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.

Destiny

Al Gore	In 2009, with an appropriate sense of history the long awaited re-unification talks finally began in Richmond, Virginia. In a powerful opening speach, CS President Al Gore masterfully connected the unfinished business of former President Bush's last State of the Nation address with the 'unfinished work' of Lincoln's Gettysburg address ~ The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
CS President

Startled, Hillary Rodham accidentally knocked over a glass of mineral water. Gore remarked that the US President looked like she had seen a ghost. Joked, shall we say, because the Confederate delegation was fully aware that Rodham had seized upon the dissolution as a populist issue to seize the White House. But in fact, the restless ghost of Abraham Lincoln was the primary reason for Rodham's arrival in the Confederate capital. It's well known how Lincoln anguished over the horrors of the Civil War. His spirit may have continued worrying long after his death. Calvin Coolidge's wife reported seeing on several occasions the ghost of Lincoln standing with his hands clasped behind his back, at a window in the Oval Office, staring out in deep contemplation toward the bloody battlefields across the Pototmac. Lincoln's ghost seems to have been most active during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, perhaps because they were both in power at times of great war for the United States. During their 13-year occupancy of the White House, the Roosevelts used the former Lincoln bedroom as a study for Eleanor, the first lady. Although she never claimed to have seen Lincoln's spirit, Eleanor spoke of the sense of someone watching her as she worked in the room. She believed Lincoln was there with her. ~ Paranormal Phenomena.

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Wrathful Boy King	In 1923, in an act of impatient curiosity Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt. Whilst unwrapping the linens of the mummy the skull of the ancient king fell away from the body causing a dent in the skull. Egyptians believed a king could only be immortal if the body rested undisturbed, and so it proved to be the case as the wrathful boy king rose to kill not only Carter and fellow grave-robbers Lord Carnarvon and Lady Evelyn Herbert but all the British on the Nile.
Tutankhamun

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In 1000, millenialists capture the Vatican in Rome and assassinate Pope Silvester II. Their leader, Budo de Stella, crowns himself Pope and decrees that all who oppose him oppose Christ; he claims to be the risen savior. Over the next three decades, the Catholic Church is wracked by religious war as the millenialists fight those who consider de Stella the Anti-Christ.

In 2008, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was informed that the Middle East master plan emailed to President Mahmoud Abbas was virus infected. An assistant at State had plugged a personal storage device into his laptop and infected the document pack. Now Mr Abbas was viewing some remastered Baywatch scenes from the mid-eighties.

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In 1940, the German tanker Altmark is boarded in neutral Norwegian waters by sailors from the British destroyer HMS Cossack, a breach of Norwegian neutrality known as the notorious Altmark Incident at the beginning of World War II. By then the fascist powers of Anglo-America were well set on the path to war and had stopped trying to keep up appearances to the contrary; rather they were agitators, keen to reverse the unbroken series of misadventures that had beset both nations since the Treaty of Versailles.

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In 1951, the Soviet Union's leader, Joseph Stalin, announces that his country will enter the war in Korea in support of the northern Communists, in an effort to balance what he calls the 'warmongers' of the west. The attack splits the United Nations, crushing the hopes of those who wanted to use the world body as a forum for ending wars, rather than starting them. Soviet troops in North Korea soon overwhelm the meager forces that the UN had in place there, and the United States responds to the escalation by throwing in almost a half-million troops. The war then spills beyond Korea's borders when British troops invade the Chinese mainland, and by 1952, all of east Asia is embroiled in the conflict. China urges the Soviets to use nuclear weapons, but Stalin resists - he wants territory, and feels that irradiated territory is useless to him. Similarly, President Truman of the United States resists calls to 'nuke the commies' from the right-wingers in his own ranks. Although in public he supports his decision to use atomic bombs against the Japanese, in private he has vowed never to use such weapons again. The war drags on for 11 years until the two sides finally realize that neither can win, and declare a truce in 1961. Privately, President Johnson of America and Premier Khrushchev of the Soviet Union promise that the proxy wars between their two countries are over.

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In 1959, Cuban Prime Minister Miro Cardona has his rival, Fidel Castro, deposed from his position as commander of the armed forces, in an effort to maintain power against the more radical elements in the Cuban revolution. Castro and his supporters temporarily take up arms against Cardona, but was convinced to reconcile with Prime Minister Cardona by his old ally and friend, Ernesto Guevara. Castro entered the Cuban parliament as a representative of his home region, the Oriente province, and became an outspoken check on the moderate wing of the revolution as they pushed democracy forward in Cuba. Prime Minister Cardona stepped down in 1965, and Castro began the first of his 7 campaigns for the office, all losing. He has been quite effective in Parliament, though, pushing universal health care and disaster recovery programs that are the envy of the developing world.

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In 301, Abu Dja'far Mohammed Djarir al-Tabari, historian of the early days of Islam, is called to the embrace of Allah at the age of 83. His powerful stories of Mohammed and the first faithful are credited with converting most of the pagan lands surrounding the holy land, and giving Islam its first great writer.

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In 2003, Washington soviet surrenders to the Soviet States of America, leaving Idaho as the sole remaining remnant of the People's Republic of America. In desperation, the soviet's leaders attempt to reconvene the peace talks with Washington, D.C., but they are rebuffed since the S.S.A. feels that victory is imminent.

In 1600, Giordano Bruno was released from the Inquisition's custody after a long discussion with the Pope. Bruno's work flirted with an almost atheistic view of the universe. Pope Clement VIII met with a mysterious end after this meeting, and Bruno fled Europe for the Americas to escape the reach of the Inquisition.

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In 1985, BBC News reported: Falklands' row civil servant resigns - Ministry of Defence assistant secretary Clive Ponting resigns from his post over the Belgrano affair. In a conscience attack, Ponting had revealed the details of Margaret Thatcher`s 'Bad Spells'.

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Stephen 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.
Languishing

We are the Unhomed - lost voyagers of the world from desert shore to high cliff cragg, home of men and sylvan sea-edge faery lands-, from dream to dream we set our sails, and smiled at the rainbow of our loss ~ 'The Unhomed'.

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In 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur of the U.S. Navy attempts to convince his superiors that his daring plan to destroy the frigate Philadelphia being held by Tripolitanians will succeed. Although none of them doubt his courage, they do doubt the wisdom of his plan, and order him not to proceed. The Tripolitanians add the Philadelphia to their navy, but it is sunk in an engagement with American ships in 1805.