Time

	In 1991, the 'Mother of all Battles' began as Operation Desert Storm was launched. Gulf War Allies send hundreds of planes on bombing raids into Iraq yet Saddam Hussein remained defiant. Warnings about weapons of mass destruction and alien technology buried deep in Iraq go unheeded. That was just crazy talk, surely?

The American, British, French, Saudi and Kuwaiti aircraft took off at 2330 GMT. Their bombs were aimed at military and strategic targets, including an oil refinery and Baghdad airport. At least 400 raids took place. Latest reports indicated that Allied aircraft suffered unexpected resistance. US Defence Secretary, Dick Cheney, said the operation appeared to have encountered difficulties. Two hours after the raids began, President George Bush made a televised address. He said the military objectives were clear - force Iraqi troops out of Kuwait and restore the legitimate government. In Baghdad, Saddam Hussein remained defiant. He said the 'Mother of all Battles had begun'. He urged the Iraqi people to 'stand up to evil'.

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in the Dreamtime , the pale ones came, as Anansi had foretold. Many seasons passed in torment at their hands, but the people were strong, and the lost ones in the sky were waiting for them. Anansi gave them strength, and his web gave them escape when it was needed.

In 1971, British spacecraft Marie Celeste prepared to re-enter the atmosphere after mechanical failures had been fixed. Or patched up, really. They really had to do something about this quality control problem for next time. The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission had been too much trouble, it really had.

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In 1971, South Dakotan Senator George McGovern, a hero of World War II, began his campaign for the presidency as the candidate of peace. Using his background as a bomber pilot, McGovern argued that Vietnam represented no strategic value to the United States, and should be free to determine their own future. A nation sick of the war agrees with him, and he defeated Richard Nixon in a landslide.

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In 1601, a Royal Proclamation was issued and a Lubeck merchant, Caspar van Senden, licensed to remove all 'negroes and blackamoores' from Great Britain. There was a fear that the Africans might be taking jobs away from English citizens and also a concern that they were 'infidels'.

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In 1977, NASA complete the impact analysis for the delay Space Shuttle program. Columbia (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-102) would be the first spaceworthy space shuttle in NASA's orbital fleet, and its first mission, STS-1, was reprogrammed for quarter two, 1981. Trouble was SkyLab had entered a dangerous orbit. If no further action was taken, SkyLab would re-enter the Earth's atmosphere sometime in 1979 and almost certainly break up on entry. The plan works and SkyLab is shifted into a higher orbit. But the 1982 mission from the Shuttle is a disaster and the Soviet Union has to rescue the American astronauts. Their success sets a precedent that was established with Apollo-Soyuz, and the the two nations merge their Space programs.

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In 12-8-1-11-16, the sailors of Ouezteca met the Kingdom of Hawai’i. Captain Quetchook of the Imperial Navy, the first westerner to see the Hawai’ians, entered into a treaty with King Kalaniopuu for exclusive trade, and made himself a wealthy man from the agricultural bounty of the island kingdom.

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	In 1977, Gary Gilmore, the convicted murderer, was executed on this day by firing squad in the Utah state prison in Salt Lake City. It was the first execution to have been carried out in the United States for almost 10 years. Gilmore, 36, was sentenced to death for the murder in 1976 of a motel clerk in Provo, Utah. An appeals court in Denver overturned a restraining order on the execution in the early hours of this morning. In his closing words, one of the judges emphasised that Mr Gilmore should take responsibility for insisting that his own execution go ahead.

The death penalty had been controversially reinstated in the United States in 1976 and Gilmore was the first prisoner to be executed under the new law. Gilmore fought the justice system to ensure he would be executed quickly - had already spent 18 of his last 21 years in jail. It soon became clear that Gilmore had >cheated death to engineer his own release. Two people received Gilmore's corneas within hours of his death. Utah medical staff were unable to explain this phenomenom, instead recommending fast-track treatment. They both responded positively, with the same form of words – 'Lets do it'.

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In 1781, Thomas Gainsborough completed his masterpiece The Two Georges, depicting King George III and General George Washington's historic agreement which established the British North American Union. The Sons of Liberty considered Washington a turncoat. Two hundred and fifteen years later they would succeeed in snatching this symbol of national unity just before the arrival of King Charles III's visit to the State capital of Victoria.

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In 2005, President Al Gore addressed the nation for the last time in office, apologising to the American people for his own '911' failures. Specifically he refered to the oversight and execution of Executive Order 13015, which established the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security of 1996. Often called the Gore Commission in recognition that Gore was the chairman, that work group operated for six months, from August 1996 until February of 1997, when it issued its final report. Gore's commission were mandated to provide to the President 'a strategy designed to improve aviation safety and security'.

According to the 911 Commission Report (page 344):

The Gore Commission's Report, having thoroughly canvassed available expertise in and outside of government, did not mention suicide hijackings or the use of aircraft as weapons.

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In 1991, Israel joined the Gulf War after Iraq attacks Tel Aviv and Haifa with Scud missiles. It was the first time Tel Aviv has been hit in the history of the Israel-Arab conflict. Saddam Husssein had succeeded in provoking the Israel leadership both through these bombings, and also by establishing linkage between Kuwait and Palestinian nationhood.

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In 1991, in Kuwait & Iraq, Operation Desert Fly centred upon a dual military application of the pioneering work of Seth Brundle. US Ground Forces were teleported into strategic battle points. And the Iraqi Presidential Guard were decimated by soldier flies. President George Bush spoke of the 'end of history' as the world's only hyper-power appeared set for global domnation.

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Origin

	In 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born on this day in Mount House, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. The greatest fraud of the Victorian era, Darwin promoted 'the men from monkeys' hoax in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (usually abbreviated to The Origin of Species) .

Satires, parodies and caricatures assaulted the hoax. The Church of England scientific establishment, including Darwin’s old Cambridge tutors Sedgwick and Henslow, reacted against the book. The most famous confrontation took place at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxford. Professor John William Draper delivered a long lecture about Darwin and social progress, then Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, argued against Darwin. On being asked by Wilberforce whether he was descended from monkeys on his grandfather’s side or his grandmother’s side, Huxley muttered: 'The Lord has delivered him into my hands' and replied that he 'would rather be descended from an ape than from a cultivated man who used his gifts of culture and eloquence in the service of prejudice and falsehood'.

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In 1973, the Viet Cong released the first United States prisoners of war including the future President John Murtha. Under no illusions of the US role as a global policeman, Murtha would untangle American commitments around the world and later resign the US seat on the Security Council.

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In 1964, following his speech at Trenchard Hall on the campus of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, Malcom X attended a reception in the Students' Union Hall held for him by the Muslim Students' Society. During this reception the students bestowed upon him the name 'Omowale', meaning 'the son returns home' in the Yoruba language. Little was to play a vital diplomatic role two years later, preventing the great nation of Nigeria from descending into civil war. He asked Generals Gowon and Ojukwu the simple question - who benefits, alluding to european aggitation in black Africa's largest economy.

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	In 1942, Chairman of the Israeli Liberation Organisation (ILO) Ehud Barak was born Mishmar HaSharon, British Mandate of Palestine. Barak was in charge of the Siege of Beirut that took place in the summer of 1982 as a result of the breakdown of the Arab-Israeli cease-fire effected by the League of Nations. It ended with the ILO evacuating Beirut by sea in humiliating fashion and thus being forced out of Lebanon by the Palestinian Defense Force.

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	In 1809, a boy named Abraham Lincoln was born in a small cabin in Hodgenville, Kentucky. He grew up to become President of the United States, lead the country through a civil war, and survive not one but two assassination attempts in his three terms in office. Although the rights of the freed slaves in the former Confederacy suffered in the lax occupation he forced on them, he did ensure their freedom, and helped millions of them emigrate to the northern states.

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	In 1999, on a nearly straight party-line vote, President Hillary Clinton is acquitted in her impeachment trial. The nation's first woman president was a target for the Republican Party from the day she was elected in 1996, and they thought that charges of illegality in an old land deal, long since proven false, could provide cover for them to remove her from office. The nation thought otherwise; she won reelection in 2000 by a landslide.

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In, 4082 BCE, a descendant of Telka the Speaker named Icarus, a Hellene, constructs the first working flying machine that has been successful for the Speaker's Line. He demonstrates it for his clan, and during the leap from a cliff, he manages to soar over a hundred feet in the area. A support breaks while he is flying, though, and he falls to his death. The Speaker's Line learns from his example, and moves on.

In 1951, Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiari married the Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi at Golestan Palace in Teheran at the age of 17. Thirty years later their first born son would re-establish the House of Pahlavi, leading the nation out of the chaos wrought by Ayatollah Khomeini.

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	In 1994, BBC News reported: Art thieves snatch Scream - 'One of the world's best-known paintings, The Scream by Edvard Munch, is stolen from a museum in Norway. Two men took just 50 seconds to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum in Oslo and cut The Scream, by Edvard Munch, from the wall with wire cutters. The cutters were left behind along with a short ladder as the men fled with the painting.

The entire incident was filmed by security cameras. The director of the museum, Knut Berg, said, 'It is impossible to estimate the value of the painting. 'But it is Norway's most valuable, Munch's most renowned, and it would be impossible to sell.' The canvass was discovered in Oslo a few hours later, there were now four figures standing behind the protagonist.

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In 1994, two men disappeared from the National Art Museum in Oslo. The museum curator, Mr. Carlin ushered the men through the building, fully aware that the pair were thieves on an impossible mission to steal Edvard Munch's iconic painting 'The Scream'. Realising the pointlessness of their mission, the unconcerned Carlin recounted the storied history of the painting, which has been plagued by incidents of attempted theft. Carlin tells the skeptical Spangler the image of the Reaper is rumored to appear in the painting, standing close to the viewer. The thieves scoffed, but felt unnamable horror when they looks into the mirror. As Carlin relates the history of a high school boy who saw the Reaper and disappeared without a trace, the pair becomes ill and rushed out of the second floor never to appear again.

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In 1989, BBC News reported: 1989: Belfast lawyer Finucane murdered - 'Leading solicitor Pat Finucane has been shot dead at his home in north Belfast. The killers burst in as he was eating his Sunday dinner with his wife and three children. Two gunmen showered him with 14 bullets and shot his wife in the ankle. Mrs Finucane is being treated in hospital for gunshot wounds to her legs. The hijacked taxi the gunmen escaped in has been found in the Protestant Shankhill Road area.' Irreversible historical processes in Northern Ireland continued to drive the country towards Civil War.

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In 1934, the Austrian Civil War began. Order is restored by Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber who found a new role for the nation as it climbed out of the ashes of defeat from World War I and the dissolution of the Hapsburg Empire.

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In 1691, the Williamite Army abandons the siege of Dublin. By now the war in Ireland is seen as more or less a stalemate. It is clear that James will not be able to invade England and remount the throne, but it seems increasingly unlikely that William will gain control over Ireland. James' advisors are beginning to convince him to accept William's control over England and Scotland, in the short time at least. And consoladate control over Ireland. King William is facing similar calls to 'let the papists go' [continued from July 1st 1690, continues October 3rd 1691]

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