In 2012, just a week after he sensationally quit the long-running TV series "Little House on the Prairie", veteran actor Mitt Romney was re-employed as a gas pump jockey in La Jolla, California.

Paw Ingalls Quits 2"Mittens" had played "Paw" Ingalls for nearly three decades, becoming the central character that filled the gaping void left by series anchor Michael Langdon. However as America increasingly embraced diversity, the monochrome series has begun to appear dated. Hoping to fire a new sense of passion, in his own words, Mittens had left nothing on the field and yet was near-universally considered an anachronism by young people and minorities. And recently he had admitted to being "slightly frazzled" by the relentless schedule of appearances, welcoming the opportunity to let down his famously well-groomed hair.

It is considered unlikely that he will resume his entertainment career any time soon. His agent denied rumours that he had been on an all-night milk bender.

In 1916, on this day Kaiser Franz Josef Habsburg, Emperor of the Germans, (pictured) died at the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna.

Death of Kaiser Franz Josef, Emperor of the GermansHaving ruled for an incredible sixty-eight years, he was succeeded by his twenty-nine year old grand-nephew Karl. Tragically, he died five years later and was succeeded by Otto von Habsburg who lived to the ripe old age of ninety-eight.

The thousand year future of the Imperial House of Habsburg had taken a change of direction after the hard fought victory at Königgrätz which stymied the Prussian attempt to force the unification of Germany on their own terms. And instead of the Hohenzollerns, it would be the Habsburgs who won out, establishing the new Kaiserreich, a Germanic monarchist system, ruled from Vienna with a central european system of thinking. During the transition from Franz Josef to Karl to Otto, nationalist pressures were threatening to rip the Slavic part of the Empire apart. The resolution of this so-called "Southern Question" would completely dominate the early decades of Otto's long rule.

A sign of the coming was the assassination of Franz Josef's nominal heir Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in August 1914. Although the Habsburg brought the Black Hand Gang to justice, by overriding Serbian sovereignty (they insisted on sending detectives across the border) they had inadvertently de-stabilised the entire region.

In 1386, on this day a Georgian army under the command of King Bagrat V defeated the forces of Timur of Samarkand at the gates of the capital city, Tbilisi.

The Triumph of Bagrat the GreatA fair and popular ruler, also known as a perfect soldier, he was dubbed as "Bagrat the Great" by his multiethnic subjects. The Trapezuntine chronicler Michael Panaretos, who knew the king personally, called him a "prominent and victorious general"

But the hard fought victory was only made possible by the arrival of a vital ally, the Khan of Golden Horde, Tokhtamysh (a descendant of Genghis Khan's eldest grandson, Orda Khan or his brother Tuqa-Timu).

In 1921, on this day the thirty-seventh President of the United States, John Vliet Lindsay (pictured) was born in West End Avenue to an upper middle class family of English and Dutch extraction that had resided in New York City ever since the 1660s.

John V. Lindsay
37^th US PresidentWith the outbreak of World War II, Lindsay completed his studies early and joined the United States Navy as a gunnery officer. He obtained the rank of lieutenant, earning five battle stars through action in the invasion of Sicily and a series of landings in the Pacific theater. Resuming at Yale he received his law degree in 1948, ahead of schedule.

Back in New York, Lindsay he met his future wife, Mary Anne Harrison, at the wedding of Nancy Bush (daughter of Connecticut's Senator Prescott Bush and sister of future President George H.W. Bush). After they married he was admitted to the bar, and rose to become a partner in his law firm four years later.

He started gravitating toward politics, serving as one of the founders of the Youth for Eisenhower club in 1951 and as president of the New York Young Republican club in 1952. In 1958, with the backing of Herbert Brownell, Bruce Barton, John Aspinwall Roosevelt, and Mrs Wendell Wilkie, Lindsay won the Republican primary and went on to be elected to Congress as the representative of the "Silk Stocking" district, Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The life of Lindsay and his fellow New Yorkers changed forever on August 17, 1960. New York City suffered the worst storm in its history as a hurricane that by today's standards would be graded Category 4 hit just after 12:30 PM; dubbed "the Jamaica Bay hurricane" because it made landfall near the Jamaica Bay section of Queens, the storm flooded large sections of Queens and Brooklyn and also devastated much of Manhattan and the Bronx. Many of New York's most famous landmarks were heavily damaged or destroyed by the hurricane, which also brought the city's mass transit systems to a screeching halt as flood waters blocked subway tunnels and overran most of the city's major bus routes.

Within months, Robert F. Wagner would resign as mayor of New York City after weeks of constantly growing criticism of his leadership of the response to the Jamaica Bay hurricane; City Council president Abe Stark was sworn in as new mayor as 12:01 that afternoon to finish out the remainder of Wagner's term. Stark, in turn, would be replaced by Congressman and surprise write-in winner of the 1960 mayoral elections John Lindsay.

Due to his vigourous leadership of the rebuilding of the City, he was re-elected in a landslide. But more significantly, he had gained national prominence through the new media of television. Before his second term was out, he was already being talked about as a candidate for the 1968 Presidential election. His opponent in the Republican Primaries would be Michigan Governor George W. Romney who was forced to suspend his campaign due to the tragic death of his son in a car crash in France. And his substitute, fellow Michiganer Robert P. Griffin was unable to retain enough delegates at the Convention. Buoyed by this victory, Lindsay defeated Hubert Humphrey in the Fall.

In 1910, on this day a "revolt of the lash" spurred a race war in Brazil. Brazil, though a large, advancing nation in the early twentieth century and a leader among Latin American countries as part of the ABC Powers (Argentina, Brazil, & Chile), still stood as a culture suffering from racial division.

Revolt of the Lash Spurs Race War in Brazil While many French colonies had ended slavery with the Revolution in 1789, England had abolished it by act of Parliament in 1833, and the United States fought its civil war in 1861 partially over the matter, Brazil did not begin gradually ending slavery until 1871 with the passage of the Rio Branco Law (or "The Law of Free Birth") providing freedom for children newborn to slaves, the Saraiva-Cotegipe Law in 1885 freeing slaves over 60 years old, and finally total abolition in 1888 with the Lei Aurea shortly before the emperor was overthrown. While Brazil avoided much of the US's infamous institutionalization of race superiority with Jim Crow, there was still a significant social division of race among the wealthy whites and the blacks, paros (mixed race), and caboclos (mixed Euro-Indians), fed by intellectual "science" of the time.

A new story by Jeff ProvineWhile minorities were kept at a lower caste in general culture, the most obvious racism was felt in the military. In particular, the Brazilian navy was notorious for white commanders with minority crews held at their whim. Living conditions were poor aboard ship, but the navy was making leaps beyond other navies in comparable nations. In the early days of the Republic, the government focused on the army to quell internal problems, leaving only a handful of naval soldiers and less than 2,000 marines. As tiny as it was, the navy proved instrumental in the Revoltas da Armada of 1891 when President Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca attempted to dissolve Congress and continued to battle against President Marshal Floriano Peixoto who held onto office despite legal need of elections in the next few years. After the turn of the century, calls began for building up the navy and establishing Brazil as a significant power at sea. Other nations such as Britain, Germany, and the United States rushed into the naval arms race, and Brazil was quick to catch up with many new ships and two dreadnoughts, the Minas Gerais and Sao Paulo, both commissioned in 1910.

Economic downturn struck Brazil just after the completion of their dreadnoughts, causing the third proposed, Rio de Janeiro, to be shelved. The troubled times also turned into harder conditions aboard ship as well as on land with food and supplies cut back to save on expenses. General morale fell, which caused discipline to be sharpened, including the use of racial slurs and corporal punishment, specifically the lash. This aggravated two years of organization and protest against flogging, which involved "leather whips tipped with metal balls", and pushed the sailors into planned mutiny. The men aboard the Minas Gerais chose Joao Candido Felisberto ("The Black Admiral") as leader and watched furiously as a sailor was sentenced to 250 lashes, continuing even after he slipped into unconsciousness.

In the late hours of November 21, the men began their mutiny, killing officers and capturing British engineers as hostages. The revolt spread to the Sao Paulo as well as the Deodoro and the Bahia. Their demands began simply, but as Candido saw that the Army was moving to protect the capital Rio de Janeiro and outnumber the coastal defenders who were sympathetic, he decided that the only way to survive was to make wider demands. The issue that tied the bulk of the oppressed together was the problem of race. Most of the sailors (as well as army and manual laborers) were black, many of them former slaves or their sons, forced into place by lack of other options. Candido and his advisers (including several of the British) wrote up a new list of demands for rights despite race as well as taxes on the rich to support charities for the poor.

The "Letter to Brazil" (Letra a Brasil) was sent by written message, word of mouth, and even wireless, spreading through the country and spawning an upheaval in major cities and areas where minority populations outnumbered the whites. The army quickly came onto the side of the navy, which made the white elites unable to put down the revolt as they had many in the past. Britain began to step in, but when their hostages were cheerfully released home, Brazil was left to itself. Much of the government and the elites fled the country. The remainder invited Candido ashore, and a new government was built following his manifesto.

Public education became mandatory as a subpoint on the Letter, and the new Brazilian Democratic Republic survived its depression to thrive as it contributed to the rebuilding of Europe after its neutrality in World War I. The Great Depression struck harder, and Getulio Vargas swept elections with his nationalist rhetoric. He was invited by Adolph Hitler to join the new Axis, but Vargas decided to continue Brazilian elections and relations with the United States, leading to Brazil's participation in World War II. While economic issues arose after the war and rumors circulated about militaristic or even communist uprising in the 1960s, Brazil would ultimately continue to be a social model to the rest of the world.

In 1867, the House of Representatives ended a furious debate by narrowly voting to impeach Abraham Lincoln after the House Judiciary committee had produced a damning bill consisting of a vast collection of complaints against him.

Lincoln ImpeachedIn order to "bind the wounds" of the Civil War, the sixteenth President's vision for Reconstruction had been a quick and lenient re-uniting of the nation, centered on forgiving most Confederates and quickly bringing their states back to full participation in the Union.

By April of 1865, it had become clear that his plans were no more imaginative than passing control to the former Whigs who had been reluctant secessionists. And in fact the control of the entire Federal Government itself had very nearly passed to Andrew Johnson, an Independent South politician on Good Friday. However, the assassin John Wilkes Booth had misfired at the Ford Theatre, killing Mary Lincoln instead.

The emerging prospect of a confrontation with Congress had become a near certainty when Lincoln refused to sign the Wade-Davis Bill. In so doing, he had rejected a series of far more stringent conditions for the creation of State Governments which had been laid down by Congress.

The underlying issue was that Lincoln did not have a overarching plan, rather than an inclination to use his political genius to move matters forward along a roadmap of his own choosing. His undeclared intention of working with the States on an individual basis was plainly evident in his encouragement of the election of Michael Hahn as a pro-Union Governor to head a loyal government in Louisiana. And by 1867, the US Congress had decided that matters were completely out of control and the legislature must re-establish its authority on Reconstruction by terminating the recalcitrant Lincoln's scheming Presidency.

In 2003, on his retirement as Commander of the United States Central Command, Four Star General Tommy Franks gave an interview to Time Magazine in which he accurately predicted that in the event of another terrorist attack, American Constitutional liberties would be discarded by popular demand in favor of a military state.Petraeus' Knot to Untie, Part 10 - The End of the Grand Experiment
Discussing the dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, Franks said that "worst thing that could happen" was if terrorists acquired and then used a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicted heavy casualties.
Franks foresaw that under such circumstances "... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy".
Less than five years later, General David Howell Petraeus and Marine Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis would return from Iraq to an America beset by terrorism, ravaged by climate change, and ruled by a Christian military dictatorship.
The story continues.

In 1942, on this day the late Senator Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Birth of Senator Joe BidenHe lived there for ten years before moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969, and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history.

At the end of Ronald Reagan's second term, he entered the Presidential race under the slogan "A President to make us Proud Again". This was a wide open field because Jimmy Carter's VP Walter Mondale had run (and lost) in 1984 as had Jesse Jackson.

When the campaign began, Biden was considered a potentially strong candidate because of his moderate image, his speaking ability on the stump, his appeal to Baby Boomers, his high profile position as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee at the upcoming Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination hearings, and his fundraising appeal. He raised $1.7 million in the first quarter of 1987, more than any other candidate. Biden received considerable attention in the summer of 1986 when he excoriated Secretary of State George P. Shultz at a Senate hearing because of the Reagan administration's support of South Africa, which continued to practice the apartheid system.

But unfortunately his health took an unexpected down turn, and although he belatedly pulled out of the race, he died aged forty-six long before election day as a result of an aneurysm.

In 1912, on this day Otto von Habsburg (pictured) was born at Villa Wartholz in Reichenau an der Rax.

Birth of Kaiser Otto, Emperor of the GermansOnly four years later he became Crown Prince, and then at the age of just nine, succeeded his father Karl as Emperor of the Germans.

During its thousand year history, the Imperial House of Habsburg had occupied many of the thrones of Europe. But events had taken the oddest of turns in 1866. In the narrowest of victories at the Battle of Königgrätz, the Prussian attempt to force the unification of Germany on their terms ended in failure. And instead of the Hohenzollerns, it would be the Habsburgs who won out, establishing the new Kaiserreich, a Germanic monarchist system, ruled from Vienna with a central european system of thinking.

But by the time Otto was proclaimed Kaiser, nationalist pressures were threatening to rip the Slavic part of the Empire apart. The resolution of this so-called "Southern Question" would completely dominate the early decades of his long rule.

In 284 AD, on this day forty-year old Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus (Diocletian) was chosen as Roman Emperor after the army unanimously saluted him as their new Augustus, and he accepted the purple imperial vestments.

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

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

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

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

In 1938, on this day the U.S. federal government bought a substantial tract of land in the Cape Canaveral region of Florida with the aim of building a rocket launch/construction/training facility in that area to be jointly operated by the War and Navy.Departments.

Part Nine of Parley Construction on the Cape Canaveral rocket base would be finished in the summer of 1939, just in time for the start of the Second World War. The base would play a critical role in crushing the militarist rebellion on Mars; in the 1960s Canaveral would gradually transition into a fully civilian spaceport, and by 1980 would serve as the principal departure point for flights between Earth and US and allied outposts on the Moon.

In 1923, on this day in Munich, Anton Drexler the President of the German Workers' Party (DAP) was formally charged with the murder of Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler (pictured).

The Plot Against Germany 6 Hitler punks at the FeldharenhalleFirst reports had indicated that some embittered Nazis had executed the veteran for cowardice after he had punked at the Feldharenhalle, the attempted coup of November 9th known as the "Beer Hall Putsch". But investigations soon revealed that he was an army infiltrator, appointed Verbindungsmann (intelligence agent) of an Aufklärungskommando (reconnaissance commando) of the Reichswehr, to influence other soldiers and to infiltrate the DAP. The exposure was of course a tremendous shock to Drexler whose leadership had been deeply marginalized by Hitler. He suspected that Hitler had been trying to destroy the party from within. Whereas the police suspected that Drexler had used Hitler's exposure simply as a means of restoring his position in the party.

While Drexler set about the task of rebuilding the DAP in the wake of the Feldharenhalle, Hitler became a little known foot note in the early history of the party. A failed fine arts painter, a war hero and noted denizen of the Munich demimonde it was also rumoured that he briefly served with the forces of the Bavarian Socialist Republic. Unfortunately, he would not live to see Germany turn red at the ballot box, instead Drexler would be given the fruitless task of trying to stop the inexorable rise of Ernst Thalmänn to the Chancellorship of Germany. An article from the asynchronous Chancellor Ernst Thalmänn thread.

In 1759, on this day the Royal Navy was ravaged at the Battle of Quiberon Bay. The Anglo-French portion of the Six Years' War had dragged on through mixed results. Early on, the French had the upper hand with a string of victories in North America, but the leadership of Secretary of State William Pitt, Senior, resulted in a masterful use of British resources to turn the tide of the war.

Battle of Quiberon Bay Ravages Royal Navy Then came the Annus Pestis (Cursed Year) of 1759. The French settlers and their Indian allies ignited a guerilla war in the Ohio Country that frustrated British hopes of taking Quebec. In India, Madras fell to French forces, though the battle would prove Pyrrhic for the victors. On the European Continent, French troops formed a siege of Minden, taking large swaths of German land west of the Weser River. At sea, the British gained great hope after the attack on Le Havre with a two-day bombardment that destroyed many of the barges the French were assembling for an amphibious invasion of Britain and again a small victory came at the Battle of Lagos, where British ships destroyed two ships-of-the-line from the French fleet and scattered the rest. However, the Battle of Quiberon Bay would give France another chance to challenge Britain for control of the high seas.

A new story by Jeff ProvineThe battle began after a storm had driven most of the British blockade keeping the remaining troop transports at bay in France. French Marshal de Conflans hurried to merge his fleet with other squadrons collected from the West Indies and remainders from battles in the Mediterranean. He was spotted by British squadron commander Robert Buff and decided to give pursuit, but Buff split his smaller fleet into two groups heading north and south. In what was is seen as the most fortuitous move of the war, Conflans decided to keep his fleet together while in pursuit of the southerly British ships, resulting in organization that would be key to victory in the hard-won battle. The bulk of the English fleet appeared under Edward Hawke from the west, and the two converged in a titanic battle. A shift in the wind nearly disorganized Conflans, but the French managed to keep their composure and defeat the English inside the bay. Hawke died in the battle and only a handful of ships-of-the-line managed to escape, enabling the French to capture some ten more and wreck others.

It would be the final straw of the Annus Pestis. The French hurried to rebuild their fleet and launch their invasion of Britain as soon as weather permitted. Meanwhile, England became frantic.

Though William Pitt campaigned for a strong militia defense, drawing in the French force and then cutting off their supplies with a renewed navy to capture the army while it starved, the rest of Parliament would be swayed by the fearful public opinion. That Christmas, the English sued for peace, and the Treaty of Paris in 1760 took England out of the war. France made great colonial demands, retaking the lost Guadeloupe in the West Indies, expanding French territory in North America, and carving out rights to a French South India from the Carnatic and Mysore regions to the Indian Ocean France continued on in Europe, pressing troops into Hanover and forcing Prussia into a stalemate with Russia and Sweden. In the east, the war would end in 1761 with Prussia's growth being checked amid the other Baltic Powers.

The next twenty-five years would be a renewed Golden Age for France, raking in great wealth from its new colonies. Britain, meanwhile, came upon problematic times as it struggled to recover, establishing a taxation system that sent its American colonies into rebellion, which was much aided by the French. The resulting United States of America would soon have the first of many border wars with the French in Ohio, Louisiana, and along the St. Lawrence River, gradually pushing the French and their Indian allies west and northward.

The American experiment in self-rule spawned a wave of Enlightenment revolutions through Europe, and France would be among the first to lose its autocracy with the revival of the Estates-General and the establishment of the National Assembly to placate and aid those suffering from poor harvests. The renewed France would again injure Britain by aiding the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which would make famous Colonel Arthur Wesley as a great hero of Ireland as he managed to forge a self-rule for Ireland while maintaining some connection with England.

With a weakened Britain, other European powers took up their chances to increase their colonial strengths with Portugal in southern Africa, the Dutch in the South Pacific with New Holland, and the French in South Asia, West Africa, the Great Lakes, and in numerous islands wherever their navy could reach.

In 1759, on this day the home fleet of British admiral Sir Edward Hawke was destroyed off the French coast at Quiberon Bay (portrayed in "The Day After" by the artist Richard Wright). It was a strategic masterstroke for the French Government whose forces were facing impending expulsion from North America, West Africa and India. Because Foreign minister Duc de Choiseul's options had narrowed to the one significant reprisal on offer - an attack on Britain itself.

The Day AfterIronically, the tactical failures at St Nazaire were also the result of over-boldness. Because under full sail, Hawke had chased the French fleet through the rocks and shoals that stretch south from the end of the Quiberon peninsula into the confined waters of the Bay of Quiberon itself with night approaching in an onshore gale, despite having no charts, pilots or any foreknowledge of the waters.

"Where there was passage for the enemy, there was passage for me. We are so close, their pilots will be mine. If they go to pieces on the shore, they shall become our beacons" ~ Admiral HawkeAdmiral Conflans received fresh orders to transport a diversionary force of twenty thousand troops to Glasgow, luring English regiments north. Meanwhile, a further twenty thousand troops set sail for Maldon in Essex, whilst a third force descended upon Ireland. Had Duc de Choiseul received better military intelligence, he would have surely realised that a single assault upon Maldon would have sufficed.

"[Quiberon Bay] is the graveyard of our navy, the ruin of all our hopes" ~ King George II of EnglandPanic soon set in when news of the naval disaster arrived at the War Department in London. Due to the imperial overstretch placed on the one hundred twenty-five regiments of the British Army, only fourteen thousand regulars were immediately available for the defence of the realm. And the breathtaking news that Charles Stuart was aboard the French Flagship Soleil Royal prevented the War Office from raising militias for fear that a Jacobite Fifth Column would form.

In 1802, on this day 22nd President of the United States Solomon Foot (pictured) was born in Cornwall, Vermont.

Birth of President Solomon FootHe was a Vermont lawyer, state representative and later senator who spent more than 25 years in elected office. He graduated from Middlebury College in 1826 and was admitted to the bar in 1831. He served as a state representative briefly in 1833, and also from 1836 to 1838. After six years as a prosecuting attorney, he was elected as a Whig congressman in 1843 and as a senator in 1850. He was re-elected as a Republican senator in 1856, in which capacity he served until his death in 1866. He served as President pro tempore of the Senate from 1861 to 1863.

By an accident of history, he then occupied the White House for the remaining eighteen months of Chester A. Arthur's term. Because the President had been forced to resign when Arthur P. Hinman discovered evidence that he was was not a native-born citizen of the United States. Instead, he was born in Ireland and had arrived in the US at the end of fourteen.

By coincidence, he shared his birthday with the 20th President, James A. Garfield, and his predecessor died on November 18th.

In 1831, on this day the twentieth President of the United States James A. Garfield was born in Moreland Hills, Ohio.

Birth of President James A. GarfieldIn 1881 he was shot once in the arm and once in the back by Charles J. Guiteau at the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad on the National Mall in Washington.

Although the first bullet only caused a graze, the second was initially thought to have lodged near his liver. However the hopelessly incompetent Dr. Doctor Willard Bliss was completely wrong, and the bullet was actually located behind the pancreas, a discovery made by a metal detector devised by the brilliant Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

Aside from the creation of the mocking expression "Ignorance if Bliss", the event was quickly forgotten because Garfield, like many other veterans were unfazed by such an injury. In fact one of the detectives who took Guiteau to the district jail still had a Civil War bullet lodged in his head. However the consequence of his survival was huge; as soon as his recovered, he quickly resumed his radical programme of reform that would change Washington forever.

In 1600, Charles the Last, the final British monarch was born in Dunfermline Palace. He ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales in 1625.

Charles the LastCharles was deposed by Oliver Cromwell's forces in 1646, and despite several attempts to restore the monarchy over the next couple of decades, the people of the UK were never to follow a king or queen again.

Although Cromwell was followed by his son as Lord Protector of the Kingdom, Parliament began electing the Lord Protector in 1660 and the office was filled at the pleasure of the people from then on.

Other monarchies in Europe were disturbed by the loss of their British cousin, and financed many of the pretenders who tried to raise armies to retake the crown, but none were successful. Indeed, the agitators were sometimes toppled by British counter-espionage tactics - the French king fell in 1684, the Russian tsar was ousted in 1692, and the Swedish monarchy was replaced by a democracy in 1704. The rest of Europe's non-democratic governments gave up after the brutal execution of Sweden's nobility, and pretenders to the British Crown disappeared in the 18th century.

In 1700, on this day victory in the Great Northern War established the Swedish Empire's supremacy in northern Central Europe and Eastern Europe after Tsar Peter I of Russia was killed at the climax of the Battle of Narva.

Death of Peter the GreatA Swedish relief army under Charles XII of Sweden defeated a siege force three times its size. And the seizure all of the defender's cannons, muskets and military supplies meant that Russia's remaining armed forces with essentially no equipment and thus powerless to prevent the subsequent Swedish advance into Poland and also Northern Germany.

Of course the loss of such a powerful monarch was a crushing blow to the Russian State. Tragically, Peter had not planned to be present at the siege, but events had forced him to hasten back to Narva just one day before the Battle.

Swedish military hegemony of Northern Europe would only be checked by the gigantic clash of empires that occured in the Great War of 1913.

In 1918, on this day Gefreiter (Private) Adolf Hitler of the 16th Bavarian Reserve Regiment was discharged from the Paswalk Hospital, his administrative status of Kriegdverendungunfahig ("unfit for military service") made largely irrelevant by the recent and spectacular success of Ludendoff's autumn offensive.

KriegdverendungunfahigTransferred to the 2nd Bavarian Infantry Regiment in Munich, he witnessed the beginnings of orderly demobilization of the Reichwehr.

The situation in the allied countries was chaotic. The process of internal collapse that had forced the allies to sue for terms had continued after the armistice. In Britain, Soviets were being established in northern and Scottish industrial towns, and in France, Paris was in the grip of a new commune. Former Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who had first muttered "We are going to lose this war" accredited defeat less to a triumph of German arms, but rather to a "stab in the back" from anti-establishment forces stirring revolt in the working class.

As his eye-sight began to fully recover, Hitler was to observe more subtle changes in his own victorious nation. The prestige of the monarchy was shattered, and the war-time dominance of the military was set to continue long into peace-time.

Germany had attained its undeclared war-time aim of achieving world power status. But continued expansion would surely bring the country into conflict with the two world powers that had remained out of the Great War, the United States and Japan. Creating the possibility of a terrifying future war with the defeated nations in combination with those world powers. Hitler wondered if perhaps this current peace was little more than an interregnum. A prolonged armistice of two conflicts bridging a single war. It was the start of a thought process that would eventually lead to his own political awakening..

In 1938, Earth's first faster-than-sound aircraft, the Bell XF-1A, took its debut test flight.

Part Nine of Parley The XF-1A, designed by aviation mogul Howard Hughes and incorporating Martitan innovations in vehicle propulsion technology, broke the sound barrier within just a few minutes after taking off from an airfield in the California desert and would eventually reach speeds of up to 2200 miles per hour before landing at an Army Air Corps base in Nevada. The supersonic aircraft, whose existence would be revealed at a White House press conference three days later, was created in response to a War Department proposal for a tactical fighter that could fly faster than sound and intercept the long-range bombers the Germans were said to be working on with the aid of Martian militarists.

Among those who attended the press conference disclosing the XF-1A's existence was CBS Radio producer Orson Welles, who as a result of the startling turn of events which had unfolded since the landing at Grover's Mill was steadily shifting away from his former career as an entertainer to a new identity as a newsman. By the summer of 1940 he would be working almost exclusively for CBS Radio's news division.

In 1943, the mass Escape at Janowska occured on this day occured. In the outskirts of Lwów, in which had once been Poland but was then under the fascist rule of Nazi Germany, the Janowska concentration camp for labor and transit stood (pictured, Members of a Sonderkommando 1005 unit pose next to a bone crushing machine).

Mass Escape at Janowska In the early days of World War II, the corner of Poland had become Russian territory in Hitler's deal with Stalin in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Knowing the coming persecution from the Nazis, Jews fled the western part of Poland and settled here as refugees, doubling the local Jewish population to 200,000. In 1941, Operation Barbarossa brought Germany east, and the Jews found themselves blamed under propaganda for massacres, then slaughtered and fenced like animals.

A new story by Jeff ProvineWith some 13,000 already killed by 1942, the Germans restricted the northern part of Lwów into a ghetto and began deporting thousands more for extermination at Belzec. Others were taken to Nazi SS factories established on Janowska Street, forced to work for the German war machine and live in a nearby concentration camp. Janowska evolved further into a transit and processing camp, sorting victims into usable fodder and those who would simply be exterminated.

Toward the end of 1943, the war began to turn against Germany, and the Russians moved their front westward. As the Germans fell back, they worked to evacuate prisoners to cover their war crimes of mass murder. Under Sonderaktion 1005, systematic clearing of mass graves and execution of witnesses rushed to hide what had been done. In November, evacuation began at Janowska, with prisoners forced to exhume the dead and burn the bodies in hidden fires in the woods. Meanwhile, increased numbers were sent westward to extermination at unprecedented rates.

On November 19, an uprising began among the prisoners. Uprisings had been planned before, such as those by Pilecki at Auschwitz, but none seemed to meet with any hope of success. Janowska may very well have ended as a last desperate strike until a group of men who could have escaped decided to give up their freedom to fight back. Storming the arsenal at high casualties, the prisoners were able to arm themselves and establish a fortress. In the resulting firefight would ultimately result in Nazi crackdown of the camp, but by then some 6,000 well armed prisoners had escaped. While many of them would be recaptured, a majority would fall among the Polish Underground and survive the war.

The stories of the thousands of escaped Jews, Poles, and Russians reached public ears. Minor escapes had happened earlier in the Holocaust, such as Jacob Grojanowski in 1942, which created the Grojanowski Report on the war crimes by German command. While the BBC and New York Times reported on the gassing of Jews, Allied propaganda had downplayed the plight. Jan Karski, who had given testimony repeatedly on the murderous situation, even to Franklin Roosevelt himself in 1943, worked for years to call action against the Germans without much success.

Now with the thousands of freedmen spreading word across Europe, the Holocaust became impossible to ignore. Karski used his connections to give the story greater precedence, and finally the West listened. Candlelight vigils were held in London, New York, and Hollywood, and speeches were presented before Congress and Parliament. Nazi propaganda worked to contain rumors within German borders, though increased insurrection among prisoners dragged thousands of troops from the front.

In 1944, Pope Pius XII announced the condemnation of the Holocaust by the Catholic Church. The religious implications struck many of Germany's loyal Catholics, causing a political uproar that spun Germany into civil war. With unclear battle-lines and the approach of Allied troops, many Germans simply retreated home and washed their hands of the Third Reich. The war in Europe would be proclaimed an Allied victory December 12, 1944.

In the chaos, many of the perpetrators of the Holocaust would escape abroad, most eventually dragged back as the World Court sought justice. Hitler himself committed suicide while attempting to evade capture by Russian troops. Having gained political voice, the Jewish people would soon establish a new homeland in Israel in 1947 as well as cultural recognition, such as the works of journalist and novelist Anne Frank, who survived the Holocaust as a young girl.

In 1945, on this day Adolf Hitler and the Infamous Lava Man were both killed after a Schauberger "Repulsine" engine failure caused their sabotaged Haunebu-type Nazi saucer craft to crash land on approach to the secret base in New Swabia, Antarctica.
Click to watch the Nazi UFO Conspiracy on Youtube!

Farewell to the MagiciansCornered like a rat in Berlin, the Fuehrer had made a number of fantastically exaggerated claims for the secret technology with which he bought his escape from the Third Reich. And having issued upwards of a thousand emergency passports to German Scientists, the United States soon discovered that the UFO technology had been oversold, in fact like many American consumers they found the units exhibited many of the hallmarks of German products themselves, being over-featured, mostly safe but ultimately unsatisfying.

Despite his fast-talking, spittle-flying claims the Haunebu model had not transported Nazi Astronauts to the moon in 1942, rather the Repulsine engine lifted the craft just a few feet off the ground, permitting Hitler and Goering to engage in a somewhat childish if not futuristic game of bumper cars. Enraged by the double-cross, American agents had fixed the Fuehrer by sabotaging his lousy toy craft.

A new story by the EditorDespite well publicised failures at Roswell and Kecksberg, both the United States and Canada nevertheless persisted with the programme well into the 1970s, believing that the levational concept was fundamentally sound, just requiring the injection of a super fuel to accelerate flight to supersonic speeds. Finally, a suitable quantity of Element 115 was secured from aliens. Rushed to Area 51 for testing, the infinitely valuable fuel was then stolen by the pyrotechnic freak Bob Lazar who exploded the material at one of his annual Desert Storm Parties before becoming the victim of a mysterious hit and run shooting on a Las Vegas Highway.

In 2537 of Cyrus era, the "King of Kings", Shahanshah Reza Pahlavi (pictured) became the first indigenous Middle Eastern leader to officially visit the State of Israel.

State VisitPrime Minister Yitzhak Rabin greeted the Royal Party at Moshe Sharett International Airport in West Jerusalem.

Accompanied by his wife, the Empress Farah, the Shah was then driven by limousine to the Knesset where he set out his views on how to achieve a comprehensive peace to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

He said during his visit that he hoped "that we can keep the momentum in Geneva, and may God guide the steps of Premier Rabin and Knesset, because there is a great need for hard and drastic decision".

"that we can keep the momentum in Geneva, and may God guide the steps of Premier Rabin and Knesset, because there is a great need for hard and drastic decision".He made the visit after receiving an invitation from Rabin and once again sought a permanent peace settlement.

This diplomatic breakthrough had a decidedly mixed reception in the Middle East provoking the fury of nationalist Arabs. Inside of three months, Persia would be attacked by the great nation of Iraq. The new dictator in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majidida al-Tikriti had advanced plans to replace the Shah as the strongman in the Gulf. And the Soviet Union was very pleased to arm the Iraqis and create some fresh Cold War turbulence in the region.

In 1864, U.S. President Hannibal Hamlin dedicates a national cemetery on the site of the disastrous Battle of Gettysburg in July of the previous year. Dedication

The Union loss of that battle proved to be the turning point of the War of the States. News of the defeat ignited massive anti-draft riots in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and elsewhere, and was instrumental in persuading Britain and France to recognize the Confederacy. That recognition, in turn, provoked a further collapse of union morale. In December 1863, Kentucky had seceded from the Union.

At the 1864 Republican convention, with the Union war effort in tatters following the direct intervention of the British and French navies and Washington itself in Confederate hands, President Lincoln had been denied renomination in favor of his own vice-president, Hannibal Hamlin. Afterward, a dejected Lincoln had resigned and retired to his old home town of Springfield, Illinois.

President Hamlin had signed the treaty of Ontario in October, acknowledging Confederate independence. By then, Maryland, too, would have seceded from the Union. Hamlin?s overwhelming defeat at the polls on Nov. 8, 1864 by Democratic candidate Gen. George McClellan had rendered him a lame duck by the time of the dedication ceremony, but in accordance with the custom of the time, he would not leave office until the following March 4.