In 2011, the fourth movie in the popular Spider-Man series was released, with actor Toby McGuire repeating his dual role as Peter Parker and Spider-Man, Kirsten Dunst returning as Mary Jane Watson. Dylan Baker costarred as Dr. Curtis Connors (whose CGI-aided transformation into the monstrous Lizard and then back to human form would win an Oscar in the special effects category), John Malkovich as the Vulture and Anne Hathaway as Mary Jane's romantic rival Gwen Stacy.

Release of fourth Spider-Man movieCreative differences between producer Sam Raimi and Sony Pictures nearly threatened to derail the film, as producer Sam Raimi feared he could not meet the release deadline without compromising the film. Ultimately, however, the disputes were resolved, with Raimi scaling back the script by eliminating, among other things, a planned appearance of the villain Venom. That character, along with another longtime Spider-Man foe, the Sandman, was instead slated to appear in a fifth, as yet unproduced film, although actors McGuire and Dunst have hinted that they are not interested in appearing in another Spider-Man movie, suggesting that their roles may need to be recast.

In 1864, on this day the commander of First Corps [3] of the Army of Northern Virginia Lt Gen James Longstreet was killed by friendly fire on the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness.
An installement of the Federal's Lost Cause thread.

Federal Lost Cause Part 2: Death of Old War HorseBy incredible coincidence he was accidentally shot by his own men only four miles away from the place where General Jackson was injured under identical circumstances a year earlier [2]. And if the demise of the South Carolinian was a setback, then the timing appeared a disaster for the South. Because panic was fairly underway in Hancock's II Corps and Longstreet might well have been able to force Grant to retreat back across the Rapidan. Instead, the Yankees disengaged and headed south.

But as events developed, it didn't matter. Because three weeks later General Jackson won an improbable field victory at the Battle of North Anna and the electorate moved firmly into the Peace Camp. Months later, General McClellan edged Lincoln at the Polls, and the Civil War was at an end. Dedicating the victory to Longstreet, Jackson praised his colleague as "the best corps commander in the conflict on either side" [1]. Perhaps unfairly, by comparison Jackson drew a lot of harsh criticism in the post-war era, particularly for his poor performance at Antietam. But Longstreet was held up high as the standard bearer of the Confederate forces, basking in the glory of what was after all a stalemate brought to a climax by the Yankee electoral cycle.

In 1865, on this day Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Judah Benjamin and the Cabinet Ministers of the Confederate Government-in-Exile arrived in Granada where they received a warm, sympathetic welcome from General William Walker on behalf of the slaver's republic he had established in Nicaragua nine years before.

Due SouthKeen to avoid a trial which would re-open the dispute about the legal right of secession, Abraham Lincoln had decided to permit the rebel leadership to make their escape. And to ease reconstruction, he ordered Union forces to allow over one hundred thousand die hard supporters to head due south and join Jeff Davis et al in Nicaragua.

History would judge that the avoidance of a potentially messy end to the Civil War was achieved by cynically moving the institution of slavery offshore. But at the time, Lincolns supporters would argue that the President was merely following his regular policies by shaping his decision-making around the need to preserve the Union at all costs.

As Lincoln had shrewdly predicted, the pathetic remant government of Davis came to naught. But the flimsy state created by Walker, and sustained by Napoleon III, received a boost that would spur the next generation to seek out Anglo-British imperial support and carve up Central America.

The problem of dealing with the Confederate successor state would be inherited by President Theodore Roosevelt during the construction of the Panama Canal. And the angry Anglo-French investors who had just funded the construction of the Nicaraguan Canal.

In 1983, the PLM captured the Soviet government naval base at the Black Sea port of Odessa, seizing tons of ammunition and equipment and thwarting the Kremlin's hopes of reinforcing besieged Red Army troops in the Ukraine via amphibious landing.

Fall of OdessaPost-Cold War historians would later cite the rebel victory at Odessa as the point where the tide of the Russian civil war began to turn against the Communists once and for all; the events at Odessa seriously damaged morale in all sectors of the Soviet regular armed forces, and in the late stages of the war Red Army commanders found themselves increasingly plagued by desertions. By 1986 some 200 Red Air Force pilots had gone over to the PLM side and fifty Soviet naval personnel had been executed on suspicion of mutiny.

By the time the war ended in 1987 only a handful of combat troops were still fighting on the Communist side-- the rest, with the conspicuous exception of a shrinking cadre of hard-line generals, had all chosen to throw in their lot with the insurgents. In fact, the very week of the final Communist surrender to the PLM one of the few remaining Russian naval warships still under Kremlin control was torpedoed by a rebel submarine in the Baltic; the submarine's captain would later be appointed chief of staff for the post-civil war Russian navy.

In 1941, on this day the British Government lost a vote of confidence by just three votes triggering the immediate resignation of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Anthony Eden.

Churchill's Government falls after Greek MisadventureEden had embarked on a long tour of the Middle East in a futile attempt to save the Balkans from Axis Occupation. In fact the decision to overrule military advice and intervene in the Balkans was Churchill's alone. Nevertheless both Field Marshall Sir John Dill and Commander-in-Chief (Middle East) Sir Archibald Wavell were both forced from position after the failure of the mission, a savage outcome that soured relations between the political and military leadership. First Eden, and shortly afterwards Churchill were on their way too.

"The decision to go to Greece was a political one and from the point of view of a professional it was a military nonsense" ~ Lt-Col BelchamOn returning to London, Eden was required to provide the House of Commons with a "full and as clear an account as I could of the events of the last two or three months", but instead gave a disasterous performance that required Churchill's intervention. "Nothing can excuse a disaster. It was due to very woolly thinking before it was launched" ~ Gen FreybergAnd his claim that the coup in Belgrade was orchestrated by British intelligence was exposed as a desperate lie to extract some value from the whole dismal episode. Worse, a golden opportunity to end the North Africa Campaign had been thrown away by the transfer of Allies forces to Greece.

"[The Balkan nations] are such a poor lot that they would only add to our military commitments and we should gain nothing". ~ Maj-Gen KennedyChurchill claimed that "everything in human power was done by us and that our honour as a nation is clear". Shortly afterwards the House voted on the motion "That this House approves the policy of His Majesty's Government in sending help to Greece and declares its confidence that our operations in the Middle East and in all other theatres of war will be pursued by the Government with the utmost vigour".

Having warned that Balkan states faced the isolated defeat of Scandinavian nations a year before, it now appeared that another fall of Government might in the offing after the defeat in the House of Commons. Because the German propaganda image of the Luftwaffe bombing the unprotected Acropolis (pictured) struck at the heart of the confidence issue, that the future of civilization was imperilled by the accident-prone leadership of Winston Churchill. His successor, Lord Halifax would sign an armistice with Hitler that would permit the Germans to concentrate on a common enemy, the Soviet Union.

In 2002, on this day the former head of South Africa's Chemical and Bacterioligical Warfare (CBW) unit, Daan Goosen offered the FBI the entire collection of pathogens developed by his research group during the Apartheid era.

Bioweapons for SaleThe pricetag was a mere five million dollars in cash and nineteen U.S. passports for his associated and their dependents. As a gesture of goodwill, Goosen provided a vial of genetically altered bacteria that he had freeze-dried and hidden inside a toothpaste tube for secret passage to the United States. A retired CIA officer couriered the microbes eight thousand miles for the drop-off with the FBI.

The FBI refused the offer and skeptical agents turned the matter over to South African authorities, who twice investigated Goosen but never charged him. Yet during this critical period, Goosen was tricked by agents of Saddam Hussein's regime masquerading as FBI Officers.

The program known as "Project Coast" has been commissioned in 1981 by P.W. Botha as an offensive weapon for operations in Angola against Soviet-backed SWAPO, Cuban and Angolan troops. "The weapons programs were ostensibly terminated, yet clearly they weren't able to destroy everything," said Jeffrey M. Bale of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, who carried out a study of South Africa's weapons programs. "The fact that Goosen and others are providing samples and being approached by foreign parties suggests that these things never really went away".

These CBW now entered the arsenal of Saddam Hussein on the eve of the Second Gulf War. And US President Bush's "State of the Union" assertion that Saddam had obtained weapons of mass destruction from Africa was suddenly transformed from a ridiculous falsehood to a cold hard fact.

In 1915, B-Movie director George O. Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

B-Movie director Orson Welles born by Jake DominguezThrough a nearly 40-year career, Welles produced over 450 motion pictures, the vast majority of which were obscure, low-budget science fiction yarns or monster thrillers. After his October 30, 1938 broadcast adaptation of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds for the CBS radio network, Welles quickly realized the potential of fantastic fictional concepts and creatures to thrill and overwhelm the populace. He quickly moved to Hollywood where he convinced RKO to fund his first and most-acclaimed cinematic 'achievement', Venusian Kane. Despite the rather pithy story of a man from another world's struggle to adapt to Earth society, the film featured a number of directorial innovations that quickly placed it among the most well-critiqued films of 1941.

However, the success of the film seems to have wilted Welles' ambitions to transform Hollywood's creative process, and he soon became comfortable churning out an average of a dozen low-grade films per year for a multitude of lesser-known film studios, chief among them American-International Pictures, for whom he directed the cult classic I Was A Teenaged Biker Werewolf in 1962. Toward the end of his life, as the B-movie market dried up with the growing popularity of the expensive genre movie, Welles moved on to performing voiceover work for popular cartoons and television programs, as well as hosting the Saturday Night horror film showcase program Creature Features for a nearly 10-year stint.

Welles died of a heart attack in 1985, and at his own request was memorialized only by having his image and voice inserted in the role of a doomed citizen in the then in-production Japanese film Godzilla vs. Biollante.

In 1979, on this fateful day in Los Angeles, James Earl Carter was assassinated by a thirty-five year old Ohio-born unemployed American drifter called Raymond Lee Harvey. The President had been all set to deliver a speech to a predominantly Hispanic audience at the Civic Center Mall when eight shots had rung out in rapid succession.

The Assassination of the Georgia GiantLAPD managed to arrest both the assassin, and a gang of Mexican hit men armed with sniper rifles. In fact, an investigation ordered by President Mondale subsequently discovered that the original plan was for Harvey to simply act as a diversion, but to increase the odds of success, this was upgraded and his starter pistol replaced with a live weapon. And because of his successful shot, the Mexicans had attempted to escape, but had been apprehended anyway.

With the Presidential election just twelve months away, the conspiracy threw the campaign into confusion. And of course the multiple connections with John F. Kennedy had implications for the campaign of his younger brother Teddy.

In 1822, Sir Harry Paget Flashman VC KCB KCIE the fictionalized anti-hero of the Flashman Papers was born on this day to H. Buckley Flashman, Esq., Ashby, and Hon. Alicia Paget.

Birth of FlashmanThe author Thomas Hughes introduced him as a notorious childhood bully in his 1857 classic Tom Brown's School Days in which the character was expelled for drunkenness. George MacDonald Fraser later decided to write Flashman's memoirs, portraying him an "illustrious Victorian soldier": experiencing many 19th-century wars and adventures and rising to high rank in the British Army, acclaimed as a great soldier, while remaining by his unapologetic self-description "a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a coward-and oh yes, a toady".

Naturally, when the 1971 mini-series of TBSC was a blockbuster success, screenplay writers proposed a continuation. And their search for a tall dark actor led them straight to Christopher Lee. The initial screenings were a huge success and over more than fifteen years all twelve volumes were turned into movies. For decades it framed Lee's acting career, typecast as "the man who played Flashman". But his desire to shoot horror movies was at least placated by his casting as Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies.

In 1914, on this day American film and stage actor Tyrone Edmund Power, Jr. was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. From 1930s to the 1950s Power appeared in dozens of films, often in swashbuckler roles or romantic leads. His better-known films include The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, The Black Swan, Prince of Foxes, The Black Rose, and Captain from Castile.

Happy Endings 22In fact, he had over-strained himself and had difficulty accepting the transition into middle age. On November 15, 1958 he was admitted to hospital suffering from acute chest pains. But fortunately, he recovered. This health scare vindicated his recent decision to turn down another strenuous role in Solomon and Sheba.

Even though he was only one year into his third marriage, his relationship with Debbie Ann Minardos had fundamentally changed him. And the prospect of the upcoming birth of their child (a son Tyrone William Power, IV) made him exercise caution. And ultimately, he had allowed himself to accept his wife's sound advice - to slow down. But to the outside world, all that was known at that time was that Power intended to move into character roles. Still only forty-four, he went on to star in some of his most memorable roles, continuing a long career into the late nineteen seventies.

In 1883, Field Marshal Archibald Wavell architect of the Allied conquest of North Africa born in Colchester, Essex. As the professional Head of Middle East Command he oversaw the successful prosecution of Operation Compass. And by early 1941 the Italian Army had been routed and Allied forces were the masters of North Africa.

The Oyster Clams UpBut events in Greece now conspired against him. Because Churchill desperately wanted to send several divisions of his experienced troops into Greece. During their strategic planning meetings, he was enraged by Wavell's long silences (King George VI nicknamed him "the oyster" after a sticky audience). Of course Churchill was thinking along the right lines, using Hitler's megalomania as a means of trapping the Nazi beast into exhaustion. However, in practical military terms, Wavell was right to "Clam Up", Churchill was wrong and somehow common sense prevailed. Because surely British support would not change the outcome in Greece but it could reverse the hard fought victory in North Africa. And ultimately, Churchill could not afford to sanction that loss of his solitary victory.

And so Wavell continued his invasion of Libya. By the end of the year, Britain was the master of North Africa, and Nazi Germany the master of a similar sized space of Soviet Russia. Both nations then signed an armistice followed by a "spheres of interest" agreement. Just weeks later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour and the United States joined a ferocious, must regional, war in the Far East.

In 1991, the shock reverberating across the nation began to abate somewhat with the greatly reassuring news that Senator Robert Dole of Kansas had agreed to serve as Veep in the one-day old Quayle Administration.

A Heartbeat Away, Part 2Dole joined the United States Army's Enlisted Reserve Corps to fight in World War II. Dole became a second lieutenant in the Army's 10th Mountain Division. In April 1945, while engaged in combat near Castel d'Aiano in the Apennine mountains southwest of Bologna, Italy, Dole was hit by German machine gun fire in his upper right back. His right arm was also badly injured. When fellow soldiers saw the extent of his injuries all they thought they could do was to "give him the largest dose of morphine they dared and write an "M" for "morphine" on his forehead in his own blood, so that nobody else who found him would give him a second, fatal dose". Dole had to wait nine hours on the battlefield before being taken to the 15th Evacuation Hospital. His right arm was paralyzed; he often carried a pen in his right hand to signal that Dole could not shake hands with that arm. He was three times decorated for heroism, receiving two Purple Hearts for his injuries, and the Bronze Star with combat "V" for valor for his attempt to assist a downed radio man.

And so being a man of honour and sense of duty, for the good of the nation Dole had graciously agreed to serve under a man thirty years younger than him and in a position he had sought fifteen years before under Gerald Ford. And maybe to rebuild his reputation from the damage done during the 1988 election, ironically enough, by the winning candidate, George H.W. Bush who had died during an emergency cardioversion just twenty-four hours before.

Because despite having the support of President Ronald Reagan, Bush had managed to lose the Iowa Caucus and only just narrowly won the New Hampshire primary by pledging a "kinder and gentler nation" and smearing Dole as a tax raiser. In office, he dispensed with these cheap lies and sought to establish a new world order with America as a hyperpower, and he also raised taxes (despite pledging "read my lips - no new taxes"). Perhaps worse of all, during the campaign Bush had used every possibile photo opportunity to promote his own mobility, cruelly aware that Dole's war wounds preventing him from doing so as well. The day after his withdrawal from the race, Dole was gripped by a shattering epiphany, blaming himself for his defeat by "not being whole".

Still, Robert Dole picked himself up very quickly and soldiered on as old soldiers do. Only a few short months later, Quayle discovered that he was afflicted by blood disorder known as phlebitis, forcing him to withdraw from the upcoming presidential race. By then Dole had acted on his final election campaign pledge, to get George Bush from "stop lying about my record". That record had been set straight, and Dole looked comfortably on course for victory in 1992. It would be the last, and greatest mission of the World War Two Generation.

In 2688 AUC, the Ethiopian City of Addis Ababa fell to the East African Roman forces of the Legatus Legionis Badoglio.

Government ReshuffleEmperor Haille Selassie had fled the country three days before, clearing the way for the Ethiopian Empire to be formally annexed on May 7. Then on May 9, Caesar Emmanuel III was proclaimed Emperor of Ethiopia (the countries of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland being merged into a single colony known as Roman East Africa (Africa Orientale Roma, or AOR).

Rome would taste a rare military success that had been conspiciously absent in recent years; "Emperor! Emperor! Salute the Emperor!" ("Imperatore! Imperatore! Salute Imperatore!") chanted the crowd when the Caesar, in full military uniform, showed himself on the balcony in the Palazzo Venezia.

Whilst Caesar maintained a dignified silence, General Mussolini unwisely did not, acting in what some might describe as a more flamboyant Latin manner (pictured top left) bordering on self-congratulatory exuberance. So when victory was announced by the General the Roman population reacted with jubilant abandon.

"People of Rome, people of the world, peace has been restored".From the balcony, the General proclaimed: "During the thirty centuries of our history, Rome has known many solemn and memorable moments -- this is unquestionably one of the most solemn, the most memorable. People of Rome, people of the world, peace has been restored". The crowds would not let him go - ten times they recalled the General to the balcony and cheered and waved while the boys of youth organizations sang the newly composed "Hymn of the Empire" (Inno dell'impero).

Caesar was less impressed with the General's victory, achieved frankly through the use of overwhelming force and also the cowardly use of mustard gas. Now observing some potential for confusion over who was actually "Il Duce" (the Leader), Caesar ordered that the General and his mistress, Clara Petacci were to be crucified and then hung upside down in the Palazzo Venezia (pictured right).

Whilst the remainder of the Romans were rejoicing, Haile Selassie was constructing a memorable letter of protest to stir up the Celts who would soon wage war with the Romans ~ "We have decided to bring to an end the most unequal, most unjust, most barbarous war of our age, and have chosen the road to exile in order that our people will not be exterminated and in order to consecrate ourselves wholly and in peace to the preservation of our empire's independence ... we now demand that [the Celtic allies] should decide not to recognize territorial extensions, or the exercise of an assumed sovereignty".

In 1945, on this day low flying American and British bombers released thousands of white doves over the City of Tokyo.
Peace breaks outAfter several days of behind-the-scenes negotiations the Gozenkaigi (Japanese leadership) decided, in principle, to accept generous proposals for conditional surrender. John Nance Garner had only recently entered the White House following the sudden demise of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The new President was the son of a former Confederate cavalry trooper, famously described by the British journalist Alistair Cooke as "the last public man linking America of the Civil War and America of the Nuclear Age". Garner had the gift of perspective resulting from a genuine insight into long-term history. Japan was ready to surrender, and there was absolutely no need to be a damn-fool and usher in apocalyptic weapons to bring the war to a speedy conclusion; best to set up a beacon of liberty to whom the post-war nations would rally.

In 1626, on this day Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland aboard the See Meeuw.

Nieuw-Nederland foundedover the course of the next three centuries, Nieuw-Nederland would develop side-by-side with the United States. The two nations had grown up alongside one another as Europeans colonized North America. The English threatened to eliminate the Dutch from their holdings of New Amsterdam when four frigates occupied the harbor. Director-General Peter Stuyvesant, after considering ceding the land in hopes of retaking it, decided to head off a Second Anglo-Dutch War and refused. After firing on the city, the frigates were rebuffed and returned to England empty-handed.

Since that time, New Amsterdam quickly expanded. Jews ousted from Brazil as Portugal retook Dutch conquests flooded into the city, and immigrants from all over the world were accepted. The economy flourished as pelts were harvested from the upper Hudson and established shipping. When the twin states of New England and Great Virginia declared independence from Britain, the Dutch granted support first financially and then through its impressive navy. When Napoleon conquered the Netherlands in Europe, Neiu Nederlands announced its own independence.A new article by Jeff Provine

Relations between Neiu Nederlanders and Americans were amicable. They were particularly close with New England due to ties in shipping and manufacturing, although relations were at times strained while the United States to the south determining water rights of Lake Erie. When New England broke off trade with the US over slavery, the Nederlanders maintained a lucrative neutrality. The sudden surge of trade brought about a new golden age, which led to a great deal of corruption that responded in a powerful Progressive Movement, headed by the young Theodoor van Rosevelt.

Rosevelt was part of the wealthy and politically influential family that had begun with Claes Maartenszen van Rosevelt, who purchased a large farm on Manhattan Island that would translate into enormous wealth as the city grew. Theodoor was born in 1858 and struggled through his childhood suffering from asthma. He overcame the disease by determination and exercise with seeming limitless energy, features that would define his life. After his education, Theodoor traveled extensively to the American West as well as Dutch holdings in the Caribbean and South America. He returned and entered civil service, soon becoming Director of the Navy where he built a canal through Panama and led the Great White Fleet on its tour around the world. By 1910, he was elected President.

When war erupted in Europe, Rosevelt hoped to join quickly and use the impressive New Dutch fleet, but business was too good trading through the neutral Netherlands. Despite his extensive campaigning, it wasn't until the Americans threatened Germany that he finally gained the agreement of shipping interests who disapproved of attacks by uboats. In 1917, unrestricted submarine warfare resumed, and a joint declaration of war was announced. Thanks to Rosevelt's anticipation, New Dutch troops joined the front almost immediately.

In 2012, on this day the blockbuster movie Marvel's The Avengers premiered worldwide with Johnny Depp the surprise casting choice for the role of Tony Stark, genius, billionaire, playboy, and philanthropist with a mechanical suit of armor.

Premiere of Marvel's The Avengers
by Ed & Andrew BeaneInsurance issues had forced Robert Downey, Jr. to forced to withdraw and an opportunity was created for Depp to reportray Stark in a more eccentric caricature.

But the negative consequence of this choice was that he was unavailable for the shooting of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Film makers Rob Marshall and Jerry Bruckheimer turned to British actor Russell Brand who redefined the role of Captain Jack Sparrow.

In 1872, on this day the twenty-ninth President of the United States, Alexander M. Palmer was born in White Haven, Pennsylvania.

Alexander M. Palmer
29th President of the United StatesHe rose to national prominence serving as the fiftieth Attorney General, winning a great deal of public support for the organization of a series of high profile raids on Galleanist anarchists. And within the Justice Department he established a General Intelligence Division that soon became a storehouse of information about radicals in America.

But he exercised his own judgement in rejecting GID's flimsy evidence of plans for an attempted overthrow of the U.S. government on May Day 1920. Instead he fired the hot-headed and unbalanced principal officer J. Edgar Hoover. Fate intervened when President Wilson was assassinated less than six weeks after he resigned the office to seek the Democratic nomination.

With the country in turmoil, his staunch law enforcement credentials enabled him to defeat his main party rival James Cox. And he persuaded his other chief opponent William McAdoo to serve as his running mate. This pairing provided the regional balance to the ticket that defeated Warren Harding in the General election.