August 27th, 2007
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Don't forget - Birthday Contest for Steve – November 22, 1967. Send in an alternate birthday for him for us to post!
Robbie's Long Goodbye: I'm sure that some of you have been anticipating this – I have decided to turn over TIAH to my Co-Historian, Steve, who has been doing most of the work here since he started, anyway. I will be starting another project, The RATMANifesto, which will be more along the lines of what I am writing now. This week, I'll be making the changes that Steve wishes to see in the design of TIAH before I hand over things to him, and I'll be writing a note of fond farewell each day as I do so. I have a couple of Guest Historians who have sent in material for future dates, and I will suggest to Steve that he take advantage of the great pool of talent out there among the Alternate Readership. We'll be letting you know by the time Steve takes over whether that will be the case. Steve has also graciously asked that I post from time to time, and I'm sure that I will – who could resist being the Visiting Alternate Professor Emeritus? But, this week will mark my last as your chief Alternate Historian, and so I will have maudlin farewells at the beginning of each post as I make them. Thank you for your attention, and your readership over the last three years.
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 Jesse Owens | In 1935, American athlete Jesse Owens commented on the decision by United States Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage to withdraw the participation of the American athletics from the Games of the XI Olympiad in Archona, capital city of the Dominion of Draka. |
| With Owens expected to win up to four gold medals, a tinge of bitterness could reasonably be expected from most human beings. It is widely repeated that Chief Justice von Shrakenburg "snubbed" Jesse Owens and his achievements. Brundage believed that politics had no place in sport; von Shrakenberg feared sport would define politics by debunking the Draka assertion of white supremacy. Owens said, "I think journalists showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in the Dominion of the Draka". One can only wonder if his tongue had crept into his cheek before making this memorable statement. | |
| ~ variant entry by Steve Payne: details of the Draka World have been used to celebrate the genius of S.M. Stirling | |
| In 1868, in Lee Allred's West of Appomattox US Secretary of State General Robert E. Lee receives a chilly welcome in the Foreign Office. Britain's continued alliance with the Confederacy is creating major problems for the defeated North. Officially ignored, he finds a deeper game is afoot. |
~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.
| In 1950, UN Commander in Chief for the Korean Peninsula General Douglas MacArthur ordered the evacuation from Pusan. He told the people of South Korea “I will return”, a promise he was unable to keep. |
 BITBBH | In 2007, troubled Pals series star Jennifer Anniseed announced a trial separation from her husband of only six weeks, the TV celebrity formerly known as the Bear in the Big Blue House. Saddened, BITBBH suggested that Jen had never got over Bradley Putz and didnt really want a bear for all seasons at all. |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
| "Old Blood and Guts" Part 1 (1885-1918) - General George Smith Patton III has died, aged eighty. He was survived by his wife of fifty-five years Banning Ayer, the daughter of a wealthy textile baron. The Pattons had two daughters Beatrice Smith (died 1953) and Ruth Ellen. Their son George Smith IV was a 1946 graduate of West Point, serving in Korea as a company commander. In Vietnam he commanded the 11th Armored Cavalry as a colonel during three tours of duty there, before retiring from the Army in 1980. Alongside his contemporary cavalryman General George Armstrong Custer, George Patton III was instrumental in the development of armored warfare during the mid-20th. In World War I General John "Black Jack" Pershing assigned Patton to the newly formed United States Tank Corps. Depending on the source, he either led, or was an observer at the Battle of Cambrai in which first tanks were used as a significant force. From his successes (and his organization of a training school for American tankers in Langres, France), Patton was promoted to major and then lieutenant colonel and was placed in charge of the U.S. Tank Corps, which was part of the American Expeditionary Force and then the First U.S. Army. He took part in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, September 1918, and was wounded by machine gun fire as he sought assistance for tanks that were mired in the mud. |
 Castle Bonny | In 1943, British Prime Minister Oswald Mosley and King Edward VIII presented the view of the British Government to the movie Castle Bonny which premièred eight days before on Broadway. |
| The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and starred Cary Grant as Dick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund and Paul Henreid as resistance leader Victor Laszlo, caught in a love triangle. The rekindled romance between Blaine and Lund was set during Great War II in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, off the Bight of Bonny – then controlled by the Nazi Protectorate of Britain. The final scene shows Dick, Laszlo and a detachment of Free British soldiers on a ship, to incorporate the Allies' 1943 invasion of England. “This unpleasant and beastly business will shortly come to an abrupt end” said the King from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. “The invasion or the movie reviews?” quipped the Prime Minister and they both laughed. Actually, it was no laughing matter, because that very day both had reluctantly approved the Nazi decision to use gas to repel the Free British Forces racing up the south coast at uncomfortable fast speed for the Fascists. | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
| In 2127, through the functioning of the Hussein-Sadat time dilation device, and assisted by the kidnapping by the Eurasian fugitive known as Brent first Asian QC Kim Hollis and the Attorney General return to the London office of Lord Peter Goldsmith on 11 March 2003. |  Goldsmith |
| Goldsmith is being strongly encouraged to leave his wife Joy of 33 years in favour of Hollis. He is also being prevailed upon to issue confidential legal advice to the Prime Minister of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that British involvement in a land invasion of Iraq would be illegal due to the absence of a UN Security Council Resolution explicitly sanctioning participation by the “coalition of the willing”. Neither prospect was particularly savoury. People just didn't seem to understand the difference between private and public morality, really – it was quite maddening. | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
 USS Eldridge | In 1943, on this day the U.S. naval destroyer escort Eldridge was commissioned by the .. |
| .. Navy for Project Rainbow. In a military application of Albert Einstein’s unified field theory, the destroyer escort was fitted with powerful generator equipment, designed to distort electromagnetic radiation and gravity, rendering the ship invisible to radar. On or before October 28 1943 USS Eldridge was rendered invisible to human observers for a brief period of time. Upon her return, she left a very visible tear in the fabric of the Universe. The observers reported a thermal distortion much like the running of gas out of a pipe, or hot air rising off the desert. By the time President Truman arrived for a personal viewing on October 30th, there were some seriously worried people on the Project. That included Albert Einstein, who offer absolutely no guarantees to the President that the tear could be fixed up. | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
| In 1962, on this day the Mariner 2 was launched to Venus. On the way it measured for the first time the solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun. It also measured interplanetary dust, which turned out to be more scarce than predicted. |  Mariner 2 |
| And something else was discovered which the Mariner 2 was not simply designed to report. The spacecraft is now defunct in a heliocentric orbit, where it is bristles with a virulent space plague. | |
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge! | |
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