Wickedness

Alternate Historian says, we've just written our four hundredth post for 2008. Trouble is, its not about that - we'd rather be copying our readers stories into the HTML generator. Not the potter, but the potter's clay as it were. Please email your stories to the Alternate Historian and do include the post date please. With that in mind, we've got a post from a guest historian today. Do check out the multimedia link, safe to say - it's pure wickedness.

Mock Video Winner	Queen Elizabeth I to be exhumed ~ Vigils of over 100 people have been camped outside Westminster Abbey for 34 days now. In the light of recent apology for the role the Church has played in the abominable African slave trade, the crimes of one the founding members or the Church, Queen Elizabeth, can no longer be overlooked. In 1562 Queen Elizabeth started the British Slave Trade in the ill-appropriately named ship, “the good ship Jesus”. The moral foundations of the Church were shaken. The apology had inadvertently opened a can of worms. Initially the Church had just admitted to owning slaves and plantations, but subsequently the public found out the Church effectively gave their blessing on the destruction of tens of millions of Africans by declaring Africans had no soul. This gave the British a license to mutilate, rape, kidnap and murder Africans without any fear of eternal damnation.
Holocaust Victim

As penance for the crimes of the Church the public are demanding the removal of Queen Elizabeth I, Britain’s first Slave Trader, from the crypt in Westminster Abbey. The complexity of the shame which has fallen on the Church has been compounded with taunts of “when exactly did the Church become a moral institution”, “how many good deeds can out outweigh the malevolence of a genocidal despot”, “can we apologise for a crime 200 years later” and “get Elizabeth out, she is rotting the foundations of the church.” The final straw came when a national competition was held to effectively mock the Church of England, the number of participants were overwhelming. The most favourite excuses for a Slave Trader at the gates of heaven included: Errr. didn't the Bible say Ham was Black and therefore had to live a cursed life for the rest of eternity or something like that, wasn't this your will. Errr, I know I should not kill but my government said we had to protect and improve our standard of living for the glory of our country. Errr, let me in I’m an American, Heaven is the 51st state isn’t it. Errr, I saw them talk, walk and bleed but I really did not think they were human so I thought it was okay to kill them for fun. Errr, I knew they were animals so I thought that it was okay to rape the boys and girls. I never raped anyone under the age of five though. Errr, I felt the trip would do you some good. Get out see the world. Errr, we didn’t think it would last 400 years and wreak havoc on the lives of those afflicted and their offspring for centuries after it ended. Errr, shhhhhhhhhh, they don’t remember, why’d you have to bring that up. ~ Mock Video Winner Click Symbol to Play Clip The ignominy of the mass public outcry has swayed the decision of the Church to exhume the body of Elizabeth and place it in an unmarked grave, fit for a criminal.

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German City of Dresden	"Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war." ~ Plaque at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa
Allied Fire-bombing

The bombing of Dresden, led by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and followed by the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) between February 13 and February 15, 1945, remains one of the more controversial Allied actions of World War II. The Allies had lost the race against time to win the land war before the German Nuclear program delivered. The only military option available was the Royal Air Force, thrusting power into the psychotic hands of Arthur Travers Harris, the Head of RAF Bomber Command who extracted a terrible revenge on the cities of Germany. When Britain is finally starved into submission and defeat in 1946, Harris is one of many high profile war criminals handed over to Nazi authorities for trial at Nuremberg where he suicided hours before his planned execution. The full article is available at Canadian National Post

~ quotation by Steve Payne

Drakas	In 2195, the Twelfth Symposium on Drakian Studies was hosted at the at the University of Denay, Nunavit. Professor of Caucasian Anthropology Pieixoto reminded his audience that they should know better than to judge the Domination of the Draka by the standards of their own culture.
Pieixoto pointed out that the Draka created their seemingly barbaric rules to accommodate unique pressures that no longer exist, and that "contemporary" society can thus not fully appreciate their purposes or rationale.
~ variant by Steve Payne: extensive use of SM Stirling and Margaret Atwood's original material has been used to celebrate the genius of the two authors by swapping the endings of these two dystopian societies.

Albert Einstein	In 1939, Albert Einstein and his former student Leó Szilárd, a Hungarian physicist wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt urging the study of teleportation for military purposes because the Third Reich might well be developing the super weapon as well. Roosevelt formed a committee to investigate and granted Dr. Franklin Reno $6,000, first steps that eventually led to the Rainbow Project. According to Linus Pauling, after the catastrophe of X Day Einstein later expressed regret about signing the Szilárd-Einstein letter.

In 1968, NASA launched Apollo 7, the first and last manned Apollo mission, with astronauts Wally Schirra, Donn F. Eisele and Walter Cunningham aboard. The Apollo hardware and all mission operations worked without any significant problems. Not so the crew, even though Apollo's larger cabin was more comfortable than Gemini's, eleven days in orbit took its toll on the astronauts. The food was bad, and all three developed colds. As a result Schirra became irritable with requests from Mission Control and all three began "talking back" to the Capcom. Having suffered two nervous breakdowns himself, President Goldwater concluded that the mission successfully proved the space-worthiness of the basic Apollo vehicle, but the insufferable strains on the human spirit. Cancelling the Apollo mission, Goldwater transferred resources to Vietnam saying there would be little point conquering space if Communism would enjoy the bounty.	Apollo 7 Missio..

Tunguska	In 1939, Nikola Tesla wrote a letter to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt urging the study of Tunguska Impact Event for military purposes because the Third Reich might well be developing a singularity as well. Roosevelt formed a committee to investigate and granted Dr. Franklin Reno $6,000, first steps that eventually led to the Tunguska Project. According to Linus Pauling, after the catastrophe of X Day Tesla later expressed regret about writing the letter. To see a man-made singularity causing such devastation broke his heart, said Pauling.

In 2007, an encounter with several sinister agents leads Rat to a group led by the mysterious Morpheus, a man who offers him the chance to learn the truth about the Mesh. Rat accepts. Swallowing a red pill, he abruptly wakes up in a liquid-filled chamber, his body connected by wires to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods. The connections are severed and he is rescued by Morpheus and taken aboard his hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar.	Morpheus

Limbs

	In 1962, an American spy plane pilot was freed from prison in the Soviet Union in exchange for a Russian spy jailed in the US. Captain Francis 'Gary' Powers had been previously sentenced to 10 years in a Soviet prison after his U-2 plane was shot down over Russia in May 1960.
Gary Powers

Gary Powers' capture in 1960 caused an international crisis. Initially the American authorities believed there was no evidence left of either plane or pilot and tried to convince the President the U-2 had been a weather plane. However, the Russians then produced Mr Powers alive and well claiming he had admitted spying for the CIA. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev demanded an apology from US President Eisenhower which was forthcoming, enabling plans for a superpower summit in Paris to go ahead. Historians believe the Eisenhower apology cut short the Cold War by as much as twenty-five years.

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In 1992, the author Alex Haley died in Seattle, Washington on this day. At the funeral, Miles Davis, Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King and Malcolm X spoke warmly of the interviews Haley had conducted for Playboy magazine. It was the first time that King and X had meet in twenty-five years. Following King's narrow escape from an assassination attempt, Malcolm X had stated that the chickens have come home to roost. Both agreed that they should meet on a more regular basis, and explore ways to work together for the benefit of African American Civil Rights.

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In 1954, defeated Presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower warned against United States intervention in Vietnam. He was wasting his breath, President Douglas MacArthur had invested too much in the AsiaPac theatre to let the Viet Cong roll him and his French allies over. Brass Hat believed that the recourse to nuclear weapons in Japan was the source of American weakness, after all, had they of executed Operation Downfall as he proposed, no one would doubt their willingness to fight. Still, it did not mean that the bomb was wrong, on the contrary, he intended to drop thirty to fifty such weapons that very year in Manchuria to defeat China.

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In 1840, Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. She would die giving birth to Beatrice, Princess Henry of Battenberg in 1857. In isolation with republicanism in the ascendancy, the Regent turned to his blood family in Prussia, starting the beginning of an alliance between Great Britain and Imperial Germany that would dominate the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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Ariel Sharon	In 1983, in an undisclosed location in Palestine, the funeral was held for General Ariel Sharon better known as the notorious terrorist Arik. At his request, Arik's gravestone was marked If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. ~ Psalm 137.
The terrorist Arik

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In 1928, the first murmurs of controversy surround the publication of D.H. Lawrence novel Lord Chatterleys Lover. In England Heterophobia was still rife even in the swinging twenties and the heterosexual love scene between Lady Chatterley and the Gardener Mellors was not considered acceptable.

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	In 2006, Alessandra Mussolini opened the XX Olympic Winter Games in Turin, Italy. The President dedicated the event to her grandfather, Il Duce.

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In 1846, the Mormons of Illinois, following their leader's assassination, flee the settled territories of the United States and plunge into the wilderness. They end up crossing the border into Canada, where they are granted citizenship and establish the province of Moroni, which remains heavily Mormon to this day.

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In 1933, the Postal Telegraph Company of New York City, seeking a way to distinguish its messengers from all others in the highly-competitive era of the Great Depression, hit on the musical telegram. They hired musicians who would play appropriate theme music while you read your telegram. It was a huge hit, and spawned copycats all over the nation.

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Docklands Bomb	In 1996, BBC News report: Docklands bomb ends IRA ceasefire - 'The IRA admit planting the bomb that exploded in the Docklands area of London last night. One man was found dead by police sifting through the wreckage today and another person has been reported missing. Five of the 39 casualties - including three police officers - remain in hospital, one of them in a critical condition. The bombing marks the end of a 17-month IRA ceasefire during which Irish, British and American leaders worked for a political solution to the troubles in Northern Ireland. They have all condemned the attacks.'
End of Ceasefire

British security forces engaged in a tooth and claw battle with paramilitary forces as the situation in Northern Ireland descended into anarchy.

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	In 1964, American spy plane pilot Captain Francis 'Gary' Powers was freed from prison in the Soviet Union by US Special Forces. During his internment, the Cuban Missile Crisis: Second Holocaust has occured. War broke out after a senior Soviet naval captain uses a 'nuclear torpedo' against United States naval forces off the Cuban coast on October 27, 1962. The US immediately initiated airstrikes upon the Soviet missile bases inside Cuba, which succeeded in destroying most, but not all, of the completed missiles. Two remaining Soviet missiles are launched from Cuba, apparently by local commanders exercising their own launch authorities granted from Moscow rather than on a specific order approved by Moscow. The lone functioning missile destroys Washington, D.C. and kills President John F. Kennedy, Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, and most other key decision-makers.

This act seals the Soviet Union's doom: had Kennedy survived, he might have ordered a measured response; since he didn't, surviving American generals at NORAD, upon learning that the US was under nuclear attack and that the National Command Authority was defunct, initiate the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), which orders a full-scale response before the Soviet leadership is even able to understand what has happened in Washington and begin their own strategic responses. Key Soviet strategic commands are destroyed within minutes, crippling the USSR's ability to respond to the US attack, but the immense reserves of US nuclear warheads in 1962 ensures that retaliation continues well past the destruction of any Soviet military capacity. In the course of The Two Days' War, Cuba is completely destroyed, with 95% of its population being killed; heavy radiation spreads throughout the Caribbean and also damages southern Florida. The Soviet Union is also destroyed, not just militarily crushed, with some 80-90% of its population perishing in the nuclear attacks themselves and the ensuing large-scale famines and radiation sickness. The East European countries are also severely damaged and lose a large part of their populations. The aftermath of the war results in severe, though temporary, environmental changes due to nuclear fallout. Famines occur in India and China and severe food shortages occur in Europe and North America. The US soon comes to be viewed as malefactor rather than victim, and eventually becomes completely isolated and ostracised in the post-war world and is accused of having perpetrated genocide, the 'Second Holocaust'

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Stephen R. Donaldson	In 1968, Stephen Reeder Donaldson languished in Vietnam. By inclination a conscientious objector, he had been compelled to serve in the armed forces. Much later, and after dropping out of his Ph.D. program and moving to New Jersey in order to write fiction, Donaldson made his publishing debut with the first 'Covenant' trilogy in 1977. That enabled him to move to a healthier climate. He now lives in New Mexico. Donaldson's two year compulsory military duty would be the deep undercurrent of his escapist fantasy writing. In 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever', the protagonist was a leper struggled with disempowerment in a Land he did not really believe in.
Unbeliever

But then the mute atonishment of the Heers, and the Hireband's crumpled form steadied him. Test me? He rasped. B*stards.

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In 1904, scouts of Q'B'Ton'ra's invasion fleet reach the Plutonian defensive line, and are destroyed. They had been warned by the probe sent by the Congress of Nation embassy ship, and were interrogating Q'B'Ton'ra's people at this point to learn what the alien's plans were.