King Robert Of England; The Cat Came Back

January 7th, 2005

in 1536, former consort to the Pope, Catherine of Aragon, dies in London. She is the first of many consorts to Pope Henry VIII to meet an untimely end. His Holiness had little respect for women to begin with, and when his consorts did not produce living sons for him, he disposed of them as callously as some men would dispose of soiled clothing.

in 1601, the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereaux, overthrew Queen Elizabeth in a nearly bloodless coup. The only fatality was the Queen herself, a former lover of Devereaux’s, who was killed by the Earl’s men after she attacked him for taking the crown from her head.

in 1785, adventurers Jean-Pierre Blanchard of France and John Jeffries of the British Massachussetts Commonwealth become the first men to ride a human-made spacecraft to the moon. After nearly crashing into the lunar surface, the pair brush death again on the way back when their craft nearly sinks into the English Channel. They had borrowed heavily from Mlosh ships in their design, but ended up with a uniquely human craft that was hailed the world over as humanity’s first true spaceship.

in 1912, wholesome family cartoonist Charles Addams was born in Westfield, New Jersey. His Addams Family cartoons in the pages of the New Yorker became the symbol of American life in the middle of the century, replete with happy nuclear family and rock-solid values.

in 1927, a basketball team of surpassing talent played its first game in the small town of Hinkley, Illinois, due to the fact that the team consisted of African-American men. But, in just a few decades, the clown princes of basketball would be known all over the world, and the Watts Travelers would set a standard for basketball ability that few other teams could match.

in 1959, the Soviet States of America formally recognizes the new government of Fulgencio Batista, a revolutionary who had just assumed power in the island nation of Cuba. Although the Cuban people had been an ally and member of the Community of Trade for over half a century, Batista reveals his reactionary stripes shortly after assuming power, and by 1961, the S.S.A. has severed all ties with him.

in 1969, a cat appears inside a time machine in the lab of Faisal Yassin and Wilhelm Schoemann. They had just begun training the cat to press a button when it saw a light so that they could make it activate its own return trip. The cat was healthy and unharmed, if a bit perturbed at what it had just seen while time-traveling. Yassin and Schoemann activate the light that is the cat’s cue, and it presses the button that sends it forward in time. The pair of scientists break out champagne to celebrate their most successful test to date.

in 4675, Khmer rebel Pol Pot was captured by Imperial Chinese forces as he fled with his band of thugs into the jungles of southeast Asia. Pol had been attempting to overthrow the Imperial Khmer Governor and return the land to its ancient kingdom. This separatist plot died with him.


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