LeMay's Air Lifts

June 24th, 2007

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The Announcement

in 1999, King Arthur II was surprised to see how well Queen Gwen was conducting the war in his absence. He had expected to see retreat across all fronts – but Gwen had virtually eliminated the Illuminati as a threat, and the Central European Empire had all but ceased to exist. “Perhaps I was wrong about her,” he said to Sir Lance du Lac in the War Planning Room. The knight disagreed vehemently. “No, my liege, you were right. She was simply doing away with the competition – which included you.” King Arthur regarded his greatest knight for a moment. “You don't believe she should be granted leniency, then?” Sir Lance's eyes lost a little bit of their life and he shook his head. “I once defended her, my king, but no longer. She has committed treason against the royal person, and must be executed before she can do even more harm to our nation.” Arthur leaned back in his chair and considered how unpopular that decision would be, given the queen's high popularity. “I don't think that's possible right now, Lance. We have to come up with another solution.”

In 1949, the events of Jo Walton's Mark occurred eight years after Germany agreed to a Carthaginian peace with Fascist Britain, leaving Oswald Mosley in control of the European continent. A typical gathering at the country estate of East Prussia of the power elite who brokered the deal is thrown into turmoil when the main negotiator, Rudolph Hess, is murdered, with a yellow star pinned to his chest with a dagger.

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

In 721, following the Battle of Toulouse Umayyad control spread inexorably westward from Narbonne into Aquitaine. The Frankish Army led by Duke Odo of Aquitaine had been defeated on June 9th by an Umayyad army besieging the city, and the keys to south-west France were now in the hands of governor of Al-Andalus, Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani.

~ entry from Co-Historian Steve Payne

In 2316, or Change+300 in our new calendar the transition of the world of men is still only partially understood. Electricity and pressurized gases were rendered unusable. The underground nuclear test at the gateway of worlds had opened a small crack in the fabric of the space/time continuum, inviting something catastrophic in from a parallel Lovercraftian universe. The world of men suffered a heavy consequence from a single cause at an arterial point.

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

In 2007, English-born Canadian Steve Payne failed in his bid to sue a well-known coffee shop in Mississauga for the costs of a new laptop computer. An accident prone geek, he had been attracted by the “wireless hot spot” advert in the window yet minutes later had foolishly spilt a demi-litre of French Vanilla cappuccino into his smouldering laptop. Legal authorities ruled that it was an accident waiting to happen, a view that Payne's wife heartily shared having witnessed the demise of many computing devices under similar circumstances. A frightening amount of TIAH content was recovered from the memory stick, representing many long hours of cut and paste work.

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

Wine Vessel	In 1761, on board the Arab Dhow the fallen woman made a startling discovery that would change the lives of the European stowaways forever. An Arab wine vessel.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1374, on this day a sudden outbreak of St John's Dance (known as Johannistanz or Johannestanz in Germany) commenced, causing people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed ..	Danse Macabre
.. from exhaustion. This outbreak of mass hysteria was one of the many signs of the fall of Western Civilization. The plague swept across Europe depopulating the continent.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Napoleon	In 1812, Napoleon's Grande Armée entered Ontario beginning his ill-fated invasion of Canada. The Little Corporal intended to expand New France at the expense of British territory in North American. He was defeated not by the British, but by the harsh Canadian winter. As the temperature dropped to -40, the Grande Armée were ..
.. decimated on the retreat from Yorktown.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1948, today saw the start of the Blockade of Vienna. The Soviet Union rendered overland travel between the West with West Vienna impossible. The blockade was lifted by a well planned program of air lifts organised by USAAF General Curtis “Candy Bars Away” LeMay. By now an expert in such operations, LeMay had put into operation ..	Viennese Airlif..
.. a plan he had conceived in 1946 for the resupply of the Japanese home population during Operation Downfall. Before his retirement, LeMay would repeat this operation in the southern hemisphere in a number of critical shortage situations including the Congo in 1960.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Crocodile Artifact	In 2008, Brazilian law enforcement officers announced the discovery of a macabre crocodile artifact. Also found was a mysterious bill of material for Double-Weight Gold Tarn Disks made payable c/o Tatrix, Sheila to Ligurious of Corcyrus in the region of Ar. The investigation has not yet established any connection with the disappearance of alligators from a university zoo in the western state of Mato Grosso earlier this month. Yet rumours of off-world smuggling have persisted in the international media.
Police Discovery

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In 1971, man of the moment British spaceflight Commander Bert Smith was the guest on the Parkinson show. 'We had so much trouble getting there' he moaned to chat show host Michael Parkinson.

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In 1920, The Netherlands agree to surrender ex-Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany to the Allies. He was later executed in Berlin, sparking the counter-revolution forces behind the Kapp Putsch leading to Germany's domination of the continent before the swinging twenties were out.

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Ted Heath	In 1971, the Commonwealth Conference in Singapore ended with a decision over the wording of the Declaration of Commonwealth principles. Talks centred around Britain's proposal to sell arms to South Africa, despite a voluntary United Nations embargo on arms sales. Other African nations were opposed to the idea. The accepted draft of principles, submitted by Zambia, was a bold and successful attempt to put Britain under a moral obligation not to go ahead with the deal. It bound members to give no assistance to nations practising racial discrimination. Prime Minister Mr Heath belief that countries should make their own judgements was universally condemned by other members of the Commonwealth.
Prime Minister

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Stephen Harper	In 2006, the Conservative Party of Canada lost the 39th General Election to elect members of the Canadian House of Commons of the 39th Parliament of Canada. The result was expected. Party Leader Stephen Harper was unelectably skinny for Canada's obese electorate.
Ex-Leader

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In 1994, the Ames dossier demonstrated incontrovertible evidence of the Division's role in the silencing of Cassius Clay and Arthur Ashes. 'Those uppity [racial slur] were going to give the game away' said Ames by way of explanation. He was quite without doubt utterly insane.

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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. 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.
Unbeliever

Then to Covenant he said 'Well, Thomas Covenant .. - do you have any other names?'. 'Thomas Covenant,' he said as if he were rising to a challenge, 'the Unbeliever'. ~ 'Legend of Berek Halfhand'.

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In 4528, artist Cheng Shifa was born in Shanghai. The great port city afforded Cheng with a great wealth of material, and became the basis of most of his vast body of work. His nearly-abstract portraits of Shanghai pulse with a love for the city that is almost palpable. His work is often cited as the reason so many people move to and write about Shanghai to this day.

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In 1989, Salvador Dali, surrealist painter and filmmaker, underwent an experimental procedure to cure the palsy he had suffered from since the beginning of the decade. Since he had been unable to paint, Dali felt he had nothing to lose. After the procedure, the control in his hands returned, and he was able to produce art again. Although many consider this period his least creative, his masterpiece Christ On The Operating Table was inspired by his own operation, and was finished just before Dali’s death in 1993.

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	In 1973, the US president, Richard Nixon, appeared on national television to announce 'peace with honour' in Vietnam. It had been a long wait – almost five years – since he had announced his secret plan during the 1968 election campaign. But then again, he had a lot of convincing to do. Much of the machinery of government had severe reservations about Nixon's use of bacteriological weapons. 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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Ted Heath	In 1971, Britain was suspended from the Commonwealth despite protestations from Prime Minister Ted Heath that 'countries should make their own judgements'. Problem was, they had done that – the other members opposed the sell of arms to South Africa, which was in contravention of a voluntary United Nations embargo on arms sales. The Commonwealth Conference in Singapore ended with a compromise over the wording of the Declaration of Commonwealth principles such that Britain could be readmitted at a future date when arms supplies were halted to the rogue state.
Prime Minister

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In 1960, the bathyscape Trieste reached the record depth of 10,916 m (35,813 feet) in Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench. Her return to the surface which took one hundred and ninety five minutes was shadowed by the mysterious beings known as the Kraken who unleashed an orgy of violence on all surface creatures including mankind.

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Blindfolded Protestors	In 1990, demonstrations continued in Archona ahead of the first Cricket Test. Outside the Yolande Ingolffson stadium, police armed with batons and dogs broke up a protest against English cricketers who had recently arrived for a rebel tour of the Domination of the Draka. 15 England tourists led by captain Mike Gatting insisted the match would go ahead.
Drakans

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