Visions of the Future

	In 2007, the Bank of Scotland launched a new £20 note, featuring the Scottish economist Adam Smith. It was the first note in the new Series F banknotes, issued to mark five years of independence north of the border.

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	In 1976, the author Kurt Vonnegut died and always will die on this day. At the time of his death, he says, he is in Chicago to address a large crowd on the subject of flying saucers and the true nature of time. He has had to cross three international boundaries in order to reach Chicago. The United States of America has been Balkanized, has been 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. So it goes. Vonnegut was philosophical about his death, concentrating on the happy moments of his life, and ignoring the unhappy ones-to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by.

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In 1919, British Indian Army soldiers under the command of Brigadier Winston Churchill opened fire on an unarmed gathering of men, women and children at the Amristar (or Jallianwala Bagh) Massacre. Years later, Punjabi separatist Udham Singh travelled to the UK and assassinated Churchill in a daring and audicious revenge attack.

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In 1940, Udham Singh prepared to assassinate the former Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, a revenge attack for his authorisation of the events of April 13, 1919 in Jallianwala Bagh. Known as the Amritsar Massacre, imperial troops opened fire on an unarmed gathering of men, women and children in an act of unprovoked barbarism, killing 1800 people. Singh understood that security will be a major problem in entering Admiralty House to put his plan into action. Driven by the spirits of the murdered Punjabis, he is determined to succeed however, Winston Churchill dies tonight.

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In 1954, Viet Minh forces fall into a trap at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu: Viet Minh where they are convincingly beaten by Franco-US forces and Hmong mercenaries led by Christian de Castries. Ignoring Eisenhower's advice to avoid entanglement in Vietnam as a counsel of despair, President MacArthur said they had not conquered the Japanese only to be defeated by night-fighters in pyjamas.

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In 1846, 300 tenants were unjustly evicted at the village of Ballinglass in Ireland during the Irish Potato famine. The indefensible Ballinglass Incident was the beginning of the end for the British Rule in Ireland. That great reforming British Prime Minister William Gladstone brought the Irish Home Rule Bill before the House of Commons on 8 April 1886 and before the end of the decade, the island of Ireland was free.

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In 1925, in the State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes (the Scopes Trial) Judge John T. Raulston ruled in favour of the high school teacher. Henceforth 'Any statement that denies Charles Darwins' proven theory of evolution that man has descended from a lower order of animals rather than the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible.' became a crime in Tennessee.

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In 1881, the People's Will revolutionary movement in Russia claims its greatest prize - the life of the Czar. Alexander II was killed by a bomb in St. Petersburg. Sergei Nechayev, leader of the People's Will, led a small force against the Czar's son, Alexander III, and killed him before he could assume the throne. Peasants across the huge country answered the call of the People's Will to rise up against the old system and threw the country into anarchy. The Russian Civil War lasted until 1888, when the People's Will assumed power and Nechayev named himself Prime Minister. Most of the nobility in the country was killed during the struggle, including all the members of the royal family. Most of the other countries of Europe refused to acknowledge the Peasant Country, and the French government even went so far as to set up the Russian government-in-exile in the Russian embassy in Paris. This all changed when the Great War erupted between the Central Powers and the Western Powers of Europe; each side was quite happy to woo Prime Minister Ulyonov for the might of Russia's peasant army. Ulyonov threw Russia's strength behind the West, locking the Central Powers in a vise between east and west. Russia's entry into the war in 1916 all but ended the conflict - Austria-Hungary surrendered immediately, and the Ottoman Empire and Germany followed in the next three months. Prime Minister Ulyonov exacted a high price for Russia's involvement - the monarchies of all three of the Central Powers were deposed, and democracies set up in those countries. The Peasant Country continued exporting 'people's democracies' throughout the 20th century, causing trouble with its erstwhile western allies for decades after the war.

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In 2005, George Michael appeared on the premier British Chat Show hosted by Michael Parkinson. Afterwards, he delivered an inspired performance of his new song, with the haunting lyrics If Jesus Christ is alive and well, how come Peace, Love and Smokey are dead?. It was a tragic tribute to Smokey Robinson, who like Michael, had turned to drugs when long shadows had entered his life.

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In 969, Sultan Askia Ishaq II of the Songhai Empire defeated the bandit general Ahmed al-Mansur in Tondibi. The bandit al-Mansur had been plaguing northwestern Africa for years, and the Sultan was finally able to muster the force necessary to drive him back to his stronghold in Morocco.

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In 1881, revolutionaries unconnected to the Secret War killed Alexander II of Russia, the most powerful member of the Conqueror's faction of the Speaker's Line. His son, Alexander III, who had not been initiated into his role as a descendant of Telka the Speaker, was unable to fund the programs his father had started because he didn't know about them. Much of Russian research was lost in this period.

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Northwoods	In 1962, Lyman Lemnitzer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the USA, proposes a document, called Operation Northwoods, regarding performing terrorist attacks in Guantanamo Bay, to Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara. The proposal is accepted by President John F. Kennedy. Problems would arise in 1964 after Kennedy was dead. Even as US Marines stormed Havana the casus belli for the Cuban invasion was being challenged - by one of their own.
Memorandum

Compelling evidence was emerging that the wave of terrorism that struck America in late 1963 was the result of false-flag operations executed by the US Government itself. Sensationally, a former US marine Lee Harvey Oswald was claiming that he had assassinated John F Kennedy under hypnotic suggestion from the CIA. This lone gunman conspiracy theory shook the credibility of the Warren Commission's report, which placed the blame on a Cuban hit squad known as the three Hobos. The previously secret document for Operation Northwoods was finally made public on November 18, 1997, by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board, a U.S. federal agency overseeing the release of government records related to John F. Kennedy's assassination. A total 1521 pages of once-secret military records covering 1962 to 1964 were concomitantly declassified by said Review Board. Operation Northwoods, or Northwoods, was a 1962 plan by the US Department of Defense to stage acts of simulated or real terrorism on US soil and against US interests and then put the blame of these acts on Cuba, so as to generate U.S. public support for military action against the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. As part of the U.S. government's Operation Mongoose anti-Castro initiative, the plan called for various false flag actions, including simulated or real state-sponsored acts of terrorism on U.S. and Cuban soil. The plan was proposed by senior U.S. Department of Defense leaders, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Louis Lemnitzer.

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	In 1925, in the the Scopes Trial, Confederate Judge John T. Raulston banned the use of Charles Darwin's satirical novel Planet of the Apes from Schools in the State of Tenneseee. The grotesque depiction of a technologically advanced ape society was perceived as a terrifying future vision in which history had taken a wrong turn with white supremacy set aside.

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Hope

	These are the stakes: to make a world in which all God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love one another, or we must die. ~ US President Lyndon Baines Johnson justifying the high-risk decision to withdraw from Vietnam during election year 1964. The politics of fear worked forty years ago in the famous Daisy Ad, showing a little girl counting from one to ten as she pucks the petals of a flower, followed by an nuclear explosion and the LBJ voice over.
Daisy

Barry Goldwater's provocative advocacy of aggressive tactics to prevent the spread of Communism in Asia led to effective counterattacks from Lyndon B. Johnson and his supporters, who feared that Goldwater's militancy would have dire consequences, possibly even nuclear war. Regarding Vietnam, Goldwater charged that Johnson's policy was devoid of 'goal, course, or purpose,' leaving 'only sudden death in the jungles and the slow strangulation of freedom.' Goldwater's own rhetoric on nuclear war was viewed by many as quite uncompromising, a view buttressed by off-hand comments such as, 'Let's lob one into the men's room at the Kremlin.' Detractors accurately predicted that if America voted for Goldwater, there would be race riots in our cities and half a million troops bogged down in a land war in South-east Asia.

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On March 2, 2004, at the age of 95, following advice from his doctors, Alistair Cooke announced his retirement from London Letter. He died less than a month later, on March 30, 2004, at his Belgravia home. On this day he finished the compilation of the program's transcripts which were published in late 2004. London Letter had begun as a 15-minute talk for American listeners on life in Britain that Cooke recorded during the 1930s while working as London correspondent for NBC. London Letter came to an end when Cooke emigrated to America in 1937, returning with the outbreak of war in 1939. The show continued from 1946 when regular broadcasting resumed.

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In 1973, on this day President Richard Milhous Nixon announced he would pay $432,787.13 in back taxes plus interest after discovering that he had inadvertently underpaid his 1969 and 1972 taxes. That was the kind of guy he was, honest to a fault.

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	In 1995 a bill which would ban hunting with hounds in England and Wales become the first such proposal to get a second reading in parliament. The private member's bill, introduced by Labour MP John McFall, would outlaw fox and stag-hunting and hare-coursing. There was cheering in the House of Commons chamber and the public gallery as it was passed by 253 votes to nil after its first reading.

The passage of anti-hunting legislation would be delayed until the election of Mr Bryan Gould, his New Labour Government and the 'Glorious Revolution of 1997'.

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	In 1853, Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh is born in Groot Zundert. As a successful art dealer for the firm Goupil & Cie, he was transferred to their London office in 1873, and it was here that he truly began to come into his own. The company transferred him to their Paris office in 1875, and Van Gogh began selling his own work alongside that of others. In the 1880's, he battled severe depression, but a young German doctor, Sigmund Freud, assisted him through that in 1886, and he came out of it inspired. His great works from this period sell for millions in auctions today.

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In 1955, a truck driver turned singer from Tupelo, Mississippi appeared on the Louisiana Hayride, a popular radio program, and set the nation on fire. The young man, Jesse Presley, became the most popular singer in the world practically overnight.

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In 1927, Harry M. Whittington was born on this day in Henderson, Texas. He received his law degree from the University of Texas at Austin and began practicing law in Austin in 1950. Whittington was a member of the Texas Beta chapter of Phi Delta Theta. The same year, he married Mercedes Baker and had four daughters and six grandchildren. He has also been active in Texas state politics.

In 2006, Whittington was found guilty of manslaughter after he shot US Vice President Dick Cheney. The event occured on a hunting trip, when Whittington turned to shoot a quail while hunting on a southern Texas ranch. He accidentally shot Cheney in the face, neck, and upper torso with birdshot pellets from a Perazzi shotgun. The owner of the ranch stated that, 'Mr. Cheney got peppered pretty good.' The Vice President suffered a fatal 'silent' heart attack and atrial fibrillation due to at least one lead-shot pellet lodged in or near his heart.

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In 1991, George Holliday, videotaping some shots of Los Angeles' Hansen Dam Park, saw several police officers beating a black man in the street. He put down his camera and ran over to the scene, but by the time he got there, the police had cuffed the suspect and thrown him into a squad car. Although Holliday attempted to get some news organizations interested, the fact that it was his word against several police officers' led them to avoid his story. Ironically, if he had kept videotaping instead of rushing to help, the officers might have been brought to justice.

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In 1952, the Supreme People's Court upholds a New York Soviet law prohibiting capitalists from teaching in the public school system. The 6-3 decision upholding the Feinberg Law said, 'The state has a constitutional right to protect the immature minds of children from subversive propaganda,' while the dissenters maintained it 'turned the school system into a spying project.'

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Arthur Scargill	In 1985, on this day BBC News reported - Miners call off year-long strike: 'Miners' leaders vote to end the longest-running industrial dispute in Britain with a highly favourable deal. Prime Minister Margaret Thatchers Government is in tatters and there is now every prospect of a Labour victory at the next election. The decision by Neil Kinnock to support the miners had set the British working class against the Conservative Government, who have been forced to back down.'
Surprise Victor

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Arthur Scargill	In 1985, on this day BBC News reported - Miners call off year-long strike: 'Miners' leaders have voted to end the longest-running industrial dispute in Britain without any peace deal over pit closures. Miners' leader Arthur Scargill says the campaign against job losses will continue - but miners will return to work on Tuesday. The final vote by the National Union of Mineworkers national executive was close; 98 to 91 for a return to work.' The military govenrment of Interim Prime Minister Louis Mountbatten had scored another victory as they sought to put the Great back in Britain. Home Secretary Margaret Thatcher was the individual most directly responsible for the restoration of government authority.
Defeated

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In 1974, Roman Catholic and Lutheran officials reach an agreement for eventual reconciliation into one communion. Momentum continued to gather for the eventual merger of Christian religions, undoing the fractures caused since 1517 by the Reformation.

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	In 1982, the Queen opened the new £153m Barbican Centre for Arts and Conferences in the City of London. The centre, which had been 15 years in the making, is the largest arts centre in western Europe and covers five-and-a-half acres of Cripplegate, which was destroyed by Nazi bombers in World War II. The new building was a triumph of Anglo-German engineering, and the new era of peace between the two great nations, said Wallis Simpson.
Barbican

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