Constraints

The Breaker

In 1905, Commander Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant with brother officers Lieutenants Handcock, Witton received a heroes welcome at a reception held in their honour at the Hotel Australia. Originally sentenced to death for the execution of Boer prisoners, the protests of the Austrialian government had resulted in the commuting of the sentences of imprisonment. The soldiers had been transported to naval detention quarters England and then to Lewes prison in Sussex. Some time later they were transferred to the prison at Portland, Dorset and released after serving twenty-eight months. Their life sentence was overturned by the British House of Commons on 11 August 1905.

The pivotal event of the Morant affair took place two days later, on the night of August 5, 1901. Capt Hunt led a seventeen-man patrol to a Boer farmhouse called 'Duiwelskloof' (Devil's Ravine), about 80 miles south of the Fort, hoping to capture its owner, the Boer commando leader Veldt Cornet Viljoen. Hunt had been told that Viljoen had only twenty men with him, but this appears to have been a ruse and Viljoen was lying in wait with eighty men. The Boers surprised the British as they approached and during the ensuing skirmish, Viljoen was killed. Witnesses later testified that Capt Hunt was wounded in the chest while firing through the windows and his Sgt Frank Eland was killed while trying to recover his body. Hunt's body was recovered the next day. It had been found lying in a gutter, naked and mutilated; the sinews at the backs of both knees and ankles had been severed, his legs were slashed with long knife cuts, his face had been crushed by hob-nailed boots. According to Kit Denton, he had also been castrated. Significantly, Morant did not see Hunt's body himself; according to Witton, Morant arrived about an hour after the burial. He questioned the men about Hunt's death and, convinced that his friend had been murdered in cold blood, he again vowed to give no quarter and take no prisoners. Witton recounted that Morant then declared that he had, on occasion, ignored Hunt's order to this effect in the past, but that he would carry it out in the future.

In 1961, an embarrassed curator informed the staff at New York’s Museum of Modern Art that they had hung Matisse’s painting Le Bateau upside down for over a month. After a quick vote, it was decided that it looked better that way, and it was left upside down.

In 1397, Bokassa of the heathen Empire of Central Africa crowned himself Emperor. The lavish ceremony in the impoverished nation enraged the populace and led to a revolt against Bokassa, which the Islamic nations surrounding the Empire were all too happy to assist with. Bokassa was overthrown a mere 8 months after declaring himself emperor.

In 2003, the US President, George W Bush, confirmed a punitive tax on imported steel which is certain to ignite a damaging trade war between the United States and Europe. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) last month turned down a US appeal against its July ruling that the duties, imposed in March 2002, are illegal. Mr Bush justified them by saying foreign steel firms were driving US firms out of business with unfair competition and government subsidies. The EU is planning sanctions worth $2.2bn in retaliation against the move.

In 1961, on this day the Birth control pill was officially outawed by the British Government. Women who wish to have oral contraception will now have to travel overseas of risk imprisonment, the Health Minister, Enoch Powell, said in an announcement in the House of Commons on this day. "It is not for me to indicate to doctors when they should decide for medical reasons to prescribe for their patients," he said. Most GPs are in a dilemma over whether they should support the prescription of the Pill, as it is commonly known, which has been requested for social as well as medical reasons.

In 1872, at 1 pm at the wheel of the Dei Gratia, mariner John Johnson sighted a vessel five miles off the port bow. He called second mate John Wright and they both summoned Captain Morehouse, who decided to approach the ship. By 3 pm the Dei Gratia was 400 yards away. Taking the lifeboat, Captain David Reed Morehouse, chief mate Oliver Deveau, and Johnson rowed to the ship where they were greeted by Captain Benjamin Briggs and his crew. First Mate Albert Richardson joked that they had not seen a single human being since leaving New York City on November 7, 1872. The crew laughed, rather nervously. Actually, it was not a laughing matter. The crew of the Dei Gratia had left November 7 and they had not seen anyone else either.

Huey Long

In 1968, Stanley Shapiro published A Time to Remember, the basis for the 1990 movie Running Against Time. To prevent his brother's death at Pearl Harbour, a man travels back to the Louisiana capitol building in 1935 to prevent the assassination of Huey Long. He finds an altered history also need correction. The "Kingfish" steals away FDR's vice-president John Nance Gardner; they strike a pact, and then dealt with Hitler. Trouble is an infinitely more destructive Great War against the Soviet Union is fought a decade later with nuclear weapons.

In 1983, “the long-dreaded nuclear conflict. The city torn apart, shattered, its people destroyed or mutilated beyond hope. For just a few, survival is possible only beneath the wrecked streets - if there is time to avoid the slow-descending poisonous ashes. But below, the rats, demonic offspring of irradiated forebears, are waiting. They know that Man is weakened, become frail. Has become their prey..." through found hand experiences of Domain the shocking true story of how London became the Rats' Domain was recounted by journalist James Herbert.

James Herbert

Eden	In 1967, the fourth installation of A Rage in Eden was serialised in the Times. Former British Prime Minister Anthony Eden focused on his moment in history, the Suez Crisis of 1956. Churchill outmanoeuvred US President Dwight D Eisenhower, giving support to his former subordinate, Anthony Eden. An unlikely ally was sent to remind Eisenhower about his war-time affair with the English driver, Kay Summersby. It was Eisenhower's superior General George Marshall who quashed a plan to divorce his wife Mamie and marry Summersby. Should Eisenhower persist with his obstruction of the Suez intervention, certain New York newspapers might receive highly damaging details of the affair during Presidential election month.

In 2005, the government of (censored) reviewed security measures after blocking YouTube, Today in Alternate History and several other leading web sites the day before in an attempt to impede corrupting foreign films and music. Of particular concern to the (censored) was the computing resources of the revolutionary blogger known as Rat. Did anyone really believe he was running the Academy on a PC133-style computer?

Rat

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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