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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Rejection

Algeria	In 1961 the French people voted to grant Algeria its independence in a referendum. The result was a clear majority for self-determination, with 75% voting in favour. In Algeria, a slightly lower percentage - 69% - voted in favour. More than 40% of the electorate abstained in response to a campaign by the rebel pro-independence group FLN to boycott the vote. The FLN, led by Ben Bella, has been waging an increasingly violent guerrilla war against French colonists for seven years, causing a political crisis in France.
Crisis

The referendum result was welcomed by French Prime Minister Michel Debré as a "clear and striking response". General de Gaulle was informed of the results by telephone at his country home at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises and remarked that the "good sense" of the people had prevailed. He had staked his political future on the referendum result, saying in a broadcast to the nation three days ago that it would be a matter between himself and the individual voter. There was an atmosphere of high tension in Algeria as voting took place. Security was at its highest in the capital, Algiers, where an estimated 20,000 French troops were on patrol. And that was the nub of the problem, the French Government was looking for trouble in the wrong place. The military commander in Algeria, General Raoul Salan, announced a Universal Declaration of Independence, forming a government of French settlers determined to fight the independence movement. Led by Salan and a group of French army officers staged a successful coup in Algiers in April 1961 as well as carrying out several bomb attacks in mainland France assassinating President de Gaulle.

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	In 1979, Donny Osmond appeared on the Tonight Show with his two deaf brothers Virl and Tom. They performed a version of "Crazy Horses". Truth be told, musically it wasn't very good. Donny said that now he had suffered rejection himself, he had apologised to his brothers for their exclusion from the band. He was sorry, so very sorry about that.
Osmonds

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M. Mitterand	In 1996, France mourned the loss of its longest-serving president, François Mitterrand, who died at the age of 79 from prostate cancer. The news was announced by President Jacques Chirac at a news conference at the Elysee Palace. He told journalists: "For 14 years M Mitterrand wrote an important page in the history of our country. A great figure has left us." François Mitterrand took many secrets with him when he died, but his most startling claim was revealed in Ali Magoudi’s book, Rendez-vous: The psychoanalysis of François Mitterrand.
President

The figure who enters, 45 minutes late, is François Mitterrand, no less — the president of France. Magoudi discovers that his patient does not want to talk about his childhood or his dreams, but about Margaret Thatcher and the crisis over the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands. “Excuse me,” Mitterrand begins, apologising for his late arrival. “I had a difference of opinion to settle with the Iron Lady. What an impossible woman, that Thatcher! “With her four nuclear submarines on mission in the southern Atlantic, she threatens to launch the atomic weapon against Argentina — unless I supply her with the secret codes that render deaf and blind the missiles we have sold to the Argentinians. Margaret has given me very precise instructions on the telephone. Controversy continues to rage amongst contemporary historian. With fifty years of hindsight, many believe that the casus belli for World War Three was Western defence sales, placing equal blame on both Britain and France.

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In 1992, President George Bush regurgitated his sushi at a dinner banquet during a tour of Japan. Much like the footage of a fatigued President Carter during a 1980 fun run, this anti-photo opportunity in election year was a disaster for Bush who had previously been seen as an athletic and youthful commander-in-chief.

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In 1811, Charles Deslonde led a successful slave revolt in parts of the Louisiana Territory. The revolt took place in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana and St. James Parish, Louisiana. Deslonde and about 500 insurgent slaves marched down the Mississippi River Road toward New Orleans, killing two whites, burning plantations and crops, and capturing weapons and ammunition. The revolt was a pivotal moment in the termination of Jim Crow laws in the South during the early nineteenth century.

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Harmony	In 2009, quite unexpectedly, arbitrators from the Congress of Worlds arrived uninvited on planet earth to resolve what they saw as the long-standing dispute between the sons of Apollo, Mason Williams and Tommy Emmanuel. Just about everybody in the galaxy was talking about the family schism, it was after all threatening the spheres. Surely the arbitrators must help reconcile the gods discordant interpretations of the harmony, or they would die trying.
of the Spheres

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In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a 'War on Poverty' in the United States. In reality hybrids like Johnson were being developed by the Alliance for alien re-population. Conversion failures were hidden amongst the exaggerated deaths of the homeless that were reported in the United States during the 1960s. This excludes the three hobos famously filmed on the Grassy Knoll at Dallas during the Kennedy Assassination, during the cover-up they really were killed by Alliance agents.

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In 12-13-2-1-5, the great Sioux military leader, Tashunca-uitco, fought his final battle against the superior forces of the Oueztecan Empire. Knowing they were hopelessly outnumbered, Tashunca-uitco and his warriors bravely held off the Oueztec long enough to give their Cheyenne allies, led by Tatanka Iyotake, time to escape.

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Nelson Mandela	“I, met Nelson soon after his release from prison.” said Samson Zola, “All those years on on Robben Island, breaking stones and collecting seaweed. He should have been filled with hatred and thirst for revenge.” In Laura Resnick's dystopia, years of civil war had torn apart the dream of a Rainbow nation. Samson Zola prepared to assassinate the President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela. Even though he loved him like a father, he saw the need to return South Africa to its people.
Alternate Tyrant

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In 1935, the blond King of Rock and Roll, Jesse Garon Presley, was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Jesse, as he was known to fans around the world, shocked and rocked the 50’s with his blend of black and white southern music, and became the most famous singer in the world – no one else even comes close to his fame and ability to sell records. After his death in the 1970’s, there have even been fans who have started a church in his name, sometimes referred to as the Jesse-its.

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In 1992, during a tour of Japan, President George Bush became ill at a dinner banquet. Although he dismissed it as a sour stomach, in his hotel room later that evening, he suffered a fatal stroke. His death brought an end to the Republican Party’s dream of another 4 years in the White House, as newly-elevated President Dan Quayle was crushed in the November election, 74 to 21 percent, by Democrat Bill Clinton of Arkansas.

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In 1634, Galileo Galilei is executed by the Inquisition for heresy, months after being found guilty. The Church had originally granted the blasphemer leniency, but after he continued to publish his “scientific” papers, they took action to silence his heliocentric fallacies forever.

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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.
Unbeliever

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. These are the pale deaths which men miscall their lives: for all the scents of green things growing, Each breath is but an exhalation of the grave, bodies jerk like puppet corpses and hell walks laughing- ~”You Cannot Hope”.

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