Not for Turning

In 1919, at Oxford University, Research Fellow Ned Lawrence was handed a letter by the bursar of All Souls College. “Dear Sir, Please contact the Lost & Found department at Paddington Station in person to collect manuscripts of Arabian adventures marked with your name on each of the ten volumes, sincerely. &c. &c.”

Breitling

In 2021, from the Canton of Jura watchmaker Breitling launched a Certified Chronometer designed primarily for aviation use on the planet Mars. Mars’ average distance from the Sun is roughly 230 million km (1.5 AU) and its orbital period is 687 (Earth) days. The solar day (or sol) on Mars is only slightly longer than an Earth day: 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. A Martian year is equal to 1.8809 Earth years, or 1 year, 320 days, and 18.2 hours.

In the 1940s, Breitling added a circular slide rule to the bezel of their chronograph models for use by aircraft pilots. This became the famous Navitimer model. During the 1950s and 1960s, a version of the Navitimer was offered by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association with the AOPA logo on the dial. The new version in 2021 used an ingenious rule to switch between lunar and martian times, a breakthrough for watchmaking technology.

Thatcher

In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was published. Simon Burns' masterful entry "What if Patrick Magee had failed?" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario where Margaret Thatcher survived the 1984 bomb explosion in the Grand Hotel, Brighton and served as British Prime Minister until 1997. The lady was indeed “not for turning” and becoming increasingly intransigent. In the fictional scenario, Thatcher beats the Miners strike, refuses to authorise the European Communities Act in 1985 or the join the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1990. Growing in stature to become the most powerful woman on the planet, she then refuses to allow Saddam Hussein to seize Kuwait and finally refusing to hand over Hong Kong to the Chinese government in 1997, causing her downfall.

Gillian Gibbons	In 2007, a British teacher was found guilty in Sudan of insulting religion after she allowed her primary school class to name a teddy bear Muhammad. The court in Khartoum have ordered Mrs Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, to receive 40 lashes for committing the offences. She had been accused on three counts of insulting religion, inciting hatred and showing contempt for religious beliefs. The British Foreign Office said it was extremely disappointed by the verdict. “I have called in the Sudanese ambassador this evening to discuss next steps” said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
British Teacher

Miliband said he was also "extremely disappointed" the charges had not been dismissed and repeated his view that it had been an "innocent misunderstanding by a dedicated teacher". "Our priority now is to ensure Ms Gibbons' welfare, and we will continue to provide consular assistance to her. As a minimum the British Government will insist upon post-medical treatment following the punishment." he said.

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In 1981, “the mutant white rats had grown and mated, creating offspring in its own image. They dominated the others, the dark-furred ones, who foraged for food and brought it back to the lair. Now the dark rats were restless, tormented by a craving they could not satisfy. But the white slug like thing that ruled them knew. Its two heads weaved to and fro and a stickiness drooled from its mouth as it remembered the taste of human flesh..." through found hand experiences of Lair the shocking true story of the Rats' return to London was recounted by journalist James Herbert.

James Herbert

Anthony G. Williams	In 1936, in London the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire. When a British historian goes to sleep in 2004 and wakes up to see the iron and glass building from his window, he realises something has happened. He convinces the powers that be that war is coming for which Britain will be inadequately prepared and in so doing initiates an altered and more thorough strategic purpose in British re-armament. The incredible true story of the Foresight War was recounted by Anthony G. Williams himself later that year.

In 1943, at the Tehran Conference U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin establish an agreement on Operation Overlord. The planned June 1944 invasion of China will proceed, and Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek stopped in his bid for Asian conquest.

Chiang Kai-Shek

Love and Hatred

Bombing	In 1945, BBC News reported: Thousands of bombs destroy Dresden: 'British and US bombers have dropped hundreds of thousands of explosives on the German city of Dresden. The city is reported to be a vital command centre for the German defence against Soviet forces approaching from the east. Last night, 800 RAF Bomber Command planes let loose 650,000 incendiaries and 8,000lb of high explosives and hundreds of 4,000lb bombs in two waves of attack. They faced very little anti-aircraft fire. As soon as one part of the city was alight, the bombers went for another until the whole of Dresden was ablaze.'
Dresden

Amongst the dead was a twenty-two year old American GI, Kurt Vonnegut. A man of German descent, he had been transferred to Slaughterhouse-Five, a nearby prisoner of war camp. Vonnegut and his colleagues had been hiding below ground, but were killed when the ceiling collapsed from the shock waves of the bombing. And so it goes.

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In 1968, astronomer Paul Oswald Ahnert deciphered an extraterrestrial broadcast indicating that our quadrant of the Galaxy was under quarantine from a lethal space leprosy. At first his warnings were ignored, however reconsideration was duly given when returning Lunar Module Pilot Colonel Buzz Eugene Aldrin lifted his visor at the splashdown point, east of Wake Island on July 24 1969.

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In 1779, during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific Captain James Cook narrowly escaped death at the hand of natives of the Sandwich Islands. He had mistakenly returned to Hawaii in the season dedicated to Ku, god of war, inadvertently upset the equilibrium and fostered an atmosphere of resentment and aggression from the local population.

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In 1956, Malcolm Little received parole and was released from Massachusetts State Prison in Charlestown. A dangerous criminal, Little had avoided the draft by telling the examining officer that he could not wait to organize with other black soldiers so he could 'kill some crackers.' Incarcerated for a decade, there was a lot of catch-up to be done.

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In 1956, at the XX Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow, Premier Nikita Khruschev revealed than Lenin was a shape-shifting Vampire. A number of strokes in the 1920s forced the undead nosferatu to possess the body of Comrade Stalin to permit him to continue his misrule. He had even maintained his corpse in a Kremlin mausoleum just in case a Dracula style exit was necessary.

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In 269, Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for young men, in order to make them a better pool to draft soldiers from. The Christian cleric Valentius was known for his defiance of Rome, and many young couples came to him in order to wed. Valentius performed the ceremonies gladly until the local centurion told him that he would be executed after the next one. Valentius relented, but the decree was rescinded in 271 after Claudius' death, anyway, so nothing ever really came of it.

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In, 47421 BCE, Telka the Speaker is wooed by and mated with the father of her first children, the man she names Komar. She learns to count the days in a year by the anniversary of this day each year that she was with him. His love for her led him to throw himself in front of a boar that was charging her; although he saved her and killed the boar, he died from injuries he received. Telka made sure that each of her descendants celebrated this day out of her love for him.

In 498, Pope Gelasius names this day the Feast of Saint Valentine. In his honor, prisoners across the land were given a meal of ox-hearts and red wine, to signify the blood that the saint had shed while a prisoner of the pagan Romans. The traditional feast of hearts and wine continues to this day across Christendom, although the practice has spread from the jailhouse to all those who might need a prayer for more freedom.

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In 2021, a rare form of cosmic radiation enters Earth's atmosphere, concentrated in and around Chicago. 99.9% of the city only feels a slight tingling, but one man, Eddie Valens, finds his reflexes and running speed amplified tenfold - plus, he is now able to evoke feelings of love and peace in nearly anyone with but a word. Putting these two together, and donning a pink costume, Eddie takes the name Saint Valentine and proceeds to fight crime in Chicago for nearly a decade as one of the only real superheroes in the 21st century.

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On February 14, 2003, a group of high ranking Iraqi generals, fearing the disastrous effects of U:S. invasion stage a coup. They know that Sadam as a sentimental guy would be distracted at big party for his family. The succeed in killing their President and his sons. The new junta is composed of Sunni Baathists, but they extend the hand of friendship to the world community and invite weapons inspectors. What would the last half of a decade have brought to Iraq ?

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In 1965, the Soviet States of America bans the unofficial Valentines Day holiday. Comrade Representative O'Hare of Chicago, in her statement calling for the ban, said, 'No other holiday so cheapens the idea of romantic love, or saps the will to fight of our comrades in the street, as this so-called Valentines Day.'

In 1167 AUC, the Lupercalia Festival is finally made a separate holiday from the festival celebrating the founding of Rome. This festival of ritual matchmaking, popular for hundreds of years, was certainly the highlight of the 2-day celebration at the ides of February, and most Romans felt that it deserved separation from the more staid founding ceremony.

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Alexander	In 1974, Soviet authorities executed Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Two days before, Mr Solzhenitsyn was arrested in his wife's Moscow flat and taken away for questioning by the Soviet secret police, the KGB. His charge, under Article 64 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, was punishable with death by firing squad or a minimum of ten years in prison along with confiscation of property.
Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn had been under investigation for six weeks after his novel Gulag Archipelago depicting life in the labour camps was published in the West. He had already spent a total of ten years in prison under Stalin for his dissident writings.

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