A Harvard education enabled Dr Izzeldeen to escape the crushing poverty of the Jabaliya refugee camp Click to watch the documentary, subsequently working in Israel as a gynaecologist from 2001 until 2009. At the weekends, Dr Izzeldeen would return to a sturdy five story high apartment block in Jabaliya where his extended family lived.

Despite this hard-fought freedom, Dr Izzeldeen's fate was trapped in a closed nightmare world where 1.5 million Gazans were prevented from leaving the Strip by the Israeli Defense Force. And at 04:05pm on 16 January 2009, two Israeli tank shells killed three of his daughters and a niece whilst they were engaged in the terrorist activity of completing their school homework.

Dr Izzeldeen issued a live anguished broadcast in Hebrew from the Israeli hospital where he worked, stating Look at what this family was armed with. Love and education. I dedicated my life really for peace, for medicine. This is the path I believe in. And what I raised and education my children to believe. Click to watch the hospital interview.

His demands that the Israeli military explain why his home had been targeted marked the entrance of Dr Izzeldeen as peace advocate into a radically changed political dynamic. Because the military invasion of Gaza was a political and humanitarian disaster of such magnitude that it served as a catalyst for change. In a very real sense, it was the end of a final chapter that had begun with the death of Yasser Arafat.

Other new vectors of peace had entered play with the departure of George W. Bush from the White House. US President Barack Obama actually recognised Palestinians as human beings, seeking both positive engagement with the Muslim world and a peaceful settlement in Palestine Click to watch Al Arabiya interview. Obama sent a heavy-weight peace envoy to the region, former US Senator George Mitchell who was a veteran of the marathon Northern Ireland peace settlement between Protestants and Catholics during the mid-1990s. And fortuitously Mitchell arrived in the region at a critical juncture, shortly before the departure of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who had ordered the attack.

A breakthrough was achieved with the incoming Israeli administration. The two state solution was scrapped in favour of a multi-faith state with full democratic representation for Palestinians. The final settlement included an amendment to the Israeli constitution to allow for the appointment of a new executive office of deputy President, an idea inspired by F.W. De Klerks role in Nelson Mandela's first Rainbow administration in South Africa.

Critically, this new minister would have full powers of oversight for the welfare of the Palestinian population, based at the Mukataa in Ramallah. This symbolic location was previously the seat of office for the President of the Palestinian National Authority. Also known as Arafat's Compound, the compound was raided by the Israel Defense Forces and later placed under siege during late 2004 as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict entered its final, tumultuous phase.

	On this day in 1975, George Stark, a.k.a. 'the Lawnmower Man', was executed in the gas chamber at Nevada State Prison in Carson City.
Stephen King

In 2008, Brazilian law enforcement officers pursued off-world smugglers into the Hills of New Hampshire. Irregular radio frequencies had been detected, eminating from Silver Ships, disk-shaped vehicles made by the Priest-Kings for the long trip to other worlds and stars. Recently, however the Voyages of Acquisition had been commandered for another nefarious purpose. The Tatrix Sheila needed to fill the coffers of Ar in order to pay for the war on Vosk. Ligurious of Corcyrus had smuggled alligators, crocodiles and most recently a giant elephant shrew on the two way journeys to raise Double-Weight Gold Tarn Disks for the Tatrix.	Albino Alligators
	Missing

'Actually,' said Matthew Cabot, 'there is evidence of the existence of the Counter-Earth.' Tarl looked at him. 'Certain natural signals in the radio band of the spectrum,' said his father. Tarl's astonishment must have been obvious. 'Yes,' he said, 'but since the hypothesis of another world is regarded as so incredible, this evidence has been interpreted to accord with other theories; sometimes even imperfections in instrumentation have been supposed rather than admit the presence of another world in our solar system.' 'But why would this evidence not be understood?' Tarl asked. 'Surely you know,' he laughed, 'one must distinguish between the data to be interpreted and the interpretation of the data, and one chooses, normally, the interpretation that preserves as much as possible of the old world view, and, in the thinking of the Earth, there is no place for Gor, its true sister planet, the Counter-Earth.' ~ Tarnsman of Gor - 32-35

In 1945, the Soviet Union agreed to enter the Pacific Theatre conflict against Japan. The Red Army invaded Hokkaid? Prefecture whilst US forces were bogged down in the main island of Honsh?.

	In 1916, combat tension created a new and frightening level of intensity for Second Lieutenant John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Serving in the eleventh battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers, Tolkien's imagination was over-stimulated by the horror of the Somme. In escapist fantasy writing, Tolkien's inner hero struggled to restore his own dissipated life force.

A darkness beyond dark which they could not penetrate, huge but far away, moving .. [Tolkien's fear] with great speed. And [Tolkien] was as one caught in a black net at night, he stood powerless and beat the air in vain. ~ Of the Darkening of Valinor

In, 47,371 BCE, Swikolay begins her ascent of Kilimanjaro. Because she feels it will be her last chance to touch the sky and fulfill the Speaker's dream, she doesn't allow anyone to climb with her; she tells her companions, If I succeed, I will find a way to let you know. If you see no sign, I have failed. Either way, I will not come back.

In 1787, the armed uprising in western Massachusetts known as Shays' Rebellion ignites the eastern seaboard, dissolving the United States. Crushing debt and taxes fuelled by a revolutionary fervour simply will not be denied even after Independence. Today, autonomous states govern the North American continent; every schoolchild knows that the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave was made possible by this liberating anarchy.

In 1871, the counter-history Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (BMHAWK) is published by the gifted Sioux author Tatanka Iyotake. In the what if world of BMHAWK, indigenes were unable to summon the powerful magicks required to prevent the invasion of the fork-tongues. Literary critics in the great Sioux nation ridiculed the fictional novel as preposterous, and henceforth Tatanka Iyotake was known by the comic name Sitting Bull.

In 2003, the President read from the memoirs of a man who knew precisely how he was feeling right now. 'Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.' wrote Harry S Truman after the death of Roosevelt in 1945.

In 1943, the last pockets of German resistance in the Soviet city of Stalingrad surrendered to the Red Army after one of the largest and bloodiest land battles of the Second World War.

One crucial element of the Soviet victory over the German Sixth Army was the support of a contingent of U.S. Army Rangers who'd been inserted into the Stalingrad pocket via parachute in late 1942 just as the Red Army was launching its counterattack against the main German front; prior to the parachute drop, the Rangers had traveled to Siberia via a long and hazardous Pacific convoy route from Hawaii and then been sent by train to the Caucausus.

Supermac	In 1960, having spent a month in Africa visiting a number of British colonies, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivered the historically-important 'Wind of Change ' address to the Parliament of South Africa in Cape Town. The speech acquired its name from a now-famous quotation embedded in it. Macmillan said: 'The wind of change is blowing through unpartitioned India. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. Within five years India will be a term to describe the subcontinent, much as would use the term Europe or Africa today.'
Prime Minister

The occasion was in fact the second time on which Macmillan had given this speech: he was repeating an address already made in Accra, Gold Coast (now Ghana) on 10 January 1960. This time it received press attention, at least partly because of the stony reception that greeted it. Macmillan's Cape Town speech also made it clear that Macmillan included South Africa in his comments and indicated a shift in British policy in regard to apartheid with Macmillan saying: As a fellow member of the Commonwealth it is our earnest desire to give South Africa our support and encouragement, but I hope you won't mind my saying frankly that there are some aspects of your policies which make it impossible for us to do this without being false to our own deep convictions about the political destinies of free men to which in our own territories we are trying to give effect.' Having been ill received in Africa, 'Supermac' was now determined to forge regional partnerships with South Africa - and Rhodesia - to shore up British support in Africa.

In 1869, it was confirmed by scientists that the Cardiff Giant was after all a 10-foot-tall (3 m) petrified man uncovered by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. 'Stub' Newell in Cardiff, New York.

In 1399, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, died without heirs. Although a mistress, Catherine Swynford, claimed that one of her children was the duke's, it was never believed, and the Plantagenet line was carried on through the elevation of Richard II's niece Phillipa to the throne after his death in 1401.

In 1950, British scientist Klaus Fuchs, long suspected of having communist sympathies, is arrested in Great Britain for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet States of America. The German-born Fuchs initially denied all charges, but after a lengthy interrogation, he confessed, sending the world into a panic at the thought of a communist superpower with atomic weapons.

In 1959, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly announced a collaborative album in the middle of their Winter Tour, in Moorehead, Minnesota. Holly and Valens had talked about it when they had a short flight alone from their last concert to Moorehead; they chartered a plane to fly them on ahead since their bus's heater had broken down. The album, Southwestern Flavor, was a phenomenal hit, cementing their places in the rock 'n' roll firmament.

In 1994, President Clinton ended the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam. Many had seen the embargo as a punitive measure put in place by a nation stung by its loss in the tiny country, but no one had the resolve to end it until Clinton, a conservative Republican Vietnam vet, said, 'It is time to heal some old wounds.' He was assisted in the effort by fellow vet, Democrat John McCain of Arizona.

In 1943, Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov paid tribute to his British allies after the half-starved remnants of the German 6th Army give themselves up after five months of bloody fighting for Volgograd ended in defeat. Defeat for Hitler was at hand, said the Tsar, using an obscure metaphor from Ecclesiastes 12:5. - the grasshopper lies heavy.

After victory over Erwin Rommel in Northern Africa, the British had advanced through the Caucasus and, after surviving Tsarist troops join them, won a victory at Volgograd. Within two years, British tanks stormed Berlin at the end of the war. 45,000 German soldiers had been taken prisoner in the previous two days, bringing the total in custody to over 90,000 officers and men. The prisoners are understood to be in an appalling condition after enduring months of starvation in temperatures down to -30 degrees centigrade. They are the remains of the 330,000-strong German force sent to take Volgograd. The rest - about a quarter of a million men - have died, as many from illness, starvation and frostbite as from the fighting itself. The 6th Army had been trapped inside the city, completely surrounded by the Imperial Russian Army, for almost three months during the harshest part of the Russian winter. They have had to rely totally on air drops by the Luftwaffe for food. Atrocious weather conditions have reduced the amount getting through to just 90 tonnes a day - less than a third of what they needed. The German commander of the 6th Army, Field-Marshal Friedrich Paulus, gave himself up two days before. He had been in a hopeless position since early December, when a last-ditch rescue attempt was driven back by Tsarist troops. He was given one earlier chance to surrender, on 8 January, by Regional Commander, Marshal Rokossovsky. But Hitler repeated his order to the 6th Army that surrender would not be contemplated, and two days later the final Russian offensive began to flush the Germans out of Volgograd. Paulus lost his last German-controlled airfield ten days later, on 22 January, and with it the last hope of any more regular supplies. By 29 January the desperately weak 6th Army was split into two pockets of men. The surrender of Field-Marshal Paulus brought the ordeal to an end for one of the groups. The defeat of the second remnant today closes at last one of the most horrific chapters of the war so far.

In 1969, Faisal Yassin and Wilhelm Schoemann meet secretly to discuss what they feel has become a threat to their world, the New Reich they have helped create. Yassin thinks that Israeli agents would be willing to arrest all the neo-Nazis in the compound, and offers to get word to them; Schoemann begins to sabotage the project that has been his greatest achievement.

In 1950, blonde bombshell Patsy Ann McClenny was born in Dallas, Texas. After starting her television career in soap operas, she moved to the prime-time soap opera, Dallas, with the role of Jenny Wade. Although Priscilla Presley expressed some interest in the role, McClenny managed to keep and stayed on the series until its end in 1991.

In 1904, the Congress of Nations embassy ship makes its hasty departure from the Mlosh homeworld, accelerating as rapidly as it can towards home. While still in the system, they encounter the fleet of Q'B'Ton'ra, the ruler of the people who have supplanted the Mlosh on their world, and are captured.

In 1399, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, died without heirs. Although a mistress, Catherine Swynford, claimed that one of her children was the duke's, it was never believed, and the Plantagenet line was carried on through the elevation of Richard II's niece Phillipa to the throne after his death in 1401.

In 1986, the knives were out for the management of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration even before their Space Shuttle Challenger returned to Earth.

Mission STS-51-LDue to the cold weather, two O-Rings had failed to seal on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). Fortunately, solid fuel had formed a crust which protected the seal. Had this Aluminium Slag not held the SRBs in place, the booster cylinder would have impacted the external tank area. It was an accidental contingency that had miraculously saved from disaster the twenty-fifth flight of the American Space Shuttle program.

Engineers had been alarmed by earlier flights pointing the finger directly at management-driven schedule pressures. And the dispute in the Agency would soon leak upwards into a governing Republican Party bidding to replace Ronald Reagan with a GOP successor in the White House. The complacency within the leadership of NASA was beginning to gain acknowledgement. But cancelling the Shuttle program was not politically acceptable, not after spending $7 billion and building 5 machines, plus designing a space station around it. Of more immediate concern though was a four-man mission scheduled for May 1986 in which a shuttle was to carry a Centaur filled with explosive hydrogen to boost the unmanned spacecraft Galileo to the Planet Jupiter...

In 1882, on this day the celebrated Irish novelist and poet James Joyce was born to a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin.

Birth of James JoyceThirteen years later, in an event that was part-literary pilgrimage and part-pub crawl, Envoy founder John Ryan and novelist Brian O'Nolan led writers Anthony Cronin and Patrick Kavanagh, James-Joyce-cousin Tom Joyce, and Registrar of Trinity College AJ Leventhal on a horse-drawn carriage ride through Dublin, Ireland, to recreate the day described in Ulysses now nicknamed "Bloomsday".

Written expansively by James Joyce from shorter stories in 1907 to its full publication in 1922, the experimental novel broke new literary ground with its usage of stream of consciousness in narrative and, along with T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, stood as the pinnacle of Modernist literature in the English language.

Taking place in Dublin on June 16, 1904, the story details a number of point-of- view characters including young writer Stephen Dedalus (who appeared earlier in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and various Dubliners. While including fantastical events and hallucinations, the narrative largely displays the lives of the average people, complete with difficulties and happiness. Over the course of the story, however, Joyce's overall despondency toward the world is displayed. Dedalus begins his day leaving his apartment over tension with his roommate and ends it accidentally beaten to blindness by an English soldier over a perceived anti-Royalist remark, which is covered up by police. Bloom, who witnessed the crime, determines to believe it never happened and instead continues his day, which he had spent meandering across Dublin, attending a mass, visiting the baths, going to a funeral, attempting to sell an ad, having lunch at a pub, ogling nude statues at the National Museum, dinner at a hotel, another visit to another pub, dropping by the maternity ward, and finally returning home, peeking at various women along the way.

Molly Bloom, however, proved through history as the most provocative character and perhaps the villain, though the protagonist-antagonist standard of literary theory hardly is followed in the piece. Joyce later wrote that he used elements of a girl he dated once (on June 16, 1904), but that the date had gone sour due to a spat over art versus life with him believing her thinking of him merely as a toy. The topic is explored in Ulysses as Molly has an ongoing affair with her manager, "Blazes" Boylan, who is not given a perspective but is displayed as something more pet-like than human. In the final episode of the novel, nicknamed "Molly Bloom's Soliloquy", her stream-of-consciousness is shown as she and her husband retire for the night, concluding with her reflection that he is furniture to their marriage, "a useful hat rack" or "a door".

Scholars to this day debate whether the work is pro- or anti-woman, featuring both vivid and humanistic portrayals of female thought in "Episode 13, Nausicaa" and the conclusion "Episode 18, Penelope" as well as jovial discussions of misogyny in "Episode 16, Eumaeus" and throughout. While on his self-exile to Europe, Joyce married a student from Trieste, Amalia Popper, but fled the marriage to Paris when he took up a week-long invitation from Ezra Pound that became a stay for a lifetime. He came under the patronage of feminist and publisher Harriet Shaw Weaver, who took his female characters as greatly human. After the success of Ulysses, Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake, which he began after a year break and continued unfinished until his death in 1941.

Joyce commented on Ulysses as being "immortal" and that he "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant". However, what gave the work great notice was its perceived obscenity. It had been serialized in The Little Review in the US until 1918, when it came under legal accusation of obscenity due to vividly displaying human sexuality. In the resulting bans in both the US and Britain, the book gained notoriety, surging the readership. Molly Bloom was picked up as a champion among Flappers of the era, inspiring gold-digging and establishing oneself as the dominant role in relationships as a matter of philosophy. Literary minds disagreed whether the portrayal of Molly is negative or positive as a strong figure. Whatever the case, "Mollies" began organizing, disrupting social norms and causing reprisals among conservatives. The Bloomsday celebration in 1954 would soon be joined by numerous latter-generation Mollies, and the festival would spread to dozens of other cities.

In 1812, as the sea otter fur trade blossomed in the Northern Pacific, settlers from Russia began to colonize the Alaskan coast.

Founding of Fort Ross Begins Russian Gold RushThey worked alongside native Aleutians to perfect hunting techniques for otters, and American ships provided the transport of processed furs out and new settlers in. Joint Russian-American hunting expeditions took them as far south as the coasts of Spanish California, where otters were plentiful beyond the reach of colonies. Alexander Andreyevich Baranov, Chief Administrator of the Russian-American Company, which had been chartered as Russia's first joint-stock company in 1799, determined to establish a settlement in California to exploit the natural resources there as well as limiting the northward expansion of the Spanish.

After a trade mission to San Francisco in 1806 and a successful hunting expedition in 1808 during which Russians buried plaques denoting Russian possession of the land, a second try at a permanent agricultural settlement was successfully made in 1812 by Commerce Counselor Ivan Kuskov with what became known as "Fort Ross" (a slurred nickname of "Fortress Russia"). The settlement flourished, though the otters in the area were practically eliminated by American and English hunting expeditions in the next decade. Settlers built windmills and a shipyard and introduced luxuries such as glass windows and stoves to Northern California.

A new story by Jeff ProvineIts great importance, however, came as it was a stop on the exploration route of Lieutenant Otto von Kotzebue. The German-born Kotzebue had been given charge of a ship of twenty-seven men outfitted by Count Nikolay Rumyantsev to seek out a passage through the Arctic Circle and chart undiscovered islands in Oceania along with the naturalists Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz and Adelbert von Chamisso and the artist Louis Choris. While a Northwest Passage proved impossible, he stopped in 1824 at Fort Ross after visiting the Spanish missions at Santa Clara and San Francisco. His journals described the region as "of a very romantic though wild character; and the luxuriant growth of the grass proved that the soil was rich". He also noted, "the inhabitants of Ross live in the greatest concord with the Indians, who repair, in considerable numbers, to the fortress, and work as day-labourers, for wages" and that the natives "willingly give their daughters in marriage to Russians and Aleutians; and from these unions ties of relationship have arisen which strengthen the good understanding between them".

Kotzebue returned to San Francisco, where "The Californian winter being now fairly set in, we had much rain and frequent storms. On the 9th of October the south-west wind blew with the violence of the West-Indian tornado, rooted up the strongest trees, tore off the roofs of the houses, and occasioned great devastation in the cultivated lands". Their ship suffered severe damage as its cables broke and wind drove it onto the rocky shore. With such major repairs needed, Kotzebue determined to winter in the safe harbor of San Francisco Bay, giving extra time for Dr. Eschscholtz to obtain botanical samples from far upstream in the lands not inundated by the notable fogs that plagued Russian gardens in the area. Upon his return from one of the expeditions, Eschscholtz revealed to Kotzebue a handkerchief full of gold pebbles gathered from a creekbed. Kotzebue returned the samples of gold to Russia and determined that the storm that had delayed them struck simultaneously in St. Petersburg, as if a herald of the joining of northern California to Russia. Tsar Alexander I and his ministers dispatched expeditions and colonies to the area, igniting a Russian gold rush and securing the claim to the area by supporting America in its war against Mexico in 1846-8 (during which they seized San Francisco). As the Russian gold turned national attentions to the Pacific, they expanded with colonies in the Sandwich Islands and throughout the northern ocean.

While for the most part the Russian settlers worked well with Americans, Russia proved too cordial to natives for the Americans' taste. After battles in the Oregon territory such as Rogue River, Grave Creek, and Big Meadows, the Russian colony of New Albion welcomed refugees and helped organize a resettlement program that bolstered the defense of the region, ending many Americans' hopes of annexation as had been seen in Texas. Several warhawks called for an expedition to drive out the Russians, but by the time railroads would have allowed supply chains, Albion was as entrenched of a state as Alaska.

Following the lackluster support given from the tsar during the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian colonies in the Pacific began calling for independence. Although several attempts at insurrection were put down in the early 1900s, the Russian Civil War would give the colonies a wave of successful revolutions in 1917. Fearing Japanese expansion, the defensive Coalition of Pacific Russian Republics renewed its close ties with the Americans and British. Political ties deepened as they came into NATO during the Cold War, though Albion, Alaska, and Gavay (Hawai'i) were often viewed with suspicion due to their historical ties with what became the Soviet Union.

In 2011, Matthew Write write ~ this scenario is not as totally impossible as some people might believe. In the range of improbability, it's more like a ten-to-one shot, rather than a hundred-to-one shot. In the early 1990s the USA probably came closer to open rebellion than at any time since the 1960s

Perotista Revolution!
American Civil War of the 1990sThis scenario is not as totally impossible as some people might believe. In the range of improbability, it's more like a ten-to-one shot, rather than a hundred-to-one shot. In the early 1990s the USA probably came closer to open rebellion than at any time since the 1960s. In the 3 years from 1992 to 1995, the US saw:

• Three of the five bloodiest episodes of domestic political violence in 20th Century America (L.A., Waco, OK City: total body count about 300)
• The largest third-party presidential campaign since (?)1912.
• A total shift in the balance of power: from a Republican president to a Democratic, and from a Democratic Congress to a Republican one, including, for example, the first defeat of a Speaker of the House since when? 1860?

What we need to do is crank up the Rage-o-Meter a few notches so that this era of grumbling leads to all-out civil war. Of course, I have no idea how to do this. None of the issues of the day seem to be worth dying over. I mean, let's have a show of hands: how many people would be willing to take a bullet in order to abolish/preserve affirmative action? I didn't think so.

A new article by Matthew WhiteSure, taxes are a bit high, and they get squandered on useless activities, but for most of us, the government still leaves us enough for house, car, clothes, computer, gun, food, girlfriend, wife, both, TV, child or two, etc., and we get interstates and Internet in return.

The hard right seems to believe that Waco should have been a spark for rebellion, but it's not like any militiamen rushed to relieve the siege; however, let's pretend that they did. Let's say that discontent had gotten so bad by 1993 that we have the required 13% necessary to fight a successful guerrilla war. When the Feds surrounded the Branch-Davidian compound, militiamen spontaneously coalesce on the scene. Civil war erupts.

The most likely outcome of a war between the Feds and the extreme right is that the extreme right is crushed like bugs, even before the network news anchors can move their mobile newsdesks, satellite link-ups and tactical hairdryers out to the battlefield. To make it more interesting, however, let's suppose that there are enough rebels to make it drag on awhile.

A rough rule of thumb (from Liddell Hart [?] "Lessons from Resistance Movements -- Guerrilla and Nonviolent"[?]) is that a successful insurrection needs at least 3% of the adult population actively fighting the government, and another 10% supporting the rebels. In the US, that would be 5 Million armed and 19 Million in support. Who would they be?

Well, in our timeline, the discontent with the status quo showed up most noticeably in the Perot Campaign, so let's magically turn these 20M Perot voters into 24M rebels, roughly distributed the same, geographically. Although Perotistas were spread widely across the country, they were strongest in the Mountain Time Zone. Wait, I'm lying. The Perot vote was actually strongest in Maine, Alaska and Kansas which are not on Mountain Time, but the *NEXT* level down (@ ca. 25% of the vote) was a solid cluster of states in the area that Joel Garreau, in The Nine Nations of North America, labelled the Empty Quarter, a hotbed of anti-federalism.

My guess is that any insurrection in the early 1990s would be strongest here -- not as a secession of states (with control of the air, the Feds could easily drop the 82nd Airborne into any state capital), but there would be a solid guerrilla presence that required the Feds to travel in large convoys or not at all. This is good partisan country, with some 20M people scattered across rough territory, which makes up 30% of the area of the Lower 48. Let's say that some 2.5M of our rebels and 8.5M sympathizers would be in this zone. (With some 4 million too young to take sides, this would leave 9 million loyalists in this region.)

The other 13M rebels and sympathizers would be in smaller patches all over the country -the upper tier of New England, enclaves in the plains states, clusters of counties in the south, etc. There would be plenty of rural ambushes and urban bombings outside the Empty Quarter, but if the rebellion follows the same pattern as the Perot vote, then most of these remaining rebels (say 7.5M) would still be within a day's drive of the Empty Quarter. (Well, "a day's drive" today. In a war zone, there would be enough roadblocks and checkpoints to slow it down to 3-5 days)

On the whole, however, the Feds would probably keep control of all the cities. They would surely pack enough firepower to be able to travel wherever they chose. The rebels would melt away whenever a column approached, but they would pick off any sentries and small garrisons left behind, after the column had passed.

How many people would die in this rebellion? Well, I just happen to have on hand the death tolls from 50 civil wars fought during the period 1975-1999.

If we take the middle half of our fifty civil wars (that is, numbers 13-38), and apply that range of percentages (.7% to 2%) to an American population of 250 million, then we see that there's a good chance that 175,000 to 5,000,000 people would die in a new American Civil War. The precise median death rate in our sample is 3500 per million, which therefore puts the likeliest body count at 875,000 Americans. Of course, there's a wide spread in the sample. A civil war of Afghan intensity would kill 25,000,000, while a Northern Irish death rate would kill only 15,000, but an average war, fought in a style similar to Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Peru or Algeria would certainly kill many hundreds of thousands.

So I guess we're lucky that this didn't happen.

In 1776, Benjamin Franklin sent a letter to General Charles Lee, expressing his wish that "pikes could be introduced" along with "bows and arrows", which, Franklin added, "were good weapons, not wisely laid aside". What if the Continental Congress and the American army had taken up Franklin's suggestion?

Guns and Bows and ArrowsFranklin's reasons for recommending the longbow over the musket are difficult to refute in an eighteenth century context.

Those reasons were essentially the following:

• The bow was often more accurate
• A man could shoot four arrows in the time it takes to fire and reload a musket.
• A man could shoot four arrows in the time it takes to fire and reload a musket.
• No gunsmoke, thus no problems in field vision.
• No gunsmoke, thus no problems in field vision.
• No gunsmoke, thus no problems in field vision.
• An incoming flight of arrows is rather disconcerting to the enemy.
• An arrow stuck to a man essentially immobilizes him, until extracted.
• Bows and arrows are more easily provided than muskets and ammunition.

A new article by Brian TubbsGiven the Continental Army's supply problems, one wonders why Franklin's suggestion wasn't more readily entertained.

Perhaps some of my readers have come across some information on this subject, but, based on my reading of the history, I would say the reasons Franklin's suggestion was never given serious thought are:

1) Image: Using bows and arrows was considered primitive. Having an army with uniforms, muskets, bayonets, professional training, etc. was a mark of civilization and progress. To regress back to the 1500s or to adopt tactics used by Native Americans was probably not a direction that the Continental Congress was even willing to contemplate. A more serious dimension to this was the fact that the Americans may have feared that such a direction would result in their being taken less seriously by France, Spain, and the Netherlands. They wanted these European powers to see them as a respectable nation ready to take its place in the family of nations.

2) Chivalry: The advent of gunpowder had a lot to do with the decline of armour on the battlefield. While armour provides some protection against arrows, it provided virtually none against musket balls! By the time of the American Revolution, European style warfare had evolved to armies in bright uniforms maneuvering on the open field and firing musket volleys at one another, with some artillery and cavalry thrown in for variety and good measure. To reintroduce bows and arrows would have been deemed (in all likelihood) as "ungentlemanly", much like the British viewed colonists shooting at them from behind rocks and trees.

Perhaps some of my readers could add to those reasons, but I think that (consciously or unconsciously) the above two were probably among them.

Still, one wonders if the American Revolution woud've turned out differently or perhaps ended sooner had Franklin's suggestion to Charles Lee been accepted by General Washington and the Continental Congress.

	On this day in 1945, SS commander-in-chief Heinrich Himmler was arrested on suspicion to trying to topple Hermann Goering as chancellor of the Third Reich and restore Adolf Hitler to power.
Heinrich Himmler

In 2005, comedian and television star Jerry Seinfeld announces he is in pre-production on The Seinfeld Movie, a feature-film based on the Seinfeld sitcom that will reunite Seinfeld himself, Jason Alexander, Julia-Louie Dreyfus and Michael Richards as the four friends who go about various mis-adventures in New York.
	Jerry Seinfeld

It's a surprise move given it's been six years since the popular sitcom's cancellation, but a source close to Seinfeld reveals it was talked about since the show's series finale proved a disappointment for viewers. However, Richards was unable to commit as Cosmo Kramer given his success with The Michael Richards Show, and it was clearly a sore point between Richards and Seinfeld, with both men only recently back on speaking terms. Dreamworks Studios is set to finance and distribute the film, with Andy Ackerman (who directed the bulk of episodes of the sitcom during it's run) scheduled to direct. It will mostly be shot on location in New York city.

	On this day in 1969, US Air Force veteran Neil Armstrong was named the mission commander for Apollo 5.
Neil Armstrong

In 1993, President Sam Nunn announces that Vice-President Bill Bradley will chair a working group on the subject of universal health care, one of Bradley's interests while in the Senate. Appearing before a conservative group in his home state of New York, ex-President Jack Kemp denounces the idea as threatening to substitute 'a social-welfare mentality' for the 'free market' in health care, branding it 'another tax-and-spend scheme from people who think they can run your life better than you can.'	Pres. Nominee
	Sam Nunn

Kemp calls for a system of 'healthcare incentives' in the form of tax breaks for employers who offer health plans to their employees.

	On this day in 2012 shooting began in Las Vegas for the big-screen movie adaptation of CSI:Crime Scene Investigations.

In 1777, John and Thomas Adams and their families arrive in New Orleans, having fled Massachusetts with little more than the clothes on their backs. Both men soon become active in producing propaganda aimed at encouraging a new rebellion. The refusal of Spanish authorities to hand over the 'traitors' further angers the British, who are already incensed that the Adamses' fellow colonial rebel Alexander Hamilton has been given safe haven.

Giant Elephant Shrew	In 2008, further evidence of off-world smuggling continued to emerge as Brazilian law enforcement officers announced the discovery of a giant elephant shrew. The cat-sized animal looks like a cross between a miniature antelope and a small anteater. It has a grey face, a long, flexible snout, a bulky, amber body, a jet-black rump and it stands on spindly legs. Elephant shrews are only found in Africa. They were originally described as shrews because they superficially resembled shrews in Europe and in America. However, this variant is unknown on Earth.
Police Discovery

Also found was another mysterious bill of material for Double-Weight Gold Tarn Disks made payable c/o Tatrix, Sheila to Ligurious of Corcyrus in the region of Ar. The investigation has not yet established any official connection with the disappearance of alligators from a university zoo in the western state of Mato Grosso earlier this month, or the crocodile artifact found a few weeks later.

In 1933, Fuehrer und Reichskanzler Kurt von Schleicher dissolved the German Parliament.

In 1968, Stephen Reeder Donaldson languished in Vietnam. By inclination a conscientious objector, he had been compelled to serve in the armed forces. Much later, and after dropping out of his Ph.D. program and moving to New Jersey in order to write fiction, Donaldson made his publishing debut with the first 'Covenant' trilogy in 1977. That enabled him to move to a healthier climate. He now lives in New Mexico. Donaldson's two year compulsory military duty would be the deep undercurrent of his escapist fantasy writing. In 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever', the protagonist was a leper struggled with disempowerment in a Land he did not really believe in.	Stephen R. Donaldson
	Unbeliever

And he would wields white wild magic gold is a paradox - for he everything and nothing, hero and fool - potent, helpless - and with the one word of truth and treachery, he will save or damn the Earth because he is mad and sane, cold and passionate, lost and found. ~ The Legend of Berek Halfhand.

In 1925, novelist James Dickey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. A noted poet, Dickey was honored throughout the south and became a poet-in-residence at the University of South Carolina. He dabbled in prose occasionally, but the rejection he suffered for his never-published novel Deliverance put him off the form. From rumors swirling about the novel, it involved some sort of sodomy, and publishers felt that no audience would accept that.

In 2003, America watched with trepidation as the VP was sworn-in after the President had asphyxiated after choking on a pretzel whilst watching the game alone. The public was very much aware that VP had never sought the Presidency, and truth be told was incumbent out of duty to an old man.

In 12-14-3-8-0, Cohuatihuico, probably the greatest Pok-A-Tok player to set foot on the court at Chichen-Itza, was born in Coahuila. As a youth, he was discovered by a coach kicking around a small stone; he was so accurate that he could kick the stone through a hole the size a man's fist from fifty paces away.

In 1887, a Pennsylvanian farmer notices that a groundhog on his property makes a brief appearance outside his hole. The groundhog sees his shadow, and hides back in his burrow. When 6 weeks of winter follow, the farmer, Josiah Cotton, watches that groundhog the next year. When the groundhog is wrong the following year, Mr. Cotton kills the furry little beast and turns him into a hat.

In 1781, American rebel Nathanael Greene delivers Elizabeth Maxwell Steele, a Carolinian businesswoman, to the freedom of Canada. Mrs. Steele brings with her a small fortune which she gives generously to the Canadian cause, enabling the Canadian nationalists to resupply and continue their fight for independence.

Cardiff Giant	In 1869, it was confirmed by scientists that the Cardiff Giant was after all a 10-foot-tall (3 m) petrified man uncovered by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. 'Stub' Newell in Cardiff, New York.
New York

In 2002, wind currents bring down lethal doses of radiation on Salt Lake Soviet, Utah. Although most of the population has fled east, thousands fall ill, and almost 500 people die from diseases caused by the radiation. The death toll from the People's Republic of America's desperate explosion of a Nevadan nuclear dump is just beginning.

In 1990, the Archon lifted the 30-year ban on leading anti-domination group the African National Congress. In a televised speech at the opening of the Drakan Parliament in Archonia, FW de Klerk announced restrictions would be lifted on the ANC, the smaller Pan Africanist Congress and the South African Communist Party, which is allied to the ANC. He also made his first public commitment to release jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela, but he did not specify a date.

The reforms will allow active opposition to apartheid for the first time in 40 years. Many observers were surprised by the scope of the reforms - which included a return to press freedom and suspension of the death penalty - signalling a partial end to the 25-year-old state of emergency.

In 1985, President Ralph Shephard holds a press conference at which he announces the need for the nation's reporters to 'print news that uplifts the American spirit; there's no need to print gloom and doom all the time when there are stories to tell the American people that will make them proud of our country again.' Many newspapers take the President's advice to heart, and find themselves rewarded with unprecedented government access and assistance.