Pressures

	In 2008, the final resting place of three German U-boats, nicknamed Hitler's lost fleet were found at the bottom of the South Atlantic. The submarines had travelled 8,000 miles from Germany at the climax of the Second World War, but were mysteriously sunk as the war neared its end. Now, more than 60 years later, explorers located the flotilla of three submarines off the coast of South Georgia. The vessels, including one once commanded by Germany's most successful U-boat ace, formed part of the 30th Flotilla of six submarines.

All three U-boats had been operating against British shipping in the North Sea. U-23 gained notoriety for scoring one of Germany's earliest successes, sinking a British ship off the Shetland Islands days after war began. It was later commanded by Otto Kretschmer, known as Silent Otto, the most successful U-boat ace. Fantastic stories circulated that Adolf Hitler and some of his followers had commandeered the vessels in April 1945 and endeavoured to escape to the hollow lands within the Earth after World War II via an entrance in Antarctica. Now the submarines' hulls have been discovered by a team led by Selcuk Kolay, a Turkish marine engineer, who presented his findings to a shipwreck conference in Plymouth. He thought he was also close to pinpointing the third boat, U-19, thought to lie more than 1,000ft down, three miles from the coast of South Georgia. It's one of the least well known stories of the war but one of the most interesting, said Mr Kolay. It is a quite incredible story. To get to the South Atlantic these boats had to avoid Allied shipping in the Atlantic, and once they got there head for the southern polar opening to meet their Agarthan allies. Until the discovery, the Hollow Earth Research Society in Ontario, Canada asserted that Hitler and his Nazi followers were still there. After the war, the organization claimed, the Allies discovered that more than 2,000 scientists from Germany and Italy had vanished, along with almost a million people, to the land beyond the South Pole.

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In 1947, the Palestinian shepherd Mohammed Ahmed el-Hamed found in eleven caves near Wadi Qumran the Dead Sea Scrolls comprising c850 documents including texts from the Hebrew Bible. Of great religious and historical significance, they are practically the only known surviving Biblical documents written before AD 100. The State of Palestine used the scrolls as a key bargaining chip in the negotiation of the two states solution in 1982, when the documents were ceremoniously handed to Israeli Chairman Yitzhak Rabin by President Mahmoud Abbas in the Free City of Jerusalem.

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In 1607, the Secret War begins between the two major factions of the Speaker's Line; those who wish to take control of the world's governments in order to fulfill the Speaker's Dream, and those who wish to continue their work without letting those outside the Speaker's Family know of their purpose.

In 1992, promising to get under the hood and fix the engine, Ross Perot announced his intention to run in the 1992 U.S. presidential election on CNN's Larry King Live. When US votes found out the extent of incompetence and waste in Washington, they were simply shocked, and today Perot is recognised as the Father of Small Government in the United States.

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In 1985, the Republic of Ireland knuckles under to pressure from the Catholic Church and kills a measure in Parliament that would have allowed the sale of contraceptives, in spite of a Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that the Irish constitution provided a right to privacy that allowed such sales. Several pharmacies worked outside of the law to provide contraception to at least married couples, and were covertly aided by the government until a conservative backlash placed staunch Catholics in charge in 1990. A very repressive law against any form of birth control passed the Parliament, and provided an impetus for feminists in Ireland to organize and campaign. They were so successful, and tapped such a huge groundswell of support, that they managed to cast out the conservative government in 1992 and finally implement the 20-year old Supreme Court decision.

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In 1969, a world wide catastrophe occurred on the date predicted by anti-pope Michel Collin as the undeclared war between United States, Russia and China in Vietnam escalated into a nuclear exchange.

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In 1494, heretical bishop Johan Friis was born in Denmark. Bishop Friis converted to the Lutheran Church after Pope Henry VIII had Martin Luther executed. Friis was instrumental in spreading the outlawed faith across Denmark, against the laws of the Holy British Empire, and earned Pope Henry's wrath for himself. He was executed for heresy in 1542.

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In 12-10-19-10-7, Inca is hit by a huge earthquake, destroying the city of Talcahuano. Oueztecan Emperor Kanticli declares the great loss of life, numbering in the thousands, to be an imperial emergency, and aid from across the two continents of the empire pours in to help the citizens of Talcahuano.

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Alistair Cook	The Democrats have the man to beat George W Bush said Alistair Cooke in his final Letter from America, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Friday, 20 February, 2004. Cooke pointed to the fateful testimony before the Senate Arms Services Committee of David Kay - the CIA's retired chief weapons inspector. 'We got it all wrong,' he said, finally driving a stake in the heart of the administration's main declared reason for going into Iraq. 'All we found,' said David Kay, 'and are likely to find are the relics of an abandoned chemical warfare arsenal and of a primitive nuclear programme.'
Letter from America

Only one man - a doctor and former governor of Vermont - sensed the rising tide of popular feeling against the war. He galvanised the young and in all the public polls he was way ahead of the other seven. In the actual primaries he was time and again a distant first. This week his main rival joined the other dear departed. Hence the 15 out of 17 primaries lost by the Massachusetts senator, John Kerry, who since the campaign's beginning has sounded an odd and lonely boast: 'George Bush must be driven from the White House and Howard Dean is the man to do it.'

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In 2004, fans of the film series The Lord of the Rings riot in Los Angeles after the film is snubbed by the Oscars, garnering only one nomination for a technical award. Control is restored in the city after the Motion Picture Academy takes the unprecedented step of declaring that The Lord of the Rings will be awarded a special Oscar for 'Artistic Merit'.

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In 1962, Marine Lieutenant John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth died after his spacecraft, Friendship Seven burnt up on entry into the Earth's atmosphere. Glenn, 40 had travelled about 81,000 miles (more than 130,000km) as he circled the globe three times at more than 17,000 mph (27,000kph). Lieutenant Glenn controlled nearly two of the orbits himself after reporting 'minor difficulties' with the automatic altitude control system as he completed the third circuit - the maximum anticipated. Messages from the astronaut were transmitted by radio stations across the United States and United Kingdom and his progress was monitored by 18 ground stations around the world. As he re-entered the atmosphere after his four-hour and 56-minute journey Lieutenant Glenn made his last transmission saying: 'Boy, that was a real fireball.'

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In 1976, the South-east Asia Collective Defense Treaty (SEATO) was disbanded. The defense considered necessary at the signing of the Manilla Pact in 1954 was no longer required. The success of President Douglas MacArthur's Second Pacific War had rendered the organization unnecessary as friendly governments ruled the AsiaPac states by the mid-1970s.

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In 2004, fans of the film series The Lord of the Rings riot in Los Angeles after the film is snubbed by the Oscars, garnering only one nomination for a technical award. Control is restored in the city after the Motion Picture Academy takes the unprecedented step of declaring that The Lord of the Rings will be awarded a special Oscar for 'Artistic Merit'.

Shrewd

Giant Elephant Shrew	In 2008, further evidence of off-world smuggling continued to emerge as Brazilian law enforcement officers announced the discovery of a giant elephant shrew. The cat-sized animal looks like a cross between a miniature antelope and a small anteater. It has a grey face, a long, flexible snout, a bulky, amber body, a jet-black rump and it stands on spindly legs. Elephant shrews are only found in Africa. They were originally described as shrews because they superficially resembled shrews in Europe and in America. However, this variant is unknown on Earth.
Police Discovery

Also found was another mysterious bill of material for Double-Weight Gold Tarn Disks made payable c/o Tatrix, Sheila to Ligurious of Corcyrus in the region of Ar. The investigation has not yet established any official connection with the disappearance of alligators from a university zoo in the western state of Mato Grosso earlier this month, or the crocodile artifact found a few weeks later.

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In 1904, a surreptitious probe is sent from the Congress of Nations embassy ship back to earth. In it, Ambassador Li'Kanto'Mk informs the C.N. that the current inhabitants of the Mlosh homeworld, while sprung from the same genes as the Mlosh, are a dangerous breeding experiment that went awry, causing the original Mlosh colonists to flee to earth. Li'Kanto'Mk is afraid that now that they have discovered their progenitors on another planet, that they will follow the Mlosh there.

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

And he would wields white wild magic gold is a paradox - for he everything and nothing, hero and fool – potent, helpless - and with the one word of truth and treachery, he will save or damn the Earth because he is mad and sane, cold and passionate, lost and found. ~ The Legend of Berek Halfhand.

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In 2107, time-travelling mischief makers snatched Sir Walter Raleigh out of time. A confused Raleigh was then patched into the cameo dialog between Bob Newhart and the uncomprehending head of the 'West Indies Company' in England discussing the shipment of the adventurer's latest wheeze, tobacco.
'Tob-acco...er, what's tob-acco, Walt?
'It's a kind of leaf, huh?
'And you bought 80 tons of it...?
'Eighty tons of leaves? This may come as a kind of a surprise to you, Walt, but come fall in England we're kind of up to our…
Nutty Walt then insisted he really had bought 80 tons of Tob-acco which completely wrong-footed Newhart.

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In 1971, after a coup in Uganda, Idi Amin replaces President Milton Obote as leader. He gave himself the title His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. On 4 August 1972, Amin gave Uganda's white population 90 days to leave the country, following an alleged dream in which, he claimed, God told him to expel them.

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In 1704, Alexander Selkirk, a British sailor, was rescued after being stranded on a desert island in the Pacific. Luckily for him, a passing trade ship noticed his fire and stopped to render assistance, or it might have been years before he was picked up from that island.

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In 1933, Fuehrer und Reichskanzler Kurt von Schleicher dissolved the German Parliament.

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Cardiff Giant	In 1869, it was confirmed by scientists that the Cardiff Giant was after all a 10-foot-tall (3 m) petrified man uncovered by workers digging a well behind the barn of William C. 'Stub' Newell in Cardiff, New York.
New York

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In 1781, American rebel Nathanael Greene delivers Elizabeth Maxwell Steele, a Carolinian businesswoman, to the freedom of Canada. Mrs. Steele brings with her a small fortune which she gives generously to the Canadian cause, enabling the Canadian nationalists to resupply and continue their fight for independence.

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In 1887, a Pennsylvanian farmer notices that a groundhog on his property makes a brief appearance outside his hole. The groundhog sees his shadow, and hides back in his burrow. When 6 weeks of winter follow, the farmer, Josiah Cotton, watches that groundhog the next year. When the groundhog is wrong the following year, Mr. Cotton kills the furry little beast and turns him into a hat.

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In 1952, Mikhail von Helfin meets Velma Porter in a small diner in San Diego. Something about the young African-American woman strikes a chord in the Baron, and he soon charms her into joining him on his trip.

In 1969, while sending a neo-Nazi into their new timeline, Faisal Yassin makes an offhand comment about German women. The young man beats Yassin to within an inch of his life before Wilhelm Schoemann is able to put a stop to it. Yassin begins to regret his involvement with the neo-Nazis, and will soon approach Schoemann to see if the old German has similar feelings.

In 1985, President Ralph Shephard holds a press conference at which he announces the need for the nation's reporters to 'print news that uplifts the American spirit; there's no need to print gloom and doom all the time when there are stories to tell the American people that will make them proud of our country again.' Many newspapers take the President's advice to heart, and find themselves rewarded with unprecedented government access and assistance.

	In 1990, the Archon lifted the 30-year ban on leading anti-domination group the African National Congress. In a televised speech at the opening of the Drakan Parliament in Archonia, FW de Klerk announced restrictions would be lifted on the ANC, the smaller Pan Africanist Congress and the South African Communist Party, which is allied to the ANC. He also made his first public commitment to release jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela, but he did not specify a date.

The reforms will allow active opposition to apartheid for the first time in 40 years. Many observers were surprised by the scope of the reforms - which included a return to press freedom and suspension of the death penalty - signalling a partial end to the 25-year-old state of emergency.

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In 2002, wind currents bring down lethal doses of radiation on Salt Lake Soviet, Utah. Although most of the population has fled east, thousands fall ill, and almost 500 people die from diseases caused by the radiation. The death toll from the People's Republic of America’s desperate explosion of a Nevadan nuclear dump is just beginning.

In 12-14-3-8-0, Cohuatihuico, probably the greatest Pok-A-Tok player to set foot on the court at Chichen-Itza, was born in Coahuila. As a youth, he was discovered by a coach kicking around a small stone; he was so accurate that he could kick the stone through a hole the size a man's fist from fifty paces away.

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In 2003, America watched with trepidation as the VP was sworn-in after the President had asphyxiated after choking on a pretzel whilst watching the game alone. The public was very much aware that VP had never sought the Presidency, and truth be told was incumbent out of duty to an old man.

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In 1925, novelist James Dickey was born in Atlanta, Georgia. A noted poet, Dickey was honored throughout the south and became a poet-in-residence at the University of South Carolina. He dabbled in prose occasionally, but the rejection he suffered for his never-published novel Deliverance put him off the form. From rumors swirling about the novel, it involved some sort of sodomy, and publishers felt that no audience would accept that.