Crossing Over

Alternate Historian says, monday's post includes some of the developments we've implemented in the HTML Generator for 2008. To invite some comment we're still crossing over designs so likely there's a few glitches. Please email your comments to the Alternate Historian. Thanks to Mr Taylor for taking care of the posting last week - appropriately enough, today we're starting a story about our Visiting Emeritus Alternate Historian.

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Saxon	We were strangers in the night Strangers in the night Going nowhere ~ Saxon - Click to Watch Live Gig Sample
Strong Arm of the Law

In 1979, British Heavy Metal band Saxon signed to the Carrere record label and released their eponymous debut album. In 1980 follow-up album Wheels of Steel spawned two hit singles: the title track, and the crowd favourite "747 (Strangers in the Night)". The Strong Arm of the Law album, considered by fans to be one of their best recordings, was released later that same year, and chart success continued with singles from their next release, Denim and Leather. Ironically Saxon would be victims of the Strong Arm of the Law. The title track to that album is seen as an anthem of the early 1980s metal movement. Later legal issues with Carrere forced the band into insolvency and tragically Wheels of Steel was their final album. The lyrics are available at at Lyrics Dir

~ quotation by Co-Historian Steve Payne from Counter-history – You're the Judge!

Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far far beneath in the abysmal sea, His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee About his shadowy sides; above him swell Huge sponges of millennial growth and height; And far away into the sickly light, From many a wondrous grot and secret cell Unnumber'd and enormous polypi Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
Alfred Lord Tennyson	There hath he lain for ages, and will lie Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, Until the latter fire shall heat the deep; Then once by man and angels to be seen, In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die. ~ Tennyson's poem "The Kraken"
Kraken

In 1953, an alien invasion quickly escalates. In the first phase objects from outer space land in the oceans. The distribution of their landing points - always at ocean deeps, never on land - implies intelligence. Phase two starts with ships being attacked, causing havoc to world shipping. Shortly after, the aliens start 'harvesting' the land by sending up 'sea tanks' which capture humans from seaside settlements; this is presumed to be for investigation, although the humans always drown. However, humans manage to defeat this phase... The escalation is described at Wikipedia

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

Roots	In 1750, a Mandinka village elder conducts an ancient ritual, returning Omoro Kinte across the great river of time and space to Juffure on the Gambia. On the same voyage are four others, Alex Haley, Thalmus Rasulala, Cicely Tyson, LeVar Burton who are returned to New York City 1976. In the window of Barnes & Noble, they see number #1 best-seller, “Roots: The Saga of an American Family” by Alex Haley. Excited, they rush inside – there is a huge queue of people at the checkout, all holding a new copy of Haley's masterpiece. These buyers have a shared purpose, they need a myth to live by, overturning other myths about the Black American experience and giving African Americans a proud history.

In 1962, on this day Québécois Premier Raymond Barbeau gave a speech at the U.N. General Assembly, noting that "If... we are attacked, we will defend ourselves. I repeat, we have sufficient means with which to defend ourselves; we have indeed our inevitable weapons, the weapons which we would have preferred not to acquire and which we do not wish to employ." A number of unconnected problems meant that the Soviet missiles were not discovered by the U.S. until a U-2 flight of October 14 clearly showed the construction of an SS-4 site near Montmagny in Chaudiere-Appalaches administrative region in Québéc.	Barbeau

Invasion of Nor..	In 1974, To Go Boldly in Amongst Them: The Invasion of North Vietnam was published. War correspondent Kevin F. Kiley recounts how US military planners determined that the North Vietnamese heartland was poorly defended, and decide to invade. The open chapter reveals how a failed POW-rescue mission in early 1970 led to an invasion in June, a week after much of the North Vietnamese army had already moved to respond to the invasion of Cambodia.

In 2007, computer engineer Robert A. Taylor leads a secret life as a blogger of Alternate History under the alias "Rat". Cryptic messages on his computer monitor are delivered as blog comments under the name “Morpheus”. Soon, Rat will be offered the chance to learn the truth about the Mesh and he will accept.	Robbie Taylor