MLK

In 1945, fourth generation German-American Kurt Vonnegut's body was filled with holes by a firing squad. As a prisoner of war, he had been set to work in the City of Dresden following the Allied bombing. Caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs, Vonnegut was arrested for plundering, tried and shot. So it goes. Vonnegut was philosophical about his death, concentrating on the happy moments of his life, and ignoring the unhappy ones-to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by.

Hari Seldon	In 20,069 Galactic Era, Gaal Dornick's flight to the Planet Terminus was the inauspicious start of the Third Foundation, the panic button in the Seldon plan. Ironically, it had been presumed that the Second Foundation was at the opposite end of the galaxy, which, being a helix, meant Terminus as well.
Psychohistorian

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	Hathaway (the doctor from the Fourth Expedition) is living retired on Mars with his family, even though everyone else has departed. We are shown that Hathaway is a mechanical tinkerer, who has wired an old town below their house to sound alive at night with noise and phone calls. One night, he sees a rocket in orbit, and sets fire to the old town to signal the rocket. Captain Wilder returns to Mars. They land and have a reunion with Hathaway, who is troubled by his heart. Undeterred, Hathaway brings the crew to his house for breakfast.
Planet Mars

Wilder offers Hathaway a rescue back to Earth, but Hathaway's heart fails and he dies, begging Wilder not to call his family because they "would not understand." Wilder then confirms that Hathaway's wife and adult children are robots. As Wilder prepares to depart, one of the crew returns to the house with a pistol, but shortly after returns, sweating, having been unable to bring himself to kill the robotic family even knowing that they were not truly human. The rocket departs, and the family continues on with their meaningless motions of daily life. ~ Abridged Version of The Long Years (January 2008). In 2008, astronomers watched a football pitch-sized lump of rock hurtle through space at a speed of 45000 km/h. The fragment, which had been christened WD-5, was on a collision course with Mars. The impact on 30th January would subsequently be known as the Martian Armageddon. During the period December 2001-November 2005 humans from Earth had colonized the deserted planet, occasionally having contact with the few surviving Martians, but for the most part preoccupied with making Mars a second Earth. WD-5 changed all that, and most humans departed in haste during the December 2007 exodus.

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In 1929, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia. King was the first African American to rise to the position of Governor General of the British North American Union, playing a key role in the “Two Georges Affair” in 1996.

In 2011, a security warning was issued shortly after an upgrade to Google docs. Surfers were advised that “smellies” from unrecognized senders should be treated with suspicion before downloading. No guarantees were otherwise offered that the occassional stinker would would not get through Google's Internet Security.

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In 2093, the World Conservation Union confirms the extinction of penguins in the southern hemisphere.

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In 4625, Guan-di Wang a spiritual leader of the African people in the Chinese Empire, is born in the ancient city of Timbuktu. Before his famous Journey of Enlightenment in 4660, the ethnic Chinese of the Empire had felt that the other ethnic groups under their rule were treated well; his sermons led the Chinese to understand the second-class nature of the citizenship conferred on non-Chinese. With the opening of democracy in the latter half of the century, he was able to bring a new ethnic ethos that saw all citizens of the Empire as equal.

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In 1307, the mullah Malik al-Rai is born in Timbuktu. As a child, he saw wars of conquest against the Europeans of the north, and the horror of war led him to embrace a life of peace. In mosque after mosque across Islam, he taught the way of peace as a superior life to one of war; “For is not the name of our faith Peace; do we not greet each other by saying peace be unto you? Peace is the greatest gift of Allah.”

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In 1929, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia. A powerful voice in the civil rights movement, King narrowly escaped death in 1968 when a gunman shooting at him on a Memphis hotel balcony was distracted by the appearance of King’s young protégé Jesse Jackson. Jackson was killed, but King was unharmed.

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In 1929, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Although deeply spiritual as a young man, Dr. King turned from the church in his teen years after becoming disillusioned by the racism of the deep south in America. Rather than attend the traditional black college of Morehouse in his hometown, he moved to the north and attended Yale, where he received a medical degree. His studies of sickle cell anemia provided a cure for the disease in 1977, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

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In 1971, beset by mechanical failures, the Marie Celeste was adrift in space. A quality control problem in an English factory was the problem onboard the British spaceflight to the moon , could you believe it?.

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In 1929, Comrade Martin King was born in Atlanta, Georgia. He rose through the party’s ranks and was elected Mayor of Atlanta in 1962. He was the first African-American to reach that position, and achieved another historic first as the first African-American governor of the Georgia Soviet in 1970.

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Out of Control

	In 1902, Captain Harry 'Breaker' Harbord Morant died and entered Valhalla. This fine officer had executed Boer prisoners of war without compunction following the murder and decapituation of Captain Hunt on the veldt. The trial was to have long-reaching consequences. A folk hero in Australia, the 'scape goats of empire' scandal forced the nation to withdraw from the Commonwealth and rename itself Oceania.

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	In 1917, the 39th Governor of Texas John Connally was born. During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to finish it by whatever military means necessary. He was wasting his breath, LBJ already had every intention of doing precisely that.

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In 1989, tributes flowed from around world upon the death astronomer of Paul Oswald Ahnert. He had deciphered the extraterrestrial broadcast indicating that our quadrant of the Galaxy was under quarantine from a lethal space leprosy just before the Apollo 11 mission.

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	In 1917, the 39th Governor of Texas John Connally was born. During the Vietnam War, Connally hawkishly urged Johnson to finish it by whatever military means necessary. That assertion included the assassination of John F Kennedy, and Connally's role in the conspiracy was revealed after his death in 1993. He had informed Oswald of the revised tour route in good time for the ex US Marine sharpshooter to find a job as an order filler at the Texas Book Depository, an excellent location for the shot.

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In 1933, Germany's parliament building in Berlin, the Reichstag, was set on fire by agents provocateurs of the Nazi Party. The plan backfired as Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering were killed in the blaze.

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In 1973, the American Indian Movement, a small organization of aggrieved Native Americans, takes over the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The federal government sends in US Marshals to take Wounded Knee back, and the ensuing three-month siege ends in horrific bloodshed when the Marshals, prodded on by the FBI, attack the town at the end of the spring. Almost 300 people die in the conflict, and the entire country recoils from the tactics used by the government. Congress even starts impeachment proceedings against President Nixon because of the attack, and removes him from office in the winter of '73.

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In 1997, Robin Dennell from the Department of Prehistory and Archaeology at the University of Sheffield published the article 'The World's Oldest Spears' in Nature Magazine. Humans of 400,000 years ago were sophisticated big-game hunters. Complete hunting spears discovered in a German coal-mine puncture the idea that these people hadn't the technology or foresight to hunt systematically. One mystery remains. Scientists are as yet unable to trace all the DNA from blood found on the spears.

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In 1033 AUC, Emperor Constantine of Rome was born in Naissus. While emperor, he flirted with the possibility of joining the cult of Christos, a Judean messianic religion that had gained a few converts in Rome, but felt that the restriction of worshipping only one god was too harsh.

	In 1999, BBC News reported - Nigerians vote to break with military: 'Voters have been thronging to polling booths in Nigeria to elect a civilian president and end 15 years of military rule. Queues formed at polling stations soon after they opened for registration. On some street corners groups of exuberant young men shared bottles of palm wine, singing and chanting party slogans. In the cities of Lagos and Abuja, the turnout is reported to be higher than for parliamentary elections last weekend. Up to 40 million Nigerians are expected to cast ballots in a contest between former military ruler Olusegun Obasanjo, who relinquished power for the last elected president in 1979, and former finance minister Olu Falae. The vote is being closely monitored by foreign observers.

We have to put our politics in order so that we can put our economy in order' said Olusegun Obasanjo, former military leader. Trouble was, by the end of his second term the economy as far from in order. Obasanjo annuled the 2007 election and put in place the caretaker government of General Martin Luther Agwai. 'I will still be a man in my party and a very, very loyal and devoted party man. I cannot say goodbye to politics. I will be the chairman of the board of trustees of the party.' explained Obasanjo in his new back-seat driving role.

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	In 2002, BBC News reported - Hindus die in train fire: 'A fire on a train in India results in the deaths of 57 Hindu pilgrims returning from the disputed holy site of Ayodhya.' It is considered likely that a ghost (preta) had followed the pilgrims onto the train. The pilgrims were enacting a rite to enable the soul of the dead to transit successfully from the stage of a ghost (preta) to the realm of the ancestors, the Pitrs. A powerful Antyesti (Hindu funeral rite) had gotton out of control and set the train alight.

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	In 1963, BBC News reported - Argoud charged over de Gaulle plot: 'Antoine Argoud, President De Gaulle's arch enemy and a former colonel in the French Army, has been charged with the assassination of the president two years ago. Argoud was, until now, the only active member of the Algerian Secret Army (OAS) , an organisation opposed to Algerian independence that has used violent methods to promote its cause. He was found by police yesterday tied up and badly bruised in the back of a blue van in central Paris after a tip-off. He claims he was kidnapped from Munich, Germany, by the French secret service, known as Les Barbouzes (the Bearded Ones).

But the man who phoned police about Argoud's whereabouts claimed to be a member of the OAS. He told the police: 'Argoud has betrayed us. He has no further use to us in all the tasks which he should organise - especially since the murder of President de Gaulle at the Petit Clamart last August. 'You can pick him up now. He is very near you.' The blue van was found just yards from the Quai des Orfevres, the French equivalent of Scotland Yard.

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Ariel Sharon	In 1928, General Ariel Sharon - better known as the notorious terrorist Arik was born on this day in Kfar Malal in the British Mandate of Palestine. Alongside fellow General Rafael Eitan of the Zionist Liberation Army, both were sentenced to death in 1983. The court found that Mr Sharon was indirectly but personally to blame for the massacres of more than 800 people in the Sabra and Shatila villages near Beirut in 1982.
The terrorist Arik

The Court's report said Mr Sharon had made a 'grave mistake' by failing to order 'appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre of innocents' by his allies in the Phalange Christian militia. Mr Sharon's defence lawyer said that because he had no knowledge of what would happen when ZLA irregular troops allowed the militia into the camps, he could not be held to account.

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