In 1945, in his first day in Downing Street, Clement Attlee confirmed that Winston Churchill would remain in his post of Minister of Defence, a position that he had concurrently held as War-time Prime Minister.

Attlee and Churchill win the Khaki Election of 1945
by Ed & Scott PalterDuring that time he had also been Leader of the Tories, but ironically, having crossed the aisle to switch parties twice before, this time "Winnie" had been unceremoniously dumped by own party. Having muscled into Downing Street only because Lord Halifax's peerage barred him from occupying the Prime Minister's office, Churchill still did not become Leader for six months until ill health forced Neville Chamberlain's retirement in October 1940.

Fortunately for Churchill's career, if the Tories hated him for supplanting Chamberlain, then the British electorate hated the Tories even more. Twenty Members of Parliament left the Conservative Party as well; these Churchill loyalists ran as National Commonwealth Party Candidates in districts where the Labour Party agreed not to field a candidate, much like the post World War agreement between the Liberal David Lloyd George and the majority Conservative Party. Crucially, they agreed to embrace the Beveridge Report and the result was a landslide victory for a new-style Government of National Unity. The Leader of the Opposition Anthony Eden had his work cut out to recover Tory fortunes before Churchill could destroy the Coalition from the inside.

In 1794, at the height of the Reign of Terror, the French Revolution held its climax as forces loyal to the ideals of Maximelien Robespierre overwhelmed the Convention army arranged by men such as Billaud, Barras, Barère. They had been rallied by the overnight and secret publication of Robespierre's speech defending himself from charges of tyranny. Instead, he attempted to warn France of a conspiracy to seize power in the Republic, which caused his enemies to leap to action and call for Robespierre's execution.

Robespierre's Defense PublishedIt was a harried time in the chaos that seemed to dominate Paris since the storming of the Bastille in 1789. Through the next five years, the National Assembly would attempt to create constitutions, women would march on Paris, property of the Church was publicly seized, the king fled, was captured, and eventually executed, and nearly every king in Europe declared war on the new Republic. Meanwhile, even the forces of revolution began to splinter, forming political clubs such as the Feuillants and the Girondins. Many of them encouraged the wars, hoping for war to be declared against Austria, but lawyer and political leader Robespierre said in 1792, " such a war could only favour the forces of counter-revolution, since it would play into the hands of those who opposed the sovereignty of the people. The risks of Caesarism were clear, for in wartime the powers of the generals would grow at the expense of ordinary soldiers, and the power of the king and court at the expense of the Assembly".

The war began anyway after the death of Leopold II of Austria, but France took major victories in Belgium and the Rhineland, seeming to cement the position of the Republic on the continent. Then the fledgeling government turned inward to its problems of food shortages, insurrections, and outright treason. The Tribunal was established in 1793, leading to a Committee of Public Safety, and Robespierre was one of the nine elected. Here began a "Reign of Terror" during which Robespierre wrote, "...the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible". The report of enemies of the state became a major part of clearing up the factionalism and counter-revolutionaries of the time, and it grew further with the Law of 22 Prairial on June 10, 1794. By it, the Tribunal could condemn an enemy of the state through direct order and without witnesses. Through the next eight weeks, nearly 1300 people would be guillotined.

A new story by Jeff ProvineRobespierre's system of purification nearly ricochetted back at him when he was called before the Convention, accused of treason. That July, Robespierre had recalled several envoys who had been accused of extravagance with their positions to Paris to account for their actions. One of them, Joseph Fouché, evaded arrest and sneaked from house to house of Convention members, explaining that Robespierre would come for them too. With the groundwork set for a coup d'état, the Convention called in Robespierre, who delivered a two-hour speech and giving already his knowledge of the conspiracy. The guilty members (though unnamed) hurried to act. The next day, during a speech by Robespierre's ally Saint-Just (whom Robespierre had been before sent to the front to garner support from the army), he was shouted down. Robespierre also attempted to speak, but the chaos and outright mockery closed him off. At the conclusion, the Convention ordered the arrest of Robespierre and many of his allies.

Commune soldiers under General Coffinhal marched in to defend Robespierre, aiming for the Convention itself, who ordered up soldiers of their own. The soldiers of the Commune began to falter, and it was then that copies of Robespierre's speech was delivered to them, printed in secret after the debate in the Convention had attempted to censor them. Instead, the soldiers realized that they must continue to fight for the good of the revolution against conspiracy and were joined by many free Parisians from the mob. The Battle of Paris raged for only a few hours initially, but when the conspirator's army broke in the early morning, the rioting spread to follow them. Barras, who led the Convention soldiers, was killed in the fighting, Jacques Nicolas Billaud-Varenne was captured and executed, and Bertrand Barère (who had already come under suspicion of treason) managed to escape, eventually ending up in England before disappearing into the Caribbean as an adventurer.

After the Battle of Paris, Robespierre succeeded in his plans of settling the counter-revolutionary movements. By winter, the Law of 22 Prairial came to an end and the Terror expired. Instead, Robespierre continued his place maintaining the Committee of Public Safety and keeping the political elements of pure to his ideal of republic. Meanwhile, the wars with Europe (and even the Quasi-War with the United States until the matter of privateering was settled) continued until the Treaty of Lunéville with Austria in 1801 and the Treaty of Amiens with Britain in 1802. The war was finished by General Moreau as the great Corsican general Napoleon Bonaparte was dispatched to the West Indies as a "punishment" for his lateness in returning from Egypt in 1799 due to poor communication, but also to get a potential tyrant away from the young republic as well as to organize the former slaves who had been freed under the Rights of Man. Robespierre himself would retire from political office in 1815, but he would continue to lead the Jacobin political party and encourage the spread of Republicanism to other countries. After the success of the Society of United Irishmen liberating the Republic of Ireland and later the Republic of Australia, Robespierre was instrumental creating a Republican Bloc of nations such as Batavia and Saint Domingue that spurred conservatism in the royal houses of Europe. In 1821, Robespierre left to observe and later join General Simón Bolívar in his carving out of republics from the old Spanish Empire in the Americas, which rejected Robespierre's Cult of the Supreme Being. Elsewhere, primarily in Europe and then in French republican dependencies, the deist Le culte de l'Être suprême remains the state religion with its festival on June 8 as the largest holiday of the year. Robespierre himself led the festivities in Paris until his death in 1836.

In 1214, on this day John Lackland King of England brought the twelve year old Angevin-Flanders War to a decision with a glorious victory against his rival Philip II of France at the Battle of Bouvines.

Battle of BouvinesWhich was fortunate for the House of Plantagenet, because the treasury had been exhausted despite the unprecented levels of taxation revenue that had been raised from the barony. Sensing that their simmering resentment could easily lead to civil war, John recalled the army to march through the capital and stamp his authority on the country.

And in a meadow by the River Thames, he forced the reluctant barons to sign a great charter. Due to its broad definition of the "free man" this historic document is generally considered to be the cornerstone of modern English government.

In 1943, Great Britain defeated Nazi Germany by dropping the atomic bomb on Hamburg but when Soviet occupation quickly followed Winston Churchill enraged President Frank Lloyd-Wright by blaming US isolationism for permitting "an iron curtain to descend across Europe".

FirestormBoth the manner of the victory and its direct consequences was the result of the periphery war that Great Britain had been forced to fight since Dunkirk. Undefeated only because of the strength of the Royal Navy and Air Force, the flipside of the victory was that the lack of a comparative land army prevented Great Britain from either re-entering the theatre or mounting an invasion after the bombing of Hamburg.

Or honouring the guarantee of Poland that had sparked the war. Most embittered of all was Lieutenant-General Wladyslaw Anders who demanded the release of the Polish Army in Exile. But Churcill had other plans for these hardened Polish veterans who would be desperately needed in the coming war with the Soviet Union.

In 2004, Chicago's Archbishop Barack Obama was arrested in Boston at a conference of the North American archbishops of the Anglican Church, which was attended by the highest officials of the British Empire's established church from every province of the United Commonwealths of America, and detained pending questioning as to suspected leanings toward the Muslim faith of Britain's arch-enemy, the Ottoman Empire.

Secret MuslimObama was the son of a North American-born mother and a native of British East Africa who had emigrated to the Sandwich Islands. The elder Obama and his wife, née Ann Stanley Dunham, separated in 1960 and divorced in 1964. A new story by Eric LippsThe younger Obama then spent years with his mother in Indonesia, where he encountered Muslims for the first time at school. Under the policies of Britain's colonial authorities, Muslims in Indonesia were permitted education alongside Anglicans, as were Catholics and Jews, a practice considered dangerously radical by many old-line conservatives faithful to the spirit of England's first Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. That exposure would form much of the basis for the charges of religious disloyalty brought against the younger Obama at his trial before the Inquiry in November of 2004.

Although formally acquitted of the charge of secret Muslimhood, Obama would be stripped of his office and placed on the Inquiry's index of suspect persons, subject to routine surveillance. In 2008, the surveillance would be lifted and Obama would be removed from the Inquiry's watch list, allowing him to apply for a position as a theology professor at Chicago's prestigious King Henry University. An appeal to ecclesiastical authorities to restore his clerical rank was ongoing as of September 2010.

In 1694, on this day the new King of England William III (pictured) dismissed the idea of a "Bank of England".

King William III Dismisses Idea of a "Bank of England"William, Prince of Orange and the new King of England after the Glorious Revolution ousted James II, ran a government in desperate need of money. Elections in 1690 had weakened his Whig supporters, and the Tories were happy with his domestic policies but not his continuation in the Nine Years' War with France. With his preference for the minority Whig Junto, William was able to direct the country, but it was difficult to enact taxes from a resistant Parliament.

In order to get around the ancient laws of Parliament controlling English taxation, William and his Whigs turned to an idea that made his native Netherlands famous and powerful: banking. Plans were put forth to enact a Royal Charter for a Bank of England, much to suspicion of Parliament. William had been very generous to the people, who had been very generous to him with their invitation for his invasion to rout James II, encouraging legislation such as the Bill of Rights and the Act of Toleration.

However, the Tories spoke out against his idea of a bank, seeing it as a potential downfall of the balance between Parliament and King. If the King could borrow money from another source, the powers of Parliament would slip. After much politicking and even threat of turning back to the Jacobites who still clamored for William's blood, it finally fell to a body of Tories to stop the bank by agreeing to raise funds for the war with France. Thus, on July 27, William publicly dismissed the potential charter.

A new story by Jeff ProvineMaintaining the tradition of government mints and treasuries, England and its allies would be victorious against France by 1697. After the war, the Dutch continued their place as the bankers of Europe, guaranteeing economic and military strength for the small country. After decades of marginal peace, Europe would again be torn asunder in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). While Britain would be the greatest winner of the war, the Dutch would secure their economic mastery of the world for a century until manufacturing outpaced banking in capitalism.

As fallout from the Seven Years' War, the American colonists rebelled against England due to rising taxes and lack of self-government. Already in dire economic straits due to empty coffers from the Seven Years' War, King George III had very little money for mercenaries and so dispatched only what he could of his armies. The war ground on until 1781 when English soldiers began to desert en mass from lack of pay. In 1782, the Dutch granted the fledgling United States with a loan of five million guilders, enough to solve many of the Americans' financial problems. Britain, however, was bankrupt.

Heavy taxation to solve the problem resulted in a much angered populace, and, in 1787, revolution would break out. Dethroning the king, Parliament would become the highest law of the land, though many new additions to the Bill of Rights would keep the country from the darker days of Cromwell's reign. The new republican government would soon restore relations with the United States and quickly recognize the French Republic when it came along in 1792 after beginning its own revolution in '89. Alliances among these republics as well as the wealthy Dutch would build up until France fell back under dictatorial rule with Napoleon's crowning of himself.

Faced with new military requirements, the British Republic would bring up the idea of a national bank it had left behind over a century before. The Bank of Britain secured financing for the lengthy Napoleonic Wars and served to aid the exiled Dutch bankers when their lands fell. When Napoleon was finally defeated, the republics found themselves again at odds with the rest of Europe. Britain wished France a return to its republic while the rest of Europe established Louis XVII.

Instead of igniting another war over Europe, Britain turned to expand its republican ideals into the rest of its empire. The wealthy Netherlands, too, continued its empire by maintaining the Belgians despite a rebellion in 1830 and expanding into Africa and the Pacific. Economies worldwide would spread like wildfire, but the growing sense of nationalism would also spread.

In the eruption of the World War, much of the world leaders' forces would be stuck in trenches in Europe, but a competition began provoking colonial rebellion as Germany successfully organized revolt in Ireland. Soon empires based on hollow republican ideals would fall as natives rose up with their own notions of self-rule. India, the Congo, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Tanzania and many other countries would spring up independent over the coming years. Even after the war was over, De-Colonization would continue through the 1920s and '30s, creating over two hundred countries over the globe. The resulting economic downturn would cause a Great Depression like the world had never seen, giving way to a rise of strong Fascist governments ruling these new countries. Not only would former colonies would gain fascist governments, but also European nations like the Nazis of Germany, the Blackshirts of Italy, and the British Union.

As with all strong governments, they would eventually clash. The German invasion of France in 1941 would give way to a series of campaigns that would carve up the world into factions battling one another over four continents. In the end in 1962, the United States would assume supremacy with its Hydrogen Bomb, and a new world empire would begin under the popular Grand Marshall Kennedy, sadly murdered a year later, but succeeded by LBJ, who would rule the world for the next decade.

In 1939, representatives of the French and British Government received a technical briefing from the Polish Cipher Bureau at a secret meeting in Warsaw on this day. Poland's Enigma-decryption techniques and equipment were outlined. And to the astonishment of the western allies, it was revealed that the nightmarish task of code-breaking the growing structural and operating complexities of the plugboard-equipped Enigma had required seven long years of dedication from the Polish General Staff agency's best cryptographers. Polish military planners estimated that within seven weeks, Adolf Hitler would issue orders to invade. And so the timing of the decryption of Nazi German secret communications (Ultra) was none too soon. In exchange for two cracked Engima devices, massive military assistance was required by the Wojsko Polskie, the Polish Army, and to arrive during the month of August.

Enigma CodesA British Expeditory Force (BEF) commanded by Field Marshal John Vereker (Lord Gort) was dispatched to Poland, with the first elements arriving on August 19th.

When the German attack began, the BEF consisted of ten infantry divisions in three corps (I, II, and III), 1st Army Tank Brigade and a RAF detachment of about 500 aircraft, the BEF Air Component. Although constituting only a tenth of the defending Allied force the BEF sustained heavy losses during the German advance and after a desperate retreat through the "Polish Corridor" a bare fraction of the remainder (roughly 30,000 men) were evacuated from the Port of Danzig between September 26th and October 4th. The Royal Navy was unable to pull off a "miracle at Danzig" due in no small part to the activities of the German population who succeeded in causing havoc for the evacuation plan.

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest" ~ Winston ChurchillDespite this dreadful military disaster, the western allies had succeeded in preventing Germany from signing a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.

And the startling success of the Blitzkrieg had accelerated German plans for the conquest of Western Russia, which would now proceed with terrifying ferocity. And as the Second World War approached a decision on the Eastern Front, the Western Allies would be locked in an unfought "Phoney War" with the Germans, contributing nothing further to the bloodbath other than to supply the Red Army with the Enigma Codes.

In 1948, Obersturmbannfuhrer Otto Skorzeny escaped from an Allied Prisoner of War Camp. Scorzeny EscapesWith the defeat of Nazi Germany inevitable, Skorzeny had trained, until March 1945, recruits for the stay-behind Nazi organisation, the Werwolves, which engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Allies.

However, Skorzeny quickly realized that the Werwolves were too few in number to become an effective fighting force. Instead of this, they were used for the Nazi 'ratlines', a secret 'Underground railroad' which helped Nazi war criminals escape trial after Germany's surrender. Beside this organisation of the 'ratlines,' which would form the basis of the supposed ODESSA network after the war, Skorzeny had been employed since August 1944 by high-ranking Nazis and German industrialists to hide money and to loot property, documents, etc., some of which were buried in the mountains of Bavaria, and others shipped overseas.

Skorzeny finally decided to surrender to the Allies in May 1945, feeling that he could potentially be of use to the Americans in the forthcoming Cold War. On May 16, 1945, he emerged from the Austrian woods near Salzburg and surrendered to a lieutenant of the US Thirtieth Infantry Regiment. He was held as a prisoner of war for more than two years before being tried as a war criminal at the Dachau Trials for his false flag actions in the Battle of the Bulge. However, he was acquitted when Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas G.C. of the SOE testified in his defence that Allied forces had also fought in enemy uniform. But he was held until he escaped from a prison camp on July 27, 1948.

There was one item of property that Skorzeny took with him in his flight to South America. Some documents actually. Letters written by Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, posing as his Uncle, to John Bruce between 1931 and 1934. And also the five missing pages from Lawrence's War Diary, ripped in shame by the author describing his capture in Deraa during November 1917. Documents that would create a spectacular reaction when they surfaced in 1960 during the premiere of the movie Lawrence of Arabia on 16th December 1962.

In 1908, Imperial soldiers of the Russian First Army arrive at the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River. Nikola Tesla realises immediately that his June 30th experiment has gone even worse than horribly wrong. Not only has a large area of Siberia been laid waste, but the transmission from his Tesla Tower has clearly interfered with the navigation of an alien spacecraft, causing the ship to crash. And then there was the fungus .. Uncomplicated by the wider issues of the downed spacecraft, General Pavel Karlovich Rennenkampf does not hesitate to do his duty to the Tsar of all the Russias.Tesla Experiment downs the Grayboys

The ship, an enormous gray plate nearly a quarter of a mile across, had torn through the dead trees at the center of the river, exploding them and casting the splintery fragments in every direction. The Blue Boy (it was not blue at all, not a bit blue) had come to rest at the swamp's far end, where a rocky ridge rose at a steep angle. A long arc of its curved edge had disappeared into the watery, unstable earth. Dirt and bits of broken trees had sprayed up and littered the ship's smooth hull.

The surviving grayboys were standing around it, most on snow-covered hummocks under the upward-tilted end of their ship; if the sun had been shining, they would have been standing in the crashed ship's shadow. Well . . . Rennenkampf thought it was more Trojan Horse than crashed ship, but the surviving grayboys, naked and unarmed, didn't look like much of a threat. About a hundred, Rennenkampf had said, but there were fewer than that now; Tesla put the number at sixty. He saw at least a dozen corpses, in greater or lesser states of red-tinged decay,lying on the snow-covered hummocks. Some were facedown in the shallow black water. Here and there, startlingly bright against the snow, were reddish-gold patches of the fungus . . . except not all of the patches were bright, Tesla realized as he raised his binoculars and looked through them.

Several had begun to gray out, victims of the cold or the atmosphere or both. No, they didn't survive well here not the grayboys, not the fungus they had brought with them. ~ Stephen King, Dreamcatcher Chapter 5

	In 1961, on this day the NYPD, PAPD, and FDNY held their first joint post-Jamaica Bay hurricane disaster drill. The exercise was carried out at the directive of New York City mayor John Lindsay, who wanted to be sure the city's first responders weren't caught off guard by future hurricanes as they had been by the Jamaica Bay disaster.

One of the NYPD officers involved in the drill, a rookie patrolman named Raymond Kelly (pictured), would later serve two terms as the city's police commissioner.

On this day in 2002, a group of Iraqi regular army generals alarmed by the looming threat of civil war in their homeland secretly met to begin planning the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
	Saddam Hussein

Post-1968 flag of	On this day in 1968, the East German government signed a pact with West Germany under whose terms Germany would be reunified effective October 1st. Shortly after the agreement was signed, Erich Honecker issued a directive ordering all Warsaw Pact-tasked Soviet military forces to withdraw from German territory within fifteen days.
Germany

On this day in 1973, vacationers Burt and Vicky Stanton were murdered in the town of Gatlin, Nebraska by the Lawnmower Man. Their deaths would later be the subject of a Stephen King-narrated documentary, "Children of the Corn".
	Stephen King

In 2006, a series of high-level resignations continued in the Justice Department and at the FBI following the revelations of James Anthony Traficant, Jr. at a press conference in Washington. A former Democratic Representative in the United States Congress from Ohio, Traficant, Jr. had been recently released from prison after compelling evidence emerged that he was the victim of a government set-up. This included false allegations of taking bribes, filing false tax returns, racketeering, and forcing his aides to perform chores at his farm in Ohio and on his houseboat in Washington, D.C. All of which were dismissed at the re-trial.

I went back in time the other day. It was quite an interesting experience. I almost prevented the birth of Hitler, and was an inch away from saving Martin Luther King. And, by the way, it was Oswald, and he was the only gunman. I can say that without fear of contradiction.
I'm not supposed to interfere, but you can't help yourself, really. After all, what's the point of going back if you're not going to try to change things? Time travel is the ultimate wish fulfillment. If you go back far enough, and you know enough, you can be a god.
Marcus had wanted to do that; be a god. He told me that he could bring a few gadgets with him, set up shop in Mesopotamia or someplace like that, and he would never have to worry about anything ever again. I reminded him that modern conveniences like hologames, running water and vaccinations might be missed by someone playing the god for the primitive locals, but he says that he could tough it out. I doubt it.
But, he's been gone for a while now, and I don't think he's coming back. The world hasn't come crashing down around us, so whatever changes he's made, I assume that they've already been taken into account in the time stream. I hope.
That's what we all hope, really. Everybody involved in the project has got to hope that we can't really change the past, at least not in a way that will destroy the present. If we can, then somebody's going to screw us all up any day now.
Maybe they already have.
There are a lot of paradoxes in this line of work, and you really just have to get used to them. I mean, if you try to grasp each set of contradictions that you bring up just by appearing in the past, you'd spend all your time sitting around confused instead of doing something. And that's not very productive.
My main area of focus is on historical accuracy in textbooks. I was the one who got to correct all the assassination buffs who?ve been living on JFK rumors for decades. That was my masterpiece; seventeen cameras along a one mile patch of road in old Dallas. Conclusive proof that the only shots came from the book depository, there was nobody on the grassy knoll, and I got a really good close-up of Lee Harvey himself squeezing the trigger. How they howled. I've now been labeled part of the conspiracy.

In 1940, the fleeing British Royal Family reached their safest haven. That being the capital of New Britain established by Arthur Wellesley in 1814, Windsor, Ontario. Nowhere other than this Anglophone pocket in North America would have accepted these desperate refugees. Head of the British Government in Exile, Winston Churchill summoned up the situation on their arrival: "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was our darkest hour".

In 2003, the BBC reported that their scientific exploration of Loch Ness in Scotland had found a colony of huge monsters living in the lake. Tourism in Scotland increased by a factor of 1000.

In 1999, the 17 madmen of Mt. Didicas arrive back at the undersea ruins. They kill a scuba shop owner and steal all of his equipment, then steal a boat to sail back out to the ruins. A voice is calling them all; a voice that many fisherman also can hear on the sea; a voice that sends the sane back to the shore.

In 1974, acid rocker John Denver hit the top of the charts with Annie's Song, a ballad about his wife's drug addiction. Denver also had a hit with downers like I'm Sorry, and often opened for acts like Kiss and Alice Cooper. After a decade of inactivity in the 80's, he experienced a brief revival in popularity when Marilyn Manson covered Annie's Song.

In 1925, Enrico Caruso releases an album of arias on the Maggie format. When he dies days after the recording session, the album cannot be kept on store shelves, and this has the side effect of driving sales of Maggie-players through the roof. It seems as if every home in America has one by Christmas.

In 1974, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted 27 to 11 to recommend the first article of impeachment against President Robert F Kennedy: obstruction of justice. Americans were waking up to the fact that RFK's Special Investigations Unit ('the Plumbers') had burgled their own Democratic National Committee Headquarters in an attempt to besmirch Richard M Nixon's reputation. Still, it was just too late for Honest Dick. At sixty years old, he had made two bids for Presidency, and one for the Governorship of California. Even if he had been tricked by the Kennedys, he still had a record of losing.

In 1930, Henry Ross Perot was born in Texarkana, Texas. Following a successful business career, an intention to run in the 1992 U.S. presidential election was announced on CNN's Larry King Live. Perot's common-sense platform was based on a promise to get under the hood and fix the engine. When US votes found out the extent of incompetence and waste in Washington, they were simply shocked, and today Perot is recognised as the Father of Small Government in the United States.

In 1953, following a six-month "surge" US President Douglas MacArthur proclaimed victory in the Korean War. In Seoul, anti-communist Syngman Rhee was declared president of the newly unified Republic of Korea. Rhee's legacy has been in considerable dispute. In general, conserVative circles regard Rhee as the patriarch of the nation, while liberals tend to be critical of him. Shortly before the 1988 Olympic Games it was discovered that Rhee had embezzled over $20m from the government and tributes to the former head of state were cancelled.

In 1969, Whatever had been U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts fell outward into the night, going backwards with its hands thrown out above its head, like a diver going off a high board. The pallid body gleamed like marble.

Joseph Gargan (Kennedy's cousin) let out a crazed, terrified scream and rushed to the window and peered out. There was nothing to be seen but the moon-gilded night - and suspended in the air below the window and above the spillof light that marked the living room, a dancing pattern of motes that might have been dust. ~ The Emperor of Ice Cream

In 1941, Japanese troops occupied French Indo-China. Meanwhile, Mountbatten, Wingate et al. were poised to quit the Far East altogether, taking with them the Indian Divisions of the British Army. These troops were desperately needed in Jerusalem by Bernard Montgomery of British Central Command. Caught in the Middle East between the German and Japanese pincer movement, the British Army prepared for Churchill's Last Stand.

In 1759, British General James Wolfe started the siege of Quebec.

Two French traitors told Wolfe and his men about a secret cove used for riverside unloading, at the base of the cliffs west of Quebec along the St. Lawrence River. After an extensive yet unsuccessful shelling of the city, Wolfe then led 200 ships with 9000 soldiers and 18 000 sailors on a very bold and risky amphibious landing. Wolfe had been betrayed, his men were met by French under the command of the Marquis de Montcalm. Wolfe was shot in the chest and died just as the battle was lost. He reportedly heard cries of 'We run,' and thus died miserable that the British had been defeated. The Battle of the Cove is notable for causing the deaths of the top military commander on each side: Montcalm died the next day from his wounds. Montcalm's victory at Quebec prevented an assault on the French at Montreal the following year. With the cancellation of that plan, French rule in North America continued uninterrupted by British belligerance.

In 1861, on this day US President Abraham Lincoln promoted the Commander of the Department of the West John C. Frémont to the upgraded position of the General-in-Chief of Union Army.

Frémont named General-in-Chief of Union Army The American Civil War had raged for several months, and the northern nation needed a commander for its armies. General Winfield Scott was capable, but far too old to keep command over what he understood would be a years-long war. Irvin McDowell's defeat at Bull Run showed that he was incapable. Many believed George McClellan, commander of the Department of Ohio, would be given the command, but his plans about an invasion of Virginia from the west and a campaign along the Ohio River were the source of much derision. Not even the political squawking of his acquaintance Salmon P. Chase could push him for general.

Instead, President Lincoln named commander of the Department of the West, John C. Frémont, to be his commander. Frémont had been a noted explorer through the 1840s and California's first senator, not to mention being the Republicans' first candidate for the presidency. Despite being a Southerner from Atlanta, Frémont remained staunchly loyal to his country. He seemed impetuous, and there had been controversy about what may have been mutiny of his mounted rifles in the Mexican-American War, but Frémont vowed to end the war as soon as possible.

A new story by Jeff ProvineGeneral Frémont would piece together his Union Army for a fast invasion of Virginia. Instead of waiting for spring, Frémont set out in September of 1861. He would prove ruthless against the rebels, as many of his policies in Missouri had shown. Warnings came from General Henry Wagner Halleck (Frémont's replacement in the west) of the mess the general left behind, but these were ignored as simple backroom military gossip.

Frémont's campaign would be an initial success out of his impetuousness. General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Southern Army of the Potomac, would fall back, drawing Frémont deeper into Southern territory, where his armies would wreak havoc. Newspapers from both the North and, especially, the South decried the horrors of war. Finally, only five miles from Richmond, at the Battle of Seven Pines (or of Fair Oaks to the Union) on November 30, 1861, Johnston would counterattack. The battle was bloody and inconclusive, except that Johnston had stopped the approach of Frémont.

Rather than beginning a siege for the winter, Frémont regrouped for another attack and assaulted the Richmond defenses. A more stalwart general may have waited, but Frémont meant to end the war and end slavery. Just as Confederate President Jefferson Davis pulled Johnston from command and replaced him with his adviser Robert E. Lee, Frémont threw his soldiers against the defensive works. It was a gamble that could have won the Civil War for the Union.

Instead, the attack proved to be a disaster. Dead piled up as Frémont's troops were unable to crack the defenses. Lee held the city with everything he could scrounge, and reinforcements poured in from all over Virginia in the Southern counterattack, most notably General Jackson and his Stonewall Brigade as well as the cavalry of JEB. Finally, on December 3, Frémont would die from wounds incurred the day before and the remnants of the Union forces would retreat to Fort Monroe, where they had landed months before.

Despite the terrible setback, Lincoln would refuse to allow the South to secede. The retired Winfield Scott's "Anaconda Plan" called for the conquest of the Mississippi, which would be initially a tactical success in 1862. But, the bloodthirsty General Ulysses S. Grant would prove the undoing of the United States as his losses during battles proved unacceptable. Numerous battles began to turn potential victories into defeats from shortages of men and materiel supplied. With logistics failing in both the western and eastern theaters, Union troops would fail to catch up with Lee's Army of the North before it took Harrisburg, PA. The Southern victory would cut off Maryland and Washington D.C. from the rest of the Union. The subsequent revolt in Maryland would cause another wave of secession, and European nations would begin to recognize diplomatically the Confederate States of America.

George McClellan would win narrowly the election of 1864, ousting Lincoln. While the war would drag on for another three years, eventually McClellan would organize the Treaty of Washington of 1868. Peace would settle over America for a time until border disputes in the coming decades again caused friction between the two nations.

In 1961, on this day Time magazine published an article on New York City mayor John Lindsay which speculated on Lindsay's future prospects on the national political scene once his mayoral tenure was over.

From Gracie Mansion To Pennsylvania AvenueThe article's title posed the intriguing question "From Gracie Mansion To Pennsylvania Avenue", a clear hint as to how far the experts thought Lindsay could go; rumors that Lindsay might one day run for President had been circulating ever since his improbably victory in the mayoral elections the previous November, and those rumors would pick up steam after he won re-election as mayor in a landslide in 1964. By the time the 1968 presidential campaign started most political analysts were convinced the race for the Republican nomination would boil down to a two-man battle between Mayor Lindsay and former vice-president Richard Nixon. When Nixon finally did gain the GOP nomination, he surprised a great many people(himself included) by choosing Lindsay as his running mate -- an ironic decision considering how the two men had butted heads eight years earlier over the Eisenhower administration's initial response to the Jamaica Bay hurricane.

Lindsay did eventually become president, albeit in a more roundabout way than anyone would have expected; when the Watergate scandal forced Nixon to resign the presidency in 1974 Lindsay, then nearly a year and a half into his second term as Nixon's vice-president, was sworn in as the 38th President of the United States. Lindsay would go on to win a bruising fight with former House of Representatives minority leader Gerald Ford for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination and crush Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter in the general elections. His successes with welfare reform and anti-crime legislation and his hands-on role in the historic 1978 Camp David peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt would pave the way for Lindsay's own vice-president, former California senator Ronald Reagan, to defeat Carter's second White House bid in 1980. This post is a variant ending to the President Lindsay article.

In 1995, George Wilcken Romney, the thirty-eighth President of the United States of America, died.

Death of President George RomneyRomney's presidency was the most unlikely of historical accidents. In 1968 he had unsuccessfully sought the Republican Party's nomination. A weak campaigner by most accounts, he was further hindered by his background as a Mormon, which led him to define issues in moral terms in ways which often struck observers as self-righteous. His religion also frightened many right-wing Christian evangelicals, who had difficulty considering it as Christian. Having formally announced his candidacy in November of 1967, he withdrew from the race on February 28, 1968.

He was rescued from political exile by an unlikely ally: Richard M. Nixon, one of his rivals in 1968 and the Republicans' eventual nominee that year. Increasingly confident of victory as the Republican convention approached, Nixon had been considering running-mates and had been favoring Maryland governor Spiro T. Agnew-until, two weeks before the convention was to meet in Miami Beach, Florida, Nixon learned that Agnew had apparently been taking kickbacks from state contractors¹. Fearful of the consequences should this blow up into a public scandal before Election Day-or, what might be even worse, after a Nixon victory, when it would taint his administration-Nixon dropped Agnew in favor of Romney, whom he saw as sharing the qualities he had found appealing in the Marylander: limited intellect, a weak personality and a lack of the sort of personal political skills which might enable him to build his own political machine within a Nixon White House.

Nixon's assessment of Romney's intelligence was unfair, but his perception of the latter's political haplessness was accurate enough. After the Republican convention, the gaffe-prone Romney was increasingly kept on the sidelines by Nixon and his campaign staff, who foresaw a close vote in November and worried that the Michigan governor might say something as disastrous to their campaign as his earlier remark that he had been "brainwashed" by the military regarding the Vietnam War had proven to be to his own. The isolation continued after Nixon assumed the presidency in January 1969, prompting cartoonists to produce images of Romney in a dungeon, buried underground, or bound and gagged. Certainly Nixon dared not use his VP to vent his hostility toward the press, college students and the antiwar movement, as he might have done with the combative Agnew.

But ironically it was Romney's very irrelevance within the Nixon administration which would save him and put him in place to become president himself. Romney was deliberately excluded from the deliberations of Nixon and such subordinates as H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, G. Gordon Liddy and John Dean which produced the series of ill-advised actions which became known collectively as the Watergate scandal. As the Watergate crisis mounted, Romney remained untouched by the rising tide of mud. And on August 8, 1974, as a haggard and bitter Richard Nixon boarded a helicopter leaving Washington, it would be George Romney who would become the thirty-eighth President of the United States of America.

It would prove to be a tainted prize. In one of his first official actions, President Romney rejected the calls of diehard Nixon supporters that he pardon his predecessor, pointing out that Nixon had not actually been tried and convicted. However, he then stated that if he were to be convicted of anything while Romney remained in the White House, a presidential pardon would be issued. While this maintained the forms of legality, it angered many Nixon critics, since it effectively made any trial of the disgraced ex-president pointless. In the 1976 election, Romney's declaration would become a serious political issue as opponents hinted that his guarantee had been a quid pro quo in exchange for Nixon's resignation in his favor².

Nor would subsequent events help him. The Arab oil embargo of 1973-'74, retaliation for U.S. support of Israel in the 1973 Mideast war, would help produce a double whammy of recession combined with inflation-"stagflation," as it would come to be called. That this was not Romney's fault would not help him, nor would his efforts to point out that he had had no honorable choice but to aid America's ally. The ignominious departure of the last U.S. military personnel from Vietnam, fleeing to safety by helicopter from atop the top of of the embassy in Saigon as North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops occupied the city on April 30, 1975 and the North Korean seizure of the USS Mayaguez two weeks later, resulting in a four-month hostage drama³, would indelibly mark Romney as an inept and weak leader. That short of an apocalyptic use of force Vietnam had already been a lost cause by the time he had succeeded Nixon would not matter; neither would the fact that the protracted Mayaguez drama ended with no casualties on either side.

Under such circumstances it was all but inevitable that the President would face a challenge in the 1976 Republican primaries, and one came, from California governor Ronald W. Reagan. A faded movie and television star who had burst onto the political scene with a stem-winding speech in favor of Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican convention and had then defeated Democrat Edmund G. "Pat" Brown in the latter's quest for re-election in 1966, Reagan had become a veritable icon of the right for his hard-line anti-Communism, his tough-some would say vindictive-approach in dealing with student protests and his willingness to attack Great Society programs such as Medicare as threats to American freedom. As political demonstrations exploded across the country, sometimes turning violent, Reagan's political popularity had risen. His first run for the presidency, in 1968, had widely been regarded as a joke and had ended after only two months, but by the mid-seventies it no longer seemed ridiculous to imagine he might someday occupy the Oval Office.

And as the primary season wore on, President Romney's disadvantages as a candidate increasingly hobbled his reelection bid. A wooden speaker, he could not compete with Reagan on the stump or in that year's debates. In addition, the President's religion soon became an issue with evangelical Christians, just as it had in 1968. Right-wing Protestant fundamentalists and conservative Catholics tilted heavily toward Reagan, as did secular conservatives angry at Romney over such foreign-policy issues as his perceived "betrayal" of South Vietnam. Evangelicals began a whispering campaign suggesting that Romney secretly practiced polygamy, which survived among some Mormons despite their church's having banned it in 1890 as a condition for Utah statehood.

By the time of the Republican convention in Kansas City, the handwriting was on the wall. Though the balloting proved closer than anyone had expected, Reagan would win, with 1,201 delegates against Romney's 1,056 and one for minor candidate Elliott Richardson⁴. Reagan went on to choose New York's Sen. James L. Buckley, a favorite of right-wing stalwart Sen. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, as his running mate.

Despite the alleged handicap of being the Republican nominee in the first presidential election since Watergate, Reagan handily won the November election against Georgia governor James Earl Carter, and on January 20, 1977, was inaugurated as the thirty-ninth president of the United States. Romney returned to Michigan, where he devoted himself to promoting voluntary work and civic responsibility through the National Center for Voluntary Activity which he founded.⁵

In 1953, on this day a breakaway zone in the rebellious south-eastern Oriente region of Cuba was liberated by a surprise attack on the Moncada and Bayamó military barracks executed by a tiny revolutionary force under the command of Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl (pictured with Che Guevara).

M 26-7The commanders had careful planned their revolutionary movement (Movimiento 26 Julio abbreviated to "M 26-7") by striking in a remote, rebellious region far from the centre of power - Moncada lies closer to Haita and Jamaica than Havana. And of course the significance of the Moncada Barracks was the naming after General Guillermón Moncada, an iconic hero of the War of Independence, because Fidel was hoping to imprint his own revolutionary profile in the Cuban mind. An associate Alfredo Guevara (no relation to Che) had commented that Castro was "a boy who will be José Marté or the worse of the gangsters."..

Aged only twenty-six, he was sufficiently cynical to have already concluded that the only difference that lies between the two was an ideology. But in fact he had been diverted from the path to becoming an elected official in the Chamber of Deputies and might well have achieved national leadership through democratic means if not for the coup orchestrated by Fulgencio Batista. Because on March 10, 1952 he and his officers had simply walked unchallenged into the army's Camp Columbia in Havana.

Batista recognized that Castro had pulled a similiar stunt himself, and realising the serious challenge to his authority, appealed to the Organization of American States (OAS) for military assistance. This move, supported by hard evidence that Castro was a communist proven a masterstroke that encouraged the United States to dispatch a Korean-style multi-national policing force that prevented Batista from being portrayed as an American stooge.

In 1790, twelve months after Mrs Alexander Hamilton served the very first dish of ice cream to a thrilled President Washington, her husband's receipe for the Public Credit was rejected as unpalatable to Southern States, support deserted the Secretary of the Treasury and his own piece de la resistance, the Assumption Plan was narrowly voted down by the US Congress.

Dish best eaten ColdAs is so often the way with strategic decisions, the technical proposal as set out in his "Report on Public Credit" made a great deal of sense: the principle that the federal government should assume at par value the state debts which were incurred during the Revolution. Detailed financial scrutiny revealed otherwise: assumption would force the Federal Government to unnecessarily honour a bad debt. Because some of the States had already negotiated reduced rates. Moreover it did not appear realistic that former loyalists could really be compensated nor that the British Government would willingly relinquish the Northwestern Forts they still occupied in contravention of the Treaty of Paris. It was in reality a simple question over the principles of democracy and republican government, because surely, central stupidity was endangering local common sense.

Neither commercially naive, nor a "jerk" Hamilton (pictured) had a powerful ally. Because key to the Presidential agenda was nation-building both inside the fabric of the former colonies, but also building infrastructure and establishing respectful peer-to-peer relationships foreign powers. And so Washington believed that the federal government would be undermined by individual states negotiating in this way. Better for his legacy that England and France were forced to deal with a central contracting authority.

Even though Thomas Jefferson had been deceived into believing the nation faced bankcruptcy with the Assumption Plan (which actually increased the likelihood of such an outcome), on this occassion it was James Madison that changed his mind: "I deserted Colonel Hamilton, or rather Colonel H. deserted me; in a word, the divergence between us took place from his wishing to administration, or rather to administer the Government into what he thought it ought to be..."..

Whilst there was a certain war-time logic to these arguments that sat well in Washington's orderly, militaristic mind, Hamilton had a broader, sinister agenda. By promoting the adoption of a "loose constructionist" interepretation of the Constitition the Federal Government could usurp powers as it saw fit, and inevitably, the states rights would be diminished. Assumption was merely the first step on a road map that included increased taxation, and a Central Bank of the United States. His receipe wasn't for sweet ice cream, it was a sickening, devil's delight.

Whilst we can only speculate, it seems probable that if the strict constructionists had lost out, then today the US Government would have accumulated an unimaginablely large Public Debt that instead of maintaining the sovereignty of the United States, would in fact mortgage its childrens future's to foreign powers.

In 1863, Confederate General Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North reached a dramatic climax on this day when his Army of Northern Virginia entered the city boundaries of New York. Like the British capture of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812, the occupation was purely symbolic, and certainly of no military value. As a result of a time-bomb in their military plans, the Union had lost control of the city since July 13th, and the only enemy Lee had to contend with was the so-called "Army of the Streets".
Watch the Youtube Clip of Lee's Military Career

The Fall of New YorkNew Yorkers had quickly rallied behind the Union cause when the Civil War started in April 1861. As a result, their term of service was reaching a conclusion just as General Lee was crossing the Potomac en route to a crushing victory over Union Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade's Army of the Potomac at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Congress had passed the first conscription act in United States history on March 3, 1863, authorizing the President to draft citizens between the ages of 18 and 35 for a three-year term of military service. Yet for a commutation fee of $300 dollars, men could dodge the draft, creating the impression among the middle and lower classes that the Civil war had become "the rich man's war and the poor man's fight".

"Martial law ought to be proclaimed, but I have not a sufficient force to enforce it" ~ Major General John E. WoolWhen violent disturbances ripped across New York City, President Abraham Lincoln sent several regiments of militia and volunteer troops to control the city. Although not the majority, many of those arrested had Irish names, according to the lists compiled by Adrian Cook in his "Armies of the Streets". The protestors were overwhelmingly working class men, resentful because they believed the draft unfairly affected them while sparing wealthier men who could pay to exclude themselves from its reach.

Initially intended to express anger at the draft, the protests turned ugly and degraded into "a virtual racial pogrom, with uncounted numbers of blacks murdered on the streets". The conditions in the city were such that Major General John E. Wool stated on July 16, "Martial law ought to be proclaimed, but I have not a sufficient force to enforce it". The military suppressed the mob using artillery and fixed bayonets, but not before numerous buildings were ransacked or destroyed, including many homes and an orphanage for black children.

In 1830, England's King George IV (pictured) dies. His younger brother William will succeed to the throne as William IV. Mourning ceremonies for the deceased king and coronation celebrations for his successor will be held throughout the British Empire.

One of the first tasks undertaken by the new king is a re-evaluation of colonial policy in North America. As part of that effort, King William will confer with Parliament and with colonial authorities regarding what he refers to as a "reorganization of colonial law enforcement". Reorganization of Colonial Law Enforcement by Eric LippsThis is widely interpreted as hinting at the downsizing or even elimination of the Order Police, whose red-uniformed officers have dealt harshly with political subversion in the American colonies since the OP's establishment following the rebellion of the 1770s. The Order Police have always been unpopular with the colonists, for obvious reasons, but in recently years they have become increasingly so with the British public as stories of some of their actions have circulated. In addition, the OP's escalating cost, as British colonization extends across the continent and new contingents of Order Police must be created and maintained, has become a sore point in Parliament.

Such concerns will increase pressures to establish a professional civilian police agency in the colonies. London's Metropolitan Police, whose Scotland Yard headquarters opened in 1829, will be suggested as a model. To the distress of conservatives, it will be recommended that any such agency be staffed mostly by Americans, though it is to be answerable to London.

In 1950, on this day Tralfamadorean advocate Isaac Asimov commented that Human History was "a dark and turbulent stream of folly illuminated now and then by flashes of genius ".

FoundationThat stream of folly had recently ended wih the arrival of the Tralfamadoreans whose intervention in human affairs had terminated the cycle of destruction.

The act of genius was now to follow - the building of a Foundation - a small, secluded haven of art, science, and other advanced knowledge - at Peace City One, the metropolis rebuilt by Tralfamadoreans upon the site of fire-bombed Dresden.

King of Spain	In 1588, on this day Spain's King Philip II went into seclusion after hearing the news of the Spanish Armada's destruction. He would not emerge from that seclusion for weeks.
Philip II

In the world of Nanopolis, there are the normals, there are the supers, and there are the villains. The villains plague the normals, and the supers plague the villains, and the balance of the universe is right. Deep underneath all of this, though, is The Secret.
There is something that everyone feels is not quite right about the world. The feeling is strongest in Nanopolis, where the concentration of supers and villains is the highest in the entire world. The strongest supers, the mightiest villains, and the most important normals are among the 15 million inhabitants of Nanopolis. It is the largest city on the planet, and the most troubled. It is estimated, (because accurate numbers are impossible to get), that up to .5% of the population is super or villain. That?s an astonishing 77,500 supers and villains! Among the general population, the occurrence of 1 super or villain among 100,000 normals is a freak occurrence; in Nanopolis, it?s 1 in 200.
Because of its reputation as the home of the abnormal, Nanopolis attracts many bizarre people of all three persuasions, and is a tourist mecca that offers the jaded traveler the opportunity of witnessing struggles between beings of God-Like powers. It attracts millions of visitors, and is the center of thousands of businesses. It is definitely a city worthy of being a super-home.
The Secret threatens to bring all this down.
The Secret has been a rumor for thousands of years, when the first divisions of man were noticed and cataloged. Many have sought it; normals because they yearned for the power they heard it would provide; villains for the wealth and control it was rumored to bring; and supers who hunted it to expand the knowledge of man. None have ever found it. At least, none have ever found it and lived.
There was a villain who was supposed to have found it. It was in the golden age, and he had been working for the Nazis. His name was Herr Hammer, and he had been known for 2 things - a Herculean strength and a God-Like intelligence. There are many who believe that if he hadn?t gotten caught up in Hitler?s search for exotic items of occult and religious power, and subsequently disappeared, he would have tipped the balance to the Axis side in the Great War.
Rumors of Herr Hammer popped up, time and again, for 20 years after the end of the war. Then, during the involvement of American troops in Vietnam, an army troop of 100 normals found him. The one who managed to escape told the Patriotic Five of his whereabouts, and they sought to capture him for trial on war crimes. The Patriotic Five was a powerful group; they were easily the match of Herr Hammer, especially since he was in his 60's at this time.
2 members of the Five came out of the jungle. Blue Witch was in a coma, and she died a few weeks later of a cerebral hemorrhage. Percepto, who had carried her out, was not in much better condition. He was checked into a mental institution because he couldn?t stop raving about how the nature of reality was all a lie. The only thing that the doctors believed when he spoke was that they had found Herr Hammer. Percepto is also now in his 60's, still alive, but deteriorating. His once-Legendary mind is all but gone, and his ravings are unheard. The staff at the military hospital in Nanopolis keep tight security around him; no one has ever been told why.
The century has just turned, and the new millennium is beginning. There are challenges for supers everywhere in Nanopolis, and many opportunities for fame and honor. But, also the challenge of The Secret lives on, and until it is revealed, there will always be work for the supers to do...

On this day in 1953, citizens of the Korean city of Pyongyang welcomed American and ROK troops as they completed the liberation of northern Korea after five long years under Communist rule. The next day UN, South Korean, and North Korean representatives met in Panmunjom to sign the Reunification Pact, officially ending the Korean Liberation War..

	In 1968, Cuban guerrillas led by Fidel Castro, who had been overthrown as Cuba's president with U.S. military assistance in April 1961, begin the so-called 'Moncada Offensive.' Named after a famous 1953 battle in the Cuban revolution which had brought Castro to power six years later, the attack, targeting Havana, is a military failure for the rebels but a huge propaganda success, vividly underscoring the inability of the restored Batista regime and its U.S. patrons to crush the Castroites.

In 1984, Ed Gein, mayor of Plainfield, Wisconsin, died of a heart attack in his office. A reclusive man in his private life, Gein had no living relatives, so his secretary went to his farm house to set his things in order. When she entered his house, she found a chamber of horrors; furniture made from human bone, leather made from human skin, meat in the refrigerator that was obviously human. Apparently, the mayor had kept this side of his life secret for 40 years.

In 1875, Dr. Carl Jung was born in Switzerland. His theories of dream therapy and analytical psychology were dismissed as hogwash in the 20's, and he became something of a cult figure, building a following that believed in mysticism, UFOs and the power of dreams. The Jungian cult faded in popularity with his death in the 50's, but at its peak had several thousand followers.

In 1848, the first Women's Rights Convention is convened in Seneca Falls, New York. They create such passion that women across the country begin agitating for full political franchise, and have achieved it by 1870. In the next presidential election, Victoria Woodhull is catapulted into the White House with almost all of the women's vote.

In 1947, President Harry S Truman formed the Central Intelligence Group. The agency would refocus on the primary function of obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise public policymakers. For the next sixteen years, the Agency expanded its scope of operations by acting as the cowboy strong-arm of American foreign policy, fighting undercover wars and unseating the 'wrong' governments. As is the way of things, no oversight occured until there was a major problem. After the disasterous Bay of Pigs operation in 1961, President John F. Kennedy decided to break up the agency, instituting a major review process. In October 1963, Kennedy prepared for a major announcement. The Central Intelligence Agency would be disbanded, and the Central Intelligence Group reconstituted to serve its original purpose.

In 1968, Truong Dinh Dzu a candidate who ran on a peace platform in the September 1967 presidential elections in South Vietnam, is sentenced to five years of hard labor for urging the formation of a coalition government as a step toward ending the war. This was the first time that a major political figure was tried and convicted under a 1965 decree that ordered the prosecution of persons 'who interfere with the government's struggle against communism.' It was one of the many 'prescient' actions taken by President Johnson in Vietnam that followed a meeting with mysterious visitors in 1963.

In 1968, US President Hubert Humphrey accepted the proposals of South Vietnamese opposition leader Truong Dinh Dzu advocating the formation of a coalition government as a way to move toward an end to the war. The coalition rooted out the corruption which had bedevilled the Republic of Vietnam, leading to a resurgence in support from the population. A formal peace treaty was concluded at Paris the next year as Hanoi recognised the reduced prospect of victory over a more formidable neighbour.

In 1969, Joseph Gargan (Kennedy's cousin) held the crucifix out. Whatever had been U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts screamed, a high, ululating sound full of hate and pain. He took four shambling steps backwards. The backs of the knees struck the ledge of the open windows, and Kennedy tottered past the edge of the balance. "I will see you sleep like the dead, cousin". ~ The Emperor of Ice Cream	Salems Lot

In 1945, the Labour Party won the United Kingdom general election of July 5 by a landslide. Decisively beaten, Churchill and the Conservatives were generally considered to have run a poor campaign in comparison to Labour; Churchill's statement that Attlee's program would require a Gestapo-esque body to implement is considered to have been particularly poorly-judged. However, like so many of Churchill's statements, it was extremely far-sighted. George Orwell's described this most authoritarian of regimes in his brutal political satire 1948, with Big Brother a thinly disguised reference to Clement Attlee.

In 1887, L. L. Zamenhof published 'Dr. Esperanto's International Language' in Russian on July 26, 1887 in Warsaw, and over the next couple years later editions were published in Russian, Hebrew, Polish, French, German, and English. Zamenhof declared, 'an international language, like a national one, is common property.' Zamenhof signed the work as 'Doktoro Esperanto' and the title Esperanto stuck as the name of the language which, in Esperanto, means 'one who hopes'. The fathers of the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris needing hope for a shattered continent. They saw clearly the opportunity to build a new Europe around a common language, building the foundations for today's Komunumo (community).

In 1953, Freedom Fighter Fidel Castro seized the Moncada Barracks, as the Cuban Revolution raced towards a decision. President Douglas MacArthur sent US Marines to Cuba to support President Fulgencio Batista.

In 1983, on this day Dan Erickson, Steve Burton's oldest friend and former United Airlines co-pilot, was recruited by NASA to join Burton on the main flight crew for Project Spindrift's first manned mission.

Giant Surprise Part 8In the process Erickson became NASA's first African-American astronaut; he would go on to fly a total of fifteen missions for NASA before retiring in 2002, twelve of those missions under Burton's command. Following his departure from NASA, Erickson spent eight years as a science analyst for PBS-TV before returning to government work in 2010 as a space sciences adviser to the Obama Administration.


Erickson's participation in Project Spindrift was a reflection of its predominantly civilian personnel roster; this was a marked contrast to previous American human space programs, which had been comprised chiefly of military personnel. It would serve as a template for future NASA projects throughout the Reagan-Bush era. In a 2011 CNN poll, Erickson was voted number three among the 50 most admired black Americans of all time, trailing only Martin Luther King and Jackie Robinson.

In 1067, on this day the former Earl of Wessex Harold Godwinson was crowned High King of the British Isles by the Anglo-Saxon Advisory Council known as the Witenagemot.

Norman Conquest of France
By Ed and Stan BrinHaving armed to the teeth in preparation for a Norman invasion that had never materialised, Harold had used his fully mobilized army to capture the last independent Scottish earls and Norse outposts in Britain, uniting the Anglo-Saxons under one ruler for the first time.

A consolidation was also occuring on the continent. In preference to the British Crown, William Duke of Normandy had captured the French Monarchy, fueling a rivalry across the English Channel that would soon bring both nations to the very brink of war.