The Wrath Of Wellington

July 17th, 2007

Digg this

The Announcement

Apologies From The Alternate Historian: sorry about missing yesterday's post, and many thanks to Steve for stepping up. Pets – they can be a source of great joy and great frustration, if you know what I mean. Much like children, except you can't depend on them to care for you in your frail old age.
Come to think of it, you can't really depend on your children to do that, either... Anyway, on with our regularly scheduled TIAH!

Marvin looked at her a little non-plussed. “So, it's probably just an automatic thing, right? I mean, you send something like that out here, naturally you want it to signal back home if it finds something important.”
“Right,” she said, walking with him over to the food table and lowering her voice so the others wouldn't hear. “My whole team thinks it's just an automatic signal, triggered by the radio waves we've been hitting the probe with. They figure that if the thing can still send a signal forward after this long, then of course it's got the power to send a signal home, to all its long-dead builders, letting them know it found somebody else.” She made sure the reporter and the cameraman were occupied, which they were – they were interviewing Monica. “But, what if the builders aren't long-dead, Marv?”
“Three million years is a long time, Andi.”
She dipped a celery stick into some ranch dressing and munched it. “That could be a wrong figure.”
“I thought you all agreed that was how long it took to get here from that Wolf place.”
She nodded. “Based on its current speed and trajectory. But, what if it slowed down once it approached our system? I mean, it's barely going mach 3 right now, and that's awful slow. Our probes are all traveling in excess of 15000 miles an hour. In 3 million years they'll have traveled ten times the distance this thing has. The probe's been in our system for years, and we only just noticed it because it suddenly turned on its radio.”
“Look, Andi,” Marvin said, rubbing her shoulder. “Even if its only been a few thousand years instead of a few million, it's not like this is gonna be Independence Day, right?” He smiled broadly, and she returned the smile. “You're a hard-nosed scientist. Remember when we had that argument after we saw War of the Worlds? Alien invasion just doesn't make sense.”
“If you're that advanced, you can just repair the planet you're on,” she said, quoting herself. “You're right. Sorry, Marv. I'll try to let go of all the shop talk.”
“Well, don't let it go too much,” Marvin said, pointing at the reporter. “Don't want him to get itching for something else to say about you.”

"Eddie"	"White man came across the sea Brought us pain and misery We killed his tribes we killed his creed Took his game for our own need We fought him hard we fought him well Out on the plains we gave him hell ~ Lyrics to Run to the Hills (Click Note to Play Video)
Iron Maiden Icon

British Heavy Metal band playing live on their "Eddie Rips the Long House" 2005 Tour of the Inter-tribal states on the Turtle Island. Ironically, members of the band were rebellious Etonians who had studied at the same school as the leaders of the failed imperial adventure to conquer America. The full lyrics are available at Dark World

~ quotation by Co-Historian Steve Payne from Counter-history – You're the Judge!

Salisbury	"The Civil War was the last chance we [Great Britain] had of stopping them [the United States]." ~ Marquis of Salisbury
Prime Minister

Speaking in 1898 of the British Century to come by justifying British intervention on behalf of the Confederacy in the American Civil War. A widespread consensus of Victorian politicians agreed that a resurgent Britain would not have been possible if the Union had been permitted to defeat the South, creating a world hyper-power in North America. The history of this period is masterfully explored by Amanda Foreman in her classic opus The Trent Incident Leads to War which is available at Uchronia

~ quotation by Co-Historian Steve Payne from Counter-history – You're the Judge!

In 2007, A. Breeg wrote ~ I feel that my search is now over. The person who contacted me from Romania has finally met me. Only now, eleven months later can I find the words to describe our meeting. And the contents of the journal. Finally I was given the answers I sought regarding my cousin Benjamin Breeg. I can hardly contain myself at the thought of sharing them..

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the genius of Iron Maiden's "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg".

In 2009, TV networks ran episode eight of So What If?. General Augustus Pinochet refused to handover his friend Margaret Thatcher to face trial for war-crimes in Britain, isolating Chile within the Organisation of American States. Pleading ill-health, the Iron Lady died in exile in Santiago. Her son Mark returned to Britain to organise a counter-coup with Simon Mann and other mercenaries drawn from Old Etonians.

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

In 1967, British Minister of War Dennis Healey announced a decision to increase British troop levels in Singapore and Malaysia. East of Suez was a term used in British military and political discussions. It referred to Imperial interests beyond the European theatre (sometimes including, sometime excluding the Middle East). Strategically the empire military infrastructure was based upon sea lanes of communication through the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal and round the Cape to India and on to East Asia and Australia. With the post-war struggle to prevent a retreat from empire, starting with the Indian Emergency(1947), a gradual build up of the military presence "east of Suez" started. In 1967, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Minister of War Denis Healey announced that British troops in major military bases in South East Asia (primarily in Malaysia, Singapore, and Aden) would be doubled by 1971. Edward Heath's government decided when it came to power in June 1970 to send further forces to augment a small political and military commitment to South East Asia through the Five Power Defence Arrangements.

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

In 1916, the Battle of the Somme headed towards an apocalyptic stalemate.
Battle of the Somme	The background was thus; Winston Churchill had struck a tremendous blow for the Allies with his stunning victory at the Battle of Gallipoli, achieved with the use of staggering quantities of gas which were released by the British Navy to overcome the Turkish defenders.
Promoted from the Admiralty to the position of Minister of War, when the French mutinied at Verdun, Churchill convinced the Cabinet to authorise a similar attack, Gallipoli on Land. Reluctance and xenophobia was widespread, after all, they would be releasing the gas at fellow Europeans, not the Turk who had stolen Constantinople from Christendom and threatened Western Civilization. German humanist sympathisers in the British Government warned the German High Command who prepared troops by supplying huge stocks of gas masks. However, the gas release was bungled, rendering the region of Picardie uninhabitable for twenty years.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1918, by order of the Bolshevik Party and carried out by Cheka, Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his immediate family, and retainers were murdered at the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg, Russia. By feigning death, Princess Anastasia escaped to Paris where provided a detailed report of the tragedy. The western world was horrified ..	Romanovs
.. by a whole nest of vampires draining the Russian Royal Family of their blue blood in an act of indescribable violence. Calls for the War of Intervention in Russia started immediately. By cruel irony, the White Forces were soon dispatched to the city port of Arcangel.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Montreal 76	In 1976, controversy marked the Summer Olympics in Montreal, Canada when a Congolese-led block of 25 African nations boycotted the opening ceremony. In protest at a tour of South Africa by the All Blacks team earlier in the year, Congo's official Jean Claude Ganga led demands that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ..
.. bar the New Zealand team. The IOC was unable to resist the logic of these demands, and the New Zealand team departed the next day. The Commonwealth Games planned for Edmonton in 1978 were cancelled completely to the disgust of the provincial government which had planned for the event for many years and was seriously out of pocket.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1815, Napoleon surrendered to British forces at Windsor, Ontario. The contribution of New France to the North American conflict was over, as was the statehood of the Francophone nation.
The United States faced the wrath of Duke Arthur Wellesley alone, as Wellington turned the clock back to 1776.	Napoleon Bonaparte
~ 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 -

Secrets

Indira Gandhi	In 1966, the only daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, became the first woman prime minister of India. Mrs Gandhi led the nation into a new period of enlightenment by pursuing Bapu's policy of brahmacharya, meaning 'control of the senses in thought, word and deed'. No better demonstration could be given that her survival from a hail of bullets from her Sikh bodyguards in New Delhi in 1984. She had after all witnessed Bapu survive a similiar attempt on his life in 1948.
Prime Minister

.

T.E. Shaw	The earth trembled with the wrath of the warring nations, as Shaw's fame spread fast and with the momentum of the fabulous through Asia. All the metals were molten. Everything was in motion. No one could say what was impossible. Shaw realised Napoleon's young dream of conquering the East; he arrived in Constantinople in 1919 with most of the tribes and races of Asia Minor and Arabia at his back. ~ epic coda to the Final Arabian Tale 'Byzantium', by fantasy writer Ned Lawrence © Oxford University Press, 1919.
Fictional Hero

On completing his degree (1910), Ned Lawrence commenced postgraduate research in medieval pottery with a Senior Demy at Magdalen College, Oxford, which he abandoned after he was offered the opportunity to become a practising archaeologist in the Middle East. In December 1910 he sailed for Beirut, and on arrival went to Jbail (Byblos), where he studied Arabic. He then went to work on the excavations at Carchemish, near Jerablus in northern Syria, where he worked under D.G. Hogarth and R. Campbell-Thompson of the British Museum. He would later state that everything he accomplished as a fantasy author he owed to Hogarth. While excavating ancient Mesopotamian sites, Lawrence met Gertrude Bell, who was to influence him for much of his time in the Middle East. In late summer 1911, Lawrence returned to England for a brief sojourn. By November he was en route to Beirut for a second season at Carchemish, where he was to work with Leonard Woolley. Prior to resuming work there, however, he briefly worked with William Flinders Petrie at Kafr Ammar in Egypt. Lawrence continued making trips to the Middle East as a field archaeologist until the outbreak of World War I. In January 1914, Woolley and Lawrence were co-opted by the British military as an archaeological smokescreen for a British military survey of the Negev Desert. They were funded by the Palestine Exploration Fund to search for an area referred to in the Bible as the "Wilderness of Zin"; along the way, they undertook an archaeological survey of the Negev Desert. The Negev was of strategic importance, as it would have to be crossed by any Ottoman army attacking Egypt in the event of war. Woolley and Lawrence subsequently published a report of the expedition's archaeological findings, but a more important result was an updated mapping of the area, with special attention to features of military relevance such as water sources. At this time, Lawrence visited Aqaba and Petra. From March to May, Lawrence worked again at Carchemish. Following the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, on the advice of S. F. Newcombe, Lawrence did not enlist in the British Army but held back until October, when he was commissioned in the Royal Flying Corps. During this period, he wrote a series of fantasy novels that were published after the war after he resumed his education.

.

In 736 AUC, Caius Lumis Juventus, Roman inventor extraordinaire, demonstrates the most powerful steam engine ever built. Caius had been a student of the ancient Greek sciences, and had learned of the simple uses they had put the power of steam to in the old days. Jove’s Thunderbolt, the engine that Caius Juventus built, was capable of pulling a carriage with three heavy men for miles. His designs revolutionized Roman society.

.

In 3896, Japanese Zen philosopher Dogen Kigen is born somewhere in southern Japan. As a young man, he traveled to the Chinese Empire to study the true ways of Zen at Mount Tendo. His mountain temple in Echizen has become a regular stop for pilgrims, including every Chinese emperor; tradition dictates that the emperor spend a week there before his coronation.

.

In 1809, renowned author Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachussetts. The most popular writer in America during his lifetime, Poe invented detective fiction, as well as popularizing what would come to be known as horror stories by those who sought to imitate him at the end of the century. Poe died in 1883, a wealthy and happy man of letters.

.

In 1840, Captain Charles Wilkes claims a third of Pluto for the North American Confederation. Although considered a bad piece of property to own at first, Pluto’s position at the outer reaches of the solar system becomes important when the Congress of Nations decides to build its defensive base there, and the N.A.C.’s importance in system affairs is increased.

.

In 1943, singer Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas. Her hard living fueled the blues that she sang so beautifully, but it all came crashing down on her when she missed the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969 because she was too drunk to perform. She checked into rehab after that, but her music never recovered. Today, she runs a counseling center for performers trying to kick addictions.

.

In 2001, Chairman McPherson issues the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the circumstances of the fatal car crash which killed the heir to the throne Prince Charles Windsor and his lover Camilla Parker-Bowles in Paris on 31st August 1997. McPherson finds no grounds for conspiracy. The British Public will have none of it, and the McPherson report overtakes the Warren Commission as a source of conspiracy theories on the Internet.

.

In 1840, Captain Charles Wilkes attempts to circumnavigate Antarctica to claim so-called Wilkes Land for the United States. The southern lights known as the aurora australis terrorize the mission as powerful magicks force Wilkes to turn back and abandon the mission.

.

In 1943, singer Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas. A charismatic and leading member of the counter-culture, conspiracy theorists believe that Joplin was a victim of the authoritarian problem implemented by President Richard Milhous Nixon in the late sixties / early seventies. Defeated in the '60 election, America entered a crazy decade of anti-social behaviour which threatened to rip the country apart. A strong disciplinarian, Nixon got the country back on track when he was re-elected in '68 with a 'secret plan'. His dislike for the hippie counterculture and the anti-war demonstrations emerged during the campaign when he had intimated 'I think some of these young people need what my father would call a visit to the woodshed.' The essence of the 'secret plan' soon emerged following the mysterious deaths of numerous counter-culture personalities including Janis Joplin as well as Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix..

.

In 1940, the anti-German Underground film by the Three Stooges, You Natzy Spy, premiered in America. The highly controversial film featured comic Moe Howard as a Hitler-like figure who ruled over an amorphous country known as Moronica. The American Bund called for a total boycott of the film, and incited riots at many of the theaters showing it.

In 1971, European Space Agencies described Apollo 13 mission mechanical failures as a self-inflicted wound. The British really had to do something about this quality control problem for next time.

.

Mike Gatting	In 1990 police in Archona armed with batons and dogs broke up a demonstration against English cricketers who arrived for a tour of the Domination of the Draka. Several hundred protesters, many waving placards saying "Domination is not cricket" and "Ban racist tours" had gathered in the arrivals hall at the Eric von Shrakrenberg airport to wait for the 15 England tourists led by captain Mike Gatting.
England Capt.

The cricketers were three hours late - by which time the police had moved in waving batons, setting the dogs on protesters and firing tear gas. Winnie Mandela - wife of the jailed African National Congress leader, Nelson Mandela - was seen among the crowd wiping tears from her eyes. She later complained of police brutality.

.