Love and Hatred

Bombing	In 1945, BBC News reported: Thousands of bombs destroy Dresden: 'British and US bombers have dropped hundreds of thousands of explosives on the German city of Dresden. The city is reported to be a vital command centre for the German defence against Soviet forces approaching from the east. Last night, 800 RAF Bomber Command planes let loose 650,000 incendiaries and 8,000lb of high explosives and hundreds of 4,000lb bombs in two waves of attack. They faced very little anti-aircraft fire. As soon as one part of the city was alight, the bombers went for another until the whole of Dresden was ablaze.'
Dresden

Amongst the dead was a twenty-two year old American GI, Kurt Vonnegut. A man of German descent, he had been transferred to Slaughterhouse-Five, a nearby prisoner of war camp. Vonnegut and his colleagues had been hiding below ground, but were killed when the ceiling collapsed from the shock waves of the bombing. And so it goes.

.

In 1968, astronomer Paul Oswald Ahnert deciphered an extraterrestrial broadcast indicating that our quadrant of the Galaxy was under quarantine from a lethal space leprosy. At first his warnings were ignored, however reconsideration was duly given when returning Lunar Module Pilot Colonel Buzz Eugene Aldrin lifted his visor at the splashdown point, east of Wake Island on July 24 1969.

.

In 1779, during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific Captain James Cook narrowly escaped death at the hand of natives of the Sandwich Islands. He had mistakenly returned to Hawaii in the season dedicated to Ku, god of war, inadvertently upset the equilibrium and fostered an atmosphere of resentment and aggression from the local population.

.

In 1956, Malcolm Little received parole and was released from Massachusetts State Prison in Charlestown. A dangerous criminal, Little had avoided the draft by telling the examining officer that he could not wait to organize with other black soldiers so he could 'kill some crackers.' Incarcerated for a decade, there was a lot of catch-up to be done.

.

In 1956, at the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow, Premier Nikita Khruschev revealed than Lenin was a shape-shifting Vampire. A number of strokes in the 1920s forced the undead nosferatu to possess the body of Comrade Stalin to permit him to continue his misrule. He had even maintained his corpse in a Kremlin mausoleum just in case a Dracula style exit was necessary.

.

In 269, Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for young men, in order to make them a better pool to draft soldiers from. The Christian cleric Valentius was known for his defiance of Rome, and many young couples came to him in order to wed. Valentius performed the ceremonies gladly until the local centurion told him that he would be executed after the next one. Valentius relented, but the decree was rescinded in 271 after Claudius' death, anyway, so nothing ever really came of it.

.

In, 47421 BCE, Telka the Speaker is wooed by and mated with the father of her first children, the man she names Komar. She learns to count the days in a year by the anniversary of this day each year that she was with him. His love for her led him to throw himself in front of a boar that was charging her; although he saved her and killed the boar, he died from injuries he received. Telka made sure that each of her descendants celebrated this day out of her love for him.

In 498, Pope Gelasius names this day the Feast of Saint Valentine. In his honor, prisoners across the land were given a meal of ox-hearts and red wine, to signify the blood that the saint had shed while a prisoner of the pagan Romans. The traditional feast of hearts and wine continues to this day across Christendom, although the practice has spread from the jailhouse to all those who might need a prayer for more freedom.

.

In 2021, a rare form of cosmic radiation enters Earth's atmosphere, concentrated in and around Chicago. 99.9% of the city only feels a slight tingling, but one man, Eddie Valens, finds his reflexes and running speed amplified tenfold - plus, he is now able to evoke feelings of love and peace in nearly anyone with but a word. Putting these two together, and donning a pink costume, Eddie takes the name Saint Valentine and proceeds to fight crime in Chicago for nearly a decade as one of the only real superheroes in the 21st century.

.

On February 14, 2003, a group of high ranking Iraqi generals, fearing the disastrous effects of U:S. invasion stage a coup. They know that Sadam as a sentimental guy would be distracted at big party for his family. The succeed in killing their President and his sons. The new junta is composed of Sunni Baathists, but they extend the hand of friendship to the world community and invite weapons inspectors. What would the last half of a decade have brought to Iraq ?

.

In 1965, the Soviet States of America bans the unofficial Valentines Day holiday. Comrade Representative O'Hare of Chicago, in her statement calling for the ban, said, 'No other holiday so cheapens the idea of romantic love, or saps the will to fight of our comrades in the street, as this so-called Valentines Day.'

In 1167 AUC, the Lupercalia Festival is finally made a separate holiday from the festival celebrating the founding of Rome. This festival of ritual matchmaking, popular for hundreds of years, was certainly the highlight of the 2-day celebration at the ides of February, and most Romans felt that it deserved separation from the more staid founding ceremony.

.

Alexander	In 1974, Soviet authorities executed Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Two days before, Mr Solzhenitsyn was arrested in his wife's Moscow flat and taken away for questioning by the Soviet secret police, the KGB. His charge, under Article 64 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, was punishable with death by firing squad or a minimum of ten years in prison along with confiscation of property.
Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn had been under investigation for six weeks after his novel Gulag Archipelago depicting life in the labour camps was published in the West. He had already spent a total of ten years in prison under Stalin for his dissident writings.

.

Significant Others

Alternate Historian says, construction work continues at the Academy.

From Jan 1 2008 we're releasing a richer story format for TIAH. Also having the story in a yellow shaded area, but underneath will be hyperlinked metadata tags. We're so keen to get your feedback that we've created the first two posts for today in this new style.

The Site metre tells us that the average site visit is around half a minute, so we're got to design for web grazers. Therefore, we're thinking of more whacky ideas for positioning the stories. Perhaps two-on-two magazine style, or a text scrollable with just the first paragraph showing, or perhaps expand/collapse button to see the whole story..

Trouble is the HTML is machine generated by an OpenOffice spreadsheet with a bajillion text functions. We want to finalise the design this month. Before we forget how the HTML is generated, we'd love some feedback from our readers.

Please email the Alternate Historian with your comments on the already underway developments, or better still some new ideas!

In 2012, on this day the City of Mississauga announced an exciting new development in free Internet connectivity services. The following month WirelessMississauga would be upgraded at the Central Library on Burnhamthorpe and Living Arts Drive. Currently, citizens could enter their library pass code and connect their personal client device to the Internet. WirelessMississaugaPlus offered the new feature of Power over Ethernet through WiFi. This new geek heaven was amazing, whilst connected online to a billion webizens, you could really keep your head down. By drawing power from the network, you could sit in a building of a thousand human beings and avoid any form of social interaction at all, not even to quarrel over limited power sockets. It was just a fantastic social opportunity.

.

In 1999, author Stephen King saw a lost pet poster stapled to a telephone post on the right shoulder of Route 5 - 'Lost, a gray tabby, loves children, call Center Lovell, Maine 7-7661'. Signs that his old friends were about, the low men in yellow coats.

.

In 2010, Adolf Hitler's second successor Austrian-born Kurt Haldweim died in Berlin. His replacement, the new fuhrer Heinz Buckliger was a dynamic young technocrat who planned to introduce a progressive new program of change. Thwarted by conservative elements in the Nazi leadership, instead of guiding the future of the Greater German Reich and the Germanic Empire, Buckliger triggered a Soviet-style crisis.

~ variant from Alternate Historian: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

Bachman	In 2010, fans of the author Stephen King received a tremendous shock in his farewell speech in Bangor, Maine. At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view among publishers was such that an author was limited to a book every year at the utmost; any more, it was felt, was not acceptable to the public. King therefore wanted to write under another name in order to double his production.
He convinced his publisher, Signet Books, to print these novels under a pseudonym. The originally selected pseudonym was Gus Pillsbury; but at the last moment King changed it to "Richard Bachman" in tribute to crime author Donald E. Westlake's long-running pseudonym Richard Stark. The name Stark was used in King's novel The Dark Half, a novel about an author with a pseudonym. The surname was in honour of Bachman-Turner Overdrive, a rock and roll band King was listening to at the time. The foreword of each of King's books includes an open letter addressed to "Constant Reader". Fans had interpreted this as a personal message to themselves. Not so. At the farewell speech, King revealed that all of the books had been written by his "Dark Half" Richard Bachman and addressed to his alter-ego Stephen King, who was the real Constant Reader.
~ entry by Alternate Historian

In 1977, in a public relations disaster for the studio, 20th Century Fox entered into a badly timed length dispute with the African American actor James Earl Jones. Arising during bicentennial year, the perception was that dramatic impact of the role of Darth Vader had been mis-credited to a Caucasian actor. Director George Lucas never intended to use the voice of David Prowse, who portrayed Darth Vader in costume, because of Prowse's English West Country accent. Instead a voice over was provided by Jones. Jones cited the case of Linda Blair's Oscar nomination for The Exorcist, when there was a campaign for Mercedes McCambridge (who provided the devil's voice) to share the nomination. Jones found this ridiculous, and did not want to find himself put in a similar position with Star Wars. However, when he became aware of the prominence of the credit given to Prowse he was incensed but his request was made too late to alter the early editions of the move and hence the dispute. In fact the real credit was due to Ben Burtt who created the robotic voice of R2-D2 by filtering their voices through an electronic synthesizer. Darth Vader's breathing was achieved by Burtt breathing through the mask of a scuba tank implanted with a microphone

~ entry by Alternate Historian

Golda Meir	In 1972, a parcel bomb sent to Israeli Embassy in London destroys the entire building killing thirty diplomatic staff. Acting on intelligence that the bomb was placed by Syria, Prime Golda Meir appeals once more to the world to "save our citizens and condemn the unspeakable criminal acts committed." Privately she sanctioned an extension to Operation Wrath of God. Hundreds of Syrian nationals are innocent victims over the next decade as Mossad “set the boys loose”.
~ entry by Alternate Historian

In 1976, a Boeing 727 almost flew into a mountain near Isparta southern Turkey. The spiritual beings on the mountain prevented the death of of the 155 people aboard; when the Boeing set down in Istanbul, a relieved crew were greeted by flight traffic pashas of the Ottoman Empire.	Boeing 747
~ entry by Alternate Historian

DC-10	In 1989, a terrorist bomb exploded on-board a UTA Flight 772 in mid-air above the Tùnùrù Desert, Niger. The shrieking spirits of the 171 passengers were trapped in the wreckage of the Union de Transportes DC-10 Series 30 craft until the Sultan of Sokoto could send deep-souls to their succour.
~ entry by Alternate Historian

In 1928, Adam West was born. Witnessing the murder of his parents as a child leads him to train himself to the peak of physical and intellectual perfection, don a bat-themed costume, and fight crime. Unlike most superheroes, he does not possess superhuman powers or abilities; he makes use of intellect, detective skills, science and technology, wealth, physical prowess, and intimidation in his war on crime.	Batman
At a fund-raising party, West met and falls for famous photojournalist Vicki Vale, recently arrived in town to cover the phenomenon and finds the courage to tell her : “I'm Batman”.
~ entry by Alternate Historian