Bad News In The War

The state of TIAH

May 6th, 2007

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Alternate Historian's Note: We have an additional Guest Historian today, Jake Dominguez. Professor Jake has contributed to many of our contests before, and we are happy to see that he is still keeping his hand in.

in 1891, 'Sockless' Jerry Simpson, hearing the news that Missouri's new governor doesn't wish to participate in the siege of Kansas, pulls his men away from the Missouri border and sends them north to Nebraska. He also sends a telegram of congratulations to the new governor, Arnold Morgan, and tells him that Kansas has no designs on those who honor its sovereignty. This telegram throws a pall over Governor Morgan's reception of Major Mark Wainwright, who tries to argue that Simpson's Kansas volunteers mean to spread their rebellion across the midwest, and thus endanger Missouri. Morgan shows the telegram to Wainwright, saying, “Sir, this gives the lie to that rather bold declaration. I mean to make peace with my neighbors.” Wainwright leaves the meeting downhearted, seeing the chances of the Union to win this war dwindling away.

at the start of the Moon When Ponies Shed by the End of the White Man's War, War Leader His-Horse-Is-Crazy of the Ogala Lakota accepts the surrender of General George Crook at Forest Canyons, Nebraska. The white man's camp, while well-armed and filled with warriors, had been suffering over the long winter by lack of food and water, with forage parties being neatly cut down by the Lakota besiegers. Late in the winter, the white men had begun sending unarmed parties of women and children to gather food and water, prompting His-Horse-Is-Crazy, privately amused at the cleverness of his enemy, to decree these not be harmed. However, what supplies these managed to collect were insufficient, and the white man sent messengers to ask peace before the heat began to touch the territory. At the ceremony, George Crook, clearly familiar with the customs of the Lakota, bowed in submission and presented his very long steel knife and fine flat warbonnet, decorated with gold, to the War Leader. His-Horse-Is-Crazy was touched by the gesture and ordered that all whites be fed, and provisioned with one horse for every woman-and-two-children, as well as with enough supplies for the entire band to be able to leave the territory. This was done, and the sheer number of weapons left behind was found to be enough to arm a tribe twice the size of the gathered Lakota. However, the news of the victory swelled the numbers of willing warriors from the Plains People, guaranteeing the dominance of the Ogala Lakota in the area. post by Guest Historian Jake Dominguez

in 1915, B-Movie director George O. Welles was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Through 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. post by Guest Historian Jake Dominguez

In 1992, Neal Stephenson published Snow Crash a cyberpunk classic which described the outbreak of a virus in an anarcho-capitalist America of the near future. The title is a geeky reference to a total software failure mode on the Apple Macintosh computer. Stephenson's genius was to imagine that ancient Sumerian language constructs could invoke such a failure in the human mind itself. So successful was the novel, that five years later, Stephenson would attend the premier of the movie.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

In 1999, on the right shoulder of Route 5 in Center Lovell, Maine he heard the approaching roar of the engine. It was Mr Gray. Get off the road! Hide a voice screamed in the mind of the author Stephen King.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

Joseph McCarthy	In 1947, the Tydings Committee got under way with the interview of General Dwight David Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, effectively in overall charge of the Allied forces in Western Europe on 1 May 1944 known as D Day. By way of introduction, Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy of Wisconsin read ..
.. to the committee the statement that Eisenhower had prepared the night before D Day: 'Our landings have failed and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.' Perhaps Eisenhower would like to explain the need to write such a self-admonishing note?
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1989, the British Royal household awoke to find some very unpleasant photographs in the morning report. Last night a police van had been stoned. And similar reports were coming out of the Royal capitals across Western Europe. The Goddess of Democracy had been in Hyde Park for forty-eight hours now.	Stoning a Polic..
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Clement VII	In 1527, Spanish and German troops sacked Rome, ending the Renaissance. 147 Swiss Guards, including their commander, died fighting the forces of Charles V during the Sack of Rome but were unable to permit Pope Clement VII (real name Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici) to escape. The second dark ages began in Europe.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1983, the Churchill diaries were revealed as a hoax when experts examined the books and concluded that they were fake. The hoaxers had claimed to have received the diaries from England, smuggled out by Hugh Trevor-Roper. The diaries were claimed to be part of a consignment of documents recovered from an aircraft crash ..	Winston Churchi..
.. in Windsor in April 1945. However within two weeks the Churchill Diaries were revealed as being 'grotesquely superficial fakes' made on modern paper using modern ink and full of historical inaccuracies, the most obvious of which might have been the fact that the monogram on the title page read 'VC instead of 'WC' (for Winston Churchill) - even though in the old English typeface those letters looked strikingly similar. The content had been largely copied from a book of Churchill's speeches with additional 'personal' comments recorded by those who fled into exile with him in 1941.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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