Unforgotten

Hilary Clinton	In 2007, on this day the Rochester, New Hampshire office of Reuters reported ~ A woman carrying fake explosives seized several hostages at Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign office on Friday before surrendering peacefully to end a tense standoff. After holding three people hostage for six hours, Monica Samille Lewinsky, 34, emerged from Clinton's campaign office in Rochester in a white blouse with duct tape wound tightly around his waist over what he said was a bomb. "It was for me and my campaign an especially tense and difficult day," the New York senator and former first lady told reporters in New Hampshire. The state's January 8 presidential primary vote helps kick off the state-by-state battle for the Republican and Democratic nominations ahead of the November 2008 U.S. presidential election.
Candidate

New Hampshire State Police Col. Frederick Booth said Lewinsky had strapped highway flares to his body, held a detonator that gave the appearance she was holding an improvised explosive device and demanded to speak with Clinton. Clinton had offered to cooperate, Booth said, but police negotiators did not want her to talk with Lewinsky. Police said there was no bomb. "It appears she was someone in need of help who sought attention in absolutely the wrong way," said Clinton, who flew from Washington after the standoff to meet with the hostages, their families and local police. Clinton, who cancelled a speaking date in Virginia immediately after news of the incident broke, said she would stick with earlier plans to campaign on Saturday in Iowa. "It affected me not only because these were my staff members and volunteers but as a mother it was just a horrible sense of just bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time," she said. Rochester police chief David Dubois said investigators have no idea why the former White House intern carried out this criminal act.

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Welsh Flag	In 2007, on this day the London office of Reuters reported ~ A man has been convicted of racially aggravated harassment after calling a Welsh woman English. Michael Forsythe was sentenced to 10 weeks in jail, suspended for 12 months, after being found guilty of racially aggravated disorderly behaviour, a court official said. Forsythe received the sentence at Welshpool Magistrates Court on Tuesday and was also ordered to pay 200 Welsh pounds in prosecution costs. The former lorry driver, who is originally from Northern Ireland, but lives in the Kingdom of Powys, Mid Cymru, called Lorna Steele an "English b-" during an argument after he collided with her parked vehicle in the Welsh market town of Newport in February. Forsythe has attacked the prosecution as a waste of time and money, according to the Daily Mail newspaper. "I find it unbelievable that I've been prosecuted for this," he said. "I've travelled all over Europe as a lorry driver and never had any problems with anybody and now they're officially calling me a racist. "It's political correctness gone mad."
Wales

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Presley

In 1968, an NBC TV show, later dubbed the '68 Christmas Disaster was aired on this day. Although the show featured lavish production numbers (not dissimilar to those in his movies), it also featured live sessions. Presley was extremely nervous about recording live. Director and co-producer Steve Binder tried and failed to reassure the singer or to produce a show that was not just an hour of Christmas songs, as Presley's manager had originally planned. Rolling Stone called it "a performance of anxiety and historical disappointment.

In 1919, the bursar of All Souls College met with the Vice Chancellor of the University of Oxford. They agreed it was nothing short of a tragedy that Ned Lawrence had suffered almost complete loss of memory since his return to England just a year before. Trouble was that Lawrence had enormous respect for Winston Churchill. Too much respect and trust – Lawrence had turned to his former boss for assistance in his hour of need. Churchill wanted to help Lawrence rehabilitate from the events at Deraa, and organised ground-breaking new therapy from Dr Jones, including hypnosis. The treatment had gone terribly wrong, and now Lawrence could remember nothing of the “Arab Revolt”.

Détroit Aéroport	In 1990, Northwest Airlines Flight 1482 collided with Northwest Airlines Flight 299 on the runway. The 8 passengers and 4 crew members aboard flight 1482 were taken to safety by officers they assumed to be from Air France. Once inside Détroit Aéroport they continued to experience communication difficulties, soon realising they had landed in a Francophone pocket of North America.

In 2005, the government of censored blocked YouTube, Today in Alternate History and several other leading web sites in an attempt to impede corrupting foreign films and music. Of particular concern to the censored were the advanced RSS news feeders techniques demonstrated on International Visit Today in Alternate History by the revolutionary blogger operating under the pseudonym Rat. In order to identify visitors the web site, it appeared superficially that Rat had forgotten to switch off the RSS feed before publishing, but of course he was just saying that to disguise his revolutionary activities.	Rat

Eden

In 1967, the third 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. Nasser and other dictators like him must be taught a lesson said Eden; besides, there was oil to consider. Churchill met with Eden at Chequers the Prime Minister's retreat to discuss strategy, both quickly agreeing that neither had become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

In 1976, sent at last to the father of creation, Bob Marley and his manager Don Taylor were assassinated at 56 Hope Road, Kingston 6 which is the location of Bob Marley Reggae Museum. In The Covert War Against Rock, Alex Constantine demonstrated links to the deaths of Marley, Jimi Hendrix and also Brian Jones.	Bob Marley

Freedom on the March

Hilary Clinton

In 2008, as the first all-woman Presidential campaign race entered its final months, Hilary Clinton encountered fresh voter hostility over Iraq. Democrat calls for major cut in troop levels were blamed for worsening the situation on the ground, opening the party to political criticism that they "lost" Iraq. "A secure, stable democratic Iraq at peace with its neighbours was, in my view, unattainable," Clinton said.

~ entry by Steve Payne

Palestine	In 1922, on this day "a British mandate came into force in Palestine, over the heads of unyielding Arab opposition,” quoted from a dispatch from Jerusalem to London’s The Times. "The Arabs declared a day of mourning throughout the city and the shops were closed as a protest against today's formal proclamation of the Mandate, but no Jews were molested"
~ entry by Steve Payne: this incredible event has not been modified.

Berlin 2010

In 2010, Heinrich Gimpel left work at the Wehrmacht's Oberkommando office in Berlin. Even though he had worked at Adolf Hitler Platz for twelve years, he marvelled at the Great Hall. In the foreground was the Railway Carriage where Germany had yielded to France in 1918, and France to Germany in 1940. The first Panzer to enter Moscow. Behind thick leaded glass, the twisted radioactive remains of the Liberty Bell, excavated by expendable prisoners from the ruins of Philadelphia in 1970.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

Wystan Hugh Auden	"To JS/07/M/378 this marble monument is erected by the State - He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be one against whom there was no official complaint. And all the reports on his conduct agree that, in every sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint for in everything he did he server the Greater Community. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd - had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard." ~ The Unknown Citizen by W.H. Auden (1940)
Poet

In 2006, the British national identity card was passed under the Identity Cards Act. Long delays - real or imagined - enabled the establishment to play a long game with libertarians. By the time the technology was implemented in 2012, crime rates had been "permitted" to rise such that it was both feasible and allegedly desirable to micro-chip the population.

~ quotation by Steve Payne

Before the world moved on the Gunslinger Roland Deschain and his friends Cuthbert Allgood and Alain Johns led the troops of "The Good Man" John Farson's into a thinny, an area where the barrier between worlds can be passed despite the absence of a true door. Then something really unexpected happened.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

László de Almásy	In 1941, English Patient Count László de Almásy revealed a shocking truth to Loose Cannon Colonel "Ned" Lawrence. Alongside the rest of the world, Almásy had originally believed his fellow Arabist to have died in a 1935 motorcycle accident at Cloud's Hill. However, during his affair with Katherine Clifton, he discovered otherwise from her husband, the spy Geoffrey Clifton.
~ variant by Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the genius of Susan Shwartz and Michael Ondaatje

British Palestine	In 1891, the Jewish Colonization Association was established by Baron Maurice de Hirsch. The association was greatly affected by the British withdrawal from mandated territory in Palestine in 1947, considering the move an act of betrayal following the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
By 1947, oil had been discovered in the Middle East, and the Western Powers were more concerned about keeping the Arab nations on board. At the one hundredth anniversary celebration in 1991, having abandoned demands for final status talks, the Association was seriously considering either a South American option or in fact an Israel mini-state. The JCA also established several colonies in Argentina. Once such colony is Colonia Lapin founded in 1919 in the Buenos Aires Province.
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 2007, television networks around the world continued to re-run incredible camera footage from the previous day. For the first time viewers were watching an undeniable public demonstration of the extra-terrestrial technology which had been recovered from developing countries by the 41st US President George HW Bush.	Stargate
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was returning to Pakistan from exile in London. Immediately after landing in Islamabad, Sharif was intent on challenging President Musharraf for the leadership of the nation. Trouble was the United States could not afford to lose Musharraf who was a vital ally in the War on Terror. Not only was Musharraf less than keen to engage in a dictatorship vs. democracy struggle he could hardly win, he also desperately needed to discourage a similiar return from another former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto later in the week. Desperate measures were called for. Seconds before Sharif's passenger jet landed, a Stargate opened and the plane disappeared in broad daylight. TV channels that evening showed the 43rd US President George W Bush being briefed during a school visit, W looked mildly irritated that his super weapon was no longer a secret.
~ entry by Steve Payne absolutely no disrepect is suggested or implied by this post.

Mussolino	In 1926, Italian Prime Minister Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was assassinated by the anarchist Gino Lucetti. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, robbed of a regional partner, was unable to resist diplomatic pressures from the Stresa Front formed by French foreign minister Pierre Laval, British prime minister Ramsay MacDonald, and Italian leader Pietro Badoglio in April 1935.
By 1942, when Nazi Germany was on a full war footing, Hitler no longer had anything to fear and struck the allies with Blitzkrieg across both the Brenner Pass and the Belgium border. By the time America entered the war, Hitler had the bomb, and the rest is history. A very short history at that.
~ entry by Steve Payne

In 1944, the first allied troops of the U.S. Army cross the western border of Germany and see behind the curtain of the Third Reich.	Werewolf
Evidence of widespread lycanthropy shocks the Americans, unaware that sadistic members of their senior command have already succumbed to temptation, unable to face the horrors of peace-time.
~ entry by Steve Payne

Tragedy

Hillary Rodham	In 2009, fulfilling a key campaign promise, US President Hillary Rodham arrived in Richmond, Virginia for re-unification talks with Confederate President Al Gore. During the election, Rodham had seized upon the theme of unfinished business in former President Bush's last State of the Nation address. It was a bold step that had carried her to the White House, and the restless ghost of Abraham Lincoln.
US President

That Lincoln had a precognitive dream about the dissolution that is well documented. He related the dream to his close friend, Ward Hill Lamon: About ten days ago, I retired very late. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room. No living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds met me as I passed alone. I was puzzled and alarmed. Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room. Before me was a catafalque on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng or people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. 'Who is dead in the White House?' I demanded of one of the soldiers. 'The Union,' was his answer. ~ Paranormal Phenomena.

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	In 1536, physician and alchemist Theophrastus Phillippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus, apparently ssucceeds in synthesizing gold from lead and other base elements. When word of his discovery leaks out and his efforts are duplicated, panic sweeps Europe at the prospect of a financial collapse. Particularly hard-hit is Spain, which had been levering its expropriating of Aztec and Inca precious metals to increase its political power. With alchemical gold far cheaper to produce than natural gold is to mine and refine and impossible to tell from the natural product by sixteenth-century methods, the bottom drops out of the gold market.
Paracelsus

Church condemnation of alchemy is greatly strengthened, leading to a wave of arrests and executions by the Inquisition, including the death of Paracelsus himself in 1539. The fledgling science of chemistry is placed under ecclesiastical supervision; thereafter, only priests will be permitted to carry out research in the field. The Church’s prohibition of alchemy, however, does not prohibit Spain from using alchemical gold--and later, alchemical silver--to undermine the economies of its political enemies. England’s Henry VIII, for example, is forced from his throne after defying Rome by divorcing his wife Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. In the 'starving time' which followed the Papacy's authorization of economic warfare, Henry sees his country's currency turn worthless. Finally, his brother-in-law King James IV of Scotland attacks and defeats Henry’s remaining supporters, and is crowned King of England in Henry's place. Henry is shut up in the Tower of London, where he will die in 1547. The economic chaos in Europe will slow exploitation of the New World; the first English settlement, at Roanoke Island, will not be established until 1651. Also delayed will be scientific progress, as direct Church control spreads from chemistry to all fields. The one exception is in chemistry, where the Vatican supports a research program aimed at developing alchemy and at eventually finding a way to distinguish alchemical products from their natural counterparts. The result is an 'arms race' between alchemical synthesis and chemical analysis which will not end until 1887, when Bishop Ernest Rutherford demonstrates the use of spectroscopy to distinguish infallibly between alchemical gold and natural gold. As Rutherford shows, and as had long been accepted by alchemists, alchemical gold has not really been transmuted; instead, it is a chemical amalgam whose properties mimic those of the natural metal almost exactly. The same is soon demonstrated for other products of alchemical 'transmutation.'

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	In 2000, Indian Point II nuclear power plant in New York State vented a huge amount of radioactive steam when an ageing steam generator failed. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) initially reported that no radioactive material was released but were forced to retract this statement when ten of thousands of people died on the eastern seaboard. On February 16th the NRC stated The event...resulted in an initial primary-to-secondary leak of reactor coolant of approximately 50,000 gallons per minute and required an Alert declaration (the second level of emergency action in the NRC-required emergency response plan.

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In 1933, in Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara shot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, who died of his wounds on March 6. John Nance Garner ascended to the Presidency, famously described by Alistair Cook as the last public man linking America of the Civil War and America of the nuclear age. Cooke was referring to the fact that Garner was born in 1868, the son of a former Confederate cavalry trooper. His unique understanding of American history enabled Cactus Jack to steer the isolationist nation clear of the tragedy of the Second Great War.

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In 634, an Asian team of the Speaker's Line assembles their Dragon, a kite that is capable of carrying two full-grown men and is almost fully controllable from within. They manage to glide the Dragon to a height of several hundred feet and manage to return to the ground safely. There is rejoicing throughout the Speaker's Line as word of this success spreads through their ranks.

In 1965, the far-left government of Canadian Prime Minister Dominic 'Moonchild' Montclair adopts the leaf of the cannibis sativa as the national symbol for the nation's flag. An obviously oblivious Queen Elizabeth attends the flag-raising to hoots and hollers from hippies gathered for the occasion. Canada becomes known as the front line of the drug war as Montclair's government and a sympathetic parliament enact the most liberal drug laws in the western world. Although denounced by Great Britain and the United States, drug abuse actually declines in Canada during this period, even though casual drug use increases slightly.

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In 1950, the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China signed a mutual defense treaty as World Communism continued to gain an unstoppable momentum. By the time that Douglas MacArthur was inaugurated in 1953, the Cold War was effectively lost. The reversal of these facts on the ground required Brass Hat to reconquer the world all over again, a feat of arms he attempted in the Dropshot War of 1957.

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In Hellenic Year 3362, Socrates flees Athens, confirming his guilt to all citizens. He lives the remainder of his life in shameful exile in Thrace, and his work and students no longer commanded respect among the elite in Athenian society. Even today, he is an obscure philosopher of that great era in Hellenic history.

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In 1564, Galileo Galilei was born in Pisa, Italy. An astronomer of great note in his youth, he gave up the profession after accusations of heresy were leveled against him because of certain findings he had made. He was arrested in 1616 for speaking to some students about the possibility of the earth moving around the sun rather than vice versa. When he refused to recant this belief, he was burned at the stake as a witch.

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In 1898, Spanish troops catch a small band of men about to sneak aboard the U.S.S. Maine in Puerto de Habana, Cuba. They are carrying enough explosives to sink the battleship, which might have provoked America into war with Spain. The nationality of the men is never determined, although they speak with heavy German accents.

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Bombing	In 1945, rescue workers looked for survivors in the rubble of Dresden which closely resembled the surface of the moon. A forty-five year old man Edgar Derby was found holding a teapot. German solders concluded this had been stolen as a momento of his incarceration at nearby Slaughterhouse-Five. The previous night, 800 RAF Bomber Command planes let loose 650,000 incendiaries and 8,000lb of high explosives and hundreds of 4,000lb bombs in two waves of attack. They faced very little anti-aircraft fire, even though the city was reported to be a vital command centre for the German defence against Soviet forces approaching from the east. As soon as one part of the city was alight, the bombers went for another until the whole of Dresden was ablaze.
Dresden

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In 1933, a constitutional crisis ensues when President-elect Franklin Roosevelt is shot to death by an Italian-American bricklayer who objected to another plutocrat gaining control of America's government. Although it seemed obvious to most that Vice-President-elect John Garner was next in line to take over the White House in May, Republican President Herbert Hoover maintained that the constitution was unclear on this point, and asked the Supreme Court to decide who should follow. Although most on the court believed privately that the constitution was, in fact, quite clear on this point, they punted the question to Congress. The House of Representatives, given the duty of electing the president if the general election was unclear, took up the question of whether to elevate their former Speaker, Garner, or to continue Hoover's presidency. Although Garner felt confident that he would win among his old colleagues, it turned out that 'Cactus Jack' had rubbed more than a few of them the wrong way; they voted Hoover back into office. An enraged electorate was made even more radical by this action, and the elections of 1934 saw a huge turnover in Congress - virtually everyone who had voted against Garner and was up for reelection was defeated and replaced by a Garner supporter. Hoover was rendered impotent by the loss of Congress, and was very nearly impeached. He managed to negotiate his way to 1936 still in the office, and John Garner was swept into office in 1936 by a near-unanimous landslide, winning every single state in the general presidential election.

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In 1904, the invasion fleet of Q'B'Ton'ra, at least the remains of it, take up position just outside the earth system's Oort cloud. The conquerors of the Mlosh homeworld offer a trade of their prisoners held back on the Mlosh homeworld for the Q'Bar, as he calls his people, held on earth. Delighted that their people are still alive, the Congress of Nations agrees to the prisoner transfer.