Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Death's Anniversary; The McMartin Case

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January 31st, 2006

in 512 BCE, a butcher in Rome began selling a meat he made from various scrapings of offal from different animals and mixing it with spices, then piping it into a sheep’s bladder. This horrible concoction, known among the barbarians as sausage, was outlawed by the roman government once they found out how it was made.

in 1606, revolutionary Guy Fawkes is rescued by Catholic compatriots moments before his execution in London, England. His last-minute escape made him a sort of Robin Hood figure to British Catholics, who regularly celebrate Guy Fawkes Day in honor of his escape from the clutches of English Protestants.

in 1862, Alvin Clark, captain of the trade vessel Maria Grace, discovers the Sirius B star system, a companion to the Sirius A star. In honor of his discovery, Sirius B is now known as Clark’s Star. Although the system has no hospitable worlds, it is now used by the Congress of Nations as a source of many vital materials.

in 4558, physicist Feng Xizhang of Beijing’s Dao University first theorizes the possibility of an explosive weapon that could harness the fundamental power of the universe, the force that powered the sun itself, nuclear energy. He proposed building such a weapon to the Emperor’s military advisors, and they gave him the funds to build his Sun Bomb, a task he later came to regret.

in 1918, Velma Porter reminds her husband, Mikhail von Heflin, that this date will be the day they meet for the first time in 1952. In spite of the virulent racism around them in the southern port city of Charleston, South Carolina, they enjoy a night of romance; unknown to them, they are watched the entire time by Milo Cranston.

in 1937, pop composer Phillip Glass was born in Baltimore, Maryland. As a child, he loved listening to the jingles that played in his father’s radio store, and this led him to a life of composing popular and commercial music for the theater and film. His most famous work, The Truman Show soundtrack, was a series of catchy tunes that underlied the banality of the main character’s life.

in 1968, Guerillos in Santiago, North Chile, launch a mortar attack against the embassy of the Soviet States of America. 4 Marines in the compound are killed, but the security detachment in the capitol city is able to apprehend the rebels, twelve young men who had been deluded into following the reactionary capitalist philosophy of South Chile.

in 1990, the retrial of Ray Buckey of the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, brought into the open the hideous ring of Satanists that were running most of America’s nursery schools and day-care centers. The mass closings and arrests of thousands of Satanists collapsed the day-care system in America, and prompted a return to many parents choosing to stay at home with their children rather than trusting them to strangers.

in 2005, Chelsea Perkins and Alma May Watson discover a book of spells written by an ancestor of Perkins' in the Great Tree. Delving into it, they see that this ancestor, one Morris Perkins, had been more than willing to dabble in Ingredients that the Council of Wisdom had outlawed centuries before. Her curiosity peaked, Miss Perkins begins gathering some of the less-illegal Ingredients together to cast one of the least-harmful looking spells.

in 2005, the Save Earth camp site where Jeanna Best and Dave Lange are being kept is raided by Texas Rangers, who start shooting anyone who tries to flee. In spite of this, Lange and Best make a break for it, along with several others. Losing their pursuit in the hills, they try to double back and see what is happening to the camp. When they find a hill where they can observe the campsite unseen, they see the supposed “Rangers” executing the Save Earthers that have been captured.

Timelines in today's post: the Mlosh, the Chinese Empire, von Heflin, Communist America, and the Chelsea Perkins timeline..

We have a winner! Sean Demory is the first winner of our Star Trek Challenge series - Sean, email us to let us know your preferences for your prize alternate history post! Also, you have to let someone else win the next one :) Today's "Six Degrees of Star Trek" challenge: Connect the made-for-TV movie Indictment: The McMartin Case to Star Trek. Place your answers in the comments and see the Forum for previous results. For more on 6 degrees games, click here.


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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you mean "Indictment: The McMartin Trial"? Because I can't find "Indictment: The McMartin Case".

If so, James Cromwell plays Judge Pounders, and he appeared in three episodes of TNG, one of DS9, and one of Enterprise. And he was in "Star Trek: First Contact" as Zefram Cochrane.

Anonymous said...

Indictment: The McMartin Trial was produced by Oliver Stone,
who directed Natural Born Killers,
in which Peter Crombie acted (intense cop),
who acted in DS9 (Fallit Kot)

Random

Alien Truther said...

Sorry, it is "trial" instead of "case" - I wasn't paying attention when I looked it up in IMDB, apparently.

Anyway, good catch, Max - Mr. Cromwell makes the movie a 1-stepper!

Alien Truther said...

Random- that Peter Crombie may be the new Kevin Bacon. Either that, or the Transformers movie will be... :)

Anonymous said...

Between "The Doors," "Se7en" and "Natural Born Killers," Peter Crombie's a beast. Must keep him in reserve for later.

If only he turned up in "Transformers: The Movie," he'd be the perfect actor and he'd be perfectly connected to the Golden Age of Hollywood (through Orson "Unicron" Welles.)

- Sean

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