Control

In 1967, Vonnegut needed help with his memories for Slaughterhouse-Five, and decided to travel to the home of the crazy Colonel, "Wild" Bob" in Cody, Wyoming. For the sake of balance in his anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse-Five. The Colonel's daughter made her displeasure clear when Vonnegut arrived. Setting themselves up in the kitchen, offering only soft drinks and then banging the ice tray noisely.

Kurt Vonnegut	"Finally, I discovered what was wrong. She said the Colonel wasn't doing so good." ~ Kurt Vonnegut In the afternoon, he would retire to bed and suffer from weeping. She wanted to know if there would be a part for the Colonel in my new book, Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. I told her my son was in the Green Berets, just like John Wayne. "She was my friend after that".
Peacenik

Drakas

In 2006, an ingenius analysis of the defeat of the Domination of the Draka was published on the Alternate History web site. From the foundation of the Crown Colony of Drakia in 1783, to collapse in 1951 a detailed account is given of the Drakas failure to capitalise on early strategic advantage created by its enemies fighting amongst themselves. In 2014, Andries Rhoodie and members of Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging studied the analysis very carefully. Armed with AK47s, they returned through time to 1783 to create the future that they believed was stolen from them.

Barbeau	In 1960, the United States government decided to place an embargo on Socialist Québéc. This counter-productive miscalculation forced an isolated Québécois Premier Raymond Barbeau into the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Within two years, construction of an SS-4 site was underway near Montmagny in Chaudiere-Appalaches administrative region, less than one hundred miles from the bordering US state of Maine.

In 1992, on this day Helmut Kohl's government was forced to withdraw the Deutschmark from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) due to pressure by currency speculators—most notably George Soros who made over US$1 billion from this speculation. Following the exit of the pound just four weeks before, the ERM was effectively terminated.	Helmut Kohl

John Kerry	In 2999, the mind cast for the next instalment of “Personality of the Triple Millennia” was re-run across the networks. POT3M drew an even larger audience because of its oddness. John Forbes Kerry was the candidate, the context was the Fall of Vietnam in 1975 and the moment bare minutes after he testified to Senate Foreign Relations Committee asking "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?". MC Millennia addresses the allegations of US Marine Jack Smith who recollected that Kerry and other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence on the front steps of the U.S. Capitol.
However, Kerry still possesses his medals in 2005 and Smith explains this apparent anomaly by revealing that Kerry threw someone else's medals in an act of showmanship. Smith and Kerry – he alleges - had purchased the medals at a market sale in Greenwich Village, New York in December 1970. Kerry takes the fifth amendment, MC Millennia ends the show early.

In 2007, Rat back in the Mesh, publishing new entries on Today in Alternate History promising that he will demonstrate to the people imprisoned in the Mesh that "anything is possible." He hangs up the phone and flies into the sky above the city.	Robbie Taylor

Wickedness

Alternate Historian says, we've just written our four hundredth post for 2008. Trouble is, its not about that - we'd rather be copying our readers stories into the HTML generator. Not the potter, but the potter's clay as it were. Please email your stories to the Alternate Historian and do include the post date please. With that in mind, we've got a post from a guest historian today. Do check out the multimedia link, safe to say - it's pure wickedness.

Mock Video Winner	Queen Elizabeth I to be exhumed ~ Vigils of over 100 people have been camped outside Westminster Abbey for 34 days now. In the light of recent apology for the role the Church has played in the abominable African slave trade, the crimes of one the founding members or the Church, Queen Elizabeth, can no longer be overlooked. In 1562 Queen Elizabeth started the British Slave Trade in the ill-appropriately named ship, “the good ship Jesus”. The moral foundations of the Church were shaken. The apology had inadvertently opened a can of worms. Initially the Church had just admitted to owning slaves and plantations, but subsequently the public found out the Church effectively gave their blessing on the destruction of tens of millions of Africans by declaring Africans had no soul. This gave the British a license to mutilate, rape, kidnap and murder Africans without any fear of eternal damnation.
Holocaust Victim

As penance for the crimes of the Church the public are demanding the removal of Queen Elizabeth I, Britain’s first Slave Trader, from the crypt in Westminster Abbey. The complexity of the shame which has fallen on the Church has been compounded with taunts of “when exactly did the Church become a moral institution”, “how many good deeds can out outweigh the malevolence of a genocidal despot”, “can we apologise for a crime 200 years later” and “get Elizabeth out, she is rotting the foundations of the church.” The final straw came when a national competition was held to effectively mock the Church of England, the number of participants were overwhelming. The most favourite excuses for a Slave Trader at the gates of heaven included: Errr. didn't the Bible say Ham was Black and therefore had to live a cursed life for the rest of eternity or something like that, wasn't this your will. Errr, I know I should not kill but my government said we had to protect and improve our standard of living for the glory of our country. Errr, let me in I’m an American, Heaven is the 51st state isn’t it. Errr, I saw them talk, walk and bleed but I really did not think they were human so I thought it was okay to kill them for fun. Errr, I knew they were animals so I thought that it was okay to rape the boys and girls. I never raped anyone under the age of five though. Errr, I felt the trip would do you some good. Get out see the world. Errr, we didn’t think it would last 400 years and wreak havoc on the lives of those afflicted and their offspring for centuries after it ended. Errr, shhhhhhhhhh, they don’t remember, why’d you have to bring that up. ~ Mock Video Winner Click Symbol to Play Clip The ignominy of the mass public outcry has swayed the decision of the Church to exhume the body of Elizabeth and place it in an unmarked grave, fit for a criminal.

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German City of Dresden	"Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war." ~ Plaque at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa
Allied Fire-bombing

The bombing of Dresden, led by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and followed by the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between February 13 and February 15, 1945, remains one of the more controversial Allied actions of World War II. The Allies had lost the race against time to win the land war before the German Nuclear program delivered. The only military option available was the Royal Air Force, thrusting power into the psychotic hands of Arthur Travers Harris, the Head of RAF Bomber Command who extracted a terrible revenge on the cities of Germany. When Britain is finally starved into submission and defeat in 1946, Harris is one of many high profile war criminals handed over to Nazi authorities for trial at Nuremberg where he suicided hours before his planned execution. The full article is available at Canadian National Post

~ quotation by Steve Payne

Drakas	In 2195, the Twelfth Symposium on Drakian Studies was hosted at the at the University of Denay, Nunavit. Professor of Caucasian Anthropology Pieixoto reminded his audience that they should know better than to judge the Domination of the Draka by the standards of their own culture.
Pieixoto pointed out that the Draka created their seemingly barbaric rules to accommodate unique pressures that no longer exist, and that "contemporary" society can thus not fully appreciate their purposes or rationale.
~ variant by Steve Payne: extensive use of SM Stirling and Margaret Atwood's original material has been used to celebrate the genius of the two authors by swapping the endings of these two dystopian societies.

Albert Einstein	In 1939, Albert Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd, a Hungarian physicist wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt urging the study of teleportation for military purposes because the Third Reich might well be developing the super weapon as well. Roosevelt formed a committee to investigate and granted Dr. Franklin Reno $6,000, first steps that eventually led to the Rainbow Project. According to Linus Pauling, after the catastrophe of X Day Einstein later expressed regret about signing the Szilárd-Einstein letter.

In 1968, NASA launched Apollo 7, the first and last manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard. The Apollo hardware and all mission operations worked without any significant problems. Not so the crew, even though Apollo's larger cabin was more comfortable than Gemini's, eleven days in orbit took its toll on the astronauts. The food was bad, and all three developed colds. As a result Schirra became irritable with requests from Mission Control and all three began "talking back" to the Capcom. Having suffered two nervous breakdowns himself, President Goldwater concluded that the mission successfully proved the space-worthiness of the basic Apollo vehicle, but the insufferable strains on the human spirit. Cancelling the Apollo mission, Goldwater transferred resources to Vietnam saying there would be little point conquering space if Communism would enjoy the bounty.	Apollo 7 Missio..

Tunguska	In 1939, Nikola Tesla wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt urging the study of Tunguska Impact Event for military purposes because the Third Reich might well be developing a singularity as well. Roosevelt formed a committee to investigate and granted Dr. Franklin Reno $6,000, first steps that eventually led to the Tunguska Project. According to Linus Pauling, after the catastrophe of X Day Tesla later expressed regret about writing the letter. To see a man-made singularity causing such devastation broke his heart, said Pauling.

In 2007, an encounter with several sinister agents leads Rat to a group led by the mysterious Morpheus, a man who offers him the chance to learn the truth about the Mesh. Rat accepts. Swallowing a red pill, he abruptly wakes up in a liquid-filled chamber, his body connected by wires to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods. The connections are severed and he is rescued by Morpheus and taken aboard his hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar.	Morpheus