In 1992, on this day the eighth commissioner of baseball Fay Vincent was forced to resign after the owners of the teams declared that they had no confidence in his leadership.

"Skin" Comes off the Bench II: Father and Son "on the bench"His relationship with baseball's owners was always tenuous at best; but he was forced to resigned after the owners gave him an 18-9 no confidence vote. The owners were still angry at him over his intervention during the 1990 lockout. The owners were also disappointed by dwindling television ratings in light of a $1.2 billion, four-year deal with CBS (which ultimately cost the network $500 million) beginning in 1990 (Vincent's first full season as commissioner) and upwardly spiraling salaries. (It is also important to note that CBS itself contributed to decreasing ratings thanks to the haphazard scheduling of Game of the Week broadcasts during the regular season to the point that fans grew tired of tuning into no baseball on summer Saturdays.) They also accused him of acting in a high-handed manner, especially in the Howe affair.

As the chief executive of Major League Baseball and its associated minor leagues (a constellation of leagues and clubs known as organized baseball) he was the professional head of the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball which hires and maintains the sport's umpiring crews, and negotiates marketing, labor, and television contracts.

And his permanent successor George W. Bush had only been the the managing partner for the Texas Rangers since 1989 at around the same time that Vincent had been appointed. But despite this limited experience, as a former Vice President's son [1] he enjoyed a great deal of supported and backing that ultimately prevailed upon the owners. Because in 1987, Ronald Reagan had nominated his father - the sitting VP - to the bench after the retirement of Justice Lewis Powell. Proving a thoughtful and serious jurist, he served through four presidents, including his own successor as vice president, Orrin Hatch.

In 1695, on this day Henry Every (pictured), captain of the Fancy (formerly Charles II), and his crew of pirates raided the Indian Ocean after mutinying against England's ally, Spain.

Piracy Ends India-UK RelationsAfter a year of good hauls, Every joined up with other pirates to prey on the pilgrimage fleet of Grand Mughal Aurangzeb. There he took the greatest prize in pirating history: the Ganj-i-Sawai treasure ship, valued at between £325,000 and £600,000 (over $100,000,000 in 2011) in gold, silver, and gemstones. After seizing the great wealth, Every and his crew disappeared into history with only twenty-four ever being captured.

Also on board was "something more pleasing than jewels", believed to be Aurangzeb's daughter. She, too, was taken with rumors claiming she went willingly with the daring pirate captain. Aurangzeb was furious and announced an end to the treaties and trade that had grown up with the British East India Company. Despite Company efforts to pay the insured amount for the lost ship, Mughal forces marched on Bombay and chased the English out of India.

A new article by Jeff ProvineWith an enormous market at stake, the East India Company made efforts to strike back into India, but Aurangzeb turned to another European power, France. Frenchman Francois Bernier had served as his physician for twelve years, and the Mughal offered the new vacuum in Bombay to the French East India Company, which happily seized profits and ended the expansive British control there. As Mughal power began to fade in the eighteenth century, French domination expanded.

The British, meanwhile, began to focus more on holdings in the Caribbean and expanding into further markets in the Pacific such as China and Japan, which were opened by force. Colonies continued to trade hands with war, but India remained under French influence and served as a conduit to expand French colonial control into the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

In 1191, the Battle of Arsuf was lost because the indiscipline of the Hospitallers caused King Richard's tactical plan to unravel.

Saracen Victory at the Battle of ArsufThe culprit was the hotheaded Master Garnier de Nablus; he disobeyed orders to maintain position by charging into the Saracen ranks with a cry of St. George!. Richard knew that if he did not support the Hospitallers, they would soon be cut down and slaughtered. But while he mustered his forces, one of Saladin's commanders Muzaffar al-Din Gökböri reacted even more quickly and managed to rally his men to attack the enemy bowmen. Saladin's nephew Taqi al-Din then led seven hundred men of the Sultan's own bodyguard against Richard's left flank and the battle was lost.

Arsuf further enhanced Saladin's reputation, preventing the Crusader Army from occupying the port of Jaffa. Although it was a fatal blow to the Third Crusade, there was an upside because it forced Richard to return home and focus instead on the governance of his own neglected Kingdom.

In 1959, on this day Canada's Prime-Minister-For-Life Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis died after suffering multiple cerebral seizures.
Robert MacDougall explains all on his Old is the New New web site.

Dominion DayThis is probably going to be the longest of these alternates, since it doesn't employ any fun history-benders like zombies, time travel, or nanotech - just that old chestnut of alternate history, the South winning the American Civil War. Which is not to say that what follows is at all plausible. Or desirable. Just a fever dream brought on by the heat, and by the fact that the-South-wins alternates rarely have much to say about how such a change might affect the rest of the world. In this alternate, Canada gets Colombo's formula "right," with a little help from the Confederacy. The moral is, be careful what you wish for Colombo, ya dodgy old kook.

"He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the river unto the ends of the earth" ~ Psalm 72:8, the source of Canada's official name ("The Dominion of Canada") and national motto ("From Sea to Sea")

When Robert E. Lee outfoxes the Union Army at Sharpsburg, he opens the way for the capture of Baltimore, and British recognition of the Confederacy. By winter, the Royal Navy is openly aiding the Southern cause. Thus provoked, radical Republicans in the U.S. Congress declare war on Britain and its possessions in the spring of 1863. British regulars join the Confederates at New Orleans and pour into the Canadian colonies to shore up the second front. Detroit falls to the red coats in 1865; Washington to the gray coats the same year. The United States are forced to grant the South its independence; Britain reclaims the Oregon Territory for its pains. But the peace is uneasy and British troops remain on the continent. When the Dominion of Canada is created on July 1, 1867, it is no bureaucratic marriage of convenience, but a formidable military union.

Licking their wounds, the Union's remaining states close their doors to immigration; over the next fifty years millions of immigrants will pour out of Europe and into Canada instead. Blocked from trading with Britain or the states of the Confederacy, the economy of the shattered Union sputters and slows. Boosted by British capital, the mills and mines of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick take up the slack. Hamilton becomes Upper Canada's industrial center and eventually its capital - a black fortress of iron and smoke, like Manchester-meets-Mordor on Lake Ontario. Anti-British sentiment in the defeated Union also drives men like Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison - both arrivals from Britain by way of the Canadian colonies - back to the Dominion, where their ingenuity stokes the furnace of Canadian industry.

The Great War erupts in 1914 and a tangle of treaties pull the beleaguered Union into war against the Canadian-Confederate Alliance. The trenches stretch from Quebec to the Pacific; the carnage is indescribable. Union President Teddy Roosevelt's outnumbered doughboys hold the line in the East but the red brigades of the Dominion smash through on the great plains. When Canadian and Confederate troops shake hands on the shores of the Platte River, it is the final end of the United States west of the 100th meridian, and the birth of a cruel, new Canada, baptized in blood.

But the Dominion's jingoistic victory parades are interrupted by violent labor uprisings in Hamilton and Halifax. In October 1919, Major General Sam Hughes, the ambitious and aggressive Minister of the Militia, seizes control of Parliament and extends the martial powers of the War Measures Act in perpetuity. By the 1930s, the Dominion is a fascist monstrosity. Jack-booted Mounties crush internal dissent while the weak old men in London increasingly depend on the iron-willed Canadians to maintain Britain's fractious empire in India and the Far East.

The Second World War ends with a rain of atomic Avro-bombs on Dresden and Berlin, a show of might that makes official what has been whispered for years: the Empire no longer belongs to England but to its former colony. On July 1st, 1947, Canada's Prime-Minister-For-Life Maurice Duplessis effectively dissolves the English Parliament in London. "A Flannel Curtain has descended across the continent" Winston Churchill thunders; he dies in a Yukon gulag for daring to challenge "Duplessisme". King Edward VII is re-installed as Canada's puppet monarch; he lives out his days playing shuffleboard in Victoria's Empress Hotel. Duplessis expires in 1967; the bench-clearing brawl for his succession is won by the blustering Field Marshall Donald Cherry.

So there you have it. The culture of the French (the insular, hidebound culture of Duplessis' Quebec, to be precise), the know-how of the USA (particularly its death dealing military-industrial complex); and the government of the English (quite literally). From sea to shining sea, the Polite but, Who Are We Kidding, Evil Empire stands unchallenged. The bloody Red Ensign - no namby pamby 1960s maple leaf for this fascist super-state - has cruel dominion unto the ends of the earth.

In 1914, on this day the Commander of the Russian Second Army General Alexander Samsonov delivered the Tannenburg & Masurian Lakes battle report to Tsar Nicholas II in person before returning to the officers quarters at the Peter and Paul Fortress to blow his brains out with his service revolver.

Battle of Tannenberg, RebootThe statistics revealed the true extent of the disaster that had unfolded in East Prussia: ninety-two thousand men captured, seventy-eight thousand killed or wounded, only ten thousand escaped; over five hundred artillery pieces were lost and sixty trains were required to transport captured Russian equipment to Germany. The fight against Austria-Hungary had also gone far less well then intended. Unmistakably, these similiar reversals on the Galicia front revealed a pattern of failure caused by a deep-seated problem in the Tsarist system. Far from demonstrating progress since the Russo-Japanese War, the latest conflict had exposed the inherent weakness of Imperial Russia which was not being threatened with collapse.

Fearing a bloody revolution, an unlikely array of forces converged, comprising moderates such as Father Gregori, the pro-German elements of the elite and also the Russian General Staff. Through their reactions to the Samsonov Report, they ensured that the blame passed from the hapless General to the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov. He was forced out within days and the Czarina's brother, Duke of Hesse-Cassel was dispatched to Finland with a ceasefire proposal. Needless to say with the Allies expecting the Russian Steamroller to smash the Germans on the Eastern Front, this de facto capitulation caused panic in London and Paris.

In 1992, on this day a chance discovery in Soviet era archive records revealed that treachery in the Nazi High Command was the key to the USSR beating the United States in the race to the moon.

Red Sky at Night by Ed & Scott PalterReichführer Heinrich Himmler had long suspected that the technical director of the German rocket program Wernher von Braun was more preoccupied with space travel than the development of the offensive weaponry which might have save the Third Reich. Placed under surveillance in October 1943, a young female dentist who was an SS spy reported comments made at an engineer's house in Peenemünde. His colleagues Riedel and Gröttrup had said that they were working on a spaceship¹ and that they felt the war was not going well; this was considered a "defeatist" attitude leading to Von Braun's detention in a Gestapo cell in Stettin (now the town of Szczecin in Poland).

Deputy Führer Martin Bormann suspected that Himmler was planning to use von Braun's research as a bargaining chip with the Americans. Of course Himmler's mistake was to detain von Braun near the Eastern Front. Because both Bormann and the chief of the Gestapo Heinrich Mueller were Soviet agents who saw a similar opportunity - but with the Russians. They arranged for von Braun to be sprung from Stettin, and supplied with the secret codes that allowed him to pass through Soviet lines as a "Free German". Codes that they themselves would use with twelve months to save their own necks.

One can speculate as to the alternative possibility of a defection to the West. Such an outcome must be considered less desirable to Von Braun given his well documented use of slave labour at Peenemünde and also his ruthlessness in accepting a command position as a Sturmbannführer in the SS. Aiming for the stars, he was prepared to see his rockets used to hit London², and therefore the possibility of him standing trial as a war criminal at Nuremberg cannot be completely dismissed.

Of course within two decades, and supplied with the unrestricted resources that only an undemocratic society could provide, von Braun had completed his space port at Baikonur. In 1966 the embarrassing spectacle of Germany losing the Soccer World Cup Final to England was soon displaced by the image of a much greater German triumph, Prussian Rocketry powering Yuri Gargarin to the surface of the moon.

Even though they were never destined to meet again, by coincidence Bormann and Von Braun died within a month of each other in 1977. Far from home Bormann died in his retirement apartment in Moscow, and von Braun in Kazakhstan, overlooking the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Both having the ultimate satisfaction of knowing that the development of the Soviet mission to Mars was ahead of its schedule for a landing on the Red planet in 1980³.

In 1953, under cross examination the sociologist Kenneth Clark reluctantly released additional statistical data which disproved the arguments of the NAACP plaintiffs and forced the collapse of the civil rights case in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Doll StudiesThe "separate but equal" precedent of the 1896 Plessy vs Ferguson ruling made it extremely difficult for the NAACP to argue that segregated schooling (which existed by law throughout the southern states) was unconstitutional. By claiming that the separate facilities for black and white schoolchildren were in fact equal southern states achieved paper compliance with the demands of the Fourtheenth Amendment that all citizens must be extended equal protection of the law.

I may have used the word "crap" ~ NAACP lawyer Jack B. Weinstein [commenting on the Doll Studies]Instead the NAACP sought to counter this arguement by demonstrating the injustice of the "separate but equal" precedent using sociological evidence that segregated schooling had a profoundly negative effect on black self-esteem. That evidence was drawn from a series of studies conducted in segregated southern schools which revealed that when black students were shown a white doll and a black doll a majority indicated a preference for the white doll.

Yet the published evidence excluded data from Kenneth Clark's own research in Massachusetts which revealed that black children in integrated school were even more likely to choose the white doll. This information was not volunteered to the Court, but forced out under cross examination.

In 1776, in the wee hours of the morning in New York Harbor, an explosion tore through the hull of the HMS Eagle, Admiral Richard Howe's flagship. Though carpenters and crew rushed to save the vessel, it sank, carrying twenty-five men with it while the rest fled to shore and nearby ships.

Turtle Sinks Eagle The British suspected an accident with the stored gunpowder, but two more explosions sank ships the next night. Eventually word came from old notes provided by a Loyalist spy that the Americans had a sort of "sub-marine" attack ship.

The Turtle (pictured) had been invented by the young Yale student David Bushnell. While a freshman, he had begun experiments with underwater explosives, proving that gunpowder exploded underwater. He sought help from Isaac Doolittle, a New Haven clockmaker, and created the first time bomb. To implement the explosive on the hulls of ships, Bushnell designed a boat that could dive under the water. Something like an upturned clam, the one-man boat was made of two steel-reinforced wooden shells covered in tar. A hand pump and bilge tank allowed the intake and expulsion of water, thus increasing or decreasing the density of the craft and allowing it to sink. Six small windows allowed for bearings along with a compass lit by the bioluminescence of foxfire from fungus on cork.

A new story by Jeff ProvineCalled the Turtle, the boat was manned by Sergeant Ezra Lee, who would later become part of Washington's secret service. Dodging the iron plate at the Eagle's rudder, Lee was able to secure the bomb and sneak away before spotted by soldiers. As the watch increased around the panicked British fleet, the Turtle was too easily discovered, so Washington set Bushnell on the task of improvements. The general referred to the craft as "an effort of genius" that had much promise for the future.

While improving the Turtle, copies of which had success in New York, Boston, and Baltimore through the course of the war, Bushnell was also made Captain in the Corps of Sappers and Miners. Explosives he devised helped push the British to surrender during the Siege of Yorktown. After the war, Bushnell traveled to France where he met with inventors Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson with his letter of introduction from Washington. While Franklin was more enthused with the Parisian balloon launches, Jefferson became captivated by Bushnell's ideas. Bushnell returned to America and took up teaching until 1800, when he was called up by Jefferson to build up America's naval forces. A fleet of short-range submarines launched from important ports seemed perfect to the defense-minded president.

Bushnell was made a Captain of the Navy and began implementing Jefferson's defense plan. His submarines, now in a steel shell with improved diving, longer range and higher speed, as well as a "periscope" invented by Jefferson himself, populated the key harbors of America. While the Marines would show the naval prowess of America during the destruction of the Barbary pirates in Jefferson's term, Bushnell's Turtles would be pivotal defense in the War of 1812, keeping much of Britain's navy at sea and minimizing coastal raiding.

Bushnell died in 1824, and his Turtle designs were scarcely updated until the Civil War when ironclad ships began to dominate naval battles. With improved torpedoes, new Turtles were able to dive under ironclads and attack their weaker bellies. The South made effective use of Turtles combating the North's blockade, prompting the US to develop anti-Turtle detection techniques, some precursors to sonar. Shipborne Turtles would also play major roles in the naval battles of the Spanish-American War.

Upon the entry of the United States into World War I, US submarines carried out hunting of the German U-boats that had plagued Allied shipping. Sonar was more fully developed and shared among Allies, causing a push for defensive science to improve subs' ability to hide. By World War II, submarine warfare was doing for undersea combat what aircraft carriers did for above the waves. German u-boat-mounted V-2 rockets, for example, were used for several hit-and-run attacks against the Eastern Seaboard.

Since the Cold War, submarine technology has continued to improve to the point boats can stay underwater for as long as crew morale can endure hibernation techniques while automation and water-class Predator drones patrol the seas.

In 2005, on this day Danny Cannon's action movie "Judge Dredd II: The Doomsday Scenario" premiered in movie theatres across North America.
Watch the Youtube Clip
Doomsday Scenario by Ed. and Eric OppenLoosely derived from the AD 2000 Comic, progs 1141-1164 and 1167, and Megazine 3.52-3.59 Christian Bale played a more faithful adaptation of the character than Sylvester Stallone, keeping his face covered throughout the movie (as the real Judge Dredd does in the comic). His deadly archenemy Orlok is a former judge of East-Meg One, the city which was destroyed in the Apocalypse War two decades before. In the sequel, a vengeful Orlok attempts to overcome Justice Department by spreading the Block Mania virus across Mega-City One.
The truer depicton of Dredd was heralded as a masterpiece by fans of the comic, although American's lack of familiarity with the milieu limited the movie's commercial success.

In 2006, on this day British Prime Minister George Brown stated he would step down as Labour Party Leader by the time of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference which was held from 10 September 2007 - 13 September 2007, having promised to serve a full term during the previous general election campaign. Successor
The announcement concluded a remarkable set of events that had begun with the Labour Defeat at the polls in the 1992 General Election.
Then Labour Leader Neil Kinnock had resigned and been replaced by fellow Scotsman John Smith who had appointed Brown as his Shadow Chancellor. Only two years later, Smith died of a heart attack aged only fifty-five and was succeeded by Brown after a short-term interim leadership by Margaret Beckett, the Deputy Leader.
Brown was the natural successor, not only holding high office (at least in the ranks of the opposition), but having a strategic grasp of the economics brief during a time of recession. His strong roots in the Labour Party would enable Brown to launch a much needed program of change with his partners in the public sector trade unions after Labour's landslide victory in 1997.
However, fate was to play a cruel hand.
Brown's principled refusal to join America in the War on Terror looked astute up until the 7/7 bombings in London. After 7th July 2005. the national mood changed overnight, with even the former socialist Ken Livingstone, by the Major of London, summonding some Churchillian phrases and managing to sound belligerent.
Inevitably, Brown was unfairly accused of taking no domestic action to tackle the al-quaeda threat.
Immense pressure now emerged for Brown to stand aside in favour of Home Secretary and former Lawyer Tony Blair (pictured), the architect of the Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime policy which had already achieved dramatic changes in homeland security.
Ironically, Brown had foreseen such a scenario as far back as 1991 when he had correctly predicted that I think Blair could well one day be leader after me .
Little else could have propelled Blair into the leadership, asked why he had originally joined the Labour, he had replied unconvincingly that I couldn't very well join the Tories .

It is 1946, and Germany has conquered Great Britain. Prince Philip of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg has joined Hermann Goering's secret intelligence service.

Partisan PrincessPhilip got the job with the aid of his sister, Princess Sophia, who had married Prince Christoph of Hesse, the chief of Hermann Goering's secret intelligence service. Her two sisters Cecile and Margarita had also married Germans and become Nazis, so they help convince Philip to take the promising post.

His agents soon tell him about the daring exploits of Elizabeth, the Partisan Princess. She is known for rescuing and treating wounded British partisans after their guerrilla raids, using the experience she gained as an ambulance driver while the war was still going on. After he sets a trap for her, she is captured and taken before him...where her beauty, courage, dignity and defiance soon win his heart. Since he has already started having reservations about his German employers, she wins his mind as well. And she,in turn, is won over by his striking blond good looks.

After a night of passion, he arranges for her escape .. and is soon sending her information to help the partisans plan their attacks. Fortunately for them both, Sophia has the decency to warn him that the Gestapo is close to learning the truth. She helps them escape to America, where they convince President Truman to help support the guerrillas, with both intelligence and weapons, as well as her radio broadcasts. These messages have been written for her by Winston Churchill, including the unforgettable tribute to the guerrilla warriors, "Never have so many owed so much to so few".

In 394 AD, on this day at the Battle of the Frigidus, Romano-Gothic forces of the West Roman ruler Eugenius and his commander, the Frankish magister militum Arbogast defeated the army of Eastern Emperor Theodosius I.

Theodosius the Great repulsed at the Battle of the FrigidusTroop strengths on both sides numbered at about fifty thousand with the Eastern Army reinforced by numerous barbarian auxiliaries including over twenty thousand Visigoth federates and additional forces from Syria. They had passed through the Alps completely unopposed because Arbogast favoured a concentration of forces, a tactic that had been proven to work in his recent struggles in Gaul with the usurper Magnus Maximus.

Neverthlees, he had been tempted to split his forces to pull of an entrapment in the mountain pass, but wisely calculated that there was too much of a risk of his own men deserting¹. This proved to be a vital command decision due to the diversity of both armies, and although Eugenius credited the victory to Jupiter, in reality the Easterners greater cohesion carried the day.

In 1775, the Continental Army liberated Boston from British occupation in one of the Americans' first major strategic victories of the Revolutionary War.

Double Jeopardy Part 8
Boston LiberatedThe victory came about partly as a result of a ruse devised by Continental Army commander-in-chief George Washington in which fake cannons were set up in the countryside overlooking the city to convince the British they were about to come under artillery bombardment; seeking to get out of the line of fire, the British forces began re-deploying to less exposed positions and promptly walked into an ambush set by American infantry.

By 10:30 that night most of the British occupation forces had either been killed or captured and the rest were fleeing to New York City; within a year, New York too would be in colonial hands as the Revolution gathered steam and volunteers from all parts of the original thirteen states-- along with veterans of the Quebec Rebellion - continued to swell the ranks of the Continental Army. By 1777 French regular troops were fighting side by side with Washington's men, tipping the balance for keeps in favor of the Americans. The Revolutionary War would end in August of 1779 with the surrender at Yorktown, Virginia of the remnants of the British Army's North American expeditionary force.

In 1943, on this day Pope Pius XII granted permission for the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in Portugal before resigning as the Holy Pontiff so that the German occupation forces in Rome would arrest him in the name of the private citizen Eugenio Pacelli.

The Third Secret of FatimaThe well grounded fears that Hitler would order the kidnapping of the Pope had forced the Catholic leadership to make advanced plans should the Nazis carry out such a threat. When Italy signed the September 3 armistice with the Allies and German troops occupied Rome, Pius informed key aides that he believed his arrest was imminent. And so the decision to relocate the Vatican and appoint a new Pontiff was taken without delay.

Nazis secured the archives and art treasures unaware that the prophetic document that foresaw these very events had already been removed from the Vatican archives. In fact, the Third Secret of Fatima had been smuggled out of Rome during the summer and was already in the safe hands of the new leadership in Portugal. Ironically, not far from where Sister Lucy dos Santos had confided the account to the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon just three years before ~ "In Portugal, the dogma of the Faith will always be preserved, in many nations, perhaps in almost the entire world, the Faith will be lost. The pastors of the Church will fail gravely in the duties of their office."..

Pius would die under mysterious circumstances whilst in custody, the suspected reason for which was the near certainty that on release he would speak out to condemn Nazi atrocities against the Jews. In his place, his successors would lead a a remarkable transformation that prepared the Roman Catholic Church for the last times. It was, as Fatima had predicted, a cathartic final renewal that had been initiated by the work of the devil.

In 2007, on this day M'kolka was indicted by a USPF special tribunal on chargs of attempted piracy and conspiracy to commit terrorism.

Moongoogle 3 by Chris OakleyThe indictment sent shock waves throughout the Mlosh homeworld, where it had been expected he would easily break out of jail and resume his reign of terror.

One of the USPF's most experienced and feared officers, Bob Hauck, was assigned to lead the security detail for M'kolka's trial and would continue in that post until the trial was over.

In 1861, on this day Union troops under Brigadier Gen. Ulysses S. Grant invade Kentucky, enraging the inhabitants of the state.

The Invasion of KentuckyKentucky had declared itself neutral in an attempt to spare the state the ravages of the war, but when Gen. Grant marched in and occupied Paducah, the majority of the legislature (which had been pro-Union) sided with the Confederacy. The legislature officially seceded on the 4th and asked for admittance as the twelfth state of the CSA.

The Confederates were overjoyed; with Kentucky on their side, this made it easy for Confederate troops to march into the vital states of Ohio and Indiana and wreak havoc. Also, the Ohio River formed the border between Kentucky and the states to the north, giving the rebels an excellent defensive position.

General Grant's campaign was for his army to march down the Mississippi and cut the Confederacy in half, but on September 17th Confederate troops began the siege of Cincinnati, forcing Grant's army to be recalled north to relieve the city. For the next year, the Union army hammered away at the Confederates in Kentucky, slowly driving them back. However, the Union was dealt a major blow on October 1st, 1862, when southern raiders under the command of Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest rode north into Illinois, tearing up the southern half of the state and briefly riding into the outskirts of St. Louis.

A new article by Zach TimmonsAt the same time, a raiding party led by Joe Wheeler went into Ohio, making it as far as the state capitol at Columbus before returning south. The states of the Old Northwest had considerable numbers of Southern sympathizers, especially Illinois' south; in the mid-term elections in November, these states went strongly Democratic, forcing Lincoln to rely heavily on War Democrats in Congress.

The political success of these relatively minor raids did not go unnoticed in Richmond, which ordered Forrest (promoted to Brig. Gen.) and Wheeler to step up their attacks. The Union was forced to keep considerable numbers of troops in the rear to guard against possible raids; these troops could have made a huge difference on the front. Confederate raids increased through mid-1863 and tapered off around August as the Union finally developed a cavalry force capable of keeping up with the Southern horsemen. However, the effect of these raids was immeasurable; by the time of the presidential elections in 1864, the Union had only then begun to march into Tennessee, and a three-year stalemate had been occuring in Virginia with no results on either side.

President Lincoln was soundly defeated by his Democratic opponent, New York Governor Horatio Seymour, who began peace talks with the South the day after he was inaugurated. According to the terms of the Treaty of Alexandria, Kentucky remained with the Confederacy, as did a piece of southern Missouri that was added to Arkansas. Also, the Mississippi was demilitarized and opened to Northern shipping. This became a moot point in 1867, when the states of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, and Missouri formed the Union of Midwestern States, with its capitol centrally located at Des Moines, Iowa.

With a land connection to the east lost, the territories of the west gradually broke off: California, Oregon, Nevada, and the western half of the New Mexico Territory (Arizona) formed the Commonwealth of the Pacific in early 1868; the Confederacy added the Indian Territory and the eastern half of the New Mexico Territory (West Texas) later that year. The Dakota and Nebraska Territories were annexed by the UMS, and Colorado was split in two by the UMS and the Mormons, now in the Nation of Deseret. The British even moved in, taking the northern half of the Washington Territory as the Mormons nabbed the south. The USA, now limited to New England and the eastern Great Lakes states, was a shell of its former self. Abraham Lincoln was a broken man; with the secession the UMS in 1867, he collapsed into a deep depression.

On January 6th, 1868, at his home in Springfield, he put a pistol to his head and committed suicide. His wife Mary awoke, and was so overcome by grief she picked up the gun and shot herself as well. Ulysses S. Grant, the man whose invasion of Kentucky most likely started the downfall of the Union, was last seen drinking on a Mississippi riverboat in 1870; he is believed to have fallen overboard and drowned.

In 1901, while shaking hands at the Pan-American Exposition, William McKinley met with the anarchist Leon Czolgosz, who slapped his extended hand aside. The would-be assassin raised his hand wrapped in a handkerchief like a bandage and fired two shots from a hidden revolver.

President McKinley Dodges Assassin's BulletMcKinley, reeling from the impertinence of slapping aside the president's hand, took a half-step sideways. One bullet grazed his ribs while the other cut a thin line across his torso but did little more than pierce the skin.

A new story by Jeff ProvineSecret Service agents, who had been distracted by a tall black man they knew had been recently laid-off from an exposition restaurant, immediately pounced upon Czolgsoz. As he was being dragged away, several members of the enraged crowd struck him until McKinley gave the shout, "Don't let them hurt him!" The president's forgiveness was noted in papers across the country, especially in the anarchist's trial when Czolgosz was given a life sentence of hard labor instead of the death penalty.

The rest of McKinley's presidency was hardly as exciting, and his vice-president Theodore Roosevelt continued the Republican Progressive Era with his election in 1904. During his two terms (1905-13) he would be responsible for actions such as the expedition of the Great White Fleet, the construction of the Panama Canal in northern Columbia (the rights for which McKinley's administration had paid Columbia $25,000,000), negotiating the end to the Russo-Japanese War, and breaking up many of the US's overbearing monopolies. In 1912, the Republicans would continue in the White House with Roosevelt's vice-president Taft winning the election against New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson.

With war in Europe in 1914, Roosevelt would return from his safari in Africa and press America to take part. Taft would disagree publicly, and the country would be divided between them. Many Republicans wanted nothing to do with a European war while those with Roosevelt were ready to charge into the fray like a "Bull Moose". With the Republicans crippling themselves, Wilson would take to the campaign trail. By 1916, however, the Republican committee solved its division with Charles Hughes taking the presidency, Taft being prepared for the Supreme Court, and Roosevelt readying a potential expedition if the war did come to America.

In 1917, the war did come with the Zimmerman Telegram to Mexico. Roosevelt led the American Expeditionary Forces aided by General John J. Pershing. By the war's end, Roosevelt's opinion of the honors and glories of wars would change, and he would retire from politics permanently. Americans would take up a similar opinion and leave Europe to itself, which created an especially crippling Treaty of Versailles for the Central Powers. With a sense of blame for the war, the Republican Progressive Era would come to an end with Democrat James Cox coming to the White House in 1920 with his VP Franklin Roosevelt, a distant cousin of Theodore.

Their campaign had been a "Return to Normalcy," though the following decade would be one of unprecedented economic and social growth. With the fall in 1929 and the Great Depression, the Democrats would find blame of their own despite then-president FDR's Works Progress Administration. Voters would turn back to Republicans with Herbert Hoover and his many alleviation projects, but his "do it yourself" ideals backfired as people looked to improve life in America through unity and strength, just as the nations of Italy and Germany had done in becoming fascist.

In 1938, a culmination of historical cross-national pressures to unify German populations under one nation resulted in the Anschluss - in phase one, the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany by the Nazi regime. Anschluss Phase 2
During 1933, in the first the Nazis came to power. Jews were prevented from holding positions in the civil service, and also the professions. On July 25 1934 150 members of the National Socialist Party dressed in the uniform of the Austrian Army broke into the federal chancellery and shot Austrian Chanceller Engelbert Dollfuss in the throat at point-blank range. 1935 had seen the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws in Germany.
After a lengthy period of pressure by Germany, Hitler met Kurt Schuschnigg, the Chancellor of Austria on 12 February 1938 in Berchtesgaden (Bavaria) and demanded that he lift the ban on political parties, reinstate full party freedoms, release all imprisoned members of the Nazi party and let them participate in the government. Otherwise, he would take military action. Schuschnigg complied with Hitler's demands and appointed Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a pro-Nazi lawyer, as Interior Minister and another Nazi, Edmund Glaise-Horstenau, as a Minister without Portfolio.
At about 10 PM on March 11, well after Hitler had signed and issued the order for the invasion, Goring and Hitler gave up on waiting and published a forged telegram containing a request by the Austrian Government for German troops to enter Austria. Around midnight, after nearly all critical offices and buildings had fallen into Nazi hands in Vienna and the main political party members of the old government had been arrested, Miklas finally conceded to appoint Seyss-Inquart Chancellor. Subsequently, 38,000 Austrian Jews were granted refuge in Switzerland by Robert Grimm's (pictured) Socialist Government.
Germany started planning the invasion of Switzerland on 25 June 1940, the day France surrendered. The third of these plans was called Operation Tannenbaum ('Pine Tree'). The plan was submitted by 12th Army on 6 September 1940 to Army Group C for execution, and Phase two of the Anschluss began.
To be continued..