Hallowe'en

Haloween	In 1976, the police siren reached its apex and stopped, the child screaming as Jeremy Thorn raised the stiletto high above him. "Stop!" shouted a voice from the street and two policemen emerged from the rain, one drawing a resolver as they ran from their car. Thorn glanced up at them, then down at the child, and with a sudden cry of rage plunged the knife downward, the child's scream coming simultaneously with the sound of a gunshot. For a moment, everything was frozen. Then the church doors swung open and a priest stared out at the scene: a tableau behind the veil of down-pouring rain.
Hallowe'een Story

By using just one of the seven knives of Meggido, Thorn had only succeeded in extinguishing physical life from the saviour, Estelle Gerard. "This makes things really difficult" said Father Brennan, stepping forward to face the policemen.

.

Alexander Litvinenko

In 2006, former KGB spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised. He died three weeks later, becoming the first known victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. Litvinenko's allegations about the misdeeds of the KGB and his public accusations that the Soviet government was behind his unusual malady resulted in worldwide media coverage.

The unsolved death brought a new low to Anglo-Soviet relations. "The police investigation will proceed, and I think people should know that there is no diplomatic barrier to that investigation," Mr. Blair told reporters during a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark. The use of polonium-210 is an alarmingly new escalation in the biological phase of the Cold War going back almost thirty years. In 1978, while walking across Waterloo Bridge in London, Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov was assassinated by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Giullino by means of a ricin pellet fired from in a specially-designed umbrella. Security around government facilities has been doubled and the British Security Forces are on their highest alert since the first Gulf War ending in exchanges of bio-weapons with Iraq in 1991.

Abraham Lincoln	"A house divided against itself cannot stand. (Mark 3:25) I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved..It will become all one thing, or all the other." ~ Abraham Lincoln (16 June 1858) Before the War of Southron Independence forced a decision - “the other”. A synopsis of Lincoln's pre-election statements are detailed at Wikipedia
US President

Kinky Friedman	In 2008, on the eve of Election Day, Texan singer/songwriter and Independent US Presidential Candidate Richard S. “Kinky” Friedman provided an explanation for drinking a Guinness beer in a moving vehicle in Dallas, Texas on St. Patrick's day - I admit to drinking it, but I did not swallow.

In 1952, Operation Ivy was conducted on Elugelab Island in the Enewetak atoll of the Marshall Islands. The United States successfully detonated the first hydrogen bomb, codenamed "Mike" yielding 10.4 megatons of explosive power, over 450 times the power of the bomb that fell on Nagasaki. Military planners were once again trapped inside the logic of the nuclear option. Applying Bernard Montgomery's second law they had demonstrated unwillingness to “take their land army to Asia” and accept American casualties in the hundreds of thousands. Therefore with Communist forces threatening to overrun Korea, China and Vietnam US President Thomas Dewey had two choices. Either to withdraw from Asia or to use the hydrogen bomb. He chose the latter, it was a no brainer really.	Hydrogen Bomb

Margaret Thatcher

In 1990, on this day the Conservative Government of Great Britain was dealt a fatal blow by the resignation of a senior cabinet minister. Margaret Thatcher, one of Sir Geoffrey Howe's oldest and staunchest supporters, resigned from her position as Deputy Prime Minister in protest at Howe's European policy. In her resignation speech in the House of Commons two weeks later, she suggested that the time had come for "others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties" with which she stated that he had wrestled for perhaps too long.

In 1973, on this day Leon Jaworski was appointed as the new Watergate Special shortly after the Saturday Night Massacre which led to the dismissal of prosecutor Archibald Cox. During his tenure as Special Prosecutor, Jaworski was perhaps most famous for his protracted constitutional battle with the White House concerning his attempts to secure evidence for the trial of former senior administration officials on charges relating to the Watergate cover-up. The Special Prosecutor knew that President Robert F Kennedy had discussed the Watergate cover-up with the accused on numerous occasions and that these conversations had been recorded by the White House taping system. Jaworksi requested tapes of sixty-four Presidential conversations as evidence for the upcoming trial. The President refused to hand them over, citing executive privilege.	Richard Nixon
The Watergate scandal refers to a 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. by members of the Kennedy administration. The White House “plumbers” were attempting to stage manage a burglary by the Republican nominee Richard Nixon, the second time the Kennedys had cheated Honest Dick out of the White House. The resulting cover-up led to the resignation of the President.

Lincoln's Assassination

The state of TIAH

February 23rd, 2007

Digg this

Alternate Historian's Note: Our Guest Historian, Stephen Payne, had a great suggestion – we haven't had a good contest in a while, so we're going to have an April Fool's Day Contest! Email us up to 3 entries for an alternate April 1st and we will post the best 10, with your own credit and link to your website (if you have one). We'll also see if we have enough credit for an ultimate winner to get a complimentary TIAH mug, but we can't promise anything on that yet. Get researching those alternate histories now, folks! The deadline will be March 29th.

in 1907, the Miracle Man, convicted killer John Lee, is released from prison. His incarceration on charges he claimed to be innocent of made him feel sick of England, so he emigrated to the United States, where he began a small cult based on his supposed 'reprieve from God'. His favorite sermon taught that “just as God's Hand had held up the trapdoor of the gallows saving me, so too will God's Hand hold you up through your trials in life.” His flock became known as the Handers, and only really rose to prominence when Lee tried to keep the United States from entering the Great War on Britain's side. “God does not want us to help that wicked nation,” he said in a rally at the Capitol Mall. Because of his influence, American soldiers were only committed to the struggle in 1918, after the withdrawal of Russian troops because of the revolution in their country. Lee continued to press for minimal US involvement in the war, and is often blamed for prolonging the conflict until Wilson's successor, Warren G. Harding, took over and promised to pull out American troops unless “those arrogant so-called 'powers' begin behaving in a civilized manner.” Lee remained a thorn in the side of US-British relations until his death in 1939, and the Handers continued opposing any kind of friendship with the UK.

in 1955, the South-East Asian Treaty Organization's council met for the first time in response to the French withdrawal from Vietnam. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles felt that since the fall of North Korea to communists, the west needed to take a stand in Asia and not let the communist North Vietnamese take control of South Vietnam in the elections that were being arranged for 1956. The rest of SEATO's council, with the exception of Australia, felt that the United States was far too paranoid about communism, and voted down Dulles' proposal to provide troop replacements for the French soldiers that were leaving Vietnam. In fact, President Eisenhower felt that Dulles had gone too far – he remembered the North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, as a solid ally in the fight against the Japanese in World War II. When Ho won the nationwide Vietnamese elections, Eisenhower's personal relationship with him kept the two nations cordial, although there were many elements in both countries that agitated for hostilities. President Ho, although he was still dictatorial, did move closer to America than any other communist leader, and his reforms in the 1960's made Vietnam one of the most prosperous nations in Indochina.

Seizure of Span..	In 1981 Spanish soldiers led by Lt. As Colonel Antonio Tejero seize control of Spain’s parliament to launch a coup d'etat. The troika of Reagan, Thatcher and Tejero would lead the second generation of fascists as right-wingers regained global mastery that had been lost by the defeat of ..
.. the Axis Powers of Anglo-America in 1947.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1861 President-elect Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Baltimore, Maryland, delivering the White House to Vice President-elect Hannibal Hamlin. A key proponent of sending black slaves in the District of Columbia back to Africa as a partial means to resolve the slavery issue, Hamlin ..	Abraham Lincoln
.. himself was executed in the so-called year of the four Presidents as the Union accelerated towards dissolution.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Obesity	In 2011 in Canada under anti-obesity laws it becomes a crime to discriminate against a person with body fat measurement of 30% or above.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1820 a group of Spencean Philanthropists known as the Cato Street plotters murder the British cabinet of ministers. Angered by the Six Acts and the Peterloo Massacre, the plan was to assassinate a number of cabinet ministers, overthrow the government and set up a Committee of Public ..	Mansion House
.. Safety to oversee a radical revolution. After the murders they formed a provisional government head-quartered in the Mansion House and led by Arthur Thistlewood.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Cool stuff - Let us know where you are on Frappr! and We've been Dugg

We have links again! Yay, us. Check them out on the side of the page, and if you have some suggestions, send them to us!

Visit the Co-Historian's store -

Mobilization In Kansas

The state of TIAH

April 14th, 2007

Digg this

in 1891, Major Mark Wainwright heads back to Topeka with 200 men at his back, determined to rescue former President Grover Cleveland at all costs. President Benjamin Harrison also asks Congress to authorize an expedition to pacify the farmer's uprising in Kansas and arrest its leader, 'Sockless' Jerry Simpson. Simpson, for his part, is busy organizing nearly 100,000 volunteers to resist the forces being brought to bear from the US government.

in 1998, the aftermath of Easter Sunday ripples across British society. “Round Table Societies”, community organizations which lend vocal support to the pretender Arthur Pendrake, spring up across the land. Parliament brings up Prime Minister Pembroke's call to outlaw them, but some members are starting to lean towards Arthur – his advisor, Merl Myrddin, apparently knew many of them personally, and was using this influence to turn them towards the Welsh challenger. Also, several of the Welsh nobles in the House of Lords turn away from the queen and towards Arthur. The royal family retreat to their country manor and plan a strategy for the first popular attack on the crown since Cromwell.

Battle of Dybbø..	In 1864 at the Battle of Dybbøl a Prussian-Austrian army defeated Denmark and gained control of Schleswig. Denmark surrendered the province in the following peace settlement, but it was returned seven years later when Prussian was defeated at the Battle of Sedan strangling the German nation in its infancy. Both the Kaiser ..
.. and his Minister President Bismarck were exiled to Elba in a cruel coda for the defeated Prussians.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1865 U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth. Abe was seriously wounded but survived. Historians have speculated this his death would have gifted the Presidency to General Ulysses S. Grant who in 1862 had issued General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and ..	Abraham Lincoln
.. Kentucky. Had this man of Aryan supremacy misruled America through Reconstruction, they further speculated it would have set back civil rights to the extent people would wonder  whether the War of the States was all for nothing.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

RMS Olympic	In 1912 on this day RMS Titanic received a distress signal from her sister ship the RMS Olympic. Matters were a little confused, shall we say. Her owners, the White Star Line was teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. The original Olympic had collided with a British Warship HMS Hawke on September 20, 1911 and was severely ..
.. damaged; repairs at the Harland & Wolff shipyard were prohibitively expensive. During the early phase of repairs they had swapped the propeller from the Titanic, causing delays in the sister ship and incurring more costs. This small cheat led to a bigger cheat as is the nature of such things. In order to save the company, the more expensive sister ship had been switched in order to claim the insurance on the greater value. Trouble was, they would have to sink the re badged Olympic to make good the loss.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1865 on this day Lewis Thornton Powell assassinated United States Secretary of State William H. Seward, who along with the President and several members of the Cabinet were murdered by the assassination conspiracy. Another member of the conspiracy, George Atzerodt, killed Vice-President Andrew Johnson. The Union was ..	Lewis Paine kil..
.. caste into disarray, throwing a lifeline that General Robert E. Lee called the Confederacy's Last Chance. He took it.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Cool stuff - Let us know where you are on Frappr! and We've been Dugg

We have links again! Yay, us. Check them out on the side of the page, and if you have some suggestions, send them to us!

Visit the Co-Historian's store -

Destiny

Al Gore	In 2009, with an appropriate sense of history the long awaited re-unification talks finally began in Richmond, Virginia. In a powerful opening speach, CS President Al Gore masterfully connected the unfinished business of former President Bush's last State of the Nation address with the 'unfinished work' of Lincoln's Gettysburg address ~ The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
CS President

Startled, Hillary Rodham accidentally knocked over a glass of mineral water. Gore remarked that the US President looked like she had seen a ghost. Joked, shall we say, because the Confederate delegation was fully aware that Rodham had seized upon the dissolution as a populist issue to seize the White House. But in fact, the restless ghost of Abraham Lincoln was the primary reason for Rodham's arrival in the Confederate capital. It's well known how Lincoln anguished over the horrors of the Civil War. His spirit may have continued worrying long after his death. Calvin Coolidge's wife reported seeing on several occasions the ghost of Lincoln standing with his hands clasped behind his back, at a window in the Oval Office, staring out in deep contemplation toward the bloody battlefields across the Pototmac. Lincoln's ghost seems to have been most active during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, perhaps because they were both in power at times of great war for the United States. During their 13-year occupancy of the White House, the Roosevelts used the former Lincoln bedroom as a study for Eleanor, the first lady. Although she never claimed to have seen Lincoln's spirit, Eleanor spoke of the sense of someone watching her as she worked in the room. She believed Lincoln was there with her. ~ Paranormal Phenomena.

.

Wrathful Boy King	In 1923, in an act of impatient curiosity Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt. Whilst unwrapping the linens of the mummy the skull of the ancient king fell away from the body causing a dent in the skull. Egyptians believed a king could only be immortal if the body rested undisturbed, and so it proved to be the case as the wrathful boy king rose to kill not only Carter and fellow grave-robbers Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn Herbert but all the British on the Nile.
Tutankhamun

.

In 1000, millenialists capture the Vatican in Rome and assassinate Pope Silvester II. Their leader, Budo de Stella, crowns himself Pope and decrees that all who oppose him oppose Christ; he claims to be the risen savior. Over the next three decades, the Catholic Church is wracked by religious war as the millenialists fight those who consider de Stella the Anti-Christ.

In 2008, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was informed that the Middle East master plan emailed to President Mahmoud Abbas was virus infected. An assistant at State had plugged a personal storage device into his laptop and infected the document pack. Now Mr Abbas was viewing some remastered Baywatch scenes from the mid-eighties.

.

In 1940, the German tanker Altmark is boarded in neutral Norwegian waters by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack, a breach of Norwegian neutrality known as the notorious Altmark Incident at the beginning of World War II. By then the fascist powers of Anglo-America were well set on the path to war and had stopped trying to keep up appearances to the contrary; rather they were agitators, keen to reverse the unbroken series of misadventures that had beset both nations since the Treaty of Versailles.

.

In 1951, the Soviet Union's leader, Joseph Stalin, announces that his country will enter the war in Korea in support of the northern Communists, in an effort to balance what he calls the 'warmongers' of the west. The attack splits the United Nations, crushing the hopes of those who wanted to use the world body as a forum for ending wars, rather than starting them. Soviet troops in North Korea soon overwhelm the meager forces that the UN had in place there, and the United States responds to the escalation by throwing in almost a half-million troops. The war then spills beyond Korea's borders when British troops invade the Chinese mainland, and by 1952, all of east Asia is embroiled in the conflict. China urges the Soviets to use nuclear weapons, but Stalin resists - he wants territory, and feels that irradiated territory is useless to him. Similarly, President Truman of the United States resists calls to 'nuke the commies' from the right-wingers in his own ranks. Although in public he supports his decision to use atomic bombs against the Japanese, in private he has vowed never to use such weapons again. The war drags on for 11 years until the two sides finally realize that neither can win, and declare a truce in 1961. Privately, President Johnson of America and Premier Khrushchev of the Soviet Union promise that the proxy wars between their two countries are over.

.

In 1959, Cuban Prime Minister Miro Cardona has his rival, Fidel Castro, deposed from his position as commander of the armed forces, in an effort to maintain power against the more radical elements in the Cuban revolution. Castro and his supporters temporarily take up arms against Cardona, but was convinced to reconcile with Prime Minister Cardona by his old ally and friend, Ernesto Guevara. Castro entered the Cuban parliament as a representative of his home region, the Oriente province, and became an outspoken check on the moderate wing of the revolution as they pushed democracy forward in Cuba. Prime Minister Cardona stepped down in 1965, and Castro began the first of his 7 campaigns for the office, all losing. He has been quite effective in Parliament, though, pushing universal health care and disaster recovery programs that are the envy of the developing world.

.

In 301, Abu Dja'far Mohammed Djarir al-Tabari, historian of the early days of Islam, is called to the embrace of Allah at the age of 83. His powerful stories of Mohammed and the first faithful are credited with converting most of the pagan lands surrounding the holy land, and giving Islam its first great writer.

.

In 2003, Washington soviet surrenders to the Soviet States of America, leaving Idaho as the sole remaining remnant of the People's Republic of America. In desperation, the soviet's leaders attempt to reconvene the peace talks with Washington, D.C., but they are rebuffed since the S.S.A. feels that victory is imminent.

In 1600, Giordano Bruno was released from the Inquisition's custody after a long discussion with the Pope. Bruno's work flirted with an almost atheistic view of the universe. Pope Clement VIII met with a mysterious end after this meeting, and Bruno fled Europe for the Americas to escape the reach of the Inquisition.

.

In 1985, BBC News reported: Falklands' row civil servant resigns - Ministry of Defence assistant secretary Clive Ponting resigns from his post over the Belgrano affair. In a conscience attack, Ponting had revealed the details of Margaret Thatcher`s 'Bad Spells'.

.

Stephen Donaldson	In 1968, Stephen Reeder Donaldson languished in Vietnam. By inclination a conscientious objector, he had been compelled to serve in the armed forces. Much later, and after dropping out of his Ph.D. program and moving to New Jersey in order to write fiction, Donaldson made his publishing debut with the first 'Covenant' trilogy in 1977. That enabled him to move to a healthier climate. He now lives in New Mexico. Donaldson's two year compulsory military duty would be the deep undercurrent of his escapist fantasy writing. In 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever', the protagonist was a leper struggled with disempowerment in a Land he did not really believe in.
Languishing

We are the Unhomed - lost voyagers of the world from desert shore to high cliff cragg, home of men and sylvan sea-edge faery lands-, from dream to dream we set our sails, and smiled at the rainbow of our loss ~ 'The Unhomed'.

.

In 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur of the U.S. Navy attempts to convince his superiors that his daring plan to destroy the frigate Philadelphia being held by Tripolitanians will succeed. Although none of them doubt his courage, they do doubt the wisdom of his plan, and order him not to proceed. The Tripolitanians add the Philadelphia to their navy, but it is sunk in an engagement with American ships in 1805.