Il Duce

The state of TIAH

March 23rd, 2007

Digg this

Alternate Historian's Note: I promised you a collection, and we are working on it – but real life is getting in the way. Fortunately, the worst part of the real-life problems we were having has been resolved. I have found new employment (yay!). We're going to aim for an April release for the collection, and will make more announcements about it as we draw closer to actually making that a reality. And, speaking of April, our Guest Historian, Stephen Payne, suggested that it was time for a contest, 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). My lovely Co-Historian says that if we can get 30 entrants, we can offer an ultimate winner a complimentary TIAH mug, but we only have 3 entrants so far! Get researching those alternate histories now, folks! The deadline is March 29th.

in 1919, the black-shirted Italian Fascisti are born from the mind of Great War veteran Benito Mussolini. His violent tactics and intimidation of political opponents leads the Italian King Emmanuel III to appoint Mussolini his prime minister in 1922. King Emmanuel disliked the parliament, and felt them weak; he preferred Mussolini's bully tactics. The people disagreed, and in 1924, the Socialist Party, (where, ironically, Mussolini began his political life), led a popular revolt against the King and the Prime Minister, deposing both of them in a bloody, 4-month struggle. The new government, although composed of leftists, survives by aligning itself with the more moderate governments in Germany and Austria, as well as making overtures to their political counterparts in Great Britain and France. When fascist movements attempts to rise in Germany and Spain, they provide invaluable tactical support in defeating them. Socialist Italy also proves itself a leader economically – the New Rome economic alliance it creates in central Europe weathers the world-wide depression of the 1930's more easily than Europe's non-members. Indeed, Germany and Italy emerge from the 30's as economic powerhouses, and many envious smaller countries joined the New Rome treaty in order to get a taste of the prosperity that they represented. Some of the more envious denounced New Rome, though – in fact, in Great Britain, there were many that referred to Italy as the Beast from the Christian Book of Revelation, and New Rome as the mark of the beast.

Moscow SVO Airp..	In 1994 an Aeroflot Airbus A310-300, flying from Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO) to Hong Kong's former Hong Kong international airport (Kai Tak Airport) almost crashed into a hillside in Siberia. All 75 passengers and crew survived. The flight cockpit voice recorder revealed that the pilot's 15-year-old ..
.. son had been at the controls at the time. Aeroflot Flight 593 returned to SVO where the pilot Yaroslav Kudrinsky was startled to see the branding Royal Tupolev running down the side of the aircraft.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1989 the 300 metre (1,000-foot) diameter Apollo asteroid 4581 Asclepius (1989 FC) struck the Earth creating the largest explosion in recorded history, equivalent to 1 Hiroshima-sized atomic bomb detonating every second for 50 days. Subsequent discoveries revealed that a whole class of such objects exists, and that an ..	Kitt Peak Natio..
.. object the size of the one which struck the Earth in March, 1989, probably comes by undetected once every two or three years. 'On the cosmic scale of things, that was a close call, we just got unlucky' said Dr. Henry Holt from an underground bunker under Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Cold fusion cel..	in 1989 at the University of Utah Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced cold fusion, a nuclear reaction that occurs near room temperature and pressure using relatively simple devices. The research posed a problem for the US Government, because the simplification of the process would inevitably lead to more widespread ..
.. application by non-desirable governments. The research stopped abruptly and mysteriously in 1990.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1983 President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept enemy missiles: Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as 'Star Wars'. Luckily, it was not needed as presidents were under pressure to justify huge military expenditure and gloss over technical failure. During the Gulf War, George ..	Strategic Defen..
.. Bush's exhortation that the Patriot Missile Batteries in Israel had a 100% success rate proved fatally wrong when it was discovered that the Scud missiles were actually duds. It is too easy to imagine a scenario when decisions were based on SDI, when the technology was known to be defective..
~ 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 -

Annus Horribilis

The state of TIAH

May 18th, 2007

Digg this

Alternate Historian's Note: C'mon people! In 9 days, we'll hit TIAH's third anniversary. As before, that calls for a contest! Please send in your alternate versions of the Academy's beginnings (May 27th, 2004 was the date in this timeline). You can even use the fact that we lost the original day and had to restart on the 28th – whatever you can think of to provide a twist to our start. Send 'em in, and we'll print 'em! Be sure to tell us how you want your credit for the post to appear, as well as any links you want to be connected with your entry. Thanks for reading and get researching those alternate timelines! And, just as an addendum – if we don't get any entries, we're going to consider printing some of our more interesting emails...

in 1891, the Kansans are driven from the fort outside of Concordia. Colonel Theodore Monteith walks into the fort to the wild cheers of the men who had been trapped inside. Major Mark Wainwright, nursing a gunshot wound in his shoulder, nonetheless meets the colonel with a smile on his face and a spring in his step. He gives a smart salute to his superior and says, “Sir, I've never been more happy to see my boss.” Colonel Monteith embraces Wainwright and tells him privately, “I heard that you were about to accept their terms. I'm glad I could prevent that from happening, Major.” Wainwright nodded and laughed. “As am I, sir. As am I.”

in 1999, Sir Lance du Lac arrives in Hungary to join the British troops trying to subdue this former bastion of the Central European Empire. His mind, however, is on events back in Great Britain – his affair with Queen Gwen weighs heavily on his mind. He is so overcome with guilt that he joins a push at the front and gets himself captured by the enemy. The Illuminati's elite, hearing of this interesting development, make sure to take control of the prison camp where du Lac is being held. Queen Gwen also hears of this before it becomes known to the British, and she contacts her Illuminati allies with a plan.

In 2032, Commander Albert Raft departs Melbourne Town to travel to Ayers Rock City with the Security Ombudsman for the Australasian Sector of International Security. The Collapse is only one of the changes that Commander Raft witnesses, 20th-century thought has been expunged as well.

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

In 1972, arguments continued between Marvin Gaye and duet singer Diana Ross over her excessive marijuana smoking which he believed endangered wife Tammy Tyrell's unborn child, Marvin Junior. The problem did not get fixed until 1984 when husband Berry Gordy took extreme action; he shot her dead.

~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Montgomery	In 1947, the Tydings Committee summoned a most unexpected witness as the door to the courts open and in walks a Nazi General. Hans Guderian introduced himself as the commander of the XIX Army Corps in the invasion of of France. He personally led the attack that traversed the Ardennes Forest, crossed the Meuse River and broke ..
.. through the French lines at Sedan. Guderian's panzer group led the "race to the sea" that split the Allied armies in two, depriving the British Expeditionary Force and the French armies in Northern France and Belgium of their fuel, food, spare parts and ammunition. Senator McCarthy asked a seemingly innocuous question. Leaving the Committee front bench and walking up to the witness stood no more than three paces from Guderian : how did you know? Immediately General Sir Bernard Montgomery slammed the desk with his fist in a fury and shouted at McCarthy 'Damn you to hell!'.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1989, the King made a public broadcast on British Television: '1989 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one of my more sympathetic correspondents, it has turned out to be an 'Annus Horribilis'. I suspect that I am not alone in thinking it so. Indeed, I suspect that there are ..	Picketing
.. very few people or institutions unaffected by these last months of worldwide turmoil and uncertainty. ' The reaction to the speech was mixed. There was a pause as the British people considered carefully their next step. Their master had spoken, but would they roll over?
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Anon Detective	In 1998, he chased down the trail, weak at first then stronger and stronger. Like the best of private detectives, he worked on gut instinct. And his instinct told him he was close, so very close to the huntress now.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1994, Michael Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in the Dominican Republic. Her father gave her away in the photo opportunity of the millennia	Lisa as a child
~ 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 -

Take It Away, Steve...

June 2nd, 2007

Digg this

The Announcement

The Alternate Historian Speaks: As I told you up in the announcement above, today we start a new style of post at TIAH. Steve will still provide the alternate history, but my portions of the entries from now on will consist of whatever I am writing – this note, for instance. Today, I will let Steve take it all away and fly solo as I rest up for tomorrow's post...

In 1999, the networks ran installment six of TSEotTC. Il Duce hung upside from a lamp post as Fascist Rule collapsed in Italy in late 1943. The spreading lake of crimson blood engulfing the revolutionaries who had murdered the vampire Benito Mussolini..	Vampire Hanging
~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate both of the author's genius.

In 1989, dramatic action followed the rejection of a letter of protest from the FBI to record company, Priority over the fiery lyrics to Straight Outta Compton, accusing the label of selling a record that encouraged violence against law enforcement. Rappers Ice Cube, Doctor Dre, Eazy-E, M.C. Ren and Yella were arrested in South Central Los Angeles.	Rappers
A blanket ban was placed upon listening to the album which the rappers had recorded in six weeks with $8,000 and sounded like nothing that had come before it. The consequences for America proved profound and deep-reaching. President Jesse Jackson described the lyrics as disturbing and unhelpful to those members of the community who had worked hard since Selma to build Dr King's dream.
~ entry from Co-Historian Steve Payne

In 2005, obsessed with exploration and getting grants for the Stonehenge Gate physicist Derek Ironcraft and archeologist Lupe Vargas demonstrated absolutely no sense of personal safety. Soon after arriving at the site in the Sahara Desert, they were drawn through an interstellar gate left behind by the Omegans. Transported instantly to their home world, they were received by the shape-shifting intelligent metal caretakers of that distant planet.

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

In 1989 on this day former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith was interviewed by Ian Hancock. Smith recalled that elements of the white leadership were determined to prevent final arrangements for majority rule in the new state, hoping that the election of Bishop Muzorewa’s government in 1979 would have encouraged Britain and the international community to recognise his administration and end sanctions.	Operation Quartz
Instead Nyerere of Tanzania and Kaunda of Zambia, however objected at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Lusaka in August 1979, demanding that their proteges, Mugabe and Nkomo, leaders of the two main groups seeking power, should be included in any final arrangement for majority rule in Rhodesia. Their pressure was instrumental in causing British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to withhold recognition, causing Smith's government to consider extreme alternatives. Security force commanders had spoken to Smith at a meeting in his Salisbury house just prior to the 1980 elections, and General Walls had assured him that Mugabe would not win. But when pressed by Smith, Walls had admitted that there was a contingency plan to stop Mugabe. Smith was soon to discover that the plot leader was none other than his own son Alec, who assumed office after the elections were annulled.
~ story by Co-Historian Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Churchill	In 1942, the 32nd American President Winston S. Churchill arrived for a State Visit to the Irish Isles. His dual heritage was a source of deep concern to the Dublin Government. Winston's father, Randolph Churchill was English, whilst his mother was daughter of American millionaire Leonard Jerome. He himself had been brought ..
.. up in Brooklyn and new little of his English ancestry, however the Irish were rightly concerned about the introduction of a Protestant Patriot figure as the “Troubles” continued in Southern England.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1942, the defeated remains of the British Eighth Army wheel towards Alexandria. Claude Auchinleck is replaced and the British Eighth Army is restructured, as Bernard Montgomery was appointed Head of British Central Command. With the Western Desert and the North African Campaigns lost, Monty is charged with organizing Churchill's ..	Moshe Dayan
.. Last Stand in the remaining Theatre of War, the Middle East. His first step is to meet with Jewish General Moshe Dayan and offer him the keys to the British Mandate in Palestine.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Boys from Brita..	In 1976, Ira Levin published the pseudo-factual novel ”The Boys from Britain”, later made into a 1978 movie starring Gregory Peck and Lawrence Olivier. Yakov Liebermann is an elderly gentleman who investigates crimes against humanity perpetrated during the End of Empire. He receives a disturbing phone call from a ..
.. young man who claims he has just finished eavesdropping on Louis Mountbatten, the final British Viceroy of India. According to the young man, Mountbatten is activating former agents of MI5 for a strange assignment: to kill on a certain date 94 men who share a few common traits. The meaning of the title only becomes evident after a crazy hunt ensues and Yakov Liebermann begins to discover why the 94 men are to be killed. They are surrogate fathers of Winston Spencer Churchill clones.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1881, on this day Charles J. Guiteau shot and fatally wounded U.S. President George Armstrong Custer, who eventually died from infection on September 19. Guiteau lay in wait for the President at the Baltimore and Potomac Rail road Station, getting his shoes shined, pacing, and engaging a cab to take him to the jail later. ..	Charles J. Guit..
.. As President Custer entered the station, looking forward to a vacation with his wife in Long Branch, New Jersey, Guiteau stepped forward and shot him twice from behind, the second shot piercing the first lumbar vertebra but missing the spinal cord. As he surrendered to authorities, Guiteau fired with the exulting words, repeated everywhere: 'I am a Stalwart of the Lakota... '". Custer died on September 19, eleven weeks after being shot, after a long, painful battle with infections brought on by his doctors poking and probing the wound with unwashed hands and unsterilised instruments. Most modern physicians familiar with the case state Custer would have easily survived his wounds with the medical care available even 20 years later.
~ 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 -

Falling

	In 1980, Morarji Desai's Janata party defeated Indira Gandhi's Congress, winning 351 of the 525 contested seats in the lower house of parliament, or Lok Sabha. Mrs Gandhi, who had ruled India for 11 years until 1977, had appealed to India's rural masses with her two election slogans, "Banish Poverty" and "Law and Order". During the 63-day campaign, the 62-year-old gave up to 20 speeches a day during a 40,000 mile tour of 384 constituencies.

But Mrs Gandhi's political comeback was viewed with suspicion. During the 19 months of emergency rule, introduced after she was accused of electoral malpractice, democracy was suspended, many opposition politicians were imprisoned and a compulsory birth control programme was introduced. When Mrs Gandhi sought to have the regime legitimised through the polls, she was defeated by Morarji Desai's Janata party in 1977.

.

Leaning Tower	In 1990, the Leaning Tower of Pisa was closed to the public for the first time in 800 years shortly before the structure toppled over. Over the past 100 years the belfry at the top of the mediaeval tower has moved 9.6 inches (nearly a quarter of a metre). The tilt was 16ft (4.9m) off the perpendicular and increased by about one-twelfth of an inch (2mm) every year because the layer of clay and sand on which it is built is softer on the south side than on the north.
Pisa

The Italian government set aside 100bn lire (£47m) and appointed an international team of experts to come up with a detailed plan within three months to save the building from collapse. It was just too little, too late. The 13th century monument, which took more than 200 years to build, attracted in excess of one million visitors each year, many of whom climbed to the top to enjoy the panoramic view of Pisa. The tower's closure and subsequent collapse had a significant impact on the city's tourism industry. < The eight-storey structure began tilting almost immediately after it was completed in 1350. Attempts have been made in the past to stop the building moving. Mediaeval builders tried to correct the tilt but their efforts resulted in the upper section of the tower leaning at a different angle to the lower section. The Leaning Tower's ornate and unique exterior balconies were built to enable local dignitaries to be seen by the populace during religious processions in the Middle Ages.

.

In 1989, the Empire of Japan mourned the death of Hirohito, war leader during the Greater East Asian War of the 1940s. Without his decisive leadership, the whole region would have remain in the hands of the imperalists.

.

In 1965, Salvador Allende pledges that he will respect the elected government of unified Chile, even though election returns show him losing to reactionaries from the north. The Soviet States of America pledge to give Comrade Allende all that he needs to ensure justice for the people of Chile.

.

Balrog	In 1918, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien set about the life-long work of the Middle-earth opus. A good deal had been written while Tolkien was laid up in a military hospital and at home with trench fever. No long suffering from combat tension, Tolkien was not gripped with a new kind of fear. Not longer fearing death, he wonder if he still wanted to live. Seeing the desolation of the World, Sauron [Tolkien's fear] .. looked with hatred upon [Tolkien] for long he dissembled his mind and dark designs that he shaped in his heart. Now the Elves made many rings; but secretly Sauron made One Ring [Tolkien's opus] to rule all the others, and their power was bound up with it, to be wholly subject to it and to last only so long as it would last. And much of the strength and will of Sauron passed into that One Ring ~ Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age
Tolkiens Phantasm

.

In 1989, Taiwan mourns the death of Hirohito, Emperor of Japan during World War II. Alongside his unlikely ally Chiang Kai-shek, the combined gold and foreign reserves of China and Japan were used by the two renegades to successfully launch the first Asian Tiger in the 1950s.

.

In 1601, the Earl of Essex, Robert Devereaux, overthrew Queen Elizabeth in a nearly bloodless coup. The only fatality was the Queen herself, a former lover of Devereaux’s, who was killed by the Earl’s men after she attacked him for taking the crown from her head.

.

Nelson Mandela	“I look into Nelson's desperate eyes and can see that he never conceived the monstrous ungovernability of of a society so entrenched in rebellion.” ~ Samson Zola. In Laura Resnick's dystopia, years of civil war had torn apart the dream of a Rainbow nation. Samson Zola prepared to assassinate the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Even though he loved him like a father, he saw the need to return South Africa to its people.
Alternate Tyrant

.

In 1536, former consort to the King, Catherine of Aragon, dies in London. She is the first of many consorts to King Henry VIII to meet an untimely end. Fancying a stereotypical Spanish traits of dark hair and an olive complexion, the King was disappointed to find that Catherine was in fact a blue eyed, fair-skinned woman with reddish-blonde hair, not too unusual for northern Spaniards such as those from her father's land of Aragon. Furthermore, Catherine herself was part English, through her English great-grandmother, Catherine of Lancaster.

.

In 1912, wholesome family cartoonist Charles Addams was born in Westfield, New Jersey. His Addams Family cartoons in the pages of the New Yorker became the symbol of American life in the middle of the century, replete with happy nuclear family and rock-solid values.

.

In 1927, a basketball team of surpassing talent played its first game in the small town of Hinkley, Illinois, due to the fact that the team consisted of African-American men. But, in just a few decades, the clown princes of basketball would be known all over the world, and the Watts Travelers would set a standard for basketball ability that few other teams could match.

.

	In 1983, after twenty long and frustrating years of searching, private detective Henry Friend found Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in a hotel lounge in Arizona. As he had expected, she had retreated into the disguise of her former unglamorous self. Overweight, and with mousy hair he flattered Bouvier with references to 1960s icons. He ordered a whiskey and some nuts, possibly as a gesture to Jack. Later, he would cut her head off with a saw and return it to the mob. It was a contractual requirement for private identification. Absolutely necessary before he could collect on the fee.

.

In 1953, President Harry Truman announces that the United States has developed a hydrogen bomb. Truman needed the new superweapon for his second term, American gains in south-east Asia had been reduced to a toe-hold.

.