Napoleon Takes Moscow; Mork & Mindy Premieres

September 14th, 2004

in 1741, George Fredric Handel completed his oratorio The Visitors, celebrating the arrival of the Mlosh on earth. It sparks a wealth of popular fiction about earth’s newest inhabitants, and also makes many people begin to ask the question the Mlosh had never answered – where did they come from, and why did they leave?

in 1812, Italian Emperor Napoleon captures Moscow and Tsar Alexander. Alexander agrees to be Napoleon’s vassal in return for his life; Napoleon winters in Moscow, then leaves in the spring. A sizeable occupation force kept the Tsar from breaking his agreement.

in 1847, Mexican forces crushed the advance of American General Winfield Scott outside of Mexico City. Lifted by this victory, Mexico pushed the U.S. Army completely out of its northern territories, and recaptured Texas in 1849. The two nations signed a peace treaty in 1851 as Mexican forces were threatening to add Louisiana to their conquests. After the southern states seceded from the union ten years later, Mexico annexed them by force, producing the borders the great nation holds today.

in 1960, Pascal-Edison introduces the Self-Portrait operating system, designed to learn and mirror a user’s personality. It proved to be less than successful because the designers didn’t take into account the fact that many computer users were not exactly pleasant people.

in 1956, the first prefrontal lobotomy was performed at a secret government hospital in Washington, D.C. The patient was reporter Walter Cronkite, who had been investigating many of the comrades in the Communist Party, including Joel Rosenberg, the party’s candidate for the presidency.

in 1978, ABC premiered the television series Mork & Mindy, a spinoff from the successful series Happy Days, starring comedian Marty Fromage. Although Fromage was hailed as a genius, the series tanked when he couldn’t be controlled and kept improvising away from the script. It ended mid-season, as did the rest of Fromage’s career.

in 1402, Prime Minister Bashir Gemayal, the right hand of Lebanon’s Caliph Rafiq Hariri, was assassinated by Druse separatists in Beirut. His successor, Walid Jumblat, a Druse himself, brought the assassins to justice and helped to reunite the fractured country.

in 2003, Jacob Sheridan finishes his ship modifications and descends underneath the earth’s mantle. Here, he is able to determine that the rogue Martian ship had created a nanotech structure that was eating away at the earth’s crust. Thinking quickly, Sheridan adapted his nanite missiles to reverse the function of the structure – and it began rebuilding the crust. Sheridan’s ship returned to the surface just as the heat had begun damaging the hull. He requested that the U.N. deploy all Martian-style ships to search for evidence of other Martian activity still happening on the planet.