Last and Only Hopes

In 2026, Captain Wilder told his children that the Red Planet represented the anglo's last and only hope. Almost five centuries before, they had quit Europe, carrying a deadly plague that decimated the indigenes of the Turtle Island. However, the madness had travelled with the anglos - the First Nation genocide and then the States War. Finally, very finally, the bomb. The Earth had exploded in the inferno of nuclear war, resulting in the Million Year Picnic the Wilder Family were now enjoying.

President-elect Gore	In 2007,Mike Resnick issued "Alternate Tyrants Part 2" including the controversial short story "Y". In a thinly disguised reference to "W", the United States Supreme Court releases a decision on a disputed President election. To unite the country, the Court proposes a joint inauguration followed by the candidates sharing the presidency with each serving a two-year term.
Best practice had been established by an indecisive election in Israel during 1984 when Prime Ministers Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres agreed to the same power-sharing formula. Without the luxury of a full-term to plan and launch an invasion of a Middle Eastern country, the Republican camp falls upon a national security pretext to delay the Democratic Candidates two-year occupancy.

Advertisement	In 1976/1767/1750, Thalmus Rasulala, Cicely Tyson, LeVar Burton and Omoro Kinte converge on Annapolis, Maryland. Somehow they must release Alex Haley from bondage and return him to the year 1976, where he must must publish “Roots: The Saga of an American Family”. According to an advertisement in the Maryland Gazette newspaper, the Africans are to be sold into slavery on October 7.

In 2000, Stephen E. Ambroke published Eisenhower Victorious: The D-Day Options. In this counter-history, the Communist insurgency in China wins through, and Chairman Mao defeats the Kuomintang. Rejecting Truman at the 1948 election, Americans turn to General Douglas MacArthur to reconquer the Pacific for good. Brass Hat dusts off his plans for Operation Downfall and plays them out in the vast interior of China rather than the Japanese Islands, supported by the launching of fifty nuclear missiles at Manchuria. MacArthur also deploys Bacteriological weapons that Unit 731 surrendered to him in 1945 to secure the amnesty of the Japanese scientists against trial for the extermination of 200,000 Chinese citizens during World War II.	What If?
Korea and Vietnam are re-united, Chiang Kai-shek re-instated in Beijing, where he meekly returns with the entire gold and foreign currency reserves had taken on his flight to Formosa. After all, the book asks, how could America use the bomb and Japan, and then permit China to be lost?

T.E. Lawrence	In 1946, outside a building complex on Fürtherstrasse 22 in Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany Commander of the British Eighth Army Colonel T.E. Lawrence and subordinates Bernard Law Montgomery, Archibald Percival Wavell and Sir Claude John Eyre Auchinleck were shot on this day. They considered themselves betrayed by 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. The Egyptian officers themselves had no opinion, they were so many holes in the desert, having been betrayed themselves by Heydrich who had established a German Protectorate on the Nile.

In 1535, Jacques Cartier discovered Montreal, Quebec. Despite efforts by British to invade New France, and several referendums from federalists, Quebec remains a Francophone pocket in North America. In the famous words of Charles de Gaulle in 1967 Vive le Québec libre ! (Long live free Quebec!).	De Gaulle

Force

In 1976, Jeremy Thorn said without expression "I already know the name of the man I'm supposed to see is Bugenhagen. That was the name, I've remembered it all. " "'When the Jews return to Zion '" Thorn recited in a near whisper, "'and a comet fills the sky and the Holy Roman Empire rises then all of us will die.'" Mrs Baylock listened intently in the darkness; finally, alterted by the lifeless tone, she knew something in Thorn had changed. "'From the eternal sea she rises with armies on either shore turning man against his brother until man exists no more.'"	Hallowe'en Story

Jousting	In 2007, federal legislators promised to review health and safety regulations in Equestrianism following another jousting fatality. A man died in a freak accident at a jousting tournament on Monday. The unnamed man died after a splinter of wood from a lance flew through the slit of his helmet and penetrated his eye. He died after a week in hospital. The accident occurred in September but the man's death has only just been made public. "We have been shocked and deeply saddened by this tragic accident," a United States Department of Agriculture spokeswoman said. "The professional event has an excellent safety record and took all the appropriate and necessary precautions and it does sadly appear this was a tragic freak accident."
Fatality

The United States Department of Agriculture perform routine inspections of horse shows including jousting events, but safety concerns are difficult to eliminate in this controversial high contact sport.

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Quebec

In 1943, the Governor General of Canada, Major General Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone, KG, GCB, GCMG, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS, born Prince Alexander of Teck warmly welcomed Allied leaders to the Quebec Citadel. Earl Athlone was joined for a series of strategy meetings by Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The agenda was to decide the strategies of the Western Allies that would lead to victory over Nazi Germany and Japan.

Closing the conference, Athlone thanked the Allied leaders for their attendance. Of course, only Roosevelt was leaving the country. Churchill and the British Royal Family were amongst the other members of the British Government in Exile, staying at the Governor's residence at Rideau Hall, Ottawa.

In 2008, service agents at the head office of the restaurant chain Wanda's of Montreal 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.

Gromyko	In 1962, at an emergency session of the UN Security Council Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko showed photographs proving American missiles were installed in Izmir. He forcefully asked the American ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, if his country was installing missiles in Turkey, punctuated with the famous demand "Don't wait for the translation, answer 'yes' or 'no'!" in demanding an immediate answer. Following Stevenson's refusal to answer the abrupt question, Gromyko retorted, "I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over." In a diplomatic coup, Gromyko then showed photographs that proved the existence of missiles in Turkey, just after the American ambassador had said they did not exist.

In 1956, a week after his 17th birthday Lee Harvey Oswald enlisted in the US Marine Corps. His shyness and Soviet sympathies alienated him to his fellow Marines. Ostracism only seemed to provoke him into being a more staunch and outspoken communist. For his steadfast beliefs his nickname ultimately became Oswaldskovich. The Marine had subscribed to The Worker and taught himself rudimentary Russian. During his otherwise undistinguished military career, Oswald earned the Sharpshooter weapons qualification badge with a score of 212 out of 250 targets, average or slightly above average for a Marine, and far above average judged by civilian standards. Initially the KGB considered Oswald to be a potential deep sleeper agency.	Alek
He proved unreliable after his arrival Minsk, and to protect their investment, the KGB eliminated Oswald and substituted him with a Soviet double named Alek. Impersonating Oswald, Alek was ordered by Khrushchev to “return” to the United States and eliminate Kennedy before he could win the Cold War for America.

Hiroshima	In 2999, the mind cast for the next instalment of “Personality of the Triple Millennia” was re-run across the networks. POT3M drew an even larger audience because of its oddness. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the candidate, the context was the Manhattan Project and the moment was seconds before FDR expired. Would FDR endorse a decision by a successor to drop the Bomb on the cities of Japan if it would save hundreds of thousands of American lives? FDR said in principle he would, but was concerned that successors would be trapped in the Pandora's Box logic of the bomb. MC Millenia asked FDR to explain quickly and he said that adversarial powers would doubt the commitment of future US Governments to commit ground troops, and if they did not drop the bomb, they would be forced to accept defeat.

In 2003, on this day the Cedar Fire is reported at 5:37 pm. It becomes the second largest wildfire in California history. Most significantly, it forced sasquatch to leave their native habitat. Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin had captured sasquatch on film at Bluff Creek, California in 1967 and the authenticity of that event was now unambiguously verified thirty-six years later.	Big Foot

Sorted

In 1976, in Israel Jeremy Thorn reached the archaelogical dig. Beneath his feet were King Solomon's quarries, an intricate system of ditches and canals that possibly stretched to Jerusalem, some sixty miles away. Somewhere within the system were the ruins of an ancient city, believed by many to be the site where the Bible itself was created. Text had already been recovered, carefully preserved in pottery and cloth, that reflected stories closely following those in the Old Testament. Thorn sought out some of the archeologicl students, but gleaned little information. They were unfamiliar with the name "Bugenhagen" and all they knew of the city of Meggido was that many centuries ago a violent upheaval had caused it to sink into the earth. It was an earthquake, possibly a flood, for they had found snail shells here, far from any known body of water.	Hallowe'en Story

Jason Statham	In 2008, hardman actor Jason Statham was chosen as the new Grant Mitchell for British soap opera Eastenders. Statham sailed through the screen test. It wasnt too challenging. Some grunting. Throwing a few "sauceys" up against the wall and telling them to "shut it" and "stay sorted". That kind of thing.

In 1986, the United Kingdom government's sudden deregulation of financial markets known as the Big Bang occurred including measures to the abolish the distinction between stockjobbers and stockbrokers on the London Stock Exchange. The Big Bang was so called because the abolition of fixed commission charges precipitated a complete alteration in the structure of the market. One of the biggest alterations to the market was the change from open-outcry to electronic, screen-based trading. Other reforms were enacted at the same time, and it was the aggregation of the measures plus the expected increase in market activity that led to the event being called the Big Bang. In Britain, the Big Bang became one of the cornerstones of the Thatcher government's reform programme. Prior to this event, the financial institutions of the City of London were seen as elitist and operated within tight-knit old boys' networks. The Big Bang brought the free market doctrine of meritocracy to London, allowing a new class of nouveau riche to profit from the economic boom. Flawed thinking and British muddleheadedness were not realised for four years until the economic meltdown of 1989, fundamentally because the architects of the Big Bang were optimistic young men living in boom-time. Institutions set automatic trigger points for selling shares in their IT systems, and when the market slumped the whole system collapsed in 17.2 seconds as tail-spin computer programming continued to recalculate prices downwards in real-time until they hit zero.

Barbeau	In 1962, on this day in a personal letter to Khrushchev dated 27 October , Québécois Premier Raymond Barbeau urged Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike against the United States if Quebec were invaded, but Khrushchev rejected any first strike response. Soviet field commanders in Quebec were, however, authorized to use tactical nuclear weapons if attacked by the United States. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a US commitment not to invade Quebec and an understanding that the US would remove American MRBMs targeting the Soviet Union from Turkey and Italy, a measure that the US implemented a few months later. The missile swap was never publicized because the Kennedy Administration demanded secrecy in order to preserve NATO relations and protect Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections.

In 1962, the U-2 reconnaissance air plane of Major Rudolph Anderson of the US Air Force was shot down by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile, becoming the first direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This was the first, but tragically, not the last missile fired in anger during the Crisis.	Major Anderson

Rasputin	In 2999, the mind cast for the next instalment of “Personality of the Triple Millennia” was re-run across the networks. POT3M drew an even larger audience because of its oddness. Tsar Nicholas Romanov II was the candidate, the context was the sustenance of blood-drained Tsarevich Alexei and the moment was the assassination attempt on the master, Rasputin. MC Millennia asked when the Tsar first became aware of the deceit in the Royal household. The truth was his son did not suffer haemophilia and was not being supplied anticoagulants; Alexei had been turned by the vampire Rasputin.

In 1997, journalist James Herbert published the true story of the American Hoke in '48. Set three years after the Allies lose WW II, Hitler hits London with his V1 rockets but still finds himself losing the war. So he fires off V2 rockets, which hold a deadly virus that freezes human blood and causes fast death, although some rare victims die more slowly. Only that three percent of the population with AB negative blood survive the virus--so that gangs of slowly dying Blackshirts roam the city looking for AB-negs whose blood they hope to exchange for their own.	48
One of those fighting the Blackshirts as they pursue him is Hoke, an American once with the RAF who now holes up in a vacated luxury hotel, the Savoy. races about on his Matchless 350 motorcycle, locked into anger against the Germans because the virus killed his wife and child, while the Blackshirts are Nazi sympathizers sprung from England's worst pre-war racists.

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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