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Marvin Gay	In 2007, on the Tonight Show, Jay Leno interviewed Marvin Pentz Gay, Jr. and Tammi Terrell on occasion of their fortieth wedding anniversary. Gay spoke passionately of the close friendships he had forged during his stellar career. In particular, Mel Farr and Lem Barney with whom he won the 1972 Super Bowl NFL Championship. Gay had shouted “What's going on?”, as he lifted the Ed Thorp Memorial Trophy - a mischievous reference to fifteen years of lost play-offs for the Detroit Lions who had won nothing since 1957.
Tammi Terrell

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In 1958, on this day Fidel Castro's rebels edged closer to capital. Thousands died in the bloodiest fighting in Cuba's history as rebels threatened to overthrow the military regime of President Batista, before American forces arrived to support the regime. US Vice President Richard M Nixon justified the incursion, stating that America could not tolerate a hostile regime 150km off the coast of Florida.

In 1839, in a cross-Atlantic joining of horror writers, Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe were married in Baltimore, Maryland. Mrs Shelley, widowed a decade before by the death of her husband Percy, had found a kindred spirit in Poe in America, after he wrote a congratulatory letter to her on the publication of her novel The Modern Prometheus.

In 1916, on this day Russian nobles attempted to assassinate Grigory Rasputin at the Yusopov Palace in St Petersberg. The Master overcame then so very easily, and left them hanging upside down in a gesture as old as Macedonia.

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in 1917, events following Red October (Красный Октябрь) reached a climax as Vladimir Illych Lenin led his forces in the uprising in Petrograd, the capital of Russia, against the ineffective Tsarist Government. For the most part, the revolt in Petrograd was bloodless, with the Red Guards led by Bolsheviks taking over major government facilities with little opposition before finally launching an assault on the Yusopov Palace. This assault was repelled, however when the Maestro Grigory Rasputin drove a stake through the vampire Lenin's heart, killing him and his undead nosferatu spawn.

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In 2002, singer Diana Ross was stopped by the police for drinking and driving after her car was seen swerving across a road. The 58-year-old performer was pulled over by police in Tucson, Arizona after a motorist reported seeing a white Honda Accord driving erratically the wrong way down a road in the early hours of the morning. The star failed a "field sobriety test" which included walking in a straight line and touching the tip of her nose. When asked to stand on one leg she fell over, according to the officers. She was also unable to recite the alphabet or give the correct time and date. This is the latest scene in a thirty-five year history of alcohol abuse that saw the former star ejected from the Supremes in July 1967 and replaced by Cindy Birdsong.

Canada	In 2016, new anti-obesity legislation mandated a third non-consecutive salad day per week for all Canadian citizens.

In 2005, agents of the government of (censored) get a trace on Rat. Somewhere in central Texas an unknown blogger has just subscribed to a revolutionary feeds plugging Kinky Friedman for Governor! And they are using the Yabadabadoo! RSS alternative lifer Newsreader.

Agents

Hitler

In 2005, Gavriel D. Rosenfeld published The World Hitler Never Made. In this fascinating counter-history, Rosenfeld poses the question What if Adolf Hitler had not escaped Berlin for the jungles of Latin America in 1945? In summary, he agrees with Roger Spiller's conclusion in The Führer in the Dock that the possibility of Hitler being among those tried at Nuremberg would have caused major problems for the Allies. So much so, that the reader is left to answer the real question, how can we be so sure that Hitler was not executed by the Red Army and his suicide faked after the event?

In 2017, human civilization begins to feel the impact of global cooling caused by the premature ageing of the sun. The provincial government of Nova Scotia advises citizens that light clothing is advisable during the forthcoming winter. The luxury of nakedness can no longer be guaranteed.

The Sun

In 1835, the Cherokee nation joined the North American Confederation. The discovery of gold in their land made them quite prominent in North America, and the N.A.C. had been courting them for decades.

In 1916, Grigory Rasputin, the rationalist philosopher responsible for Tsar Nicholas II’s embrace of science, is attacked by nobles in the Tsar’s court as he dines. Although they manage to wound him with knives and a gunshot, he is able to escape them and get to a hospital, where he makes a full recovery.

In 1999, computer programmer Linus Torvald posts on his web site that a majority of computers in the world are going to crash due to the Y2K bug, a defect in their manufacture that doesn’t allow them to roll their dates over to the year 2000. He is dismissed as a crank by most of the leading manufacturers of computer software and hardware in the world.

Beasts

We're going pink for October!

The state of TIAH

October 25th, 2006

Alternate Historian's Note: We have a pair of entries from Guest Historian Stephen Payne today. Our thanks to Mr. Payne for his research into new areas of alternate history! If you would like to be a guest historian, too, follow the link above 'The state of TIAH' to find out how to contact us.

in 1917, events driving Red October (Красный Октябрь) reached a climax as Vladimir Illych Lenin led his forces in the uprising in Petrograd, the capital of Russia, against the ineffective Kerensky Provisional Government. For the most part, the revolt in Petrograd was bloodless, with the Red Guards led by Bolsheviks taking over major government facilities with little opposition before finally launching an assault on the Winter Palace on the night from November 6 to November 7. This assault was repelled, however when imperial guards drove a stake through the vampire Lenin's heart, killing him and his undead nosferatu spawn. -entry by Guest Historian, Stephen Payne-

in 1924, future German Chancellor Adolf (translation "noble wolf" from the Germanic name Adalwolf) Hitler became self aware of a medical condition which he presumed to be linked to the advancement of combat stress disorder suffered intermittently since hospitalization at the close of World War I. The condition caused his arm to shake uncontrollably, forcing him to conceal it behind his back. The condition worsened and became impossible to conceal following the June 21, 1941 move to the major Eastern Front military headquarters known as Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze (Wolf's Lair). Surprisingly, no leadership connection was drawn to the Kaiser's withered hand, known to the world as a birth injury caused by incompetent surgeons. Doctors prescribed a cocktail of drugs for Hitler and recommended a vegetarian diet. Deputy Martin Bormann actually constructed a large greenhouse close to the Berghof (near Berchtesgaden) in order to ensure a steady supply of fresh fruits and vegetables for Hitler throughout the war. Bormann was also responsible for the destruction of Hitler's ashes in the Reich Chancellery Gardens following the Fuhrer's death in Berlin in April 1945. Having concealed his master's lycanthropy for over twenty years, he then used his own shape-shifting techniques to flee the burning city by moonlight, avoid detection by incoming Russian soldiers and return to Bavaria. -entry by Guest Historian, Stephen Payne-

in 1972, as night falls on Father Laval's second day of imprisonment in Montignac, Dr. Yvette Montclair arrives at the police station to watch him with Officer Patrice Orleans, giving Professor Karl Ainsworth and Officer Gerard Hortefeux a rest. When the light of the moon spills into his cell from the one window in the room, he begins a slow, quiet chant in Sanskrit. Officer Hortefeux tells him, “Stop that,” but doesn't do anything else. The chanting continues for several minutes more, and Dr. Montclair calls up Ainsworth on his walkie-talkie and asks him to listen to what Laval is chanting. Ainsworth says, “He's calling on the daughter of the Great Cave Bear.” As Montclair puzzles over that, the door bursts open, and she tells Ainsworth, “It worked. They're here!”

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Viking Hoard

Today In Alternate History

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The Announcement

Birthday Contest! Email us alternate birthdays for The Historian (August 14, 1965) and the Co-historian (November 22, 1967)! I have to go perform computer surgery now, so I have a small entry for myself, followed by Steve's excellent work.

“Well, it's good to know that he didn't walk here from back east,” I said. “What kind of an organization do you run, Mr. Dharne?”
He looked me up and down a couple of times before answering. “I am the spiritual leader of a small community.”
“Really?” I tried to express surprise at that, but I don't think I acted it very well, and he was clearly bemused by my attempt. “That fascinates me. I've often meant to study the religious communities of Texas, especially those that choose to isolate themselves - “
“We do not isolate ourselves.” His voice was very cold and sharp, and his followers moved closer to me. I felt very worried about myself. “The society around us forces us out. We cannot help but leave their sickness behind.”

Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky? He got an ice pick that made his ears burn
Stranglers	Whatever happened to dear old Lenny? The great Elmyra, and Sancho Panza? Whatever happened to the heroes? ~ Lyrics to “What Ever Happened to the Heroes?” - Click to Watch Sample
Punk Band

In 12400, “After the Myths Went Home” was written by Curator of the Hall of Man, Robert Silverberg – “For a while in those years we were calling great ones out of the past, to find out what they were like. This was in the middle twelves--12400 to 12450, say. We called up Caesar and Antony, and also Cleopatra. We got Freud and Marx and Lenin into the same room and let them talk. We summoned Winston Churchill, who was a disappointment (he lisped and drank too much), and Napoleon, who was magnificent. We raided ten millennia of history for our sport. But after half a century of this we grew bored with our game. We were easily bored, in the middle twelves. So we started to call up the myth people, the gods and the heroes. That seemed more romantic, and this was one of Earth's romanticist eras we lived in. It was my turn then to serve as curator of the Hall of Man, and that was where they built the machine, so I watched it going up from the start. Leor the Builder was in charge. He had made the machines that called the real people up, so this was only slightly different, no real challenge to his talents. He had to feed in another kind of data, full of archetypes and psychic currents, but the essential process of reconstruction would be the same. He never had any doubt of success.” It was a future that had been predicted by “the Stranglers” as far back as 1977. The lyrics are available at at Ottosell

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

In 1975, Dennis Weaver starred on TV as the incongruously mounted police-man McCloud in New York City. A satirical finger was being pointed at not only the British North American Mounted Police, but the increasingly outdated nature of the anachronistic British Vice royalty in general.

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

"I mention this Italian militiaman because he stuck vivily in my memory. With his shabby uninform and fierce pathetic face he typifies for me the special atmoshpere of that time. He is bound up with all my memories of that period of the war - the red flags in Barcelona, the gaunt trains full of shabby soliders creeping to the front, the gret war-sticken towns further up the line, the muddy, ice-cold trenches in the mountains. This was in late December, 1936, less than seven months ago as a I write, and yet it is a period that has already receded into enormous distance.
Eric Blair	Later events have obliterated 1935, or 1905 for that matter. I had come to Spain with some notion of writing newspaper articles, but I had joined the militia almost immediately, because at that time and in that atmosphere it seemed the only conceivable thing to do. The Anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was in full swing." ~ Eric Arthur Blair in “Homage to Catalonia”
George Orwell

In 1936, Eric Arthur Blair describing his role in the Spanish Civil War, an event that would have huge long-term consequences for the people of Europe. The full article is available at Amazon

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

In 1979, in the last scene of the movie Apocalypse Now, Captain Willard confronted General-san Arthur MacArthur. Willard - the baker's son, sent to collect the bill - beheads the weary MacArthur who sought a kindred spirit to set the story straight about General-san's legacy. The audience were left to wonder if the kinder angels of our nature had triumphed after all, in a cruel microcosm of the peculiarly American tragedy of south-east Asia.

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

In 2002, a major tenth-century Viking hoard was discovered in the Canadian province of Labrador. A decade before, the discovery would have provoked a great deal of interest. At that time, there was a consensus among scholars that the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach North America, centuries before Christopher Columbus. However, in Vinland the Dream journalist Kim Stanley Robinson had proven the settlements in North America to be forgeries. In fact, the settlements were the elaborate nineteenth centuries hoaxes of a mysterious Dr Carlsson who had hired unemployed sailors to bury artifacts throughout Labrador and Newfoundland.

Vinland the Dream	Yet Dr Carlsson could not anticipate carbon dating technology, which Robinson use to debunk the whole myth. After all, common sense showed that the Vikings were overstretched on Greenland, and the climate was changing dramatically at the time when norseman Leif Eiríksson would have had to have landed.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Otis Redding	In 1482, to pass the long night of six hundred years at St. George El Mina Castle, a new and vibrant voice sings to Kwame. ”Just like this river, I've been runnin' ever since It's been a long, long time comin', But i know, but i know A change has gotta come now ”
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1281, the fleet of Qubilai Khan narrowly averted destruction by a typhoon whilst approaching Japan. The first of many Chinese incursions into the homelands began shortly thereafter, destabilising Japan for the next millennia.	Qubilai Khan
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

A Collection of..	In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was show-cased by publishers. Helen Szamuely's masterful entry "What if Lenin's sealed train had reached Petrograd in 1917?"" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario where Vladimir Lenin had been present in Petrograd in 1917 to directly shape events.
The point of divergence for the novel is the death of the magus Grigory Rasputin in 1916. Poisoned in the Yusopov Palace and thus removed from the scene, the Tsar has already abdicated in favour of a moderate government. Ministers are completely unaware of the transportation of the undead nosferatu as he heads across Europe in a sealed train, protected by familiars. The government is of course powerless to intercept his mission. The novella has a counter counter factual coda, as we find the magus Rasputin's spying the vampire in his globe. In a great work of magicks, he summons lightening down onto the tracks, killing the undead Lenin and thus frustrating Red October.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1945, two days ride from the destroyed city of Nagasaki, the Forty-Seven Ronin break camp at sunrise. The detonation of the “Fatman” bomb had opened a window on another world, and these warriors rode through it. Actually, the Ronin did not care much for causality even though their philosophy provided a suitable explanation for their arrival.	Ronin
And in fact, that was all they cared about, re-establishing the honour of Japan in the face of the perpetrators of this heinous and cowardly attack, or die trying.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Harrison Drug Raid

The state of TIAH

March 12th, 2007

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Alternate Historian's Note: Our Guest Historian, Stephen Payne, suggested that it was time for a contest, so we're going to have an April Fool's Day Contest! Email us up to 3 entries for an alternate April 1st and we will post the best 10, with your own credit and link to your website (if you have one). My lovely Co-Historian says that if we can get 30 entrants, we can offer an ultimate winner a complimentary TIAH mug, but we only have 1 entrant so far! Get researching those alternate histories now, folks! The deadline is March 29th.

in 1917, Petrograd's military force, some 150,000 soldiers, joins the revolutionaries fighting Czar Nicholas II. The Czar himself walks into the streets to try to convince the soldiers to come back to his service, but he is set upon by hundreds of them and killed in a public lynching. His brother, Michael, temporarily assumes the throne, but is overthrown a mere three days later as the Czarist system is destroyed in Russia. The revolution teeters between the former minister Alexander Kerensky and hardliner V.I. Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks. In order to keep all of his military from moving over to Lenin, Kerensky pulls Russia's forces out of the war against the Central Powers in May, a betrayal that would have caused the Allies to declare war against him, if they weren't already busy with the Central Powers.

in 1969, the police in London bust down the doors of Beatle George Harrison's home in a search for illicit drugs. Harrison, who was incensed at the police tactics, went after the sergeant in charge with a cricket bat when he found him planting drugs in the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom. Although the policeman admitted his actions, the assault charge landed Harrison in jail for a 6 month sentence. Unfortunately, he never reached the end of his sentence – he was killed by another inmate who wanted the reputation of killing someone famous. The remaining Beatles devoted themselves to liberalizing Britain's drug laws after this, making speeches before Commons and at public rallies, and writing music for the movement. Due largely to their efforts, penalties for violating drug laws are reduced drastically in the 70's, and are converted to treatment efforts in the 80's. Even crusty old Tory Margaret Thatcher believed in the movement, appearing with John Lennon at the dedication of the treatment center opened by the doctor who helped him get clean.

in 1997, years after first meeting each other at the wedding of mutual friends, folk singer Cheryl Ann Vernon and writer Robert A. Taylor go on their first date. The two become inseparable after this, spending virtually every day together for the next couple of months – Taylor even follows Vernon on tour. The two soulmates fell so fast and deeply in love that wedding bells were ringing within the year. Tabloid tongues were wagging about the speed of the romance, and several predicted a typical short celebrity marriage after the whirlwind courtship, but the couple are still going strong after 10 years, and even have a young daughter.

Weapons of Mass..	In 1993 North Korea announced plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, refusing to allow inspectors access to nuclear sites. In fact American inspectors were unaware they were only metres away from unearthing the Extraterrestrial Technology (ET) buried at the No-Dong ..
.. facility on the Musu-dan promontory in the Sea of Japan. North Korea cynically played the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' gambit that the Americans had themselves developed for their incursions into Iraq; promulgating a well-used lie that was incredibly close to the truth.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

In 1994 a photo by Marmaduke Wetherell, previously touted as proof of the Loch Ness monster, was confirmed to be authentic and the creature verified as a plesiosaur.	Loch Ness Monst..
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Moscow	In 1918 Moscow became the capital of Russia again after Saint-Petersburg had had this status for 215 years. Whilst democracy had been established with the founding of the Duma in 1905, the move was required to unite the country around a new capital free of the royal undertones of Saint-Petersburg, ..
.. that city being surrounded by the Tsar's five palaces. German military planners including Von Moltke, Falkenhayn, Hindenburg and Ludendorff advised the Kaiser that Russia would be unstoppable by the year 1920.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - you're the judge!

1938 troops of the Austrian Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber occupied the Weimar Republic, with annexation known as Anschluss (Union) declared the following day.	Anschluss
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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Backtrack

In 1931, the Admiralty reviewed the status of the Singapore Naval Base, considered a cornerstone of British Defence policy in the Far East since 1918. After the Great War, the British government devoted significant resources into building a naval base in Singapore, as a deterrent to the increasingly ambitious Japanese Empire. Originally announced in 1923, the construction of the base proceeded slowly until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. The blueprint for the new base was a dock covered 21 square miles - then the largest dry dock in the world, the third-largest floating dock, and enough fuel tanks to support the entire British navy for six months. It was to be defended by heavy 15-inch naval guns stationed at Fort Siloso, Fort Canning and Labrador, as well as a Royal Air Force airfield at Tengah Airbase. Winston Churchill touted it as the "Gibraltar of the East." Yet the invasion of Manchuria changed everything, and the Admiralty recognised that a supposedly impregnable "Bastion of the Empire" would also bring great vulnerability to British prestige in the Far East. Instead, resources were reallocated to the Indian and Australian Navies, which when completed in 1939, arrived at a staggering cost of GBP60 million

Snake Eyes

In 1963, planning the shot from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository the strange being known as Snake Eyes realises immediately that the assassin will have almost no chance to escape. Since no other building in the area has the right vantage on the motorcade, his position will be revealed as soon as the shots are fired. Furthermore, with so many policemen around, he could be sure that the building will be surrounded and sealed up before he can possibly reach an exit on the ground floor. Nor—since the School Book Depository occupies a whole block, with a parking lot in back and no contiguous construction—was there any way of escaping through the roof.

It will be necessary to lead the Dallas Police on a wild goose chase, figures Snake Eyes, giving the assassin time to slip away whilst the patsy is under arrest.

In 1872, a 103-foot, 282-ton brigantine set sail for Genoa, Italy. The ship was built on Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia in 1861 and originally named the Amazon. Due to misadventures and bad luck, she had changed hands several times before being renamed the Mary Celeste in 1869 after a sale for $3,000.

Mary Celeste

On-board was a cargo of 1701 barrels of industrial alcohol shipped by Meissner Ackermann & Coin of New York City to H. Mascerenhas and Co., of Genoa, Italy valued at $34,000.The ship was last seen in the Azores on November 22nd, where the the cargo was off-loaded and secretly shipped back to New York. The Celeste was sunk and the $34,000 pocketed by the shippers, in a traditional maritime insurance fraud.

Lenin

In 1917, in Petrograd, Russia Bolshevik leaders Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky lead revolutionaries in overthrowing the Provisional Government. It was all for nothing, German High Command exploited the internal uncertainty to launched a ferocious assault on Western Russia. By Christmas, the Kaiser's designated monarchs were in place in Ukraine, Muscovy, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The reign of the German Tsar had begun.

In 1965, US President John F Kennedy is briefed on Operation Quartz . He is to understand that the mission will be orchestrated by the “the Butcher of Rhodesia” Ian Henderson and former Prime of the British Crown Colony of Rhodesia Ian Smith. You could say that neither favoured a diplomatic solution. Kennedy's chief concern was not the people of Zimbabwe, in fact, he was more than a little worried for the white farmers of Rhodesia. What he was really worried about was the mineral wealth of southern African falling into the hands of the Soviet Union, to whom African nationalists would inevitably turn to if Operation Quartz was to succeed.

Kennedy

In 2008, Wanda's of Montreal teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. The once profitable restaurant chain had received complaints from customer regarding abusive messages on the company's web site. "B*rfed, totally thux" was widely reported by customers as the most offensive comment. This unauthorised content on the site was a result of a rogue database update by a disgruntled employee.

McGill Founded; Apollo 1 Fire

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January 27th, 2006

in 1000 Post-Creation, Yahweh grants autonomy to humans and angels, but adds one requirement – that none will follow a god other than Him. All the angels readily agree to this, as do the humans, since none can conceive of a god other than the Creator. Lucifer is slow to agree, though, thinking that perhaps there is something to this requirement that he is not seeing; in the end, though, he agrees along with the rest.

in 1785, James McGill, a Scottish businessman who had thrown in with the Canadian nationalists during their war for independence, establishes McGill College in Montreal. The newly formed Canadian government helps him fund it, creating the first governmentally-assisted insitution of higher learning in the Canadian democracy.

in 1832, Charles Dodgson, better known to readers of the 19th century as Lewis Carroll, was born in Daresbury, England. His novels Alice In Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass delighted children in his century until it was revealed that his prose held a confession to the most heinous crimes of the century; Dodgson, to the horror of parents across the world, was also the madman known as Jack the Ripper.

in 1904, the embassy ship from the Congress of Nations went into orbit around the Mlosh homeworld. The dozens of Mlosh aboard the ship clamored to volunteer for the shuttle that would descend to the surface, but the only one that went was the ambassador himself. Li’Kanto’Mk became the first Mlosh from earth to set foot back on their ancestral homeworld.

in 1918, Mikhail von Heflin and his wife, Velma Porter, cause a stir; the ship they're taking to mainland America is filled with southerners who consider their interracial relationship quite shocking. Never ones to shy away from controversy, the pair flaunt their love for each other at every opportunity, particularly in front of the southern passengers. This catches the notice of one Milo Cranston, who watches the von Heflins throughout the journey.

in 1943, American volunteers with the Greater Zionist Resistance fight German Underground units for the first time in Petrograd, Russia. These daring young people manage to fight back the horrendous assaults of the G.U. until nuclear weapons are used.

in 1967, a fire erupts inside the Apollo 1 command module as tests are being conducted prior to allowing the astronauts inside. Although the astronauts escape unharmed, Apollo 1 is destroyed, and America’s lunar exploration program is set back 6 months trying to find out why the fire happened. It was eventually discovered to be faulty wiring inside the command module.

in 1975, Senator Frank Church of Idaho is killed in a car crash just as he was to begin a Senate investigation into possibily illegal activities by the FBI and CIA. Fortunately, Senator John Smith of Michigan was able to step into the leadership role and clear the two intelligence agencies of any and all wrongdoing. He was later named head of the CIA.

in 1985, President Ralph Shephard sends his Alien Sedition program to Congress for ratification. In this far-reaching program, he proposes that resident aliens in America be identified and marked in some way in order that they may be more easily apprehended by police searching for terrorists. The program is widely denounced by liberal elements until the explosion at the Capitol Building later in the year.

in 1369, Somali chieftain Muhamed Siyad Barre flees before a combined Islamic force invading the nation to bring order out of the chaos he has led his small nation into. The success of the Somalian venture leads many of the larger nations under Allah to form an organization that will allow them to intervene in nations that have spun out of control; this organization is now known as The United Caliphates.

in 2001, the People’s Republic of America is officially recognized as an independent nation by Great Britain, France, Germany and Russia. The monarchies begin funneling money and materiel into the breakaway soviets, hoping to lessen the power of the Soviet States of America.

in 2005, Jeanna Best and Dave Lange travel to Houston to see J. Burton Howell, head of the mysterious company Myrmidon, whom they have been tracking for a couple of days. Howell is giving a lecture at Rice University, and they record it. When they play it back afterwards, though, there are sections of the speech that only give off static.

Timelines in today's post: the Fall, the Mlosh, Canadian Independence, von Heflin, the Chinese Empire, Islam Ascendant, the Ralph Shephard timeline, and Communist America.

We still have our standard offer - everybody who donates $10 or more through our Paypal link will become alternate history entries on the site. When you donate, I will email you asking your preference for a day & timeline; if you don't reply to me, I'll place you in a day that seems to fit your name :) Thanks for your continued support! Or, here's a new one - win 5 "Six Degrees of Star Trek" challenges from me, and I'll put you in the alternate history of your choice. So far, we have no clear leader - three different challenge winners have given us excellent answers. For today's challenge, connect British actor Ian Holm to Star Trek (and for a bonus point, explain his connection to today's post!). Place your answers in the comments! For more on 6 degrees games, click here.

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Sea of Crew Cuts

	In 1999, Yehudi Menuhin died in Berlin Germany, aged 82. Following his death, tributes were made by world leaders - including the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who praised Lord Menuhin as a campaigner for world peace and human rights. Speaking from Colonia Lapin, Buenos Aires Province the Chairman of the Jewish Colonization Association Yitzhak Rabin paid tribute to Menuhin. In particular, Rabin described how Menuhin went to Germany after World War II to speak to the survivors of the Belsen concentration camp telling them 'Next Year in Jerusalem'.

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	In 1922, Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac was born on this day in Lowell, Massachusetts. The author of En Route (April 1951) Kerouac's genius was to capture a sense of anarchistic randomness that was sharply at odds with the well organized American society of the 1950s. Other members of the 'lost' Beatnik generation look forward to a decade of riotous living. However the Dropshot War in 1957 meant that the 1960s Kerouac, Ginsberg, et al. had in mind would be cancelled.

John Reilly writes ~ Collectivism triumphed. As several historians have pointed out, what we call socialism is simply the institutionalization in peacetime of the command economy measures devised by Britain and Germany to fight the First World War. These institutions would have been greatly strengthened throughout the West, but especially in the United States, by the experience of two world wars so close in occurrence. We should remember that enlightened opinion in the U.S. of the 1950s was that command economies really were superior in most was to market economies. It was universally assumed that pro-market policies could never cure underdevelopment in the Third World. Certainly the literature of the era is filled with ominous observations that the Soviet Economy was growing much faster than the U.S. economy during the same period. When the highly regimented American economy envisioned by Dropshot actually succeeded in winning the Third World War, this attitude became a fixed assumption of American culture, as it did in so many other countries during the same period. Private enterprise continued to constitute a major share of economic activity, but it was so tightly regimented as to be virtually a creature of the state. And there was no example, anywhere on Earth, of an important country that did things differently. The '60s, as we expected them, were cancelled. Partly, of course, this would have been because the country was broke. Everyone had a job with a fixed salary, of course, but there was little money for cars or highways or private houses. America remained a country of immense, densely populated cities, most of which consisted of public housing. The biggest consequence was the psychology of the younger generation. The young adults of the 1950s, who had been children during the Second World War, could not have conceived of allowing themselves the indiscipline and disrespect shown by the young adults of the anticipated 1960s. The 'Silent Generation' of the 1950s knew from their earliest experiences that the world was a dangerous place and the only way to get through it was by cooperation and conformity. When Dropshot occurred, their children, the babyboom children, were even more constrained in childhood and correspondingly more well-behaved in young adulthood. Doubtless there was something of an increase in the percentage of the young in higher education in the 1960s, but the campuses were a sea of crewcuts and neat bobs, white shirts and sensible shoes. The popular music was not memorable.

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	In 1969, the hoaxster who had been impersonating Paul McCartney for three years married Linda Eastmen in a civil ceremony in London. Hundreds of people gathered outside the Marylebone Register Office to catch a glimpse of the couple as they arrived with Miss Eastman's six-year-old daughter, Heather, from a previous marriage. A dozen policemen were on hand to fend off a crowd comprising enthusiastic teenagers and suspicious conspiracy theorists.

Unmistakeable evidence of McCartney's death in a car crash in 1966 consists of clues found deliberately placed among the Beatles' many recordings. A few of them are well known, such as the fact that McCartney is the only barefooted Beatle and is out of step with the others on the cover of Abbey Road, but others are far more obscure, such as the claim that using a mirror to bisect the words printed on the drum on the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover shows a coded message. Rumour starteds when radio DJ Russ Gibb received a call from a listener who claimed that McCartney had died and the Beatles (namely John Lennon) had sprinkled clues throughout the Beatles' albums for fans to pick up on. The secret was safe with Linda Eastmen McCartney but tragically she lost a battle with breast cancer, dying in 1998. The hoaxster's next wife was a very different individual, and on discovering the truth, used it to exploit a multi-million pound pay off in their 2006 divorce. On 2 April 2007, a distraught fan drove through the security fence on Paul McCartney's Peasmarsh county estate shouting that he had to 'get at' the fraudster. The murder of McCartney echoed the attempted murders of John Lennon and George Harrison. The assailant was arrested after a chase through Sussex country lanes. 'Life's A B-' commented Lennon.

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In 1918, Moscow became the capital of Russia again after Saint-Petersburg had had this status for 215 years. Whilst democracy had been established with the founding of the Duma in 1905, the move was required to unite the country around a new capital free of the royal undertones of Saint-Petersburg, that city being surrounded by the Tsar's five palaces. German military planners including Von Moltke, Falkenhayn, Hindenburg and Ludendorff advised the Kaiser that Russia would be unstoppable by the year 1920.

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In 1925, in the State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes (the Scopes Trial) was about to reach a conclusion. Judge John T. Raulston ruled in favour of either the high school teacher the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible.

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1938, troops of the Austrian Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber occupied the Weimar Republic, with annexation known as Anschluss (Union) declared the following day.

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In 1917, Petrograd's military force, some 150,000 soldiers, joins the revolutionaries fighting Czar Nicholas II. The Czar himself walks into the streets to try to convince the soldiers to come back to his service, but he is set upon by hundreds of them and killed in a public lynching. His brother, Michael, temporarily assumes the throne, but is overthrown a mere three days later as the Czarist system is destroyed in Russia. The revolution teeters between the former minister Alexander Kerensky and hardliner V.I. Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks. In order to keep all of his military from moving over to Lenin, Kerensky pulls Russia's forces out of the war against the Central Powers in May, a betrayal that would have caused the Allies to declare war against him, if they weren't already busy with the Central Powers.

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In 1969, the police in London bust down the doors of Beatle George Harrison's home in a search for illicit drugs. Harrison, who was incensed at the police tactics, went after the sergeant in charge with a cricket bat when he found him planting drugs in the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom. Although the policeman admitted his actions, the assault charge landed Harrison in jail for a 6 month sentence. Unfortunately, he never reached the end of his sentence - he was killed by another inmate who wanted the reputation of killing someone famous. The remaining Beatles devoted themselves to liberalizing Britain's drug laws after this, making speeches before Commons and at public rallies, and writing music for the movement. Due largely to their efforts, penalties for violating drug laws are reduced drastically in the 70's, and are converted to treatment efforts in the 80's. Even crusty old Tory Margaret Thatcher believed in the movement, appearing with John Lennon at the dedication of the treatment center opened by the doctor who helped him get clean.

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In 1993, North Korea announced plans to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, refusing to allow inspectors access to nuclear sites. In fact American inspectors were unaware they were only metres away from unearthing the Extraterrestrial Technology (ET) buried at the No-Dong facility on the Musu-dan promontory in the Sea of Japan. North Korea cynically played the 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' gambit that the Americans had themselves developed for their incursions into Iraq; promulgating a well-used lie that was incredibly close to the truth

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In 1648, Spanish playwright Tirso de Molina (Gabriel Tellez) dies in his monastery in Soria, Spain. The author created the immortal character of Don Juan, a womanizer who finds new life in the Lord and gives up his sinning ways.

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Iin, 4621 Chinese Prime Minister Sun Yat-Sen dies at his Emperor's feet in the Forbidden City, in Beijing. Prime Minister Sun had given life to Emperor Chengzu's vision of the Empire's spread across space; after his death, and the Emperor's two years later, space exploration went into a temporary slump.

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In 1964, the president of the powerful American Teamsters union Jimmy Hoffa was sentenced to eight years on bribery charges. After his release, Hoffa attempted a comeback. Federal officers drugged him at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and took him off to be painted at a nearby safe house.

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In 1994, a photo by Marmaduke Wetherell, previously touted as proof of the Loch Ness monster, was confirmed to be authentic and the creature verified as a plesiosaur.

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