Downfall

The Violent yet peaceful death of Marvin Lee Aday Part IV ~ Orvis Wesley Aday was a Police Officer. One of Dallas' finest. That was until the Incident. Not that he was the only Officer in Dallas affected of course, far from it. By 1965, Aday was an alcoholic who would go on drinking binges for days at a time. His son Marvin and his mother Wilma Artie (Hukel) would drive around to all the bars in Dallas, looking for Orvis to take him home. In 1967 Wilma died and Orvis, in a drunken rage, tried to kill Marvin with a knife. Marvin got his inheritance from his mother's death, and fled to Los Angeles with Nadine Cross.

Jart	The Death, when it came, was completely earnest and open. Every weapon was used as it had been designed to be used. There seemed to be no compunction about consequences... The Little Death resulted in 4 million casualties, most in Western Europe and England. The Death resulted in approximately 2 1/2 billion casualties, and the numbers will always be uncertain, for by the time the body counts were 'completed,' it is possible that as many bodies had rotted as had been counted. And, of course, as many more had been completely vaporized. ~ Patricia Vasquez Click Symbol to Watch Clip
Invaders

In 2000 emerging from a supernova, a 300 kilometre asteroid entered the solar system and into eratic orbit around the Earth. Scientists made a mysterious discovery - the "Stone" had exactly the same external dimensions of an orbital of Jupiter, yet had infinite internal mass. Worshippers of all faiths hoped that the arrival could prevent the near future apocalypse termed the "Death" (America and the Soviet Union had been on a collision course since a limited nuclear exchange in 1993 known as “the Little Death”). The Stone had been hollowed out along its long axis, and subdivided into seven vast cylindrical chambers by humans from Earth's future. Trouble was the society of human descendents, called the Hexamon had also been locked in ongoing war with an alien race. The Jarts had come from further down the Way, beyond 2.0 ex 9 (2 billion kilometers) and conquered Axis City. These frightening beings were now the masters of the Thistledown and they had an altogether different form of “Death” planned for humanity.

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In 1985, UNESCO declared the Historic District of Old Kingston a World Heritage Site. Once the British capital of Ontario, Kingston was at this juncture the only North American city north of Mexico where English was spoken by a majority of citizens as a first language.

'I feel so strange what's wrong with me?' You've got a problem that you can't see But I've got a feeling that the rumours are true I see the girl's got a hook in you You carry on believing That you can take or leave it Now who are you deceiving Cause when its own up time She's in back of your mind She's got her hooks in you You said you'd never let it happen again You spend your money and you're deeper in
Marillion	Your fair-weather friends call two by two To let you know what's wrong with you But now your heartbeat's thumpin' You watch your nerve ends jumpin' Well I can tell you somethin' When it's own up time You're gonna toe the line ~ Marillion 'Hooks in You' - Click to Watch Sample
Hooks in You

In late 1988, citing 'musical differences', Fish (real name Derek Dick) left the band and was replaced as vocalist by Steve Hogarth. In fact Fish had been suffering depression and alcoholism partly as a result of too much touring with the band. The loss of the larger-than-life Fish left a hole that would be difficult to fill. However, the release of “Hooks in You” delivered a new commercial appeal, and more than that, a modern 90's appeal from the more photogenic new singer Steve Hogarth. Hogarth himself made some disturbing references to the origin of the lyrics, written in February '89 at 'The Music Farm': 'The days were spent jamming in the studio and drinking fresh coffee in the lounge next door. On one such afternoon I was wrestling with the cafetiere plunger when I heard that guitar riff coming through the wall. I was perusing a fax from the ever-creative John helmer and there was this line 'when the fear gets a hook in you...' The song unfolded in my head, right there and then and, in about an hour, we had the basic structure nailed. We all wondered whether it was too 'straight ahead' but always liked its attitude... You have to listen to it loud, really... ' Trouble was, fans of Fish understood the undertones in the song. In particular, the lyric 'She's got her hooks in you She's got her hooks in me too' is a clear statement of personal rivalry between the two. There are various unsubtle references to instability etc which are unimistakably having a pop at Fish. And also of course, by then, Fish had conquered his demons, his solo career had faltered and he wanted back in... Big time. The lyrics are available at at Tripod

Guy Montag

In 2012, security forces in the dystopian America of Condoleeza Rice order the closure of the Today in Alternate History website. Arriving in College Station, Central Texas fireman Guy Montag explained that “451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which book-paper catches fire, and burns. However a hotter temperature will be required for Cat's PC133-style computer which has defied many physical laws still to be operating at all.

In 2017, John Cramer published Einstein's Bridge. This incredible non-fiction book recounts how George H.W. Bush selected Bob Dole as his running mate in 1988, and after being elected named John Deutsch as secretary of Energy. The combination resulted in the completion of the Superconducting Super Collider 14 years later. The high energies of the SSC attracted the attention of intelligences in two other bubble universes, one benevolent and the other implacably hostile.	Particle Accelerator

Snakeyes	In 1963, in the early evening, the strange being known as Snake eyes stood outside the Paine home in Irving, Texas, about 15 miles from down-town Dallas. He knocked on the door, and spoke briefly with a young Russian lady. Her husband worked in the City, she was alone and impatient to return to her two week old daughter. Snake eyes passed the young lady a brown paper bag containing a Mannlicher-Carcano Rifle and gave some detailed instructions to be carried out forty-eight hours hence. Her uncle and aunt in Minsk would have been astounded to see the calm acquiescence of the troubled 19-year-old student they knew just a few years before .

In 1999, Philip Roth published his masterpiece The Plot Against Rhodesia, exploring a wholly imagined thesis and sees it through to the end: Ian Smith becomes Rhodesian Prime Minister in 1965 as seen through the eyes of a Zimbabwean family in the suburbs of Salisbury. Some critics panned the ending in which a well known literacy device was used to project forward to the election of Robert Mugabe in 1980 whereby some limited form balance had been restored in this alternative universe. However, in a breathtaking coda, Ian Smith turns the tables on Zanu-PF and restores white settler rule with assistance from South African in Operation Quartz	Ian Smith

Trapped

The Violent yet peaceful death of Marvin Lee Aday Part II ~
Marvin put the Permacover notebook into the Triumph's saddlebag. He capped the pen and clipped it in his pocket. He put the muzzle of the Colt into his mouth and looked up at the blue sky. He thought of a game they had played when they were children, a game the others had teased him about because he never quite dared to go through with it. There was a gravel pit out on one of the back roads, and you could jump off the edge and fall a heartstopping distance before hitting the sand, rolling over and over, and finally climbing up to do it all over again. All except Marvin. Marvin would stand on the lip of the drop and chant, One .. . Two . . . Three! just like the others, but the talisman never worked. His legs remained locked. He could not bring himself to jump. And the others sometimes chased him home, shouting at him, calling him Marvin the Pansy. He thought: If I could have brought myself to jump once . . . just once . . .I might not be here. Well, last time pays for all.
Marvin Lee Aday	He thought: One . . . Two . . . THREE! He pulled the trigger. The gun went off. Marvin jumped. ~ Stephen King, The Stand Book III Chapter 64. ~ "Bat Out of Hell", Meatloaf, 1976 Click Symbol to Play Clip Shortly after his mother died, his father, in a drunken rage, tried to kill him with a knife, and he barely managed to escape after they had a bad fight. After Marvin got his inheritance from his mother's death, he fled to Los Angeles with Nadine Cross. But Nadine was promised to another - the Walkin' Dude. They had sprung a trap, and left Marvin for dead.
Meatloaf

But I can't stop thinking of you, and I never see the sudden curve until it's way too late. I never see the sudden curve 'till it's way too late. Then I'm dying at the bottom of a pit in the blazing sun. Torn and twisted at the foot of a burning bike. And I think somebody somewhere must be tolling a bell. And the last thing I see is my heart, still beating, breaking out of my body, and flying away, Like a bat out of hell.

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In 1945, the author Kurt Vonnegut became unstuck in time. One of the very few Allied witnesses to the fire-bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut had been deeply traumatised. Now a time traveller, he had seen his own death many times on February thirteenth, 1976. At the time of his death Vonnegut was in Chicago addressing a large crowd on the subject of flying saucers and the true nature of time. He had to cross three international boundaries in order to reach Chicago. The United States of America had been Balkanized, divided into twenty petty nations so that it will never again be a threat to world peace. Chicago has been hydrogen-bombed by Angry Chinamen. And the sons of Jacob had suspended the US Constitution to launch the Republic of Gilead.

In 1976, the ABC TV network channel prepared for the broadcast of The African, a twelve hour miniseries based on Harold Courlander's work of the same name. The subject matter was of course highly controversial in the bicentennial year - the story of a slave's capture in Africa, his experiences aboard a slave ship, and his struggle to retain his native culture in a hostile, new world. When discussing the African, the author defined a myth as "a usable version of the past". Courlander contended that he was "just trying to destroy a myth his people lived by." Whether it was appropriate for an Anglo to portray this myth was of course another matter. Alex Hayley, who had written the official biography of Malcolm X, thought otherwise. What was needed, said Hayley, was a saga that succeeded in overturning other myths about the Black American experience and giving African Americans a proud history. Only an African-American author could achieve this.

Ford

In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was published. Simon Burns' masterful entry "What if Sara Jane Moore had missed?" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario where Gerald Ford had served as U.S. president until 1985. Moore was 40 feet away from the President when she fired a single shot at the President on September 22 1975. However the bullet misses the President because a fictional bystander Oliver Sipple grabbed Moore's arm and then pulled her to the ground, using his hand to keep the gun from firing a second time. Sipple said : "I saw [her gun] pointed out there and I grabbed for it. [...] I lunged and grabbed the woman's arm and the gun went off." The single shot which Moore did manage to fire from her .38-caliber revolver ricocheted off the entrance to the hotel and slightly injured a bystander.

In 1940, in response to Germany's levelling of Coventry, England two days before, Sir Arthur Travers Harris commander of RAF Bomber Command orders the destruction of Hamburg. When Britain is finally starved into submission and defeat in 1945, Harris is one of many high profile war criminals handed over to Nazi authorities for trial at Nuremberg where he suicides hours before his planned execution.

Bomber Harris

James Herbert

In 1980, a simple little village in England was quickly ripped apart by a devastating earthquake. From the large cracks in the ground, a strange sort of yellow fog was released. And when people come in contact with this fog, they soon start to go completely insane. Chaos ensues along with murder, self mutilation and destruction. Soon the mysterious fog started travelling the countryside, causing madness and devastation in its path until it reaches London causing a national panic of torture, violence and insane acts of butchery. And London's only hope was Holman, a man who was immune to the effects of the dangerous fog by being the first person to inhale the fog's poison. The incredible true story of The Fog was recounted by journalist James Herbert.

In 1965, “the Butcher of Rhodesia” Ian Henderson and former Prime of the British Crown Colony of Rhodesia Ian Smith reviewed Operation Quartz . This plan envisaged placing Rhodesian troops at strategic points from which they could simultaneously wipe out the terrorists at the Assembly Points and assassinate Mugabe and the other terrorist leaders at their campaign headquarters. The strike would be assisted by Puma helicopters of the South African Air Force and would involve the participation of elite Recce units of the South African army. Clearly the Rhodesians had discussed Operation Quartz with their counterparts in the SADF and obtained their approval and co-operation.

Ian Smith

Lord Soames had already agreed to allow 400 South African troops into the country in order to protect the Beitbridge area, the main route of escape for whites if the situation were to degenerate into chaos and all-out war. In fact the number of men that the SADF sent across the border was closer to 1,000, although some were later withdrawn following protests by Mugabe.

Buried

The Violent yet peaceful death of Marvin Lee Aday Part I ~
They had been coming around a hairpin turn [heading West to the Dark man], Nadine on the inside, Marvin on the outside aboard his Triumph cycle. They were on the Colorado Western Slope, about seventy miles from the Utah border. There had been an oilslick on the outer part of the curve, and in the days since, Marvin had pondered much on this oilslick. It seemed almost too perfect. An oilslick from what? Surely nothing had been moving up here over the last two months [since Captain Trips]. He gripped the pen. Thought. Wrote:
Marvin Lee Aday	I apologize for the destructive things I have done, but do not deny that I did them of my own free will. I want to sign this by a name given me in Los Angeles. I could not accept it then, but I take it now freely. I am going to die in my right mind. Writing neatly at the bottom, he affixed his signature: Meatloaf. ~ Stephen King, The Stand Book III Chapter 64. ~ "Bat Out of Hell", Meatloaf, 1976 Click Symbol to Play Clip
Meatloaf

I can see myself tearing up the road, faster than any other boy has ever gone. And my skin is raw but my soul is ripe. No-one's gonna stop me now, I gotta make my escape. But I can't stop thinking of you, and I never see the sudden curve until it's way too late. I never see the sudden curve 'till it's way too late. Then I'm dying at the bottom of a pit in the blazing sun. Torn and twisted at the foot of a burning bike. And I think somebody somewhere must be tolling a bell. And the last thing I see is my heart, still beating, breaking out of my body, and flying away, Like a bat out of hell.

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In 2012, in Center Lovell, Maine Constant Reader buried the author Stephen King in the deep corner formed where the house and the barn came together at an extreme angle. He would bury him where his wife kept her garden. The garden that she loved more than she loved him. After all, a man who would steal your love when your love was really all you had was not much of a man.

In 1906, Ernest Oldmeadow's North Sea Bubble described the horrors of the German occupation of Great Britian following the Great War. The Germans attempted to woo their new vassals with universal Christmas gifts and subsidised food. The worst atrocities inflicted by the occupiers were the introduction of a diet of sausages and sauerkraut, the correct spelling of Handel's name in concert programmes and Home Rule for Ireland. It was a far cry from the predictions of Saki (Hector Hugh Munro). In When William Came: A Story of London under the Hohenzollerns (1913) his hero, Murrey Yeovil — `bred and reared as a unit of a ruling race' — returns from darkest Asia to find a vanquished Britain `incorporated within the Hohenzollern Empire ... as a Reichsland, a sort of Alsace-Lorraine washed by the North Sea instead of the Rhine', with continental-style cafés in the `Regentstrasse' and on-the-spot fines for walking on the grass in Hyde Park.

Spear	In 1966, a cargo flight crashed less than 10 miles west-southwest of Tegel Airport in Berlin, Germany, in the early morning hours of the morning. All three crew members perished. The cause was undetermined because U.S. investigators were not allowed to survey the accident site or the aircraft remains. The accident site was in the Soviet occupation zone causing some to speculate that the aircraft was shot down.. The Soviet authorities returned about 50 percent of the wreckage. Some major components were not returned, including the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, flight control systems, navigation and communication equipment plus two items of incalculable value.
Heinrich Himmler who had never actually died; the body identified as his was only someone pretending to be him to save the last power circle of Nazi masters from the righteous fury of the conquering armies. And the Spear used to stab Jesus Christ as a weapon of mass evil destruction. The incredible story of the Soviet interception was told by journalist James Herbert in his masterpiece Heilige Lance.

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 the Bay of Pigs, a man travels back to Palm Beach, Florida, in December 1960 to prevent the assassination of President-elect John F Kennedy by Richard Paul Pavlick. He finds an altered history also need correction. The result is shocking as Kennedy fails to authorise an air strike on the island. Instead of Nixon's successful but bloody overthrow of Casto, Kennedy creates a military fiasco which has repercussions for the next decade.

Kennedy

Shuttle Buran

In 1988, the unmanned Shuttle Buran is launched by the Soviet Union on her first flight. It had military missions other than simply placing one or two men into space, involved with space defense missions against the United States Air Force's X-20 Dyna-Soar.

In 1965, “the Butcher of Rhodesia” Ian Henderson and former Prime of the British Crown Colony of Rhodesia Ian Smith make a momentous decision for the peoples of southern Africa. The two agree to proceed with a modified version of Operation Quartz . Instead of the resources of the British Government, a private army of mercenaries and white farmers would be used.

Ian Smith

Fast-talking

Offred	In 1991, the following notice was published ~ With due respect to sworn testimony of God-fearing citizens, - Deeply regretted by the Commander and his good wife Serena Joy,- In accord with the laws of the sons of Adam in this Republic of Gilead,- the patronymic, concubine Offred to be hung at "The Wall" this evening. Dereliction in duty per "The Ceremony", yet guilty of fornication with the Commander's chauffeur by magistrates of this good parish of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Guilty

Persuant to Holy Scripture, Mark 5:29 refers, - And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. On this day of our Lord, 1991 Anno Domini. Not the potter, but the potter's clay. Amen.

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In 2012, the author Stephen King awoke to a knock on his home in Center Lovell, Maine. Stranger : You stole my story. [King looks at a loss for words] Well? King : I'm sorry.. do I.. I don't believe I know you. Stranger : I'm Constant Reader. But that doesn't matter. I know you, Mr. King. That's what matters. You stole my love.

In 1919, Text 1 of the "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" entered the possession of NILI, a secret intelligence group led by the Zionists Sarah and Aaron Aaronsohn. Text I was an accurate record of Lawrence's capture at Deraa in November 1917, yet Lawrence had mislaid the manuscript whilst changing trains at Reading Station. Chaim Weizmann immediately understood the bargaining potential of the document as “in” to British Foreign Policy in the Middle East. Inside the British Foreign Office, Lawrence was “turned” becoming a powerful advocate for the creation of the State of Israel, an event which occurred in 1924 despite the original plans for a British mandate as set out in the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916.

Shawnee

In 1970, Southern Airlines Flight 932 crash landed in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia. The seventy-five passengers including members of the Marshall University football team were carried from the burning aircraft and taken for parley. Chief Blackfish and Blue Jacket explained they had taken the corrective action necessary to save their lives, but needed to understand why the Americans were trespassing west of the Appalachia mountains in contravention of the Royal Proclamation of 1763.

1979, in an act of treachery renegade CIA Agent Aldrich Ames informs his Soviet handlers that Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu and members of his elite Sayeret Matkal unit have arrived in the United States. Their objectives are to post mortem Operation Eagle Claw, the failed military operation to rescue the 53 hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1980 and come up with a new, improved plan. Meanwhile in Tehran, the hostage takers pursue another agenda. Consideration is give to a plan to “return” the hostages to an independent such as Jesse Jackson, only to seize that individual to deepen the sense of national humiliation in the United States.	Hostages

Tunguska	In 1966, Lyndon Baines Johnson received an alarming update regarding the two deep-underground nuclear detonations. Scientists were confident that the detonations were the result of the Tunguska Event in 1908. A singularity had penetrated the Earth, causing an explosion that flattened 20 miles of Tunguska in central Siberia. An elliptic course had been pursued by the singularity for fifty-eight years. As a result, they believed the singularity would re-emerge on the Eastern Seaboard during 1971.

In 1965, echoing a charge made of his predecessor Anthony Eden a decade before, the political enemies of Harold MacMillan accuse the British Prime Minister of failing to provide “the firm smack of government”. They begin to exploit the national humiliation caused by the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in Zimbabwe. The affair may have exacerbated Macmillan's ill-health. He was taken ill shortly afterwards, diagnosed incorrectly with inoperable prostate cancer. Consequently, he resigned and was succeeded by the Foreign Secretary Alec Douglas-Home in a controversial move; it was alleged that Macmillan had pulled strings and utilised the party's grandees, nicknamed "The Magic Circle", to ensure that Butler was not chosen as his successor.	Macmillan

Empowerment

In 2012, the author Stephen King awoke to find another threatening note had been pushed through the letter box of his home in Center Lovell, Maine. Some men don't know that they got the whole world and it's right in front of their nose Signed, Constant Reader.

Handmaiden

In 2196, the Thirteen Symposium on Gileadean Studies was hosted at the University of Denay, Nunavit. Professor of Caucasian Anthropology Pieixoto explained that sterility had caused the downfall of Gileadean. Almost all of the Commanders were sterile, due to an accidental release of a bioweapon designed for a war of aggression on the Soviet Union. Unable to accept this simple truth, Commanders had introduced the subjugation of women in an attempt to redirect the blame.

Handmaids were women modeled after Zilpah and Bilhah in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible, the slaves of the patriarch Jacob's wives Rachel and Leah. When the wives could not conceive, they had their handmaids lay with their husband to have children on their behalf. Like the biblical handmaids, Gileadean equivalents must have ritualized and completely unemotional sex with a man, with his wife holding her hands. Sexual satisfaction is forbidden and if a child is produced, it will be considered the offspring of the man and his wife. Handmaids spend a maximum of two years in a particular household before they are moved. Those who cannot conceive within three placements are deemed barren Unwomen and sent to the colonies — so that many genuinely fertile Handmaids seek to impregnate themselves using alternative methods.

MLK

In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was published. Simon Burns' masterful sequel "What if James Earl Ray had missed?" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario where the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King had survived as NAACP Leader. In a chilling line, the novel explains King is not the same man who checked in to the hotel, and as a result adopted a harder stance with dramatically improved results for African Americans by the late 1970s.

In 1980, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu and other veterans of the Entebbe Raid arrive secretly in the United States. Whilst there, they will post mortem Operation Eagle Claw, the failed military operation to rescue the 53 hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1980. And come up with a new, improved plan.

Yoni

Verwoerd

In 1965, South African Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd received a decidedly unpleasant telephone call from the White House. The Americans might have ignored internal security matters such as the Sharpeville massacre, the banning of the African National Congress and Pan Africanist Congress, and the treason trial of Nelson Mandela. However any support for the white Rhodesian government was quite another matter. This President did not live in the nineteenth century and would not tolerate gun boat diplomacy in Zimbabwe. “Don't even think about it, Verwoerd” and hung up the telephone abruptly.

In 1965, in a broadcast to the nation British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan announced that “whilst he strongly disagreed with the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Zimbabwe, he accepted it”. Britain would not be taking any action, and he asked the nation to pray for the success of the black majority government and the white farmers. Shortly before the show, he had called off Operation Quartz , that mission had been planned on a needs to know basis. Nobody needed to know about Operation Quartz.

Macmillan

Change the only constant

In 2012, on the morning following his combined sixty-fifth birthday and retirement party, the author Stephen King awoke to find a threatening note had been pushed through the letter box of his home in Center Lovell, Maine. A man who would steal your love when your love was really all you had was not much of a man. I have, therefore, decided to kill you. Signed, Constant Reader.

In 1992, the Federal Government introduced Chapter 419 Criminal Code to protect the wealthy citizens of oil-rich Nigeria from the Advance fee fraud. The collapse of western economies in the early 1980s encouraged desperate individuals to attempt to persuade victims to advance relatively small sums of money in the hope of realizing a much larger gain. Among the variations on this type of scam are the English Letter and "The Spanish Prisoner." The Spanish Prisoner is a confidence trick dating back to 1588. In its original form, the confidence artist tells his victim that he is in correspondence with a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain (originally by King Philip II) under a false identity. The alleged prisoner cannot reveal his identity without serious repercussions, and is relying on the confidence artist to raise money to secure his release. The confidence artist offers to let the mark supply some of the money, with a promise that he will be rewarded generously when the prisoner returns; financially and perhaps also by being married to the prisoner's beautiful daughter. However, once the mark has turned over his money, he learns that further difficulties have arisen, requiring more money, until the mark is cleaned out and the game ends. More recently, though most 419 scams are perpetrated by e-mail alone, some scammers enhance the believability of their offer through the use of a sham website. Such websites can imitate real sites such as eBay, PayPal or a banking site like Bank Of America for the purposes of phishing, while others are totally fictional and used to lend credibility to a scammer's story. For example, a scammer may create a website for a fictional bank, then give the victim details to login to the site, where the victim then sees the money that the scammer has promised sitting in the account. The victim is then more likely to believe the scammer and send the requested advance payments. Fake websites are the centerpiece of false online storefront scams. The journalist Robert Harris investigated the use of sham web sites in his 2005 publication Enigma: from Alan Turing to the Spanish Prisoner. The title of the book is cruel reference to the glory days of British computing technology at Bletchley Park, when the cracking of the German military code proved vital in winning World War Two.

European Defendants

in 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) also known as the Tokyo Trials were adjourned. Leaders of the Empires of Britain, France and Holland were tried for three types of crimes: "Class A" (crimes against peace), "Class B" (war crimes), and "Class C" (crimes against humanity) committed during the Pacific War. Twenty-seven European military and political leaders were charged with Class A crimes, and more than 300,000 European nationals were charged with Class B and C crimes, mostly over prisoner abuse. Executions at Sugamo Prison in Ikebukuro went ahead on December 23, 1948.

In 1979, due to the Tehran hostage crisis, US President Jimmy Carter halted petroleum imports from Iran. He considered a range of military option; most appealing was an offer from the IDF to loan the elite Sayeret Matkal unit for an Entebbe style Raid.	Jimmy Carter

Tunguska

In 1966, Lyndon Baines Johnson received the most alarming and unexpected briefing of his presidency. The two deep-underground nuclear detonations were not initiated neither in nor out of the nuclear club of sovereign nations. Three possibilities had emerged. Aliens. Nations as theorised by Edmond Halley's postulation that the Earth was hollow. Or the singularity that penetrated the Earth at the Tunguska Event in 1908.

In 1965, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan received a decidedly unpleasant telephone call from the White House. Eisenhower might have let Suez go, after all, it was election month and he had just suffered a heart attack. However, this President did not live in the nineteenth century and would not tolerate gun boat diplomacy in Zimbabwe. “Don't even think about it, Mac” and hung up the telephone abruptly.

Macmillan