Impact

Jesus	In 2007, the Ghost Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows Ebeenezer Scrooge a strange vision of the far future. Eugene Cratchit Facebooks an annual megablurb of a family update, "In May we hired a beachfront in Malibu, Timmo got that iPhone he wanted..Awesome!" Yet something is missing in this future. Or someone. Despite the wild extravagance there's not nearly so much joy as at the 1843 Cratchit family christmas. If these descendants thought they were having a nice day, they sure were lieing to themselves.
Is Love

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In 1945, on this day US Army General George Smith Patton Jr. narrowly avoided serious injury in a road accident at Neckarstadt, (Käfertal), in the country outside Mannheim. At 11:45 a 2½ ton truck driven by T/5 Robert L. Thompson appeared out of the haze and made a left-hand turn towards a side road. The Cadillac smashed into the truck. His chief of staff, Major General Hobart R. "Hap" Gay, was thrown forward and his head struck a metal part of the partition between the front and back seats. The driver PFC Horace Woodring and Patton were uninjured. Paralyzed from the neck down, General Gay died of an embolism on December 21, 1945 at the military hospital in Heidelberg, Germany with his wife present.

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In 1970, Elvis Presley became a narcotics officer for the FBI, under the direct order of Richard Nixon. With Presley’s help, most of the musical talent of the 60’s was put into prison on drug charges.

In 1958, Charles de Gaulle was elected President for life by an unstable and frightened French nation. Revolt in the Algerian colony led the French down the road of dictatorship, which de Gaulle followed with relish. Under his unquestioned reign, he forged closer ties with fellow dictator Franco of Spain, massacred workers and students who protested against his policies, and made France the world’s second-greatest nuclear power. The Second Napoleon, as he was known, was finally halted by death in 1970.

In 1945, private Kurt Vonnegut died of gangrene that had started in his mangled feet. After his capture on December 14th, German soldier has swapped his boots for clogs and force marched him and the “three musketeers” of the 106th Infantry Division into Germany's interior.

In 1945, on this day U.S. Army general George Smith Patton Jr. Died and entered Valhalla. Old Blood and Guts was a well-respected disciplinarian after the Slapping Incident, and he was planning to launch a political career until Eisenhower had him assassinated.

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In 1614, Tommasso Caccini, a priest of Florence, spoke with Galileo Galilee for several hours to discuss the scientist’s theory that the earth circled the sun, and not the other way around. After this meeting, Caccini left the priesthood and devoted his life to spreading the word of science. He was executed for heresy in 1616.

In 1977, the Young people from the Norwich Choir spoke of their admiration for Home Secretary Margaret Thatcher returned forty-eight hours after a Christmas reception at Number 10 Downing Street. “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony” was one of the key messages they had taken on board. Shortly after the party, Thatcher had returned to her office and worked through the night on stockpile forecasts for primary resources oil and coal. Within the next twelve months, she would break the back of the British Trade Union movement for sure, provoking a Miner's Strike this time.

Violent End

In 1973, on this day mixed tributes were paid to the Spanish Caudillo, General Franco, who was killed in a car bomb attack in Madrid the day before. Franco's legacy is controversial. While some Spaniards remember him as a strong leader who pacified and stabilized Spain, others remember him as a harsh dictator. Issues surrounding his controversial legacy include whether the Second Spanish Republic he overthrew had become an unstable regime, the nature of the relationship between his politics and those of contemporaries Mosley, Hitler and Mussolini, the repressive policies adopted in cultural and regionalist domains, state centralization, the nationalist and corporatist ideology of the Movimiento Nacional, and the execution of thousands of military and political opponents during the civil war and in the early years after.

British Prime Minister Enoch Powell paid tribute to Franco, describing him as a great leader. Franco had united two great nations after five hundred years of conflict. The Armada was now "water under the bridge" he quipped.

Danville

In 2011, Patrick Danville died at twenty-two years old, having saved the lives of two men, one of whom must not die. Danville was saved himself in 1993 by Lois Chasse and Ralph Roberts at High Ridge in the State of Maine. Ralph and Lois had to save the boy's life at any costs, because the man he will save six years later is the author himself, Stephen King...

In 1992, with the Red Army massing along the borders of Western Germany, British Home Secretary Norman Lamont spoke candidly about the refugee crisis developing around the entrance to the Channel Tunnel at Coquelles near Calais in northern France. Controversially, Lamont made reference to Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech from 1968– 'I seem to see the River Thames foaming with much blood.' Who now could say Powell was wrong about the vampire threat from Russia?

Enoch Powell

Rice	In 2009, President Condoleeza Rice labels litter as the third biggest problem in the world today after poverty and climate change. The following day Condi will speak to the nation with her proposals.

In 1979, the Lancaster House Agreement is signed in London by Lord Carrington, Sir Ian Gilmour, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Bishop Abel Muzorewa and Dr S C Mundawarara. Secret promises are made by the Britain Government to the White settlers regarding the security of their farms. These are underwritten by the South African government, who required a buffer state with Black Africa.

Ian Smith

Lakota Sioux tribals	In 2007, the Reconstructed United Nations recognised the new nation of Lakota. The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, had withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday. "We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old. They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference. Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said. The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website. The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said. "This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said. "It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means. The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England. Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said. One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws. "We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference. The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means. Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world. Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website. "Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young. "We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.

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Constraints

The Breaker

In 1905, Commander Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant with brother officers Lieutenants Handcock, Witton received a heroes welcome at a reception held in their honour at the Hotel Australia. Originally sentenced to death for the execution of Boer prisoners, the protests of the Austrialian government had resulted in the commuting of the sentences of imprisonment. The soldiers had been transported to naval detention quarters England and then to Lewes prison in Sussex. Some time later they were transferred to the prison at Portland, Dorset and released after serving twenty-eight months. Their life sentence was overturned by the British House of Commons on 11 August 1905.

The pivotal event of the Morant affair took place two days later, on the night of August 5, 1901. Capt Hunt led a seventeen-man patrol to a Boer farmhouse called 'Duiwelskloof' (Devil's Ravine), about 80 miles south of the Fort, hoping to capture its owner, the Boer commando leader Veldt Cornet Viljoen. Hunt had been told that Viljoen had only twenty men with him, but this appears to have been a ruse and Viljoen was lying in wait with eighty men. The Boers surprised the British as they approached and during the ensuing skirmish, Viljoen was killed. Witnesses later testified that Capt Hunt was wounded in the chest while firing through the windows and his Sgt Frank Eland was killed while trying to recover his body. Hunt's body was recovered the next day. It had been found lying in a gutter, naked and mutilated; the sinews at the backs of both knees and ankles had been severed, his legs were slashed with long knife cuts, his face had been crushed by hob-nailed boots. According to Kit Denton, he had also been castrated. Significantly, Morant did not see Hunt's body himself; according to Witton, Morant arrived about an hour after the burial. He questioned the men about Hunt's death and, convinced that his friend had been murdered in cold blood, he again vowed to give no quarter and take no prisoners. Witton recounted that Morant then declared that he had, on occasion, ignored Hunt's order to this effect in the past, but that he would carry it out in the future.

In 1961, an embarrassed curator informed the staff at New York’s Museum of Modern Art that they had hung Matisse’s painting Le Bateau upside down for over a month. After a quick vote, it was decided that it looked better that way, and it was left upside down.

In 1397, Bokassa of the heathen Empire of Central Africa crowned himself Emperor. The lavish ceremony in the impoverished nation enraged the populace and led to a revolt against Bokassa, which the Islamic nations surrounding the Empire were all too happy to assist with. Bokassa was overthrown a mere 8 months after declaring himself emperor.

In 2003, the US President, George W Bush, confirmed a punitive tax on imported steel which is certain to ignite a damaging trade war between the United States and Europe. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) last month turned down a US appeal against its July ruling that the duties, imposed in March 2002, are illegal. Mr Bush justified them by saying foreign steel firms were driving US firms out of business with unfair competition and government subsidies. The EU is planning sanctions worth $2.2bn in retaliation against the move.

In 1961, on this day the Birth control pill was officially outawed by the British Government. Women who wish to have oral contraception will now have to travel overseas of risk imprisonment, the Health Minister, Enoch Powell, said in an announcement in the House of Commons on this day. "It is not for me to indicate to doctors when they should decide for medical reasons to prescribe for their patients," he said. Most GPs are in a dilemma over whether they should support the prescription of the Pill, as it is commonly known, which has been requested for social as well as medical reasons.

In 1872, at 1 pm at the wheel of the Dei Gratia, mariner John Johnson sighted a vessel five miles off the port bow. He called second mate John Wright and they both summoned Captain Morehouse, who decided to approach the ship. By 3 pm the Dei Gratia was 400 yards away. Taking the lifeboat, Captain David Reed Morehouse, chief mate Oliver Deveau, and Johnson rowed to the ship where they were greeted by Captain Benjamin Briggs and his crew. First Mate Albert Richardson joked that they had not seen a single human being since leaving New York City on November 7, 1872. The crew laughed, rather nervously. Actually, it was not a laughing matter. The crew of the Dei Gratia had left November 7 and they had not seen anyone else either.

Huey Long

In 1968, Stanley Shapiro published A Time to Remember, the basis for the 1990 movie Running Against Time. To prevent his brother's death at Pearl Harbour, a man travels back to the Louisiana capitol building in 1935 to prevent the assassination of Huey Long. He finds an altered history also need correction. The "Kingfish" steals away FDR's vice-president John Nance Gardner; they strike a pact, and then dealt with Hitler. Trouble is an infinitely more destructive Great War against the Soviet Union is fought a decade later with nuclear weapons.

In 1983, “the long-dreaded nuclear conflict. The city torn apart, shattered, its people destroyed or mutilated beyond hope. For just a few, survival is possible only beneath the wrecked streets - if there is time to avoid the slow-descending poisonous ashes. But below, the rats, demonic offspring of irradiated forebears, are waiting. They know that Man is weakened, become frail. Has become their prey..." through found hand experiences of Domain the shocking true story of how London became the Rats' Domain was recounted by journalist James Herbert.

James Herbert

Eden	In 1967, the fourth installation of A Rage in Eden was serialised in the Times. Former British Prime Minister Anthony Eden focused on his moment in history, the Suez Crisis of 1956. Churchill outmanoeuvred US President Dwight D Eisenhower, giving support to his former subordinate, Anthony Eden. An unlikely ally was sent to remind Eisenhower about his war-time affair with the English driver, Kay Summersby. It was Eisenhower's superior General George Marshall who quashed a plan to divorce his wife Mamie and marry Summersby. Should Eisenhower persist with his obstruction of the Suez intervention, certain New York newspapers might receive highly damaging details of the affair during Presidential election month.

In 2005, the government of (censored) reviewed security measures after blocking YouTube, Today in Alternate History and several other leading web sites the day before in an attempt to impede corrupting foreign films and music. Of particular concern to the (censored) was the computing resources of the revolutionary blogger known as Rat. Did anyone really believe he was running the Academy on a PC133-style computer?

Rat