Seeds

In 2013, the City of Mississauga reported a dramatic fall in vehicular mansalughter. Put simply, drivers were notorious for ignoring white lights permitting pedestrians to cross. Corners were taken very quickly after light changes in order to beat oncoming traffic. Also by “beating the lights” drivers chose not to decelerate if they did not see pedestrians actually crossing, even if they were approaching the kerbside. Both of these scenarios had caused a large number of accidents for immigrants who thought that the white light might it was safe for pedestrians to cross. The rising population of immigrations caused the Department of Transport to take action, and they turned to telegram technology as a draconian measure. Images of children were picted just after light changes. This huge rise in virtual deaths led to widespread traffic calming. And not a few fender benders, which insurance companies recovered from increased premiums.

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In 1905, the Japanese attack on Port Arthur is frustrated by the arrival of Russian reinforcements. At one stage it looked as if the Tsar would be humiliated by defeat, but after Port Arthur, the Russo-Japanese war drifted into a stalemate.

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In 1979, punk rocker Sid Vicious goes on trial for the murder of his girlfriend/manager, Nancy Spungen. Vicious attempts suicide several times during the trial process, until he is finally placed into custody and put under a suicide watch. He is found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. He was paroled in 2002, a shell of his former self.

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In 1727, James Wolfe was born, a British general remembered mainly for his role in establishing British rule in Canada. By 1942, British rule only existed in Canada, with the British Government in Exile, headed by Lord Halifax unexpected guests of the Governor General at his residence in Rideau Hall, Ottawa.

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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

She came out of the store just in time to see her young son playing on the sidewalk directly in the path of the gray, gaunt man who strode down the center of the walk like a mechanical derelict. For an instant, her heart quailed. Then she jumped forward, gripped her son by the arm, snatched him out of harm's way. The man went by without turning his head. As his back moved away from her, she hissed at it, "Go away! Get out of here! You ought to be ashamed!" Thomas Covenant's stride went on, as unfaltering as clockwork that had been wound to the hilt for just this purpose. But to himself he responded, Ashamed? Ashamed? His face contorted in a wild grimace. Beware! Outcase unclean! ~“Golden Boy”

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In 1727, James Wolfe was born on this day in Westerham, Kent, England, the eldest son of Colonel Edward Wolfe and the former Henrietta Thompson. Around 1738, the family moved to Greenwich, in London.

From his earliest years Wolfe was destined for a military career, entering his father's marine regiment at the age of 13. No other British Officer in North America was to achieve Wolfe's level of disreputation, following his decision on September 13th to destroy the city of Quebec after the winter threatened to overtake the besieging British red coats.

In Wolfe's own condemnatory words, he said “I propose to set the town on fire with shells, to destroy the harvest, houses and cattle, both above and below, to send off as many Canadians as possible to Europe and to leave famine and desolation behind me; but we must teach these scoundrels to make war in a more gentleman like manner."

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In 870, the infidel rulers Ferdinand and Isabella fall to the righteous forces of Caliph Boabdil. Allah saw fit to give the Moors control of Espagne, and from there, a foothold on the rest of Europe, so that His word might reach the poor northerners who had not heard Its beauty.

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In 1903, after appointing a black postmistress to the post office in Indianola, Mississippi, President Roosevelt sent reinforcements along with her to ensure that she would be able to do her job. Roosevelt’s commitment to the civil rights of the African-American population of America gave him a hitherto unmeasured degree of support in the south. His Civil Rights Act of 1904, ensuring the voting rights of blacks across America, is credited with landing him his unprecedented 3rd term of office in the election of 1908.

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In 1960, Senator Joe Kennedy, Jr. threw his hat in the ring for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Kennedy’s inspiring tale of recovery from injuries suffered in a horrific plane crash during World War II made him a natural choice, and he won the nomination handily. He had a little more difficulty defeating Vice President Nixon in the general election, but squeaked by with a margin of half a million votes.

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In 1920, Исаак Озимов was born on this day in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR. Isaac Asimov as he is more commonly known in the West is generally considered by many as the father of Psychohistory. During the 1940s, Asimov's research determined that the House of Romanov was in terminal decline. Without intervention, the Tsarist Empire would soon fall giving way to a barbaric interregnum of one hundred years before a Second Empire would arise. He concluded that it was too late to prevent the fall of the House of the Romanov. Secretly, Asimov put in place the Asimov Plan to reduce this interregnum to as little as a decade, by setting up Foundations within continental Russia.

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StrawBerry	In early 1999, Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM) released the first StrawBerry, using the same hardware as the Inter@ctive pager 950, and running on the Mobitex network. Today the device supports push e-mail, mobile telephone, text messaging, internet faxing, web browsing and other wireless information services. RIM settled on the name "StrawBerry" only after weeks of work by Lexicon Branding Inc., the Sausalito, California-based firm that named Intel Corp.'s Pentium microprocessor and Apple's PowerBook. One of the naming experts at Lexicon thought the miniature buttons on RIM's product looked "like the tiny seeds in a strawberry," Lexicon founder David Placek says. "A linguist at the firm thought straw was too slow sounding. Someone else suggested blackberry. RIM went for strawberry."
Revolution

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In 1958, the following notice was published ~ with due respect to sworn testimony of God-fearing citizens, -
Mr Paul Adolph Volcker is found guilty as charged of usury,-
by magistrates of this good parish of Cape May, New Jersey, -
persuant to Holy Scripture, Mark 8:36 refers, -
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?,-
on this day of our Lord, 1958. Not the potter, but the potter's clay. Amen.

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Boost

Late post from 30th January ~

Alfred Hugenberg	In 1933, President Hindenburg of the Weimar Republic appointed Alfred P. Hugenberg of the German Nationalist Party as Chancellor. With Wehrmacht troops still in effective control of the country under the emergency decrees of the previous April, the President expects the industrialist-politician to serve essentially as a front man for the military, an arrangement the increasingly senile Hindenburg finds appealing.
Chancellor

He is doomed to disappointment. He has underestimated Hugenberg, who has spent the time since the April crisis cementing his ties to important military officers and his peers in the business community, while maneuvering to seize control of the weakened National Socialists. With SA chief Viktor Lutze in prison along with Nazi Party leader Heinrich Himmler, Hugenberg has been able to quietly take the reins of the SA and SS. The Nationalist leader will be no one's puppet.

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In 2008, in Washington US President George W. Bush was yet to receive a credible explanation as to the mysterious disapperance of WD-5. Only Valentine Michael Smith knew that the Old Ones of Mars would intercept WD-5, just as they had destroyed the fourth planet and created the asteroid belt so many years before.

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In 2003, Dick Cheney suffered a very bad night's sleep. It was one thing to ignore Martin Brundle and recommend the continued military application of his technology. Quite another to be the new Commander in Chief who sent Frankenstein's monster into battle against the objections of Dr Frankenstein.

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Mind Control	In 1977, Senator Edward Kennedy received a visit from two unexpected guests who alleged that America's recent victory in Vietnam was not what it seems. Jacob Singer's former unit in Air Cavalry were amongst the first US troops to receive a chemical boost to their fighting power - without their knowledge. At least, until a week before when they had been contacted by a chemist working with the Army's chemical warfare division in Saigon.

Michael Newman worked on creating a drug that increased aggression in soldiers. Tests of the drug (code-named 'the ladder' in reference to the effect) were first given to monkeys and then to a group of enemy POWs, with gruesome results. Later the ladder was given to Jacob's unit, through the platoons' C-rations. The drug was named for its ability to cause 'a fast trip straight down the ladder, right to the primal fear, right to the base anger'. Positive results in the Mekong Delta in October 1971 had encouraged the Pentagon to mount the decisive campaign that had finally ended the war.

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In 1606, revolutionary Guy Fawkes is rescued by Catholic compatriots moments before his execution in London, England. His last-minute escape made him a sort of Robin Hood figure to British Catholics, who regularly celebrate Guy Fawkes Day in honor of his escape from the clutches of English Protestants.

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In 1990, the retrial of Ray Buckey of the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, brought into the open the hideous ring of Satanists that were running most of America's nursery schools and day-care centers. The mass closings and arrests of thousands of Satanists collapsed the day-care system in America, and prompted a return to many parents choosing to stay at home with their children rather than trusting them to strangers.

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Element: Who row: 3971	In 2000, and bang on schedule according to the Hubbert peak theory the world enters Peak Oil. As described by the bell-shaped production curve suggested by M. King Hubbert in 1956, Peak oil is the point or timeframe at which the maximum global petroleum production rate is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically. Of course global consumption had not been mitigated, far from it, it had been soaring. The vast oil reserves of Russia put that previously failed nation in the box seat for the twenty-first century.
Element: Who_Title row: 3971

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In 1948, the bullet-ridden dead body of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi lay in state in New Delhi. According to his wish, the majority of Gandhi's ashes were immersed in some of the world's major rivers, such as The Nile, Volga, Thames, etc. A small portion was sent to Paramahansa Yogananda from Dr. V.M. Nawle, (a publisher and journalist from Pune (formerly Poona), India) encased in a brass & silver coffer. The ashes were then enshrined at the Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Memorial in the Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine within a thousand-year-old stone sarcophagus from China. Paramahansa Yogananda had met Gandhi at the latter's Wardha Ashram in 1936 and Gandhi had requested and received Kriya Yoga diksha from him.

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In 1957, the following notice was published ~ following sworn testimony from his God-fearing sibling Jesse Garon, -
without prejudice of family loyalty, -
Elvis Aaron Presley sentenced to trial by water,-
by magistrates of this good parish of Tupelo, Mississipi, -
persuant to Holy Scripture,-
Make No Music Except With Human Tongue Saith The Lord God refers, -
on this day of our Lord, 1958. Not the potter, but the potter's clay. Amen.

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In 1948, the bullet-ridden dead body of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi lay in state in New Delhi. Bapu ('Father') travelled in serenity to the gateway of worlds where he was met by great soul-deeps. A Navajo guide looked up quizzically; nodding a respectful greeting, 'Ya'aa'tey' ('It is good') by way of explanation. 'Brahmacharya' ( 'Control of the senses in thought, word and deed') replied Bapu in his native Hindu. It was a reference to the one aspect of his worldly existence that required closure. When Gandhi was 16 his father became very ill. Being very devoted to his parents, he attended to his father at all times during his illness. However, one night, Gandhi's uncle came to relieve Gandhi for a while. He retired to his bedroom where carnal desires overcame him and he made love to his wife. Shortly afterward a servant came to report that Gandhi's father had just died. Gandhi felt tremendous guilt and never could forgive himself. He came to refer to this event as 'double shame.' The incident had significant influence in Gandhi becoming celibate at the age of 36, while still married.

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Chimp	In 1961, the North American Space Agency (NASA) reported the good news 'Chimp returns safely after space flight - A chimpanzee sent into space in a United States rocket is recovered alive and well from the sea near Florida.'. Behind closed doors, NASA were desperately trying to understand how the chimp had developed the power of speech, and the location of this Ape City he was describing.
Planet of the Apes?

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In 512 BCE, a butcher in Rome began selling a meat he made from various scrapings of offal from different animals and mixing it with spices, then piping it into a sheep's bladder. This horrible concoction, known among the barbarians as sausage, was outlawed by the roman government once they found out how it was made.

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In 1950, President Harry S. Truman announced a program to develop the hydrogen bomb. Truman needed a quick payback for the new superweapon, American gains in south-east Asia were unravelling very quickly.

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In 1947, the United States made the Greenland purchase.

After the war, the Pentagon was keen to retain control over the world's biggest aircraft carrier' and pressed the Truman administration to buy Greenland from Denmark.U.S. Strategic Air Command (SAC) were given free reign to use Thule as a launching pad for Armageddon. In the fall of 1956, Thule-based B-47s made repeated deep incursions into Soviet airspace (Operation Home Run) that were designed to push Kremlin nerves to the limit. Later Curtis Le May, the singularly sinister commander of SAC, wistfully recollected that 'with a bit of luck we could have gotten World War Three started back then. '

'Bombs Away' only had to wait five years.

In 1961 SAC commanders ordered a nuclear strike after they lost contact with Thule due to a technical glitch that they misinterpreted as a Soviet attack.

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