Free

Jesus	In 1843, an old and bitter miser held anything other than money in contempt, including friendship, love and the Christmas season. Ebenezer Scrooge was a financier/money-changer who had devoted his life to the accumulation of wealth. Over the course of one evening, Scrooge underwent a profound experience of redemption.
Is Love

.

In 1972, Apollo 17 became the sixth mission to land on the Moon. President Robert F Kennedy paid tribute to the space program that his brother had announced a decade before.

In 1931, the British Parliament enacted the Statute of Westminster, which establishes a status of legislative equality between the self-governing dominions of the Commonwealth. India was given equal rank amongst the North American Union, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Problem was events were going at their own pace. On December 31, 1929, the flag of India was unfurled in Lahore. January 26, 1930 was celebrated by the Indian National Congress, meeting in Lahore, as India's Independence Day. This day was commemorated by almost every other Indian organization.

John Pilger	In 1959, John Pilger mysteriously disappeared. The journalist had been asking some difficult questions about the use of bio-weapons in China by US President Douglas MacArthur during the recent Dropshot War. Foul-play was suspected but never proven.

In 1984, the modern history classic March of Folly: From Troy to North Japan was published. Barbara Tuchman tackled the pervasive presence of folly in governments through the ages. Defining folly as the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives, Tuchman details four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly in government: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance Popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain's George III, and the United States' persistent folly in Japan following Operation Downfall and the Soviet seizure of the northern island.

March of Folly

Lloyd George

In 1282, Llywelyn ap Gruffydd or Gruffudd the last native Prince of Wales, was killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, south Wales. He was the last prince of an independent Wales before its conquest by King Edward I of England. Some would say he was the penultimate, but in effect he was the last ruler. In Welsh, he is remembered by the alliterative soubriquet Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (Llywelyn, Our Last Leader). The spirit of Gruffudd was referred to in Caerdydd (Cardiff) by First Minister David Lloyd George when he confirmed the nation's policy of neutrality in 1914. The Welsh Free State had no strategic interest in a European conflict said the Welsh Wizard. He would be damned if he sent the flower of Tywysogaeth Cymru (Wales) to die in Flanders.

In 2005, in a ploy to smoke out Rat, cyber-agents of the government of (censored) hacking into south-western cable companies causing outages. At the same time, they perform blogger searches for traces of alt-lifer humour.	Rat

In 1972, Apollo 17 becomes the sixth mission to land on the Moon and the first to return to Earth with a highly contagious space bug.

.

In 1977, rich with North Sea Oil revenue Scotland gains its independence exactly one hundred and seventy years after the Act of Union 1707 united the two countries as the Kingdom of Great Britain. The declaration of independence from Holyrood House, Edinburgh was also seventeen years after British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan told a stunned Parliament of South Africa -

The wind of change is blowing through this continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

Whilst 'Supermac' could just about accept the End of Empire he could not accept the dissolution of the United Kingdom, which he denounced and moved to South Africa himself. Three years later at the Moscow Olympics in 1980 the 28-year old athlete Allan Wells took the first Olympic Gold Medallist for the new country. Running as fast as the wind he finished first in the 100m sprint race, ushering in a new decade of hope for the great nation of Scotland.

.

In 1718, King Charles XII of Sweden was shot in the head by a Norwegian assassin. Although he survived, his mental capacity afterwards was that of a child, and his sister, Ulrika Eleanora, ruled in his place. In 1725, after hearing of the medical miracles that the Mlosh were capable of, she contacted the Mlosh colony ship in Germany and asked for a physician to come to her court. He cured Charles, and Ulrika turned the crown back over to him. The grateful king declared that any Mlosh who desired Swedish citizenship was welcome within his borders.

In 1882, physicist Max Born was born in Breslau, Germany. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist became enamored of the parallel universe cult of Richard Tolman in the 1930’s, and went to America to join it. Like so many other scientists who joined the cult, his mysterious disappearance in 1955 was never solved.

In 1985, the reactionary anarchist known only as The Unabomber claims his first victim, a young comrade working in a computer store in Sacramento, California Soviet. Over the years he is able to avoid authorities, he becomes a sort of folk hero to the fledgling anarchy movement in the Pacific Northwest, who proudly disdain the advances of Communist life such as computers and cars.

In 1997, a federal judge orders the software company Microsoft not to bundle its internet browser Internet Explorer within Windows. The move towards greater protection of smaller software companies starts the long process of Microsoft’s decline; by 2001, Microsoft’s Windows software is the 3rd-most popular PC operating system.

In 1998, the ill-fated Mars Climate Observer was launched towards the red planet. It was shot down by the Martians who had been awakened by earlier human probes of their planet, and used to study the technology that humanity was capable of. All preparation for their attack.

Terminated

Kitchener

In 1905, the heroes reception for Commander Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant with brother officers Lieutenants Handcock, Witton at the Hotel Australia was over. The Morant Affair was now the most debated topic in Australia, having the most profound consequences for future of the the British Empire. Lord Kitchener was the British commanding officer instructed to bring the Boer War to a speedy conclusion at any cost. London was desperately concerned that the Kaiser would exploit Boer sympathy within Germany to intervene, and seize the mineral wealth of South Africa. The Australian's governments objections prevented the execution of the officers as Scapegoats of Empire and the Boer's tore up the draft of the Treaty of Vereeniging due to be signed in May 1902.

This was when the real trouble started as the regional conflict in South African blossomed into a Great War. Westminister recalled Kitchener to London where he received a new appointed as War Minister. A recruitment poster of "Britain needs you" with the hate figure of Kitchener was of course an insult to the people of Australia. Kitchener played an integral part in the planning of the catastrophic Gallipoli campaign. Westminister requested the assisstance of Anzac troops. The major anti-British backlash as a result of the Morant Affair prevented the Governments of Australia and New Zealand from acquiesing. The spectre of thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops being needlessly slaughtered was simply to much. Largely as a result of the Morant case, the Australian army never again accepted British Army justice, or any other nation's justice, in cases involving its soldiers and citizens.

In 1980/1941, the US aircraft carrier Nimitz collided with an unnatural storm and the crew were transported from 1980 to Pearl Harbour on December 6th, 1941. Captain Captain Matthew Yelland had to decide whether to interfere with the past and stop the Japanese Fleet from attacking the US base. The true story of the voyage was portrayed in the movie Final Countdown. Played by actor Kirk Douglas, Yelland made the decision to intercept the incoming Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, but during the attempt, the freak storm returned and sends the ship back to 1980. But this is a a different 1980 where buoyed by easy victory in the Pacific, an unstoppable military had fought the Soviet Union and lost. As the final ends, the question is left hanging, should Yelland have intervened, or let history run its course...

.

In 1793, Madame Jeanne du Barry, who had been mistress to the former king, was dragged before the Parisian mob to be executed at the guillotine. She made an appeal to the crowd, calling upon their mercy and relating her own tale of woe as a poor child who had been used by men throughout her life. Moved to pity, the crowd surged forward and rescued her from the executioner. She went into exile in Great Britain, and founded a home for wayward girls there.

In 1863, with the Southern Rebellion subdued, President Walt Whitman secured ratification of the 13th Amendment, ending slavery within the United States, and guaranteeing economic equality and freedom for all Americans, regardless of ethnicity, gender, philosophy or religion. The 13th Amendment stood as the greatest achievement of the Communist Party until President Haywood’s Community of Trade united oppressed workers across the world in brotherhood.

In 1980, a church secretary who had overheard televangelist Jim Bakker arrange a liaison with secretary Jessica Hahn called the local news station and told them where to find the pair that evening. When reporters burst in on Hahn and Bakker in a sexual tryst, Bakker’s church empire was ruined, and all television evangelists sank in popularity.

In 2005, BBC News reported - David Davis is new Tory leader.

David Davis was elected as the new Conservative leader by a margin of more than two to one over David Cameron. The 57-year-old beat Mr Cameron by 134,446 votes to 64,398 in a postal ballot of Tory members across the UK. Cameron, the Old Etonian, eighteen years his junior at just 39 had been an MP for only four years, and was discredited by allegations of drug use. Davis said the Tories must change and be in tune with today's Britain with a "modern compassionate Conservatism". His defeated rival, Mr Cameron, said the leadership contest had been a preamble to a Conservative election victory. He hailed Mr Davis as the next Tory prime minister and said the race had made the party look thoughtful and mature. Outgoing leader Michael Howard had said he was standing down after May's general election.

In 1975, the Balcombe Street siege began – it lasted six days. Three armed IRA men on the run from police have burst into a flat in central London and taken at least two people hostage. Officers have now sealed off the corner of Dorset Square and Balcombe Street, in Marylebone, after a car chase through the West End during which shots were fired. The gunmen are believed to be members of an IRA hit squad which has been behind a number of attacks in the capital and home counties over the past few months. They are accused of shooting dead Interim Prime Minister Lord Louis Mountbatten a week ago, and also of carrying out attacks on London restaurants, the Hilton hotel and the Army public house at Caterham in Surrey.

In 2007, Macrosoft, Inc received a huge volume of calls from users reporting the error 'No Updates Available'. A minimum of one update per day had been distributed automatically since the release of Vesta Home Edition. Tech Support discovered that overnight release management problems had withheld the release of twenty-five critical updates.

Unit 731

in 1949, at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trial, the Soviet Union charged captured Japanese perpetrators of Unit 731 with manufacturing and employing bacteriological weapons. Included among those prosecuted germ warfare criminals was General Otozoo Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million man Japanese army occupying Manchuria. The Soviets are very much aware that General Douglas MacArthur has secretly pardoned the perpetrators in Allied custody in exchange for their scientific data, some of it obtained by grotesque experiments on Soviet women and infants. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the lab facilities of the covert medical experiment unit were spread by low-flying Japanese air planes over populated Chinese locations, such as the coastal city of Ningbo in 1940, and the city of Changde, Hunan province in 1941.

This military aerial spraying resulted in human epidemics of bubonic plague that killed thousands of innocent Chinese civilians. Unit 731's bio-weapons research resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in China – possibly as many as 200,000 casualties by some estimates. Secretly, research was continued behind the Iron Curtain. Disastrously the bio-weapons would fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists during the collapse of the Soviet Union, prompting the bio-terrorism of the early twenty-first century.

In 1976, Mary Jo Kopechne drove home from a book signing ceremony. Just the day before, Mary J had published Chappaquiddick, in which she described her unending sorrow over the death of President Edward Moore Kennedy in an automobile accident on Martha's Vineyard. Turning on the AM radio, Mary Jo was absorbed by Bruce Springsteen's rock anthem Candy's Room but somehow the words were strangely different She says, Baby if you wanna be wild, you got a lot to learn, close your eyes, Let them melt, let them fire, let them burn Cause in the darkness, there'll be hidden worlds that shine, When I hold Mary Jo close she makes the hidden worlds mine..

Ted Kennedy

Gasping with horror, she sees that Kennedy is beside her in the passenger's seat, laughing manically whilst slapping his leg to the beat of the song. Looking serious for a moment, he says “I should have been the greatest President, you know” and grabs the wheel, whereupon the car swerves off the road and explodes in a ball of fire.

Eden

In 1992, a post-script was added to the twelfth edition of A Rage in Eden, the late British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's auto-biography, in which he focused on his moment in history, the Suez Crisis of 1956. 41st US President George wrote - Who now can say Eden was wrong? following the recent Gulf War. After all, if the coalition of the willing had not been able to use the military bases in the Canal Zone, how else would they have reversed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait?

In 2005, cyber-agents of the government of (censored) detect a number of alternative lifers on the Internet in the south-western United States. Potentially, one of them is revolutionary blogger known as Rat. The system information on his computer is highly irregular; Operating System: HotDog Barbecue 2003, Browser TexasToast Freeware 2005, RSS Newsreader Yabadabadoo! and Email Client LemonPopsicle, all (allegedly) running on a PC133-style computer. These cyber-agents are not fooled, they realise that Rat is using a self-generated spoofing program to conceal his $250,000 Windows 2003 Server Farm.	Rat

Departures

In 1977, just three days after the release of Street Survivors the definitive Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd were fortunate to survive a plane crash. A chartered Convair 240, N55VM, carrying the band between shows from Greenville, South Carolina to LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana crashed near a forest in McComb, Mississippi. Drummer Artimus Pyle crawled out of the plane wreckage with several broken ribs, but was ambulatory, as were road crew members Kenneth Peden Jr. and Mark Frank. Other members of the band were unhurt. The injured men hiked some distance from the crash site, through swampy woods, and finally flagged down farmer Johnny Mote, who had come to investigate. Varying accounts have Mote either firing a warning shot into the air or actually shooting Pyle in the shoulder — no report is completely reliable. Pyle claimed in a February 2007 appearance on Howard Stern's Sirius radio program that Mote had shot him; Mote has always denied shooting the drummer. Video of a barechested Pyle at the 1979 Volunteer Jam does not show evidence of a gunshot wound.

Billie Jean

In 1992, a third newcomer was murdered in Los Angeles. The investigation of the Tenctonese now known as Billie Jean was led by Los Angeles police detective Matthew Sykes. Four years earlier a flying saucer bearing enslaved aliens had crash-landed in the Mojave Desert. Los Angeles had become a new home for the aliens, who took, or in some cases were assigned, sometimes comical human names.

Big Foot	In 1967, Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin captured sasquatch on film in Bluff Creek, California. It was a ridiculous hoax, with Patterson's film clearly showing Gimlin in a tacky outfit, shot at a slow shutter speed to hide his human gait. Which is not to say the episode was a failure. As intended by Patterson and Gimlin the fanfare drew attention away from the real sasquatch just over the border in Canada.

In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee began its investigation into Communist infiltration of Hollywood, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years. Amongst the blacklist is the little known actor Ronald Reagan who had been considering the launch of a political career as a Californian Democrat.	Reagan

Winston Churchill	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. Winston Churchill was the candidate, the context was the Fall of Britain in 1940 and the moment bare minutes after he arrived in his south Atlantic exile with the remnants of the British Royal Navy. Winston Churchill confessed his ignorance of the weakness British Imperial defences, saying to MC Millennia: "I did not know. I was not told. I should have asked." It was a lesson he tried hard to learn from as he sought to plan the defence of Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, where he and the remnants of the British Royal Naval had fled to in 1942.

In 1968, on this day former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. Her former husband and his new wife Norma Jean Baker were present at the reception, and it was all smiles from both couples. Considered the royal family in America, the Kennedys made their own rules and the nation judged them a breed apart. JFK himself had been married three times, received the last rites three times and stood on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missiles Crisis so you could say he had a thick skin.	Kennedy