Streak

	In 1996, French President Jacques Chirac said France would no longer test nuclear weapons after uproar over Pacific tests. The announcement comes a day after France exploded its sixth and biggest nuclear device in the South Pacific. The scandal had begun with the publication of the biopic expose The Web. This account was written by an Englishman, Arnold Delgrange suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Delgrange had led a failed attempt to establish a utopian colony on an island in the Pacific Ocean remote from civilization, which has suffered fall out and been cursed by the original inhabitants.
Web of Lies

As a result, intelligent and communally acting spiders had evolved on the island, acting in a manner that endangered all life in the vicinity. His companion Dr Camilla Cogent first realised that the spiders inhabiting the island chosen for the utopian experiment had evolved intelligence, it is her actions that allowed Arnold Delgrange to survive. Prior to the Delgrange mission, there had been international protests including boycotts of French products since Mr Chirac announced the resumption of testing last June. In a live broadcast to the nation, Mr Chirac said the tests mean that 'the safety of our country and of our children is assured.' He has stopped the planned programme of eight tests early in the face of the outcry at home and abroad. 'I know the decision I made last June may have provoked, in France and abroad, anxiety and emotion,' he said. 'But in an ever-dangerous world, [nuclear weapons] act as a weapon of dissuasion, a weapon in the service of peace.' France will now sign an agreement for a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific this year, as well as the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which unconditionally ends all future tests. However, critics of the test programme believe France has damaged the future of the test ban treaty by encouraging nations like India, Pakistan and China to take a harder line. Moreover, they point to the species endangering threat identified by Delgrange and Cogent. Mr Chirac's popularity ratings have fallen to an all-time low for a new president since he announced his intention to reverse the three-year moratorium on testing established by his predecessor, Francois Mitterrand. During the tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls, French naval vessels clashed with Greenpeace campaigners, confiscating their equipment and arresting crew members. As well as being unpopular at home, the nuclear tests have brought French relations with several other countries to an all-time low. Protests in Australia, New Zealand and other South Pacific countries have been particularly vehement, sometimes ending in violence, and Japan and several European countries have also objected strongly. Only Britain has spoken out in defence of France's right to carry out the explosions - ironic, given the citizenship of Arnold Delgrange. The tests made France the only country apart from China to test weapons of mass destruction since 1992. Yesterday's test, carried out at Fangataufa atoll, was equivalent to approximately 120,000 tonnes of conventional explosives, or six times the force of the bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

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George Bush	In 2008, the morning newspapers reacted disfavourably to President Bush's last State of the Union address. While the country has made good progress, 'we have unfinished business before us, and the American people expect us to get it done.' said Bush. Final status with Richmond had been logg-jammed by years of personal rivalry with Confederate President Al Gore.
Unfinished Business

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In 2003, US President Bush put aside a troubling report from Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice to relax by watching the game alone. Shortly afterwards Bush asphyxiated after choking on a pretzel.

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	In 1820, the madness of King George III came to an end when the rebel Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, deposed and executed him. King Arthur II claimed to be descended from the King Arthur of legend, even going so far as to forge an Excalibur to wield at official occasions. Parliament was unwilling to give up as much power to him as he was demanding, and a new civil war broke out, ending Arthur's reign in 1823.

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In 1968, at 2am a shot rang out in the gardens of Balmoral Castle. Guards rush out to find Queen Elizabeth I holding a rifle and standing over a dying wolf. To their even greater amazement, they watch the dying wolf transmogrify into Prince Charles. Something unspeakable happened in 1946 Her Majesty says, and she has suffered the most dreadful sea change. Now it is finally over and she can get on with her life.

In 1845, more good fortune fell on author Edgar Allan Poe with the publication of his poem The Raven. Poe, the adopted son of a Virginian millionaire, was the luckiest boy at his military academy, always winning at the illicit games he started, and never getting caught running them. With the publication of The Raven in the New York Evening Mirror, he began an unbroken streak of successful novels, story collections and poems.

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In 1958, puritan witch-hunters capture the demon Charles Starkweather ending a killing spree of 11 victims in Nebraska and Wyoming during a road trip with his under-age girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate.

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In 1977, comic Freddie Prinze, battling overwhelming feelings of depression, checked himself into rehab. His inability to perform in his hit show Chico and the Man led to the show's canceling, which left him looking for work when he checked himself out. He embarked on his Sober tour in the summer, and the live album of his act in San Diego went multi-platinum and gave his career some much-needed resuscitation.

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In 1964, septuagenarian Chancellor Adolf Schicklgruber opened the IX Olympic Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria.

	In 1959, in London, England fog brought transport chaos to the Capital City. Dense fog - the worst for seven years - brings road, rail and air transport in many parts of England and Wales to a virtual standstill. The true story was later revealed by John Holman, is a worker for The Department of the Environment investigating a Ministry of Defense base in a small rural village when unexpectedly an earthquake swallowed his car and released a fog that had been trapped underground for many years.

In his account 'The Fog', Holman explained the cause of the disaster - government and military incompetence - these being the reason for the fog's existence, the fog itself being an old self-producing chemical weapon that was buried underground and released during an underground explosion caused by the military while testing arms.

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Thatcher	In 1985, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was snubbed by Oxford dons who refused her an honorary degree. The Iron Lady was generally considered the person most directly responsibile for the countries dramatic turnaround. Yet socialists/academics could not forgive her for the part she played in the Plot to Overthrow Harold Wilson in 1974.
Iron Lady

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Corrie Aquino	In 1987, in a violent coup d'etat, President of the Philippines Corazon Aquino was overthrown by a group of heavily armed rebels. Around 1,000 heavily armed troops wearing gasmasks, surrounded the building just before the attack. The rebels warned that they Aquino she had 15 seconds to surrender over a loud speaker. The rebel leaders Colonel Oscar Canlas and Chief General Fidel Ramos have formed a new military government. Following her resignation President Aquino said: 'Here was a determined attempt to disrupt the affairs of government and those of the people at large. Here was a determined attempt to overthrow the first principle of democracy, which is civilian supremacy by those specially charged with its preservation.'
Forced Out

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In 2002, in his State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush describes regimes that sponsor terror as an Axis of Evil, in which he includes Iraq, Iran and North Korea. W's determined attempts to dismantle the Axis of Evil lead to the nuclear war of 2008, forcing him to withdraw to a bunker at Camp David where he married Condoleeza Rice, dying in 2026 aged 80 years old convinced he had kept 'a charge to keep'.

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In 1947, comic genius Arthur Miller hit paydirt again with his play All My Sons, which opened to rave reviews and huge audiences on Broadway. A radio show based on the play followed, and it even became a hit television series that ran from 1954-1960.

Raven

Hari Seldon	In 926 Foundation Era, on the Planet Terminus, a vault opened and Hari Seldon emerged. This time, in flesh and blood, not the holograms of the previous eight crises. His prediction of the eventual fall of the Galactic Empire, and the apocalyptic predictions around that event, was the reason behind his nickname 'Raven' Seldon. By 20,069 Galactic Era, Seldon had decided that his initial plan was insufficient. He required a panic button.
Psychohistorian

Biographer Gaal Dornick reported that 'had been working up until his last moments on psychohistorical equations; his activated Prinie Radiant was discovered clutched in hand. According to Seldon’s instructions, the instrument was shipped by his colleague Gaal Dornick who had recently emigrated to Terminus.' This was a lie, Gaal Dornick brought Hari Seldon's cryogenically frozen body to the periphery of the galaxy, to be activated by the Prinie Radiant nine hundred thirty years later.

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In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower addressed the nation for the last time in office, issuing a strange warning.

'We face a hostile ideology [communism] global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method ... [warning about what he saw as unjustified government spending proposals] [that] we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by [Ike leans forward for emphasis] the congressional military industrial complex... Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.'

Richard M Nixon was seething with angry. Not only had Ike failed to back him during the campaign, not his former boss was trying toreally spoil things for him.

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In 1596, there were so many black people in England that Queen Elizabeth I demanded that they be expelled from the country. An edict from the Queen, at first it brought no action. However it was then followed up by a Royal Proclamation, issued in 1601.

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In 1776, the defeated General George Washington is astonished by the generous final settlement terms being offered to from King George IV at Buckingham Place. Prepared for the humiliation of crushing terms for the vanquished republicans in the Colonies, rather King George IV proposes a genuine partnership for Anglo-America based on local representation and self-governing taxation. 'No victors, no vanquished' chips in his shadowy adviser Ernest Shackleton by way of explanation.

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In 1819, Simón Bolívar proclaims the Republic of Baja California, the predecessor nation to a twenty-first century mega state on the west coast. Today Spanish speaking citizens enjoy the world's highest per capita income and literacy rates.

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In 1942, Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. Was born in Louisville, Kentucky on this day. Aged just eighteen, Clay, Jr. won the Gold Medal at the Rome Olympics. Four years later Clay beat Sonny Liston to take the World Heavyweight Boxing Championship. Clay had driven to Sonny's home in Denver at one o'clock in the morning, shouted for Sonny to come out and fight him on the spot, and set up a huge bear trap on the lawn. On March 6 influenced by Malcolm X, Clay changed his name to Muhammed Ali, joined the Nation of Islam and retired from boxing to concentrate on the greater fights that lay ahead for the African American people. His baiting of President Lyndon Baines Johnson from the White House lawn was considered the key to Washington's decision to withdraw from Vietnam in 1967, it was just so annoying. Just like Arthur Ashe, draconian measures would be taken by the Division to prevent Clay giving the game away. He really had the establishment on the ropes.

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In 2232 AUC, the Empire of Mali in Africa declared war on its northern neighbors of Rome. The Republic had been encroaching on Malian territory for decades, and the settlement of a small town on Mali’s eastern border by Romans was the final straw. The war between Mali and Rome lasted almost seventeen years, and killed millions in Africa and Europe.

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In 1775, following the example begun by the witch-hunters of Salem, Polish Christians burn 9 women at the stake in Kalisk. The witch-hunter movement reaches its peak in the 19th century as countries that were simply full of witches were taken over by Christians and put to the torch.

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In 1860, Russian playwright Anton Chekhov was born in Taganrog, on the Sea of Azov. His comedies of manner helped the noble class in Imperial Russia forget the troubles of the day like the crushing poverty of the serfs and the communist agitation of the Americans. His last play, Good Comrade Wilson, was a skewering indictment of the communist system as practiced by America.

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In 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower addresses the nation for the last time in office. While his speech begins with time-worn platitudes, he then veers into conspiracy theory, warning Americans of the Military-Industrial Complex and the consequences of its takeover of the country. Just before he starts naming names, though, he suddenly clutches his chest and falls over dead from a heart attack. Most politicians attributed Ike’s remarks to delirium brought on by the heart attack he was obviously suffering from as he began his speech.

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In 1971, British spaceflight Commander's wife Mrs Bert Smith confessed to her sister Betty that she wasn’t sure her Bert would be back tomorrow despite her optimistic statement to reporters. The ill-fated Apollo 13 mission had been too much trouble, it really had.

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Kennedys	A Review of PBS' 'The American Experience: Bobby & Teddy' ~ Tonight, PBS airs the third part of its five-part series on the Kennedy brothers, Bobby and Teddy, and the way they shaped the life of a generation--the tumultuous times that brought President Kennedy to the Oval Office continue to reverberate down to the 2008 election. The first two episodes focused primarily on the family life of the Kennedys, one of the wealthiest and most storied political families in American history.

The first episode was a masterwork on the emergence of ethnic politics in the early part of the last century, and the rise of the Irish Catholics in Boston, from 'Honey' Fitz to James Curley to Joe Kennedy Sr.'s storied career, culminating in his time serving as the American Ambassador to the Court of Saint James. The second episode took up the experience of the family during the Second World War. Like any American family, it was marked with tragedy and triumph, the deaths of Joe Jr. and John leaving indelible mark on Bobby and Teddy, the family's youngest sons, as well as their sisters Eunice and Patricia. The death of their brothers forced father's vast political ambitions to include his daughters, a move some Kennedy biographers have described as proto-feminism; others, noting Joe Sr's ambition, suggest that the post war era leading up to Pat running Bobby's Congressional campaign, and later, her own Senatorial run in California, were just another form of Ma Fergusonism, a way to expand the Kennedy family sweep throughout the country. The third episode ended on a high note, with Bobby becoming Governor of Massachusetts as Teddy took over his Congressional seat. Nonetheless, the looming shadows of the Nixon Administration were problematic--the simmering crises across the globe, from the wars in Cuba and Vietnam, to flashpoints like Czechoslovakia, and the Civil Rights Movement. Though as Governor, there was relatively little that Bobby could do, in the lead up to his election, the third episode noted his reaction to the attacks on Freedom Riders and muted disgust at Nixon's refusal to meet with the leaders of the Civil Rights' Movement during the March on Washington--an action that galvanized Bobby's idealism, while Patricia saw an opportunity to capture the black vote and propel Bobby to the White House at the end of Nixon's second term in 1968. Tonight's episode promises new revelations regarding the conduct of both the Kennedys and Nixon during the 1968 election. Numerous books have been written alleging dirty tricks on both sides--Patricia mobilized the ethnic machines to their fullest, as well as achieving a mass registration drive of black voters--while Nixon, in full flights of paranoid fantasy, hoped to use the power of the federal government to smash 'that damned Catholic choir boy.' The final two episodes will focus on the first and second terms of the Kennedy Administration, with a wildly expanded access to documents, staffers, and family members to create an in-depth psychological profile of the President, his Attorney General, and the Supreme Court Justices he appointed....

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