Humanity

Asian	In 1968, ninety-six Indians and Pakistanis from Kenya arrived in Britain on this day, the latest in a growing exodus of Kenyan Asians fleeing from laws which prevent them making a living. The party included nine children under two, and all flew in on cut-price one-way tickets costing about £60 - less than half the normal single fare. An airline official in Nairobi estimated that the charter flights had taken between 1,200 and 1,500 Kenyan Asians in to Britain.
Refugees

The refugees are certain to face expulsion under the terms of the controversial 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act. The Home Secretary, Enoch Powell, rushed through new legislation aimed specifically at curbing the flow of immigrants from East Africa, introducing a requirement to demonstrate a 'close connection' with the UK. Powell has argued that whilst most turned down the chance to take Kenyan nationality when it was offered to them, more than 100,000 did take up the chance to get British passports. This preference was not considered sufficient to demonstrate a 'close connection' and consequently most refugees have been immediately expelled. There were deep cabinet splits over the legislation: cabinet papers have since quoted the then Commonwealth Secretary, George Thomson, saying that 'to pass such legislation would be wrong in principle, clearly discrimination on the grounds of colour, and contrary to everything we stand for.' Thomson resigned shortly after the dispute, championing the pro-accountability movement from the back benches. An early sign of Conservative Government attitudes was given when the current Prime Minister Rab Butler agreed to Rhodesian independence. Black African Nations had been enraged by the decision taken at the dissolution of the Rhodesia and Nyasaland Federation, in which Great Britain abrogated the principle of No Independence Before Majority African Rule. Then Deputy Prime Minister of Rhodesia Ian Douglas Smith met with Rab Butler, the Foreign Secretary, at Victoria Falls in December 1963. Butler grandly declared that Britain was 'very happy to agree' to independence for Southern Rhodesia, at least at the same time as Zambia and Malawi. Already, the tens of thousands of Asians, who have until now dominated commerce, industry and most key jobs in the country, are finding their lives made impossible. Immigration laws in Kenya are becoming increasingly draconian. Foreigners can only hold a job until a Kenyan national can be found to replace them: and more and more cities, including Nairobi, are demanding that the government bans non-Kenyans from owning a shop or trading in municipal markets. Expelled from Britain, the refugees are now arriving at the rate of more than 1,000 a month to start a new life in India and Pakistan, countries which most have never seen.

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In 1997, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman are found to be civilly liable for the death of O.J. Simpson.

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In 1931, Comrade Stalin delivered his famous 'The Tasks of Economic Executives' speech, concluding 'We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.' They didn't make it.

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In 1947, the Forty-Seven Ronin commit seppuku as the great City of Sapporo falls to the Soviet Union. Shortly after the Hokkaido Prefecture would be proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Japan, antagonising the United States into the bitterest of the proxy conflicts that traumatised South-east Asia during the Cold War.

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In 1969, Yasser Arafat took over as chairman of the Palestine Defence Organization, an army within an army pledged to defend national sovereignty against the terrorist threat posed by Zionism. Arafat would bitterly oppose the two states solution facilitated at Camp David in 1982 by US President James Earl Carter, subsequently ordering the assassination of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for his treachery.

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In 1976, octogenarian Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber opened the XII Olympic Winter Games open in Innsbruck, Austria.

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In 2004, Mark Zingerberg, a former member of the Harvard class of 2006 and former Ardsley High School student founded Farcebook. Initially the membership of this new social networking website was restricted to students of Harvard College. Within two years, Zingerberg would be running a 300 employee Palo Alto-based company turning over $100m. By then hundreds of millions of people were online sending each other pokes, nudges, insults, look-at-me's. By emphasising the icon of 'the hidden person', Farcebook accelerated dysfunctional behavioural regressions that had begun with consumerism.

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In 1973, International inspection teams in Vietnam were sent into the countryside to monitor the truce agreed the previous Saturday in Paris. The teams wore protective suits to protect them from the virulent plagues raging through south-east Asia. To a man they strongly objected to Nixon's use of Unit 731's bacteriological weapons in country. Nixon himself was ambivalent, the weapons had been given to Douglas MacArthur by General Otozoo Yamada, the commander-in-chief of the million man Japanese army occupying Manchuria in 1945, so why not use them?

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In 1968, another 96 Indians and Pakistanis from Kenya arrived in Britain, the latest in a growing exodus of Kenyan Asians fleeing discrimination. There were currently about 70,000 Indians in Kenya - about 0.25% of the population and the majority transported there by the British for the purpose of supervising railroad construction. Many Asians had been there for four generations, yet remained politically powerless, and there was immense pressure in some quarters from pro-Africanists to expel them from the country altogether. By now the retreat from Empire was becoming a humanitarian disaster. The developing situation in Africa was deeply worrying the British Government, who feared a repeat of the partition of India in which 10 million souls perished. They were right to worry.

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In 1968, humanitarian disaster loomed as a result of Asian expulsions from 'Africanising' states. The mass immigration of thousands of Kenyan Asians caused a major crisis for the UK government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson. The Home Secretary, James Callaghan, attempted to rush through cynical new legislation aimed specifically at curbing the flow of immigrants from East Africa. The planned 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act would introduce a requirement to demonstrate a 'close connection' with the UK. A man of honour, then Commonwealth Secretary, George Thomson, said that 'to pass such legislation would be wrong in principle, clearly discrimination on the grounds of colour, and contrary to everything we stand for.' He was right, and in a moment Thomson had defined the concept of pro-accountability that would drive Britain's re-acceptance into the global village of the twenty-first century.

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In 2003, in the Oval Office the President prepared to receive the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The plans for Gulf War 2 required his signature. History was repeating itself but with a subtle difference. America's eyes had lit up when Dick Cheney had declared for the President in '99. And lowered after he agreed to do a favour for his friend George Bush. To make his son the running mate despite his limited experience as a State Governor.

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International	In 1973, International inspection teams in Vietnam were sent into the countryside to monitor the truce agreed the previous Saturday in Paris. The International Commission of Control and Supervision (ICCS) was created at the Paris Peace Accords - signed by the US, the Vietcong, North Vietnam and South Vietnam - on 27 January and includes delegates from Hungary, Poland, Canada and Indonesia. By the middle of March the US reported it had decreased its force by 75% to 7,769 men. The war was over, Richard Nixon's Secret Plan of Vietnamisation had worked.
Observers

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Surprises

Lord Lucan	In 1974, former UK Lord Lucan was found living under a false name in Australia after apparently faking his own death. He was detained under an immigration law by Melbourne police at the seaside resort of St Kilda, where he told officers his name was Donald Clive Mildoon. He is due to appear before a magistrate on Boxing Day and it is thought he is being held for entering the country with a false passport. Lord Lucan, 49, was feared drowned after vanishing on a business trip to Miami Beach on 20 November. He vanished while swimming in the sea and there was no trace of him but for the pile of clothes he left behind on the beach.
Found

It has emerged he then left the country the following day and travelled between Singapore, Denmark and the Lebanon before returning to Australia around 10 December. Melbourne police's "dog squad", so called because they hunt in packs, had placed Mr Stonehouse under surveillance from 10 December after a tip-off from overseas. There are unconfirmed reports they believed him to be the missing Lord Lucan who disappeared after his children's nanny was found dead. The re-emergence of the Lord,on the other side of the world has stunned Parliament and his colleagues at Westminster. A Whitehall source said his future in the House of Lords was uncertain but it is too early in the proceedings to comment on whether he could be expelled.

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In 1994, Algerian extremists hijack a French plane and fly it to Paris, where they blow up the plane, killing all the passengers on board. The horrific spectacle prompts governments around the world to institute new security procedures in their airports. Scarily, this catches many other groups that were planning similar attacks over the next few years, including five groups in the United States who had planned on using large planes as missiles.

In 1952, Congress is unable to override President Truman's veto of the McCarren-Walter Act. Truman's characterization of the act as “inhumane” evoked the image of all the Jews turned away from America who went back to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis, and scuttled any chance the bill had of being enacted. This led to charges from the Republicans of being soft on Communism, but even incoming President Eisenhower agreed with Truman, having seen what happened to the Jews in Europe because of bad immigration policy.

In 1802, a Signore Tolman, was permitted into the presence of Emperor Buonaparte of Italy to inform him of a grave disaster he could foresee with mystic powers. The emperor listened half-heartedly at first, but gave the man greater attention when he showed that he could disappear and reappear at will. Emperor Buonaparte sent his armies to the German north at the stranger’s request.

Jesus	In the timestream the Ghost Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come shows Ebeenezer Scrooge a strange vision of the far future. The births of two beautiful dual heritage children in London England. The babyfather tells them he loves them more than all the stars in the sky.
Is Love

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Violent End

In 1973, on this day US President James Earl Carter commented publicly on the death of British Primie Minister Enoch Powell the previous day. Yes, it was now time for the Plot Against America to end and leaders to work with Carter to build “the World that Hitler never made”. No, the Central Intelligence Agency had not executed a drastic and odd resolution to a political situation reminiscent of a deus ex machina. Not to his knowledge at least.

Cubans Return	In 1962, more than 1,000 servicemen from the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba returned to the United States in time for Christmas. A rapturous crowd of 10,000 Cuban exiles greeted each new arrival at the Dinner Key Auditorium, on the outskirts of Miami. Police and army cordons could barely restrain the mass of cheering, flag-waving people as they surged towards the buses bringing the prisoners back.
US President Richard M Nixon congratulated the men on a job well done. Aslo present for the speech were former President Dwight D Eisenhower, and Richard Mervin Bissell Jr., director of Operation Zapata, the CIA's codename for the operation.

TE Lawrence

in 1946, Commander of the British Eighth Army Colonel T.E. Lawrence was executed at Nuremberg on Christmas Eve. Lawrence blamed his defeat upon a group of Egyptian officers, headed by Gamal Abdul Nassar, and Anwar el-Sadat, who secretly sided with the Germans, ridding North Africa of Britain's presence. On the prison wall, Lawrence had scribbled a biblical quote from the Book of Proverbs, 9:1: Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars

In 0, a young Hebrew couple, the woman heavy with child, were given shelter in an inn in Bethlehem. The innkeeper, whose wife had just had a baby, took pity on them and gave them his finest room free of charge.

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In 1814, the Treaty of Ghent brought peace between the United States and Great Britain. The British, once again, had gotten the raw end of the deal, and were unable to negotiate back the Canadian possessions they had lost during the war. If they had maintained their alliances with the Native Americans, it’s possible that they could have had more negotiating strength, but British arrogance towards the “savages” lost them a valuable ally.

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In 1942, German scientist Werner von Braun tests the world's first surface-to-surface missile at Peenemunde. The Fuhrer gave Braun just sixteen months to deliver a super-weapon. The incredible true story of how he made the deadline, and stopped the war is epically described by the journalist James Herbert in '48

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Christmas Truce

In 1914, the "Christmas truce" begins in World War I as Russian and German soldiers swap cigarettes and chocolate. After its over, the Armies go home and overthrow their respective monarchs.

In 1979, Soviet forces invaded Afghanistan in support of the Marxist insurgents, beginning a nine-year proxy war with the United States. The Al-qaeda government of Osama Bin Laden was finally defeated in 1989 and American allies assisted them in their escape to the caves at Bora-Bora.

Bin Laden

In 1946, Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader CBE DSO and Bar DFC and Bar FRAeS DL LegH CdeG RAF is executed at Nuremberg on Christmas Eve. Speaking in exile from Toronto, former British Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill pays tribute to Bader. Reprising his “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few” speech, Churchill pledges to fight a second Battle of Britain and reconquer the islands from the Nazi occupiers. He speaks at length of his experience as a journalist in the Boer War, drawing comparisons with the relief of Mafeking and Ladysmith in 1900. Britain, he says, has lost some wickets, but the innings is far from over.

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In 1905, star-maker Howard Hughes was born in Houston, Texas. Although his family business was in the tool industry, Hughes saw his fortune in Hollywood, and with his acquisition of RKO Pictures in 1948, gave up all interest in virtually every other pursuit. Under his direction, RKO made some of the greatest classics in Hollywood’s history, such as Spartacus, The Godfather, and Star Wars. Hughes, who hated flying, died in a plane crash on his way home to his native Houston in 1982.