A Note About A Certain Day

The state of TIAH

April 17th, 2007

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Alternate Historian's Note: We started experiencing a spike in visits yesterday, with a rather large percentage of that spike going to one particular page on our site – the page titled Hitler's Birthday. It has, rather disturbingly, always been a popular destination here, but we've never seen as huge a number of hits on that page like occurred yesterday – in fact, it's still going on today. I have been hoping that it's not because we've gotten ourselves on some Nazi mailing list, but because Hitler's birthday is coming up and we appear 5th in a Google search when you look those words up. It's one of those odd things you accept when you run an alternate history site. Still, this is the largest number of hits I've seen on that page since it went up, and I can't help but think it's caused by something. There was a horrific incident yesterday that people might have thought was sparked by the approaching anniversary – this date seems to bring out lunatics time and time again (there is some dispute as to whether Hitler was born on the 19th or the 20th). It disturbs me that people are drawn to that page, because the one section of the Internet's population that I get threats from comes from those who take Hitler rather more seriously than I do, and I hate the thought of more of them coming here. I haven't been inundated in email or comments calling me various anti-Semitic slurs, so there's hope that we don't have a new Nazi wave coming through the hallowed halls of TIAH. I guess we'll have to wait and see. While I worry, please enjoy our Guest Historian's work...

In 2165 almost two hundred years had passed at Venice Beach since the fateful meeting of Jim Morrison and Ray Manzarek. The teenagers who played basket ball on this day knew nothing of the formation of The Doors. All they knew was basket ball. The great game had been played at Venice Beach long before the fateful meeting, and would continue to be played for a short time to come.

~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

Lord Louis Moun..	In 1972 the Conference in Admiralty House began. In the Chair was Interim Prime Minister Lord Louis Mountbatten and his Deputy Ord Wingate, the delegates were the senior figures in the military government who had ruled Britain for the past five years. Fundamentally, Mountbatten reflected, the officer corps had not come to ..
.. terms with Britain's new position in the world. They had won the war and lost the peace. It was maddening to beat the Japanese in Burmese jungles, yet be defeated by the invisible movements of world trade.  But there it was .
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - You're the Judge!

In 1942 Windsor, Montgomery and Auchinlech take a step further. The attempt to establish the Axis Powers of Anglo-America had ended in failure. US President Charles Lindburgh and British Prime Minister Oswald Mosley were the right men but at the wrong moment in history. Neither Britain nor America wanted a war of defence ..	Edward VIII
..  let alone a war of conquest , public opinion had absolutely no interest in foreign glory. After the financial crises and depression of the 1930s, all they wanted peace and prosperity.
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

RMS Titanic	In 1912 on this day agents of the near-bankrupt White Star Line were paid to supply Journalists with a number of stories in the bars and pubs of Belfast and New York. One story was that the Titanic was carrying a cursed Egyptian mummy. The mummy, nicknamed Shipwrecker, after changing hands several times, and causing many ..
.. terrible things to each of its owners, exacted its final revenge by sinking the famous ship. Another story was that several Catholic shipbuilders reportedly walked off the job in protest when they noticed horrible blasphemies against Catholicism and the Virgin Mary spray-painted by Protestant workers on parts of the ship. Yet another that the hull number 390904 which, when seen in a mirror or written using mirror writing, looks like 'no pope'. And the fourth story was the truth, smuggled out in lies to conceal it – the switch with the RMS Olympic. the two sister ships had been swapped at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in order for the near-bankrupt White Star Line to sink the irreparably damaged sister ship, the RMS Olympic.
~ entry by Steve Payne from counter history in context - You're the Judge!

In 1945 on this day in Strassfurt, Germany, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Boris T. Pash seized half a ton of uranium, foiling Soviet Union plans to build an atomic bomb. He was formerly head of the counter-intelligence organization for Project Manhattan. In 1945 Pash was appointed head of the Alsos Group, organized to search for ..	Manhattan Proje..
.. German scientists in the postwar environment. The mission was to prevent the Soviets, previously Allies but now a potential threat, from capturing any scientists and putting them to work at their own atomic research plants. Uranium piles were also rich 'catches,' as they were necessary to the development of atomic weapons. Pash's efforts set the Soviet atomic program back a decade, by which time, America had established firm control of third world countries with Europeans in full retreat at "end of empire".
~ entry by Steve Payne from Counter History in Context - You're the Judge!

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In 2002, the Catholic Church was astonished by news that Mother Teresa, a globally beloved symbol of saintly devotion to the poor, spent her last fifty years secretly struggling with doubts about her faith. A research team led by Rev. Brian Kolodiechuk of the Missionaries of Charity Order had been examing secret letters for publication in a new biography, Mother Theresa: Come Be My Light. It appears that an unknown researcher had released the letters to the press after being shocked to read "How painful is thus unknown pain - I have no Faith".

	"If there be God- please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul." ~ Secret Letter from Mother Theresa The purpose of the letters was unclear. However the Holy See reacted by suspending the process of beatification, the second step towards possible canonization. The full article is available at National Post

"Sixteen hours ago, a German plane dropped one bomb on an American division in Northern France. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British "Grand Slam," which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed by those who brought war to the continent of Europe. Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But nobody knew any practical method of doing it.

Nazi's Experimental Nuclear Pile	By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to all the other engines of war with with they hoped to enslave the world. Yesterday, we found out that they had succeeded. ~ Harry S Truman, US President Having lost a race against time to defeat Nazi Germany in conventional war, committed to a land invasion before America herself was ready to respond in kind, Truman was trapped in the inescapable logic of nuclear weaponry.
Werner Heisenberg's team at Haigerloch

Missiles on Turkey	In 1962, a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21surveillance flight over Izmir takes photos of American nuclear weapons being installed. Two days later, the Strategic Rocket Forces Marshal Mitrofan Nedelin presents the photographs to Secretary Nikita Khrushchev and the Turkish Missiles Crisis begins.

In 1925, French inhabitants flee an anti-French uprising in Damascus. Just six years before, Ho Chi Minh had persuaded US President Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference that the principle of self-determination applied to the indigenous people languishing in the British Empire and French Union. Sympathy for the entente powers had been soured by the acts of bad faith such as T.E. Lawrence's Arab Revolt, Balfour Declaration inter alia. As the winds of change continued to blow through the southern hemisphere, Europeans were ejected from the Middle East by the end of 1920s. But a few short years later, oil was discovered; decisions affecting the future of the world would no longer be taken in the capital cities of Europe.	Arab Peninsula

Oswald	In 1962, simply the most inexplicable network of contacts was developing. The Soviet double named Alek had arrived in Dallas impersonating the murdered US marine Lee Harvey Oswald. A group of Russian emigres including George de Mohrenschildt helped Alek to settle in. de Mohrenschildt had been close to young Jacqueline Bouvier, who referred to him as "Uncle George". He was dating Jacqueline's mother at the time of her parents divorce and had been engaged to Jacqueline's Aunt Michele. de Mohrenschildt was also very close to George HW Bush

In 2007, whilst returning to the hacked telephone line which serves as a safe "exit" from the Mesh, the group is ambushed by Agents and police officers, and Morpheus is captured in an attempt to save Rat. The group was betrayed by one crew-member, Cypher, who preferred his old life in ignorance of the real world's hardships, and made a deal with the Agents to give them Morpheus in exchange for a permanent return to the Mesh. The betrayal leads to the deaths of all crew-members except Rat, Trinity, Tank and Morpheus, who is imprisoned in a government building within the Mesh.	Cypher

The Bomb

The state of TIAH

August 6th, 2006

in 1945, after watching a film that had been made of the atomic tests going on in New Mexico, and agonizing the entire night over his decision, President Thomas Dewey calls off the proposed use of a nuclear weapon against the Japanese city of Hiroshima. His order barely reaches the Enola Gay in time to stop it from its destined flight over the small Japanese city. To show the Japanese leadership exactly what they have been spared, President Dewey arranges through neutral intermediaries for the Emperor and the top Japanese generals to observe the dropping of an atomic bomb off of the Japanese coast; the incredible explosion horrifies the Emperor, who says that they must surrender to the Americans immediately; but the generals harden his heart, telling him that this must be a bluff, a trick that the Allies are using because they are too afraid of assaulting the main Japanese islands. They refuse the offer of surrender and shore up their defenses, preparing for a conventional invasion. President Dewey reluctantly gives in to his generals, and allows them to use their remaining nuclear bomb against Tokyo, itself. The destruction of their capitol and most of their leadership on August 10th, 1945 results in chaos throughout the Japanese islands, and the Allied forces are able to invade without much resistance, finally ending the war on November 12th. Dewey is so shaken at the images of destruction in Tokyo that he becomes disenchanted with his office, and does not run for reelection in 1948. “I only wished to serve one term because I had presided over the most horrific single war crime in human history,” Dewey wrote in his memoirs. “I should never have allowed them to talk me into using nuclear weapons against Japan, and will carry the guilt of all those deaths to the end of my days.” President Dewey retired to his home state of New York in 1949 and became the world's most vocal opponent of atomic power until his death in 1961.

in 2017, the Pokor, now packed with Amandarans who had been able to talk their way into a berth on the ship, awaits the activation of the golden Jump device by Najib Kasem and the Quarai translator Monkar. They put in earth's coordinates and activate the device nervously. After the flash of brilliant light that the crew of the Eagle has become so used to, they find themselves floating in space around a familiar yellow sun. The humans let out a cheer as the Pokor's sensors detect a blue planet floating about 10 light-minutes in the distance. As soon as the Amandaran crew is told where they are, they join in the cheering. Captain Mawrao of the Pokor, who is now easily the most traveled captain the Quarai have ever produced, orders the ship into orbit around earth, while the Eagle sends a message ahead informing earth of the quite unexpected side-results of their mission to Pindar-Asaki. Commander Patterson tells the European Space Agency that the Amandarans are the best friends that humans could ever hope for in space, and says, “These aliens may look strange, but they are kindred souls, and we should embrace them as they have embraced my small crew for these last two months.” The European Space Agency signals back to the Eagle with permission to land, and to bring Amandaran ambassadors with them.

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The Ultimate Weapon

August 6th, 2005

in the Dreaming, in a last attack on the people, the flies from the Heavens set a great village of the Pindanjaru alight with the fire of the stars. All of the great spirits of the Heavens rally around the people at that point; the flies have made their greatest mistake.

in 1875, Human League terrorists explode a nuclear weapon in the majority-Mlosh city of Qu’Mar, killing 150,000 people. It is the last desperate move of a doomed organization; virtually all sources of funding for the Human League dry up after this hideously barbaric act.

in 4572, Nipponese rebels in Hiroshima defy the Emperor and begin hanging all ethnic Chinese in the city. Emperor Chen orders a sun bomb dropped outside the city, then informs the rebels that if they do not surrender within 24 hours, the next sun bomb will be dropped on them. The rebels give in.

in 1934, Greater Zionist Resistance spies set off a nuclear blast in Berlin. When the world sees the mushroom cloud rising, something seems to turn off in the human spirit; death becomes blasé after the utter destruction of the atomic bomb.

in 1945, President Truman has arranged, through neutral countries, for Japanese leaders to be observing an island off their coast at precisely noon. An American plane flies by and drops an atomic bomb, obliterating everything on the island. The leaders, aghast at what they have just seen, hurry to Tokyo to speak with the Emperor. He orders a surrender; no one could stand against such a weapon.

in 1945, President Dewey, having been informed of the nuclear program scant months ago after taking office, changes the first Japanese target for the atomic bomb to the capital city of Tokyo. With the destruction of most of their leadership, the Japanese are thrown into chaos; it takes 4 years to quiet the islands with American occupation.

in 2000, Mikhail von Heflin and Velma Porter attack the presence controlling Las Vegas. The city itself seems to explode during the struggle; the presence shatters buildings when they gain the upper hand. In order to save the population of Las Vegas, the newlyweds are forced to withdraw.

in 2003, Pope Righteous I destroys the city of Jesu, France, with a nuclear weapon. “The enemies of God shall be consumed in the eternal fire,” he said as Jesu was destroyed. The city had been a hotbed of Protestant rebellion against him.

in 2004, Lalande 25372 goes nova. Everyone on earth watches in horror as the star becomes the brightest object in the sky, next to the sun. Discussions are begun among scientists and government leaders on how to mask the radio transmissions earth sends out every day, in a desperate effort to hide the human race from the galactic civilization of the Elders.


An alternate birthday wish

Your humble alternate historian is about to leave the pleasant decade of the 30's behind and enter into the downhill slope of the 40's on August 14th. Before he does, he would like one simple wish - a contract with a publishing company like Workman Publishing to produce a page-a-day calendar of TIAH. If you are an editor for such a company, or can place us in touch with one, please fulfill this birthday wish!

Thanks to everyone for their generosity!

We have raised a lot from your donations, for which we are VERY grateful! Our situation is no longer as dire, so we don't need to beg for help - thanks so much! Because we like including our readers into the site, though, we will still keep our offer open - everybody who donates $10 or more through our Paypal link will become alternate history entries on the site. When you donate, I will email you asking your preference for a day & timeline; if you don't reply to me, I'll place you in a day that seems to fit your name :) Thanks for your continued support!

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Hiroshima

August 6th, 2004

in 1697, George I, pope of the Holy British Empire during the height of its colonization period, is born. Pope George is responsible for the expansions of the empire in North and South America, as well as Asia and Africa.

in 1875, Human League terrorists explode a nuclear weapon in the majority-Mlosh city of Qu’Mar, killing 150,000 people. It is the last desperate move of a doomed organization; virtually all sources of funding for the Human League dry up after this hideously barbaric act.

in 4572, Japanese rebels in Hiroshima defy the Emperor and begin hanging all ethnic Chinese in the city. Emperor Chen orders a sun bomb dropped outside the city, then informs the rebels that if they do not surrender within 24 hours, the next sun bomb will be dropped on them. The rebels give in.

in 1934, Greater Zionist Resistance spies set off a nuclear blast in Berlin. When the world sees the mushroom cloud rising, something seems to turn off in the human spirit; death becomes blasé after the utter destruction of the atomic bomb.

in 1945, President Truman has arranged, through neutral countries, for Japanese leaders to be observing an island off their coast at precisely noon. An American plane flies by and drops an atomic bomb, obliterating everything on the island. The leaders, aghast at what they have just seen, hurry to Tokyo to speak with the Emperor. He orders a surrender; no one could stand against such a weapon.

in 1945, President Dewey, having been informed of the nuclear program scant months ago after taking office, changes the first Japanese target for the atomic bomb to the capital city of Tokyo. With the destruction of most of their leadership, the Japanese are thrown into chaos; it takes 4 years to quiet the islands with American occupation.

in 1976, actress Soleil Moon Frye is born in Glendale, California. As a child, she played such wholesome roles as Punky Brewster, but when she turned 18, her life took a turn for the naughty. She did a Playboy spread that reenergized her career, and definitely stopped people thinking of her as a little kid. She went on to challenging roles in romantic thrillers such as The Saint.

in 2003, Pope Righteous I destroys the city of Jesu, France, with a nuclear weapon. “The enemies of God shall be consumed in the eternal fire,” he said as Jesu was destroyed. The city had been a hotbed of Protestant rebellion against him.

Beastly

Jesus	In 1843, Jacob Marley's ghost warns Ebeneezer Scrooge that his miserliness and contempt for others will subject him to the same fate Marley himself suffers in death: condemned to walk the earth in penitence since he had not done it in life in concern for mankind. Marley explains that Scrooge's fate might be worse than his because of his selfish life since Marley's death seven Christmases ago. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a chance to escape this fate through the visitation of three more spirits that will appear one by one.
Is Love

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In 1944, the Battle of the Bulge engages the forces of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt in the Belgian Ardennes. The Germans split the Allied line in half, capture Antwerp and encircle four Allied armies, forcing the Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis' favour. The attack was planned in total secrecy, in almost total radio silence and not detected by Ultra.

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In 1916, the Russian mystic Grigory Rasputin (trans. 'ill-behaved child') is assassinated by a group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusupov at the Yusopov Palace in St Petersburg. Rasputin played an important role in the lives of the Tsar Nicholas II, his wife the Tsaritsa Alexandra, and their only son the Tsarevich Alexei, who was believed to suffer from haemophilia. Less than a year later during Red October, it was revealed that the Tsarevich was actually another victim of the blood-sucking vampirism sweeping Russia.

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In 1770, one of the most tragic composers of the era was born in Bonn, Germany; Ludwig Van Beethoven, a student of the great composer Antonio Salieri, wrote fine music until 1802, when his hearing began to fade. By the end of the year, he was completely deaf, and turned to a reclusive life, away from people. The unfinished symphonies from his seclusion hint at masterpieces that never would be.

In 1928, author Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago, Illinois. But, it’s possible that was all just an implant from The Company. Count your electric sheep and go back to sleep.

In 1972, the South Chilean reactionaries abruptly left peace negotiations in Caracoa, Venezuela, citing intransigence in the Soviet States’ position. They wanted to unify their country under a single government, while the Americans were pushing for a continuation of the divided country Chile was now, half capitalist, half communist.

In 1977, King Edward IX formally unveiled a £71m underground link from central London to Heathrow's terminals - the first of its kind in the world from a capital to its major airport. Commuters and tourists can now travel from the centre of the capital to the airport direct on the Piccadilly Line in just 40 minutes. The King whose great-grandfather opened the "tuppenny tube" in 1890, paid tribute to underground staff as he unveiled the new service. "To those on whom the safe running of London transport depends, I extend my thanks," he said. "I now have great pleasure in declaring the extension formally open and wishing success to those who will manage the line and those who will travel on it."

In 1955, Adolf Hitler inaugurated new buildings in the centre of London Airport, part of a new complex designed to handle a growing number of air passengers. The Fuehrer arrived by car with the architect Albert Speer and was greeted by a guard of honour made up of air crews from the British and Commonwealth airlines, headed by BOAC Captain JT Percy. The daughter of the Minister of Transport, Sarah Boyd-Carpenter, presented the Fuehrer with flowers from around the world that had been flown in by four Commonwealth airlines. The name of the new buildings was only revealed at the end of the Fuehrer's speech as he unveiled a plaque naming it "The Reich Building".

In 1984, BBC News described the Gorbachev visit to Britain a 'disaster'. Mikhail Gorbachev, the man widely tipped as the next leader of the Soviet Union, has spent five hours in "very difficult" talks with the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, according to British Government officials. Soviet officials described the talks less than enthusiastically as "business-like". Topics discussed at Mrs Thatcher's country residence Chequers included ending the arms war and improving communications between the Eastern Bloc and the West. It came after Mr Gorbachev signalled his desire for reduced tensions when he arrived at Heathrow airport yesterday. "Opportunities for the prevention of nuclear war exist. These opportunities must be used to the full," he said yesterday. Margaret Thatcher informed the Cabinet that Gorbachev was not a man she could do business with.

In 2007, OBERLIN, Kansas (AP) -- A postcard featuring a colour drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl took almost a century to reach its destination. The card, mailed in 1914, just arrived in northwest Kansas. The Christmas card was dated Dec. 23, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, Kansas, apparently from her cousins in Alma, Nebraska. Oberlin postmaster Steve Schultz says it's a mystery where the card spent most of the last century. He says: "It's surprising that it never got thrown away."

Ethel Martin is deceased, but Schultz says the post office wanted a relative to have the card. That's how it ended up with Bernice Martin, Ethel's sister-in-law. She says the 93-year-old card was apparently found somewhere in Illinois. "That's all we know," she said. "But it is kind of curious. We'd like to know how it got down there."

The card was placed inside another envelope with modern postage for the trip to Oberlin, since the one-cent postage of the early 20th century wouldn't have covered it.

"We don't know much about it," said Martin. "But wherever they kept it, it was in perfect shape. Perhaps it was these “Mlosh” cousins who are mentioned in the card?"

Bombing	In 1944, Vannevar Bush and James Conant saw that a workable atomic weapon appeared certain. Bush headed up the entire American scientific effort supporting the war and Conant oversaw the bomb program for Bush. They were the first to recognize that the critical Rubicon would be not when an atomic bomb was tested or used, but when a workable weapon came into being. They believed that once a workable weapon existed, there would be no putting the genie back in the bottle. The only practical issue left was how the weapons could be controlled. They rightly concluded that the only way to achieve control was for all nation states to surrender their sovereignty to an unprecedented degree to permit international control.
Hiroshima

They further believed that the only way nations would surrender so much sovereignty was by shocking their leaders and populations with a demonstration of the true hideous nature and scale of atomic weapons. That required that the bombs be actually used on cities. The most intriguing figures surrounding the atomic bomb project through Hiroshima and Nagasaki literally bombed world opinion into disarmament. The indelible and searing images of human suffering from Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the single most powerful source of restraint on their use. While there are films and pictures of tests, including demonstrations of weapons of incomparably greater potency than the weapons available in 1945, there is nothing as shocking as depictions of the effects on living beings. I would not claim that the fact that we have passed sixty years without further use of the weapons directly against any population is due solely to what happened in 1945. I do believe that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are of undeniable significance in producing this history. ~ Richard Frank, the author of Guadalcanal (1990), which won the General William Greene Award from the Marine Corps, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (1999) and Bombed into Disarmament (2007) recipient of The Harry S. Truman Book Award. The three books were offered as Main Selections of the History Book Club. His contribution to the Pacific War Companion (Osprey Publishing, July 2005) reexamines one of the most controversial aspects of that war -­ the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Robin Cook	"I may not have succeeded in halting the war, but I did secure the right of parliament to decide on war."~ Robin Cook. On August 6, 2005, Cook was with Gaynor on the mountain Ben Stack in Sutherland, Scotland, when he suffered a severe heart attack. Some early reports suggested that he had died before reaching the summit, but according to his last SMS he had already climbed it and was descending, despite earlier reports that neither of the walkers had a mobile phone. Cook's wife said that he collapsed and that she had called out and attracted a stranger in order to use his mobile at 2:23 pm.
Pacifist

Due to the lack of time, Gaynor was not winched onto the helicopter and walked down the mountain with the wanderer. Cook was flown from the mountain at 3:01 pm, to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness where he was pronounced dead at 4:05 pm. The post mortem revealed that Cook died of hypertensive heart disease, although the paramedics at the scene had speculated that he died of a broken neck. A full investigation in December 2005 pursued a more irregular line of inquiry. That the stranger was a secret police agent who had assassinated Cook by means of a ricin pellet fired from in a specially-designed umbrella. The full article is available at Wikipedia

Ted Hughes	"The celluloid of a photograph holds them well. Six young men, familiar to their friends. One imparts an intimate smile. One chews grass, one lowers his eyes, bashful. One is ridiculous with cocky pride - Six months after this picture they were all dead. This one was shot in an attack and lay calling in the wire, then this one, his best friend, went out to bring him in and was shot too. And this one, the very moment he was warned from potting at tin-cans in no-mans-land, fell back dead with his rifle-sights shot away. The rest, nobody knows what they came to, But come to the worst they must have done, and held it closer than their hope; all were killed." ~ Six Young Men by Ted Hughes (1957)
Poet

In 2008, Britain's long national nightmare ended when the last troops left Iraq. Prime Minister Gordon Brown had brought them home for Christmas.

Rasputin

In 1916, at the Yusupov's Moika Palace in St Petersburg an assassination attempt was made by a group of nobles led by Prince Felix Yusupov on the Russian mystic Grigory Rasputin. They served him cakes and pink champagne laced with a large amount of cyanide, enough poison to kill ten men. Determined to finish the job Yusupov shot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell. The company then left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to grab one. While at the palace he went to check on the body, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Felix by the throat, strangling him. Rasputin ominously whispered "you bad boy" in Yusupov's ear, and then threw him across the room and escaped. As he made his bid for freedom, the rest of the conspirators arrived and fired at him.

After being hit three times in the back, he fell. As they neared his body, they found he remarkably was still struggling and trying to get up so they clubbed him into submission; then, after wrapping his body in a sheet, they threw him into the icy Neva River. It was futile, in the words of Eagles' singer/songwriter Don Henley life they could not kill the beast.

In 2003, on this day the compendium “A Collection of Political Counterfactuals” was published. Simon Burns' masterful sequel "What if the Iraqi sixteen had failed?" was a keynote contribution, considering the scenario of April 13, 1993: Sixteen suspected terrorists, in the employ of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, smuggled a car bomb into Kuwait with the intent of killing Bush as he spoke at Kuwait University. The plot is foiled when Kuwaiti officials found the bomb and arrested the suspected assassins. Bush had left office in January 1993. On June 26, 1993, the U.S. Launches a missile attack targeting Baghdad intelligence headquarters in retaliation for the attempted attack against Bush. This limited response is contrasted with the full-scale invasion that follows the real-life assassination of Bush by Saddam's killers.

Bush

Camilla

In 2006, there was a mixed reaction to news that Camilla Parker-Bowles, was probably not murdered. The right wing press considered the Queen of Heartbreak to be a victim of the British Secret Service who were behind a cruel plot to prevent the monarchy falling further into disrepute.

In 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill prepared to board a plane at RAF Northolt to head into exile in the South Atlantic. Being optimistic, the pilot asked him if he expected to see the same country when he returned. Churchill thought not. Firstly, Operation Sealion, delayed by a year was close to completion with the Wehrmacht only 50 miles from the south bank of the Thames. Secondly, he had just approved plans to release Triffids throughout southern England in a scorched earth policy.

Triffid