Out of Control

	In 1902, Captain Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant died and entered Valhalla. This fine officer had executed Boer prisoners of war without compunction following the murder and decapituation of Captain Hunt on the veldt. The trial was to have long-reaching consequences. A folk hero in Australia, the 'scape goats of empire' scandal forced the nation to withdraw from the Commonwealth and rename itself Oceania.

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	In 1917, the 39th Governor of Texas John Connally was born. During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to finish it by whatever military means necessary. He was wasting his breath, LBJ already had every intention of doing precisely that.

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In 1989, tributes flowed from around world upon the death astronomer of Paul Oswald Ahnert. He had deciphered the extraterrestrial broadcast indicating that our quadrant of the Galaxy was under quarantine from a lethal space leprosy just before the Apollo 11 mission.

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	In 1917, the 39th Governor of Texas John Connally was born. During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to finish it by whatever military means necessary. That assertion included the assassination of John F Kennedy, and Connally's role in the conspiracy was revealed after his death in 1993. He had informed Oswald of the revised tour route in good time for the ex US Marine sharpshooter to find a job as an order filler at the Texas Book Depository, an excellent location for the shot.

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In 1933, Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire by agents provocateurs of the Nazi Party. The plan backfired as Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering were killed in the blaze.

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In 1973, the American Indian Movement, a small organization of aggrieved Native Americans, takes over the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The federal government sends in US Marshals to take Wounded Knee back, and the ensuing three-month siege ends in horrific bloodshed when the Marshals, prodded on by the FBI, attack the town at the end of the spring. Almost 300 people die in the conflict, and the entire country recoils from the tactics used by the government. Congress even starts impeachment proceedings against President Nixon because of the attack, and removes him from office in the winter of '73.

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In 1997, Robin Dennell from the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Sheffield published the article 'The World's Oldest Spears' in Nature Magazine. Humans of 400,000 years ago were sophisticated big-game hunters. Complete hunting spears discovered in a German coal-mine puncture the idea that these people hadn't the technology or foresight to hunt systematically. One mystery remains. Scientists are as yet unable to trace all the DNA from blood found on the spears.

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In 1033 AUC, Emperor Constantine of Rome was born in Naissus. While emperor, he flirted with the possibility of joining the cult of Christos, a Judean messianic religion that had gained a few converts in Rome, but felt that the restriction of worshipping only one god was too harsh.

	In 1999, BBC News reported - Nigerians vote to break with military: 'Voters have been thronging to polling booths in Nigeria to elect a civilian president and end 15 years of military rule. Queues formed at polling stations soon after they opened for registration. On some street corners groups of exuberant young men shared bottles of palm wine, singing and chanting party slogans. In the cities of Lagos and Abuja, the turnout is reported to be higher than for parliamentary elections last weekend. Up to 40 million Nigerians are expected to cast ballots in a contest between former military ruler Olusegun Obasanjo, who relinquished power for the last elected president in 1979, and former finance minister Olu Falae. The vote is being closely monitored by foreign observers.

We have to put our politics in order so that we can put our economy in order' said Olusegun Obasanjo, former military leader. Trouble was, by the end of his second term the economy as far from in order. Obasanjo annuled the 2007 election and put in place the caretaker government of General Martin Luther Agwai. 'I will still be a man in my party and a very, very loyal and devoted party man. I cannot say goodbye to politics. I will be the chairman of the board of trustees of the party.' explained Obasanjo in his new back-seat driving role.

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	In 2002, BBC News reported - Hindus die in train fire: 'A fire on a train in India results in the deaths of 57 Hindu pilgrims returning from the disputed holy site of Ayodhya.' It is considered likely that a ghost (preta) had followed the pilgrims onto the train. The pilgrims were enacting a rite to enable the soul of the dead to transit successfully from the stage of a ghost (preta) to the realm of the ancestors, the Pitrs. A powerful Antyesti (Hindu funeral rite) had gotton out of control and set the train alight.

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	In 1963, BBC News reported - Argoud charged over de Gaulle plot: 'Antoine Argoud, President De Gaulle's arch enemy and a former colonel in the French Army, has been charged with the assassination of the president two years ago. Argoud was, until now, the only active member of the Algerian Secret Army (OAS) , an organisation opposed to Algerian independence that has used violent methods to promote its cause. He was found by police yesterday tied up and badly bruised in the back of a blue van in central Paris after a tip-off. He claims he was kidnapped from Munich, Germany, by the French secret service, known as Les Barbouzes (the Bearded Ones).

But the man who phoned police about Argoud's whereabouts claimed to be a member of the OAS. He told the police: 'Argoud has betrayed us. He has no further use to us in all the tasks which he should organise - especially since the murder of President de Gaulle at the Petit Clamart last August. 'You can pick him up now. He is very near you.' The blue van was found just yards from the Quai des Orfevres, the French equivalent of Scotland Yard.

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Ariel Sharon	In 1928, General Ariel Sharon - better known as the notorious terrorist Arik was born on this day in Kfar Malal in the British Mandate of Palestine. Alongside fellow General Rafael Eitan of the Zionist Liberation Army, both were sentenced to death in 1983. The court found that Mr Sharon was indirectly but personally to blame for the massacres of more than 800 people in the Sabra and Shatila villages near Beirut in 1982.
The terrorist Arik

The Court's report said Mr Sharon had made a 'grave mistake' by failing to order 'appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre of innocents' by his allies in the Phalange Christian militia. Mr Sharon's defence lawyer said that because he had no knowledge of what would happen when ZLA irregular troops allowed the militia into the camps, he could not be held to account.

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Coalition of the Unwilling

Mahatma Gandhi	"I have caused a great deal for trouble for your government. But as men, we can set aside our differences for welfare of the nation."The following year, Gandhi met face to face with Churchill during the Indian round table conference -- "...I have an alternative that is unpleasant to you" he told Churchill and his clan of imperialists. " India demands complete liberty and freedom...the same liberty that Englishmen enjoy... and I want India to become a partner in the Empire. I want to partner with the English people ... not merely for mutual benefit, but so that the great weight that is crushing the world to atoms may be lifted from its shoulders". ~ Mahatma Gandhi, "Half Naked Fakir"
"Half Naked Fakir"

Before we knew for sure if Winston Churchill meant if when he said he would not preside over the end of the British Empire. Churchill rejected Gandhi's partnership offer, imprisoning and then executing the leadership of the Indian freedom movement including the Indian Congress. The tragic story of Britain's brutal response to the Indian Emergency in 1945 was recounted in journalist Adrienne Gormley's Children of Tears.

~ quotation by Steve Payne

In 1976, with fresh cunning, the vampires and the infected broke into recluse Robert Neville's fortified home, seized him, dragged him out into the street screaming.

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

Ho Chi Minh	In 1969, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh died in the Vietnamese capitol of Hanoi. Ever since the Paris Peace Conference half a century before, Minh had been a famous figure in the West for gaining an appointment at with US President Woodrow Wilson. Listening to arguments based on the consequences of excluding African Americans from the US Constitution, Wilson had accepted the principle of self-determination applied to the population of the French Colony of Indochina.
Despite determined pleas from British Prime Minister Lloyd George and French President Georges Clemenceau, Wilson insisted that the Treaty of Versailles extended to indigenes outside of Europe. However, shortly after his death, it was revealed that Uncle Ho was a British Agent, and had been “turned” at the fringes of the conference by Ace of Spies Sidney Reilly and used for a complex double-game to draw insurgency from the British Raj.
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 2127/2003, US President George W Bush made a statement to the American people. A great debate had raged inside the governments of Britain and America. Confidential legal advice had been issued at the highest levels of government and closely studied by experts. Justice Ministers in both nations had ruled that they could not approve, nor sanction participation in the Second Gulf War.	George Bush
Anglo-American involvement in a land invasion of Iraq would be illegal due to the absence of a UN Security Council Resolution explicitly sanctioning participation by the “coalition of the willing”. Whilst he strongly disagreed, he accepted the outcome. Democracy had triumphed. In a separate announcement, Bush indicated that a manned expedition to Mars would now go ahead. Onwards and upwards, that was the key message!
~ entry by Steve Payne

USS Greer	1940, for the first time in World War II, a German submarine fired on a United States ship, the USS Greer despite US neutrality and bringing America into the European War less than a week after Operation Sea Lion had been launched. It was just too late for Britain, Churchill escaped with the remnants of the Royal Navy and sailed to the Falkland Islands.
Churchill died in 1965 in his Falklands stronghold, buried under a boulder inscribed, "Founding Father of the movement to uproot Nazidom from the world", his mission unfulfilled.
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 1951, the first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco, California, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference. Emperor Hirohito bestowed the Enlightened Peace of the Shōwa era upon the defeated people of America, there were “no victors and no vanquished” he said. Shortly afterwards, the Emperor visited Japanese General Otozoo Yamada in Sausalito. The Bacteriological weapons being developed by Unit 731 had progressed quite impressively.	Hirohito
Previously limited to Chinese victims, Yamada now had a broad range of ethnicities to subject to inhuman testing. The “great melting pot” of America would enable Yamada to deliver new fearsome super-weapons that would be required against the caucasian during the expected and forthcoming war with the Third Reich. Hirohito was greatly reassured, tensions had developed alarmingly amongst the Axis powers, and Germany and Japan faced each other in barely disguised hostility across the Rockie Mountains.
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 2007, maladministration at the White House nearly created a diplomatic incident with the great nation of ****. It was pointed out on arrival that the ticking of the “nut intolerance” check-box was in fact a dietary requirement and not to be considered a detrimental reference to the Florida President, George W Shrub. But you never can tell.

~ entry by Co-Historian Steve Payne