Hijacks

Alternate Historian says, construction work continues at the Academy.

From Jan 1 2008 the new format for TIAH will have just the story in a yellow shaded area. Underneath will be hyperlinked metadata tags. This will link to the source article and also use the Blogger search facility to link together the thread - so you can read the whole story in one go.

Basically each story will be a mini-post within a post.

The HTML is machine generated by an OpenOffice spreadsheet with a squillion functions designed using the test/fix methodology. Before we forget how it works, we'd love some feedback.

Please email the Alternate Historian with your comments on the already underway developments, or better still some new ideas!

Kaiser	In 1914, on this day South African troops land in German South West Africa. Ever since the Kaiser's cynical intervention in the Boer War, Imperial Germany had identified South Africa as a regional partner, not to mention a boundless source of mineral wealth. As Britain and France fought for survival on the Western Front, German and South Africa troops drove into Southern Africa creating new facts on the ground that would prove to be very difficult to reverse after the Great War.
~ entry by Alternate Historian

In 1914, the Irish Home Rule Bill becomes law forming the Free State on the very cusp of the First World War. Michael Collins, the author of Ireland's constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann stated that thousands of unnecessary saved deaths in the trenches had been averted by precipitous timing, “the luck of the Irish” he said.	Michael Collins
~ entry by Alternate Historian

Mukden Incident	In 1931, the Mukden Incident gave China the pretext to invade and occupy Kyushu. In fact, Japan had been dangerously destabilised for a millennia. In 1281 the fleet of Qubilai Khan narrowly averted destruction by a typhoon whilst approaching Japan, the first of many Chinese incursions into the homelands began shortly thereafter.
~ entry by Alternate Historian

In 1945, General Douglas MacArthur moved his command headquarters to Tokyo. Swiftly installed as military governor and de facto Head of State, it was some time before the United States realised that Brass Hat had no intention of letting going of the reins of power. The incredible story of how General-san crushed post-war Japan under his heel was described in the biography "The Rising Sun at Dusk" by Jack Nimersheim, published in Unlikely Tyrants by the editor Mike Resnick in 1997.	General-san
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 1968, a fourth-generation German American living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much) published a most remarkable book - Slaughter-house-Five. Kurt Vonnegut consider the book a failure. Like Lot's wife, he had spent twenty-five years looking back at “his” Sodom and Gomorrah, the fire-bombing of Dresden. He too was a “pillar of salt”. Now he planned to work on a work of humour and stop looking back. Yet something was about to happen to change his easy circumstances, and give this incredible human being a subject matter much bigger than the fire-bombing of Dresen. A canvass, in fact, as big as the Universe in which humanity played only a bit part. And so it goes.

~ entry by Alternate Historian

Paul Weller	"I first felt a fist, and then a kick, I could now smell their breath And too many right wing meetings, My life swam around me It took a look and drowned me in its own existence The smell of brown leather, It blended in with the weather It filled my eyes, ears, nose and mouth, It blocked all my senses Couldn't see, hear, speak any longer And I'm down in the tube station at midnight, I said I was down in the tube station at midnight" ~ Paul Weller, lyrics to Down In The Tube Station At Midnight.
Mod Revivalist

After punching Sid Vicious in a night club; he was followed onto the transport system and received a near-fatal beating from supporters of the Sex Pistols. A summary of Paul Weller's biography is detailed at - Wikipedia

~ quotation by Alternate Historian

Rev. Rattie	In 2007, "between web sites" Reverend "Rattie" Taylor prepared to occupy his new home in cyberspace. Said future home being built courtesy of wife Cheryl aka Cat. The open house invite was also being drafted by this most respected of alt-lifer webizens. Opening soon Rat Manifesto, attendance unrestricted (cut & paste limey Co-historians excepted).
~ entry by Alternate Historian

Brown & McFly	In 1985, Back to the Future characters "Doc" Brown and Marty McFly were the victims of twenty-third century time-travellers. On-set Marty McFly's mother Lorraine had recounted how she and George first met when her father hit George with a car. That night, Marty met Doc at the parking lot of Twin Pines Mall. Doc showed him a DeLorean DMC-12 sports car, which he falsely claimed to have modified into a time machine.
Back to the Future

The time machine required 1.21 gigawatts of power, generated by plutonium, and the car needed to be going eighty-eight miles per hour to travel through time. To demonstrate how one programs the machine, Doc entered in November 5, 1955 as the target date. The twenty-third century time-travellers appeared on set. Attempting to recover their property from Universal Pictures who had stolen the time machine, they showed up in a van and shot Doc. Marty jumped into the DeLorean and, in the ensuing chase, drove eighty-eight miles per hour, activating the time device and transported himself into a very different 1955...

~ quotation by Alternate Historian