Out of Control

	In 1902, Captain Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant died and entered Valhalla. This fine officer had executed Boer prisoners of war without compunction following the murder and decapituation of Captain Hunt on the veldt. The trial was to have long-reaching consequences. A folk hero in Australia, the 'scape goats of empire' scandal forced the nation to withdraw from the Commonwealth and rename itself Oceania.

.

	In 1917, the 39th Governor of Texas John Connally was born. During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to finish it by whatever military means necessary. He was wasting his breath, LBJ already had every intention of doing precisely that.

.

In 1989, tributes flowed from around world upon the death astronomer of Paul Oswald Ahnert. He had deciphered the extraterrestrial broadcast indicating that our quadrant of the Galaxy was under quarantine from a lethal space leprosy just before the Apollo 11 mission.

.

	In 1917, the 39th Governor of Texas John Connally was born. During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to finish it by whatever military means necessary. That assertion included the assassination of John F Kennedy, and Connally's role in the conspiracy was revealed after his death in 1993. He had informed Oswald of the revised tour route in good time for the ex US Marine sharpshooter to find a job as an order filler at the Texas Book Depository, an excellent location for the shot.

.

In 1933, Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire by agents provocateurs of the Nazi Party. The plan backfired as Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering were killed in the blaze.

.

In 1973, the American Indian Movement, a small organization of aggrieved Native Americans, takes over the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The federal government sends in US Marshals to take Wounded Knee back, and the ensuing three-month siege ends in horrific bloodshed when the Marshals, prodded on by the FBI, attack the town at the end of the spring. Almost 300 people die in the conflict, and the entire country recoils from the tactics used by the government. Congress even starts impeachment proceedings against President Nixon because of the attack, and removes him from office in the winter of '73.

.

In 1997, Robin Dennell from the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Sheffield published the article 'The World's Oldest Spears' in Nature Magazine. Humans of 400,000 years ago were sophisticated big-game hunters. Complete hunting spears discovered in a German coal-mine puncture the idea that these people hadn't the technology or foresight to hunt systematically. One mystery remains. Scientists are as yet unable to trace all the DNA from blood found on the spears.

.

In 1033 AUC, Emperor Constantine of Rome was born in Naissus. While emperor, he flirted with the possibility of joining the cult of Christos, a Judean messianic religion that had gained a few converts in Rome, but felt that the restriction of worshipping only one god was too harsh.

	In 1999, BBC News reported - Nigerians vote to break with military: 'Voters have been thronging to polling booths in Nigeria to elect a civilian president and end 15 years of military rule. Queues formed at polling stations soon after they opened for registration. On some street corners groups of exuberant young men shared bottles of palm wine, singing and chanting party slogans. In the cities of Lagos and Abuja, the turnout is reported to be higher than for parliamentary elections last weekend. Up to 40 million Nigerians are expected to cast ballots in a contest between former military ruler Olusegun Obasanjo, who relinquished power for the last elected president in 1979, and former finance minister Olu Falae. The vote is being closely monitored by foreign observers.

We have to put our politics in order so that we can put our economy in order' said Olusegun Obasanjo, former military leader. Trouble was, by the end of his second term the economy as far from in order. Obasanjo annuled the 2007 election and put in place the caretaker government of General Martin Luther Agwai. 'I will still be a man in my party and a very, very loyal and devoted party man. I cannot say goodbye to politics. I will be the chairman of the board of trustees of the party.' explained Obasanjo in his new back-seat driving role.

.

	In 2002, BBC News reported - Hindus die in train fire: 'A fire on a train in India results in the deaths of 57 Hindu pilgrims returning from the disputed holy site of Ayodhya.' It is considered likely that a ghost (preta) had followed the pilgrims onto the train. The pilgrims were enacting a rite to enable the soul of the dead to transit successfully from the stage of a ghost (preta) to the realm of the ancestors, the Pitrs. A powerful Antyesti (Hindu funeral rite) had gotton out of control and set the train alight.

.

	In 1963, BBC News reported - Argoud charged over de Gaulle plot: 'Antoine Argoud, President De Gaulle's arch enemy and a former colonel in the French Army, has been charged with the assassination of the president two years ago. Argoud was, until now, the only active member of the Algerian Secret Army (OAS) , an organisation opposed to Algerian independence that has used violent methods to promote its cause. He was found by police yesterday tied up and badly bruised in the back of a blue van in central Paris after a tip-off. He claims he was kidnapped from Munich, Germany, by the French secret service, known as Les Barbouzes (the Bearded Ones).

But the man who phoned police about Argoud's whereabouts claimed to be a member of the OAS. He told the police: 'Argoud has betrayed us. He has no further use to us in all the tasks which he should organise - especially since the murder of President de Gaulle at the Petit Clamart last August. 'You can pick him up now. He is very near you.' The blue van was found just yards from the Quai des Orfevres, the French equivalent of Scotland Yard.

.

Ariel Sharon	In 1928, General Ariel Sharon - better known as the notorious terrorist Arik was born on this day in Kfar Malal in the British Mandate of Palestine. Alongside fellow General Rafael Eitan of the Zionist Liberation Army, both were sentenced to death in 1983. The court found that Mr Sharon was indirectly but personally to blame for the massacres of more than 800 people in the Sabra and Shatila villages near Beirut in 1982.
The terrorist Arik

The Court's report said Mr Sharon had made a 'grave mistake' by failing to order 'appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre of innocents' by his allies in the Phalange Christian militia. Mr Sharon's defence lawyer said that because he had no knowledge of what would happen when ZLA irregular troops allowed the militia into the camps, he could not be held to account.

.

Falling Apart

In 1963, FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Chief Justice Earl Warren met in the Oval Office. The trio studied notes from an interview with Marvin Lee Aday in which the young man described how he, a friend and his friend's father, drove out to Love Field to watch John F. Kennedy land. After watching him leave the airport, they decided to head to Market Hall which was on Kennedy's parade route. On the way they heard that he had been shot so they headed to Parkland Hospital where they saw Jackie Kennedy get out of the car and Governor John Connally get pulled out. Then they saw a very much alive Kennedy taken out and smuggled into a private car.

In 1952, President-elect Adlai Stevenson fulfilled an election campaign pledge to visit Korea in an effort to find an end to the bitter civil war raging in the small Asian nation. His opponent Dwight David Eisenhower had electrified the country just before the election by promising to personally go to Korea and end that stalemated conflict, a pledge which Stevenson had matched. Characteristically, he arrived at one but his smart alec solutions that led to his impeachment in 1956.

Partition Map	In 1947, the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine or United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 was announced. Palestine followed India in suffering the agony of partition following a British withdrawal.

in 1952, Eisenhower had made Joe McCarthy his running mate, MacArthur's campaign had fallen apart and the result was Stevenson winning the nomination. All three candidates had promised to go to Korea to find out what could be done to end the conflict. On this day the U.S. President-elect fulfilled that campaign promise. Arriving in the war-zone, his secret plan to end the conflict was immeasurably different from the two other candidates. In The Impeachment of Adlai Stevenson journalist David Gerrold examined how six years of intelligent decisions provoked Congressional uproar.	Adlai Stevenson

T.E. Lawrence

In 1963, FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, President John F Kennedy and Chief Justice Earl Warren met in the Oval Office. Agenda: to agree the action plan for the Presidential Commission into the assassination attempt on the President which occurred just a week before. Kennedy re-iterated that if a CIA plot was discovered, he really would smash the agency into a thousand pieces this time. Hoover could not agree more, he wanted a super-agency from which he could control both domestic and foreign intelligence services. The provisional title for the new super-agency was Homeland Security; Hoover felt the name had a good ring to it.

In 1947, General Assembly invited Arab Palestine to join the United Nations as a sovereign nation. The Palestine Plan was denounced by Zionists worldwide. In New York, protests are led by David Green and former Commander of the British Eighth Army, Colonel T.E. Lawrence who had promised Aaron Aaronsohn that Eretz Israel would get his voice after the war.	Lawrence