Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 14, 2020 20:51:47 GMT
Felix Baumgartner,Jim Hines,Chuck Yeager, Louis Le Prince, Sumner Locke Elliott,Erwin Rommel,Jane Wyman, Charles Bickford,Claude Grahame-White, John Flammang Schrank(he could have been mind controlled to change history),Daniel O'Connell , and Robert the Bruce of Scotland could be good people to meet.the Cuban Missile Crisis could always be a ah story about nuclear war. And Mary, Queen of Scots could be a good conspiracy themed historical. My takes: 1. The Battle of Hastings I covered in the daily listing. But there are lots of possibilities. It's the sort of events that would attract time travellers, depending on the Limelight Effect. There could be historians (ArcHive, the Warrior-Historians of New Ultonia, St. Mary's Institute), tourists (regular and disaster junkies) not to mention meddlers. It's the last gas of pre-Norman England, a magnet for a certain kind of 'Lost Cause' or Golden Age mentality, or someone who wants to conquer for personal gain or to improve things. There could easily be multiple groups wandering around. Including stranded time travellers looking for a way home.
2. The Battle of Old Byland is probably more suited to mixing the party up in events and getting them into trouble.
3. The trial of Mary had opportunities for quixotic time travellers trying to rescue her, or academics recording every detail (and probably trying to get access to the Casket Letters).
4. The Battle of Hochkirch is another opportunity that would attract military historians; it doesn't seem like a good point to meddle in European history.
5. Jena–Auerstedt is interesting. In addition to being a virtual Who's Who of famous Prussian generals (von Blücher, von Clausewitz, von Gneisenau, von Scharnhorst, and von Boyen to start with) there's also the possibility of preventing Napoleon from deploying the Guard to save Ney from his premature attack. A little meddling there could probably have cost the French the battle.
6. There are a number of possibilities around Daniel O'Connell; having the arrest being resisted, having him go ahead with the 'Monster Meeting' at Clontarf or having him killed. Any of these would have immense consequences, possibly leading to another uprising in the country, especially in conjunction with events of five year later.
7. Roundhay Garden Scene could have accidentally captured all sorts of things in the background; from the true appearance of a shapeshifted alien to fairies to mysterious auras.
8. There could have been something weird going on on the SS Mohegan hat caused the collision.
9. Schrank's attempt to kill Roosevelt could be orchestrated to prevent his presidential bid, or to remove him and allow Taft to win, removing Wilson and altering the course of the Great War.
10. The Senghenydd colliery disaster could linked to something underground; Earth Reptiles, buries space ship or a base belonging to Fu Manchu.
11. Altering the Bulgaria entry into the Great War would have significant negative consequence for the Central Powers.
12. The Balham underground disaster could have a completely different cause, or few time travellers could end up there during the London Blitz.
13. Sobibor is another 'intrestinng' spot to drop a party, or for them to follow another time traveller to.
14. Rommel surviving the war is an interesting minor divergence.
15. Stopping the first supersonic flight disastrously could slow aerospace research.
16. The Cuban Missile Crisis has enough oddities for an entire campaign. Replace Kennedy with Nixon, have Khrushchev
17. The construction of the Montreal Metro could have unearthed, or awakened, something strange.
18. The Żabbar Vulcan crash could have had a different cause, or could be altered to trigger a nuclear detonation.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 15, 2020 18:59:57 GMT
15OCT
In 1066CE on the day after the death of Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, Edgar the Ætheling is proclaimed King of England by the Witenagemot; he is never crowned, and concedes power to William the Conqueror two months later, just prior to William's coronation on 25DEC.
In 1211 the Battle of the Rhyndacus is fought between the forces of two of the two main successor states to the Byzantine Empire, the Latin Empire and the Byzantine Greek Empire of Nicaea, both established following the dissolution of the Byzantine state. The battle sees the Latin emperor Henry of Flanders achieve a crushing defeat over the Nicaean emperor Theodore I Laskaris.
In 1529 the Siege of Vienna ends when Austria routs the invading Ottoman forces, ending the European expansion of the empire. The siege was led by Suleiman the Magnificent, came in the aftermath of the struggle between the Austrians Ottomans that followed death of the King of Hungary in 1525, and the descent of that kingdom into civil war.
In 1582 the Adoption of the Gregorian calendar begins, with the issuance of the Papal Bull Inter gravissimas by Pope Gregory XIII; it will eventually lead to near-universal adoption. However in the short term the bull had no authority beyond the Catholic Church and the Papal States and the changes he was proposing required adoption by the civil authorities in each country to have legal effect.
In 1783 The first human ascends in a hot air balloon. Piloted by physicist Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier a balloon constructed by the the Montgolfier brothers' makes the first human ascent, carrying de Rozier to an altitude of about 25 metres (the length of the tether). In fact a discrete test had happened earlier that day, carrying Jacques-Étienne, in the yard of the Réveillon workshop in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
In 1815 Napoleon begins his exile on Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. Unlike his previous exile there will be no escape for the deposed emperor.
In 1863 the H. L. Hunley, eventually to become the first submarine to sink a ship, sinks for the second time, killing its inventor. On his occasion all eight of her second crew, including Horace Hunley himself, will die. Again the Hunley will be raised and returned to service; on 17FEB1864 the Hunley attacks and sank the 1,240 ton United States Navy screw sloop-of-war Housatonic, on blockade duty in Charleston's outer harbour. Hunley did not survive the attack and also sank, taking with her all eight members of her third crew.
In 1864 after a short battle the Union garrison of Glasgow, Missouri surrenders to Confederate forces. Although the battle resulted in a Confederate victory and the capture of significant war material, it had little long-term effect.
In 1879 the Segura river in southeastern Spain floods, killing 1077 people.
In 1888 the "From Hell" letter, allegedly sent by Jack the Ripper andreceived by George Lusk, the chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee is posted. The letter is accompanied by half a preserved human kidney. The author of this letter claimed to be the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who had murdered and mutilated at least four women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London in the previous two months. The letter was postmarked on 15OCT1888 and was received by Lusk on the 16th. The truth of the letter has never been resolved.
In 1910 the airship America is launched from New Jersey in the first attempt to cross the Atlantic by a powered aircraft. The America was a non-rigid airship built by Mutin Godard in France in 1906 for the journalist Walter Wellman; Wellman planned to use it in attempt to reach the North Pole by air. Backed by of newspaper publisher Victor Lawson, the Wellman Chicago Record-Herald Polar Expedition was announced but never took place. As originally constructed, the America was 50m long 15.8m wide, with an internal gas volume of 7,300 m3 of hydrogen, covered in three layers of fabric and three of rubber. There was no internal framework. The gondola could hold a crew of five; power was supplied by three internal-combustion engines delivering a total of 80 hp to two propellers. After the failure Wellman resolved to make the first aerial crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. He had the America enlarged again, to 9,800 m3 and a spark gap radio set was added to (the use of this device was rather hazardous, and was one of the first examples of air-to-ground radio communication). Accompanying the crew was the ship's cat, Kiddo. On 15OCT1910 the America took off from Atlantic City but the craft's engines failed 38 hours into the flight, due to contamination by sand, and America drifted. The crew jettisoned all excess weight and drifted. After another 33 hours, and a total trip of over 2,200km, they sighted the Royal Mail steamship Trent west of Bermuda and signaled for help (both by lamp and the first aerial distress call by radio). The crew, and cat, got into the lifeboat, deflated the gasbag and abandoned the America. It would be nine years before the Atlantic was crossed by air.
In 1917 the Dutch dancer Mata Hari is executed by France for espionage by firing squad . She had been convicted, dubiously, of espionage against France (having previously spied for France) and is considered by many a scapegoat for French wartime failings.
In 1928 the airship Graf Zeppelin completes its first trans-Atlantic flight, landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States. For added excitement, on the third day of the flight a large section of the fabric covering of the port tail fin was damaged while passing through a mid-ocean squall and volunteer riggers repaired the torn fabric. At the time the airship sent a distress call; when this was received, and nothing else was heard from the airship, many believed it was lost. In fact the reduced speed necessitated by the repair efforts reduced the electric power available. The 9,926 km crossing, the longest non-stop flight at the time, had taken 111 hours 44 minutes.
In 1954 Hurricane Hazel devastates the eastern seaboard of North America, killing 95 and causing massive floods as far north as Toronto. Earlier at least 469 people had been killed in Haiti.
In 1979 supporters of the Maltese Labour Party ransack and destroy the Times of Malta building and other locations associated with the (right-wing/Catholic) Nationalist Party.
In 1979 a coup d'état in El Salvador overthrows President Carlos Humberto Romero and begins the 12 year-long Salvadoran Civil War.
In 1991 the "Oh-My-God particle"is detected. This was an ultra-high-energy cosmic ray measured at approximately forty million times that of the highest energy protons produced in an terrestrial particle accelerator; it was observed at the University of Utah HiRes observatory in Dugway Proving Ground. Since then higher energy cosmic rays have been detected, but this incident was utterly unexpected and called into question theories of that era about the origin and propagation of cosmic rays. The Oh-My-God particle's energy was estimated about fifty Joules.
In 1997 the Cassini probe is launched from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.
In 2001 NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 175km of Jupiter's moon Io.
In 2003 China launches Shenzhou 5, its first crewed space mission.
In 2006 the magnitude 6.7 Kiholo Bay earthquake rocks Hawaii, causing property damage, injuries, landslides, power outages, and the closure of Honolulu International Airport.
In 2013 the magnitude 7.2 Bohol earthquake strikes the Philippines. At least 215 die.
Comments? Ideas?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 15, 2020 20:01:39 GMT
Carlos Humberto Romero,Mata Hari,Mutin Godard,Walter Wellman, Victor Lawson, George Lusk(could be a fake like the Mona Lisa or written by jack in the whoniverse, Horace Hunley,Theodore I Laskaris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, Edgar the Ætheling,the Montgolfier brothers, and Pope Gregory XIII are good people to meet. And the Graf Zeppelin could be good for a base under siege or a method of transport in a storyline.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 15, 2020 21:39:27 GMT
The America is interesting. Other than carelessness about sand ingestion into the engines there's no real reason the attempt couldn't have worked. It could be a minor divergence between our history and the Whoniverse.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 16, 2020 18:51:32 GMT
16OCT
In 456CE Flavius Ricimer defeats the emperor (and former Visigoth king( Avitus at Piacenza and becomes master of the Western Roman Empire. He will effectively rule the tattered remnants of the Roman Empire until his death in 472CE.
In 690 the Empress Wu Zetian ascends to the throne of the Tang dynasty and proclaims herself ruler of the Chinese Empire. She was the only female monarch of the Chinese Empire, in her own name, but was the de facto ruler of China for longer; first through her husband the Emperor Gaozong and then through her sons the Emperors Zhongzong and Ruizong.
In 912 Abd ar-Rahman III becomes the eighth Emir of Córdoba. He will later found the Caliphate of Córdoba.
In 1311 the Catholic church Council of Vienne convenes for the first time. The principal function of the fifteenth ecumenical council was to withdraw papal support for the Knights Templar on the instigation of Philip IV of France.
In 1384 Jadwiga is crowned King of Poland, although she is a woman. The coronation was a political maneuver amongst the labyrinthine scheme of political alliances of the period.
In 1590 Prince Gesualdo of Venosa murders his wife and her lover, after finding them in flagrante. The two are brutally hacked to death and their bodies further mutilated. An investigation finds that no crime has been committed. This, and his inspiring musical compositions are what Gesualdo is remembered for.
In 1736 mathematician William Whiston's predicted comet fails to strike the Earth, much to the relief of the general populace. Whiston was an English theologian, historian, translator, mystic and mathematician and a significant figure in the popularisation of the ideas of Isaac Newton. He also helped instigate the Longitude Act in 1714. A devotee of the idea of biblical flood geology and frequent cometary impacts his prediction of an impact in 1736 caused a degree of panic.
In 1780 the British-led Royalton raid is the last Native American raid on New England. It was led by Lieutenant Houghton and included about 300 Mohawk warriors; the force attacked and burned the towns of Royalton, Sharon and Tunbridge along the White River in eastern Vermont. Four Vermont settlers were killed and twenty six were taken prisoner to Quebec.
In 1793 Queen Marie Antoinette of France convicted of treason by the Revolutionary Tribunal and sentenced to death; later that day she is taken from the Conciergerie prison, along the rue Saint-Honoré thoroughfare to the guillotine erected in the Place de la Révolution (the present-day Place de la Concorde). She was guillotined at 12:15PM.
In 1813 The Sixth Coalition attacks Napoleon in the three-day Battle of Leipzig.
In 1834 the disposal of large stockpiles of old wooden 'tally sticks' in furnaces under the old Palace of Westminster goes wrong and fire spreads rapidly though the building. The Palace of Westminster was at the time the remnant of the medieval royal palace used as the home of the British parliament. The burning of the sticks caused a chimney fire that lasted through the night and destroyed a large part of the palace.
In 1836 during the Great Trek a party of Afrikaner voortrekkers repulse a Matabele attack at Vegkop, but lose their livestock. Three children are also kidnapped.
In 1846 Dr. William Morton administers ether anesthesia during a public demonstration of surgery at the operating theatre of the Massachusetts General Hospital. The operation involved the removal by John Collins Warren of a tumour from the neck of Edward Abbott. News of this use of ether spread rapidly around the world, and
In 1847 the novel Jane Eyre is published in London.
In 1859 the abolitionist John Brown leads a raid on the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry (then in the state of Virginia). His hoped for slave revolt never materialises and the arsenal is stormed two days later.
In 1869 the Cardiff Giant, one of the most famous American hoaxes, is "discovered".
In 1901 US President Theodore Roosevelt hosted African American leader and Tuskegee Institute President Booker T. Washington at a private dinner at the White House. This was the first such invitation extended to a black person and caused harsh criticism from newspapers and politicians in the American South.
Also in 1901 the Swedish Antarctic Expedition, led by Professor Otto Nordenskjöld of the University of Uppsala, departs from Gothenburg on the ship Antarctic, captained by Carl Anton Larsen.
In 1909 US and Mexican presidents William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz hold the first summit between a US and a Mexican president. The event is also notable for the enormous banquet and an assassination attempt.
In 1919 Adolf Hitler delivers his first public address at a meeting of the German Workers' Party.
In 1920 as part of emergency preparations for a strike of coal miners, Great Britain restricted city lighting, put rations on coal, food and sugar, and halted the export of British coal.
In 1964 China detonates its first nuclear weapon.
In 1965 police find a girl's body on Saddleworth Moor near Oldham in Lancashire. It is quickly identified as that of 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey, who had disappeared on 26DEC from a fairground in the Ancoats area of Manchester.[Ian Brady, who had been arrested a week earlier for murdering a 17-year-old boy, was charged along with his girlfriend Myra Hindley for the murder.
Also in 1965, on the penultimate day of the New York World's Fair, a time capsule was lowered 15 metres into the ground, containing 117,000 pages of microfilmed records from 1940 to 1965, as well as 45 other objects. The capsule, buried a few metres from another capsule placed for the 1939 New York World's Fair, is not scheduled to be opened until the year 6939CE.
In 1968 the city of Kingston in Jamaica is rocked by the Rodney riots, inspired by the barring of Walter Rodney from the country.
That same day the DSV Alvin, a deep-submergence vehicle which would later explore the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, sinks to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean while preparing for a routine inspection dive about 140km southeast of Cape Cod. The craft would finally be recovered on 01SEP1969.
In 1975 Indonesian troops kill the Balibo Five, a group of Australian journalists, in Portuguese Timor.
In 1975 three-year-old Rahima Banu, from Bangladesh, is the last known case of naturally occurring smallpox.
In 1991 George Hennard runs amok in Killeen, Texas, killing 23 and wounding 20.
In 2002 the Bibliotheca Alexandrina opens in Egypt, commemorating the ancient library of Alexandria.
Comments? Ideas?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 16, 2020 19:25:43 GMT
Rahima Banu, George Hennard ,Lesley Ann Downey, Dr. William Morton, Flavius Ricimer,Abd ar-Rahman III, William Whiston,Prince Gesualdo of Venosa, Jadwiga, Otto Nordenskjöld,Carl Anton Larsen, and Wu Zetian are good people to meet. The harpers ferry raid could be a good pure historical or a ah involving the survival of john brown. And the Diaz/Taft summit could be a good ah in the assassination becoming real.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 17, 2020 19:53:20 GMT
17OCT
In 79CE this is possibly the day Mount Vesuvius erupted. The exact date is unknown, and disputed by many historians, but while a date in August used to be favoured, recent research suggests this is the earliest. Whenever exactly it happened the eruption in 79CE was one of the deadliest in European history; Mount Vesuvius violently spewed forth a deadly cloud of super-heated tephra and gases to a height of 33km and ejected molten rock, pulveried pumice and hot ash at 1.5 million tonnes per second, with an ultimate energy of approximately two gigatonnes TNT equivalent. At the time the region was a part of the Roman Empire, and several Roman cities were obliterated and buried underneath massive pyroclastic surges and ashfall deposits, the best known being Pompeii and Herculaneum. Of course the Whoniverse has already re-told the story once, why not again?
In 1091 the city of London is, unusually, struck by a powerful tornado. That Friday the old (wooden) London Bridge was demolished, and the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in the city of London was badly damaged. Other churches in the city were demolished, as were over 600 (mostly wooden) houses. For all the damage inflicted, the tornado claimed just two known victims from a population of about 18,000.
- Might this mesh with other oddities around the accession of William Rufus? Was the destruction down to some different cause?
In 1346 the Battle of Neville's Cross, during the Second War of Scottish Independence, took place less than a kilometres west of Durham of England. and ended disastrously for the invading Scots. The English capture King David II of Scotland and imprison him for eleven years. The invading Scottish army was about 12,000 strong and led by King David II; it was defeated (with heavy losses) by an English army of approximately half that size, led by Ralph Neville, Lord Neville. The battle was named after an Anglo-Saxon stone cross that stood on the hill where the Scots made their stand. After the victory, Neville paid to have a new cross erected to commemorate the day. The battle was the result of the invasion of France by England during the Hundred Years' War; King Philip VI of France called on the Scots to fulfil their obligation under the terms of the 'Auld Alliance' and invade England. David II obliged and ravaged much of northern England was taken by surprise by the English defenders. A small number of French knights marched alongside the Scots. Strategically this victory freed significant English resources for the war against France.
The Scots arrived outside Durham on 16OCT and camped at Beaurepaire Priory, where the monks offered the Scots £1,000 in protection money to be paid on 18OCT. The Scots at Beaurepaire discovered the English army only on the morning of 17OCT, when they were less than ten kilometres away; a force of around 500 men under William Douglas stumbled upon them in the morning mist during a raid near Merrington, south of Durham. After bing driven off with heavy casualties Douglas raced back to David II's camp, alerting the rest of the army, which stood to arms. The same morning two Benedictine monks arrived from Durham in an attempt to broker a peace but David II, thinking them to be, ordered them beheaded; the monks escaped in the confusion.
In 1448 an Ottoman army defeats a Hungarian-led Crusader army at the Second Battle of Kosovo. It was part of a Hungarian campaign to avenge the defeat at Varna four years earlier. In the three-day battle the Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Murad II defeated the Crusader army of regent John Hunyadi. The battle ended any hopes of saving Constantinople from the Ottoman Empire. With the end of the half-century-long Crusader threat to their European frontier, Murad's son Mehmed II was free to lay siege to Constantinople in 1453.
In 1534, Paris saw the Affair of the Placards, as anti-Catholic posters in public places in Paris and in four major provincial cities (Blois, Rouen, Tours and Orléans), supporting Huldrych Zwingli's position on the Mass. One of the posters was posted on the bedchamber door of King Francis I at Amboise, an affront and a breach of security that left him shaken. The "Affaire des Placards" brought an end to the conciliatory policies of Francis, who had formerly attempted to protect the Protestants from the more extreme measures of the Parlement de Paris, and also of the public entreaties for moderation of Philip Melanchthon.
The individual who has been traditionally credited as the chief inspiration, if not the direct author, of the placards, was the French Protestant leader Guillaume Farel; it is believed that the placards were printed at Neuchâtel in Switzerland. A reward of a hundred gold écus was advertised for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator or perpetrators, who were to be burned at the stake.
In 1558 Poczta Polska, the Polish postal service, is founded. Curiously it was the death of the Polish queen Bona Sforza in 1557 was the factor that influenced the emergence f the Polish Post; King Sigismund II Augustus had to maintain permanent and regular correspondence with Italy in order to collect his inheritance. On the 18OCT1558 the monarch granted the right for the establishment and management of the post to the Italian Prospero Provana. The services of this post, which ran from Cracow to Venice, could also be used by private persons, despite the fact that the costs of its maintenance were borne by the crown. Provana, however, started a conflict with the Thurn und Taxis family, who controlled postal communications in Austria, Hungary and Italy.
In 1604 Johannes Kepler begins his year long programme of observations of the 'new star' that will be named after him, a supernova in the constellation of Ophiuchus. As mentioned previously the first recorded observation in Europe was by Lodovico delle Colombe in northern Italy on 09OCT1604.
In 1610 the French king Louis XIII (the Just) is crowned in Reims Cathedral. He is just eight years old, and acceeded to the throne when his father Henry IV was assassinated. His mother, Marie de' Medici, acted as regent during his minority. Mismanagement of the kingdom and ceaseless political intrigues by Marie and her Italian favourites led the young king to take power in 1617 by exiling his mother and executing her followers, including Concino Concini, the most influential Italian at the French court. Louis XIII is generally considered to have been taciturn and suspicious; he relied heavily on his chief ministers, first Charles d'Albert, duc de Luynes and then the eminence rouge himself, Cardinal Richelieu. Between them they established the Académie française, and ended the power of the French nobility.
Interestingly there is no evidence that Louis kept mistresses (a distinction that earned him the title "Louis the Chaste"), but several reports suggest that he may have been homosexual.
In 1660 four of the regicides who signed the death warrant of Charles I of England are hanged, drawn and quartered in Charing Cross in London; they were Adrian Scrope, John Jones Maesygarnedd, Gregory Clement and Thomas Scot Following the trial of Charles I in JAN1649, 59 commissioners signed his death warrant. They, along with several key associates and numerous court officials, were the subject of punishment following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 with the coronation of Charles II.
In 1771 Mozart's Ascanio in Alba, a pastoral opera in two parts, has it's premiere at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was 15 when he composed the work, commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresa for the wedding of her son, Archduke Ferdinand Karl, to Maria Beatrice d'Este.
In 1777 during the American Revolutionary War the British General John Burgoyne surrenders his army at Saratoga in New York. The Saratoga campaign had been an attempt by the British high command for North America to gain military control of the strategically important Hudson River. In fact it became the great turning point of the war; gaining for Americans the foreign assistance which was the last element needed for victory.
Burgoyne's army surrendered with full honours of war. Burgoyne gave his sword to Gates, who immediately returned it as a sign of respect. Burgoyne's army, about 6,000 strong, marched past to stack arms as the American and British bands played "Yankee Doodle" and "The British Grenadiers". Burgoyne was allowed to return to England on parole in MAY1778, where he spent the next two years defending his actions in Parliament and the press.
On 04DEC1777 news of the battle reached the American minister in France, Benjamin Franklin, at Versailles; two days later, King Louis XVI assented to negotiations for an alliance. The treaty was signed on 06FEB1778, and France declared war on Britain one month later, with hostilities beginning with naval skirmishes in June.
In 1781 also during the American Revolutionary War the British General Charles, Earl Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown, in Virginia Yorktown was a decisive victory for the combined forces of American Continental Army troops led by General George Washington and French Army troops led by the Comte de Rochambeau. It was to be the last major land battle of the American Revolutionary War as the capture of both Cornwallis and his army prompted the British government to negotiate an end to the conflict.
In 1806 the former leader of the Haitian Revolution, Emperor Jacques I, is assassinated after a period of oppressive and brutal rule; after the end of the war for independence Dessalines would order the execution of all French people on the island, causing the deaths of around five thousand people over several months.
Disaffected members of Dessalines' administration, including Alexandre Pétion and Henri Christophe, began a conspiracy to overthrow the Emperor. Dessalines was assassinated north of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, at Pont Larnage (now known as Pont-Rouge), though the exact circumstances are unknown and accounts vary widely; he may have been killed at Pétion's house at Rue l'Enterrement, been arrested and fatally injured in the struggle, ambushed and shot, or attacked by his own troops The mob dismembered and disfigured his remains. Dessalines' assassination did not solve the tensions within the Haitian government; his removal created a power vacuum that led to a civil war and a temporary partition of Haiti between Pétion and Christophe.
In 1814 eight people are killed in the London Beer Flood, an accident at Meux & Co's Horse Shoe Brewery where one of the huge (~7m high) wooden vats of fermenting porter burst. The pressure of the escaping liquid dislodged the valve of another vessel and destroyed several large barrels; around a million-and-a-quarter litres of beer were released in total.
The resulting wave of porter destroyed the back wall of the brewery and swept into, the St Giles rookery, a notorious area of slum-dwellings; there eight people were killed, five of them mourners at the wake being held by an Irish family for a two-year-old boy.
In 1817 tomb KV16, the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I is discovered in Egypt's Valley of the Kings by Giovanni Battista Belzoni It is also known as "Belzoni's tomb", "the Tomb of Apis", and "the Tomb of Psammis, son of Nechois". It was the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I of the Nineteenth Dynasty and remains one of the best decorated tombs in the valley; when Belzoni first entered the tomb he found the wall paintings in excellent condition with the paint on the walls still looking fresh and some of the artists paints and brushes still on the floor.
- Does that scream 'Osiran temporal stasis' to anyone?
It is also the longest tomb in the valley, at 137.2m and contains very well preserved reliefs in all but two of its eleven chambers and side rooms. One of the back chambers is decorated with the Ritual of the Opening of the mouth, which stated that the mummy's eating and drinking organs were properly functioning. A long tunnel leads away deep into the mountainside from beneath the location where the sarcophagus stood in the burial chamber (it was long suspected that there was a 'secret burial chamber' at the end but this wasn't true).
- Unless of course it was true and the chamber was covered up by someone; UNIT? Osiran cultists? Rogue archaeologists? The Alexandrian Society? The CIA?
I’ve mentioned Belzoni here several times previously; a fascinating person, well worth dropping into a scenario set earlier in the century; a two metre tall former circus strongman (he could carry a tonne on his back), former seminarian and hydraulic engineer, turned Egyptologist, with a legendary fondness for explosives. He’d decided to go to Egypt to try to sell his engineering developments, was rebuffed and turned to exploration which resulted in the discoveries of many artifacts, including four tombs in the Valley of the Kings. He was also responsible for the gifting of “Cleopatra's Needle” to Britain, though he died before it arrived.
In 1861 in the Cullin-la-ringo massacre in Central Queensland, Aboriginal Australians kill nineteen Europeans. It remains the largest massacre of white settlers by Aboriginals in Australian history, and a pivotal moment in the frontier wars in Queensland. A squatter party from the colony of Victoria under Horatio Wills began a temporary tent camp to start the process of setting up the grazing property of Cullin-la-ringo. Wills's party, an enormous settlement train including bullock wagons and more than 10,000 sheep, had set out from Brisbane eight months earlier to set up a farm at Cullin-la-ringo, a property formed by amalgamating four blocks of land with a total area of 260km2 The size of the group had attracted much attention from other settlers, as well as the Indigenous people.According to the account of one of the survivors, John Moore, Aboriginals had been passing through the camp all day on 17OCT1861, building up numbers until there were at least 50. Then, without warning, they attacked the men, women and children with clubs. Nineteen of the twenty-five defenders were killed. At least seventy natives were killed in reprisal.
In 1907 the Marconi company begins the first commercial transatlantic wireless service between Clifden in Ireland and Glace Bay in Nova Scotia,
In 1913 the mid-air explosion and crash of the German zeppelin L-2 is the worst air disaster to that date. All 28 passengers and crew on board died when the airship exploded in mid-air 200m over the city of Johannisthal in Germany.
In 1915 the Austro-Hungarian monarchy sees the biggest royal scandal since the Mayerling incident in 1889. Prince Leopold Clement, heir to the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry in Austria-Hungary, met his mistress Camilla Rybicka to formally end their affair and to write her a cheque for four million crowns. Unknown to Leopold, Rybicka had armed herself with a revolver and a bottle of sulfuric acid, intending to kill him and take her own life. She shot him five times and then smashed the bottle of acid in his face, resulting him losing an eye. She then shot herself. Leopold did not die immediately, but suffered from disfiguring injuries until he succumbed and died the following April. The
In 1917 the German light cruisers Brummer and Bremse ambush an Allied convoy in the North Sea, sinking the British destroyers Mary Rose and Strongbow along with several Scandinavian merchant ships carrying coal. Over 300 naval and civilian crew were killed in the attack.
That same day German and Russian naval squadrons clashed in the Baltic Sea in the Battle of Moon Sound; this endswith a Russian retreat and the loss of its pre-dreadnought battleship Slava, which was too damaged to retreat and had to be scuttled.
In 1927 the criminal trial of former Interior Secretary Albert Fall and former Mammoth Oil chief Harry Sinclair for their involvement in the Teapot Dome scandal begins.
In 1932 a prison riot breaks out at Kingston Penitentiary in Ontario, Canada. Machinery and equipment were damaged, but there were only a couple of injuries in the four-hour uprising.
In 1933 Albert Einstein arrives in the United States on the liner Westmoreland as a refugee from Nazi Germany; he will take up a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as most American universities of the period (including Harvard, Princeton and Yale) had minimal or no Jewish faculty or students due to their policy of "Jewish quotas" (which lasts into the later 1940s).
Einstein had been planning to leave Germant for some time; in APR1933 the new German government had passed laws barring Jews from holding any official positions, including teaching at universities. In May Einstein's works were among those targeted by the German Student Union in the Nazi book burnings. One German magazine included him in a list of enemies of the German regime with the phrase, "not yet hanged", and offered a bounty on his head. Initially Einstein rented a house in De Haan in Belgium, where he lived for a few months before going to England in late July for about six weeks at the personal invitation of British naval officer Commander Oliver Locker-Lampson, who'd become friends with Einstein in the preceding years.
- Locker-Lampson is an interesting character, previously he'd been an admirer of Hitler and had certain fascist sympathies himself, later he worked to save Jews from Nazi persecution.
Locker-Lampson invited Einstein to stay near his home in Cromer (in Norfolk) in a wooden cabin on Roughton Heath; Locker-Lampson employed two armed bodyguards to watch over Einstein. Locker-Lampson also took Einstein to meet Winston Churchill and later, Austen Chamberlain and former Prime Minister Lloyd George. Einstein asked them to help bring Jewish scientists out of Germany, something to which Churchill took part in, dispatching his friend, physicist Frederick Lindemann, to Germany to seek out Jewish scientists and place them in British universities. Locker-Lampson also submitted a bill to parliament to extend British citizenship to Einstein, during which period Einstein made a number of public appearances describing the crisis brewing in Europe.
Einstein accepted an earlier offer from the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, to become a resident scholar; at the time Einstein was still undecided on his future. He had offers from several European universities, including Christ Church, Oxford where he stayed for three short periods between May 1931 and June 1933.
In 1940 the body of Communist propagandist Willi Münzenberg is found in South France, starting a never-resolved mystery. Münzenberg was a German Communist political activist and publisher and a leading propagandist for the Communist Party of Germany during the Weimar Era, but grew disenchanted with the USSR due to Stalin's Great Purge of the 1930s. Condemned by Stalin to be purged and arrested for treason, Münzenberg left for Paris became a leader of the German émigré anti-fascism and anti-Stalinist community until forced to flee the Nazi advance into France in 1940. Arrested and imprisoned by the Daladier government in France, he escaped prison camp only to be found dead a few months later in a forest near the commune of Saint-Marcellin. Who exactly garrotted him (fascist, Nazi, communist or other) is still unknown.
Om 1943 the last German merchant raider, the auxiliary cruiser Michel, is torpedoed and sunk off Japan by the American submarine USS Tarpon. The Michel had sunk 17 Allied merchant ships.
In 1944 contact was lost with the submarine USS Escolar, a Balao-class submarine operating in the Yellow Sea. The last direct message transmitted was on 30SEP where the boat was north of the Bonin Islands; this reported an surfaced gunfire attack on a ship but the transmission ended abruptly. She was never heard from again and no sign has even been found. While she probably hit a mine there's room for a different fate.
In 1945 a massive demonstration in Buenos Aires in Argentina, demands Juan Perón's release. This is considered the foundation day of Peronism. At 11:10 pm, before a crowd estimated at 300,000 people, Perón appeared at the main balcony of the Casa Rosada, the nation's executive government offices. He thanked those present, recalling his work in government, reported on his request for retirement, pledged to continue defending the interests of workers and, finally, asked those present to disperse in peace, urging instead that they maintain the general strike the following day. The events forced Perón to return to the political struggle, and persuaded the Army to turning in his favor before those among the military leadership opposed to him could organise their colleagues against him.
In 1956 the first commercial nuclear power station is officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II at Windscale (later renamed Sellafield) in England. In fact most the complex was used for the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons. The two air-cooled and open-circuit, graphite-moderated Windscale reactors (the "Windscale Piles") and the associated first generation reprocessing plant, produced the first British weapons grade plutonium and were central to the UK nuclear weapons programme of the 1950s. In 1957 Pile 1 suffered a major accident; the Windscale fire mentioned previously.
In 1961 at the instigation of their chief Maurice Papon, Paris police massacre scores of Algerian protesters during the Algerian War. Under orders the French National Police attacked a demonstration by 30,000 pro-National Liberation Front Algerians. Official estimates suggest 40 were killed; others suggest 100 to 300 victims. Most deaths were due to beatings by the police or drownings, as police officers threw demonstrators in the river Seine.
In 1966 the 23rd Street Fire in the Flatiron District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, kills 12 firefighters when the floor collapsed beneath them.
In 1967 the first "rock musical", Hair, premieres at the theatre in the Astor Library in New York City's East Village.
In 1968 Bullitt, the iconic Steve McQueen action film that featured what has been called "the most famous car chase in cinematic history" premieres at New York City's Radio City Music Hall.
In 1969 te Caravaggio painting Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence is stolen from the Oratory of Saint Lawrence in Palermo.
1970 as mentioned previously FLQ terrorists murder Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte.
In 1977 the hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 lands in Mogadishu. Just after midnight on 18OCT the remaining hostages are rescued when the aircraft is stormed by the West German counter-terrorism group GSG 9.
In 1989 the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake shakes the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Coast, killing 63 people. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park approximately 15km northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of the San Andreas Fault System. Damage was heavy in Santa Cruz County and less so to the south in Monterey County, but effects extended well to the north into the San Francisco Bay Area, both on the San Francisco Peninsula and across the bay in Oakland. Because it happened during a national live broadcast of the 1989 World Series it is sometimes referred to as the "World Series earthquake".
In 2000 the Hatfield rail crash at Hatfield in Hertfordshire leads to four deaths and the collapse of Railtrack in the UK.
Comments? Ideas?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 17, 2020 22:35:42 GMT
Oliver Locker-Lampson,Prince Leopold Clement,Steve McQueen ,Juan Perón,Earl Cornwallis, Alexandre Pétion and Henri Christophe,Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,Maurice Papon, Giovanni Battista Belzoni ( i agree), and King David II of Scotland are good people to meet.the Tomb of Apis could be a good base under siege. the tornado in London could be a aien creating a natural disturbance. And the London Beer Flood could be a good comedic adventure.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 18, 2020 18:04:00 GMT
18OCT
In 320CE Pappus of Alexandria, the Greek philosopher and one of the last great Greek mathematicians of antiquity, observes an eclipse of the Sun and writes a commentary on The Great Astronomer (Almagest) mentioning his observation and calculations pertaining to the event. Other than remnants of his Collection (an eight-volume collection of notes pertaining to geometry, astronomy and mathematics) this is almost all we know of Pappus; most of the Collection is lost.
In 614 King Chlothar II, Merovingian king of the Franks, issues the Edict of Paris (Edictum Chlotacharii), an important royal instrument from the Merovingian period in Frankish history and a step in the history of the development of the Frankish monarchy; it was the last of the Merovingian capitularia, legal ordinances governing church and realm.
In 629 Dagobert I, the last king of the Merovingian dynasty to wield any real royal power, is crowned King of the Franks after the death of his father Chlothar II.
In 1009 the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by orders of the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who has the Church's foundations dug down to bedrock. This was part of a more general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. Few parts of the early church remain.
In 1016 the Danes, led by Canute the Great, triumph over the English army led by King Edmund Ironside, in the Battle of Assandun. The battle was the conclusion to the Danish reconquest of England. Curiously the location of the battle is lost to use; the most probably sites are that Assandun may be Ashdon near Saffron Walden in north Essex or Ashingdon near Rochford in southeast Essex. Interestingly the Danish victory was enabled by the treachery of Eadric Streona (Ealderman of Mercia) who left the battle and allowed the Scandinavians to break through the English lines and win a decisive victory. Eadric Streona had previously defected to Canute when he landed in England but after Canute's defeat at the Battle of Otford he came back to the English, but this appears to have been a trick as he would betray them at Assandun.
In 1081 the Normans of southern Italy under Robert Guiscard defeat the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Dyrrhachium at city of Dyrrhachium (present-day Durrës in Albania), the major Byzantine stronghold in the western Balkans.
In 1356 the town (now city) of Basel in Switzerland is destroyed by an unusual and powerful earthquake. This was the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps and a highly unusual event; believed to have had a magnitude in the 6.5 to 7.1 region and was an intraplate earthquake (one that occurs within a tectonic plate, rather then where plates meet) a rare events in Central Europe. The 'quake was preceded by a foreshock between 19:00 and 20:00 local time, the main earthquake struck in the evening at around 22:00, with numerous aftershocks followed through that night and a second significant shock in the middle of the night. The town within the ramparts was destroyed by the combination of tremors and the fires caused when torches and candles were thrown around. The death toll was in the hundreds in the town of Basel alone, with more killed outside; all major churches and castles within 30km radius of Basel were destroyed. In fact there was much destruction extending to vast region, extending from Paris to Prague (suggesting an event in the magnitude 7 region).
- Of over ten thousand documented earthquakes in the last ~800 years only six are believes to have a magnitude of ≥ 6.0 making this an extremely unusual event, and one that is ripe to be attributed to a different, and deliberate, cause.
In 1540 the forces of Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto destroy the fortified village of Mabila (in present-day Alabama) and kill the paramount-chief Tuskaloosa. Tuskaloosa had been taken hostage by the Spanish as they passed through his territory, but managed to organised a surprise attack on his captors at Mabila. Contemporary records describe the paramount chief as being very tall and well built, with some of the chroniclers saying Tuaskaloosa stood a foot and a half taller than the Spaniards. His name, means "Black Warrior".
In 1561 in Japan the fourth Battle of Kawanakajima is fought between the forces of Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen, resulting in a draw. Shingen and Kenshin had contested each other for control of the plain of Kawanakajima for some time; this was not the last battle to be fought there, though it was the most famous and bloodiest. The battles were ultimately inconclusive and neither Shingen or Kenshin established their control over the plain of Kawanajima.
In 1565 as part of a trade dispute between Portuguese traders (and Jesuits) and Japanese nobles, ships of the Matsura clan attempt and fail to capture a Portuguese trading carrack in the Battle of Fukuda Bay, the first recorded naval battle between Japan and the West. A flotilla of boats carrying samurai under the daimyō Matsura Takanobu attacked two Portuguese trade vessels that had shunned Matsura's port in Hirado and had gone instead to trade at Fukuda (now part of Nagasaki), a port belonging to the rival Ōmura Sumitada. The flotilla attacked the carrack in the morning when most of the crew was on the shore and could not return to the ship in time. This left only about 80 Europeans on the flagship, along with an uncounted number of black slaves and Chinese merchants taking refuge on board. The Japanese boats focused on boarding the larger carrack, and at one point climbed aboard from the stern and fired at the captain; the Japanese then made their way into the great cabin, holding the captain-major hostage and carrying off his writing desk before being repelled. The Portuguese cannons wrought such havoc on the Japanese boats that the Hirado forces, after losing 3 ships and over 70 men, in addition to over 200 wounded, ignominiously withdrew to their base; the battle lasted about two hours.
In 1599 Michael the Brave, Prince of Wallachia, defeats the Army of Andrew Báthory in the Battle of Șelimbăr. Michael's victory resulted in the first instance when the principalities of Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania were united under a Romanian ruler.
In 1775 during the American Revolutionary War the town of Falmouth (now Portland, Maine) is attacked and burned by Royal Navy ships. The fleet was commanded by Captain Henry Mowat and began the attack began with a naval bombardment (including incendiaries) followed by a landing party meant to complete the town's destruction. The attack was supposed to be the opening of a campaign of retaliation against ports that supported rebel activities in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. However this plan backfired and led to widespread rejection of British authority and formation of a Continental Navy.
In 1851 The Whale by Herman Melville (better known as Moby-Dick) is first published by Richard Bentley of London, in a print run of only 500 copies,
- An excellent opportunity to acquire a first edition, currently valued at ~€40,000
In 1860 the Second Opium War finally ends at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, following the decisive defeat of the Chinese forces. Prince Gong was compelled to sign two treaties on behalf of the Qing government with Lord Elgin and Baron Gros, who represented Britain and France respectively. As the Anglo-French expedition force steadily approached Beijing, two British envoys, a journalist for The Times and a small escort of British and Indian troopers were sent to meet Prince Yi under a flag of truce to negotiate a Qing surrender. In fact the delegation were captures, imprisoned and tortured, with twenty deaths. Lord Elgin retaliated by ordering the complete destruction of the Old Summer Palace and Summer Palace, which was then carried out by British and French troops. Due to their size this took 4,000 men three days to destroy them; many artworks, sculptures, porcelain, jade, silk robes, elaborate textiles, gold objects and more, were looted. Charles George Gordon
Or, for another perspective: Harry Flashman
- An excellent opportunity for looting.
In 1867 at a small ceremony in Sitka in Alaska, the United States takes possession of Alaska after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Russian and American soldiers paraded in front of the governor's house; the Russian flag was lowered and the American flag raised amid peals of artillery.
In 1922 the British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) is founded by a consortium, to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.
In 1945 the Soviet nuclear program receives plans for the United States MK3 plutonium nuclear bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Fuchs would also pass the material on to nuclear scientists in Britain in violation of the Atomic Energy Act. Fuchs was a brilliant theoretical physicist, responsible for many significant theoretical calculations relating to the first nuclear weapons and, later, early models of the fusion bomb. In 1950 he would confess to his espionage. After his conviction in 1950, he served nine years in prison in the United Kingdom and then moved to East Germany where he resumed his career as a physicist and scientific leader.
Also in 1945 a group from the Venezuelan Armed Forces, led by Mario Vargas, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, stages a coup d'état against president Isaías Medina Angarita, who is overthrown by the end of the day.
And also in 1945 Argentine military officer and politician Juan Perón marries actress Eva Duarte in a discreet and private civil ceremony in Junín.
In 1954 Texas Instruments and Industrial Development Engineering Associates unveil the Regency TR-1, the world's first commercially produced transistor radio. AT the time none of the major radio makers including were interested in transmistor sets. The radio will be put on sale in November 1954 and sells well for it's small size and weight and battery operation; sound quality is poor.
In 1963 Félicette, a black and white female Parisian stray cat, becomes the first cat launched into space, as part of the French space program. Like the other cats in the programme she had electrodes implanted onto her skull to allow for neurological activity to be monitored. Most of the data from the mission was of good quality, and Félicette survived the flight, the only cat to have survived spaceflight but was euthanized two months after the launch so that a necropsy could be performed.
In 1967 the Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet. The probe comprised an entry probe, designed to enter the Venus atmosphere and parachute to the surface, and a carrier/flyby spacecraft, which carried the entry probe to Venus and served as a communications relay for the entry probe. Venera 4 provided the first chemical analysis of the Venusian atmosphere, showing it to be primarily carbon dioxide with a few percents of nitrogen and below one percent of oxygen and water vapors. While entering the atmosphere it became the first spacecraft to survive entry into another planet's atmosphere and detected a weak planetary magnetic field and no radiation field. The probe sent the first direct measurements proving that Venus was extremely hot, that its atmosphere was far denser than expected, and that it had lost most of its water long ago.
Ideas? Suggestions?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 18, 2020 20:04:49 GMT
Dagobert I,Félicette, Klaus Fuchs,Mario Vargas, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, Herman Melville (perfect for time-tourists to get) King Chlothar II,Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen, Canute the Great, Pappus of Alexandria, and and Henry Mowat are good people to meet. the Basel earthquake could be a good climax of a adventure. And the Church of the Holy Sepulchre could be a good cult in a adventure.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 19, 2020 21:12:18 GMT
19OCT
In 202BCE the final battle of the Second Punic War is fought; at the Battle of Zama, near Zama (modern day Tunisia) Roman legions and auxiliaries under Scipio Africanus resoundingly defeat Hannibal Barca, leader of the army defending Carthage. This was one of the most significant clashes of the ancient world and temporarily ended the strife between the two great Mediterranean powers, Rome and Carthage. The background to the battle is complex but can be summarised as an attempt by Carthage to gain time (after the defeat of Carthaginian and Numidian armies at the battles of Utica and the Great Plains) in order for Hannibal's army to be recalled from Italy; the Carthaginians were supremely confident in Hannibal#s ability to defeat the Romans again. Temporarily Carthage accepted the (rather generous) peace terms Scipio imposed on the them (they had no real choice but to accept them). After the return of Hannibal's forced to North Africa, the Carthaginians broke the armistice with Rome; the stage was set for the climactic confrontation between Scipio and Hannibal, near Zama Regia. Hannibal had superiority in forces (about 36,000 infantry to Scipio's 29,000) through fewer cavalry (4,00o to the 6,00 horsemen fielded by the Romans); most of the Numidian cavalry that Hannibal had employed with great success in Italy had defected to the Romans. Hannibal also employed 80 war elephants. The battle began with the sight of those eighty elephants opened charging the main Roman armyl however Scipio's soldiers were prepared and avoided the elephants by opening their ranks, and drove them off with missiles. Next was the clash of the light cavalry forces; this ended with the Roman and Numidian cavalry chasing the Carthaginians from the battlefield. Hannibal's infantry attacked in three waves; the first (mostly mercenaries) were defeated, the second (citizen levies and some mercenaries) inflicted serious losses on the Roman first line. The Roman second line then joined the struggle and pushed back the Carthaginian assault. Hannibal's third line of veterans, reinforced by the citizen levies and mercenaries, faced off against the Roman army, which had been redeployed into a single line. The combat was fierce and evenly matched until Scipio's cavalry attacked Hannibal's army in the rear, routing and destroying it.
The Carthaginians lost perhaps 25,000 killed and over fifteen thousand captured. Scipio lost about five thousand (most of his losses were Numidians). Defeated on their home ground, the Carthaginian ruling elite sued for peace and accepted humiliating terms, ending the seventeen years of war.
In 439CE the Vandals, led by King Gaiseric, take the Roman city of Carthage in North Africa. Gaiseric was one of the key players in the difficulties faced by the Western Roman Empire during the fifth century. He raised a relatively insignificant Germanic tribe to the status of a major Mediterranean power. In a surprise move on 19OCT0439 Gaiseric captured Carthage, striking a devastating blow at imperial power, taking advantage of the fact that the Roman commander, Flavius Aetius remained preoccupied with affairs in Gaul. The Romans were caught unaware, and Gaiseric captured a large part of the western Roman navy docked in the port of Carthage.
- This is an absolutely classic point to meddle, if someone was trying to prop-up the later Roman Empire.
- Aetius is a fascinating person to drop into a scenario, a rather tragic figure, sometimes referred to as "The Last of the Romans" for his ultimately unsuccessful efforts to maintain the light of Roman civilisation. In addition to being one possible inspiration for the King Arthur of legend Aetius is also one inspiration for Poul Anderson's character Dominic Flandry.
In 1216 King John of England dies at Newark-on-Trent and is succeeded by his nine-year-old son Henry, later to be Henry III. John is often considered the worst king of England in history, inspiring the nickname "Lackland" (from his losses of English territory in France) and the tradition of not naming Royal princes 'John'. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The baronial revolt at the end of John's reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document sometimes considered an early step in the evolution of the constitution of the United Kingdom (though this is actually rather a stretch). A few weeks earlier John had begun a fresh and vigorous attack on his rebellious barons, with unusually complex and effective planning. After separating the rebel-held areas of Lincolnshire and East Anglia, he moved north to relieve the besieged town of Lincoln and then back east to Lynn in Norfolk. However in Lynn (now KIng's Lynn) John "contracted dysentery" which grew progressively worse and would ultimately prove fatal.
- For anyone planning a spot of regicide the classic symptoms of "dysentery" closely match those of arsenic poisoning.
By the time he reached Newark Castle in Nottinghamshire, he was unable to travel any farther; he died on the night of 18/19OCT. Numerous, probably fictitious, accounts circulated soon after his death that he had been killed by poison. His body was escorted south by a company of mercenaries and he was buried in Worcester Cathedral in front of the altar of St Wulfstan. In the aftermath of John's death William Marshal was declared the protector of the nine-year-old Henry III; the civil war continued until royalist victories at the battles of Lincoln and Dover in 1217. The failed Magna Carta agreement was resuscitated by Marshal's administration and reissued in an edited form in 1217 as a basis for future government.
- The unusual ability and vigour demonstrated in John's last months of life is interesting (to me anyway); was someone advising him (and being listened to) or pulling the king;s strings? Did someone else intervene to murder the suddenly effective monarch, who might threaten to end the civil war and continue to rule for year to come?
In 1386 the Universität Heidelberg holds its first lecture. The university was formally established on 18OCT a special Pontifical High Mass in the Heiliggeistkirche.
In 1453 three months after the disastrous Battle of Castillon, England loses its last possessions in southern France and the Hundred Years' War comes to an end. Only the Pale of Calais remains in English hands. The battle led to the English loss of almost all its holding in France especially Gascony (Aquitaine), an English possession for three centuries. There was a shift in the balance of power in Europe, and political instability in England (and may have triggered the mental instability of Henry VI of England). Together, the weak and ineffective king and the loss of territory and president led to the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses in England.
In 1466 the Thirteen Years' War between Poland and the Teutonic Order ends with the Second Treaty of Thorn, signed in the Hanseatic city of Thorn (Toruń) between the Polish king Casimir IV Jagiellon and the Teutonic Knights.
In 1469 Ferdinand II of Aragon marries Isabella I of Castile, a marriage that paves the way to the unification of Aragon and Castile into a single country, Spain.
In 1579 James VI of Scotland is celebrated as an adult ruler by a festival in Edinburgh, including the formal Royal Entry into the city. This was the high point of three weeks of events; James VI left Stirling on 29SEP (a "dark and stormy day"), had lunch at Dunipace and dinner at Linlithgow Palace (where he stayed the night), and came to Holyroodhouse the next evening. The town lined the road with men in armour and a salute was fired from the guns of Edinburgh Castle. His entry to the town was marked by a ceremonial Royal entry, with James arriving from Dalkeith Palace and processing from the West Port, to the Overbow, to the Tolbooth, to St. Giles Kirk, the Mercat Cross, the Salt Tron, the Nether Bow, Canongate Cross, and Holyrood Palace. Much of the town, including the gates, the tolbooths of Edinburgh and the Canongate, and other buildings, were painted white with limewash. At the West Port the king was met by 32 burgesses of Edinburgh who carried a canopy made of purple velvet. John Shairp gave a speech in Latin and gifts were given to the new King. And more pageantry followed, including a tableau vivant of the Judgement of Solomon, the presentation of the keys to the town (by Cupid, at the Overbow; Cupid was played by a boy who descended in a globe). Various historical scenes were played out.
- The perfect opportunity for 'A Grand Day Out'. Now blend in an assassination/kidnapping/mind control plot and someone trying to steal the gifts.
In 1596 the Spanish ship San Felipe runs aground in Urado on the Japanese island of Shikokuon and its cargo is confiscated/looted by local authorities. The local daimyō Chōsokabe Motochika seized the cargo of the richly laden Manila galleon, and the incident escalated all the way up to Toyotomi Hideyoshi, ruling taikō of Japan. The pilot of the ship suggested to Japanese authorities that it was Spanish modus operandi to have missionaries infiltrate a country before an eventual military conquest, which led to the crucifixion of 26 Christians in Nagasaki, the first lethal persecution of Christians by the state in Japan. The cargo of the San Felipe was estimated to be worth over a million pesos;unfortunately it departed late from Manila and encountered three typhoons en route.
In 1812 Napoleon's attempted invasion of Russia ends when he begins the retreat from Moscow.
In 1813 during the War of the Sixth Coalition Napoleon is forced to retreat from Germany after being defeated at the Battle of Leipzig (also called the Battle of the Nations). The Coalition armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia, led by Emperor Alexander I and Karl von Schwarzenberg, decisively defeated the Grande Armée of French Emperor Napoleon I. The battle was the culmination of the German Campaign of 1813 and involved over half-a-million troops and was the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I.
In 1864 Union victory at the Battle of Cedar Creek ends the last Confederate threat to Washington DC. It was the final battle of the Valley Campaigns of 1864 and started with Confederate General Jubal Early launching a surprise attack against the encamped army of Union General Philip Sheridan northeast of Strasburg in Virginia. During the morning fighting seven Union infantry divisions were forced to fall back and lost numerous prisoners and cannon. Early failed to continue his attack north of Middletown, and the semi-accidental arrival of Union general Sheridan, dramatically riding to the battlefield from Winchester, allowed the Union troops to rally and hold a new defensive line. A Union counterattack that afternoon routed Early's army. After the battle the final Confederate invasion of the North was ended; the Confederacy was never again able to threaten Washington. Perhaps more importantly he stunning Union victory aided the reelection of Abraham Lincoln and won Sheridan lasting fame.
- Unless of course Sheridan, his aides and their relatively small escort never make it from Winchester to Cedar Creek, or he's incapacitated or otherwise ignores the sound of artillery in the distance.
In 1864 Confederate agents based in Canada rob three banks in Saint Albans in Vermont, annoying Canadian public opinion. The St. Albans Raid was the northernmost land action of the American Civil War; a raid by a small group of Confederate cavalry (21, led by Bennett H. Young) operating from the Province of Canada. The troops had recently failed in engagements with the Union Army and evaded subsequent capture in the United States. The mission was to rob banks to raise money, and to trick the Union Army into diverting troops to defend their northern border against further raids. Approximately US$208,000 was stolen and an attempt was made to burn the town, with little effect.
In 1914 during the First World War, the First Battle of Ypres begins.
In 1921 a day of political instability in Portugal sees the government deposed; that evening the Prime Minister and several officials are murdered in the "Bloody Night" coup. Bloody Night (Noite Sangrenta) was a radical revolt that took place in Lisbon; during the day, a coup led António Granjo's government to resign, but President António José de Almeida refused the demand to appoint the rebels' government. That night a riot led by a "ghost truck" resulted in five people associated with the Sidonist regime being killed and one was gravely injured. Events started early that morning, between 5 and 6A, civilians, members of the National Republican Guard and the Navy gathered in Terreiro do Paço, and establish positions and artillery in the Eduardo VII Park. As the sun rises, the artillery signals the beginning of the hostilities and a gunboat responds. Unable to resist, the government of António Granjo hands its resignation to President António José de Almeida As night falls, a "ghost truck", led by Abel Olímpio, roamed Lisbon with the aim of murdering a list of notable people.
In 1943 the cargo vessel Sinfra is attacked by Allied aircraft at Crete and sunk. 2,098 Italian prisoners of war drown with it.
In 1943 researchers at Rutgers University isolate Streptomycin, the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis and other diseases, including brucellosis, plague and tularemia. Streptomycin was first isolated by Albert Schatz, a doctoral student in the laboratory of Selman Abraham Waksman, assisted closely by Elizabeth Bugie. The research project was funded by Merck and Co. Waksman and his staff discovered several antibiotics; actinomycin, clavacin, streptothricin, streptomycin, grisein, neomycin, fradicin, candicidin, and candidin. Waksman won the Nobel Prize for his work, but was accused of playing down the role of Schatz and Bugie.
In 1944 a coup is launched against Juan Federico Ponce Vaides, beginning the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution.
In 1950 China defeats the Tibetan Army at the Battle of Chamdo, establishing PRC control of the Chamdo Region and leading to the eventual the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China.
Also in 1950 the Battle of Pyongyang ends in a United Nations victory. Hours later, the Chinese Army begins crossing the border into Korea.
In 1986 a Tupolev Tu-134 aircraft belonging to the Mozambican People's Republic and carrying President Samora Machel and 43 others from Mbala (in Zambia_ to the Mozambican capital of Maputo, crashes at Mbuzini in South Africa. Ten of the 34 on board survive, but the president of Mozambique along with 33 others do not. The crash has long been blamed on South African interference with radio navigation beacons, though pilot error is the official cause.
In 1987 the United States Navy conducts Operation Nimble Archer, an attack on two Iranian oil platforms in the Persian Gulf in response to Iran's missile attack three days earlier on MV Sea Isle City, a reflagged Kuwaiti oil tanker at anchor off Kuwait.
In 2001 SIEV X, an Indonesian fishing boat en route to Christmas Island that is carrying over 400 migrants, sinks in international waters with the loss of 353 people.
In 2005 Hurricane Wilma becomes the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record with a minimum pressure of 882mbar and wind speeds of 300km/h.
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 19, 2020 21:36:23 GMT
Albert Schatz, António Granjo',James VI of Scotland( i agree),Abel Olímpio, Gaiseric,( i agree),Hannibal Barca,Scipio Africanus,Casimir IV Jagiellon, Flavius Aetius, and Juan Federico Ponce Vaides,are good people to meet. The Battle of Castillon could be a good ah with a English victory story. the Battle of Cedar Creek could be a good pure historical or horrors of war themed one. And the Battle of Pyongyang could be a ah about ending the Korean war early.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 21, 2020 9:40:05 GMT
Yesterday is slightly late...
20OCT
In 1568 Spanish forces under the Duke of Alba defeats a Dutch rebel force under William the Silent (William of Orange) at the Battle of Jodoigne. This was one of the first major battles of the Dutch Revolt, otherwise known as the Eighty Year Year. At the time the Netherlands belonged to the Spanish Monarchy; however in 1566 a series of revolts emerged against the Spanish authorities, mainly caused by religious and economic impositions on the Dutch population. In 1567 the hostilities increased, leading to the Eighty Years' War.
In 1572 later during the Eighty Years' War the town of Goes, in the Spanish Netherlands, was besieged by Dutch forces with the support of English troops sent by QueenElizabeth I. Over one night a force of three thousand Spanish soldiers wade through 25km of to relieve the town. As the town could not be relieved by sea, Cristóbal de Mondragón led his forces through the mouth of the river Scheldt, much of the water chest deep The surprise arrival of the Tercios forced the withdrawal of the Anglo-Dutch troops from Goes, allowing the Spanish to maintain control of nearby Middelburg and of Walcheren Island.
In 1740 the life's work of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles VI, fails when France, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony refuse to honour their agreements regarding the Pragmatic Sanction, and the War of the Austrian Succession begins. The Pragmatic Sanction is a complicated matter of dynastic politics, caused by Charles's back of male offspring. Specifically it was an edict issued by Charles VI (on 19APR1713) to ensure that the hereditary possessions of the Habsburg (including the Archduchy of Austria, the Kingdom of Hungary, the Kingdom of Croatia, the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Austrian Netherlands), could be inherited by his niece or later his daughter Maria Theresa. On his death Charles VI was ultimately succeeded by his own elder daughter, Maria Theresa (whi was born four years after the Edict, in 1717). However, despite the Pragmatic Sanction, her accession in 1740 resulted in the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession as Charles-Albert of Bavaria, backed by France, contested her inheritance.
In 1818 the Convention of 1818, also known as the London Convention, is signed between the United States and the United Kingdom, which settles the Canada–United States border on the 49th parallel for most of its length. The Convention covered matters including fisheries, national boundaries and the restoration of slaves. This treaty was principally intended to resolve standing boundary issues between the two nations, which had continued since American independence, mainly due to faulty maps being used at the time of the Treaty of Paris.
- This includes the matter of the Isle Phelipeaux; an island in Lake Superior referenced in the 1783 Treaty of Paris. This substantial chunk of land, about 300km2, was later found to not exist. Unless someone hid it or moved it....
The two nations agreed to a boundary line involving the 49th parallel north, in part because a straight-line boundary would be easier to survey than the pre-existing boundaries based on watersheds. The treaty marked both the United Kingdom's last permanent major loss of territory in what is now the Continental United States and the United States' only permanent significant cession of North American territory to a foreign power. Due to faulty maps the treaty required a further agreement, in 1842, to correct some errors.
In 1827 during the Greek War of Independence, the Battle of Navarino, is fought in Navarino Bay (modern Pylos), on the west coast of the Peloponnese peninsula; a combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet is defeated by British, French and Russian naval forces in the last significant battle fought with wooden hulled sailing ships.
In 1935 the Long March, a mammoth retreat began by the armed forces of the Chinese Communist Party a year prior, ends.
In 1941 thousands of civilians in German-occupied Serbia are murdered in the Kragujevac massacre. Around 2,800 mostly Serb men and boys were murdered in Kragujevac by German soldiers in reprisal for insurgent attacks in the Gornji Milanovac district that resulted in the deaths of 10 German soldiers and the wounding of 26 others. The number of hostages to be shot was calculated as a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded, a formula devised by Adolf Hitler with the intent of suppressing anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe.
In 1944 a leak of liquefied natural gas from above-ground storage tanks in Cleveland,near Lake Erie, collects and then detonates. An area of around 30 blocks is levelled and at least 130 people are killed. The leak began at about 2:30PM on that Friday afternoon in a cylindrical above-ground storage tank at the East Ohio Gas Company's tank farm. It appears that a seam on the welded steel tank weakened or split, allowing vapor to pour out. The facility was located on East 61st Street, near Lake Erie, and winds from the lake pushed the vapor into a mixed-use section of Cleveland, where it sank into the sewer pipes (propane is slightly heavier than air). As the gas mixture flowed and mixed with air and sewer gas, the mixture ignited; in the ensuing explosion, manhole covers launched skyward as jets of fire erupted from depths of the sewer lines. One manhole cover was thrown several kilometres. At around 3:00PM a second above-ground tank exploded, leveling the tank farm and spreading more propane; explosions and fires continued.
In 1947 the US House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee begins its investigation into Communist infiltration of the Hollywood film industry, resulting in a blacklist that prevents some from working in the industry for years.
In 1952 Evelyn Baring, the new Governor of Kenya, declares a state of emergency and begins arresting hundreds of suspected leaders of the Mau Mau Uprising. Early the next morning, Operation Jock Scott was launched: the British carried out a mass-arrest of Jomo Kenyatta and 180 other alleged Mau Mau leaders within Nairobi. The effort was ineffective and indeed counterproductive; not only did it not decapitate the movement's leadership as hoped, the real militants, such as Dedan Kimathi and Stanley Mathenge fled and escalated their campaign. The violent and random nature of British tactics during the months after Jock Scott served merely to alienate ordinary Kikuyu and drive many of the wavering majority into Mau Mau's arms
In 1961 the Soviet Union performs the first armed test of a submarine-launched ballistic missile, launching an R-13 (SS-N-4 Sark) from a Golf-class submarine.
In 1962 China launches simultaneous offensives in Ladakh and across the McMahon Line (the boundary between formerly British India and Tibet), beginning the Sino-Indian War. The war was principally due to the disputed Himalayan border region and Indian support for the 1959 Tibetan uprising, including India's granting of asylum to the exiled Dalai Lama. The war would last about a month and see around 2,000 deaths.
In 1973 United States President Richard Nixon fires US Attorney General Elliot Richardson and then Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus after they refuse to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox (who was investigating Nixon's involvement with the Watergate affair). The next senior Justice Department official, Robert Bork, does dismiss Cox, though the decision was vacated by a court ruling. The event is known as the "Saturday Night Massacre". The political and public reactions to Nixon's actions were extremely negative and highly damaging to the president. The impeachment process against Nixon began ten days later.
In 1976 in the Mississippi river the ferry George Prince is struck by the Norwegian tanker SS Frosta while crossing the river; seventy-eight passengers and crew die, and only 18 people aboard the ferry survive.
In 1982 during the UEFA Cup match between FC Spartak Moscow and HFC Haarlem, 66 people are crushed to death in the Luzhniki disaster in the Grand Sports Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium in Moscow.
In 1991 a magnitude 6.8 earthquake strikes the Uttarkashi region of India, killing more than 1,000 people.
Comments? Suggestions?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 21, 2020 14:19:05 GMT
Evelyn Baring, William the Silent, Elliot Richardson , William Ruckelshaus, Archibald Cox,Robert Bork, and Jock Scott are good people to meet.the House Un-American Activities Committee is a good foil for a extraterrestrial villain think monsters are due on maple street. The Isle Phelipeaux could be a good base under siege scenario or underground base. And the War of the Austrian Succession could be a good pure historical.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 21, 2020 19:35:06 GMT
And now today.
21OCT
In 1096CE a Seljuk Turkish army successfully fight off the People's Crusade, obliterating the ill-trained force in the the Battle of Civetot in northwestern Anatolia. The People's Crusade was the first and largest of the popular crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These were poorly organised and ill funded popular movements who sought to "regain the Hold Land for Christendom", as opposed to the 'official', Church sponsored, better organised, well-armed, and well-funded 'Prince's Crusades. The gathered members from Europe and set off under the leadership of Peter the Hermit and Walter Sans Avoir, pausing in the Germanies and Central Europe to massacre some thousands of Jews. Approximately sixty thousand of the crusaders were massacred at Civetot.
In 1097 during the First Crusade, Crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon, Bohemund of Taranto, and Raymond IV, begin the Siege of Antioch. It would last until 02JUN1098. As Antioch lay in a strategic location on the crusaders' route to Palestine their supplies, reinforcements and retreat could all be controlled by the city. Anticipating that it would be attacked, the Muslim governor of the city, Yaghi-Siyan, began stockpiling food and sending requests for help. The Byzantine walls surrounding the city presented a formidable obstacle to its capture, but the leaders of the crusade felt compelled to besiege Antioch anyway. The garrison sortied unsuccessfully on 29DEC and on 31DEC a force of 20,000 crusaders (who were foraging for supplies) encountered a relief army led by Duqaq of Damascus heading to Antioch and defeated them. As the siege went on, supplies dwindled and in early 1098 around 15% of the crusaders was dying from starvation, and people began deserting. A second relief force, this time under the command of Ridwan of Aleppo, advanced towards Antioch, arriving on 09FEB but, like the army of Duqaq before, it was defeated. Antioch would fall on 03JUN1098.
In 1209 Otto IV is crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Innocent III in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.Shortly afterwards rioting broke out in Rome, forcing Otto to abandon the city. This was the culmination of years of political maneuverings and promises by Otto, who'd break them rapidly.
In 1392 the Japanese Emperor Go-Kameyama abdicates in favor of rival claimant Go-Komatsu. This effectively ended the southern court's claims to sovereignty of half of Japan, though initially the two had agreed to alternate control of the throne. Go-Komatsu reneged on the agreement and kept the throne for himself and his descendants.
In 1520 after much exploration, and losses over the winter, Ferdinand Magellan discovers a bay that leads to the strait, now known as the Strait of Magellan, allowing passage around the tip of South America and into the Pacific. While exploring the strait, one of the remaining four ships of the expedition, the San Antonio, deserted the fleet, returning east to Spain. The fleet reached the Pacific by the end of November 1520. Based on the flawed understanding of world geography of the period Magellan expected a short journey to Asia, perhaps taking as little as three or four days. In fact, the Pacific crossing took 110 days, leading to about thirty deaths from malnutrition and dehydration.
In 1520 João Álvares Fagundes discovers the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon near Newfoundland; he names them the "Islands of the 11,000 Virgins" in honour of of Saint Ursula.
In 1600 the forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu defeat the rival Japanese clans in the decisive Battle of Sekigahara and becomes shōgun of Japan. Tokugawa Ieyasu took three more years to consolidate his position of power over the Toyotomi clan and the various daimyō, but Sekigahara is widely considered to be the unofficial beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, the last shogunate to control Japan.
In 1797 in Boston Harbor, the 44-gun United States Navy frigate USS Constitution is launched in Edmund Hartt's shipyard in the North End of Boston, Massachusetts. This was actually the third attempt to launch the vessel; the official launching ceremony has been on 20SEP (attended by President John Adams and Massachusetts Governor Increase Sumner) but the ship slid down the ways only about eight metres before stopping. An attempt two days later resulted in only an additional ten metres of travel before the ship again stopped. After a month of rebuilding the ways, Constitution finally slipped into Boston Harbor on 21OCT1797, with Captain James Sever breaking a bottle of Madeira wine on her bowsprit.
In 1805 during the Napoleonic Wars, a major fleet action is won by a British fleet led by Lord Nelson, defeating a combined French and Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve in the Battle of Trafalgar.
In 1824 Portland cement is patented. This was, though it may not seem it, a vitally important development in construction. Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world as a basic constituent of concrete. It was developed by Joseph Aspdin and substantially improved by his son William Aspdin.
In 1854 Florence Nightingale and a staff of 38 nurses are sent to the Crimean War. Nightingale became a Victorian icon, as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War; she led to the professionalisation of a profession then held in low esteem.
In 1861 during the American Civil War Union forces under Colonel Edward Baker are defeated by Confederate troops in the second major battle of the war, the Battle of Ball's Bluff, in Loudoun County, Virginia. The battle was something of a debacle for the Union; the Union Army forces under Major General George McClellan suffered a humiliating defeat when a minor reconnaissance across the Potomac and a false report of an unguarded Confederate camp encouraged Brigadier General Charles Pomeroy Stone to order a raid, which resulted in a clash with enemy forces. Poor organisation and leadership led to a Union defeat and alarmed the US Congress, leading to the creation of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, a body which would provoke years of bitter political infighting.
In 1892 despite the fair not being complete the opening ceremonies for the World's Columbian Exposition are held in Chicago. Construction was significantly behind schedule so the exposition did not open until 01MAY1893. The World's Columbian Exposition (the Chicago World's Fair) was held to showcase the achievements of the United States and celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage Columbus took to the New World. The fair was an immense affair, with hundreds of thousands of visitors, including Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan and Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, Katharine Lee Bates (the White City later inspired the reference to "alabaster cities" in her poem America the Beautiful), the Persian traveler Mirza Mohammad Ali Mo'in ol-Saltaneh, Pierre de Coubertin, Swami Vivekananda, Kubota Beisen and of course the serial murderer H. H. Holmes (who attended the fair at least twice, with two of his eventual victims, Annie and Minnie Williams). A fascinating opportunity for a scenario. Starting with the constant activity by a small army of workmen who constantly replace the light bulbs....
In 1907 the 1907 Qaratog earthquake (of magnitude 7.4) hits the borders of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan (then in Russia) at 4:23AM, killing between 12,000 and 15,000 people.
In 1931 the Sakurakai, a nationalist secret society in the Imperial Japanese Army, launches an abortive coup d'état attempt known as The October incident. Having failed to replace the government with a totalitarian state socialist military dictatorship in the abortive coup d'état of March 1931, Kingoro Hashimoto of the Sakurakai and his ultra-nationalist civilian supporters, including Shūmei Ōkawa tried again in October 1931.
In 1940 the first edition of the Ernest Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls is published.
In 1944 the Nemmersdorf massacre against the German civilians takes place. The Nemmersdorf massacre was a civilian massacre, still highly disputed, carried out by Russian soldiers in the late stages of World War II in Nemmersdorf (present-day Mayakovskoye in the Kaliningrad Oblast). It was one of the first pre-war ethnically German villages to fall to the advancing Red Army. Allegedly on 21OCT Soviet soldiers carried out a campaign of brutality, rape and murder aimed at German civilians as well as French and Belgian prisoners held there. Accounts include descriptions of women, aged from eight to over eighty, who had been repeatedly raped and were crucified to carts and walls. The estimated death toll was around 74 German civilians and about fifty French and Belgian prisoners.
In 1950 heavy fighting begins between British and Australian forces against the North Koreans during the Battle of Yongju. Also known as the Battle of the Apple Orchard the fighting lasted two days and involved the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade and the KPA 239th Regiment. The UN forces were attempting to reach and relive the US 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment who'd parachuted into the North Korean towns of Sukchon and Sunchon on 20OCT. The US paratroopers, lightly armed and facing heavy odds, were forced to withdraw and seek assistance. Help came from the 27th British Commonwealth Brigade, including the 1st Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the 1st Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment, with the the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment. A determined Australian ground attack routed the North Koreans and they were forced to withdraw westward with heavy casualties.
In 1959 in New York City, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opens to the public. With a huge collection of unusual art, housed in a very unusual building this is the perfect setting for a nighttime scenario The Guggenheim is located at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City and houses a large, continuously expanding, collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art in a distinctive (not to say odd) cylindrical building, the last project of Frank Lloyd Wright. On 21OCT1959, ten years after the death of Solomon Guggenheim and six months after the death of Frank Lloyd Wright, the Museum first opened its doors to large crowds; the building became widely praised and inspired many other architects.
In 1959 US President Eisenhower approves the transfer of all US Army space-related activities to NASA, including most of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency.
In 1965 comet Ikeya–Seki approaches perihelion, passing 450,000 kilometers from the sun. Comet Ikeya–Seki was then a long-period comet discovered as a faint telescopic object on 18SEP1965 ans was predicted to pass just 450,000 km above the Sun's surface and to probably become extremely bright. Ikeya–Seki performed as expected. As it approached perihelion it was clearly visible in the daytime sky next to the Sun, one of the brightest comets seen in the last thousand years.
In 1966 a spoil tip from a local colliery (coal mine) collapses on the village of Aberfan in Wales; 144 people, mostly schoolchildren were killed in the disaster. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. A period of heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, engulfing Pantglas Junior School and other buildings. The tip was the responsibility of the National Coal Board (NCB), and the subsequent inquiry placed the blame for the disaster on the organisation and nine named employees. In 1966 there were seven spoil tips on the slopes above Aberfan; Tip 7, which slipped onto the village, was begun in 1958 and, at the time of the disaster, was 34m and was improperly based on ground from which water springs emerged. About 110,000m3 of waste materials slipped down the side of the hill at about 15m/s. Two houses were obliterated as the wave travelled 650m down the hill. Most was stopped at a canal and railway embankment but about one third of the material continues and engulfed the school.
In 1967 the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam organizes a march of fifty thousand people from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon in Washington DC. The demonstration began with a rally and concert (with folk singer Phil Ochs) at West Potomac Park near the Lincoln Memorial where about 70,000 people gathered. Around 50,000 of those attending were then led by social activist Abbie Hoffman and marched from the Lincoln Memorial to The Pentagon in nearby Arlington, Virginia to participate in a second rally.
In 1969 a coup d'état in Somalia establishes a Marxist–Leninist administration led by far-left military officers of the Supreme Revolutionary Council.
In 1971 a gas explosion kills 22 people in a row of shops on the main street of Clarkston in East Renfrewshire, Scotland The explosion followed a build-up of gas in an underground space beneath the Clarkston Toll shops, caused by a gas main leak (later ruled to have been accidental). While customers and shop staff had on 20 October complained of a strong smell of gas in the centre, Scottish Gas engineers had attended to investigate, but had identified no source for the smell. The engineers were still in attendance at around 2:50PM on 21OCT when the gas ignited and exploded, killing at least 21 people and injuring around 100.
In 1978 an Australian civilian pilot, Frederick Valentich, vanishes over the Bass Strait south of Melbourne, after reporting contact with an unidentified aircraft. This is a classic UFO case, though one that is almost certainly possessed of a mundane explanation. Valentich was a twenty-year-old Australian pilot who was carrying out a night-time training flight in a Cessna 182L (a single engine light aircraft). He was a relatively inexperienced pilot with around 150 flying hours and has been sescribed as During the flight Valentich informed Melbourne air traffic control he was being accompanied by an aircraft about 300m above him and that his engine had begun running roughly, before finally reporting, "It's not an aircraft". While there were reports of alleged UFO sightings in Australia that night on the night of the disappearance the country was also experiencing the peak of a meteorite stream with 10-15 sightings per hour noted. The explanation for the disappearance, and lack of wreckage are several:
- A planned disappearance. Valentich had recently failed flying examinations and was been considered for prosecution for breaches of aviation law. His aircraft had fuel for over 800km of additional flight and wasn't seen on RADAR.
- Suicide
- Disorientation followed by accidental impact with the water
- Collision or near-miss with another aircraft engaged in illicit activity. There were report of an unidentified and unauthorised landing not far from Cape Otway that night.
- Kidnapping or destruction by another craft.
One friend stated that Valentich was an ardent believer in UFOs and had been worried about being attacked by them. The Australian Department of Transport investigation into Valentich's disappearance was unable to determine the cause but that it was "presumed fatal" for Valentich. Five years after Valentich's aircraft went missing, an engine cowl flap was found washed ashore on Flinders Island that might have been from his plane.
In 1983 the metre is defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.
In 1987 Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka, killing 70 ethnic Tamil patients, doctors and nurses in the Jaffna hospital massacre.
In 1994 32 people are killed when a span of the Seongsu Bridge collapses in Seoul, South Korea, This structural failure was caused by improper welding of the steel trusses of the suspension structure beneath the concrete slab roadway.
In 2003 photographs of the dwarf planet Eris are taken and lead to its discovery by Mike Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David Rabinowitz on 05JAN2005. The search team had been systematically scanning for large outer Solar System bodies for several years, and had been involved in the discovery of several other large Trans-Neptunian Objects using the 1.2m Samuel Oschin Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory in California. Officially the image of Eris was not discovered at that point due to its very slow motion across the sky causing the image-searching software excluded it from consideration.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Requests?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 21, 2020 20:08:48 GMT
Frederick Valentich, Phil Ochs,Mirza Mohammad Ali Mo'in ol-Saltaneh, Pierre de Coubertin, Swami Vivekananda, Kubota Beisen,Kingoro Hashimoto,João Álvares Fagundes, Florence Nightingale, Peter the Hermit and Walter Sans Avoir,Pope Innocent III , and Katharine Lee Bates are good people to meet. The USS Constitution could be a good base under siege story setting. And the dwarf planet Eris could be a asteroid base in the future.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 22, 2020 19:26:13 GMT
22OCT
In 794CE as part of a political and social restructuring Emperor Kanmu relocates the Japanese capital to Heian-kyō (now Kyoto).
In 906 Ahmad ibn Kayghalagh leads the by-now annual raid against the Byzantine Empire, from Tarsus; he is joined by the local governor, Rustam ibn Baradu and their combined forces take some 4,000–5,000 captives as weall as cattle and other goods.
In 1383 after the male line of the Portuguese House of Burgundy becomes extinct with the death of King Fernando the country descends into a period of civil war known, as the Interregnum, between rival claimants and prospective husbands for Fernando's daughter Beatrice. By the standards of similar dynastic wars elsewhere in Europe (e.g. France [the Hundred Years' War] and England [War of the Roses]) the strife is relatively brief.
In 1633 the Ming dynasty defeats the Dutch East India Company at the Battle of Liaoluo Bay, off the coast of Fujian in China. The Dutch East India Company fleet under Admiral Hans Putmans was attempting to control shipping in the Taiwan Strait, while the southern Fujian sea traffic and trade was protected by a Ming fleet under Brigadier General Zheng Zhilong. This was the largest naval encounter between Chinese and European forces before the Opium Wars two hundred years later.
In 1707 in a disastrous navigational mistake four British naval vessels run aground on the Isles of Scilly; this leads to the first Longitude Act being enacted in 1714. Between 1,400 and 2,000 sailors lost their lives aboard the wrecked vessels; the disaster is attributable to a combination of factors, including the navigators' inability to accurately calculate their positions, errors in the available charts and pilot books, inadequate compasses and terrible weather. The fleet, of 21 ships, was commanded by Sir Cloudesley Shovell and had been recalled from operations in the Mediterranean and Gibraltar, as part of the War of the Spanish Succession to Portsmouth.
In 1721 the Russian Empire is formally proclaimed by Tsar Peter I after the Swedish defeat in the Great Northern War.
In 1730 construction of the Ladoga Canal, bypassing the storm prone Lake Ladoga and connecting the Neva and the Svir River, is completed.
In 1777 during the American Revolutionary War the American defenders of Fort Mercer on the Delaware River repulse repeated Hessian attacks in the Battle of Red Bank. Despite their superior training, experience and numbers the Hessian force which had been sent to take Fort Mercer on the left bank of the Delaware River just south of Philadelphia, was decisively defeated by a far inferior force of Colonial defenders.
In 1784 Russia founds a colony on Kodiak Island in Alaska.
In 1790 during the Northwest Indian War, Native American forces defeat the United States, ending the Harmar Campaign.
In 1797 André-Jacques Garnerin makes the first recorded parachute jump. Garnerin descended in a frameless (umbrella style) parachute attached to the balloon's gondola from a height of approximately one kilometres at Parc Monceau in Paris. Garnerin was a prominant early balloonist and aeronaut, ascending from Lord's Cricket Ground with Edward Hawke Locker on 05JUL1802 and travelling 28km to Chingford in around fifteen minutes amongst other adventures.
In 1844 Millerites, the followers of Baptist preacher William Miller, anticipate the end of the world in conjunction with the Second Advent of Christ. The following day became known as the Great Disappointment. The splintering of the sect created the Advent Christians, the Seventh-day Adventists and other movements.
In 1877 the Blantyre mining disaster in Scotland kills 207 miners, the youngest a boy of 11. On the morning of 22OCT nothing was thought to be amiss and at 04:40 four firemen had inspected the pits and judged them safe, so at 05:30 the regular workmen started to descend. At around 09:00 a blast was heard on the surface and flame and steam rushed up. It is believed that a flame ignited 'firedamp', a dangerous mixture of methane and aerosolised coal dust.
In 1883 the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City opens with a performance of Gounod's Faust in the 'Old Met' at 1411 Broadway in Manhattan, New York City. The house was the first home of the Metropolitan Opera Company and occupied an entire block between West 39th Street and West 40th Street on the west side of the street in the Garment District of Midtown Manhattan; it was referred to as "The Yellow Brick Brewery" for its industrial looking exterior.
In 1895 in Paris at 4pm the Granville–Paris Express train derails after overrunning the buffer stop at the Gare Montparnasse terminus, plowing across thirty metres of concourse and crashing through a wall, to fall ten metres to the road below.
In 1907 a run on the stock of the Knickerbocker Trust Company sets events in motion that will spark the Panic of 1907. The Knickerbocker Trust was an American bank based in New York and was at the time among the largest banks in the United States; however the then-president Charles Barney was misusing bank funds to attempt to corner the copper market. After a coincidental dumping of millions of dollars in copper into the market, other banks stopped accepting securities and cheques of the Knickerbocker Trust Company. This led to a run on bank funds and a more general financial panic. Barney killed himself. This banking crisis is also seen as the final straw that led Congress to form the Federal Reserve System in 1913.
In 1909 the Baronne de Laroche became the first woman to pilot an airplane alone. The Baronne took off from an airfield at Chalon-sur-Saône and flew to an altitude of 300 meters, flew for about six kilometres before landing.
In 1910 Hawley Harvey Crippen is convicted of poisoning his wife.
In 1943 in the Second firestorm raid on Germany, the RAF conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless.
In 1962 the nascent Cuban Missile Crisis goes public when President Kennedy announces that American reconnaissance planes have discovered Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, and that he has ordered a naval "quarantine" of the island. At 7:00PM Washington time Kennedy makes a nationally broadcast address on television and radio that the US has evidence of Soviet offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba.
That day Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, who had secretly been passing Soviet secrets to the United Kingdom, is arrested by the KGB. He would be convicted of treason and executed on 17MAY1963. 16, 1963.[69]
In 1963 prototype BAC One-Eleven airliner crashes in UK; all seven crew members on board the BAC One-Eleven were killed.
In 1973 Egypt launches three 'Scud' ballistic missiles against Israeli targets. One of the missiles was fired at Arish and the others at the Israeli bridgehead on the western bank of the Suez Canal, near Deversoir.
In 1975 the Soviet space mission Venera 9 lands on Venus and transmits pictures of the surface of the planet. At 05:13 UTC Venera 9 landed near Beta Regio, on a steep, smooth, slope covered with boulders.
In 1976 Scarlet GN, better known as "Red Dye No. 4", is banned by the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs.
In 2005 Tropical Storm Alpha forms in the Atlantic Basin, making the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season the most active Atlantic hurricane season until surpassed by the 2020 season.
In 2008 India launches its first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan-1.
Comments? Ideas?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 22, 2020 20:04:12 GMT
Oleg Penkovsky,Hawley Harvey Crippen, Ahmad ibn Kayghalagh,Baronne de Laroche,André-Jacques Garnerin,Emperor Kanmu, King Fernando , and Charles Barney are good people to meet. The Cuban Missile Crisis is a good area of time to be in with a lot of intrigue. the Blantyre mining disaster could be a good pure historical. Metropolitan Opera House could be good for time tourists/base under siege. And Red Dye No. 4 could be like soylent green or a inspiration of it.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 24, 2020 15:51:12 GMT
Due to the forum eating yesterday's post and me being rather busy today there will be a delay.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 24, 2020 20:07:53 GMT
23OCT
In 4004BCE, unless our understanding of cosmology and history is woefully inaccurate, the Earth or the universe did not come into existence, James Ussher's proposed creation date based on the Christian bible notwithstanding. of the world according to the Bible.
In 42BCE the Liberators' civil war approaches and end when Mark Antony and Octavian decisively defeat the army of at the Second Battle of Philippi at Philippi in Roman Macedonia. This was the final battle in the Wars of the Second Triumvirate, between the forces of Mark Antony and Octavian (of the Second Triumvirate) and the leaders of Julius Caesar's assassination, Brutus and Cassius. The battle, involving perhaps 200,000, was one of the largest in antiquity and end with the Triumvars finishing off Brutus's forces after a hard-fought battle. He committed suicide in turn, leaving the triumvirate in control of the Roman Republic.
In 425CE Valentinian III is elevated to Roman emperor at the age of six. He will rukle the remains of the Empire for thirty years, through regents and in his own right. Given his age Valentinian ruled under the regency of his mother Galla Placidia, until 437CE. This period was marked by a vigorous imperial policy and an attempt to stabilize the western provinces as far as the stretched resources of the empire could manage. However Valentinian's reign would not alter the ongoing collapse of the Western Empire.
In 1086 during the Spanish Reconquista, the Almoravid army led by their King Yusuf ibn Tashfin defeats an army led by the Castilian King Alfonso VI at the Battle of Sagrajas The battle was a notably bloody affair and while a decisive victory for the Almoravids, their losses meant that it was not possible to follow it up.
In 1157 the Battle of Grathe [Grey] Heath ends the ongoing civil war in Denmark. After king Eric III abdicated in 1146 the kingdom was split in two; Sweyn III was declared king of Zealand and Scania, while Canute, son of King Magnus, became king of Jutland. However a three-sided civil war, adding Valdemar I the Great, lasted about ten years. In the summer of 1157 the three contenders agreed to share power; so that Valdemar I the Great would rule Jutland, Canute V would rule the islands of Zealand and Funen, and Sweyn would rule Scania. A reconciling feast was agreed upon, and it was held in Roskilde on 09AUG1157; there Sweyn ordered his men to kill the two other kings. While Canute was slain, Valdemar, while wounded, managed to knock over some great candlesticks and escape in the following fire and confusion. He fled out in the darkness and managed to return to Jutland. He gathered his forces and engaged Sweyn III in battle, defeating his decisively at the battle of Grathe [Grey] Heath, ending the civil war and killing Sweyn.
In 1295 the Auld Alliance between Scotland and France against England is signed in Paris.
- Technically speaking it has never ended, not having been officially revoked; a fact to bear in mind for Future Historicals.
In 1641 a force of Irish Catholic gentry from Ulster attempt to seize control of Dublin Castle, the seat of English rule in Ireland, so as to force concessions. This attempt fails but leads to the Rebellion of 1641. The rebellion was principally an uprising of Irish Catholics, who wanted an end to anti-Catholic discrimination, greater Irish self-governance, and to partially or fully reverse the plantations of Ireland. They also wanted to prevent a possible invasion or takeover by anti-Catholic English Parliamentarians and Scottish Covenanters, who were defying king Charles I. It began as an attempted coup d'état by Catholic gentry and military officers, who tried to seize control of the English administration in Ireland. However, it developed into a widespread rebellion and ethnic conflict with English and Scottish Protestant settlers, leading to Scottish military intervention. The rebels eventually founded the Irish Catholic Confederacy.
In 1642 the indecisive Battle of Edgehill is the first major battle of the English Civil War. It was the first true pitched battle of the First English Civil War, fought near Edge Hill and Kineton in southern Warwickshire, after attempts at constitutional compromise between King Charles and Parliament broke down early in 1642. Both the King and Parliament raised large, but poorly equipped, trained and led, armies to gain their way by force of arms. In October, at his temporary base near Shrewsbury, the King decided to march to London in order to force a decisive confrontation with Parliament's main army, commanded by the Earl of Essex. Then late on Sunday 22ICT both armies unexpectedly found the enemy to be close by. The next day the Royalist army descended from Edge Hill to force battle. After the Parliamentarian artillery opened a cannonade, the Royalists attacked. Both armies consisted mostly of inexperienced and sometimes ill-equipped troops. Many men from both sides fled or fell out to loot enemy baggage, and neither army was able to gain a decisive advantage. After the battle, the King resumed his march on London, but was not strong enough to overcome the defending militia before Essex's army could reinforce them. The inconclusive result of the Battle of Edgehill prevented either faction from gaining a quick victory in the war, which eventually lasted four years.
- Unless of course someone meddles; Edgehill is interesting in that it represents the best chance for both sides to win a quick victory and a reasonable simple mechanism for achieving this. Poor intelligence and scouting led the armies to, basically, blunder into each other. However with fore-knowledge this could end with one side gaining a decisive victory.
- For added complications, what about two meddlers? One Royalist and one Parliamentarian? And perhaps a Warrior Historian from New Ultonia observing matters?
In 1707 the First Parliament of Great Britain convenes. This is as opposed to the Parliament of England, the new governance established after the merger of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland following the Act of Union. In Scotland, prior to the union coming into effect, the Scottish Parliament appointed sixteen peers and 45 Members of Parliaments to join their English counterparts at Westminster.
In 1739 the War of Jenkins' Ear begins when Prime Minister Walpole reluctantly declares war on Spain. In fact the eponymous incident had occurred in 1731, when Jenkins was injured following the boarding of his vessel by Spanish coast guards and he was almost certainly engaged in smuggling at the time. In reality the conflict was caused by trade disputes in the Caribbean and Central America. After 1742 the war was subsumed by the wider War of the Austrian Succession, which involved most of the powers of Europe.
In 1812 French Republican general Claude François de Malet begins a conspiracy and coup to overthrow Napoleon, claiming (with poorly forged documents) that the Emperor died in Russia. The Malet coup aimed at removing Napoleon I (who was then campaigning in Russia_ and replacing his autocracy with a Republican (or Royalist) system. The coup failed and the leading conspirators were executed. At the time Malet was under a form of 'house arrest' in a sanitarium (mental asylum); at around 4AM he escaped from his captivity and retrieved a general's uniform. He then approached Colonel Gabriel Soulier, who commanded the 10th Cohort of the French National Guard, informing the colonel that Napoleon had died while in Russia. Several forged documents convinced Soulier of the accuracy of Malet's claims. Malet managed to overawe the colonel (who was unwell) and informed him of his promotion to brigadier general (which was among the forged papers) Soulier obeyed Malet and assembled the cohort; net Malet announced his intention to arrest several top officials, and the cohort followed its commander's example and submitted to the recent prisoner, following him to La Force Prison. Unfortunately after a few hours' success the coup fell apart and almost all involved, unwittingly or not, were executed.
- A truly fascinating and odd little incident. Now imagine the PCs getting involved, and perhaps a determined, prepared and equipped Time Meddler....
In 1864 during the American Civil War, the Battle of Westport is the last significant engagement west of the Mississippi River when the Union forces decisively defeated an outnumbered Confederate force, forcing the Confederates to retreat.
In 1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont flies an airplane in the first heavier-than-air flight in Europe. Santos-Dumont dabbled in heavier and lighter than air aviation but his 14-bis made the first powered heavier-than-air flight in Europe to be certified by the Aéro-Club de France and the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. His conviction that aviation would usher in an era of worldwide peace and prosperity led him to freely publish his designs and forgo patenting his various innovations.
In 1911 the Italo-Turkish War sees the first use of an airplane in combat when an Italian pilot makes a reconnaissance flight.
In 1942 Allied forces begin the Second Battle of El Alamein, which will prove to be the key turning point in the North African campaign.
In 1942 all 12 passengers and crewmen aboard American Airlines Flight 28 are killed when it collides with a USAAF B-34 'Lexington' bomber near Palm Springs, California.
In 1955 the people of the Saar region vote in a referendum against remaining in an economic union with France, paving the way for the territory to rejoin with Germany.
In 1958 a powerful explosion in the Springhill colliery in Canada kills seventy-five miners; while ninety-nine others are rescued. Springhill's Number 2 colliery was one of the deepest coal mines in the world with a vast labyrinth of galleries more than 1,200m below the surface, accessed by sloping shafts 4.5km long. A small initial explosion occurred at 7PM, this was ignored as it this was a common occurrence. However at 8:06PM an enormous explosion occurred. The explosion spread as three distinct shock waves, resembling a small earthquake. Of the 174 miners in Number 2 colliery at the time of the explosion 75 died and 99 were trapped but rescued.
In 1982 the Miracle Valley gunfight breaks out between police officers and members of a religious cult in Arizona. The shootout leaves two cultists dead and dozens of cultists and police officers injured. The incident was one a long series of confrontations between predominantly black members of the Christ Miracle Healing Center and Church and predominantly white Cochise County law enforcement that occurred in Miracle Valley in Arizona. The details of these are disputed and linked to long term conflicts in the are. No-one was successfully prosecuted fro the events of that day/
In 2002 about forty Islamist separatist Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 950 theater-goers hostage. The siege was resolved when the Russian forces introduced a transquilising gas into the building which rapidly incapacitated everyone; however around 250 people died from the effects of the chemical agent, believed to be a carfentanil analogue, and the refusal of the Russian government to provide details for medical personnel.
In 2004 a magnitude 6.6 earthquake and numerous aftershocks strikes Niigata Prefecture in northern Japan; 35 people are killed and more than 2,300 injured.
In 2007 an oceanic storm causes the Mexican Kab 101 oil platform to collide with a wellhead, leading to the death and drowning of 22 people during rescue operations after evacuation of the platform. The platform was 26km off the coast of Tabasco, near the port of Dos Bocas. Initial storm damage caused the evacuation of the platform due to hydrogen sulphide gas, but both sealed life rafts suffered damage in the storm.
In 2011 a powerful, magnitude 7.2, earthquake strikes Van Province in Turkey, killing 582 people and injuring thousands.
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 24, 2020 21:46:09 GMT
Claude François de Malet,Alberto Santos-Dumont, Valentinian III,and Sweyn III are good people to meet. Maybe this is the day humans came to the earth instead of the universe or earth being born. the Miracle Valley gunfight could be a mind controlled humans going rogue and killing police officers.1739 the War of Jenkins' Ear could be a good comedic story that also has battle scenes.the Battle of Edgehill could be visited by a militaristic race or be a pure historical. And the First Parliament of Great Britain could be good for time tourists.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 25, 2020 14:12:05 GMT
24OCT
In 69CE in the Second Battle of Bedriacum, Roman troops loyal to Vespasian defeat those of Emperor Vitellius, effectively ending the Year of the Four Emperors and stabilising the Empire. The battle was fought near the village of Bedriacum (now Calvatone) around 35 kilometers from the Cremona in northern Italy. During the brief reign of Vitellius the legions stationed in the Middle East provinces of Judaea and Syria had acclaimed Vespasian as emperor (Vespasian had been given a special command in Judaea by Nero in 67CE with the task of putting down the Jewish rebellion)
In 1260 Chartres Cathedral is formally dedicated and re-consecrated in the presence of King Louis IX of France.
In 1590 bad weather and the refusal of the captain of the ship that carried him t Virginia to wait any longer forces John White, the governor of the second Roanoke Colony, to return to England after the unsuccessful search for the "lost" colonists. He was unable to complete the search of adjacent islands for the colonists.
In 1648 the Peace of Westphalia is signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years' War. As befits a complicated, multi-sided war that reflected various national agendas, the peace negotiations were also complicated. The talks took place in two cities (Osnabrück and Münster( because each side wanted to meet on territory under its own control. A total of 109 delegations arrived to represent the belligerent states, but not all delegations were present at the same time. Three treaties were finally signed to end each of the overlapping wars: the Peace of Münster, the Treaty of Münster, and the Treaty of Osnabrück. These treaties ended the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) in the Holy Roman Empire, with the Habsburgs (rulers of Austria and Spain) and their Catholic allies on one side, battling the Protestant powers (Sweden, Denmark, and certain Holy Roman principalities) allied with France, which was Catholic but strongly anti-Habsburg under King Louis XIV. The war had killed approximately eight million people.
In 1812 during the Napoleonic Wars, the Battle of Maloyaroslavets takes place near Moscow between a Russians force, under Marshal Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov, and part of the corps of Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, under General Alexis Joseph Delzons. After the withdrawal of Kutuzov it became clear to Napoleon that he would be unable to force the Russian army into a decisive battle.
In 1851 William Lassell discovers the moons Umbriel and Ariel orbiting Uranus.
In 1861 the first transcontinental telegraph line across the United States is completed, linking the existing network in the eastern United States to a small network in California, by means of a link between Omaha in Nebraska and Carson City in Nevada, via Salt Lake City. It was a milestone in electrical engineering and an important development in the formation of the United States of America; previously it had taken months for news to net across teh country. The project used approximately thirty thousand poles and over three thousand kilometres of wire. California's Chief Justice Stephen Field sent one of the first messages from San Francisco to Abraham Lincoln, using the occasion to assure the president of California's allegiance to the Union. The telegraph line immediately made the Pony Express obsolete; it officially ceased operations two days later.
In 1871 a racial riot and massacre in Los Angeles leads to the murders of around twenty Chinese immigrants, who are beaten, shot and lynched. A mob of around 500 White and Hispanic persons entered Chinatown and attacked, robbed, and murdered Chinese residents, mostly in and around Calle de los Negros (Street of the Blacks/Blacks Street) after supposedly being told of the murder of a policeman and a rancher by by Chinese.
In 1889 Sir Henry Parkes, Premier of the Colony of New South Wales, delivers the Tenterfield Oration, at the Tenterfield School of Arts, effectively starting the federation process in Australia.[6] Parkes called for the Federation of the six Australian colonies, which were at the time self-governing but under the distant central authority of the British Colonial Secretary. The speech is considered to be the start of the federation process in Australia, which led to the foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia 12 years later.
In 1901 on her 63rd birthday Annie Edson Taylor, an American schoolteacher, becomes the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel, starting a brief craze. Taylor used a custom-made barrel for her trip, constructed of oak and iron and heavily padded. with a mattress.Two days before Taylor's attempt, a domestic cat was sent over the Horseshoe Falls in her barrel to test its strength to see if the barrel would break or not; the cat survived the plunge.
In 1902 Santa María Volcano in the western highlands of Guatemala, begins to erupt around 5PM; it will become the third-largest eruption of the twentieth century. Events began at around 5PM when a sound, describes as "similar to the roar of a waterfall" was heard for several minutes. However the mist surrounding the volcano did not allow any direct observation of what was happening. An hours later cinders and ash started falling over the town of Quetzaltenango. Around 7PM witnesses recall seeing lightning and a strong fiery red light coming from the volcano, and noise similar of that of an industrial furnace. By 8PM a giant plume of black ash with numerous whirlwinds crossed by thousands of lightning bolts and curved lines of red light was visible. The area surrounding the volcano kept shaking and large explosions could be heard as far as 200km away; strong winds carried ash and debris as far as 800km. A dark cloud hovered on the north side of the cone for days, and a pitch black darkness ensued. On 25OCT events worsened; at 1PM the eruption became more violent and large rocks from the volcano started falling as far as 15km away, destroying towns and farm houses. This was followed, about twelve hours later, by a period of calm. Then on 26OCT at about 3Pm there was another eruption; this time it was a white plume (probably composed of water vapor) was emitted.
In 1926 despite being in great pain from probable acute appendicitis, Harry Houdini gives his final performance at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit. The previous night had finally seen a doctor and was found to have a fever of 39°C and acute appendicitis, and was advised to have immediate surgery. He ignored the advice and decided to go on with the performance. He was reported to have passed out during the show, but was revived and continued. Afterwards, he was hospitalised at Detroit's Grace Hospital.
In 1929 "Black Thursday" on the New York Stock Exchange sees the beginning of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash.
In 1930 a bloodless coup d'état in Brazil ends the First Republic, replacing it with the Vargas Era.
In 1946 the first photographs of Earth from space are taken by a camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket, launched from the White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico; the rocket reached a maximum altitude of 105km.
In 1956 at the "request" of the Stalinist regime of Ernő Gerő, a massive Soviet force invades Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution. Imre Nagy is reinstalled as Prime Minister.
In 1957 the United States Air Force starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar manned space program. This was a fascinating project, intended to develop a spaceplane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including aerial reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and as a space interceptor.
In 1960 the Nedelin disaster occurs at the Baikonur test range; a R-16 rocket explodes on the launch pad, releasing a clouds of dangerous chemicals (including red fuming nitric acid) and killing over 75 people. While a prototype of the R-16 missile was being prepared for a test flight, an explosion occurred when the second stage engine ignited accidentally, killing an unknown number of military and technical personnel working on the preparations. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, news of it was suppressed for many years and the Soviet government did not acknowledge the event until 1989.
Three years later in 1963 and there is another fatal incident at Baikonur when an oxygen leak from an R-9 Desna missile triggers a fire that kills seven people. The missile was being prepared for launch in a silo at Baikonur Cosmodrome, however the 11-man launch crew did not realize that an oxygen leak from the missile's fuel system had raised the partial oxygen pressure significantly and while they were descending to the eighth level in a lift, a spark from an electrical panel started a fire in the nearly pure oxygen atmosphere, killing seven and destroying the silo. 24OCT became known as Baikonur's "Black Day", and to this day no launches are attempted on that date.
In 1990 the Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti reveals to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian NATO force formed in 1956, intended to be activated in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion.
In 1998 NASA launches Deep Space 1 to explore the asteroid belt and test new spacecraft technologies. The spacecraft carried out a flyby of asteroid 9969 Braille, encountered with comet 19P/Borrelly and further engineering testing. Problems during its initial stages and with its star tracker led to repeated changes in mission configuration. While the flyby of the asteroid was only a partial success, the encounter with the comet retrieved valuable information.
In 2003 Concorde makes its last commercial flight.
In 2005 Hurricane Wilma, the most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic basin, makes landfall in Florida, resulting in 35 direct and 26 indirect fatalities and causing $20.6B USD in damage.
In 2007 Chang'e 1, the first satellite in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, is launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
In 2014 the China National Space Administration launches another experimental lunar mission, Chang'e 5-T1, which will loop behind the Moon and return to Earth.
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 25, 2020 18:57:46 GMT
Giulio Andreotti,Ernő Gerő,Annie Edson Taylor, Henry Parkes, William Lassell , and Stephen Field are good people to meet. Chartres Cathedral could be good inspiration for a cathedral in space.The Peace of Westphalia could be averted in a ah story thereby continuing the thirty years war.the X-20 Dyna-Soar coul be in UNIT use or used by a alien force as a weapon. And the V-2 No. 13 rocket could be a bit like V'Ger from star trek.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 26, 2020 15:36:34 GMT
25OCT
In 285CE (probably, some sources suggest 286CE) saints Crispin and Crispinian (possible brothers or twins) were executed, at Soissons, by beheading, for preaching Christianity in Roman Gaul.
In 473 Emperor Leo I (of the Eastern Roman Empire) acclaims his grandson Leo II as his heir to the Empire. Leo II would be made co-emperor with his grandfather on 18NOV0473, and became sole emperor on 18jan0474 after Leo I died of dysentery (or possibly poison). Leon's father Zeno was made co-emperor by the Byzantine Senate on 09FEB0474 and they co-ruled for a short time before Leo II died in November 474.
In 1147 at the Battle of Dorylaeum the Seljuk Turks defeat German crusaders under Conrad III The battle was not a single clash but a series of skirmishes and encounters over a number of days. The German crusader forces of Conrad III were defeated. The Germans were in Anatolia after being expelled from Constantinople after friction between the Byzantine Empire and the German crusader army, including armed clashes. Once beyond the area of effective Byzantine control, the German army came under constant harassing attacks from the Turks, who excelled at such tactics. The poorer, and less well-supplied, infantry of the crusader army were the most vulnerable to hit-and-run horse archer attack and began to take casualties and lose men to capture. The area through which the crusaders were marching was largely barren and parched; therefore the army could not augment its supplies and was troubled by thirst. When the Germans were about three days march beyond Dorylaeum, the nobility requested that the army turn back and regroup. As the crusaders began their retreat, on 25OCT, the Turkish attacks intensified and order broke down, the retreat then becoming a rout with the Crusaders taking heavy casualties. Conrad, himself, was wounded by arrows during the rout. The Crusaders lost virtually all of their baggage.
In 1147 during the Reconquista, the city of Lisbon falls to the crusader knights after a four month siege. reconquer Lisbon. The Siege of Lisbon was one of the few Christian victories of the Second Crusade. After four months, the Moorish rulers agreed to surrender, mainly due to hunger within the city, which was sheltering large refugee populations. After a brief riotous insurrection (attributed to "the men of Cologne and the Flemings" who wished to sack and loot the city) the city was entered by the Christian conquerors. The terms of the surrender indicated that the Muslim garrison of the city would be allowed to keep their lives and property, but as soon as the Christians entered the city these terms were broken.
In 1415 during the Hundred Years' War, Henry V of England, with his lightly armoured infantry and archers, unexpectedly defeats the heavily armoured French cavalry in the Battle of Agincourt.
- There was probably a Warrior-Historian there, taking notes.
The unexpected English victory against the numerically superior French army boosted English morale and prestige, crippled France and started a new period of English dominance in the war. Previously this phase of the war had been ging badly for the English, with disease and desertion causing their numbers to dwindle; they had tried to withdraw to English-held Calais but found their path blocked by a considerably larger French army.
In 1616 the Dutch sea-captain Dirk Hartog makes the second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, at the later-named Dirk Hartog Island off the West Australian coast. His was the first European group to leave behind an artefact to record his visit, the Hartog plate.
In 1747 during the War of the Austrian Succession, a British fleet under Admiral Edward Hawke defeats the French at the Second Battle of Cape Finisterre. In fact the battle took place in the eastern Atlantic, roughly halfway between Ireland and Cape Finisterre in northwest Spain.
In 1760 at the age of 22 king George III succeeds to the British throne on the death of his grandfather George II. George II had died suddenly, two weeks before his 77th birthday.
In 1812, during the War of 1812, the American frigate USS United States, commanded by Stephen Decatur, captures the smaller British frigate HMS Macedonian. The clash took place near Madeira and was a prolonged and bloody business. It was the first British warship to ever be brought into an American harbour.
In 1854 the Battle of Balaclava takes place during the Crimean War, part of the Siege of Sevastopol which was an ongoing Allied attempt to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russia's principal naval base on the Black Sea. The battle is most remembered for the infamous blunder, the Charge of the Light Brigade.
- If popping along to visit remember that there are several Doctors there, not forgetting Agonal and probably other time travellers (such as the aforementioned Warrior-Historians of New Ultonia)
In 1917 the second, October, Revolution begins in Russia. (This is using the Old Style dating [pre-Gregorian] still used in Russia at the time). [All dates in this entry are Old Style] The Bolsheviks under Lenin had been planning a coup against Kerensky's government for weeks, but matters came to a head in the early morning of 24OCT when government troops marched on the printing house of the Bolshevik newspaper, Rabochiy put (Worker's Path), seizing and destroying printing equipment and thousands of newspapers. Shortly thereafter, the government announced the immediate closure of not only Rabochiy put but also the left-wing Soldat, as well as the far-right newspapers Zhivoe slovo and Novaia Rus.
At 9AM on 24OCT the Bolshevik Military-Revolutionary Committee issued a statement denouncing the government's actions and their own troops were sent out; around 10AM Bolshevik-aligned soldiers successfully retook the Rabochiy put printing house. At 3PM Kerensky responded by ordering the raising of all but one of Petrograd's bridges, and sporadic clashes resulted for the rest of the day, between Red Guard militias aligned with the Military-Revolutionary Committee and military units still loyal to the government. At approximately 5PM the Military-Revolutionary Committee seized the Central Telegraph of Petrograd, giving the Bolsheviks control over communications through the city.
On 25OCT the Bolsheviks led their forces in the uprising in Petrograd against the Provisional Government. The event coincided with the arrival of a pro-Bolshevik naval flotilla in Petrograd harbor and the defection of the Kronstadt fortress garrison to the Bolshevik insurrection. The Red Guards systematically captured major government facilities, key communication installations, and vantage points with little opposition. The Petrograd Garrison and most of the city's military units joined the insurrection against the Provisional Government.
Kerensky and the Provisional Government were virtually helpless to offer significant resistance. Railways and railway stations had been controlled by Soviet workers and soldiers for days, making rail travel to and from Petrograd impossible for Provisional Government officials. The Provisional Government was also unable to locate any serviceable vehicles. On the morning of the insurrection, Kerensky desperately searched for a means of reaching military forces he hoped would be friendly to the Provisional Government outside the city and ultimately borrowed a Renault car from the American embassy, which he drove from the Winter Palace, along with a Pierce Arrow. Kerensky was able to evade the pickets going up around the palace and to drive to meet approaching soldiers.
- This is a prime opportunity to dramatically alter the course of Russian and world history. Eliminating the Bolshevik leadership and assisting Kerensky could have perpetuated the Social Democrat government instituted after the February revolution.
In 1920 after 74 days on hunger strike in Brixton Prison in England, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney dies. MacSwiney had been elected to the first Dáil Éireann as Sinn Féin representative for Mid Cork in the Sinn Féin landslide victory of 1918. After the murder of his friend Tomás Mac Curtain, then Lord Mayor of Cork on 20MAR1920 by members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, MacSwiney had been elected Lord Mayor. MacSwiney was arrested by the British Government on12AUG for possession of "seditous articles and documents", and also possession of a cipher key. He was summarily tried by a court martial on 16AUG and sentenced to two years' imprisonment at Brixton Prison in England. He went on hunger strike immediately on arrival and died on 25OCT. His death there brought him and the Irish Republican campaign to international attention.
In 1924 the forged Zinoviev letter is published in the Daily Mail; the Labour party would later blame this letter for the Conservatives' landslide election win four days later. The Zinoviev letter was a document purporting to be a directive from Grigory Zinoviev, the head of the Communist International, to the Communist Party of Great Britain, ordering it to engage in seditious activities. It said the resumption of diplomatic relations (by a Labour government) would hasten the radicalisation of the British working class. It was thought in many quarters that this development would have constituted a significant interference in British politics, and as a result it offended some British voters, turning them against the Labour Party. The letter seemed authentic to some at the time, but it is now almost universally accepted as a forgery. The British Foreign Office had received the forgery on 10OCT, two days after the defeat of the MacDonald [Labout] government on a confidence motion. Despite the dubious nature and provenance of the document, anti-communist and anti-socialist elements within the Foreign Office and Security Service conspired with members of the Conservative Party to ensure it's publication.
In 1927 the Italian luxury liner SS Principessa Mafalda sinks off the coast of Brazil, killing 314. The immediate cause of the sinking was the fracturing of a propeller shaft, which damaged the hull. The ship sank slowly in the presence of several rescue vessels, but confusion and panic resulted in 314 fatalities out of the 1,252 passengers and crew on board the ship. The ship was in poor condition, it had left Barcelona a day late due to mechanical problems and several times she slowed to a complete stop on the high seas, sometimes for hours; during the voyage water supply became intermittent and the refrigeration system failed, resulting in numerous cases of food poisoning. There are many conflicting accounts about what happened after the propeller shaft broke. Officers and crew had difficulty maintaining order, some passengers were armed and clashes ensued; poor communications with rescue vessels caused confusion. Many of the lifeboats could not be launched due to the listing of the ship and others were rushed by the crowd; many were not even seaworthy.
In 1944 Heinrich Himmler orders a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a loosely organized anti-Nazi youth culture in Germany that had assisted army deserters and others to hide from the Third Reich. They had emerged in western Germany out of the German Youth Movement in response to the strict regimentation of the Hitler Youth. In November thirteen heads of the Ehrenfelder Gruppe, were publicly hanged in Cologne, including Edelweißpiraten. However government repression failed to break the spirit of most of the 'pirate' groups, which constituted a subculture that rejected the norms of Nazi society.
In 1949 the Battle of Guningtou in the Taiwan Strait begins. Also known as the Battle of Kinmen this was abattle fought over the island of Kinmen in the Taiwan Strait during the Chinese Civil War in 1949. The Communist forces failed to take the island, eliminating their chances of taking Taiwan to destroy the Nationalists completely in the civil war.
- It's one of my favourite historical oddities due to the number of strange happenings.
Events began around 01:30AM on 15OCT when a Nationalist patrol accidentally set off one of their own land mines. The blast alerted other units all along the northern shore and they soon noticed the approach of an armada of PLA vessels (this compromising their quiet approach to Kinmen). The altered ROC troops began firing flares, which illuminated the PLA's fleet and gave the Nationalists clear shots at them. The PLA's initial landing at Longkou was met by three tanks; curiously one of them was there because it tank had broken down on the beach the previous evening and the other two tanks in the platoon had been ordered to stay and guard it while repairs were attempted.
At about 02:00AM PLA troops landed on the north side of Greater Kinmen Island (at Guningtou, Huwei and Longkou) but sufered heavy casualties from machine-gun, artillery, and mortar fire. Problems with the tide and anti- landing obstacles and immobilised most of the PLA boats and prevented their return to the mainland to transport the second wave.
Offshore a ROC Navy tank landing ship (LST 210 or Chung Lung) was unexpectedly anchored near the PLA's chosed landing site and destroyed beached PLA landing craft.
- The LST was supposed to depart on the evening of 24OCT after offloading its cargo; it had remained due to "bad weather". In fact the crew was running a side business, smuggling brown sugar from Taiwan in exchange for peanut oil. However, there was not enough peanut oil on the island for the deal, so the ship was forced to stay for another day while waiting for more peanut oil to be produced, making it the accidental hero of the battle.
- That’s rather a lot of fortuitous coincidences isn’t it? Rather too many....
In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis continues, and Adlai Stevenson shows the United Nations Security Council reconnaissance photographs of Soviet ballistic missiles in Cuba.
In 1983 the United States and its Caribbean allies invade Grenada, six days after Prime Minister Maurice Bishop and several of his supporters are executed in a coup d'état.
In 1997 after one of the Congo's many civil wars, Denis Sassou Nguesso proclaims himself President of the Republic of the Congo.
In 2010 Mount Merapi in Indonesia begins a month-long series of violent eruptions that kill 353 people and cause the evacuation of another 350,000. The increasingly violent series of eruptions continued into November. Seismic activity around the volcano increased from mid-September onwards, culminating in repeated outbursts of lava and ashes. Large eruption columns formed, causing numerous pyroclastic flows down the heavily populated slopes of the volcano. After 30NOV the mountain began to quiet down.
Comments? Ideas?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 26, 2020 16:55:38 GMT
Adlai Stevenson,Heinrich Himmler and the Edelweiss Pirates,Stephen Decatur,Leo I,Dirk Hartog, Tomás Mac Curtain,Terence MacSwiney, Conrad III, and saints Crispin and Crispinian are good people to meet.the Battle of Guningtou could have been manipulated by aliens like the Sontarans or subject to mind control.the Battle of Agincourt could be a pure historical or a Sonataran adventure.the Zinoviev letter could have been sent by one of Scaroth's splinters. And the October, Revolution could be a good place for timelord to hide in or be a good pure historical.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 27, 2020 20:03:40 GMT
26OCT
In 1185 The Uprising of Asen and Peter, a revolt by mainly Bulgarians living in Moesia and the Balkan Mountains (hen part of the Byzantine Empire) begins on the feast day of St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki and ends with the creation of the Second Bulgarian Empire. The immediate cause of the revolt was a tax increase, imposed by Emperor Isaac II Angelus to raise money for his wedding, to the daughter of King Béla III of Hungary.
In 1341 the Byzantine civil war of 1341–47 formally begins with the proclamation of John VI Kantakouzenos as Byzantine Emperor. The conflict's primary cause was the guardianship of John V Palaiologos (the nine-year-old son and heir of the recently deceased Emperor Andronikos III Palaiologos; the main factions were led by the former chief minister of Andronikos III, John VI Kantakouzenos, and by the Empress-Dowager Anna of Savoy (regent for her son) and the church leaders. The war was polarising across class lines; the aristocracy backed Kantakouzenos and the lower and middle classes supporting the regency.
In 1520 Charles V is crowned as Holy Roman Emperor. He would reign for almost forty years, his dominions in Europe includinn not only the Holy Roman Empire (which at the time extended from Germany to northern Italy) but also Austria, the Burgundian Low Countries and a unified Spain (which included the southern Italian kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia). There were also Spanish and German settlements in the Americas. His personal territories of Charles V was the first collection of realms labelled "the empire on which the Sun never sets".
In 1597 during the Imjin War, Korean Admiral Yi Sun-sin routs the Japanese Navy of perhaps 200 ships with only 13 ships at the Battle of Myeongnyang, in the Myeongnyang Strait, off the southwest corner of the Korean peninsula. With only those thirteen ships remaining from Admiral Won Gyun's disastrous defeat at the Battle of Chilchonryang, Admiral Yi held the strait as a "last stand" battle against the Japanese Navy, who were sailing to support their land army's advance towards the Joseon capital of Hanyang (Seoul). The actual numeric strength of the Japanese fleet is unclear; estimates run from 120 and 330 (though the higher end includes perhaps 200 support vessels and transports). In total thirty Japanese warships were sunk or crippled during the battle.
In 1640 the signing of the Treaty of Ripon brings peace between Covenanter Scotland and King Charles, in the aftermath of the Second Bishops' War (fought by the Covenanters to oppose attempts by Charles to bring the Church of Scotland closer to the Church of England, specifically in relation to treating the king as the source of spiritual power and the introduction of bishops into government). Their victory at the Battle of Newburn in August 1640 left the Scots in control of Northumberland, County Durham, and Newcastle upon Tyne. This attempt at a settlement forced Charles to recall the Long Parliament, which he could not dissolve, ultimately leading to the First English Civil War.
In 1689, uring the Austrian-Turkish war, General Piccolomini of Austria burns down Skopje, ostensibly to prevent the spread of cholera; he died of the disease himself soon after. The city burned for two days, and destroyed much of the city; only some stone-built structures, such as the fortress and some churches and mosques, were relatively undamaged. The fire had a disastrous effect on the city: its population declined from around 60,000 to around 10,000, and it lost its regional importance as a trading centre. In practice the burning was a political and military gesture; his forces were unable to occupy and govern a city so far from his headquarters. The worst damage was in the Jewish quarter of the town, wherealmost all the dwelling-houses, two synagogues and the Jewish school were destroyed.
In 1813 during the War of 1812, a combined force of British troops, Canadian militia, and Mohawk warriors defeat the Americans in the Battle of the Chateauguay. The defeat at the Chateauguay and at the Battle of Crysler's Farm, caused the Americans to abandon the Saint Lawrence Campaign, their major strategic effort in the autumn of 1813.
In 1825 the Erie Canal opens, allowing direct passage from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.
In 1859 the Great Storm of 1859 (also called the Royal Charter Storm) kills at least eight hundred people in the British Isles. It was the most severe storm to hit the Irish Sea in the nineteenth century; of the eight hundred known to have died, about 450 were killed on the Royal Charter, a ship which was driven by the storm onto the east coast of Anglesey in Wales. The storm was preceded by several days of unsettled weather, but erupted rapidly in the English Channel around 3PM on 25OCT. There was extensive structural damage along the coasts of Devon and Cornwall that afternoon and the storm hit Anglesey at about 8PM, though it did not reach maximum force until midday on 26OCT. Winds reached over 160km/hr.
In 1860 the Expedition of the Thousand, of the Italian Risorgimento, ends when Garibaldi presents his conquests to King Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia. A corps of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto, near Genoa and landed in Marsala, Sicily, in order to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by a branch of the House of Bourbon. The project was ambitious to the point of foolhardiness; a thousand men sought to conquer kingdom with a larger regular army and a more powerful navy. The expedition was a success and concluded with a plebiscite that brought Naples and Sicily into the Kingdom of Sardinia, the last territorial conquest before the creation of the Kingdom of Italy (on 17MAR1861).
In 1881 Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday participate in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
- Though as we all know it happened in the empty lot behind the McFly Photographic Studio.
History is strangely quiet about the presence of toothache plagued Time Lords, duplicates from a parallel universe and the Montana Kid.
In 1905 King Oscar II recognises the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden. Historically the dissolution of the union was peaceful, though preceded by months of tension and fear of war between the neighboring kingdoms.
In 1909 An Jung-geun assassinates Prince Itō Hirobumi, a four-time Prime Minister of Japan and Resident-General of Korea, following the signing of the Eulsa Treaty, which effectively reduced Korea to a Japanese vassal.
In 1936 the first electric generator at Hoover Dam goes into full operation.
- History is silent on whether this attracted Things from outside our universe, or was used to power Mad Science.
In 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution, Hungarian secret police forces massacre civilians in the towns of Mosonmagyaróvár and Esztergom; fighting spreads throughout the country.
In 1958 Pan American Airways makes the first commercial flight of the Boeing 707 from Idlewild Airport in New York City to Paris. The fuel inefficient turbojets of the time required a refueling stop at Gander in Newfoundland. The flight was preceded (on 17OCT) followed by a transatlantic flight for VIPs (personal guests of founder Juan Trippe) from Baltimore's Friendship International Airport to Paris.
In 1967 Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran.
In 1968 he Soyuz 3 mission, flown by Georgy Beregovoy, achieves the first Soviet space rendezvous, with the uncrewed Soyuz 2, but failed to achieve a planned docking of the two craft.
In 1977 Ali Maow Maalin, the last natural case of smallpox, develops a rash in Somalia. The World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider this date to be the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, the most spectacular success of vaccination. Maalin was a Somali hospital cook and health worker and made a full recovery; with no-one else infected. He was subsequently involved in the successful poliomyelitis eradication campaign in Somalia, and he died of malaria while carrying out polio vaccinations after the re-emergence of the poliovirus in 2013.
In 1979 Park Chung-hee, President of South Korea, is assassinated by Korean CIA head Kim Jae-gyu under circumstances best described as complicated, disputed and murky. The assassination took place during a dinner at the Korean Central Intelligence Agency safehouse inside the Blue House presidential compound in Jongno District in Seoul. Park was shot in the chest and the head, and died almost immediately. Four bodyguards and a presidential chauffeur were also killed. There remains a great deal of controversy surrounding Kim's motives, as it remains uncertain whether the act was part of a planned coup d'état or was merely impulsive. The chief investigator Yi Hak-bong famously concluded that the assassination was:
- But then Yi didn't know the full story....
In 1995 Mossad agents assassinate Islamic Jihad leader Fathi Shaqaqi in his hotel in Malta.
Also in 1995 an avalanche hits the Icelandic village of Flateyri, destroying 29 homes and burying 45 people, 20 of whom die.
In 2003 the Cedar Fire, the third-largest fire in California history, kills 15 people, burns more than a thousand square kilometres and destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego.
In 2015 a magnitude 7.5 earthquake strikes in the Hindu Kush mountain range in northeastern Afghanistan, killing 398 people and leaving 2,536 people injured.
Comments? Ideas? Suggestions? Requests?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 27, 2020 20:25:42 GMT
Fathi Shaqaqi,Georgy Beregovoy, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Ali Maow Maalin,Park Chung-hee,(could be mind control), Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, An Jung-geun assassinates Prince Itō Hirobumi, King Oscar II,John VI Kantakouzenos,Admiral Yi Sun-sin,Isaac II Angelus, and John V Palaiologos are good people to meet.The Erie Canal could be a good backdrop for a adventure. And the Expedition of the Thousand, could be a pure historical or a zygon impostor.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 28, 2020 15:00:33 GMT
27OCT
On this day in 312CE, the eve of Battle of the Milvian Bridge Roman Emperor Constantine is said to have received his famous Vision of the Cross, either a vision or a dream. To describe the vision and the results of it as disputed is putting it mildly, one that is distant in time and subject to layers of official rewriting and censorship. That evening the armies of Constantine and his rival Maxentius were preparing for the battle on the following day, near the river Tiber. Officially Constantine had a vision which led him to fight under the protection of the Christian God. However the details of that vision vary depending on the source. One states that Constantine was told (in a dream) to "delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers", though the nature of the sign describes was/is not one attributed to Christianity. Other historians have attributed the vision to a solar halo, something that appeared on coins minted under Constantine, and may have related to the Roman solar deity Sol Invictus. The official cults of Sol Invictus and Sol Invictus Mithras were popular amongst the soldiers of the Roman Army.
- A mystery that needs to be investigated. Was there an alien presence?
In 939 Æthelstan, the first king of all England and one of the greatest Anglo-Saxon monarchs, dies at the age of (about) 45. As he had (highly unusually) never married and produced no known children, his crown was inherited by his half-brother Edmund I, who would reign for less than seven years before dying in murky circumstances (probably assassinated) Æthelstan was buried at Malmesbury Abbey, the only member of the West Saxon royal family was buried there.His bones were lost during the Reformation.
While Edmund inherited a stable, powerful and respected kingdom matters soon began to unravel; Anglo-Saxon control of the north was the first to collaps.The reigns of bother Edmund (939–946) and Eadred (946–955) were largely devoted to regaining control. Olaf, king of Dublin, seized the east midlands, leading to the establishment of a frontier at Watling Street until 941. It would not be until 954 that Eadred would regain Anglo-Saxon control of the whole of England.was finally restored.
- A melancholy period to visit, the end of an era.
In 1524 as part of the Italian Campaign, itself part of the Italian War of 1521-26, French troops arrive at Pavia to besiget the city. By 02NOV the city was encircled.
In 1553 condemned as a heretic, the brilliant Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer and humanist Michael Servetus is burned at the stake just outside Geneva. Servetus (as mentioned previously) was the first (at least in Europe) to describe the function of pulmonary circulation, as well as being well versed in many sciences: mathematics, astronomy and meteorology, geography, human anatomy, medicine and pharmacology, as well as jurisprudence, translation, poetry and the scholarly study of the Bible in its original languages. He had fled to Calvinist Geneva after being condemned by Catholic authorities in France; there he was condemned by John Calvin, convicted and burnt at the stake for heresy.
In 1644 the Second Battle of Newbury, part of the early phase of the (First) English Civil War, is fought and ends in a tactical Parliamentarian victory, but their divided forces and command structure failed to gain any strategic advantage.
In 1775 at the State Opening of Parliament, King George III expands on his Proclamation of Rebellion in the Thirteen Colonies in his speech from the throne. The original Proclamation of Rebellion was issued on 23AUG, after news of the Battle of Bunker Hill had been received. The expanded proclamation had been written by Lord North's Cabinet and stated that rebellion was being fomented by a "desperate conspiracy" of leaders whose claims of allegiance to the King were insincere. The events was important as it sidelined moderates within the American colonies, who wished to alter the relationship with Britain without full independence; further the speech indicated that the British government intended to deal with the crisis with armed force and alluded to "friendly offers of foreign assistance" to suppress the rebellion.
In 1806 following the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt the French Army enters Berlin.
In 1838 Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs issues Missouri Executive Order 44 (better known as 'the Extermination Order') which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be killed. The order was issued in the aftermath of the Battle of Crooked River, a clash between Mormons and a unit of the Missouri State Militia, during the 1838 Mormon War and directed that "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace - their outrages are beyond all description". As a result the Mormons were expelled from their lands in the state, leading to their subsequent migration to Illinois. The order was supported by most northwest Missouri citizens, though questioned or denounced by a few; it was never tested in court.
In 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, French commander Marshal Bazaine surrenders the fortress of Metz to the Prussian forces along with 193,000 French soldiers. The Siege of Metz had lasted from 19AUG, following the retreat of the French Army of the Rhine into the Metz fortress after its defeat by the Germans at the Battle of Gravelotte. French food supplies ran out on 20OCT.
In 1907 following a religious/nationalist/ethnic demonstration at the consecration of a new Catholic church in Csernova (then in the Kingdom of Hungary, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; not in Slovakia) seventy people are shot, fifteen fatally. The official procession arrived at the village accompanied by a squad of gendarmes (seven or fifteen strong depending on source). It was protested against by the locals, who attempted to block its way to the church and prevent the consecration. The nature of the protest is also disputed; Slovak sources state the protest was peaceful and the shooting was unjustified; others say that stones were throne and the gendarmes feared being mobbed and killed and fired in self-defense (though with probably excessive force). The Černová massacre sparked protests in the European and American press and turned world's attention to the treatment of minorities in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary.
In 1914 during the early stages of the Great War the new British battleship HMS Audacious is sunk by a mine, off the northern coast of County Donegal in Ireland; the mine was laid by the German merchant-cruiser Berlin. Audacious was the fourth and last King George V-class dreadnought battleship built; her sinking, at 8:45AM, was kept secret for several years and was initially believed to have been carried out by a submarine.
In 1936 Mrs. Wallis Simpson obtains her decree nisi (divorce) from her second husband on the grounds that he had committed adultery with her childhood friend Mary Kirk. This would be one of the steps on the path of to Abdication Crisis later that year.
- While the crisis has already appeared in Who, in the novel Players, there is plenty of scope for scenarios; German meddling, shapeshifting aliens from Verossikon Prime, time travellers and more.
In 1958 as part of the 1958 Pakistani coup d'état, Iskander Mirza, the first President of Pakistan, is deposed by General Ayub Khan, who had been appointed the enforcer of martial law by Mirza 20 days earlier.
In 1961 NASA tests the first Saturn I rocket in Mission Saturn-Apollo 1. The launch was part of a sequence of tests of portions of the Apollo porgramme; in this case the first stage of the Saturn I launch vehicle. The rocket reached a height of 136.5 km and impacted 345.7 km down range from the launch site in the Atlantic Ocean.
In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis reaches it's height and matters begin to cool. (All times are EDT, the time zone for Washington DC, Cuba is three hours ahead)
At 6AM the CIA delivered a memo reporting that three of the four missile sites at San Cristobal and the two sites at Sagua la Grande appeared to be fully operational. It also noted that the Cuban military continued to organise for action but was under orders not to initiate action unless attacked.
That morning a U-2F reconnaissance aircraft piloted by USAF Major Rudolf Anderson (though operated by the CIA) took off from McCoy AFB in Florida. At approximately noon the aircraft was struck by an SA-2 surface-to-air missile launched from a site in Cuba. The aircraft was shot down, and Anderson was killed. The shoot-down was ordered by an undetermined Soviet commander, acting on his own authority
A few hours later (between 3:20 and 4PM) further US reconnaissance aircraft, US Navy RF-8A Crusaders, on low-level photo-reconnaissance missions, were fired upon, though none were downed.
During the afternoon US Navy destroyers and an aircraft carrier acting as part of the blockade force attacked the Soviet Foxtrot-class (diesel-electric) submarine B-59 in international waters. Concussion grenades were dropped to attempt ar 2:30PM to force the submarine to surface. The submarine is equipped with a nuclear armed torpedo and standing orders allow the commander to use it if the boat is in danger (both of these facts were known to the US intelligence community though not the Navy) The submarine has been out of contact from Moscow for a number of days; the submarine's batteries had run very low and the air-conditioning had failed, causing extreme heat and high levels of carbon dioxide inside the submarine. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believed that war might already have started and wanted to launch the nuclear torpedo; his political officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov concurred. However the B-59 carried a third officer with seniority Vasily Arkhipov who was the flotilla commodore (and acted as executive officer of B-59) and he vetoed the launch, probably preventing a general nuclear war.
On the other side of the planet USAF Major Charles Maultsby was also flying a U-2, tasked with collecting air samples above the North Pole, looking for evidence of a Soviet nuclear test. But he got badly lost and ended up flying for ninety minutes over Russian Siberia, pursued by Soviet fighters. The U-2 ran low on fuel and American F-102 fighters took off to retrieve Maultsby, carrying nuclear armed air-to-air rockets and release authority.
Meanwhile secret, and slow, negotiations were continuing between Kennedy and Khrushchev, with both leaders concerned about the loyalty of their military commanders. An agreement was eventually made; missiles with be removed from Turkey, Cuba and Italy.
Also that day in 1962 a Morane-Saulnier MS.760 Paris aircraft carrying the Italian administrator Enrico Mattei, crashed under murky circumstances. He had been flying (with the pilot and a Time–Life Journalist, William McHale) from Catania (in Sicily) to the Milan Linate Airport when the plan crashed near the small village of Bascapè in Lombardy. The crash was almost certainly a bombing, but there are many, many suspects; oil companies, the French government, the Italian Mafia, the US government, elements of the Italian government, the US Mafia, the OAS and more.
In 1981 the Soviet 'Whiskey' class submarine S-363 runs aground on the on the south coast of Sweden, approximately 10km from the Karlskrona naval base. The ensuing international incident is often referred to as the Whiskey on the rocks incident.
In 1994 Gliese 229B is the first Substellar Mass Object (brown dwarf) to be unquestionably identified. The Gliese 229 system is a binary (red dwarf and brown dwarf) about 19 light years from Earth.
Comments? Suggestions?
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Post by missyfan45 on Oct 28, 2020 15:22:44 GMT
Charles Maultsby ,Vasily Arkhipov(could have been mind controlled),Marshal Bazaine, Wallis Simpson,Iskander Mirza,Lilburn Boggs, Edmund I,Michael Servetus, and Ayub Khan are good people to meet.Battle of the Milvian Bridge vision could have been a alien spaceship shaped like a cross or something like Odin from The Girl Who Died.And there could have really been a conspiracy to overthrow the colonies. Also, Gliese 229B could be a good colony in the future or a planet to visit.
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Catsmate
13th Incarnation
It's complicated....
Posts: 3,753
Favourite Doctors: Thirteen, Six, Five, Two, Eight, Eleven, Twelve, One, Nine...
Traits: Eccentric, Insatiable Curiousity.
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Post by Catsmate on Oct 29, 2020 16:25:09 GMT
28OCT
In 97CE Emperor Nerva is forced by the Praetorian Guard to adopt general Marcus Ulpius Trajanus as his heir and successor. The elite military unit had, by this time,a habit of appointing emperors; their position as Imperial guard and garrison for the city of Rome gave them great prestige and influence. Nerva would die (at 68) barely three months after appointing Trajan; there is ni evidence of assassination. He had served under several previous emperors, including Nero and Vespasian and Domitian, of the Flavian dynasty. He came to the purple after the the assassination of Domitian on 18SEP96 in a palace conspiracy that involved members of the Praetorian Guard; that same day Nerva was declared emperor by the Roman Senate (although it is likely that they were approving a decision made by the Praetorian Guard). Nerva's brief reign was marred by financial difficulties and his inability to assert his authority over the Roman army. The forced adoption of Trajan was a consequence of a revolt by the Praetorian Guard in OCT97 and Nerva's own childlessness; Trajan was a young and popular general. While much of Nerva's life remains unknown he is generally considered a wise and moderate emperor by historians, with his greatest success being the a peaceful transition of power after his death by selecting Trajan as his heir.
In 306 Maxentius is proclaimed Roman emperor. He was the son of former Emperor Maximian and the son-in-law of Emperor Galerius; his reign is mainly remembered for the civil war that engulfed it's latter part when he allied with Maximinus II against Licinius and Constantine. His accession to the purple was mainly due to internal unrest at the taxation proposed for Rome, combined with the unrest due to multiple imperial claimants.
Six years later in 312 Maxentius loses his throne and his life after being defeated by Constantine I at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (see previous entry). Constantine becomes sole Roman emperor in the West. The Battle of the Milvian Bridge took place near the Milvian Bridge, an important route over the river Tiber, between the forces of the Roman Emperors Constantine I and Maxentius. Constantine decisively won the battle and started on the path that led him to end the Tetrarchy and become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Maxentius drowned in the Tiber during the battle; his body was later taken from the river and decapitated, and his head was paraded through the streets of Rome on the day following the battle. According to some sources the battle marked the beginning of Constantine's conversion to Christianity, though while the Arch of Constantine (erected in celebration of the victory) certainly attributes Constantine's success to divine intervention it has no overtly Christian symbolism.
In 969 the Byzantine Empire recovers Antioch from the Hamdanid Dynasty after a siege. Following a year spent plundering Syria, the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas returned to Constantinople for the winter. Before leaving he had constructed the Bagras Fort near Antioch and installed a force there under Michael Bourtzes, with orders to lay siege to Antioch, though explicitly not to take Antioch by force.
In 1344 the first of the Smyrniote crusades leads to the capture of he lower town of Smyrna by Crusaders in response to Aydınid piracy. The first Smyrniote crusade was the brainchild of pope Clement VI, and was intended to end the threat of Turkish piracy in the Aegean Sea. The first Smyrniote crusade began with the naval victory of the Battle of Pallene and ended with an assault on Smyrna, capturing the harbour and the citadel but not the acropolis, on 28OCT1344. In a gesture of gross over-confidence Henry of Asti attempted to celebrate mass on 17JAN1345 in an abandoned structure which he believed had been the cathedral of the metropolitan. In the middle of the service Umur Beg swept down on the congregation and the leaders of the crusade were killed.
In 1420 Beijing is officially designated the capital of the Ming dynasty when the Forbidden City is completed. The Forbidden City complex consists of 980 buildings, about ten thousand rooms and covers 72 hectares; it took fourteen years (1406 to 1420) to complete. Beijing became the empire's primary capital and Yingtian (Nanjing) the secondary, co-capital or southern capital.
In 1453 Ladislaus the Posthumous is crowned king of Bohemia in Prague. Ladislaus was thirteen at the time and had been bequeathed all his father's realms on Albert's deathbed. However this was not generally accepted and years of strife ensued.
In 1492 Christopher Columbus lands in Cuba on his first voyage to the New World. A month later Martín Alonso Pinzón took the Pinta on an unauthorised expedition in search of an island called "Babeque" or "Baneque", which the natives had told him was rich in gold.
In 1628 during the French Wars of Religion, the fourteen month long Siege of La Rochelle ends with the surrender of the Huguenots (French Protestants). The Siege was a result of the ongoing war between the French royal forces of Louis XIII of France and the Huguenots of La Rochelle; it marked the height of the struggle between the Catholics and the Protestants in France, and ended with a complete victory for King Louis XIII, Cardinal Richelieu and the Catholics. It should be noted that politics as well as religion were factors in the wars; Richelieu and Louis were attemting to centralise power in France, after the assassination of Henry IV in 1610, the regency of Marie de' Medici for Louis XIII (the aged nine) and the series of revolts by powerful regional nobles, both Catholic and Protestant. Externally religious tensions were heightened by the outbreak of the 1618 to 1648 Thirty Years War. The (Catholic) government of France rented ships from the (Protestant) city of Amsterdam to conquer the (Protestant) city of La Rochelle; at the time France was a Dutch ally in the war against the Habsburgs. Which didn't stop the (Catholic) Spanish Habsburgs aiding France during the siege.
Once hostilities started French engineers isolated the city with about twelve kilometres of entrenchments, with thirty forts and 18 redoubts. all manned with an army thirty thousand strong. A sea-wall about 1.5km long, built on a foundation of sunken hulks filled with rubble, was also constructed to prevent relief by sea. (Protestant) Britain supported the city during the siege, dispatching three relief fleets, all of which were driven off. The third fleet was dispatched in August 1628, with consisting of 29 warships and 31 merchantmen. The defeat of this force caused the city to surrender on 28OCT1628. At the beginning the population of the city was about 27,000; barely 5,000 survived the warfare, famine, and disease.
The siege was internationally famous, being visited and often painted by numerous artists as well as engineers and others, such as the philosopher Descartes. The siege forms the historical background for the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père.
In 1707 the magnitude 8.6 1707 Hōei earthquake strikes south-central Japan at 2PM local time and was the largest earthquake in Japanese history until 2011. It caused moderate to severe damage throughout southwestern Honshu, Shikoku and southeastern Kyūshū, along with destructive tsunami; over five thousand people died. It may have triggered the last eruption of Mount Fuji 49 days later.
In 1726 the novel Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, In Four Parts, By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known as Gulliver's Travels is published by Benjamin Motte in London, written by the Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan Swift. It was an immensely popular, and influential, satire of human nature and the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a considered a classic of English literature. Swift claimed that he wrote Gulliver's Travels "to vex the world rather than divert it". Swift had the manuscript copied so that his handwriting could not be used as evidence if a prosecution should arise (as had happened in the case of some of his Irish pamphlets, such as the Drapier's Letters). Motte used five printing houses to speed production and avoid piracy and seizure.
The first edition was released in two octavo volumes on priced at 8s. 6d. Today a couple would fetch €50,000 to €150,000.
In 1776 during the American Revolutionary War, British troops attack and capture Chatterton Hill from the Continental Army, at the Battle of White Plains, part of the New York and New Jersey campaign where British forces followed the retreat of George Washington's Continental Army northward from New York City. General William Howe landed troops in Westchester County, intending to cut off Washington's escape route but Washington was alerted to this move and retreated farther, establishing a position in the village of White Plains but failing to establish control over local high ground.
In 1834 the 'Battle of Pinjarra' or Pinjarra massacre sees at least thirty Binjareb people are killed by British colonists in the Swan River Colony in Western Australia. A force of about 25 soldiers, police and settlers led by Governor James Stirling attacked a group of 50-70 Binjareb.
In 1864 a Union attack on the Confederate capital Richmond is repulsed at the Battle of Fair Oaks & Darbytown Road in Henrico County in Virginia. Major General Benjamin Butler attacked the Richmond defenses along Darbytown Road and was soundly repulsed.
In 1886 the Statue of Liberty is dedicated at an event presided over by US president Grover Cleveland. dedicates the That morning a parade was held in New York City, with between one-third-of-a-million and one-million people present. Cleveland headed the procession before standing in the reviewing stand to see bands and marchers from across America. The parade route began at Madison Square, proceeded to the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan by way of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, with a slight detour so the parade could pass in front of the World building on Park Row. It was also the first occasion when torn pieces of ticker tape were thrown by traders in the New York Stock Exchange windows; beginning the New York tradition of the ticker-tape parade. Ticker tape was an early (~1870) system of automated financial communications, using telegraphy to carry stock price information; a paper strip ran through a "stock ticker" which decoded the telegraphic signals and printed information into the tape. A nautical parade began at 12:45PM with President Cleveland on a yacht that took him across the harbor to Bedloe's Island for the dedication. Several speaches were made, first by De Lesseps, followed by Senator William Evarts (whose speech was cut short by the 'accidental' premature lowering of the French flag draped across the statue's face). Cleveland spoke next, stating that the statue's "stream of light shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man's oppression until Liberty enlightens the world". It should be noted that the general public was not permitted on the island during the ceremonies; only various dignitaries. Only two women were present, a restriction which offended suffragists, who chartered a boat and got as close as they could to the island before making their own speeches applauding the embodiment of Liberty as a woman and advocating women's right to vote. Weather was generally poor that day.
In 1891 the magnitude 8.0 Mino–Owari earthquake strikes Japanese provinces of Mino and Owari (in the Nōbi Plain) in the early morning. The earthquake came at a time when Japan was undergoing a transformation into a more industrial nation and advancing its scientific understanding. Damage from the event was widespread and the loss of life was significant *at least 7,200 died). The many kilometers of visible fault breaks on the surface of the earth presented scientists with opportunities for field investigations that ultimately led to an improved understanding of the fault scarps that earthquakes often generate and the event convinced the government to bring in foreign experts to assist with the new discipline of seismology.
In 1893 Tchaikovsky's Symphony Number 6 in B Minor (Pathétique) has its première performance Saint Petersburg only nine days before the composer's death.
In 1918 at the end of World War I, Czech politicians peacefully take over the city of Prague, thus establishing the First Czechoslovak Republic. It will exist until 1938 and the Nazi invasion. Dominated by ethnic Czechs and Slovaks, the country was commonly called Czechoslovakia and was composed of former territories of Austria-Hungary (Bohemia, Moravia, part of Silesia, Upper Hungary and Carpathian Ruthenia).
In 1919 the U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Wilson's veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January. The production, importation, and distribution of alcoholic beverages would be taken over by criminal gangs, which fought each other for market control in violent confrontations. Enforcement of Prohibition would be prohibitively difficult because the gangs became so rich they were often able to bribe underpaid and understaffed law enforcement personnel and pay for expensive lawyers. Many citizens were sympathetic to bootleggers, and respectable citizens were lured by the romance of illegal speakeasies.
In 1922 Italian fascists led by Benito Mussolini (though not in person, he stayed safely in Milan) march on Rome and take over the Italian government. The March on Rome was an organised mass demonstration which resulted in Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party legally ascending to power in the Kingdom of Italy. Fascist Party leaders had planned an insurrection for 28OCT but the intervention of King Victor Emmanuel III made this unnecessary; on the 29OCTthe King appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister, thereby transferring political power to the fascists without armed conflict. The march itself was composed of fewer than 30,000 men, but the King in part feared a civil war since the fascist militias (squadristi) had already taken control of the Po plain and most of the country.
In 1949 an Air France Lockheed Constellation, on a scheduled international passenger flight from Paris-Orly Airport, to New York City, crashes in the Azores at a refueling stop. The aircraft was due to land at Santa Maria Airport, but crashed into Pico Redondo on São Miguel Island, about 100km from the airport. All 48 on board were killed. The investigation found that the cause of the accident was controlled flight into terrain due to inadequate navigation by the pilot.
In 1956 the Hungarian Revolution appears to have ended peacefully when a de facto ceasefire comes into effect between armed revolutionaries and Soviet troops, who begin to withdraw from Budapest. Communist officials and facilities come under attack by revolutionaries. General Béla Király, freed from a life sentence for political offences and acting with the support of the Nagy government, sought to restore order by unifying elements of the police, army and insurgent groups into a National Guard. By 30OCT most Soviet troops had withdrawn from Budapest to garrisons in the Hungarian countryside. Fighting ceased between 28 October and 4 November, as many Hungarians believed that Soviet military units were withdrawing from Hungary.
In 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis comes to an end when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev orders the removal of Soviet missiles and aircraft from Cuba.
In 1971 Prospero becomes the only British satellite to be launched by a British rocket. It remains intermittently operational until 1998.
In 1995 at around 6PM, during the Saturday evening rush hour, an electrical fault in the subway system of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan triggers a horrific fire; the Baku Metro fire sees 289 people killed and 270 injured. Most of the dead died from smoke inhalation, carbon monoxide poisoning or electrocution.
In 2009 NASA successfully launches the Ares I-X mission, the only rocket launch for the short-lived Constellation program which was intended to develop space vehicles for US human spaceflight after the Space Shuttle retirement. The rocket was launched at 15:30 GMT from Kennedy Space Center and the simulated payload parachuted into the Atlantic Ocean roughly 250km downrange of the launch site.
In 2014 a rocket carrying NASA's Cygnus CRS Orb-3 resupply mission to the International Space Station explodes seconds after taking off from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia. Cygnus was an automated cargo spacecraft developed by United States-based Orbital Sciences; this would be the fifth launch of the Antares rocket.
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