Raven

Hari Seldon	In 926 Foundation Era, on the Planet Terminus, a vault opened and Hari Seldon emerged. This time, in flesh and blood, not the holograms of the previous eight crises. His prediction of the eventual fall of the Galactic Empire, and the apocalyptic predictions around that event, was the reason behind his nickname 'Raven' Seldon. By 20,069 Galactic Era, Seldon had decided that his initial plan was insufficient. He required a panic button.
Psychohistorian

Biographer Gaal Dornick reported that 'had been working up until his last moments on psychohistorical equations; his activated Prinie Radiant was discovered clutched in hand. According to Seldon’s instructions, the instrument was shipped by his colleague Gaal Dornick who had recently emigrated to Terminus.' This was a lie, Gaal Dornick brought Hari Seldon's cryogenically frozen body to the periphery of the galaxy, to be activated by the Prinie Radiant nine hundred thirty years later.

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In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the nation for the last time in office, issuing a strange warning.

'We face a hostile ideology [communism] global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method ... [warning about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals] [that] we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by [Ike leans forward for emphasis] the congressional military industrial complex... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.'

Richard M Nixon was seething with angry. Not only had Ike failed to back him during the campaign, not his former boss was trying toreally spoil things for him.

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In 1596, there were so many black people in England that Queen Elizabeth I demanded that they be expelled from the country. An edict from the Queen, at first it brought no action. However it was then followed up by a Royal Proclamation, issued in 1601.

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In 1776, the defeated General George Washington is astonished by the generous final settlement terms being offered to from King George IV at Buckingham Place. Prepared for the humiliation of crushing terms for the vanquished republicans in the Colonies, rather King George IV proposes a genuine partnership for Anglo-America based on local representation and self-governing taxation. 'No victors, no vanquished' chips in his shadowy adviser Ernest Shackleton by way of explanation.

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In 1819, Simón Bolívar proclaims the Republic of Baja California, the predecessor nation to a twenty-first century mega state on the west coast. Today Spanish speaking citizens enjoy the world's highest per capita income and literacy rates.

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In 1942, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. Was born in Louisville, Kentucky on this day. Aged just eighteen, Clay, Jr. won the Gold Medal at the Rome Olympics. Four years later Clay beat Sonny Liston to take the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship. Clay had driven to Sonny's home in Denver at one o'clock in the morning, shouted for Sonny to come out and fight him on the spot, and set up a huge bear trap on the lawn. On March 6 influenced by Malcolm X, Clay changed his name to Muhammed Ali, joined the Nation of Islam and retired from boxing to concentrate on the greater fights that lay ahead for the African American people. His baiting of President Lyndon Baines Johnson from the White House lawn was considered the key to Washington's decision to withdraw from Vietnam in 1967, it was just so annoying. Just like Arthur Ashe, draconian measures would be taken by the Division to prevent Clay giving the game away. He really had the establishment on the ropes.

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In 2232 AUC, the Empire of Mali in Africa declared war on its northern neighbors of Rome. The Republic had been encroaching on Malian territory for decades, and the settlement of a small town on Mali’s eastern border by Romans was the final straw. The war between Mali and Rome lasted almost seventeen years, and killed millions in Africa and Europe.

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In 1775, following the example begun by the witch-hunters of Salem, Polish Christians burn 9 women at the stake in Kalisk. The witch-hunter movement reaches its peak in the 19th century as countries that were simply full of witches were taken over by Christians and put to the torch.

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In 1860, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov. His comedies of manner helped the noble class in Imperial Russia forget the troubles of the day like the crushing poverty of the serfs and the communist agitation of the Americans. His last play, Good Comrade Wilson, was a skewering indictment of the communist system as practiced by America.

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In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower addresses the nation for the last time in office. While his speech begins with time-worn platitudes, he then veers into conspiracy theory, warning Americans of the Military-Industrial Complex and the consequences of its takeover of the country. Just before he starts naming names, though, he suddenly clutches his chest and falls over dead from a heart attack. Most politicians attributed Ike’s remarks to delirium brought on by the heart attack he was obviously suffering from as he began his speech.

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In 1971, British spaceflight Commander's wife Mrs Bert Smith confessed to her sister Betty that she wasn’t sure her Bert would be back tomorrow despite her optimistic statement to reporters. The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission had been too much trouble, it really had.

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Kennedys	A Review of PBS' 'The American Experience: Bobby & Teddy' ~ Tonight, PBS airs the third part of its five-part series on the Kennedy brothers, Bobby and Teddy, and the way they shaped the life of a generation--the tumultuous times that brought President Kennedy to the Oval Office continue to reverberate down to the 2008 election. The first two episodes focused primarily on the family life of the Kennedys, one of the wealthiest and most storied political families in American history.

The first episode was a masterwork on the emergence of ethnic politics in the early part of the last century, and the rise of the Irish Catholics in Boston, from 'Honey' Fitz to James Curley to Joe Kennedy Sr.'s storied career, culminating in his time serving as the American Ambassador to the Court of Saint James. The second episode took up the experience of the family during the Second World War. Like any American family, it was marked with tragedy and triumph, the deaths of Joe Jr. and John leaving indelible mark on Bobby and Teddy, the family's youngest sons, as well as their sisters Eunice and Patricia. The death of their brothers forced father's vast political ambitions to include his daughters, a move some Kennedy biographers have described as proto-feminism; others, noting Joe Sr's ambition, suggest that the post war era leading up to Pat running Bobby's Congressional campaign, and later, her own Senatorial run in California, were just another form of Ma Fergusonism, a way to expand the Kennedy family sweep throughout the country. The third episode ended on a high note, with Bobby becoming Governor of Massachusetts as Teddy took over his Congressional seat. Nonetheless, the looming shadows of the Nixon Administration were problematic--the simmering crises across the globe, from the wars in Cuba and Vietnam, to flashpoints like Czechoslovakia, and the Civil Rights Movement. Though as Governor, there was relatively little that Bobby could do, in the lead up to his election, the third episode noted his reaction to the attacks on Freedom Riders and muted disgust at Nixon's refusal to meet with the leaders of the Civil Rights' Movement during the March on Washington--an action that galvanized Bobby's idealism, while Patricia saw an opportunity to capture the black vote and propel Bobby to the White House at the end of Nixon's second term in 1968. Tonight's episode promises new revelations regarding the conduct of both the Kennedys and Nixon during the 1968 election. Numerous books have been written alleging dirty tricks on both sides--Patricia mobilized the ethnic machines to their fullest, as well as achieving a mass registration drive of black voters--while Nixon, in full flights of paranoid fantasy, hoped to use the power of the federal government to smash 'that damned Catholic choir boy.' The final two episodes will focus on the first and second terms of the Kennedy Administration, with a wildly expanded access to documents, staffers, and family members to create an in-depth psychological profile of the President, his Attorney General, and the Supreme Court Justices he appointed....

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Abandoned

	A household in New Texas City after the exodus of the human population of Mars ~ though the residents had left, the automated house which took care of the family still functions. Breakfast is automatically made, clothes are laid out, voice reminders of daily activities are called out, but no one is there. Robotic mice vacuum the home and tidy up. As the day progresses, the rain quits, and the house prepares lunch and opens like a flower to the warm weather. That night, a storm crashes a tree into the home, starting a fire that the house cannot combat, as the municipal water supply has dried up and failed. ~ Abridged Version of There Will Come Soft Rains (December 2007).
Planet Mars

In 2008, astronomers watched a football pitch-sized lump of rock hurtle through space at a speed of 45000 km/h. The fragment, which had been christened WD-5, was on a collision course with Mars. The impact on 30th January would subsequently be known as the Martian Armageddon. During the period December 2001-November 2005 humans from Earth had colonized the deserted planet, occasionally having contact with the few surviving Martians, but for the most part preoccupied with making Mars a second Earth. WD-5 changed all that, and most humans departed in haste during the December 2007 exodus.

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In 1732, the turncoat George Washington was born. The measure of Washington's treachery was made worse by the fact that he was considered by many to be the best general and most accomplished leader in the Continental Army. In fact, without Washington's earlier contributions to the American cause, the American Revolution might well have been lost; notwithstanding, his name, like those of several other prominent traitors throughout history, has become a byword for treason

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Hari Seldon	By 310 Foundation Era, the Seldon Plan was in ruins. While his vassals prosecute the war, the Mule travelled under the guise of a refugee clown named "Magnifico Giganticus," with Foundation citizens Toran and Bayta Darell to different worlds of the Foundation. The Mule used his super-human abilities to undermine the Foundation's war effort by spreading despair and destroying morale. In the end, the Foundation falls without much of a fight at all.
Psychohistorian

As the Mule was advancing, the Foundation leadership complacently assumed that Seldon predicted his attack, and that even though the Mule was inexorably winning, the scheduled hologram crisis message appearance of Hari Seldon would tell them how to win (just as Bel Riose had seemed impossible to defeat, yet was "defeated" by Seldon's predictions). However, when Seldon's crisis tape plays they are shocked to discover that the crisis Seldon predicted was a civil war between the Foundation and the Independent Traders, making no mention of the Mule whatsoever. The Mule promised that he would find the Second Foundation, while Bayta asserted that he would not have enough time before the Second Foundation reacts. Bayta was correct. Not only were the Second Foundation able to defeat the Mule using their superior mental powers, they also put the Seldon Plan back on track. The Second Foundation were fully aware of the eight Seldon Crisis that would occur during the interregnum. The final three, of which the political/military forces of the First Foundation knew nothing, were well known to the psychohistorians on the Planet Trantor, being cerebral challenges. The ninth crisis was temporal, and known to neither. That was why Seldon had placed his panic button in the plan, the Third Foundation very shortly before his death in 12,069 GE.

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In 1980, gold prices plummeted when the Ethiopian Motherlode was discovered. The formerly-precious metal had been trading at $300 US an ounce, and was the monetary standard of many countries, when the doubling of the world’s supply by the discovery in Ethiopia brought the price crashing down to $50 US an ounce. The African nation, which is now the world’s largest supplier of the metal, has achieved a standard of living rivaling many European nations.

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In 1941, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George instructs his Minister of War Winston Churchill to reinforce the land-side approach to Singapore. It would after all be a damn fool mistake to just prepare for a naval assault by the Japanese. It is his grasp of the minutiae that give the Welsh Wizard a cutting edge as a proven wartime leader and ultimately why the nation turned to him again in 1940. Winnie was great on rhetoric, most definitely up for the fight - but he just wanted to do everything. Seeing the blind spots was required, mused Lloyd George, particularly when your forces are spread throughout the World, and your enemies are focused on their own theatres.

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In 3,561,299,401 BCE, several amino acids failed to form into life-promoting proteins on the 3rd planet from a small sun in the western galactic arm. The planet was ripe for kregaforming when the Kregalians of Sorga 4 found it in 1307 CE, though.

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	In 1937, encouraged by the success of 'The Hobbit', Tolkien submitted an incomplete but more fully developed version of The Silmarillion to his publisher, George Allen & Unwin, but they rejected the work as being obscure. Far from obscure, and deeply relevant to the tortured author, Tolkien had described the epic struggle of his inner world. The author had turned to escapist fantasy writing to explore the dissapation of his own life force. Whether he knew it or not, the epic struggle of the little people was an expression of his own disempowerment from World War I.

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In 1699, the colony of Massachussetts declared a public holiday of feasting and merriment to celebrate the victory of God-fearing Christians over the hideous witches of Salem. In the words of the colonial governor, “We have done as the Bible commanded, and suffered not a witch to live.”

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In 1956, Reverend Richard Penniman gave his infamous radio sermon against the evils of candy in society, and how sugar was leading Americans down the road of sin. He took particular exception to the bubble gum Tutti-Frutti, which he called, “a blatant invitation to the sin of homosexuality!”

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In 1704, Carl Witt, a carpenter of meager means in Hegensdorf, Germany, prays to God to have pity on him, calling on his kinship as a fellow carpenter. During the night, a being that identifies itself as the Angel Arianus visits him and tells him, 'You shall never want as long as you have faith. Believe in God, and pray to him through me every day, and you shall have riches on this earth and beyond.' Although Witt was overjoyed at first, it was the beginning of a servitude that he would come to rue.

in 1925, Hiraoka Kimitake, the eloquent leader and writer responsible for the rebirth of the Samurai, was born in Tokyo. Although he was so ashamed of his writing that he used the name Yukio Mishima to disguise his work from his father, Hiraoka forged a new path in Japanese thought that revived the ancient concept of Bushido, the warrior’s way. In 1970, he successfully restored the Emperor to his former place of honor and power in Japanese society, and became Emperor Hirohito’s Prime Minister.

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In 1971, through frustration a quarrel erupted on-board Apollo 13. Beset by mechanical failures, the Marie Celeste was adrift in space. Commander Bert Smith was about to say "gentlemen, we're not going to bounce off these walls, because when it's over we're going to be right back here". Actually the British spaceflight to the moon ll-fated had been too much trouble, it really had. Smith said simply "it's a bl- nightmare". A great leadership moment it wasn't.

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In 1784, at the request of the British Parliament, the American Continental Congress formally breaks all ties with the Canadian nationalists. The American militias had been assisting British troops in fighting the nationalists for a couple of years, but the Congress had never made a formal break. A flood of former rebels surges northward from America to Canada, swelling the ranks of the nationalists.