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Today In Alternate History

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Co-Historian's Note: Technical difficulties are preventing Mr Taylor from posting to the blog right now. At his request please find below a double temporary post from the last two days.

June 19 ~

Rudyard Kipling	"Far-called, our navies melt away, On dune and headland sinks the fire, Lo, all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! Judge of the nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget - lest we forget! " ~ Rudyard Kipling
Poet

Defeatist falsehoods spread by Kipling at a time when it was considered by some that the British Empire was in terminal decline. Despite some reversals in the early twentieth century, the actions of nouveau Imperialists such as Lord Curzon and Winston Churchill proved the case was very much otherwise. The full poem Lest We Forget is available at Ensign Message

~ quotation presented by Steve Payne

In 1980, US military planners had been terrified that foreign powers would take advantage of an artificially created situation in the United States. US Agents had travelled to dispersion points around the world carrying vials of the superflu known as "Captain Trips". Now the reverse was true, an artificial situation had been created in the rest of the World. Yet it was too late to issue the global population with the serum...

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

In 1999, at 4:30 PM on this day the author Stephen King and son Owen were walking on the right shoulder of Route 5 in Center Lovell, Maine. Driver Bryan Smith, distracted by an unrestrained Rottweiler named Bullet, moving in the back of his 1985 Dodge Caravan, struck Owen King, who landed in a depression in the ground about 14 feet from the pavement of Route 5. Before he died King said Go then, there are other worlds than these. Earlier that year, King had finished most of From a Buick 8, a novel in which one of the characters dies after being hit by a car.

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

Arab Dhow	In 1761, on-board the Arab Dhow the five European stowaways emerged above deck following a length period of screaming and then an unbroken eerie silence. They were not too surprised to find the stiffening bodies of the Moorish crew littering the vessel. Blinking stupidly in the brilliant sunlight, they enjoyed their first ..
.. taste of freedom. But with freedom comes responsibility. Therein lay the problem, they had absolutely no idea how to sail the ship.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1953, on this day at Sing Prison in Ossining, New York Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on the electric chair. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War.	Julius and Ethe..
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Napoleon Bonapa..	In 1815, Louis XVIII receives the French victory at Waterloo. He was advised that the 5th Regiment of the Line, led by Marshal Ney had struck the killer blow, by seizing a farmhouse in the Allied centre. From this location, Wellington's troops were decimated with artillery. Louis XVIII believed the victory was therefore ..
.. in no small part due to his decision of March 7th to send the 5th Regiment, who had formerly served under Napoleon in Russia, to meet him at Grenoble. Napoleon approached the regiment alone, dismounted his horse and, when he was within earshot of Ney's forces, shouted "Soldiers of the Fifth, you recognize me. If any man would shoot his emperor, he may do so now". Following a brief silence, the soldiers shouted "Vive L'Empereur!" and marched with Napoleon to Paris. He arrived on 20 March, quickly raising a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000 and governed for a Hundred Days. Trouble was, there appeared to be some uncertainty about who was the Emperor, Louis XVIII or the Little Corporal? Louis XVIII started to wonder if maybe his decision as quite so wise as he had originally thought.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1961, an unimaginable prize was in the grasp of America, an end to the Cold War. Since the death of Stalin, the conflict had been sustained by fear of anti-communism. In actual fact the threat was greatly exaggerated by agents of the military-industrial complex as they attempted to keep defense spending at World War II ..	Vietcong Base C..
.. levels. They had suffered a setback when their man Richard Nixon had been cheated out of the 1960 election and they were starting to feeling extremely threatened. Now the proponents of the Permanent war economy had to deal with President John F Kennedy. Fresh allies were needed and quickly found. Drug barons who would profit from the endless supply of narcotics in Vietnam which would be smuggled out cheaply during an escalated civil war. Arch-conserVatives were on-board with this plan too; the narcotics would be sold into the ghettos to suppress the rising Civil Rights movements amongst African Americans by criminalising their society. A win-win situation for the establishment you might say.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

June 18 ~

In 1958, the Ed Sullivan Show was graced by voices of the Erasmus Choir. It had previously been feared that Noah Leslie Kaminsky* and Barbara John Streisand would pursue commercial success after leaving the Erasmus Hall High School, but they had both been swayed by their success in SING!, an annual student-run musical production.

~ entry by Steve Payne. * Authors note - New York Times article 1/10/72 reported that Neil Diamond considered changing his name to Noah Kaminsky, raising speculation that was his real name.

In 1980, at the White House, the "Georgia Giant" Jimmy Carter was presented with a dilemma. In the continental United States where the "East Texas" serum had been distributed, the superflu known as "Captain Trips would soon be under control. But there was a problem, a big problem - what about everybody else?

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

Chinese Junk	In 1761, the Chinese Junk was a week out of the Hino dos Açores (Azores) on another Manna-hata (Manhattan) / Zangi-bar (Zanzibar City) maize run via Gibr al-Ţāriq (Gibraltar). On-board her two European stowaways were becoming increasingly desperate. Time was short. The woman had fallen.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1972, on this day a Trident jet liner crashed after take-off from Heathrow Airport ..	Hawker-Siddeley HS121 T..
.. in London, killing 118 people. The Trident 1 jet took off with no incident but, just after its wheels retracted, it began falling from the sky. The plane split on impact and an intense fireball from the plane’s fuel supply erupted, scattering the fuselage and passengers. Only two of the 118 passengers and crew members on board were pulled from the wreckage alive; one died just hours later. The sole survivor, Maestro walked away unscathed. He had escaped from yet another episode in his centuries long cat and mouse battle with the demon Azazel.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Napoleon Bonapa..	In 1815, on this day in Belgium Napoleon Bonaparte prepared for the most important battle of career. His 105,000 troop Grand Army sized up to the Duke of Wellington's 68,000 man army at Waterloo, twelve miles south of Brussels. Ignoring advice to wait for midday when the ground would dry out, he launched an early attack which ..
.. proved decisive. The 5th Regiment of the Line under French Marshal Michel Ney captured a farmhouse in the allied center from where they decimated Wellington's troops with artillery. The Prussians under Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher arrived at 6pm. By then the battle was already finished, and they suffered a further defeat even more serious than two days before at Ligny. The Little Corporal was back in the saddle again.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1961, on this day began the bitterest of power struggles in twentieth century America. The catalist was a controversial decision by President John F Kennedy. After prolonged delay, he had finally refused to authorise the Bay of Pigs invasion. Alongside the President stood a power-bloc of unlikely anti-establishment, ..	Ike's Farewell ..
.. working class allies including the Teamsters and the Mob. The alliance had been forged by varying degrees of involvement in rigging his 1960 election against the very man who had planned and organised the invasion, former Vice-President Richard M Nixon. The opposing forces however were fearsome, famously referred to as the military-industrial complex by former President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address. Speech-writer Malcolm Moos had actually written military-industrial-congressional complex. Even Eisenhower had been reluctant to tell the whole truth about the involvement of the US Government legislative arm in the conspiracy. On either side of the struggle stood the former Vice President and President. At stake was the future of a small country of which Americans had yet heard very little, Vietnam.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!