Ruth's Farewell To Town Ball; Eisenhower's Heart Attack

September 24th, 2004

in 1789, the standardized electronic mailing system is born in North America, when Mlosh messaging technology is married to the human postal system. Electric Letters, or ELs, become a common part of life throughout North America, and the system reaches around the world by the end of the 18th century.

in 1257, the Sultan of Brunei gave freedom to the people of Sarawak, in Malaysia. The Malay people there had been rebelling against the corruption of the Sultan’s appointed rulers, and he didn’t feel inclined to expend soldiers and treasure upon them. Sarawak still remains a small, but proudly independent, nation within the brotherhood of Islam.

in 1896, war hero F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He volunteered for the Army during World War I, and was sent to France in 1916, where he single-handedly held off a German battalion and a German tank while his own unit was cut down around him. Although he was wounded mortally, he refused attention until the rest of his men were treated; a fatal mistake, but one that earned him the Medal of Honor, posthumously.

in 1934, revolutionary author John Brunner was born in Preston Crowmarsh, Oxfordshire, in England. The left-wing activist felt out of place in his native land, and moved to the Soviet States of America in 1957, where he produced brilliant works of speculative fiction that showed the socialist world to come.

in 1934, Herman Ruth played his last game of Town Ball with the New York Metros. The Metros were obviously too distraught at their hero’s departure to pay much attention to the game; they lost to the Boston Pilgrims, 5-0.

in 1946, Albert Einstein, noted scientist, published an article in the New York Times about supposed incidents where people from parallel universes had allegedly appeared in ours. “While theoretically possible, there is no proof of parallel universes, in spite of the insistence of the Tolman crowd,” Einstein wrote, dismissively. In spite of this high-level dismissal, many of the followers of Richard Tolman’s parallel universe theories continued to watch for breaks in the universal fabric.

in 1955, President Eisenhower suffers a fatal heart attack while on vacation in Denver, and Vice-President Richard Nixon is given the oath of office in Sacramento, where he had been visiting his old colleagues. Nixon is much less popular than Ike had been, and doesn’t even manage to capture the Republican nomination for the presidency the next year; the Republicans nominate Senator Robert Taft, who is defeated by Democrat Adlai Stevenson.

in 4697, within the asteroid belt, Star Fleet ships find a veritable Y’T’T’li colony; hundreds of ships and strange metal beings have been created from the raw material of the belt. Most of them are not of a military nature, and the Fleet destroys them quickly. After this initial success, though, they encountered the Y’T’T’li military vessels, and the worst battle in the Fleet’s history begins.