Shocked

Jesus	In 1843, the next day after Christmas, Scrooge arrives at work early. Cratchit is late and Scrooge pretends at first to be his old selfish self, but then tells Cratchit that he is going to raise his salary. Cratchit is shocked and Scrooge wishes him a Merry Christmas.
Is Love

.

In 2006, on this day Gerald Ford, Jr. died aged 93 in Rancho Mirage, California. Thirty-three years before, Gerald Ford had been confirmed as the new Vice President of the United States, assuming the presidency less than six months later. Ford had become a national figure since his appointment to the Warren Commission, sensationally traveling to Dallas with Chief Justice Earl Warren and other commission members for a series of private meetings in Dallas with Jack Ruby during June of 1964. Upon its release in 1964, all files of the Warren Commission were sealed from public view for 75 years by executive order of President Johnson. In 2039, it was finally revealed that Ford, acting on the explosive information provided by Ruby, had strong-armed the CIA into unseating Vice President Spiro Agnew and President Richard Nixon, gaining him the White House. The CIA exacted revenge, scuppering Ford's re-election attempts by clandestinely backing one of their own, the “Georgia Giant”, James Earl Carter.

.

Lockerbie

In 1988, first clue to Lockerbie crash found Crash investigators have uncovered wreckage from Pan Am flight 103 which may hold the key to the Lockerbie air disaster. Rescue teams are continuing their search for bodies and the death toll currently remains at 240. This number includes Levi Stubbs, Abdul 'Duke' Fakir, Renaldo 'Obie' Benson, and Lawrence Payton who had been members of the band the Four Tops for 42 years.

Michael Charles, who is heading the investigation said it is not known yet if the crash was caused by structural failure or a bomb. Investigators cannot establish if the plane disintegrated before it came to ground, suggesting a bomb, or if it was destroyed by impact on the ground after severe structural failure led to its descent. Aviation experts have said they believe the most likely cause is structural failure after an initial inspection of the black box flight recorders did not disclose anything. Only a split second before radar contact was lost there was a 'faint unquantified noise'.

In 1972, on this day the plans for the inauguration of President-elect Richard M Nixon startled to unravel big time. Former President Harry S. Truman died in Kansas City, Missouri. Then, the incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson suffered a third and fatal heart attack. Vice President Hubert Humphrey had been sworn in for three weeks according to the US Constitution, with President-elect Richard M Nixon arguing that his Government-in-transition should take office earlier than planned.

.

In 1972, on this day Harry S. Truman died in Kansas City, Missouri. Despite his folky appeal that “the buck stops here”, corruption was rife in Truman's cabinet and he lost the 1952 election to his bitter enemy Douglas MacArthur.

.

In 2006, on this day Leslie Lynch King, Jr. died aged 93 in Rancho Mirage, California. As a member of the Warren Commission, and after travelling to Dallas in 1964, Senator King issued a robust defence of Jack Ruby, prompting Earl Warren to describe the Senator as “just plain crazy”. King left the senate shortly afterwards and pursued a career in charitable affairs.

.

Four Tops

In 1988, in a Christmas special, tributes from around the world were paid to Levi Stubbs, Abdul 'Duke' Fakir, Renaldo 'Obie' Benson, and Lawrence Payton who had been members of the band the Four Tops for 42 years until the Lockerbie Crash. TV Channels ran some of their hits: I Can't Help Myself, Reach Out, I'll be there, 'Standing in the Shadows of Love,' It's the Same Old Song. It was just a very very sad moment.

New Plymouth

In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers land at what becomes New Plymouth in Massachusetts. Today, New Plymouth is the capital of an Anglophone pocket of North America. Surrounded by a patch work quilt of nations, European and Amerindian, English is currently the fourth popular language in the continent after French, Spanish and Dutch.

In 1861, the United States government refused to free Confederate diplomatic envoys James M. Mason and John Slidell. While traveling to take up the post of Confederate envoy to Britain and France, on the British mail steamer RMS Trent, the ship was stopped by USS San Jacinto on November 8, 1861. Mason and John Slidell were confined in Fort Warren, Boston Harbor, precipitating the Trent Affair that brought Britain into open war with the United States of America.

Mason

Truman

In 1972, on this day Harry S. Truman, a former President, died in Kansas City, Missouri. The 33rd US President Harry S Truman had honoured a pledge to the American people. The use of a nuclear weapon on Tokyo he had clarified, was a once only tactic that could not be, and should not be, re-used. The post-war world was a great deal more complex than the world of 1945, and the weapon had become a great danger to the continuation of life on earth. Out office of office, Truman had led a peace movement that had delivered disarmament during the peace era of the late 1960s.

In 1979, Soviet Special forces troops take over presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan. The Al-qaeda government of President Osama Bin Laden flees the capital, appealing to their American allies for assistance in their hour of need.	Bin Laden

In 1972, on this day Harry S. Truman died in Kansas City, Missouri. Once considered a Presidential candidate, Truman was forced to withdraw from the 1944 Campaign Race after his $10 membership of the Ku Kux Klan emerged.

.

In 0, a young Hebrew couple, the woman heavy with child, were given shelter in an inn in Bethlehem. The innkeeper, whose wife had just had a baby, took pity on them and gave them his finest room free of charge.

.

In 2006, on this day Gerald Ford, Jr. died aged 93 in Rancho Mirage, California. Ford was the only person to occupy the White House who had been elected neither to the presidency nor the vice-presidency. His decision to intervene in Vietnam was therefore all the more controversial, because in his two and half years as President, Ford had never faced, nor planned to face the voters. This window of oppportunity presented the congressional-military-industrial complex with a window of opportunity which they seized with both hands.

.

My Long Farewell

August 27th, 2007

Digg this

Don't forget - Birthday Contest for Steve – November 22, 1967. Send in an alternate birthday for him for us to post!

Robbie's Long Goodbye: I'm sure that some of you have been anticipating this – I have decided to turn over TIAH to my Co-Historian, Steve, who has been doing most of the work here since he started, anyway. I will be starting another project, The RATMANifesto, which will be more along the lines of what I am writing now. This week, I'll be making the changes that Steve wishes to see in the design of TIAH before I hand over things to him, and I'll be writing a note of fond farewell each day as I do so. I have a couple of Guest Historians who have sent in material for future dates, and I will suggest to Steve that he take advantage of the great pool of talent out there among the Alternate Readership. We'll be letting you know by the time Steve takes over whether that will be the case. Steve has also graciously asked that I post from time to time, and I'm sure that I will – who could resist being the Visiting Alternate Professor Emeritus? But, this week will mark my last as your chief Alternate Historian, and so I will have maudlin farewells at the beginning of each post as I make them. Thank you for your attention, and your readership over the last three years.

Jesse Owens	In 1935, American athlete Jesse Owens commented on the decision by United States Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage to withdraw the participation of the American athletics from the Games of the XI Olympiad in Archona, capital city of the Dominion of Draka.
With Owens expected to win up to four gold medals, a tinge of bitterness could reasonably be expected from most human beings. It is widely repeated that Chief Justice von Shrakenburg "snubbed" Jesse Owens and his achievements. Brundage believed that politics had no place in sport; von Shrakenberg feared sport would define politics by debunking the Draka assertion of white supremacy. Owens said, "I think journalists showed bad taste in criticizing the man of the hour in the Dominion of the Draka". One can only wonder if his tongue had crept into his cheek before making this memorable statement.
~ variant entry by Steve Payne: details of the Draka World have been used to celebrate the genius of S.M. Stirling

In 1868, in Lee Allred's West of Appomattox US Secretary of State General Robert E. Lee receives a chilly welcome in the Foreign Office. Britain's continued alliance with the Confederacy is creating major problems for the defeated North. Officially ignored, he finds a deeper game is afoot.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

In 1950, UN Commander in Chief for the Korean Peninsula General Douglas MacArthur ordered the evacuation from Pusan. He told the people of South Korea “I will return”, a promise he was unable to keep.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

BITBBH	In 2007, troubled Pals series star Jennifer Anniseed announced a trial separation from her husband of only six weeks, the TV celebrity formerly known as the Bear in the Big Blue House. Saddened, BITBBH suggested that Jen had never got over Bradley Putz and didnt really want a bear for all seasons at all.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

"Old Blood and Guts" Part 1 (1885-1918) - General George Smith Patton III has died, aged eighty. He was survived by his wife of fifty-five years Banning Ayer, the daughter of a wealthy textile baron. The Pattons had two daughters Beatrice Smith (died 1953) and Ruth Ellen. Their son George Smith IV was a 1946 graduate of West Point, serving in Korea as a company commander. In Vietnam he commanded the 11th Armored Cavalry as a colonel during three tours of duty there, before retiring from the Army in 1980. Alongside his contemporary cavalryman General George Armstrong Custer, George Patton III was instrumental in the development of armored warfare during the mid-20th. In World War I General John "Black Jack" Pershing assigned Patton to the newly formed United States Tank Corps. Depending on the source, he either led, or was an observer at the Battle of Cambrai in which first tanks were used as a significant force. From his successes (and his organization of a training school for American tankers in Langres, France), Patton was promoted to major and then lieutenant colonel and was placed in charge of the U.S. Tank Corps, which was part of the American Expeditionary Force and then the First U.S. Army. He took part in the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, September 1918, and was wounded by machine gun fire as he sought assistance for tanks that were mired in the mud.

~ alternate obituary from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to re-examine the significance of a controversial historical figure.

Castle Bonny	In 1943, British Prime Minister Oswald Mosley and King Edward VIII presented the view of the British Government to the movie Castle Bonny which premièred eight days before on Broadway.
The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and starred Cary Grant as Dick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund and Paul Henreid as resistance leader Victor Laszlo, caught in a love triangle. The rekindled romance between Blaine and Lund was set during Great War II in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, off the Bight of Bonny – then controlled by the Nazi Protectorate of Britain. The final scene shows Dick, Laszlo and a detachment of Free British soldiers on a ship, to incorporate the Allies' 1943 invasion of England. “This unpleasant and beastly business will shortly come to an abrupt end” said the King from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. “The invasion or the movie reviews?” quipped the Prime Minister and they both laughed. Actually, it was no laughing matter, because that very day both had reluctantly approved the Nazi decision to use gas to repel the Free British Forces racing up the south coast at uncomfortable fast speed for the Fascists.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 2127, through the functioning of the Hussein-Sadat time dilation device, and assisted by the kidnapping by the Eurasian fugitive known as Brent first Asian QC Kim Hollis and the Attorney General return to the London office of Lord Peter Goldsmith on 11 March 2003.	Goldsmith
Goldsmith is being strongly encouraged to leave his wife Joy of 33 years in favour of Hollis. He is also being prevailed upon to issue confidential legal advice to the Prime Minister of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that British involvement in a land invasion of Iraq would be illegal due to the absence of a UN Security Council Resolution explicitly sanctioning participation by the “coalition of the willing”. Neither prospect was particularly savoury. People just didn't seem to understand the difference between private and public morality, really – it was quite maddening.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

USS Eldridge	In 1943, on this day the U.S. naval destroyer escort Eldridge was commissioned by the ..
.. Navy for Project Rainbow. In a military application of Albert Einstein’s unified field theory, the destroyer escort was fitted with powerful generator equipment, designed to distort electromagnetic radiation and gravity, rendering the ship invisible to radar. On or before October 28 1943 USS Eldridge was rendered invisible to human observers for a brief period of time. Upon her return, she left a very visible tear in the fabric of the Universe. The observers reported a thermal distortion much like the running of gas out of a pipe, or hot air rising off the desert. By the time President Truman arrived for a personal viewing on October 30th, there were some seriously worried people on the Project. That included Albert Einstein, who offer absolutely no guarantees to the President that the tear could be fixed up.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1962, on this day the Mariner 2 was launched to Venus. On the way it measured for the first time the solar wind, a constant stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun. It also measured interplanetary dust, which turned out to be more scarce than predicted.	Mariner 2
And something else was discovered which the Mariner 2 was not simply designed to report. The spacecraft is now defunct in a heliocentric orbit, where it is bristles with a virulent space plague.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Cool stuff - Let us know where you are on Frappr! and We've been Dugg

We have links again! Yay, us. Check them out on the side of the page, and if you have some suggestions, send them to us!

Visit the Co-Historian's store -

A Hinted Confession

August 26th, 2007

Digg this

The Announcement

Don't forget - Birthday Contest for Steve – November 22, 1967. Send in an alternate birthday for him for us to post!

Alternate Historian's Note: Back to the Porno Universe story!

After I was finished luxuriating in Willie's tub, I got out and dried off in the wind box she kept next to the bath. The wind box was one of my people's inventions, rather than an Arythiok machine, but I could tell that Willie had made modifications to it, because the gentle caresses of the air on my body were just too sensual. Most of the wind boxes made in my home feel like you're getting dried off by a hurricane.

Clean and refreshed now, I looked for my old clothes and noticed that Willie had spirited them off and replaced them with a fresh set. I hadn't remembered leaving anything here the last time I stayed with her, but she was both a generous and a resourceful hostess. I put on the shirt and pants, both of which were tailored perfectly and of a very tasteful style, and looked at myself in the mirror. I supposed I was presentable again.

I walked down to the living room just in time to see Willie switch off the holo after saying what I think was a goodbye in Arythiok. She looked around at me, her skin dark again. “Forgive me, I was just talking to an old friend,” she said, hurriedly getting up and heading to the kitchen. “I have dinner prepared if you would like to eat.”

“Who was the old friend?” I didn't know if she would answer, but it never hurt to ask.

“Someone from my ship,” she said, a much more direct answer than I was expecting. I followed her quickly into the kitchen; if she had picked now as the time to talk to me about her past, I wasn't going to let a moment waste. “She is related to me, in a complicated manner that I'm not sure I can explain in your language.” Her skin was lightening, but her eyes were still jade. “We shared a soul once.”

I shook my head. “For breakfast, or...”

Her eyes shaded from green to red, and she answered me, “We were once one soul. You know that we recycle souls; all the talk shows buzzed about that for years. But we never said what we recycle them into.”

I could hardly find my voice. “Are you going to say now?”

The red faded from her eyes and she stared deeply into my own. Now, I knew she was telepathic. I could feel her reading my mind, exploring my motivations and trying to deliberate what I would do with the knowledge she held. I've been read by telepaths before, but this time felt so different – almost as if my soul were being weighed. After a very long time in my head, she finally said, “I believe so. Your recent experience makes me believe that you will be able to understand my own past with some sympathy.”

Jesse Owens	In 1935, the sporting world was rocked by Chief Justice von Shrakenberg's decision to deny a travel permit to Jesse Owens. In protest the American athletics team withdrew participation from the Games of the XI Olympiad in Archona, capital city of the Dominion of Draka. United States Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage had initially stated that "politics has no place in sport".
With Owens expected to win up to four gold medals, von Shakenberg feared that sport could have profound consequences for politics, by debunking the Draka assertion of white supremacy. Brundage now threw his support behind anti-fascists who planned to host a People's Olympiad in Barcelona at the Estadi Olímpic de Montjuïc. Archona's bid had been preferred over Barcelona by the International Olympics Committee in April, 1931. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War led to the cancellation of this alternative games to protest the 1936 Olympics.
~ variant entry by Steve Payne: details of the Draka World have been used to celebrate the genius of S.M. Stirling

In 1861, in Lee Allred's West of Appomattox General Robert E. Lee opposed the secession of his home state of Virginia, accepting President Lincoln's offer to command United States forces. A half dozen years later, Robert E. Lee is dispatched to London because Britain's continued alliance with the Confederacy is creating major problems for the defeated North.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

Kurt Vonnegut	"I wrote the Air Force back then, asking for details about the raid on Dresden, who ordered it, how many planes did it, why they did it, what desirable results there had been and so on. [I was told] that information was top secret still. Secret? My God – from whom?" ~ Kurt Vonnegut speaking about the fire-bombing of Dresden, the city he described as the “Florence of the Elbe”
Dresden

Kurt Vonnegut was a fourth-generation German-American living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much), who, as an American Infantry Scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden. In 1968, Kurt Vonnegut would get answers all these questions and more after he was seized by alien occupants of a flying saucer from the Planet Tralfamadore.

~ variant entry by Steve Payne: extensive use of original material has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

In 2002, in Roland J. Green' George Custer Slept Here forward landings near Civitavecchia permit a result in which Rome may fall seven months early. Unlike the later Market Garden and Inchon forward attacks, Civitavecchia is a disaster in which Custer dies during a desperate Last Stand.

~ variant from Steve Payne: extensive use of original content has been made to celebrate the author's genius.

In 1914, the Russian First and Second Armies led by Generals Alexander Samsonov and Paul von Rennenkampf defeated a much smaller force of German troops at the Battle of Tannenberg. Despite the tactical brilliance of Colonel Max Hoffmann, the new High Command consisting of Hindenburgh and Ludendorff arrived too late to prevent the destruction of German Corps on the Eastern Front. The march on Berlin was relentless, and it would appear that nothing could now stop the Russian Steamroller.

~ entry by Co-Historian Steve Payne

In 2006, at the food court a Canadian customer asked "Can I get an ice cappuccino?". The next customer was a somewhat startled English-born immigrant who asked "Can I have an ice cappuccino please?". Startled because he had never thought of ordering as ordering. Surely, an order was a polite request not an aggressive stock inquiry?

~ entry by Co-historian Steve Payne

Castle Bonny	In 1943, former War Leader Winston Churchill gave his public view of Castle Bonny which premièred seven days before on Broadway. The film was directed by Michael Curtiz, and starred Cary Grant as Dick Blaine, Ingrid Bergman as Ilsa Lund and Paul Henreid as resistance leader Victor Laszlo, caught in a love triangle. ..
.. The rekindled romance between Blaine and Lund was set during Great War II in the Nigerian city of Port Harcourt, off the Bight of Bonny – then controlled by the Nazi Protectorate of Britain. The final scene shows Dick, Laszlo and a detachment of Free British soldiers on a ship, to incorporate the Allies' 1943 invasion of England. “The bulldog spirit runs through the whole film, ” said Churchill from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York “we shall fight on the south downs, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets of the home counties, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." Privately Churchill considered the movie quite dreadful. Of greater concern was the pressing need to position himself as the leader of the liberated British nation. Naturally, he and not the Head of the British Government in Exile, Lord Halifax was the right man for the job.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 2127, through the functioning of the Hussein-Sadat time dilation device, and assisted by the kidnapping by the Eurasian fugitive known as Brent, first Asian QC Kim Hollis and her lover the Attorney General arrive in Doha, Qatar. Brent has ..	Kim Hollis
.. but a moment to explain that the world of 2127 is most definitely not a Newt Gingrich pipe dream. The UN has been reconstructed and is run by first nations. Indigenous control has been re assumed of the Turtle Island (America), the Dreamtime (Australia) and Eurasians have returned to semi-barbarism, starving in the unheated and unlit city slums. “Peter, “ says Hollis “ this is terrible, you must alter the legal advice to Tony Blair!”. Goldsmith frets, he has to tell the Prime Minister of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland that he is having an extra-marital affair with the first Asian QC, and also he has decided to rule that invasion of Iraq is illegal. His credibility will be in tatters, and people will suspect he has been “got to” by Hollis. OMG, people might even think he is deep sleeping with an al-Qaeda deep sleeper agent!
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Duckies!	In 1998, SM Sterling's third book the Stone Duckies portrays the ultimate triumph of the Domination. A bio-psychological virus based on peppermint flavoured herbal tea defeats the Alliance for Democracy, who flee to a distant star led by Arnold Schwarzeneggar. It was all done in the best possible taste.
~ entry by Steve Payne: I've always thought there was a slightly sadomasochistic undertone to the over-caricatured fascists of the Draka taking over the world and skewering French peasants on stakes etc. My exagerrated satire of the already exagerrated Drakas of S.M. Stirling's novels (Marching through Georgia, Drakas, Stone Dogs etc) who are just a bit too inhumanely tough and hence "camped" up in my variant.

De Gaulle	In 1944, Charles de Gaulle marched into Paris at the head of Free French Forces. Of course this would never have been possible without the American entry into the war in 1941. Both nations bonded during Operation Torch, conquered North Africa together and then invaded the soft under belly of Europe before finally defeating ..
.. Hitler in 1945. Throughout his long-life, and his Presidency, de Gaulle could never forgive perfidious albion. Lord Halifax had maintained a policy of neutrality as France stood alone, refusing even to supply de Gaulle and the Free French Forces in North Africa with arms during the hard days that followed the Battle of France.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

In 1914, on this day the Russians 2nd Army defeated the Germans in the Battle of Tannenberg, a decisive engagement which resulted in the almost complete destruction of the German 8th Army. Inside of three weeks, the Russian Commanders of the 1st and 2nd Armies, Alexander Samsonov and Paul von Rennenkampf would enter Berlin. ..	Battle of Tannenberg
.. Such was their triumph that the Generals settled the bitter personal feud that had existed since they fought at the train station at Mukden in 1905.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Cool stuff - Let us know where you are on Frappr! and We've been Dugg

We have links again! Yay, us. Check them out on the side of the page, and if you have some suggestions, send them to us!

Visit the Co-Historian's store -