Today In Alternate History

July 21

In 2010, on this day director Zach Snyder's alternative superhero movie American Flagg premiered in cinema theatres across North America.

Set in a dystopian future, a series of world-wide crises has forced the U.S. leadership off-world. Reforming at the Hammarskjold Center on the planet Mars, a Tricentennial Recovery Committee is formed to get America "back on track for '76". Yet the lofty plan is betrayed and instead, the TRC plans to pay for self-sufficiency by selling the country to the new superpowers on Earth, the Brazilian Union of the Americas and the Pan-African League.

American FlaggBased on the 1983 comic book series of the same name, creator Howard Chaykin's team of writers included Steven Grant, J.M. DeMatteis and Alan Moore. Chaykin famously described the creative goals of the project with the statement "I couldn't see a reason why a post-Holocaust dystopia could not be funny".

"Somebody's gotta put it all back together ... Reuben Flagg just might be the man".Both Snyder and Moore had of course worked together on The Watchmen, which featured another Jewish superhero, the Nightowl. But it was Moore's suggestion to offer the protagonist role for American Flagg to Jackie Earle Haley and not Patrick Wilson. Assisted by a talking cat named Raul, the superhero is one of the few characters with a conscience. Reprising his uncompromising role as Rorschach Watch the Youtube Clip , Haley would win an Oscar for his brilliant portrayal of Reuben Flagg, an idealist who exposes the TRC's dastardly plot.

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

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Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Movies Source: Wikipedia Labels: Dystopia, Watchmen, Alan Moore, Reuben Flagg, American Flagg.

Todayinah Editor Editor says, Toonpedia says ~ according to the series back-story, in 1996 (13 years after the comic originally appeared), everything collapsed. Nukes were flying not just in the Middle East, but also in Western Europe. Black plague in Asia and food riots in Europe. Banking system melts down, just like many nuclear power plants. Islamic uprisings in places where you wouldn't even think there was Islam. So the U.S. government, along with the executive boards of most major corporations, moves to Mars.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2009-07-19 02:08:31 ~ Not really familiar with _American Flagg,_ so I can't comment.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2009-07-20 17:13:57 ~ Ditto here, except that considering we caan't manage to get humans to Mars now, how would an America whose economy was in ruins following a nuclear war (and believe it, if the nukes had flown in 1996 in Europe and the middle East the U.S. economy would be in ruins, even if America were physically unharmed) manage to relocaate its government there?

Readers Comment David Atwell commented on 2009-07-20 19:38:11 ~ thanks for the link. Sounds like an interesting comic!

Readers Comment Chris Oakley commented on 2009-08-06 00:45:10 ~ Considering the reviews "Watchmen" got, I think an "American Flagg" movie will need a ton of luck to make it to the silver screen.

In 1977, - (AP) The remains of a U.S. airman shot down over Vietnam were returned to the United States today.The return of the air pirate McCain
The airman has been identified as Lieutenant Commander John Sidney McCain III, whose plane was shot down by a missile over the then North Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on Oct. 26, 1967. McCain's A-4E Skyhawk crashed in a rural area. According to spokesmen for the Vietnamese government, although the Navy pilot survived the crash, he was attacked and killed by local villagers before units of the then-North Vietnamese Army could take him prisoner.
McCain is survived by his wife, Carol Shepp McCain, her two sons from a previous marriage Douglas and Andrew, whom he had legally adopted, and a daughter, Sidney. Mrs. McCain, motivated by her husband's disappearance in combat, has in recent years been active in the POW-MIA movement; in 1976, she was elected to the House of Representatives as a Republican in Arizona's First District, which includes the McCains' home town of Phoenix. She is said to be considering running for the Senate in 1980.
Reached for comment regarding the return of her husband's remains, Mrs. McCain stated: "John McCain died at the hands of America's Communist enemies. Their return of his body after ten years in no way absolves them of their guilt in his murder". Pressed, she made clear that she disbelieves Hanoi's account and is convinced he was, in her words, "tortured to death" by the Hanoi regime in one of its prisons.
U.S. military spokesmen have responded that based on the condition of the body, it appears this is unlikely. According to them, Lt. Comm. McCain seems to have died within hours, if not minutes, of crashing; as best as can be determined from remains of this age, his body, they say, shows no sign of the injuries of varying age which would be expected if he had endured as a prisoner for some substantial time.
Rep. McCain has introduced legislation calling for her husband to be posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

In 1945, the surrender terms were presented to the Empire of Japan "We have laid down the general terms on which they can surrender. Our warning went unheeded. Our terms were rejected. (1) The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in the first attack to avoid insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.(2) But that attack is only a warning of things to come". ~ Harry S Truman, 34th Vice President and 33rd President of the United StatesThe Truman Doctrine(1) It is suggested by many historians that if the United States had given Japan conditional surrender terms including a guarantee of the Emperor's safety, then the Japanese would have surrendered sometime in the spring or early summer of 1945, possibly even sooner. Facts such as this points to the idea that Truman's Administration had ulterior motives for dropping the bombs. (2) Hiroshima was a civilian target chosen because it had not previously bombed. If it was a military target, it would of course have been bombed before. (3) Hinting of the third strike on Tokyo that occurred on the morning of August 14th. Part of a radio broadcast by Truman on 9 August 1945, referring to the atomic bombing of Japan available at Learning Curve.

US Sec Def	On this day in 2002, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters at the National Press Club in Washington that the United States was dispatching 50,000 troops to Kuwait in response to the growing internal unrest in Iraq.

Don Rumsfeld

On this day in 1968, Belarus seceded from the rest of the USSR, heightening Kremlin fears that the Soviet Union was about to collapse.

	Belarus Flag

	On this day in 2004 the website calling for Michael Moore to be permanently disqualified from Oscar contention registered its 300,000th hit.

Michael Moore

In 1925, the Scopes 'Monkey' Trial in Dayton, Tennessee concluded in favour of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. High school biology teacher John T. Scopes was found guilty of teaching the Biblical interpretation of the Book of Genesis in class and fined $100.

On this day in 1941, Nazi Germany became the first foreign power to recognize the new anti-Soviet government of Lithuania.

In 1899, romantic writer Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois. During World War I Hemingway worked in a Milan hospital run by the American Red Cross. With very little in the way of entertainment, he often drank heavily and read newspapers to pass the time. Here he met Agnes von Kurowsky of Washington, D.C., one of eighteen nurses attending groups of four patients each. She was more than six years older than he. Hemingway fell in love with her, and they married after his return to the United States.

Hemingway's distinctive writing style is characterized by economy and understatement, in contrast to the style of his literary rival William Faulkner. It had a significant influence on the development of twentieth-century fiction writing. His protagonists are typically stoic males who exhibit an ideal described as 'grace under pressure.' Many of his works are now considered canonical in American literature.

The story of Hemingway's great romance was featured in the 1996 motion picture In Love and War, based on the book Hemingway In Love and War by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel, was the story of the young reporter Ernest Hemingway (played by Chris O'Donnell) as an ambulance driver in Italy during World War I. While bravely risking his life in the line of duty, he is injured and ends up in the hospital, where he falls in love with his nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky (Sandra Bullock).

In 1998, several of the researchers working on the undersea ruins near Mt. Didicas in the Philippines seem to go spontaneously mad, and have to be evacuated back to Manila. Curiously, they all are chanting the same thing as they are taken back; 'He is waking.'

In 1989, parodist 'Weird' Al Yankovic's first movie, UHF is released. It becomes the highest grossing comedy of all time, outpacing The Blues Brothers with over $258 million in receipts. Yankovic goes on to score other big-screen hits such as Running With Scissors and Long, Long Time Ago, his parody of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

In 1899, hack writer Ernest Hemingway was born in Oak Park, Illinois. Never a serious author, Hemingway made his name with such melodramatic fare as Old Man & The Sea, The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom The Bell Tolls. While popular with the general public, his work faded quickly after his suicide in 1958.

In 1862, Southern rebels attack the U.S. military at Manassas Junction, Virginia. Poorly organized and hopelessly outgunned, the rebels are dispatched in short order by the Union army, but they inspire others who hope to bring down the Communist government of President Walt Whitman.

In 2004, the United Kingdom government published Delivering Security in a Changing World, a paper detailing wide-ranging reform of the country's armed forces. Recognising that the hyper power Great Britain was the de facto global policemen, proposals for a rapid reaction force were accepted that could send troops to British possessions at a moments notice. Downing Street was unaware how soon such a force restructure be required. By the end of the decade, the British Army was fighting an island hopping war of fast movement in the Far East with the resurgent island nation of Nippon.

In 1994, Bryan Gould was declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party, paving the way to him becoming Prime Minister in 1997. The significance of this victory was not apparent until 2003 when Gould refused to back the US invasion of Iraq, saying that 'Labour was driven by values and principles'. He was strongly backed by Robin Cook, Claire Short inter alia. The arch back bench modernisers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson et al. could only seethe in silence as the British working class stood up to a man to back this bold and principled position.

In 1969,

going up the stairs was the hardest thing that Joseph Gargan (Kennedy's cousin) had ever done in his life. That was all, that was it. He didn't turn on the light. He mounted the steps, one by one avoiding the sixth, which creaked. He held on to the crucifix, and his palm was sweaty and slick. He reached out and pushed open the door. U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts was lying on the bed.

~'The Emperor of Ice Cream'

In 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin of the Apollo 11 mission attempted a landing at the southern Sea of Tranquillity about 20 km (12 mi) south west of the crater Sabine D . As the landing began, Armstrong reported they were 'running long'; Eagle was 4 seconds further along its descent trajectory than planned, and would land miles west of the intended site. The LM navigation and guidance computer reported several unusual 'program alarms' as it guided the LM's descent, taking the crew's attention from the scene outside of the descent such that they were surprised to be sucked into a powerful vortex. Multidimensional energies folded space and time, sending the craft to the armed camp of Austrasian Mayor of the Palace Charles Martel hours before the Battle of Tours. Armstrong was less worried that the in-craft time device is reporting 9th October 732; of greater concern was the sight of Frankish and Burgundian troops about to decamp with their heads down in abject defeat. The following day these soldiers must defeat an army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, Governor-general of al-Andalus to put a final stop to the Arab invasion of Europe, without which, there would be no Western Europe and no America!

July 20

In 1969, the lunar lander Eagle made a hard landing on the moon. Although its occupants, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were not seriously hurt, they discovered that the impact had damaged the lander's engines, making it unable to launch and return to the orbiting Apollo 11 spacecraft.

Apollo XI TragedyThis discovery presented the astronauts, their crewmate Michael Collins aboard the orbiting Apollo 11, and Mission Control on Earth with a dreadful contingency they had hoped never to confront: there was now no way to retrieve Armstrong and Aldrin. The two would have to be left to suffocate, starve or commit suicide, and Mission Control would be obliged to cut off all communications.

Four days later, on July 24, 1969, when if the mission had gone as planned all three astronauts would have returned to Earth to receive a hero's welcome, Michael Collins came back alone. He stood by the side of President Nixon as the latter delivered a eulogy for his doomed comrades:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.
These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.
They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.
In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.
In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.
For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

The tragedy of Apollo 11 would provoke a political backlash against a space program already under siege. Apollo had been planned to run for twenty missions, but none flew after Apollo 11. Not until the 1990s, under President George H. W. Bush's "Back to the Moon" initiative, would manned lunar missions again be undertaken. On July 4, 1995, the bodies of America's "moon martyrs" would be found by the crew of the Selene IX, who conducted a solemn burial ceremony at the site and, in keeping with Nixon's solemn words, left the remains where they were - inside the damaged lander, where they had apparently asphyxiated when their air failed after communications were terminated.

Entry posted by Guest Historian

Eric Lipps

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Generals Source: Wikipedia Labels: Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin Aldrin, Moon, Lunar.

Todayinah Editor Editor says, the speech attributed to Nixon is one his speechwriters drew up in case of a catastrophic failure of Apollo XI. A failure of the lander vehicle rendering it unable to rejoin the command module was considered one of the most serious risks. In our history, of course, it did not happen; Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins all survived to return to Earth. Several more lunar landings occurred, with no fatalities. It has been almost forty years since the last human being set foot on the moon.

Readers Comment Jared Myers commented on 2012-08-29 06:01:49 ~ This would have gone down as one of the greatest tragedies in American history. Hard to see how NASA would have survived.

Readers Comment Richard Roper commented on 2012-08-29 10:37:39 ~ My own view is that because of the dangers known to both them and the Russians the landings never actually took place and the television sequences were actually shotin studios, as claimed. It was simply not for prestige reseans not possible to admit a lck of success.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2012-08-29 12:15:27 ~ You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but consider this: Suppose you're right? Suppose it was faked? And suppose the Soviets found out, and either exposed it to the world up front or simply went ahead with their own program, knowing they hadn't really "lost the space race," and actually landed on the moon, say about 1974--and THEN provided proof that the U.S. hadn't done it? The political fallout would have been deadly. I don't think any U.S. administration would have dared take the chance, whatever the risks of a real moon landing.

Readers Comment John Braungart commented on 2012-08-29 12:23:07 ~ While I truely believe that the politicians did NOT want to waste money on spaceflight (prefurring to keep it here in their own pockets), no politician dared say no to the marytered John Kennedy and end the space program. The ironic thing is he laid out that challenge to go to the moon by the end of the decade because he wanted to take people's minds off of the failed Cuban Invasion, which I believe is one of the reasons he was murdered.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2012-08-29 18:21:52 ~ I remember the day the men landed on the moon. My mom's halfbrother worked at NASA. Our whole family would have been heartbroken.

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2012-08-29 19:43:03 ~ Apollo 12 was on its way, ready to be launched that November. Would America really stop? If anything, it'd put all the more pressure to get it right again. Otherwise, we would've stopped with Apollo 1.

Readers Comment Richard Roper commented on 2012-08-29 20:00:14 ~ It's not a matter of opinion. The Soviets appear to have come to the same conclusion - too dangerous, as safe landing for takeoff could not be guaranteed, and like the Americans had a huge lunar landscape in Kazagkstan to practice landings on. They appear to have belived they could control the media and the evidence for not wishing to pull out and so faking it is very considerable.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2012-08-29 22:35:12 ~ I'm afraid it remains a matter of opinion, regardless of what the Soviets "appear" to have concluded. And one of my points is that if the Soviets had found out, they could have humiliated America before the world, which I believe is not a risk our government would have taken.

Readers Comment Richard Roper commented on 2012-08-29 22:47:02 ~ For some reason they did not do this, but the American government would rely on the media to discredit such a story. However someone in the American government did not appear to have considered this.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2012-08-29 22:54:30 ~ The simplest reason they didn't do it would be that the landings actually happened. Occam's razor.

Readers Comment Richard Roper commented on 2012-08-29 22:59:01 ~ It would not because there are disturbing inconsistencies. Also the evidence is cited of the Soviet lunar landscape model and their own failure to make lunar landers work flying over it.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2012-08-29 23:27:15 ~ The Soviet moon program never recovered from the death of master designer Korolyev in 1967, so their technical failures don't prove no one went to the moon. As for the "disturbing inconsistencies," what are they? Not, I trust, the "flag flying in the breeze": as was explained many years ago, the flag left on the moon was internally braced with wires to allow it to "fly." And again, if the Soviets knew we'd faked the landings they could have rubbed our noses in it.

Readers Comment Richard Roper commented on 2012-08-30 00:26:48 ~ No,we only have the OfficialNarrative that the Soviet moon programme never recovered etc. As i say if theSoviets had said anything the media could be relied on to discredit it. One of the most damning is the same backdrop in the television broadcasts appearing at sites on the moon many miles apart and the moon rocks brought back which were identical toareas on earth where the geologists had trained.

Readers Comment John Braungart commented on 2012-08-30 01:42:34 ~ ~ It would not because there are disturbing inconsistencies. Also the evidence is cited of the Soviet lunar landscape model and their own failure to make lunar landers work flying over it. ~ That MIGHT have been due to the differences in gravitation attraction between thne Earth and the Moon. Earth gravity is about SIX times that of the moon. Even the Lunar Lander's ascent stage wouldn't have done much on the Earth and yet it was able to rendezvous with the Apollo capsule from the Lunar surface.

Readers Comment Richard Roper commented on 2012-08-30 09:56:53 ~ This assumes that it did. It would havbe toland first succesfully tobe able to take off again first. it appears being able to sucessfully land was identified as the problem.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2012-08-30 11:54:00 ~ The backgrounds, as I see them in the old pictures, weren't absolutely identical, just very similar, which isn't much of a problem. As for the moon rocks resembling rocks on Earth, why shouldn't they, if as geologists had theorized the Earth and the moon were assembled from the same materials? The current theory is that during a turbulent phase i the early history of the solar system a Mars-sized body slammed into the early Earth, hurling out huge masses of debris from both Earth and impactor which eventually coalesced into the moon, while the remainder of the impactor was absorbed into Earth. And if one's answer tp the assertion that the Soviet moom prograam was crippled by Korolyev's death is to sneer that that's just the "official narrative," I can only answer, so what? If "official" history is tossed out just because we don't like it, we can believe anything; what counts is evidence.

In 1815, on this day the American shipping merchant Sampson Vryling Stoddard (S.V.S.) Wilder disembarked at his home port of Boston accompanied by the deposed French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Napoleon's Escape to North America
by Ed and Eric OppenA member of the small American community in Paris, Wilder was an acquaintance of both Talleyrand and Lafayette. Impressed by the changes brought about in society and politics under Napoleonic Rule, he was compelled to act after the tragic defeat at Waterloo. And so he travelled to Île d'Aix and offered to help the Emperor escape the British blockade.

Reluctant to leave his fellows, appeals to Napoleon's sense of grandeur finally prevailed and he was eventually persuaded to flee to America and establish the "Second France" where his friends could join him. Perhaps he even imagined a fanfare welcome from James Madison, the President who had declared war on England in 1812.

But first they had to get to that future. And the escape plan was deceptively simple, to travel in disguise under a passport prepared for the merchant's valet. But of course there was a complication; until the danger-line was passed, he would have to be concealed in the false compartment of a hogshead barrel. Water was to drip incessantly, and during the voyage, he developed the pneumonia that would kill him shortly after he arrived at the merchants house in Bolton, Massachusetts.

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Generals Source: History World Labels: Napoleon Bonaparte, Waterloo, Wilder, America, Escape.

Todayinah Editor Editor says, in reality the emperor seriously considered this scheme, but finally declined, because he would leave his friends behind him. In authoring this article, we have used an idea proposed by Eric Oppen, and re-purposed content from Historum and History-World web sites.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2012-07-22 04:37:54 ~ This wouldn't have changed history too much. What if Napoleon had lived on in America, gradually, and without his conscious knowledge, becoming more "Americanized?"

Readers Comment Jared Myers commented on 2012-07-22 21:03:30 ~ There are some folks who seriously believe that Napoleon escaped from Elba. They even made a film about it, which I think was called "Monseiur N."

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2012-07-23 13:56:34 ~ Grounds for conspiracy theorists' dream: maybe his death was faked? Reminds me also of the aged Santa Anna ending up in New York.

Readers Comment Mike commented on 2012-07-24 19:54:29 ~ Napoleon in american politics. That would be interesting.

In 2011, with freedom of movement across the oceans already prevented by the co-ordinated action of group intelligence in mutating jellyfish, mankind soon faced expulsion from landmasses when the development of ultrasound technology backfired spectacularly.

Jellyfish Apocalypse
Rise of the Spineless MenaceFor the past decade, the rise of the spineless menace had been relentless.

1999 ~ Forty million people abruptly lost power on the Philippine island of Luzon when fifty dump trucks' worth were sucked into the cooling pipes of a coal-fired power plant
2006 ~ partially disabled the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan
2007 ~ stung and asphyxiated more than one hundred thousand farmed salmon off the coast of Ireland
2010 ~ capsized and sank a ten-ton fishing trawler off the coast of Japan

However it was only in early 2011 that a maritime problem that was seen as a nuisance quickly escalated into a species survival threatening disaster of epic proportions. To be continued

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Inventions Source: Smithsonian Labels: Jellyfish, Environment, Sustainable, Ocean, Seabed.

Readers Comment Robbie Taylor commented on 2011-07-22 02:23:41 ~ Freakin' jellyfish. And he we were, worried about the sharks!

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2011-07-22 05:35:50 ~ Lovecraft was more on to something than he may have realized...

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2011-07-22 17:14:36 ~ Coincidentally, the last Space Shuttle flight would be another herald of the end of human prowess. They'd simply lived past their prime.

Readers Comment Steven Fisher commented on 2011-12-21 19:21:25 ~ Excuse me while I go stock up on Tasers. An electric gun should do something, right?

In 1969, on this day NASA confirmed that the identity of the deceased Soviet Cosmonaut discovered at Tranquility Base was none other than Yuri Gagarin who had been reported dead by the Pravda Newspaper as a result of a fatal training accident at the Star City some eighteen months before.

Iron Nightmare 3
NASA makes a Grisly DiscoveryEven more surprisingly a radio playback included several warnings that the now abandoned Soviet lander was entering Nazi Airspace.

Ironically the American landing at Tranquility Base were largely a triumph of the German Rocket Scientists such as Werner Von Braun who had been based at the Peenemünde Space Port. Due to the rapid invasion of General Eisenhower's forces, they had been prevented from joining their colleagues in Antartica who relocated to the Dark Side of the Moon during the final phase of the war.

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Iron Nightmare Source: Wikipedia Labels: NASA, Werner Von Braun, Nazi, Space Race, Yuri Gagarin.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2011-07-14 03:06:41 ~ This reminds me of a story I read once where they found a mysterious human skeleton in an oddly-designed spacesuit on the Moon.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2011-07-14 13:14:06 ~ Ahem. There is no "dark side" of the moon, only a "far side." The distinction is this: Due to Earth's gravitational effwect, the moon's rotation has slowed to a point at which it turns on its axis in the same amount of time it takes to orbit the earth. This means we only see one side of it. But it does rotate, so the other side gets sunlight: the moon's "day" is about 29 Earth days long, meaning that the "dark side" gets just over two weeks' worth of sunlight followed by an equal period of darkness--just as the near side does.

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2011-07-18 17:28:43 ~ Argentina, Antarctica, Center of the Earth, the Moon... Where else could those Nazis end up?

In 1983, in a red hot-line conversation with his fellow Head of State, the Canadian Prime Minister, President René Lévesque (pictured) verified intelligence reports received by Pierre Trudeau that the two multi-megaton Soviet ICBM warheads were launched from the island of Cuba before crossing the sovereign airspace of the Republic of Quebec and then devastating the Greater Toronto Area.

The Last Broadcast Part 4: The Rise of A New FederationEven though the world had reached the very brink of destruction before stepping back, this shocking discovery was just one of a number of such revelations that threatened the fragile ceasefire brokered by Acting US President Malcolm Baldridge. In particular, the destruction of the cities of Beijing and Shanghai by Soviet submarine-launched missiles just moments before the ceasefire took effect left White China acutely vulnerable to a fresh conventional assault from its Communist neighbour Manchuria.

At this critical moment, Canada once again demonstrated its reputation for international leadership by inviting the heads of government to an international peace conference in the West Canadian City of Vancouver. More than a little relieved to escape the madness of their own nations, these world leaders had hardly settled into the plenary session when they were shocked by a radical suggestion from Trudeau. If World War One spawned the League of Nations, and World War Two the United Nations, perhaps World War Three was the catalist for a World Government based right here in the only part of the world unaffected by the nuclear holocause - Vancouver, or "Peace City" as he proposed to rename it.

Entry posted by Guest Historian

Steve Payne

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: GTA Nuke Source: Wikipedia Labels: Last Broadcast, Pierre Trudeau, Nuclear War, Canada, Toronto.

Todayinah Editor Editor says, this timeline is based on a Canadian student-made radio play titled The Last Broadcast. Audio clips of the play can be found on YouTube.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2011-03-07 06:55:26 ~ This would be a really different timeline, and after the destructions of all those cities, I can't see anybody being willing to settle for any peace that didn't involve them crushing their enemies for all time.

Readers Comment John Braungart commented on 2011-03-07 11:08:45 ~ Only if the horror of all that destruction shocked enough people that it stopped. Although I'm not too sure that the children in the Pentagon and the Kremlin would WANT to stop playing with their toys.

Readers Comment Chris Oakley commented on 2011-03-07 14:13:14 ~ "Republic of Quebec"? What happened? Did Quebec secede from the rest of Canada before the bombs started detonating?

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2011-03-07 18:24:55 ~ Plus, BC is upwind from the jetstream carrying debris.

Readers Comment Chris Oakley commented on 2011-03-27 00:14:24 ~ I think this chapter may need some last-minute revision...

In 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by placing a bomb in the conference room at the East Prussia command center where Hitler was holding a meeting. The bomb went off and von Stauffenberg telephoned to his confederates in Berlin that Hitler had been killed.

If the July 20 Plot Had SucceededThe conspirators had planned to stage a coup, using elements of the skeletal Home Army in Germany, perhaps supported by some of the generals on the Western Front. However, the would-be putschists in Berlin dithered for several hours, trying to get confirmation that Hitler was really dead. They did not seize the government ministries, or the telephone exchanges, or even the radio stations. When Goebbels was able to confirm that Hitler was alive and convince the army units in Berlin of this fact, the coup collapsed in short order. Apparently, all that saved Hitler's life was the absent-minded placement by his adjutant of the bomb from one side of a wooden table support to the other. Suppose the bomb had not been moved, and Hitler had been killed?

A new story by John ReillyThe conspirators had some foggy notion that they might be able to surrender to the Allies in the west, or at least negotiate a withdrawal to Germany's western border, while continuing to fight defensive battles in the east. Certainly they had gone much further in sounding out the western commanders about their attitude to a coup, though in some ways the most forceful member of the anti-Hitler network involved in the assassination attempt was Major General Henning von Tresckow of Army Group Center on the Eastern Front. (They had also attempted covert negotiations with both the Anglo-Americans and the Russians. They managed to talk to unofficial representatives of both sides, but without results.)

Objectively speaking, something like this might have been possible. The military position of Germany in July 1944 was grim. At the beginning of the month, the Russians had crossed the pre-war eastern border of Poland. Hitler was having that conference in East Prussia because the Russians were only about 60 klicks from the province. In the west, the Anglo-Americans were breaking out of Normandy, and Paris would fall in August. Still, the Germans were far from beaten. Armaments production, for instance, peaked in July. In the months before Germany finally surrendered, they would stabilize the situation more than once, and even conduct some notable offensives. In other words, they still had something to bargain with, and both sides knew it.

The problem with this analysis is that Germany still had a lot to bargain with after the British summer offensive in 1918, too, yet their army and government collapsed as soon as it became known their diplomats were treating for an armistice. No one wants to be the last soldier killed in a war, especially a soldier on the side that is clearly losing. The provisional government (the uninspiring General Ludwig Beck was to lead it) would have been unlikely to be able to control the situation. The Germans armies in the west would probably have simply melted away, rather than wait for an armistice. The government would not have been able to gain control in the homeland: Nazi Germany was a party state, one where the official civil service could do nothing without party cooperation. It would be possible to overcome the party only with the army, but the Home Army was barely sufficient to occupy Berlin. Whatever the Germany armies did in the east, most of them would have been unlikely to follow orders from Beck's government in Berlin. Many more of the eastern units were SS after all, and even the regular army types were often committed Nazis. One suspects that they would have diverted whatever forces they could in order to take Berlin and reestablish a Nazi government. That government would then have tried to recoup matters in the west.

Actually, I doubt that the conspirators would have been able to establish even an ephemeral government. It is much more likely that, if it had been proven that Hitler was dead, the SS units available in Germany would have taken Berlin. Himmler was actually in contact with the conspirators, though with Hitler's knowledge and explicit approval. Though there is no evidence he was a participant, still his behavior throughout the whole affair was oddly passive. Goering was Hitler's designated successor, of course. In earlier versions of the plot, Goering and Himmler were supposed to be assassinated, too. It is easier to image Goering attempting to negotiate a peace than any other major Nazi. In 1939, remember, he had tried to avert war so he could have peace in which to give himself up to his private dissipations. However, by 1944 these had sufficiently debilitated him that it is doubtful he could have made the succession stick.

My guess is that the end result of von Stauffenberg's bomb would have been to bring Himmler to power. (This was a possibility of which the conspirators were aware, and which apparently stayed their hand at earlier points in the war.) It is not impossible to imagine Himmler negotiating peace with either east or west. Of course, it is also not impossible to imagine him using nerve gas on the eastern front. For that matter, it is not impossible to imagine him making human sacrifices to Odin under the Brandenberg Gate. Perhaps the oddest fact about the very odd history of Nazi Germany is that Hitler was a moderate Nazi. Far more than Goebbels or Roehm, say, he was content to let civil society be, so long as his primary goals of expansion in the east and the extermination of the Jews were carried forward. Himmler, in contrast, may have been the most radical Nazi of them all. The regime he might have created would not have lasted long, but it would have been uniquely extreme.

Entry posted by Guest Historian

John Reilly

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: John Reilly Blog Source: John Reilly Labels: Germany, Stauffenberg, Valkyrie, Nazi Germany, World War 2.

Readers Comment Scott Palter commented on 2010-09-26 14:37:18 ~ 1. this all presumes the bomb takes Adolph and the generals can avoid getting the blame for it [the initial reaction at hitler's HQ was that they had been bombed from the air] 2. there were not enough SS units in Germany for a countercoup. Those that were there were in the main older men [police and building guards exempted from military call=up] and not especially loyal to Himmler. The service more likely to stage a countercoup would have been the Air Force but Goring was of the top Nazis the most likely to do a deal with the generals. Goring had hundreds of thousands of troops in Germany [mostly AAA but inlcuding AF ground staff and several divisions of paras]. 3. The enemy most likely to do a deal was Stalin not the West. By July of 1944 Stalin had almost all of HIS territory back and was quite worried about the West doing a deal behind his back.

Readers Comment Mike Stone commented on 2010-09-26 14:39:08 ~ Still, if there's some kind of civil war between Wehrmacht and SS, that should at least shorten WW2 quite a bit

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2010-09-26 19:18:54 ~ Assassinating Hitler would have thrown the Reich into chaos, with the Wehrmacht and the SS very much at odds. The Eastern front would probably have held up; the Germans were scared of the Russians with very good reason. However, the west would probably have collapsed rapidly, and you might have ended the war with the Western Allies in Berlin and possibly even east of there.

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2010-09-26 20:07:18 ~ Always considered this... Best of All Possible Worlds, even with Hitler?

In 1934, Minneapolis Teamsters were in their second strike of the summer.

Socialist Uprising begins in Minneapolis The Great Depression had hid the Midwest hard, and laborers were among the most struggling of Americans to make ends meet. In an effort to better their position, the teamsters organized themselves into a union. A constitution had been written, and drivers were organized into different locals, each representing a type of worker: milk, freight, ice-wagon, etc. The leadership of Daniel Tobbs created an efficient headquarters staffed by a women's auxiliary, and they had even allied themselves with the Communist Party to achieve political clout. The past winter, a strike of coal drivers had made great progress, and now seemed time to achieve workers' rights.

In May, the strike began. The teamsters shut down the city, allowing only farmers to transport their produce directly to grocers. Fighting almost immediately broke out with the unions and the Minneapolis police trading blows with clubs and pipes. After a week of carnage, negotiations began, and Governor Floyd Olson was ready with the mobilized (but not deployed) National Guard. The unions and their employers came to agreement, and workers returned to business by the end of the month.

However, it became apparent that they had missed a key point. Warehouse workers (who had allied themselves with the drivers) were meant to receive benefits as understood by the unions, but the employers refused to give them. The strike resumed on July 17.

A new story by Jeff ProvineThe union leadership decided that, if battle were to escalate, they would be ready. Guns were stockpiled, but only clubs were allowed until otherwise provoked. On July 20, the provocation would come as fifty police officers escorted a single truck into the picketed market. Club-bearing teamsters made to block the truck's path, and then police opened fire with shotguns loaded with buckshot. Union workers charged forward to aid the injured, and the police continued to fire. Within minutes, teamsters from the rear of the picket came forward with their own weapons. The brawl turned to battle.

Minneapolis descended into a war zone. Olson deployed the National Guard, but the soldiers expected riot control rather than urban combat. After two days, the Guard fell back to take up siege of the city. All across the nation, in Hoovervilles and breadlines, people seemed to come alive to the sounds of gunfire. Longshoremen all along the West Coast rose up, shutting down ports. A strike of auto workers in Toledo that had been thought to have been settled ignited again and began a wildfire that would consume Ohio.

President Roosevelt watched as his country became engulfed it what appeared to be civil war. He pleaded for ceasefires over his weekly addresses, but the words fell on deaf ears. Finally he would call forth the Army and Marines to join faltering National Guard deployments (many of whom were beginning to side with the union workers). The action would cause a reaffirmation of faith in the Federal government among some and calls for a total separation among others. With the Convention of Minneapolis, the anarchy would become a revolution.

Violence would tear across the Midwest. Allied with them, but unable to hold such independence, were the Workers of the West, a mass in California and the Pacific Northwest that locked down the western part of the country. Riots shredded New York City during the Thirty Days' Fire, but neither the Federalists nor the Socialists could gain ground.

The war changed when Stalin offered aid to the rebel workers. Many happily took up Soviet arms, but many others became suspicious of foreign entanglement. Following ruptures in the Socialist leadership, desertion became rampant, and order was gradually restored. FDR began his extensive projects in the New Reconstruction, which would solve unemployment issues as many major cities in the Union needed to be rebuilt.

Europe fell into the Second World War, the United States was in no position to aid their allies. Without the hope of American arms, Britain fell before the month-long onslaught of the Blitz, and Germany turned against Russia in a bloodthirsty war that tore apart both countries. In 1944, Japan would conclude its India Campaign and launch new attacks on the south to secure oil, assaulting the American bases at Manila. The US, perhaps stronger than ever and sporting a ready government-based manufacturing system, was the sleeping giant awoken. Aid poured into the French, Norwegian, and British Resistances, and the Americans mobilized over a million troops. Stalin kept Hitler occupied by scorched earth, costing the lives of untold millions of Russians. Even as Hitler took Moscow in 1943, Stalin fought on with his loyal comrades against insurmountable assaults.

With the successful testing of the atomic bomb at Trinity Site in New Mexico, the United States would bring the war to an end in 1947 with a series of eighteen bombings in Germany and Japan. Stalin seemed hopeful to emulate the technology, but his nation was too destroyed to seek to match the capitalist West. Holding the bomb as the highest prize, President Truman kept the United States as the only superpower, rushing aid to allies to rebuild, but keeping military dominance to the US. Russia would struggle, but the death of Stalin in 1956 would lead to a new revolution (rumored to be backed by American funds).

The earth became nearly uniform in its American capitalism, and the latter half of the twentieth century would see untold growth. A feeling of paternalism would come over Americans, and investment would be the new colonialism. With the United Nations as something of a front, the US would assume control of every government by means of controled federated spending. Many would call the Pax Americana the greatest age of the earth, but others would disagree as the disenfranchised suffered low wages in sweatshops.

September 11, 2001, a great rebellion would emerge throughout the Muslim world. Capitalism would fall to its knees in a third world war that would bring an end to American control and a rebirth of leftist and conservative radicals that would parcel up the devastated nations.

Entry posted by Guest Historian

Jeff Provine

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Jeff Provine Blog Source: Jeff Provine’s Blog Labels: Socialist, Teamsters, Minneapolis, Strike, Organized Labour.

Todayinah Editor Editor says, in reality, the leadership of the teamsters at the beginning of the July strike called for a new strategy of using no weapons. Unarmed, the union would face police, who would indeed attack them, calling up much sympathy from all over the nation. Communism was given something of a respectable face, but red scares and fear of foreigners would bring about the eventual suppression of socialist ideals for America.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2010-08-01 23:25:13 ~ A U.S. sociaist uprising in 1934 would almost certainly have been crushed quickly. There simply wasn't enough support in the country at large for such a thing to have any chance of success, at least unless initial conditions were different (due to an earlier divergence of some sort). Now, if the Depression had continued to worsen through the thirties, by late in the decade I'd think all bets would have ben off. Even then, though, I'd put money on the U.S. going fascist rather than socialist, since that would have the support of plenty of business leaders as well as racist groups.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2010-08-02 00:09:52 ~ How would they get weapons from the USSR to Minnesota?

Readers Comment Chris Oakley commented on 2010-08-02 15:30:09 ~ Freighter, probably.

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2010-08-02 17:39:05 ~ All those longshoremen and teamsters as experts in transport... they could've gotten anything through. My guess would be Pacific Northwest and then through the back roads in the mountains.

Comment from Mike McIlvain on Facebook: The 1940 Clark Gable movie, Comrad X, might have been written and "shot" quite differently.

Comment from Bea Warren on Facebook: Yes, I would love to know this.

Readers Comment Scott Palter commented on 2010-08-11 15:07:18 ~ Either FDR crushes this or there is a coup and the coup leaders crush it.

In 2069, as part of the programme of events to get America "back on track for '76", the Tricentennial Recovery Committee (TRC) celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the Apollo Eleven mission by showcasing the new full-size Lunar reconstruction of Mount Rushmore.
Watch the Youtube American Flagg! Howard Chaykin Review Part 1

Back on Track for '76This highly symbolic event marked the most notable triumph of American technology prowess prior to the collapse of western civilization during the so-called "year of domino" when the original Mount Rushmore had been destroyed. Because in 1996 a series of worldwide crises had forced the U.S. government and the heads of major corporations to relocate to Hammarskjold Center, on Mars ("temporarily, of course").

"Somebody's gotta put it all back together ... Reuben Flagg just might be the man".And former President Reuben Flagg paid tribute to the valued contribution of Russian engineers from the former Soviet lunar colony of Gagaringrad who had worked tirelessly alongside Martian-based technicians to make the grand opening possible.

Of course bigger challenges lay ahead for the next seven years. Because the U.S. government and the heads of major corporations had yet to effect a return to Earth. In fact during the 'thirties, it was widely rumoured that the giant, interplanetary union of corporate and government known as the Plex was seriously considering selling the continental United States as real estate to the Brazilian Union of the Americas and the Pan-African League who had become the new superpowers on Earth during their absence. Flagg, who had played no small part in preventing that outcome, had refused to entertain the suggestion that his own image be used as a fifth face, on the new monument.

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Alternate Nations Source: Wikipedia Labels: American Flagg, Reuben Flagg, America, Year of the Domino, Armageddon.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2010-06-12 01:09:21 ~ Does this count as alternate history or as future history? Also, I'm not sure that the moon has stone thatd be suitable for sculpture, at least on the surface. But I am only an egg...

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2010-11-11 15:44:02 ~ Nice to see all that space travel back in '96. Instead, we get cell phones and the Internet.

In 1993, on this day at 4pm government agents deposited the dead body of murdered Deputy White House Counsel Vincent Foster in a woodland area off the George Washington Parkway in Virginia, outside Washington, D.C. But Kenneth Starr's confidential witness Patrick Knowlton clocked their suspicious behaviour as they re-entered a blue-gray sedan motor vehicle before driving out of the small parking lot at Fort Marcy Park.

Murdergate by Ed, Eric OppenThe Clinton's desperate efforts to cover-up the homicide of the most senior White House Officer since JFK would come to nought. Because Starr's investigations would later reveal a level of government malfeasance unparalled since the tragedy at Dallas almost thirty years before:

The grassy area around the corpse was heavily trampled and yet the victim's shoes were soil-free
Carpet fibres on the body matched those of Hillary Clinton's apartment where she and Foster had conducted an extra-marital affair
White House Staffers seized Fosters papers even before his body was discovered, and broke into his safe

It later emerged that Hillary Clinton had become involved with Foster in covering up the activities that would become famously known as Whitewater and Travelgate. But when the First Lady attempted to break off the affair, Foster went crazy and arrived at her apartment with a gun planning to shoot both lovers. In the fight that ensued, Foster was killed when the firearm accidentally discharged as they grappled on the carpet. It was a dramatic scene that would have enthralled fans of the early eighties soap opera "Dynasty" had it not been so tragic.

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Conspiracy Theories Source: Wikipedia Labels: Hillary Clinton, Vincent Foster, Presidency, Kenneth Starr, Murder.

Todayinah Editor Editor says, many thanks to Eric Oppen for the original idea.

Comment from Steve Schaper on Facebook: well, it pretty much is proven by normal standards.

Readers Comment Chris Oakley commented on 2010-02-20 04:16:31 ~ Wasn't "Dynasty" already off the air by the time of Vince Foster's death? Ed. Fixed - thanks

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2010-02-20 18:16:25 ~ Watching the news medias' heads explode would have been SOOOO gratifying...on the one hand, this is a huge, huge, HUGE scandal...on the other hand, they'd suffered from "Camelotus Interruptus" ever since 1963, and had reflexively supported every Democrat that came down the pike in hopes of having another Kennedy. Having the Prex and First Lady both under indictment for murder or manslaughter would probably destroy the Democratic Party...what a tragedy.

Comment from Christopher Donahue on Facebook: As long as the Clintons remained reliably pro-abortion and more socialist than the opposition, the media would down-play the story (or load it up with technical/legal data so the audience would grow bored) or ridicule the prosector. History shows that response to other illegal/criminal actions by the Clintons. Even today, most citizens think the impeachment was about Clinton and Lewinski--trivial.

Comment from Robbie Taylor on Facebook: "...more socialist than the opposition...". To quote Princess Bride: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Comment from Fred Call on Facebook: Then they'd of proved that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn't the lone gunman the media portrayed him to be.......that's not alternate history. That's the Chesire Cat's grin.......

Readers Comment Scott Palter commented on 2010-02-21 00:18:38 ~ One of those recent history maybes. Foster investigation was botched top to bottom and there was definitely a White House cover-up of something. Beyond that it is lurid gossip and partisan sniping. Hillary is certainly capable of murder.

Comment from Mary Ann on Facebook: nothing surprise's me anymore, you don't know who to trust!...this world is in great turmoil,,,,the true working man can't make it anymore!! all this deceit for what??? what is it that everybody wants?

In 1944, on this day a plot headed by a small group of German officers (the Kreisau Circle) succeeds in killing Adolf Hitler, along with a number of his staff, including the head of OKW Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.

A briefcase bomb, planted by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (pictured), explodes at 12:40 PM, less than three feet away from Hitler. By 4:00, Unternehmen Walkure (Operation Valkyrie) was in effect, with strongpoints throughout Berlin being seized by units of the Reserve Army.

The Kreisau Circle by Zach TimmonsWehrmacht troops quickly arrest any SS and Gestapo units they can find, having been told that the SS was behind the plot to kill the Fuhrer. Heinrich Himmler is killed after a pitched battle erupts at SS headquaters, but most top Party officials (Goebbels, Bormann, Goring) are arrested with little struggle. One of the few senior officials to go along with the conspirators is Albert Speer; he will be rewarded by being retained as Armaments and War Production Minister.

By midnight, Valkyrie has been mostly successful, with most senior Army commanders around the Reich believing the cover story of the SS power seizure; also, a number of wavering military leaders (including Erwin Rommel and G?nther von Kluge) and Party officials (inc. Speer and Adm. Wilhelm Canaris) openly throw their support to the Kreisau conspirators. Within three days, their hold has been consolidated; a new government is formed, with General Ludwig Beck as President, and Carl Goerdeler as Chancellor. The ban on political parties is lifted (excepting the Communists), and the concentration camps are immediately shut down.

On July 29th, the new German government, through Swedish mediators, proposes a 48-hour truce to the Western Allies, with the intention being a total ending of hostilities in the West. The Germans agree to evacuate all occupied nations in Western Europe, with a mutual twenty-mile demilitarized zone on the western borders of Germany; their only request is the halting of Lend-Lease convoys to the Soviets. Although Churchill and Roosevelt are loathe to agree to a negotiated peace (and even less wanting to back out of their alliance with Stalin), they realize that their main reason for waging war on Germany (the Nazis and the occupation of Western Europe) has suddenly vanished. Accordingly, on August 7th, a provisional truce is signed between Germany and the Western Allies.

Stalin and the Red Army will have to face the Wehrmacht on their own.

Entry posted by Guest Historian

Zach Timmons

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beasts Source: Wikipedia Labels: Claus von Stauffenberg, Adolf Hitler, Nazi, Third Reich, Germany.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2009-07-19 21:17:03 ~ This would have been very interesting indeed. Among other things, the Communist parties in the West, which were disproportionately influential due to the large numbers of sympathizers in academic and literary circles, would have raised a giant howl about how the evol capitalists had sacrificed the Workers' Motherland. OTOH, if Katyn had been announced to the world by the Valkyrie conspirators, that might have shot a lot of the goodwill the USSR had; as well as reminding the West that the USSR had conspired with Hitler quite happily to help carve up Poland, and had attacked Finland and the Baltics with Hitler's cooperation.

Readers Comment David Atwell commented on 2009-07-19 22:30:22 ~ I'd be keen to know, if the Western Allies had accepted such a peace truce/treaty, whether Stalin would have been forced to go along with something similar rather than face Germany without any Lend-Lease support. That could have made for an interesting post-WWII period not to mention whatever may take place in respect to a Cold War (if it happens).

Readers Comment H. Torrance Griffin commented on 2009-07-20 05:57:19 ~ I am given to understand that the Red Army has hit thier stride at this point, and odds are the new Junta will need an external enemy to keep thier coalition together at least for a moment.

Readers Comment Zach Timmons commented on 2009-07-20 12:30:32 ~ As I understand it, the intention of the conspirators was always to reach an accomodation with the West - the Soviets were seen as the real enemy, the ones who would truly ruin Germany should they win. As powerful as the Red Army was in mid-1944, I think the transfer of around 1.5 million troops, plus countless tanks, 88mm guns, artillery, etc., could've at least forced a stalemate on the Eastern Front. Henry Wallace may not have been happy, but he was on his way out anyhow.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2009-07-20 17:24:01 ~ One wonders what would have happened to the Nazi Party. would the military have gone on to eviscerate the Party, or would it have reached some sort of modus vivendi with the purely politcal arms? As written, this scenario appears to envision a postwar era in which the Nazis are a l;egal politicala movement (rather than being banned as in OTL's postwar Germany). And with Germany suddenly transformed from foe to "bulwark against the Bolsheviks," as some Nuremberg defendants tried to claim it had been under Hitler, would there have been as much willingness to reveal the Holocaust?

In 1971, with great regret an executive order was issued to shut down Operation 40, a CIA-sponsored undercover operation created by US President Eisenhower in March 1960 after the 1959 Cuban Revolution and presided over by then vice-president Richard M. Nixon. Operation 40 had 86 employees in 1961, of which 37 were trained as case officers.Operation 40One such officer Frank Sturgis described the work of this elite intelligence operation as 'this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... '
Broadly, Operation 40 had three phases. 1) Execution of covert US Foreign Policy (1959-1961) by assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, Che Guavara, Patrice Lumumba ending in the Bays of Pigs Operation 2) Execution of housekeeping operations (1961-1968) including domestic assassination attempts on John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George Wallace and Malcolm X. 3) Executon of counter-culture icons (1968-1972) including Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.
By means of dispatch, Nixon's genius was to conceive of a treachery within a treasonous act. Members of Operation 40 would break-into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. Deep sleeper agent Frank Wills would then foil the robbery, call the police and kick-start the justice operation. Perhaps some of them would go for immunity, perhaps even a few stories would be told. Sturgis himself had been one of the gun-men on the grassy knoll, and witnessed the shooting of Office JD Tippit by L Gordon Liddy. An unprecented cover-up would be required. In a triple twist, the CIA punished the executive for failure to support the Agency over the Bays of Pigs. The cover-up was buried by turning the heat back onto the White House itself, forcing Nixon to resign in 1974. On tape, Nixon described the Kennedy assassination as the Bay of Pigs thing, it was a fifteen-year web of intrigue that finally caught the spider himself.

In 1996, the Protector of Aden, Colin Campbell 'Mad Mitch' Mitchell died in his beloved Crater district.Death of Mad Mitch
A former British Army lieutenant colonel and politician, he became famous in July 1967 when he led the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in the British reoccupation of the Crater district of Aden. At that time, Aden was a British colony and the Crater district had briefly been taken over by nationalist insurgents. Campbell became widely known as 'Mad Mitch', creating a renegade government in the former colony that last thirty years.
Mitchell was made Officer Commanding 1st Battalion, The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (the 'Argylls') on 12 January 1967. He achieved fame in the Aden Emergency, which was acted out in the final few years of British rule in Aden. He became known as 'Mad Mitch' and was Mentioned in Despatches.
Britain's Aden territory consisted of the Aden City Colony attached to Protectorates with a total land area similar to that of the UK. One part of Aden City was the Crater district. The Crater was the old part of the City. According to Mitchell's autobiography, Crater was a 'town of 80,000 inhabitants'. By 1967, the British position in Aden was coming under pressure from groups of armed Arab nationalists, resulting in a counter-insurgency campaign known as the Aden Emergency.
In June 1967 the Argylls were due to take over operational control of the Crater from the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. However, before this could happen, on 20 June some of the local police mutinied and seized the Crater in association with nationalist insurgents. Around 20 British soldiers were killed and their bodies mutilated.
On 5 July 1967 Mitchell led a force that reoccupied the Crater district accompanied by 15 regimental bagpipers of the Argylls playing 'Scotland the Brave'. Mitchell subsequently used what were described as 'strong arm methods' to keep control of the Crater in the remaining months before British withdrawal. The reoccupation itself was almost bloodless and Mitchell then used an integrated system of observation posts, patrols, checkpoints and intelligence gathering to maintain the Crater as a tranquil area while security elsewhere in Aden began to deteriorate. However, allegations of brutality were made against Mitchell and the troops under his command (Mitchell had told his men to expect such allegations regardless of whether or not they were true). The imposition of 'Argyll law' (as Mitchell described it) on the Crater endeared Mitchell to the media and to the British public. But it did not endear him to certain of his superiors in both the Army and the High Commission.
Mitchell's critics felt that he was a publicity seeker and that the troops under his command lacked discipline. One High Commission official described the Argylls as a bunch of Glasgow thugs (a statement for which he later apologised).

Stars & Stripes Newspaper	On this day in 1944, Adolf Hitler was mortally wounded when a bomb exploded in the map room of his field headquarters in Rastenburg, East Prussia during his daily military conference with the Wehrmacht general staff. Despite the best efforts of a team of doctors, including his personal surgeon Dr. Theo Morell, Hitler died from his injuries three hours after the blast. That evening Luftwaffe commander-in-chief Hermann Goering, invoking a succession decree signed by Hitler just after the Nazi invasion of Russia in June of 1941, declared himself the new chancellor of the Third Reich.

21st July 1944 Issue

In 1969, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first human being to set foot on the moon, planting a hammer-and-sickle flag in the Sea of Tranquility along with a plaque bearing the image of Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev and the inscription (in Russian), "The earth is the cradle of mankind. But one cannot stay in the cradle forever". The words are quoted from Russian space visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky.

	Gerard K. O'Neill

In the United States, there is consternation. The frantic acceleration of the U.S. lunar landing program ordered by President Lyndon Johnson following the Soviets' successful lunar orbit mission in November 1967 has failed to get America to the moon before the Russians. The nation which launched the first artificial satellite, on Nov. 24, 1954, has now seen its geopolitical rival outrun it in the so-called 'space race.'

As recriminations fly, some begin looking about for a new goal which will allow the United States to retake the initiative. One proposal is to continue the U.S. moon program with the goal of establishing a permanent human presence there after a successful landing is achieved. Another, from Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill, is the construction of factories and residential colonies in orbit, in the so-called 'L-5' region where the gravities of Earth and the moon exactly cancel out. Dr. O?Neill notes that in this region, little or no fuel would have to be expended to keep an installation from drifting out of orbit, and that the microgravity conditions would lend themselves to a variety of specialized manufacturing efforts difficult to carry out on Earth. Still another suggestion is that the U.S. refocus its efforts toward a Mars landing, for perhaps sometime in the early 1980s.

	On this day in 1975, future soccer star and MLS Cup MVP Paul Pierce was born in Oakland, California. Pierce would be a major contributor to the New England Revolution's successful 2007 MLS Cup run and would also be a standout player for Team USA at the 2006 World Cup.

Paul Pierce

On this day in 1944, the RAF began air-dropping food and munitions to aid the Polish anti-Nazi uprising in Warsaw. That same day Erwin Rommel, knowing he was about to be court-martialled for his ties to the July 5th assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, committed suicide in his hospital bed; however, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' official announcement of Rommel's death claimed that the ex-Afrika Korps commander died of his wounds from the July 16th RAF strafing attack.

	Erwin Rommel

A Rolling Stone	How does it feel to be on your own with no direction home Like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone? Like a Rolling Stone was released as a 45 rpm single on on July 20, 1965. Dylan gave the song its live debut at the Newport Folk Festival appearance five days later. It was a disaster with Dylan prematurely exiting the stage in tears. Dylan had been booed by fans when he played alongside an electric blues/rock and roll band while headlining the festival.

Bob Dylan

On this day in 1982, former NWA world champion Harley Race defeated One Man Gang at an NWA live show in Springfield, Massachusetts to win the NWA United States singles title; Race clinched the victory when he ducked a chair shot aimed at him by Bret Hart and the chair hit Gang square in the face.

	One Man Gang

Petunia answered the knock on the door with a little trepidation. The house wasn't nearly as spotless as she usually kept it, owing to her Duddley's recent bouts of, well, strangeness. It's all Harry's fault, she thought, thankful that at least she never had to see her wretched nephew anymore.
She swung the door open and gasped in horror. The figure standing at the door had an almost snake-like appearance, with a nose that was almost not even there, and eyes that glowed green and fiery as they took her in. The hand covering her mouth trembled as she whispered, 'No...'
'What, Petunia,' Lord Voldemort said as he stepped across the threshold, followed by Severus Snape, 'no kiss for daddy?'
Harry appeared in front of the door at the Dursley's house, sick that he had to come here one more time. But, Snape's note had been quite clear - What you seek shall be at the home that has offered you shelter when Hogwarts has not. You must trust me in this, Potter. From all he had learned of Snape's love for his mother, he had finally come to the conclusion that he had to trust that the potion master had the same motive for revenge that he did; that was why Dumbledore had trusted him, had even let Snape kill him rather than give up his position within Voldemort's ranks. There was still plenty for Snape to pay for ? Ron, Tonks, Ginny - but he no longer felt the rage he had a year ago about Dumbledore.
He opened the front door and walked in slowly, wand drawn. The door had been ajar, which made Harry's stomach turn. He advanced slowly into the house, and an odd tableau met his eyes. Seated at the dining room table, dressed in their best clothing, were Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and Duddley. All three were sitting stock still, with looks of terror frozen on their faces. The cause of that terror sat at the head of the table, his black robes draped across the arms of the chair, his reptilian features broken into a wide smile. 'Ah, Harry, my boy, come at last for Sunday dinner.' Snape stood beside Voldemort, his wand pointed at the Dursleys. 'No heroics, lad. Let's just chat.' He extended a long, thin hand to the chair at the foot of the table, and Harry sat down. 'It's so pleasant to an old man to be able to sit down with his family and have a nice dinner and conversation.' Harry's lip curled at the thought of having Voldemort in his ancestry. The dark lord speared a piece of roast beef with one of Petunia's best silver forks and ate it with relish. 'Ah, Petunia, you always were such a good cook when you were properly motivated.'
Harry impatiently said, 'What do you want?'
'Why, you, of course, Harry.' Voldemort smiled and wiped his mouth delicately with the best of the Dursleys' napkins. 'By now, you've discerned that you're the last of my horcruxes. I'd like to remove that last part of myself from you.'
'Nothing would please me more,' Harry spat at him.
Voldemort continued to speak pleasantly, picking up his wand and gesturing at Harry with it. 'Now, it can be done one of two ways. One leaves you alive, the other dead. Which method I employ depends entirely on you.' The two stared at each other for a few seconds before the dark lord continued, 'I won't lie and say that you have been pleasant to know, Harry. Your vendetta has been rather singular in its success at stripping me of my power and my followers. All I have left of my old strength is Severus, here,... and you.' He stood, and his wand came dangerously close to sparking at Harry as he spoke again. 'You've thwarted me without even knowing what you were doing. I have come to respect that, Harry. I have come to respect you. I want you at my side, grandfather and grandson.'
'You should ask Duddley; he'd jump at the chance to join you.'
Voldemort chuckled, a raspy, thin laugh. 'I have always been disappointed in Petunia and her offspring, but I must confess that I am glad I had her today, for she has provided me with bait for you.' He looked affectionately over at his muggle daughter. 'And, let's face it, her temperament was much more of a match for mine than was Lily's.' At the mention of Harry's mother, Snape stiffened slightly. 'So, my offer,' Voldemort said, getting down to business. 'Join me in killing these muggles, and we will be bound together in a more permanent fashion than even the horcrux charm can manage.'
Harry looked at Voldemort with disgust. 'Why would I want to kill these people with you?'
Now, Voldemort laughed heartily, clapping his hands together. 'Come, Harry, I've spent too much time in your mind for you to lie to me about how you feel about the Dursleys. You hate me, yes, of course, but what have I ever really done to you? Orchestrated things, had my followers attack or kill people close to you; all sort of shadowy and nebulous, nothing real to hang your hate on.'
'You killed my parents.'
Voldemort waved his hand dismissively. 'Oh, yes, yes, but you were only one. You didn't even acknowledge your mother as she fell dead in front of you.' Snape's knuckles on his wand turned white as the dark lord said this. 'That's an abstract sort of hate. Yes, I placed a hole in your life, but it was a hole that they could have filled, with understanding, affection... love.' He looked at the Dursleys, whose eyes were filling with a new terror. 'Instead, there was only neglect, disdain and loathing. I may have placed you in their hands, but they were the ones who tortured you for ten years. Tell me truly, Harry; is there anyone you truly hate as much as you hate them?'
Harry avoided looking at the family as answered, clearly, 'No.'
Voldemort's wide smile threatened to envelop his entire face. 'Join me in this, and then we shall rebuild my empire together.'
Harry's eyes flicked casually to Snape, who nodded almost imperceptibly. Is it a trap? Harry's distrust of Snape, born through many years of mistreatment at his hands, could barely be contained. But, he tamped it down, and stood. 'Which one shall I kill?'
'Duddley, I think.' The fat young man gulped audibly. 'I shall deal with dear Petunia, and Severus shall have Vernon. That's all appropriate, wouldn't you say?'
'Very.'
They locked eyes. In that moment, both were able to read the other's thoughts; the bond that locked them together broke down the barriers between them. The dark lord lifted his wand, and Harry aimed his, and a bolt of fire joined them together.
'I should have known you were too weak,' Voldemort shouted. 'Your mother was the same way.'
Snape put his wand to Voldemort's throat and growled, 'You will never speak of Lily again.' A green explosion threw Voldemort to the ground as Snape intoned, 'Avada Kadavera!'
The Dursleys all jumped back from the table and crouched together in the corner of the room as Harry and Snape went over to examine Voldemort's body. Life was rapidly ebbing from the sorcerer, but he choked out, 'I still live... I still live in you, Harry... I still live...'
'Neither can live while the other survives,' Snape intoned, pointing his wand at Harry.
Now, Harry finally understood the plan of vengeance that Snape had undertaken. He had deceived both sides because he knew that Harry had to be destroyed along with the dark lord, because his vengeance for Harry's mother could never be complete while a portion of the dark lord was still able to be reborn. 'It can't be removed from me,' he asked, 'can it?'
'No,' Snape whispered, his wand trembling slightly. Harry's eyes, so much like his mother's, bore into Snape's. 'Not without killing you.'
Harry nodded and dropped his wand. 'Then, do it.' Harry felt a great peace come over him, a sense of love and warmth that he hadn't felt since - Ginny? Mom?
The green blast dropped him to the ground and he felt all the ill that had been done to him in life fade away. All the anger, the hatred, the bitterness, melted as Voldemort's spirit was replaced by a feminine touch, a pair of voices calling to him, smoothing away the violence, settling his features, and fading away the last remnants of his scar.

Stub Entry posted by Alternate Historian Robbie Taylor

Todayinah Editor Editor says, Never let it be said I don't plug famous authors. Today, which you know about unless you have no contact with the rest of the world whatsoever, marks the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final installment in J.K. Rowling's epic series. I thought today I would indulge in a bit of fan fiction ? although, of course, it goes without mentioning that ALL RIGHTS BELONG TO JO ROWLING and I mean nothing but respect by what I present here and this HAS ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with the ACTUAL END OF DEATHLY HALLOWS!!! It's just fan fic. I've always imagined the end of the series something like this. ~ Robbie Taylor.

	On this day in 1941, anti-Soviet Lithuanian rebels acting with the encouragement of Nazi Germany seized control of Lithuania's capital, Vilnius.

On this day in 1947, Pope Pius XII left Rome to take part in an interfaith prayer service for the victims and survivors of the Roswell asteroid strike. That same day, members of more than two dozen Native American tribes gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico for a healing ceremony, and in Washington President Truman met with members of New Mexicos Congressional delegation to ask what further help might be needed as Roswell continued its recovery work.

In the 16th year of Ptolerit's reign, a man is landed on the moon. The original mission Pharaoh Ptolerit had charged his astronomers with had been seeing if the kingdom of the dead was there, so when the astronaut Soranim stepped out onto the moon, he said, 'The kingdom of the moon is dead; but our people are not here.'

In 1974, the Soviet States of America's premier cosmonaut, James Lovell, sets foot on the moon. 'That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for the people,' he said, as the entire planet watched.

In 1972, the Soviet Union lands a cosmonaut on the moon, beating the British Space Agency, the United States & the Confederate States of America by years. Boris Andreyev, a man given to few words, said, 'Moscow, luna 1 here. Mission accomplished.'

In 1969, the ultimate hoax was played as the world watched a man walk on 'the moon'. The Hollywood effects people weren't as thorough as they should have been, though; the telecast had to be fuzzed or blacked out several times because the camera strayed past the set, or a crewman walked into the field of vision. Still, virtually everyone in the world was fooled.

In 1368, Allah grants glory to Mahtab Khasim, who flies through the ether and lands on the moon on this day. Mahtab, planting his foot on the dusty surface and then dropping to his knees in prayer, says, 'All glory to Allah and to Mohammed his prophet; the skies themselves are now provinces of Islam.'

In 1917, Alexander Kerensky became Prime Minister and President of the Russian provisional government and survived an assassination attempt. His first challenge was to defeat the Red Menace from the vampire forces of Lenin's undead nosferatu who believed that 'at night, power laid on the streets of St Petersburg'. The White general Kornilov discovered Lenin in a coffin under the Finland Station, whereupon he was caste into the bright summer sunlight to kill both the vampire and his offspring brood. Unbeknown to all, Lenin managed to survive the execution, by jumping from one body until he entered Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, sneaking away to another to continue killing as the vampire Stalin.

In 1839, the Congress of the Confederate States of America began sitting in Richmond, Virginia. To a man they were implacably opposed to 8th President of the United States Martin Van Buren. The explosive issue of First Nation genocide, sparked by the Cherokee Trail of Tears was about to ignite the American Civil War. This single issue disguised general conflict over economics, westward and expansion as the nation experienced tragic growing pains.

July 19

In 1825, on this day the eighteenth President of the United States, "Gentleman" George Hunt Pendleton (pictured) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

George H. Pendleton
18th US PresidentAfter attending Cincinnati College and the University of Heidelberg in Germany, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1847. He was a member of the Ohio Senate from 1854 to 1856. In 1854 he ran unsuccessfully for the Thirty-fourth United States Congress. Three years later he was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-fifth Congress and also succeeded in being reelected to the three following Congresses (March 4, 1857 to March 3, 1865), but in 1864 he failed to be elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress.

He was one of the managers appointed by the House of Representatives in 1862 to conduct the impeachment proceedings against West H. Humphreys, United States judge for several districts of Tennessee. He was a leader of the peace faction of the Democratic party, with close ties to the Copperheads. In the 1864 general election he was on the winning ticket as George McClellan's running mate, a victory that was largely due to the delayed fall of Atlanta and the Confederate victory at Cedar Creek.

Pendleton was a noted antiwar Democrat, but McClellan's position was more equivocal: he supported continuation of the war and restoration of the Union (though not the abolition of slavery), but the party platform, written by Copperhead Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, was opposed to this position. The platform called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a negotiated settlement with the Confederacy. McClellan was forced to repudiate the platform, which made his campaign inconsistent and difficult.

The situation became even more tense when it was revealed that Lincoln was determined to attempt a no holds barred assault on Richmond to conclude the Civil War before inauguration day. President-elect McClellan then revealed his true colours by refusing to take a stand against his former boss, the lame-duck President. But he paid the ultimate price for this equivocation, because on the night of April 14th, he was shot dead in the Ford Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: George B. McClellan, Texas, Presidency, America, George H. Pendleton.

Todayinah Editor Editor says, in authoring this article we refer to Eric Lipps' post Death of "Little Mac" and we also repurposed content from Wikipedia.

Readers Comment Chris Oakley commented on 2012-05-08 00:02:50 ~ I've never heard of George H. Pendleton.

Readers Comment Stan Brin commented on 2012-05-08 11:52:40 ~ He invented the flannel shirt.

Readers Comment Stan Brin commented on 2012-05-08 11:53:51 ~ I'm sorry, he invented the *plaid* flannel shirt.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2012-05-08 11:56:28 ~ History is full of forgotten figures who might have ben president of the United States.

Readers Comment Stan Brin commented on 2012-05-08 11:57:35 ~ It wouldn't have mattered if McClellan had opposed abolition. Slavery was already abolished in the Confederacy, and the army was in no mood to let it stand. They were inspired. And after victory, which was inevitable, the Radicals would have prevented re-admission. The national mood had changed. The North savored its victory.

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2012-08-19 07:58:12 ~ McClellan was as pro-Union as Lincoln, and he'd have been delighted to preside over the final destruction of the CSA. Matter of fact, he might have made JWB even madder, because he'd have likely crowed a lot more over having humbled his precious South.

Readers Comment Brian Wall commented on 2012-08-19 18:21:57 ~ Is this the same Pendleton that gave the name to Camp Pendleton? According to Wikipedia no, Camp Pendleton was declared a "permanent installation" and by 1946, it became the home of the 1st Marine Division. It was named after Major General Joseph Henry Pendleton (1860�1942), who had long advocated setting up a training base for the Marine Corps on the west coast. Today it is the home to myriad Operating Force units including the I Marine Expeditionary Force and various training commands.

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2012-08-20 03:21:48 ~ McClellan was definitely prepping for the long-term war, which would've been even more devastating for a South behind the blockade. Rolling through Virginia as the Yanks did Georgia, but more slowly and more grinding, might've made JWB even crazier.

In 2011, on this day hackers began broadcasting rogue messages from President Obama's Facebook Account just weeks after the incoming Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned the Senate Armed Services Committee that the U.S. could face cyberwarfare.

Facebook LeaksInitially the revelations were relatively low key, exploiting alleged security weaknesses in Facebook to indiscretely reveal false information in the President's profile such as his birth in Kenya, the fact that his publications were entirely ghost written, that his smoking intake had increased to over a packet a day, that over the last decade he had spent on average less than two weekends at home etc.

The next Pearl Harbor we confront could very well be a cyber attack that cripples our power systems, our grid, our security systems, our financial systems, our governmental systemsEmbarrassingly the US Government was unable to prevent these discloures reaching the twenty-two million friends of President Obama even after Panetta (pictured) was ordered to take personal charge resulting in the immediate decision to shut down the Facebook page.

Although damaging this personal attack soon developed into something far more insidious. Further revelations soon began to emerge about the disappearance of nuclear warheads in Pakistan and Russia. And shocking details of America's clandestine role in the "Arab Spring".

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Huffington Post Labels: Barack Obama, Leon Panetta, Facebook, Cyberwarfare, Internet Security.

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2011-07-19 15:52:23 ~ Could happen any time. Spooky,

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2011-07-19 18:16:32 ~ This would be funny, if nothing else.

Readers Comment Mike commented on 2011-07-19 19:44:27 ~ We can always dream :)

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2011-07-19 21:50:42 ~ So are these leaks" supposed to be of genuine information or disinformation? If the former, the revelation that Obama was really born in Kenya would provoke a constitutional crisis, since it's far from clear who would be constitutionally entitled to take his place. And no, the presidency wouldn't default to John McCain; it could just as easily go to Joe Biden A case could be made for a full-scale "redo," since in that case Obama wouldn't have been legally eligible for the Democratic nomination, and there are plenty of Democrats, let alone Republicans, who'd rather the White House stand vacant than that Hillary Clinton get another shot at it. which raises the interesting question - what if the presidency had a recall mechanism?

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2011-07-20 13:06:19 ~ It does, in a way--impeachment. But "recall" as you seem to mean it would be something like what happened a few years ago with California's Gov. Gray Davis, which ended up putting Arnold Schwarzenegger in the goverenor's mansion. essentially there'd be a whole new election. I'd guess one reason no such mechanism exists is that in the 1780s it would have been impractyical, given the primitive state of transportation and communications (in 1789, George Washington was sworn in seven weeks late because, due to bad winter weather, the roads between Virginia and New York City were impassable all through March and early April). I also suspect the Framers, who designed the presidency with Washington in mind, did not want to weaken the office by making it too easy for a president to be thrown out.

In 1983, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to a cease-fire, ending the short but catastrophic superpower conflict which had started just 48 hours earlier with the Soviet invasion of West Germany.

The Last Broadcast Part 3: CeasefireUnfortunately for millions of Europeans and North Americans, the cease-fire came too late: dozens of cities on both sides of the Iron Curtain had been vaporized in the exchange of nuclear missiles between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and many others were so thoroughly contaminated by radioactive fallout as to be rendered uninhabitable. New York City was particularly devastated in the holocaust; at least ten Soviet nuclear warheads were detonated in the metropolitan New York area in a span of less than thirty seconds.

An article by Chris OakleyBut for all the horrors they'd suffered, the United States and the Soviet Union had at least been able to retain some semblance of a national government -- which was more than could be said for many of their allies. To cite just two examples, Czechoslovakia collapsed into anarchy within just hours of the first NATO missile strikes on East Germany and Belgium was literally wiped off the map by multiple Soviet tactical nuclear weapons. Even China had not been spared from nuclear destruction -- just before the cease-fire pact was reached, Beijing and Shanghai were annihilated by what US intelligence believed to be Soviet submarine-launched missiles.

In early July 1545, in the midst of England's participation in the Italian Wars, France launched a massive fleet in the Seine with the aim to invade English soil with some 50,000 troops.

Mary Rose leads Counter-invasion of France They sailed up the Solent (the strait between the Isle of Wight and the mainland) unopposed while the fleet of 80 small English ships held in the defenses of Portsmouth Harbor. July 18, the English came out to engage at long range, but the two fleets did little damage to one another.

On the 19th, the wind was calm, and the French made to use it to their advantage. They moved to use their galleys against the immobile English, but a breeze came up that evening, and the agile English ships became able to maneuver. The enormous carrack Mary Rose lead the charge, closing her lower gun ports and using the wind to sweep her into the midst of the French. Sporting 24 anti-ship cannon, the Mary Rose served as a potent flagship, bringing down numerous French ships herself and making way for vicious attack by other English ships.

The French were caught with large ships in the narrow harbor and made for the wider Solent, but they were cut down even there. Hoping to regroup in the Channel, French Admiral Claude d'Annebault called for the retreat. Before he could escape, however, the English pushed forward, gunning down ships until the dark of night allowed the remnants of the French fleet to slip away. Their land invasion was halted as there seemed no chance to unload and supply the massive invasion force.

With a resounding victory and thousands of French bodies floating in the sea, Henry VIII seized his opportunity for an invasion himself. His Austrian allies had made peace with the French upon fearing uprisings in the Germanies, but Henry refused to give up liberation of Boulogne in France. Instead, he used his ships to ferry a new army onto the continent and began a drive like that of Edward III in the Hundred Years War. Fearing another return to unending violence, the French opted for peace. Henry, knowing that his own coffers were running bare, agreed, and the details of the Treaty of Ardres were achieved in 1546. The French faced another diplomatic humiliation, but worse was the demands for reparations. While the French economy suddenly fell under vicious taxation to repay, England soared.

Henry would not live to see the financial fallout of his treaty as he would die in 1547. His son, Edward VI, would use the money to fund an increase in his navy, though he, too, would not live to see what his actions would do after his short reign of six years. Eventually his half-sister Elizabeth would come to the throne, and England would settle back into wars with Catholicism. With their economic upper-hand, however, their fleets would confound the Spanish attempts at reaping further wealth from the New World. Rather, English settlement would advance, taking over many of the unfunded colonies begun and abandoned by the French.

The further decadence would promote civil war against the pompous Charles, but the king had ample funds to put down the revolt with mercenaries. Creating a much weaker Parliament filled with yes-men, the House of Stewart would rule powerfully over a massive and growing empire. Along with trade, however, came new technology and ideas, and the Enlightenment would cause rebellion against monarchs all over Europe. Many kings gave up their absolute power in favor of constitutions, and colonies throughout the world would claim independence, such as the United States, Haiti, and Ireland from Britain. With his empire falling apart around him, James V would try to hold to the rule of his ancestors, but his heavy-handed efforts only brought the collapse of his crown, and England became a Republic in 1802, just as France did thirteen years earlier and the Netherlands for centuries. Later, Sweden and Prussia would join them. This division in Europe would spark the huge Monarchs' War in 1810, and many of the other kings would lose their thrones under guerrilla warfare in Iberia and major battles in eastern Europe.

Dust settling and only backward Russia still standing with its czar, the republics of Europe returned to empire-building. Trade and industry drove the countries to unpredictable wealth, but also to competition that would bring about the World War at the beginning of the twentieth century. Out of the wreckage, the new political ideology of communism would begin, some championing as a golden age of social justice while others mourn as an arrival of slavery for entire populations.

Entry posted by Guest Historian

Jeff Provine

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Jeff Provine Blog Source: Jeff Provine’s Blog Labels: Mary Rose, Royal Navy, Battle of the Solent , England, France.

Todayinah Editor Editor says, in reality, the lower gun ports of the Mary Rose were left open, and the strong breeze that pushed her caused her to careen over. Water rushed into the ship, sinking it so quickly that only a few dozen of its 450 crew escaped with their lives. The Battle of the Solent would be indecisive, as would be the Italian Wars themselves, bringing nothing but a costly stalemate for both England and France.

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2010-08-01 23:27:31 ~ Er . . . It would have been the House of "Stuart", not "Stewart".

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2010-08-02 00:11:46 ~ Is this the same Mary Rose that they salvaged a while back?

Readers Comment Jeff Provine commented on 2010-08-02 17:40:33 ~ Yep. Fascinating history on the Mary Rose. Took the tour last summer. Impressive what the supposed dullards of centuries past were able to do. Also displays the timelessness of messing up new technology, just like in Chernobyl or the iPad.

In 1969, Deputy Sheriff Christopher "Huck" Look stopped a black 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 driving erractically on the Dike Road of Chappaquiddick Island, Martha's Vineyard.

Even though Dike Road was unpaved, the vehicle was travelling at "approximately twenty miles an hour", with the reckless driver taking "no particular notice" of this fact.

The Party's OverLook was a special police officer who had been assigned to the Edgartown regatta dance that night.

At 12:30 am he left the dance, crossed over to Chappaquiddick in the yacht club's launch, got into his parked car and drove home. He testified that between 12:30 and 12:45 am he had seen a dark car containing a man driving and a woman in the front seat approaching the intersection with Dike Road. The car had gone first onto the private Cemetery Road and stopped there. Thinking that the occupants of the car might be lost, Look had gotten out of his car and walked towards it.

The occupants were lost, but not in the sense Look had imagined. Because he was was astonished to find that the driver of the vehicle was none other than Senator Edward Moores Kennedy (pictured above), accompanied by his brother, the former Presidential candidate, Robert Francis Kennedy; both brothers were riotously drunk. The other passengers were two giggling young ladies in their twenties, also drunk.

It would later emerge that a wild drunken party had been held at the Lawrence Cottage. His longtime chauffeur Jack Crimmins had brought Kennedy's car to the Vineyard on the ferry. He had also brought a supply of liquor for the weekend: vodka, Scotch, rum, a couple of cases of beer. The party had been planned by Joseph Gargan, the son of Rose Kennedy's sister. Gargan had rented the cottage for his family vacation, but when his mother-in-law fell ill, it became the cookout venue.

Neither of the Kennedy's had invited their wives, claiming that they were hosting a semi-official thank you event for some inspired young people who had campaigned enthusiastically in 1968. In fact the guests were a group of young women who had operated RFK's "boiler room", effectively "courting" a number of power brokers in order to influence the vote. It was not the first reunion of Robert Kennedy's staffers. The six young women who gathered that weekend on the Vineyard - sisters Nance and Maryellen Lyons, Rosemary "Cricket" Keough, Mary Jo Kopechne, Esther Newberg, and Susan Tannenbaum - had come together several times already to reminisce (pictured right). The Kennedys had hosted one such affair at Hyannis Port the previous summer.

Even though the Kennedys made the ludicrous claim to be chapperoning the girls back to their lodgings at the quite unbelievably late hour of 1a.m., it would transpire that both young ladies had left their hotel keys and handbags at the cottage. Because of this evidence, a supressed police report would conclude that the Kennedys "did not intend to drive to the ferry slip, but had turned onto Dike Road intentionally to drive to East Beach [for sex with the young women]" Furthermore, the police wrote, because the bridge was a hazard to be crossed with caution, Kennedy "would at least be negligent and, possibly, reckless" when he approached it, as he testified, at 20 miles per hour. Had Look not stopped the vehicle, there was good reason to believe Kennedy might even have driven off the bridge into Poucha Pond.

The Kennedy brothers would condemn the report as "not justified", a short snappy answer that was believed by absolutely no one at all.

Entry posted by Todayinah Editor

Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Beasts Source: Wikipedia Labels: Kennedy Curse, Chappaquiddick, Boiler Room Girls, Edgartown Ferry, Congress.

Readers Comment David Atwell commented on 2009-06-26 02:55:29 ~ Girls, booze, sex parties... I wanna be a Kennedy! lol Seriously, though, nice take on the Teddy scandal

Readers Comment Eric Oppen commented on 2009-06-26 05:24:14 ~ It'd be forgotten shortly...the press didn't want to go after the Kennedys. Now, if RFK AND Teddy had both been in the car when it went into the water, and survived, while two girls drowned, that would have been different...

Readers Comment Chris Oakley commented on 2009-06-26 14:41:21 ~ "The Party's Over" is right...

Readers Comment Eric Lipps commented on 2009-06-26 14:49:44 ~ I don't know about the press not wanting to go after the Kennedys. Certainly there was (and has continued to be) plenty of unflattering coverage of Ted Kennedy over Chappaquiddick, and the press was eager enough to retail Judith Campbell Exner's claims that she was mistress simultaneously to JFK ansd mobster Sam Giancana, despite what remains a surprisingly sparse supply of evidence. (I said evidence, not testimony. There were plenty of folks who insisted they knew it was true--but they've tended to be people with an axe to grind, like Frank Sinatra, a former Kennedy intimate who turned bitter foe, and Republican, after being cut off on account of his own mob connections when association with him threatened to embarrass President Kennedy.)

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A Daily Updating Blog of Important Events In History That Never Occurred Today.
Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items explore that possibility.

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A Daily Updating Blog of Important Events In History That Never Occurred Today. Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items explore that possibility.

Quick Links

Selected threads

Archive Navigator

Editor's Postbag | Feed

A Daily Updating Blog of Important Events In History That Never Occurred Today.
Imagine what would be, if history had occurred a bit differently. Who says it didn't, somewhere? These fictional news items explore that possibility.