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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Redux

In 1786, Rip Van Winkle awoke to find an old firelock lying by him, the barrel incrusted with rust, the lock falling off. There was no sign of “Wolf” his dog, nor the band of strangers. Perhaps the grave roysters of the mountain had put a trick upon him, and having dosed him with liquor, had robbed him of his gun.

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In 2007, the Jackson 7 will tour in 2008 with Janet Jackson, announced her brother Jermaine. Rumours about a possible reunion of the pop legends has been rife for some time, culminating in claims from promoter Leonard Rowe recently that live dates were being planned. Jermaine Jackson has now given the clearest indication yet that the comeback is on and will take place next year, featuring their most famous member. "Janet will be involved. We want to tour. We want to touch the lives of everybody who's bought our records and supported us. "It will probably start here first, but it will be sometime in 2008. That's our plan", he told the BBC in a new interview. The last album from the Jackson 7 - Janet, La Toya, Michael, Jermaine, Marlon, Tito and Jackie - was "2300 Jackson Street" in 1989.

Kennedy

In 1979, Stanley Shapiro wrote the third in a series of articles entitled A Time to Remember in which the journalist was sharply critical of post-Vietnam Foreign Policy. Better for the US to have been humbled by the war in Vietnam and then this ultra-belligerance would have been nipped in the bud, and Westmoreland sent off into a quiet retirement was Shapiro's view.

The build-up of Soviet troops on the Afganistan border was well underway, and the United States had began sending aid to anti-Soviet, Afghan Islamist factions on July 3, 1979. In Shapiro's view, a military standoff was fast arriving, and the belligerance of the US Leadership would force a confrontation, perhaps a nuclear one. Kennedy's crisis management skills would have been prevented such an outcome, as he demonstrated over his careful management of the Cuban missiles crisis. Trouble was, he had made too many enemies in the military, and it is was these individuals who were now driving events in the White House.

Monty on the Rhine

In 2000, Douglas Niles and and Michael Dobson published Monty on the Rhine. In this the counterfactual novel the July 1944 bomb plot failed to kill Hitler. The plotters are rounded up and executed. Meanwhile, Hitler continues a two-front war and fires German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. A resurgent Bernard Montgomery triumphs at a very different Battle of the Bulge.

Hobos	In 1963, the strange being known as Snake Eyes entered closing mode as the number of critical issues was at last diminishing. The “three Hobos” who formed the first cross fire team included CIA Master Agent E. Howard Hunt. A double had been sent to a Washington Trial and therefore Snake Eyes had an alibi. The other two Hobos were already buried in the Texan desert. Snake Eyes instructed officers to very publicly march three vagrants out the Dallas Police Head quarters, this problem required false evidence to be placed.

in 1973, Gerald Ford was confirmed as the new Vice President of the United States, almost exactly ten years to the day since he had been appointed to the Warren Commission. Ford had travelled with Justice Earl Warren and other commission members for a series of private meetings in Dallas with Jack Ruby during June of 1964. Ruby predicted "a whole new form of government is going to take over this country, and I know I won't live to see you another time”. A fundamentally honest man, Ford had decided there and then that he would make a bid for the White House and stop the military-industrial complex in its tracks. Whilst he would later appear weak in his response to the Fall of Saigon, Ford saw clearly that the dystopian future predicted by Ruby had been avoided. Whilst the American people did not re-elect him, they did turn instead to Jimmy Carter a decent man of the same mindset.	Ford

Goldwater	In 1965, the Pentagon tells U.S. President Barry Goldwater that if planned operations were to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. Goldwater tells the Pentagon advisors to get some options. Some more options. Asked for a preference, Goldwater suggests they “Lob one [nuclear weapon] into the men's room in Hanoi”.

In 1973, applying the Twenty-fifth Amendment the United States Senate voted 92 to 3 to confirm Gerald Ford as Vice President of the United States (on December 6, the House confirmed him 387 to 35). The military-industrial complex was simply enraged that Ford allowed Saigon to fall, and on September 22, 1975 in San Francisco, California, CIA patsy Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at Ford from 40 feet (12 m) away killing him instantly.	Ford

Trapped

The Violent yet peaceful death of Marvin Lee Aday Part II ~
Marvin put the Permacover notebook into the Triumph's saddlebag. He capped the pen and clipped it in his pocket. He put the muzzle of the Colt into his mouth and looked up at the blue sky. He thought of a game they had played when they were children, a game the others had teased him about because he never quite dared to go through with it. There was a gravel pit out on one of the back roads, and you could jump off the edge and fall a heartstopping distance before hitting the sand, rolling over and over, and finally climbing up to do it all over again. All except Marvin. Marvin would stand on the lip of the drop and chant, One .. . Two . . . Three! just like the others, but the talisman never worked. His legs remained locked. He could not bring himself to jump. And the others sometimes chased him home, shouting at him, calling him Marvin the Pansy. He thought: If I could have brought myself to jump once . . . just once . . .I might not be here. Well, last time pays for all.
Marvin Lee Aday	He thought: One . . . Two . . . THREE! He pulled the trigger. The gun went off. Marvin jumped. ~ Stephen King, The Stand Book III Chapter 64. ~ "Bat Out of Hell", Meatloaf, 1976 Click Symbol to Play Clip Shortly after his mother died, his father, in a drunken rage, tried to kill him with a knife, and he barely managed to escape after they had a bad fight. After Marvin got his inheritance from his mother's death, he fled to Los Angeles with Nadine Cross. But Nadine was promised to another - the Walkin' Dude. They had sprung a trap, and left Marvin for dead.
Meatloaf

But I can't stop thinking of you, and I never see the sudden curve until it's way too late. I never see the sudden curve 'till it's way too late. Then I'm dying at the bottom of a pit in the blazing sun. Torn and twisted at the foot of a burning bike. And I think somebody somewhere must be tolling a bell. And the last thing I see is my heart, still beating, breaking out of my body, and flying away, Like a bat out of hell.

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In 1945, the author Kurt Vonnegut became unstuck in time. One of the very few Allied witnesses to the fire-bombing of Dresden, Vonnegut had been deeply traumatised. Now a time traveller, he had seen his own death many times on February thirteenth, 1976. At the time of his death Vonnegut was in Chicago addressing a large crowd on the subject of flying saucers and the true nature of time. He had to cross three international boundaries in order to reach Chicago. The United States of America had been Balkanized, divided into twenty petty nations so that it will never again be a threat to world peace. Chicago has been hydrogen-bombed by Angry Chinamen. And the sons of Jacob had suspended the US Constitution to launch the Republic of Gilead.

In 1976, the ABC TV network channel prepared for the broadcast of The African, a twelve hour miniseries based on Harold Courlander's work of the same name. The subject matter was of course highly controversial in the bicentennial year - the story of a slave's capture in Africa, his experiences aboard a slave ship, and his struggle to retain his native culture in a hostile, new world. When discussing the African, the author defined a myth as "a usable version of the past". Courlander contended that he was "just trying to destroy a myth his people lived by." Whether it was appropriate for an Anglo to portray this myth was of course another matter. Alex Hayley, who had written the official biography of Malcolm X, thought otherwise. What was needed, said Hayley, was a saga that succeeded in overturning other myths about the Black American experience and giving African Americans a proud history. Only an African-American author could achieve this.

Ford

In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was published. Simon Burns' masterful entry "What if Sara Jane Moore had missed?" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario where Gerald Ford had served as U.S. president until 1985. Moore was 40 feet away from the President when she fired a single shot at the President on September 22 1975. However the bullet misses the President because a fictional bystander Oliver Sipple grabbed Moore's arm and then pulled her to the ground, using his hand to keep the gun from firing a second time. Sipple said : "I saw [her gun] pointed out there and I grabbed for it. [...] I lunged and grabbed the woman's arm and the gun went off." The single shot which Moore did manage to fire from her .38-caliber revolver ricocheted off the entrance to the hotel and slightly injured a bystander.

In 1940, in response to Germany's levelling of Coventry, England two days before, Sir Arthur Travers Harris commander of RAF Bomber Command orders the destruction of Hamburg. When Britain is finally starved into submission and defeat in 1945, Harris is one of many high profile war criminals handed over to Nazi authorities for trial at Nuremberg where he suicides hours before his planned execution.

Bomber Harris

James Herbert

In 1980, a simple little village in England was quickly ripped apart by a devastating earthquake. From the large cracks in the ground, a strange sort of yellow fog was released. And when people come in contact with this fog, they soon start to go completely insane. Chaos ensues along with murder, self mutilation and destruction. Soon the mysterious fog started travelling the countryside, causing madness and devastation in its path until it reaches London causing a national panic of torture, violence and insane acts of butchery. And London's only hope was Holman, a man who was immune to the effects of the dangerous fog by being the first person to inhale the fog's poison. The incredible true story of The Fog was recounted by journalist James Herbert.

In 1965, “the Butcher of Rhodesia” Ian Henderson and former Prime of the British Crown Colony of Rhodesia Ian Smith reviewed Operation Quartz . This plan envisaged placing Rhodesian troops at strategic points from which they could simultaneously wipe out the terrorists at the Assembly Points and assassinate Mugabe and the other terrorist leaders at their campaign headquarters. The strike would be assisted by Puma helicopters of the South African Air Force and would involve the participation of elite Recce units of the South African army. Clearly the Rhodesians had discussed Operation Quartz with their counterparts in the SADF and obtained their approval and co-operation.

Ian Smith

Lord Soames had already agreed to allow 400 South African troops into the country in order to protect the Beitbridge area, the main route of escape for whites if the situation were to degenerate into chaos and all-out war. In fact the number of men that the SADF sent across the border was closer to 1,000, although some were later withdrawn following protests by Mugabe.