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December 6th, 2006

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Alternate Historian's Note: Stephen Payne continues his stint as our Guest Historian while we present our NaNoWriMo novel. We hope you are enjoying this change in format – let us know how you feel about it in comments or by emailing us. This will be the format of TIAH throughout the holiday season, unless we receive a great outcry about it. Speaking of the Holiday Season, keep in mind those who need help year-round and keep yourselves safe and happy, as well. And, should you feel generous inclinations towards our guest historians, you can visit the sites of those who have separate ones from TIAH; generosity towards us here at the Academy is always appreciated, too, and you can find ways to help us out all over the site. Right now, we'd appreciate a lead on a good day job, but any good wishes you have towards us can be emailed here.

in 0, in the town of Bayt La (Bethlehem), Mullah Elijah Rafsanjani considers the interception option. Prehistory suggests the parents travelled from Kfar HaHoresh (Nazareth) to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus only to flee shortly afterwards to Kymeía (Egypt) to escape Herod's Massacre of the Innocents. The interception route could accelerate the flight to Egypt such that a Kymeía-born Jesus was brought up as an exile, unable to connect with the Jewish people. Trouble is, the Mullah knows that the Abrahamic religions are well connected. He might return to 2126 to find Jesus a more central figure in the Koran, altering pre-jihad history to the advantage of the Europeans. -entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!-

in 1919, inside the Vatican, the struggle for the mastery of Europe is settled decisively in favour of the great council of magicians led by Maestro. Azâzêl is trapped and sealed inside Michelangelo Buonarroti's Last Judgement painting over the altar of the Sistine Chapel. -entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!-

in 1949, at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trial, the Soviet Union charged captured Japanese perpetrators of Unit 731 with manufacturing and employing bacteriological weapons. Included among those prosecuted germ warfare criminals was General Otozoo Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million man Japanese army occupying Manchuria. The Soviets are very much aware that General Douglas McArthur has secretly pardoned the perpetrators in Allied custody in exchange for their scientific data, some of it obtained by grotesque experiments on Soviet women and infants. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the lab facilities of the covert medical experiment unit were spread by low-flying Japanese airplanes over populated Chinese locations, such as the coastal city of Ningbo in 1940, and the city of Changde, Hunan province in 1941. This military aerial spraying resulted in human epidemics of bubonic plague that killed thousands of innocent Chinese civilians. Unit 731's bio-weapons research resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in China – possibly as many as 200,000 casualties by some estimates Less than a year later McArthur deployed the bio-weapons during the amphibious operation at Incheon, when United Nations forces broke out of the Pusan region through a series of landings in enemy territory in their bid to re-unite Korea. After all, as Brass Hat often said, "There is no substitute for victory". -entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!-

in 1990, after refuelling and following the rapid fitting of a nuclear weapon to his F-16 at Dimona, Israeli Flying Ace Ilan Ramon returns for a do-or-die solo mission to the desert of Western Iraq. Ramon expertly detonates the warhead directly on top of the giant spider which had emerged from the crater at Osirak. The strike is only the third time mankind has launched a nuclear weapon in anger. Unlike the first two launches however, the strike has absolutely no effect. A few orange patches glow briefly on the arachnid's back. The spider emerges from the mushroom cloud, accelerating west towards the State of Israel. -entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!-

Before(cont.)
Janice watched the two soldiers walk down the stairs until they finally went through the door at the bottom of the stairwell. She then started her hike up the stairs, trying to keep her huffs and puffs as quiet as she could. It was amazing how much the sound echoed in the stairwell, and each step made her feel like she was giving herself away. She kept looking down to see if the soldiers had come back. Just before she reached the final landing, she heard the click of the door at the first floor opening up, and she sat down quietly.
Looking down carefully, she saw the two hazmat-suited men walking up casually. They didn't seem to be in any hurry, so she was pretty sure that they hadn't seen her. She told herself to make a note in her journal that the Army was apparently lying to its own people and telling them that radiation levels were high in Waco. She was kind of curious as to why they were here; since this was the meteorology building, perhaps they were retrieving some kind of meteorological evidence about the 'explosion'. She almost wanted to spy on them and see what they were doing, but decided that getting her visual proof of Crawford's continued existence came first.
It took them forever, but they finally left the stairwell at the 6th floor. Once the door was closed, she climbed to the top and tried the door to the roof. Naturally, it was locked. She dropped her backpack lightly on the floor and unzipped the top.
She had a tool that was highly illegal that a fellow investigator had donated a couple of years ago, and she pulled it out. It fit over the lock, and was supposed to be able to slice through the mechanism with ease. In practice, though, she struggled with it for a good five minutes, making a huge racket that bounced around the walls and announced her presence like an unwelcome sonic calling card.
When she finally cut the lock out, she looked down the stairwell nervously, half-expecting to see the hazmat men on their way up towards her with guns drawn. But no, she was still alone. She turned off her night-vision goggles and put them into her backpack, then opened the door slowly.
Sunlight blazed over her, making her blink as she slipped onto the roof and carefully shut the door behind her. She took a few minutes to let her eyes adjust, huddled up against the door as the freezing wind whipped at her. She pulled her coat closer around her and wished for thicker pants. Once her eyes were used to the bright light, she stood up again and looked around.
The central Texas countryside spread out before her in chilly glory. She pulled her binoculars out of the pack, and just as a precaution, checked the Geiger counter, too. It still read normal levels of background radiation. She hoped that the guy who sold it to her wasn't just a BS artist who took advantage of her paranoia.
She walked over to the ledge and peered out over Waco. The wind was terribly strong up here, and she was a little frightened of heights, so this wasn't an ideal location for her. According to her compass, she was facing west, so she raised her binoculars to her eyes and started searching for the president's ranch. That kept her mind off the fact that a good wind could knock her down at any second.
After several minutes of fruitless searching, her face was feeling raw, so she packed her things back up and retreated to the stairwell. She put her goggles on and looked down to make sure the soldiers weren't around, then sat down and tried to warm herself back up.
She pulled out her laptop and turned it on. The battery soon had her legs warmed up again. Soldier-boys must have worked some mojo down below, because the building's wifi was working – she was connected to the Internet. She took the opportunity to make a quick entry on her web site and email what she had found out to a few key friends. She also asked the closest paranormal investigator she knew, a guy in Amarillo, if he could drive down to the motel outside of town and keep an eye on Miss Raintree.
She wasn't very hopeful that Miss Raintree was still at the motel, but it didn't hurt to see if somebody could go keep an eye on her. She shut down the computer, then went back to her rooftop search.

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Terminated

Kitchener

In 1905, the heroes reception for Commander Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant with brother officers Lieutenants Handcock, Witton at the Hotel Australia was over. The Morant Affair was now the most debated topic in Australia, having the most profound consequences for future of the the British Empire. Lord Kitchener was the British commanding officer instructed to bring the Boer War to a speedy conclusion at any cost. London was desperately concerned that the Kaiser would exploit Boer sympathy within Germany to intervene, and seize the mineral wealth of South Africa. The Australian's governments objections prevented the execution of the officers as Scapegoats of Empire and the Boer's tore up the draft of the Treaty of Vereeniging due to be signed in May 1902.

This was when the real trouble started as the regional conflict in South African blossomed into a Great War. Westminister recalled Kitchener to London where he received a new appointed as War Minister. A recruitment poster of "Britain needs you" with the hate figure of Kitchener was of course an insult to the people of Australia. Kitchener played an integral part in the planning of the catastrophic Gallipoli campaign. Westminister requested the assisstance of Anzac troops. The major anti-British backlash as a result of the Morant Affair prevented the Governments of Australia and New Zealand from acquiesing. The spectre of thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops being needlessly slaughtered was simply to much. Largely as a result of the Morant case, the Australian army never again accepted British Army justice, or any other nation's justice, in cases involving its soldiers and citizens.

In 1980/1941, the US aircraft carrier Nimitz collided with an unnatural storm and the crew were transported from 1980 to Pearl Harbour on December 6th, 1941. Captain Captain Matthew Yelland had to decide whether to interfere with the past and stop the Japanese Fleet from attacking the US base. The true story of the voyage was portrayed in the movie Final Countdown. Played by actor Kirk Douglas, Yelland made the decision to intercept the incoming Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, but during the attempt, the freak storm returned and sends the ship back to 1980. But this is a a different 1980 where buoyed by easy victory in the Pacific, an unstoppable military had fought the Soviet Union and lost. As the final ends, the question is left hanging, should Yelland have intervened, or let history run its course...

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In 1793, Madame Jeanne du Barry, who had been mistress to the former king, was dragged before the Parisian mob to be executed at the guillotine. She made an appeal to the crowd, calling upon their mercy and relating her own tale of woe as a poor child who had been used by men throughout her life. Moved to pity, the crowd surged forward and rescued her from the executioner. She went into exile in Great Britain, and founded a home for wayward girls there.

In 1863, with the Southern Rebellion subdued, President Walt Whitman secured ratification of the 13th Amendment, ending slavery within the United States, and guaranteeing economic equality and freedom for all Americans, regardless of ethnicity, gender, philosophy or religion. The 13th Amendment stood as the greatest achievement of the Communist Party until President Haywood’s Community of Trade united oppressed workers across the world in brotherhood.

In 1980, a church secretary who had overheard televangelist Jim Bakker arrange a liaison with secretary Jessica Hahn called the local news station and told them where to find the pair that evening. When reporters burst in on Hahn and Bakker in a sexual tryst, Bakker’s church empire was ruined, and all television evangelists sank in popularity.

In 2005, BBC News reported - David Davis is new Tory leader.

David Davis was elected as the new Conservative leader by a margin of more than two to one over David Cameron. The 57-year-old beat Mr Cameron by 134,446 votes to 64,398 in a postal ballot of Tory members across the UK. Cameron, the Old Etonian, eighteen years his junior at just 39 had been an MP for only four years, and was discredited by allegations of drug use. Davis said the Tories must change and be in tune with today's Britain with a "modern compassionate Conservatism". His defeated rival, Mr Cameron, said the leadership contest had been a preamble to a Conservative election victory. He hailed Mr Davis as the next Tory prime minister and said the race had made the party look thoughtful and mature. Outgoing leader Michael Howard had said he was standing down after May's general election.

In 1975, the Balcombe Street siege began – it lasted six days. Three armed IRA men on the run from police have burst into a flat in central London and taken at least two people hostage. Officers have now sealed off the corner of Dorset Square and Balcombe Street, in Marylebone, after a car chase through the West End during which shots were fired. The gunmen are believed to be members of an IRA hit squad which has been behind a number of attacks in the capital and home counties over the past few months. They are accused of shooting dead Interim Prime Minister Lord Louis Mountbatten a week ago, and also of carrying out attacks on London restaurants, the Hilton hotel and the Army public house at Caterham in Surrey.

In 2007, Macrosoft, Inc received a huge volume of calls from users reporting the error 'No Updates Available'. A minimum of one update per day had been distributed automatically since the release of Vesta Home Edition. Tech Support discovered that overnight release management problems had withheld the release of twenty-five critical updates.

Unit 731

in 1949, at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trial, the Soviet Union charged captured Japanese perpetrators of Unit 731 with manufacturing and employing bacteriological weapons. Included among those prosecuted germ warfare criminals was General Otozoo Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million man Japanese army occupying Manchuria. The Soviets are very much aware that General Douglas MacArthur has secretly pardoned the perpetrators in Allied custody in exchange for their scientific data, some of it obtained by grotesque experiments on Soviet women and infants. Plague-infested fleas, bred in the lab facilities of the covert medical experiment unit were spread by low-flying Japanese air planes over populated Chinese locations, such as the coastal city of Ningbo in 1940, and the city of Changde, Hunan province in 1941.

This military aerial spraying resulted in human epidemics of bubonic plague that killed thousands of innocent Chinese civilians. Unit 731's bio-weapons research resulted in tens of thousands of deaths in China – possibly as many as 200,000 casualties by some estimates. Secretly, research was continued behind the Iron Curtain. Disastrously the bio-weapons would fall into the hands of Islamic terrorists during the collapse of the Soviet Union, prompting the bio-terrorism of the early twenty-first century.

In 1976, Mary Jo Kopechne drove home from a book signing ceremony. Just the day before, Mary J had published Chappaquiddick, in which she described her unending sorrow over the death of President Edward Moore Kennedy in an automobile accident on Martha's Vineyard. Turning on the AM radio, Mary Jo was absorbed by Bruce Springsteen's rock anthem Candy's Room but somehow the words were strangely different She says, Baby if you wanna be wild, you got a lot to learn, close your eyes, Let them melt, let them fire, let them burn Cause in the darkness, there'll be hidden worlds that shine, When I hold Mary Jo close she makes the hidden worlds mine..

Ted Kennedy

Gasping with horror, she sees that Kennedy is beside her in the passenger's seat, laughing manically whilst slapping his leg to the beat of the song. Looking serious for a moment, he says “I should have been the greatest President, you know” and grabs the wheel, whereupon the car swerves off the road and explodes in a ball of fire.

Eden

In 1992, a post-script was added to the twelfth edition of A Rage in Eden, the late British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's auto-biography, in which he focused on his moment in history, the Suez Crisis of 1956. 41st US President George wrote - Who now can say Eden was wrong? following the recent Gulf War. After all, if the coalition of the willing had not been able to use the military bases in the Canal Zone, how else would they have reversed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait?

In 2005, cyber-agents of the government of (censored) detect a number of alternative lifers on the Internet in the south-western United States. Potentially, one of them is revolutionary blogger known as Rat. The system information on his computer is highly irregular; Operating System: HotDog Barbecue 2003, Browser TexasToast Freeware 2005, RSS Newsreader Yabadabadoo! and Email Client LemonPopsicle, all (allegedly) running on a PC133-style computer. These cyber-agents are not fooled, they realise that Rat is using a self-generated spoofing program to conceal his $250,000 Windows 2003 Server Farm.	Rat

Thanksgiving

In 1766, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle lived in a little village of great antiquity, founded by some of the Dutch colonists west of the Hudson River in the Catskill Mountains. The Van Winkles had fought gallantly alongside Peter Stuyvesant at the siege of Fort Christina, but Rip himself inherited little of the martial character of his war-like ancestors. For some time this Appalachian region had been a province of Great Britain. On this glorious fall day, it would seem the reign of King George III was untroubled. Still the first trimester of any pregnancy is a matter best keep private by parents of the unborn child, and the birth of a new nation is much the same. They must pray for God’ mercy, and hope against hope, that that theirs is not a violent birth in blood and tears.

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I found smog at the end of my rainbow, I found my thoughts shift slowly into phase Declared the constitution of the walkway I realise it's time to plan the day I'm a Market Square hero gathering the storms to troop Cause I'm a Market Square hero speeding the beat of the street pulse Are you following me, are you following me? Well suffer my pretty warriors and follow me
Marillion	I am your Antichrist show me allegiance, Are you following me? I am your Antichrist pledge to me defiance, Are you following me? Suffer my pretty warriors, Suffer my fallen child, Are you following me? The time has come to conquer and I'll provide your end We march ~ Marillion 'Market Square Heroes' - Click to Watch Sample
Market Square Heroes

In 2007, fans of Marillion welcomed a new Fish Era following an emotional reprise performance of Market Square Heroes at Fish's concert at the 'Hobbles On The Cobbles' in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire on 26 August 2007. One individual less than happy was the displaced lead singer Steve 'H' Hogarth, who had stepped into a difficult situation when Fish had left the band in the late 80s. Whilst H might not have had the artistic genius of Fish, he certainly was a more photogenic character and dynamic performer. Allegedly, he described his ex-band as Market Square Losers, a loose and unconfirmed statement widely reported by members of the fan club “the Web”. The lyrics are available at at The Webs Pain

Alexander Litvinenko	In 2006, former KGB spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko died in University College Hospital, London becoming the first known victim of lethal polonium-210-induced acute radiation syndrome. Litvinenko had suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised on November 1st. The unsolved death brought a new low to Anglo-Soviet relations. The use of polonium-210 is an alarmingly new escalation in the biological phase of the Cold War going back almost thirty years to the assassination of Georgi Markov by Bulgarian secret police agent Francesco Giullino by means of a ricin pellet fired from in a specially-designed umbrella.
The use of radiaction poisoning was anticipated by an investigation by the Senate Banking Committee in 1994. The Committee determined that the U.S. Department of Commerce had approved, for the purpose of research, the shipping of dual-use biological agents to Iraq during the mid-1980s, including Bacillus anthracis (anthrax), later identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program, as well as Clostridium botulinum, Histoplasma capsulatum, Brucella melitensis, and Clostridium perfringens. The Committee report noted that each of these had been "considered by various nations for use in war." Declassified U.S. government documents indicate that the U.S. government had confirmed that Iraq was using chemical weapons (but not biological weapons that the agents being exported could have been used for) "almost daily" during the Iran-Iraq conflict as early as 1983. The chairman of the Senate committee, Don Riegle, said: “The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think it’s a devastating record. We need to ensure that next generation combined nuclear-bio-weapons will we expect to use radiation poisoning”.
~ variant by Steve Payne: extensive use of Margaret Atwood's original material has been used to celebrate the genius of the author

Zapruder Film	In 1963, fifty-eight year old Abraham Zapruder died in Dallas, Texas of repository failure. A change of management was announced at the diseased's offices in the Dal-Tex Building, off Dealey Plaza and directly across the street east of the Texas School Book Depository. The manufacture of women's clothing would resume in early December, after an appropriate period of mourning for President Kennedy. In the meantime, staff were not required for work, however anyone that had seen Mr Zapruder's Bell & Howell movie camera should contact the new manager, Mr Jacob Rubenstein, as a matter of urgency, as the Zapruders were distressed not to have copies of a recent family event.

In 1963, on this day the KGB made a startling discovery. As planned Soviet double Alek had assassinated President Kennedy before he could win the Cold War for America. Alek was impersonating the former US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald after a switch in Minsk during 1959. Yet the picture emerging from the American south-west was incredible; their discrete plot had been hijacked by the CIA with the planting of faked evidence. Oswald had been switched again by the CIA. The KGB quickly activated deep sleeper agent Jacob Rubenstein. The switched “Oswald” must be eliminated by “Ruby” before he confessed to being a Soviet agent. If he did, America could justify a first strike from their vastly larger nuclear armoury, and win the Cold War without Kennedy!	Alek

Cuba	In 1962, United Airlines Flight 297, a Vickers Viscount 745D, almost crashed on a scheduled flight from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey to Washington, D.C. with 17 people on board. The passengers and crew were taken to a comfort station and offered hot drinks. At the request of Stewardesses Mary Kay Klein and Kaaren G. Brent, Captain Milton J. Balog switched the television on to watch an announcement of the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In response to Nazi Germany agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, President Adlai Stevenson had agreed to end the quarantine of the Caribbean nation, permitting the Kriegsmarine to approach the island.
From Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, Winston Churchill said that yet another climbdown for the US Government represented a further step forward on the road to world conquest by Nazidom.

In 1963, at Dallas Police Headquarters officers discover that they have in custody a Soviet double named Alek held under the false name of Lee Harvey Oswald The look-alike was a close match for the murdered US marine, apart from missing a scar that resulted from surgery conducted on Oswald years before.	Alek

Pledges

	In 1783, turmoil in the Continental Army caused by the Newburgh Conspiracy enabled the British to use the opportunity to attack and re-establish control over their former colonies. With the end of the war and hence likely the resultant dissolution of the Continental Army obviously approaching, there seemed to the soldiers, many of whom were now deeply indebted from their term of service, a strong chance that Congress would not meet previous promises on back pay and pensions.

Congress, at the mercy of the states for all revenue, did not seem to have any way of meeting these promises. The result was that by March 1783, officers launched a coup, setting up martial law to secure what had been promised to them. The winter of 1783 had seen the end of hostilities between the young nation and Britain, but a formal peace treaty had not yet been signed.

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	In 2008, in Islamabad Benazir Bhutto called upon President Pervez Musharraf to convene parliament immediately. February's parliamentary elections delivered a crushing defeat to parties loyal to President Pervez Musharraf. Mr Musharraf has urged the incoming government to leave politics aside and concentrate on good governance. The new administration will be led by Pakistan People's Party, with Mr Nawaz Sharif's PML(N) acting as a junior coalition partner in a government of national unity.

The defeat of parties loyal to Pevez Musharraf surprised no one. However, the miraculous survival of Mrs Bhutton from multiple assassination attempts was a matter of such deep unease to many, that it had overtaken her husband's alleged corruption as a question over her candidacy for prime minister. The national trauma had forced the postponement of the elections until February 20th 2008. On 27 December Benazir Bhutto addressed a rally of thousands of supporters in Rawalpindi's Liaqat Bagh Park. As her convoy was leaving the park via the rear gate onto Murree road, an attacker opened fire on her car. Shortly after, a bomb exploded, killing at least 20 other people. Ms Bhutto was taken to Rawalpindi General Hospital, but was pronounced dead at 1816 local time, only to discharge herself from the hospital at sunrise the following morning. The explanation was of course a simple matter of brahmacharya, control of the senses in thought, word and deed. The Brahma himself had survived a a similiar attempt on his life on January 30, 1948, when he was shot and temporarily discorporated having his nightly public walk on the grounds of the Birla Bhavan in New Delhi. His chela Indira Gandhi had more impressively survived a hail of bullets from her Sikh bodyguards in New Delhi in 1984.

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In 1969, James Earl Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder, refusing to confess to the assassination on March 10. Ray ignored the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman who urgred him to take a guilty plea to avoid a trial conviction and therefore the possibility of receiving the death penalty. Why should he, he was innocent. The 'musicians' in the Parking Lot chatting with Jesse Jackson had executed Martin Luther King. Oh, and also lured Ray to Memphis with a phoney 'job' offer of a robbery to set him up as a patsy.

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In 2008, British Opposition Leader David Cameron was informed that the General Election strategy & plan had been lost. An assistant to the Director of the Conservative Central Office had suffered personal data loss. It was close to the truth, whilst copying files to his iPod, certain documents had been overwritten by an MP3 of Black Lace's I am the Music Man.

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In 1928, on this day James Earl Ray was born. Lured to Memphis for a 'job' (robbery) by the CIA, Ray was the unwilling drawn into the assassination of the Martin Luther King. The CIA had pulled off the Dallas Operation again. Highly visible patsy, caravan of assassins (musicians in the parking lot) & blood-stained nearest and dearest. To add to his noriety, Ray was permitted to flee to England, and then escape prison. He also had the distinction of having been twice placed on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. In 1997 Martin Luther King's son Dexter King met with Ray, and publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a retrial.

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Troll	In 1999, the Seattle Weekly newspaper reported ~ the gunman called Silas Cool has taken any clear explanation of last year's Metro bus shootings to the grave with him. Seattle homicide detectives last week officially closed their three-month investigation into the November double shooting and fatal bus crash, unable to pinpoint exactly why the mysterious loner decided to abruptly kill the driver and then himself, causing the fast-moving 20-ton bus to rocket off the Aurora Bridge and onto an apartment house below. Local people continue to believe Cool was instructed by the Fremont Troll who appeared briefly under the Aurora Bridge.
Reconstruction

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In 1998, American troops stationed in the Persian Gulf begin to receive the first vaccinations against Bacteriological weapons for the up and coming invasion of Iraq. No one can be quite sure what Saddam and his alien allies have in mind for the invaders. However the Americans are aware that they are desperate to hang on to the Extraterrestrial Technology (ET) buried in Iraq, euphemistically known as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

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In 2008, Buford T. Rogerson III sent a weasel on Farcebook to his personal trainer Anthony Abs - sick, training cancelled :-). Caio.

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In 2008, a guilty Buford T. Rogerson III snuck into his local franchise of Pappy's Texas Barbeque Chicken. The usual - pint of chips, super-sized Cola and deep fried battered velociraptor. Oh and a lake of Pappy's catsup. And er. Super frappachino ice cream with Sausalito sundae sauce.

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	In 2008, Leon Greenman, the only Englishman sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, died Friday, London's Jewish Museum said. He was 97. Greenman was born in London in 1910 but was living in the Netherlands with his Dutch wife and young son when the family was sent by the occupying Nazi forces to the camp in 1943. His wife Esther and three-year-old son Barney died there but Greenman managed to survive the war and committed the rest of his life to telling the public about the horrors he had witnessed at Auschwitz and the five other camps he was sent to.

He published a memoir, An Englishman in Auschwitz, and continued to lecture well into old age. In 1988 he received the prestigious Order of the British Empire from Queen Elizabeth II for his work fighting racism. Greenman was liberated from the Buchenwald camp in April 1945 by the American 3rd Army. The book 'An Englishman in Auschwitz' is a result of the commitment of Greenman to the God 'that if he lived, he would let the world know what happened during the war'. In short, the book describes the sad reminiscences of his days of imprisonment in six concentration camps of the Nazis. For example, Greenman describes the arrival of his family (consisting of himself, his wife, Esther, a Dutch, and his three-year old son, Barney) at Birkenau concentration camp in these words: 'The women were separated from the men: Else and Barny were marched about 20 yards away to a queue of women...I tried to watch Else. I could see her clearly against the blue lights. She could see me too for she threw me a kiss and held up our child for me to see. What was going through her mind I will never know. Perhaps she was pleased that the journey had come to an end.' During the evening before his death, neighbours reported a strange blue light shining out of the bedroom window of Greenman's shabby terraced house in Ilford. Leon's long journey had finally come to an end.

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	In 1982, all 10 planets align on the same side of the Sun as the Syzygy occurred on this day. For the first time, all of humanity can see the counter-earth postulated by Galileo through deductive logic in 1610.
Syzygy

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In 2008, at Pappy's Barbeque Texas Chicken HQ Executive Systems Manager Ron Booger gave Chief Information Officer David E. McGeek the heads-up. The enterprise resource planning system was down Booger told McGeek who was shaking with rage. They were working closely with Macrosoft, the author of the Great Plane software platform but had not yet found the semi-colon which had corrupted the XML File holding the Bill of Materials. All the lard-based receipes A-P were now clean. McGeek snapped and asked when business as usual could return, Booger fidgeted. Finally he responded 'How longs a piece of string?'. It was an estimate that only an Ivy League MBA Exec would have the insight to deliver.

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	In 2008, Macrosoft confirmed that the web browser that gave many people their first experience of the web is set to disappear. The decision mirrors an announcement Friday 29th February by AOL that Netscape Navigator will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, suggesting users upgrade to either Flock or Firefox. Firefox has an 88% market share, according to some statistics. The open source browser's development is coordinated by the Mozilla foundation, set up by Netscape staff made redundant in 2003.

Flock describes itself as 'the social web browser' and allows people to see feeds from community websites, such as Flickr and Facebook, and post to blogs without having to navigate to the page. 'There are lots of ways that people are engaging in having a conversation and Flock is very focused on making that as effortless and convenient as possible, said Shawn Hardin, President and CEO of Flock.

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