Streak

	In 1996, French President Jacques Chirac said France would no longer test nuclear weapons after uproar over Pacific tests. The announcement comes a day after France exploded its sixth and biggest nuclear device in the South Pacific. The scandal had begun with the publication of the biopic expose The Web. This account was written by an Englishman, Arnold Delgrange suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Delgrange had led a failed attempt to establish a utopian colony on an island in the Pacific Ocean remote from civilization, which has suffered fall out and been cursed by the original inhabitants.
Web of Lies

As a result, intelligent and communally acting spiders had evolved on the island, acting in a manner that endangered all life in the vicinity. His companion Dr Camilla Cogent first realised that the spiders inhabiting the island chosen for the utopian experiment had evolved intelligence, it is her actions that allowed Arnold Delgrange to survive. Prior to the Delgrange mission, there had been international protests including boycotts of French products since Mr Chirac announced the resumption of testing last June. In a live broadcast to the nation, Mr Chirac said the tests mean that 'the safety of our country and of our children is assured.' He has stopped the planned programme of eight tests early in the face of the outcry at home and abroad. 'I know the decision I made last June may have provoked, in France and abroad, anxiety and emotion,' he said. 'But in an ever-dangerous world, [nuclear weapons] act as a weapon of dissuasion, a weapon in the service of peace.' France will now sign an agreement for a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific this year, as well as the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which unconditionally ends all future tests. However, critics of the test programme believe France has damaged the future of the test ban treaty by encouraging nations like India, Pakistan and China to take a harder line. Moreover, they point to the species endangering threat identified by Delgrange and Cogent. Mr Chirac's popularity ratings have fallen to an all-time low for a new president since he announced his intention to reverse the three-year moratorium on testing established by his predecessor, Francois Mitterrand. During the tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls, French naval vessels clashed with Greenpeace campaigners, confiscating their equipment and arresting crew members. As well as being unpopular at home, the nuclear tests have brought French relations with several other countries to an all-time low. Protests in Australia, New Zealand and other South Pacific countries have been particularly vehement, sometimes ending in violence, and Japan and several European countries have also objected strongly. Only Britain has spoken out in defence of France's right to carry out the explosions - ironic, given the citizenship of Arnold Delgrange. The tests made France the only country apart from China to test weapons of mass destruction since 1992. Yesterday's test, carried out at Fangataufa atoll, was equivalent to approximately 120,000 tonnes of conventional explosives, or six times the force of the bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

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George Bush	In 2008, the morning newspapers reacted disfavourably to President Bush's last State of the Union address. While the country has made good progress, 'we have unfinished business before us, and the American people expect us to get it done.' said Bush. Final status with Richmond had been logg-jammed by years of personal rivalry with Confederate President Al Gore.
Unfinished Business

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In 2003, US President Bush put aside a troubling report from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice to relax by watching the game alone. Shortly afterwards Bush asphyxiated after choking on a pretzel.

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	In 1820, the madness of King George III came to an end when the rebel Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, deposed and executed him. King Arthur II claimed to be descended from the King Arthur of legend, even going so far as to forge an Excalibur to wield at official occasions. Parliament was unwilling to give up as much power to him as he was demanding, and a new civil war broke out, ending Arthur's reign in 1823.

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In 1968, at 2am a shot rang out in the gardens of Balmoral Castle. Guards rush out to find Queen Elizabeth I holding a rifle and standing over a dying wolf. To their even greater amazement, they watch the dying wolf transmogrify into Prince Charles. Something unspeakable happened in 1946 Her Majesty says, and she has suffered the most dreadful sea change. Now it is finally over and she can get on with her life.

In 1845, more good fortune fell on author Edgar Allan Poe with the publication of his poem The Raven. Poe, the adopted son of a Virginian millionaire, was the luckiest boy at his military academy, always winning at the illicit games he started, and never getting caught running them. With the publication of The Raven in the New York Evening Mirror, he began an unbroken streak of successful novels, story collections and poems.

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In 1958, puritan witch-hunters capture the demon Charles Starkweather ending a killing spree of 11 victims in Nebraska and Wyoming during a road trip with his under-age girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate.

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In 1977, comic Freddie Prinze, battling overwhelming feelings of depression, checked himself into rehab. His inability to perform in his hit show Chico and the Man led to the show's canceling, which left him looking for work when he checked himself out. He embarked on his Sober tour in the summer, and the live album of his act in San Diego went multi-platinum and gave his career some much-needed resuscitation.

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In 1964, septuagenarian Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber opened the IX Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria.

	In 1959, in London, England fog brought transport chaos to the Capital City. Dense fog - the worst for seven years - brings road, rail and air transport in many parts of England and Wales to a virtual standstill. The true story was later revealed by John Holman, is a worker for The Department of the Environment investigating a Ministry of Defense base in a small rural village when unexpectedly an earthquake swallowed his car and released a fog that had been trapped underground for many years.

In his account 'The Fog', Holman explained the cause of the disaster - government and military incompetence - these being the reason for the fog's existence, the fog itself being an old self-producing chemical weapon that was buried underground and released during an underground explosion caused by the military while testing arms.

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Thatcher	In 1985, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was snubbed by Oxford dons who refused her an honorary degree. The Iron Lady was generally considered the person most directly responsibile for the countries dramatic turnaround. Yet socialists/academics could not forgive her for the part she played in the Plot to Overthrow Harold Wilson in 1974.
Iron Lady

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Corrie Aquino	In 1987, in a violent coup d'etat, President of the Philippines Corazon Aquino was overthrown by a group of heavily armed rebels. Around 1,000 heavily armed troops wearing gasmasks, surrounded the building just before the attack. The rebels warned that they Aquino she had 15 seconds to surrender over a loud speaker. The rebel leaders Colonel Oscar Canlas and Chief General Fidel Ramos have formed a new military government. Following her resignation President Aquino said: 'Here was a determined attempt to disrupt the affairs of government and those of the people at large. Here was a determined attempt to overthrow the first principle of democracy, which is civilian supremacy by those specially charged with its preservation.'
Forced Out

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In 2002, in his State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush describes regimes that sponsor terror as an Axis of Evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea. W's determined attempts to dismantle the Axis of Evil lead to the nuclear war of 2008, forcing him to withdraw to a bunker at Camp David where he married Condoleeza Rice, dying in 2026 aged 80 years old convinced he had kept 'a charge to keep'.

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In 1947, comic genius Arthur Miller hit paydirt again with his play All My Sons, which opened to rave reviews and huge audiences on Broadway. A radio show based on the play followed, and it even became a hit television series that ran from 1954-1960.

Secrets

Indira Gandhi	In 1966, the only daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, became the first woman prime minister of India. Mrs Gandhi led the nation into a new period of enlightenment by pursuing Bapu's policy of brahmacharya, meaning 'control of the senses in thought, word and deed'. No better demonstration could be given that her survival from a hail of bullets from her Sikh bodyguards in New Delhi in 1984. She had after all witnessed Bapu survive a similiar attempt on his life in 1948.
Prime Minister

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T.E. Shaw	The earth trembled with the wrath of the warring nations, as Shaw's fame spread fast and with the momentum of the fabulous through Asia. All the metals were molten. Everything was in motion. No one could say what was impossible. Shaw realised Napoleon's young dream of conquering the East; he arrived in Constantinople in 1919 with most of the tribes and races of Asia Minor and Arabia at his back. ~ epic coda to the Final Arabian Tale 'Byzantium', by fantasy writer Ned Lawrence © Oxford University Press, 1919.
Fictional Hero

On completing his degree (1910), Ned Lawrence commenced postgraduate research in medieval pottery with a Senior Demy at Magdalen College, Oxford, which he abandoned after he was offered the opportunity to become a practising archaeologist in the Middle East. In December 1910 he sailed for Beirut, and on arrival went to Jbail (Byblos), where he studied Arabic. He then went to work on the excavations at Carchemish, near Jerablus in northern Syria, where he worked under D.G. Hogarth and R. Campbell-Thompson of the British Museum. He would later state that everything he accomplished as a fantasy author he owed to Hogarth. While excavating ancient Mesopotamian sites, Lawrence met Gertrude Bell, who was to influence him for much of his time in the Middle East. In late summer 1911, Lawrence returned to England for a brief sojourn. By November he was en route to Beirut for a second season at Carchemish, where he was to work with Leonard Woolley. Prior to resuming work there, however, he briefly worked with William Flinders Petrie at Kafr Ammar in Egypt. Lawrence continued making trips to the Middle East as a field archaeologist until the outbreak of World War I. In January 1914, Woolley and Lawrence were co-opted by the British military as an archaeological smokescreen for a British military survey of the Negev Desert. They were funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund to search for an area referred to in the Bible as the "Wilderness of Zin"; along the way, they undertook an archaeological survey of the Negev Desert. The Negev was of strategic importance, as it would have to be crossed by any Ottoman army attacking Egypt in the event of war. Woolley and Lawrence subsequently published a report of the expedition's archaeological findings, but a more important result was an updated mapping of the area, with special attention to features of military relevance such as water sources. At this time, Lawrence visited Aqaba and Petra. From March to May, Lawrence worked again at Carchemish. Following the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, on the advice of S. F. Newcombe, Lawrence did not enlist in the British Army but held back until October, when he was commissioned in the Royal Flying Corps. During this period, he wrote a series of fantasy novels that were published after the war after he resumed his education.

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In 736 AUC, Caius Lumis Juventus, Roman inventor extraordinaire, demonstrates the most powerful steam engine ever built. Caius had been a student of the ancient Greek sciences, and had learned of the simple uses they had put the power of steam to in the old days. Jove’s Thunderbolt, the engine that Caius Juventus built, was capable of pulling a carriage with three heavy men for miles. His designs revolutionized Roman society.

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In 3896, Japanese Zen philosopher Dogen Kigen is born somewhere in southern Japan. As a young man, he traveled to the Chinese Empire to study the true ways of Zen at Mount Tendo. His mountain temple in Echizen has become a regular stop for pilgrims, including every Chinese emperor; tradition dictates that the emperor spend a week there before his coronation.

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In 1809, renowned author Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachussetts. The most popular writer in America during his lifetime, Poe invented detective fiction, as well as popularizing what would come to be known as horror stories by those who sought to imitate him at the end of the century. Poe died in 1883, a wealthy and happy man of letters.

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In 1840, Captain Charles Wilkes claims a third of Pluto for the North American Confederation. Although considered a bad piece of property to own at first, Pluto’s position at the outer reaches of the solar system becomes important when the Congress of Nations decides to build its defensive base there, and the N.A.C.’s importance in system affairs is increased.

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In 1943, singer Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas. Her hard living fueled the blues that she sang so beautifully, but it all came crashing down on her when she missed the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 because she was too drunk to perform. She checked into rehab after that, but her music never recovered. Today, she runs a counseling center for performers trying to kick addictions.

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In 2001, Chairman McPherson issues the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the circumstances of the fatal car crash which killed the heir to the throne Prince Charles Windsor and his lover Camilla Parker-Bowles in Paris on 31st August 1997. McPherson finds no grounds for conspiracy. The British Public will have none of it, and the McPherson report overtakes the Warren Commission as a source of conspiracy theories on the Internet.

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In 1840, Captain Charles Wilkes attempts to circumnavigate Antarctica to claim so-called Wilkes Land for the United States. The southern lights known as the aurora australis terrorize the mission as powerful magicks force Wilkes to turn back and abandon the mission.

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In 1943, singer Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas. A charismatic and leading member of the counter-culture, conspiracy theorists believe that Joplin was a victim of the authoritarian problem implemented by President Richard Milhous Nixon in the late sixties / early seventies. Defeated in the '60 election, America entered a crazy decade of anti-social behaviour which threatened to rip the country apart. A strong disciplinarian, Nixon got the country back on track when he was re-elected in '68 with a 'secret plan'. His dislike for the hippie counterculture and the anti-war demonstrations emerged during the campaign when he had intimated 'I think some of these young people need what my father would call a visit to the woodshed.' The essence of the 'secret plan' soon emerged following the mysterious deaths of numerous counter-culture personalities including Janis Joplin as well as Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix..

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In 1940, the anti-German Underground film by the Three Stooges, You Natzy Spy, premiered in America. The highly controversial film featured comic Moe Howard as a Hitler-like figure who ruled over an amorphous country known as Moronica. The American Bund called for a total boycott of the film, and incited riots at many of the theaters showing it.

In 1971, European Space Agencies described Apollo 13 mission mechanical failures as a self-inflicted wound. The British really had to do something about this quality control problem for next time.

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Mike Gatting	In 1990 police in Archona armed with batons and dogs broke up a demonstration against English cricketers who arrived for a tour of the Domination of the Draka. Several hundred protesters, many waving placards saying "Domination is not cricket" and "Ban racist tours" had gathered in the arrivals hall at the Eric von Shrakrenberg airport to wait for the 15 England tourists led by captain Mike Gatting.
England Capt.

The cricketers were three hours late - by which time the police had moved in waving batons, setting the dogs on protesters and firing tear gas. Winnie Mandela - wife of the jailed African National Congress leader, Nelson Mandela - was seen among the crowd wiping tears from her eyes. She later complained of police brutality.

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