March 1969
March 1: The MCC Advisory County Cricket Committee announces the formation of a two tiered first class County Cricket competition, consisting of twenty teams in each division and setting out rules for promotion and demotion and the eligibility of players.
March 2: Soviet and Chinese border troops exchange artillery fire across the Ussuri River throughout the day as tensions increase.
March 3: The United States Navy establishes the Fighter Weapons School at NAS Miramar, California.
March 4: A trio of Cricklewood-based benevolent crime-fighting adventurers known as 'The Goodies' confront and defeat a gang of disguised robots intent on destroying their reputation and arrest their mastermind controller, the wicked Dr. Wolfgang Adolphus Ratfink Von Petal.
March 5: Swiss voters narrowly reject a referendum proposal to grant women the vote and the right to stand for election to political office.
March 6: San Francisco Police Captain Harry Callahan disrupts the armed robbery of a liquor store through the creative use of his car, freeing four hostages and shooting the three perpetrators.
March 7: A US Army rotodyne helps rescue 154 people from a burning apartment building in Seoul, Korea, whilst on exercises with the Imperial Korean Army.
March 8: The Social Democrats win a plurality in the German federal election, sparking intense negotiations for the formation of a coalition government.
March 9: Chilean Carabineros fire on a crowd of anti-government protestors in Puerto Montt using new electrical riot guns and tear gas, injuring over 120 and killing 3
March 10: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police begin use of sorcerously augmented dog sleds for Arctic patrol duties, preferring them for reasons of noise and range over motorised sleds.
March 11: Debut of the BBC television adaption of John Christopher’s children’s science fiction series The Tripods.
March 12: US and French officials begin a series of clandestine meetings in Bangkok to discuss coordinated efforts in the Congo under the guise of Indochinese operations.
March 13: A Soviet fishing trawler in the North Pacific sends out a panicked radio message reporting that it is being eaten before disappearing.
March 14: Twenty people are slain by a cloaked shadowy murderer in a single day in Indiana in a series of horrifying attacks. The perpetrator evades police by flying off into the night sky when cornered in downtown Bloomington.
March 15: Southern Colombia is struck by an earthquake registering 7.6 on the Richter scale.
March 16: Home Office environmental sorcerers complete the cleansing of the Thames River, restoring its water quality to designated pre-industrial levels after a fifteen year purification process. Spokeswizards state that the river water will be safe for human consumption within weeks and that a full range of fish and marine animals will return within a year.
March 17: Commissioning of the Royal Australian Navy's new aircraft carrier HMAS Adelaide in Sydney; her sister ship Perth is due to join the fleet in 1971.
March 18: Princess Victoria leaves England to return home to Ruritania, being farewelled from RAF Northolt by Prince Charles as she boards the Royal Flight Concord to Strelsau.
March 19: Fuerza Aeria Royale Colombiana reconnaissance aircraft investigate garbled reports of the uncovering of what appears to be hitherto lost ancient city by the Putamayo Earthquake.
March 20: An aerial convoy of long range transport jets begins the delivery of substantial Soviet reinforcements of manpower and materiel to North Vietnam.
March 21: General Abrams conducts a press conference in Saigon on the progress of Operation Rumble to date, reporting that over 8000 Viet Cong guerillas have been killed and 18 of 26 enemy base areas have been destroyed or overrun
March 22: First operational test firing at of the Royal Navy's new submarine launched medium range strike missile, the de Havilland Blue Moon, fired from HMS Jellicoe at a target range in Kenya from a distance of 1246nm.
March 23: FBI paladins and wizards investigating a series of strange events in a small Colorado town find no evidence of a reported eldritch cult, but discover a number of concerning crop circles and cattle mutilations in surrounding farms.
March 24: The King of Jordan dismisses his Prime Minister and the entire cabinet in a dispute over a new joint defence agreement with Britain and the United States.
March 25: Philippines Army forces launch a major sweep and clear operation in Darlac Province in South Vietnam.
March 26: Mikhail Suslov, the noted CPSU ideologue, is promoted to Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, formally cementing his position on the Central Committee.
March 27: Imperial Japanese Navy destroyers and submarines begin testing of a new supercavitating 'rocket torpedo' in exercises in the Inland Sea.
March 28: Pope Paul VI increases the size of the College of Cardinals from 112 to 150.
March 29: Over 100,000 people attend the opening night of Billy Graham's new Crusade and rally for decency in New York City.
March 30: The British Army introduces new general service body armour adaptable to a full range of operational climes and theatres.
March 31: A Federal Bureau of Prisons report recommends against the closure of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary despite a number of escapes from the previously 'escape-proof' prison over the previous decade.
Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
April 1969
April 1: An unknown group of wizards conducts a series of pranks across New York City, including changing all of the sorcerous screens in Times Square to show the same image of a plaintive duck, colouring the Hudson River pink and placing a large moustache on the Statue of Liberty.
April 2: Release of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli’s Greatest Adventure, the tenth book in the long running Jungle Book series.
April 3: Announcement of the retirement of Free Polish Armed Forces by the Polish Government in Exile. The heritage of certain units will be perpetuated by newly raised British Army regiments, whilst the five operational Polish Air Force squadrons will be amalgamated with the Royal Air Force, with preferential recruiting for members of the Polish exile community in Britain.
April 4: Dr. Denton Cooley successfully transplants an artificial heart into a patient in Houston.
April 5: Eighteen skiers are buried in an avalanche at the Riksgränsen ski resort in Swedish Lappland, but are rescued thanks to the heroic efforts of hundreds of Swedish and Norwegian police, local volunteers, rescue dogs and two passing trolls.
April 6: A crazed sniper randomly kills two motorists and injured fifteen in a horrific incident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
April 7: The US Supreme Court rules that the private possession of obscene materials was not protected in Stanley v Georgia, citing the authority of Roth v. United States
April 8: The French Army begins renovation and modernisation of certain ouvrages of the Maginot Line for use in the atomic age as hardened underground command facilities in addition to their residual role as border fortifications.
April 9: Philippines soldiers capture a Japanese holdout on Lubang Island, with another narrowly escaping their grasp.
April 10: British intelligence agents report that the commander of the African Liberation Front has been identified as one Kondo Simba. An indistinct photograph of Simba does not bear any resemblance to any known revolutionists.
April 11: Release of 'The Glowing Sea' a new post apocalyptic novel by renowned British science fiction author John Wyndham.
April 12: Revival of the Subbotnik concept of voluntary community labour service on Saturdays in the Soviet Union, the latest in a series of efforts to raise productivity.
April 13: The CIA station in Berlin receives a garbled shortwave radio report from a field agent of his discovery of a huge underground research facility in the German Democratic Republic beneath Karl Marx Stadt. His last screams are of the appearance of “hundreds” of some sort of" "identical" object.
April 14: Boris Spassky defeats Tigran Petrosian to win the World Chess Championship in Moscow, increasing interest in a putative match between the USSR and the Rest of the World.
April 15: The United States Navy formally establishes a Corps of Aquanauts for its intrepid underwater explorers as part of expanded interest in exploration of the mysterious depths of the world's oceans.
April 16: Television watchers in the United States are warned to stay at least five feet away from their TV sets by the US Department of Health on account of potential radiation and other dangers, after five boys in California contracted the exceptionally rare 'Square Eye Syndrome'.
April 17: Strategic Air Command begins introduction of the AGM-85 Short Range Attack Missile (SRAM), a Mach 4.5 weapon with a maximum range of 250 miles, on B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress bombers; integration on the B-70 Valkyrie and other bombers is to follow. Testing of a long range strategic cruise missile is ongoing.
April 18: A private member's bill to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 is resounding defeated in the House of Commons 425-131.
April 19: Interpol detectives assisted by two British agents arrest a gang of international criminals at a remote Swiss mountaintop chalet after uncovering an outlandish plot to assassinate President Kennedy using an orbital death ray controlled by large mirrors. Their balding heavyset leader escapes in a rocket pod on a southerly trajectory.
April 20: The British Army begins testing of an armoured vehicle equipped with an advanced heat ray in the Kalahari Desert, utilising recent advances in arcane batteries to enable the hitherto large weapons to be carried in mobile battlefield vehicles.
April 21: US Army Vietnam announces the successful conclusion of the Operation Rumble, claiming a body count of over 30,000 Viet Cong and reporting the destruction of every targeted base area. General Abrams approves the assignment of American and Free World journalists to field units to inspect the battlegrounds and report on the victory now that conditions are sufficiently safe.
April 22: Robin Knox-Johnston returns to Falmouth, having completed the first successful solo non-stop round the world yacht voyage.
April 23: President Kennedy outlines his proposal for the expansion of Medicare into a Universal Healthcare System in a speech in Chicago.
April 24: Colorado prospectors discover a number of large humanoid bones whilst searching for a suspected gold deposit near Aspen. Initial investigation and testing of the remains puts their age at an astounding 250,000 years.
April 25: A meteorite breaks up in the skies over Northern Ireland, with the largest fragment landing in a field near Londonderry and being secured shortly afterwards by police and Army personnel.
April 26: Manchester City defeat Leicester City 2-1 at Imperial Stadium before a crowd of 170,000 spectators to win the FA Cup.
April 27: Bolivian dictator General Rene Barrientos is killed as his personal helicopter is attacked and eaten by an Andean dragon.
April 28: A new Sunnyvale computing engine company, Atari, produces the prototype of the first commercial arcade videogram game, Ping, a clever simulation of table tennis.
April 29: Three Royal Navy Tribal class frigates conduct a show of force cruise in the Shatt al Arab from the Persian Gulf past the British island of Abadan to Basra and back, covered by the battleship HMS Vanguard offshore. It comes in response to rising tensions and incidents on the waterway between Iraq and Persia.
April 30: Rhodesia defeats the USA for the first time in an international cricket in the First Test in Salisbury.
April 1: An unknown group of wizards conducts a series of pranks across New York City, including changing all of the sorcerous screens in Times Square to show the same image of a plaintive duck, colouring the Hudson River pink and placing a large moustache on the Statue of Liberty.
April 2: Release of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli’s Greatest Adventure, the tenth book in the long running Jungle Book series.
April 3: Announcement of the retirement of Free Polish Armed Forces by the Polish Government in Exile. The heritage of certain units will be perpetuated by newly raised British Army regiments, whilst the five operational Polish Air Force squadrons will be amalgamated with the Royal Air Force, with preferential recruiting for members of the Polish exile community in Britain.
April 4: Dr. Denton Cooley successfully transplants an artificial heart into a patient in Houston.
April 5: Eighteen skiers are buried in an avalanche at the Riksgränsen ski resort in Swedish Lappland, but are rescued thanks to the heroic efforts of hundreds of Swedish and Norwegian police, local volunteers, rescue dogs and two passing trolls.
April 6: A crazed sniper randomly kills two motorists and injured fifteen in a horrific incident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
April 7: The US Supreme Court rules that the private possession of obscene materials was not protected in Stanley v Georgia, citing the authority of Roth v. United States
April 8: The French Army begins renovation and modernisation of certain ouvrages of the Maginot Line for use in the atomic age as hardened underground command facilities in addition to their residual role as border fortifications.
April 9: Philippines soldiers capture a Japanese holdout on Lubang Island, with another narrowly escaping their grasp.
April 10: British intelligence agents report that the commander of the African Liberation Front has been identified as one Kondo Simba. An indistinct photograph of Simba does not bear any resemblance to any known revolutionists.
April 11: Release of 'The Glowing Sea' a new post apocalyptic novel by renowned British science fiction author John Wyndham.
April 12: Revival of the Subbotnik concept of voluntary community labour service on Saturdays in the Soviet Union, the latest in a series of efforts to raise productivity.
April 13: The CIA station in Berlin receives a garbled shortwave radio report from a field agent of his discovery of a huge underground research facility in the German Democratic Republic beneath Karl Marx Stadt. His last screams are of the appearance of “hundreds” of some sort of" "identical" object.
April 14: Boris Spassky defeats Tigran Petrosian to win the World Chess Championship in Moscow, increasing interest in a putative match between the USSR and the Rest of the World.
April 15: The United States Navy formally establishes a Corps of Aquanauts for its intrepid underwater explorers as part of expanded interest in exploration of the mysterious depths of the world's oceans.
April 16: Television watchers in the United States are warned to stay at least five feet away from their TV sets by the US Department of Health on account of potential radiation and other dangers, after five boys in California contracted the exceptionally rare 'Square Eye Syndrome'.
April 17: Strategic Air Command begins introduction of the AGM-85 Short Range Attack Missile (SRAM), a Mach 4.5 weapon with a maximum range of 250 miles, on B-47 Stratojet and B-52 Stratofortress bombers; integration on the B-70 Valkyrie and other bombers is to follow. Testing of a long range strategic cruise missile is ongoing.
April 18: A private member's bill to lower the voting age from 21 to 18 is resounding defeated in the House of Commons 425-131.
April 19: Interpol detectives assisted by two British agents arrest a gang of international criminals at a remote Swiss mountaintop chalet after uncovering an outlandish plot to assassinate President Kennedy using an orbital death ray controlled by large mirrors. Their balding heavyset leader escapes in a rocket pod on a southerly trajectory.
April 20: The British Army begins testing of an armoured vehicle equipped with an advanced heat ray in the Kalahari Desert, utilising recent advances in arcane batteries to enable the hitherto large weapons to be carried in mobile battlefield vehicles.
April 21: US Army Vietnam announces the successful conclusion of the Operation Rumble, claiming a body count of over 30,000 Viet Cong and reporting the destruction of every targeted base area. General Abrams approves the assignment of American and Free World journalists to field units to inspect the battlegrounds and report on the victory now that conditions are sufficiently safe.
April 22: Robin Knox-Johnston returns to Falmouth, having completed the first successful solo non-stop round the world yacht voyage.
April 23: President Kennedy outlines his proposal for the expansion of Medicare into a Universal Healthcare System in a speech in Chicago.
April 24: Colorado prospectors discover a number of large humanoid bones whilst searching for a suspected gold deposit near Aspen. Initial investigation and testing of the remains puts their age at an astounding 250,000 years.
April 25: A meteorite breaks up in the skies over Northern Ireland, with the largest fragment landing in a field near Londonderry and being secured shortly afterwards by police and Army personnel.
April 26: Manchester City defeat Leicester City 2-1 at Imperial Stadium before a crowd of 170,000 spectators to win the FA Cup.
April 27: Bolivian dictator General Rene Barrientos is killed as his personal helicopter is attacked and eaten by an Andean dragon.
April 28: A new Sunnyvale computing engine company, Atari, produces the prototype of the first commercial arcade videogram game, Ping, a clever simulation of table tennis.
April 29: Three Royal Navy Tribal class frigates conduct a show of force cruise in the Shatt al Arab from the Persian Gulf past the British island of Abadan to Basra and back, covered by the battleship HMS Vanguard offshore. It comes in response to rising tensions and incidents on the waterway between Iraq and Persia.
April 30: Rhodesia defeats the USA for the first time in an international cricket in the First Test in Salisbury.
Last edited by Simon Darkshade on Wed Jun 12, 2024 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
May 1969
May 1: Operations begin at the Springfield Army Tank Plant in Springfield, Indiana, the newest and largest tank factory in the world. It is projected as building up to 150 M-70 Marshall tanks per month, with the cheap, plentiful power supplied by the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant being one of the major reasons for the selection of the location.
May 2: Launch of the new Cunard superliner Queen Mary 2 at Harland and Wolff in Belfast by Queen Elizabeth II in front of a crowd of 100,000. The sister ship to RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is due to be completed late next year and the pair is rivalled in size only by White Star Line’s new liners still under construction.
May 3: Foundation of a special commando unit of the Italian caribinieri, the Division for the Protection of Artistic Heritage, with the express mission of investigating thefts of antiquarian art and other related crimes.
May 4: An article appears in The Times on the strange reported appearance of a blue police box in a number of different locations, ranging from Trafalgar Square and the White Cliffs of Dover to the South Pole of Venus. It quotes a government spokesman as blaming high spirited university students for the phenomenon.
May 5: Argentine Prime Minister de Rodriguez gives a fiery three hour speech in Buenos Aires, expounding on the destiny of Argentina as the greatest power in South America and calling for a move towards full Argentine ownership of her resources and expansion of her domestic industries to match the states of Europe and North America.
May 6: First flight of the Hughes XV-21 quadjet heliplane, one of several American VTOL projects designed to compete with recent British advanced developments.
May 7: The Los Angeles Times runs a feature on 'The Reagan Era', analysing California Governor Ronald Reagan's first two years in office, noting his very high approval ratings, popular law and order policies and success in balancing the budget.
May 8: 60,000 South Vietnamese, British and Commonwealth troops launch Operation Ladder in Long Khanh Province, a localised offensive aimed at clearing and destroying remaining VC strongholds. Operations are supported by long range artillery and the new Hawker-Siddeley Salamander turboprop ground attack aircraft, which ably augments the Bristol Strikemasters and refurbished de Havilland Vampires used for tactical close air support.
May 9: Downtown St. Louis is struck pitch dark at noon for a period of 17 minutes in what is described as an arcane industrial accident, resulting in hundreds of motor vehicle crashes and widespread confusion.
May 10: Deployment of the Canadian 32nd Airborne Brigade to the expansive Commonwealth base complex at Tobruk as part of the Middle Eastern Strategic Reserve alongside British, Australian, South African and Gurkha units. Tobruk is being increasingly built up to serve as a replacement for Alexandria, which is seen as being of less military utility in the light of Egyptian strategic divergence; the Suez-Sinai base remains the fulcrum of the British Empire’s position in the Near East.
May 11: Two groups of drunken cowboys engage in a shootout in Tombstone, Arizona, resulting in three deaths.
May 12: Soviet weather sorcerors successfully test an advanced weather control enchantment in the ‘Virgin Lands’ of the northern Kazakh SSR.
May 13: A USAF F-4 Phantom narrowly misses an English school in a crash in the Oxfordshire village of Steeple Aston; the pilot staying with his plane to steer it to safety rather than eject, sacrificing his life for that of the pupils below.
May 14: Victorian police begin searching Melbourne for a vampire after finding the bodies of two drained women discarded on the banks of the Yarra.
May 15: The US Navy atomic submarine Guitarro (SSN-655) sinks whilst under construction at Mare Island Navy Shipyard due to miscommunication leading to too much ballast being taken on board, leaving only the conning tower above water.
May 16: Race riots hit several southern Malayan cities as anti-Chinese sentiment boils over into violence between elements of the Malay and Chinese populations. This is seen as a challenge for the independent Malay government to manage and suppress without recourse to having to call for the intervention of British and Commonwealth troops.
May 17: Premiere of the first episode of Civilisation, a BBC documentary series on the history of Western art and thought presented by Sir Kenneth Clark.
May 18: The British Ministry of Defence begins a comprehensive review and modernisation of The War Book, the master plan for British mobilisation, military operations, grand strategy, operational deployments, contingency war plans and strategic atomic warfare contained in a single magical volume enchanted with its own intelligence. The process aims to link up the mighty artifact with the growing networks of intelligent supercomputers that coordinate much of the British economy and war machine.
May 19: Residents of Trondheim report the complete disappearance of all rats and vermin from the city overnight.
May 20: Germany and Austria-Hungary sign an extensive trade and rail transport agreement, the centrepiece of which will be the construction of a high speed railway from Berlin to Budapest via Prague, Vienna and Bratislava.
May 21: The Imperial Byzantine Navy announces that the previous decision to retire its capital ships without replacement is under reconsideration, following intense internal political squabbling and the intervention of Emperor Alexander.
May 22: Ten separate heavy raids strike North Vietnam overnight, with USAF B-52 bombers attacking from bases in Thailand, the Philippines and Guam as well as South Vietnam.
May 23: A USAF mechanic attempts to steal a C-130 Hercules transport from RAF Mildenhall in order to return to the United States, but is apprehended and overpowered by a security robot. Investigators later determine his actions were due to a freak chemical interaction between anti-depressant medication and the Scotch and strong English cheddar he had been consuming the night before.
May 24: World premiere of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first motion picture adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ children’s fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia.
May 25: Sudanese Army officers planning an attempt to overthrow the government in Khartoum are arrested by loyalist troops and police.
May 26: Orion 5 begins the first stage of acceleration for her journey home to Earth from the outer reaches of the Solar System.
May 27: The British Army of the Rhine begins introduction of the Royal Ordnance L324 375mm Long Range Heavy Cannon, a new mobile strategic artillery piece.
May 28: 20 workers are killed in a suspicious explosion in an Arequippa, Peru dynamite factory.
May 29: A flight of five USN TBM Avengers that disappeared on a training flight over the Bermuda Triangle land at Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale after having disappeared on December 5, 1945. The crew do not appear to have aged at all and were unaware of anything untoward, reporting only a bright scintillating flash of light.
May 30: Mario Andretti wins the Indy 500 for the first time, narrowly defeating Steve McQueen.
May 31: British troops in Nigeria begin supervision of a phased ceasefire between Nigerian and rebel Biafran forces after a breakthrough in negotiations.
May 1: Operations begin at the Springfield Army Tank Plant in Springfield, Indiana, the newest and largest tank factory in the world. It is projected as building up to 150 M-70 Marshall tanks per month, with the cheap, plentiful power supplied by the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant being one of the major reasons for the selection of the location.
May 2: Launch of the new Cunard superliner Queen Mary 2 at Harland and Wolff in Belfast by Queen Elizabeth II in front of a crowd of 100,000. The sister ship to RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is due to be completed late next year and the pair is rivalled in size only by White Star Line’s new liners still under construction.
May 3: Foundation of a special commando unit of the Italian caribinieri, the Division for the Protection of Artistic Heritage, with the express mission of investigating thefts of antiquarian art and other related crimes.
May 4: An article appears in The Times on the strange reported appearance of a blue police box in a number of different locations, ranging from Trafalgar Square and the White Cliffs of Dover to the South Pole of Venus. It quotes a government spokesman as blaming high spirited university students for the phenomenon.
May 5: Argentine Prime Minister de Rodriguez gives a fiery three hour speech in Buenos Aires, expounding on the destiny of Argentina as the greatest power in South America and calling for a move towards full Argentine ownership of her resources and expansion of her domestic industries to match the states of Europe and North America.
May 6: First flight of the Hughes XV-21 quadjet heliplane, one of several American VTOL projects designed to compete with recent British advanced developments.
May 7: The Los Angeles Times runs a feature on 'The Reagan Era', analysing California Governor Ronald Reagan's first two years in office, noting his very high approval ratings, popular law and order policies and success in balancing the budget.
May 8: 60,000 South Vietnamese, British and Commonwealth troops launch Operation Ladder in Long Khanh Province, a localised offensive aimed at clearing and destroying remaining VC strongholds. Operations are supported by long range artillery and the new Hawker-Siddeley Salamander turboprop ground attack aircraft, which ably augments the Bristol Strikemasters and refurbished de Havilland Vampires used for tactical close air support.
May 9: Downtown St. Louis is struck pitch dark at noon for a period of 17 minutes in what is described as an arcane industrial accident, resulting in hundreds of motor vehicle crashes and widespread confusion.
May 10: Deployment of the Canadian 32nd Airborne Brigade to the expansive Commonwealth base complex at Tobruk as part of the Middle Eastern Strategic Reserve alongside British, Australian, South African and Gurkha units. Tobruk is being increasingly built up to serve as a replacement for Alexandria, which is seen as being of less military utility in the light of Egyptian strategic divergence; the Suez-Sinai base remains the fulcrum of the British Empire’s position in the Near East.
May 11: Two groups of drunken cowboys engage in a shootout in Tombstone, Arizona, resulting in three deaths.
May 12: Soviet weather sorcerors successfully test an advanced weather control enchantment in the ‘Virgin Lands’ of the northern Kazakh SSR.
May 13: A USAF F-4 Phantom narrowly misses an English school in a crash in the Oxfordshire village of Steeple Aston; the pilot staying with his plane to steer it to safety rather than eject, sacrificing his life for that of the pupils below.
May 14: Victorian police begin searching Melbourne for a vampire after finding the bodies of two drained women discarded on the banks of the Yarra.
May 15: The US Navy atomic submarine Guitarro (SSN-655) sinks whilst under construction at Mare Island Navy Shipyard due to miscommunication leading to too much ballast being taken on board, leaving only the conning tower above water.
May 16: Race riots hit several southern Malayan cities as anti-Chinese sentiment boils over into violence between elements of the Malay and Chinese populations. This is seen as a challenge for the independent Malay government to manage and suppress without recourse to having to call for the intervention of British and Commonwealth troops.
May 17: Premiere of the first episode of Civilisation, a BBC documentary series on the history of Western art and thought presented by Sir Kenneth Clark.
May 18: The British Ministry of Defence begins a comprehensive review and modernisation of The War Book, the master plan for British mobilisation, military operations, grand strategy, operational deployments, contingency war plans and strategic atomic warfare contained in a single magical volume enchanted with its own intelligence. The process aims to link up the mighty artifact with the growing networks of intelligent supercomputers that coordinate much of the British economy and war machine.
May 19: Residents of Trondheim report the complete disappearance of all rats and vermin from the city overnight.
May 20: Germany and Austria-Hungary sign an extensive trade and rail transport agreement, the centrepiece of which will be the construction of a high speed railway from Berlin to Budapest via Prague, Vienna and Bratislava.
May 21: The Imperial Byzantine Navy announces that the previous decision to retire its capital ships without replacement is under reconsideration, following intense internal political squabbling and the intervention of Emperor Alexander.
May 22: Ten separate heavy raids strike North Vietnam overnight, with USAF B-52 bombers attacking from bases in Thailand, the Philippines and Guam as well as South Vietnam.
May 23: A USAF mechanic attempts to steal a C-130 Hercules transport from RAF Mildenhall in order to return to the United States, but is apprehended and overpowered by a security robot. Investigators later determine his actions were due to a freak chemical interaction between anti-depressant medication and the Scotch and strong English cheddar he had been consuming the night before.
May 24: World premiere of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first motion picture adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ children’s fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia.
May 25: Sudanese Army officers planning an attempt to overthrow the government in Khartoum are arrested by loyalist troops and police.
May 26: Orion 5 begins the first stage of acceleration for her journey home to Earth from the outer reaches of the Solar System.
May 27: The British Army of the Rhine begins introduction of the Royal Ordnance L324 375mm Long Range Heavy Cannon, a new mobile strategic artillery piece.
May 28: 20 workers are killed in a suspicious explosion in an Arequippa, Peru dynamite factory.
May 29: A flight of five USN TBM Avengers that disappeared on a training flight over the Bermuda Triangle land at Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale after having disappeared on December 5, 1945. The crew do not appear to have aged at all and were unaware of anything untoward, reporting only a bright scintillating flash of light.
May 30: Mario Andretti wins the Indy 500 for the first time, narrowly defeating Steve McQueen.
May 31: British troops in Nigeria begin supervision of a phased ceasefire between Nigerian and rebel Biafran forces after a breakthrough in negotiations.
Last edited by Simon Darkshade on Wed Jun 12, 2024 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
June 1969
June 1: Investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales by Queen Elizabeth II at Caernarvon Castle; the ceremony, consisting of the presentation of his magic sword and enchanted ring and crowning with the ancient Coronet of Wales, is watched by a global television audience of over 1 billion people.
June 2: Quadruple murderer Jerome Brudos is executed in the gas chamber of the Oregon State Penitentiary.
June 3: The USN destroyer USS Frank E. Evans is accidentally sliced in two and sunk by the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne during operations off the coast of South Vietnam, killing 77.
June 4: Debut of Secret Army, a new BBC series about the deeds of the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War. A special introduction to the first episode is presented by Sir Sherlock Holmes.
June 5: The Queen’s Birthday honours list features the most new knighthoods in five years, including the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Enoch Powell.
June 6: The 25th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy is marked by a solemn ceremony attended by Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of London, Presidents Kennedy and Thompson, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery. Over 50,000 troops, hundreds of vintage aircraft and dozens of wartime ships take part in the commemoration.
June 7: Transfer of six Foxtrot class attack submarines from the Soviet Union to North Vietnam.
June 8: Twelve members of a single family are killed in an apparent arson in Parkersburg, West Virginia.
June 9: Spain closes its border with Gibraltar in the latest escalation of its long running claim on the British possession.
June 10: In a swift response to the Spanish actions of the previous day, a squadron of four RAF aerodreadnoughts arrives over Gibraltar.
June 11: French troops destroy a large Viet Cong underground base deep in the Mekong Delta.
June 12: Completion of the Imperial Trans-Arctic Expedition, a trek entirely on foot from Alaska to Spitsbergen.
June 13: USAF B-52s destroy two fighter airfields outside Hanoi using T-12 Cloudmaker demolition bombs as part of a heavy raid on the North Vietnamese capital.
June 14: Explorers Thor Heyerdahl and Jacques Cousteau announce that their specialist bathyscaphe has succeeded in finding the underwater ruins of lost Atlantis deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean.
June 15: Communist backed nationalist rebels in Portuguese East Africa claim to have effective control of over half of its provinces.
June 16: The New York City mayoral primaries are won by incumbent Republican Mayor John Lindsay and Democratic scion Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.
June 17: England defeat the West Indies in the First Test at Old Trafford by 6 wickets, with dashing young opener the Honourable Peter Ratcliffe making an unbeaten 125 on debut and tearaway fast bowler Jack Shaw evoking memories of Frank Tyson in capturing 6/24 in the West Indies first innings.
June 18: Two Albanian mountain villages are destroyed in a sudden stampede by thousands of frenzied goats.
June 19: The opening session of the much awaited Comintern Congress in Moscow is disrupted by a mysterious mass food poisoning that sees hundreds of delegates hospitalised after consuming tainted caviar.
June 20: Laying down of the first atomic powered super battleship of the Royal Canadian Navy in Halifax.
June 21: French detectives break a ring of Union Corse drug smugglers attempting the import of three tons of heroin and opium into Marseille disguised as a shipment of chalk. This is the latest scheme foiled by the Surete after their earlier success in smashing the ‘Turkish Connection’ last year.
June 22: A large oil slick on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland ignites and catches fire, burning well into the night and destroying a number of bridges and riverside structures. The striking, high profile incident sparks a national debate on water pollution.
June 23: 159 people are killed in a midair collisions between an Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-76 airliner and a Soviet Air Force Antonov An-12 near Moscow.
June 24: Production begins on a conventionally armed long range variant of the Hawker-Siddeley Lance tactical ballistic missile, itself a licensed version of the American LTV MGM-52 Lance. This is the first stage of what has been dubbed within the War Office as 'The Missile Plan', a programme for the expansion of the British Army's tactical strike range beyond the battlefield.
June 25: The Prime Minister of Peru signs an extensive land reform bill into law, providing a legal pathway for the expropriation of foreign owned property with compensation.
June 26: Activation of a new FBI super computer in Washington D.C. dedicated to the analysis and solving of crimes.
June 27: American archaeologists discover what appears to be an extremely puzzling underground structure in the Mojave Desert whilst searching for one of the fabled Mysterious Cities of Gold.
June 28: The 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the formal ending of the First World War is marked by a solemn ceremony at the Palace of Versailles attended by King Louis, Queen Elizabeth II, King Umberto and President Kennedy.
June 29: First commercial transmission of ‘Mailgrams’, a combination of the telegram and first class post in a joint experimental service by the US Post Office Department and Western Union.
June 30: Ground is broken on the world’s largest sports stadium in New York City.
June 1: Investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales by Queen Elizabeth II at Caernarvon Castle; the ceremony, consisting of the presentation of his magic sword and enchanted ring and crowning with the ancient Coronet of Wales, is watched by a global television audience of over 1 billion people.
June 2: Quadruple murderer Jerome Brudos is executed in the gas chamber of the Oregon State Penitentiary.
June 3: The USN destroyer USS Frank E. Evans is accidentally sliced in two and sunk by the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne during operations off the coast of South Vietnam, killing 77.
June 4: Debut of Secret Army, a new BBC series about the deeds of the Special Operations Executive in the Second World War. A special introduction to the first episode is presented by Sir Sherlock Holmes.
June 5: The Queen’s Birthday honours list features the most new knighthoods in five years, including the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Enoch Powell.
June 6: The 25th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy is marked by a solemn ceremony attended by Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of London, Presidents Kennedy and Thompson, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Field Marshal Montgomery. Over 50,000 troops, hundreds of vintage aircraft and dozens of wartime ships take part in the commemoration.
June 7: Transfer of six Foxtrot class attack submarines from the Soviet Union to North Vietnam.
June 8: Twelve members of a single family are killed in an apparent arson in Parkersburg, West Virginia.
June 9: Spain closes its border with Gibraltar in the latest escalation of its long running claim on the British possession.
June 10: In a swift response to the Spanish actions of the previous day, a squadron of four RAF aerodreadnoughts arrives over Gibraltar.
June 11: French troops destroy a large Viet Cong underground base deep in the Mekong Delta.
June 12: Completion of the Imperial Trans-Arctic Expedition, a trek entirely on foot from Alaska to Spitsbergen.
June 13: USAF B-52s destroy two fighter airfields outside Hanoi using T-12 Cloudmaker demolition bombs as part of a heavy raid on the North Vietnamese capital.
June 14: Explorers Thor Heyerdahl and Jacques Cousteau announce that their specialist bathyscaphe has succeeded in finding the underwater ruins of lost Atlantis deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean.
June 15: Communist backed nationalist rebels in Portuguese East Africa claim to have effective control of over half of its provinces.
June 16: The New York City mayoral primaries are won by incumbent Republican Mayor John Lindsay and Democratic scion Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.
June 17: England defeat the West Indies in the First Test at Old Trafford by 6 wickets, with dashing young opener the Honourable Peter Ratcliffe making an unbeaten 125 on debut and tearaway fast bowler Jack Shaw evoking memories of Frank Tyson in capturing 6/24 in the West Indies first innings.
June 18: Two Albanian mountain villages are destroyed in a sudden stampede by thousands of frenzied goats.
June 19: The opening session of the much awaited Comintern Congress in Moscow is disrupted by a mysterious mass food poisoning that sees hundreds of delegates hospitalised after consuming tainted caviar.
June 20: Laying down of the first atomic powered super battleship of the Royal Canadian Navy in Halifax.
June 21: French detectives break a ring of Union Corse drug smugglers attempting the import of three tons of heroin and opium into Marseille disguised as a shipment of chalk. This is the latest scheme foiled by the Surete after their earlier success in smashing the ‘Turkish Connection’ last year.
June 22: A large oil slick on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland ignites and catches fire, burning well into the night and destroying a number of bridges and riverside structures. The striking, high profile incident sparks a national debate on water pollution.
June 23: 159 people are killed in a midair collisions between an Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-76 airliner and a Soviet Air Force Antonov An-12 near Moscow.
June 24: Production begins on a conventionally armed long range variant of the Hawker-Siddeley Lance tactical ballistic missile, itself a licensed version of the American LTV MGM-52 Lance. This is the first stage of what has been dubbed within the War Office as 'The Missile Plan', a programme for the expansion of the British Army's tactical strike range beyond the battlefield.
June 25: The Prime Minister of Peru signs an extensive land reform bill into law, providing a legal pathway for the expropriation of foreign owned property with compensation.
June 26: Activation of a new FBI super computer in Washington D.C. dedicated to the analysis and solving of crimes.
June 27: American archaeologists discover what appears to be an extremely puzzling underground structure in the Mojave Desert whilst searching for one of the fabled Mysterious Cities of Gold.
June 28: The 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the formal ending of the First World War is marked by a solemn ceremony at the Palace of Versailles attended by King Louis, Queen Elizabeth II, King Umberto and President Kennedy.
June 29: First commercial transmission of ‘Mailgrams’, a combination of the telegram and first class post in a joint experimental service by the US Post Office Department and Western Union.
June 30: Ground is broken on the world’s largest sports stadium in New York City.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
July 1969
July 1: Beginning of Exercise Capricorn, a major Western Alliance air defence exercise over France, the British Isles and the Low Countries.
July 2: Spain reopens her border with Gibraltar after the British airship presence is reinforced by a large force of the Mediterranean Fleet and the Royal Space Force battlecruiser Warspite partially reenters the atmosphere over Spain, causing significant alarm and dismay. Madrid issues a protest at the British action, but the significance of the gesture is duly considered.
July 3: A powerful, sudden storm strikes Southern Michigan and Ohio, killing 42 people caught in the terrific winds and unnatural downpour.
July 4: The United States defeats Canada in the First Test by one wicket in Philadelphia in an absolute thriller, with American captain Charlie McDonald hitting the last ball of the match for four to bring up his double century after leading the way to a record run chase of 9/425. The result sparks wild celebrations in the city still considered as the heartland and spiritual home of U.S. cricket.
July 5: Rumours are reported in the highlands of Peru of a strange group claiming to be emissaries of the Incas visiting a number of villages high in the Andes.
July 6: The Soviet spacecraft Kosmos begins its initial return burn towards Earth from the Saturnine system. Dreadnought continues her explorations and refueling prior to her next mission against the Space Nazis in the Asteroid Belt.
July 7: British Army cooks and arcane gastronauts complete the arduous testing process for a new series of military rations. Twenty four improved ration pack variants are to be produced, each providing five meals and assorted additional accompaniments, designed to support a soldier in the field for one day.
July 8: USAF stocks of nerve gas are accidentally released at Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa in a mishap caused by unnecessary repainting. 36 people are injured, 4 seriously, and the major responsible is reassigned to Clipperton pending a formal investigation.
July 9: Renowned Italian scientist Andrea Fratellini publishes a paper on alarming patterns of solar radiation, describing their potential effect on the Earth's climate and the potential for dramatic global cooling.
July 10: The young King of Egypt appoints a new nationalist Prime Minister, Sayed Ahmed, under intense pressure from his ministers and military; Ahmed is considered to be somewhat more circumspect than his late predecessor, but still acceptable to the increasingly robust calls for Egyptian self-assertion.
July 11: Two former USAF airmen are hanged for murder in Washington, with the warden flipping a coin to decide whether Aiken or Wheat went first.
July 12: A flying carpet is accidentally activated in a Persian carpet salesman's emporium in Paris, completely wrecking the shop before escaping. It is recaptured later that evening in the Moulin Rouge, taking in a show in company with two ladies of dubious morality, and given a thorough beating upon its return to its owner.
July 13: The United States Mint begins the issuing of new $500, $1000 and $5000 bills; the $10,000 has been withdrawn from circulation, ostensibly due to lack of use.
July 14: El Salvadoran troops begin an invasion of Honduras, spearheaded by columns of tanks. A large bomber raid by B-27s escorted by F-4U Corsairs and F-47 Thunderbolts on the capital city of Tegucigalpa is intercepted by Honduran Air Force F-51 Mustangs and F-75 Eagles, leading to possibly the first and last major engagement between some of the most notable US fighters of the Second World War. The immediate cause of the conflict has been the rising tensions between the neighbouring Central American states which reached boiling point in a two leg World Cup qualifier.
July 15: SAS observation teams confirm suspicions first raised by RAF reconnaissance flights that Indonesia has begun to substantially increase its troop presence in Central Borneo, thought to be in preparation for a resumption of the border conflict.
July 16: Surrey boy Matthew Gore, known for his rescue his sister from a river whilst not knowing how to swim and his remarkable artistic talent, receives a special government bursary to a new programme for gifted children in Cambridge.
July 17: After urgent US diplomacy involving State Department officials making numerous flights between El Salvador and Honduras and the movement of the battleship USS New Hampshire through the Panama Canal from Porto Rico, an uneasy American-brokered ceasefire is agreed upon, ending what is dubbed 'The Soccer War'.
July 18: Nineteen children are swept away whilst wading in the Loire River near the village of Juigné-sur-Loire.
July 19: British adventurer John Fairfax becomes the first man to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, arriving in Florida in his special self-righting and self-bailing boat Britannia after a journey of 238 days.
July 20: The USDA reports that the average cow size across all breeds is 2254lb, a rise of 25% in the last decade.
July 21: British Prime Minister Stanley Barton gives a speech on the National Plan in Glasgow, outlining the challenge over the next three years, including a 24% increase in steel production, a 20% increase in coal output and a 15% increase in car production and shipbuilding, along with numerous benchmarks for cooperative success for both heavy and light industry.
July 22: Fighting along the Liberty Line in Laos begins to die down as North Vietnamese supply lines, already constrained by the severing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, are pushed to near breaking point by the heavy air interdiction campaign conducted by USAF and USN aircraft around the clock.
July 23: Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Charles and Princess Victoria of Ruritania, causing an immediate flurry of attention by the media and general public alike.
July 24: An article is published in The Lancet by ten leading US ophthalmologists predicting that within a generation, the therapeutic use of eyeglasses and corrective lenses will no longer be necessary due to the revolutionary advance of the 'Lucas Method', a painless and swift corrective eye surgery procedure involving a specially configured 'laser' first used to restore the sight of Californian youngster George Lucas.
July 25: Quadripartite strategic arms talks between the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France open in Geneva.
July 26: Nazi war criminal Josef Blösche is executed by guillotine in Leipzig for numerous crimes against humanity, having been identified as the German soldier featuring in an infamous photograph of the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto.
July 27: The Strategic War Plan Committee issues a report on proposed changes to US mobilisation programmes and the incorporation of new strategic airlift and sealift assets, stating that the long desired goal of '12 in 12', or the movement of 12 divisions across the Atlantic to Europe in the first twelve days after M-Day, will be reached by 1972.
July 28: Dwarven diamond miners in the DeBeers mine in Kimberly, South Africa discover an enormous gem-quality rough diamond weighing over 10,000 carats. It is immediately presented to mine owner Sir James Rhodes for security purposes.
July 29: Mexican private detectives probing a series of disappearances of young women in Mexico City uncover clues indicating the involvement of a foul, eldritch groups of occultists, the 'Cult of Cthulhu'.
July 30: President Kennedy gives a speech in Manila on the complete determination of the United States and her allies in the Free World to protect every country in South East Asia from Communist aggression and expansionism, stating that 'the nations of the free do not seek to expand or aggrandize their rightful borders and eschew any and all aggression against their neighbours, but will stop at nothing in their defense, which is the defense of the light of liberty itself!' This is seen by some Western observers as the beginnings of a tacit olive branch to the Soviet Union and their North Vietnamese allies, setting out a potential roadmap to a conclusion of the war in Indochina.
July 31: Pope Paul VI arrives in Kenya for the first leg of his African tour, becoming the first pontiff in modern times to set foot in the Dark Continent.
July 1: Beginning of Exercise Capricorn, a major Western Alliance air defence exercise over France, the British Isles and the Low Countries.
July 2: Spain reopens her border with Gibraltar after the British airship presence is reinforced by a large force of the Mediterranean Fleet and the Royal Space Force battlecruiser Warspite partially reenters the atmosphere over Spain, causing significant alarm and dismay. Madrid issues a protest at the British action, but the significance of the gesture is duly considered.
July 3: A powerful, sudden storm strikes Southern Michigan and Ohio, killing 42 people caught in the terrific winds and unnatural downpour.
July 4: The United States defeats Canada in the First Test by one wicket in Philadelphia in an absolute thriller, with American captain Charlie McDonald hitting the last ball of the match for four to bring up his double century after leading the way to a record run chase of 9/425. The result sparks wild celebrations in the city still considered as the heartland and spiritual home of U.S. cricket.
July 5: Rumours are reported in the highlands of Peru of a strange group claiming to be emissaries of the Incas visiting a number of villages high in the Andes.
July 6: The Soviet spacecraft Kosmos begins its initial return burn towards Earth from the Saturnine system. Dreadnought continues her explorations and refueling prior to her next mission against the Space Nazis in the Asteroid Belt.
July 7: British Army cooks and arcane gastronauts complete the arduous testing process for a new series of military rations. Twenty four improved ration pack variants are to be produced, each providing five meals and assorted additional accompaniments, designed to support a soldier in the field for one day.
July 8: USAF stocks of nerve gas are accidentally released at Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa in a mishap caused by unnecessary repainting. 36 people are injured, 4 seriously, and the major responsible is reassigned to Clipperton pending a formal investigation.
July 9: Renowned Italian scientist Andrea Fratellini publishes a paper on alarming patterns of solar radiation, describing their potential effect on the Earth's climate and the potential for dramatic global cooling.
July 10: The young King of Egypt appoints a new nationalist Prime Minister, Sayed Ahmed, under intense pressure from his ministers and military; Ahmed is considered to be somewhat more circumspect than his late predecessor, but still acceptable to the increasingly robust calls for Egyptian self-assertion.
July 11: Two former USAF airmen are hanged for murder in Washington, with the warden flipping a coin to decide whether Aiken or Wheat went first.
July 12: A flying carpet is accidentally activated in a Persian carpet salesman's emporium in Paris, completely wrecking the shop before escaping. It is recaptured later that evening in the Moulin Rouge, taking in a show in company with two ladies of dubious morality, and given a thorough beating upon its return to its owner.
July 13: The United States Mint begins the issuing of new $500, $1000 and $5000 bills; the $10,000 has been withdrawn from circulation, ostensibly due to lack of use.
July 14: El Salvadoran troops begin an invasion of Honduras, spearheaded by columns of tanks. A large bomber raid by B-27s escorted by F-4U Corsairs and F-47 Thunderbolts on the capital city of Tegucigalpa is intercepted by Honduran Air Force F-51 Mustangs and F-75 Eagles, leading to possibly the first and last major engagement between some of the most notable US fighters of the Second World War. The immediate cause of the conflict has been the rising tensions between the neighbouring Central American states which reached boiling point in a two leg World Cup qualifier.
July 15: SAS observation teams confirm suspicions first raised by RAF reconnaissance flights that Indonesia has begun to substantially increase its troop presence in Central Borneo, thought to be in preparation for a resumption of the border conflict.
July 16: Surrey boy Matthew Gore, known for his rescue his sister from a river whilst not knowing how to swim and his remarkable artistic talent, receives a special government bursary to a new programme for gifted children in Cambridge.
July 17: After urgent US diplomacy involving State Department officials making numerous flights between El Salvador and Honduras and the movement of the battleship USS New Hampshire through the Panama Canal from Porto Rico, an uneasy American-brokered ceasefire is agreed upon, ending what is dubbed 'The Soccer War'.
July 18: Nineteen children are swept away whilst wading in the Loire River near the village of Juigné-sur-Loire.
July 19: British adventurer John Fairfax becomes the first man to row solo across the Atlantic Ocean, arriving in Florida in his special self-righting and self-bailing boat Britannia after a journey of 238 days.
July 20: The USDA reports that the average cow size across all breeds is 2254lb, a rise of 25% in the last decade.
July 21: British Prime Minister Stanley Barton gives a speech on the National Plan in Glasgow, outlining the challenge over the next three years, including a 24% increase in steel production, a 20% increase in coal output and a 15% increase in car production and shipbuilding, along with numerous benchmarks for cooperative success for both heavy and light industry.
July 22: Fighting along the Liberty Line in Laos begins to die down as North Vietnamese supply lines, already constrained by the severing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, are pushed to near breaking point by the heavy air interdiction campaign conducted by USAF and USN aircraft around the clock.
July 23: Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Charles and Princess Victoria of Ruritania, causing an immediate flurry of attention by the media and general public alike.
July 24: An article is published in The Lancet by ten leading US ophthalmologists predicting that within a generation, the therapeutic use of eyeglasses and corrective lenses will no longer be necessary due to the revolutionary advance of the 'Lucas Method', a painless and swift corrective eye surgery procedure involving a specially configured 'laser' first used to restore the sight of Californian youngster George Lucas.
July 25: Quadripartite strategic arms talks between the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France open in Geneva.
July 26: Nazi war criminal Josef Blösche is executed by guillotine in Leipzig for numerous crimes against humanity, having been identified as the German soldier featuring in an infamous photograph of the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto.
July 27: The Strategic War Plan Committee issues a report on proposed changes to US mobilisation programmes and the incorporation of new strategic airlift and sealift assets, stating that the long desired goal of '12 in 12', or the movement of 12 divisions across the Atlantic to Europe in the first twelve days after M-Day, will be reached by 1972.
July 28: Dwarven diamond miners in the DeBeers mine in Kimberly, South Africa discover an enormous gem-quality rough diamond weighing over 10,000 carats. It is immediately presented to mine owner Sir James Rhodes for security purposes.
July 29: Mexican private detectives probing a series of disappearances of young women in Mexico City uncover clues indicating the involvement of a foul, eldritch groups of occultists, the 'Cult of Cthulhu'.
July 30: President Kennedy gives a speech in Manila on the complete determination of the United States and her allies in the Free World to protect every country in South East Asia from Communist aggression and expansionism, stating that 'the nations of the free do not seek to expand or aggrandize their rightful borders and eschew any and all aggression against their neighbours, but will stop at nothing in their defense, which is the defense of the light of liberty itself!' This is seen by some Western observers as the beginnings of a tacit olive branch to the Soviet Union and their North Vietnamese allies, setting out a potential roadmap to a conclusion of the war in Indochina.
July 31: Pope Paul VI arrives in Kenya for the first leg of his African tour, becoming the first pontiff in modern times to set foot in the Dark Continent.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
August 1969
August 1: The Chinese spaceship Tienchow arrives in the Jovian system, having completed the journey faster than the previous US and Soviet spacecraft.
August 2: An agreement for the opening negotiations regarding an armistice in Vietnam to take place in Geneva is reached by Soviet and American representatives in Tehran.
August 3: Opening of the Coronado Bridge that spans the 3.4 miles over San Diego Bay between San Diego and Coronado at a height of 300ft to permit the passage of USN ships beneath it.
August 4: 90,000 North Vietnamese Army troops begin moving into Northern Laos to reinforce the Pathet Lao prior to a major offensive on the Plain of Jars.
August 5: USS California sets a new record for the longest range battleship gunfire mission against an enemy target, successfully firing 32 experimental 24" rounds at suspected Viet Cong bases in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam at a distance of 149nm.
August 6: An F-4 Phantom of the US Navy's Blue Angels break numerous windows in the Canadian town of Kelowna, British Columbia after making an inadvertent supersonic pass overhead.
August 7: The entire population of Greenfield, Iowa vow to give up smoking as part of a comedic film directed by Norman Lear supported by the Girl Scouts.
August 8: President Kennedy proposes a guaranteed minimum income for families in poverty of $100 per month in addition to current welfare support.
August 9: A diabolical Satanic cult attacks a mansion in Hollywood intent upon slaughtering the occupants in an obscene blood ritual, but meet their comeuppance at the hands of a party of visiting adventurers lead by the redoubtable Reverend Elvis Presley.
August 10: The Premier of the Congo calls for an international conference under the auspices of the League of Nations to attempt to resolve the long running crisis.
August 11: Two Indonesian infiltration patrols that had crossed the border with Borneo are struck by long range 8" artillery bombardments with VX shells in a calculated demonstration of British response to the recent expansion of Indonesian border operations.
August 12: Argentine naval and air forces begin a substantial joint exercise in the Argentine Sea, with two carrier task forces operating against each other in conjunction with long range anti-ship missions flown by bombers of the Real Fuerza Aérea Argentina.
August 13: Soviet and Chinese tanks begin a tense stand-off against each other on the Sinkiang border in a concerning escalation in tensions.
August 14: Two British dragons come of age, increasing the ranks of the Royal Flying Corps’ draconic force to their largest ever number.
August 15: Death of Sultan Osman V of Ottoman Turkey in Angora in a mysterious accident in the seraglio of the Imperial Palace. He is succeeded by his eldest son, the feared and respected Vali Ahad Suleiman.
August 16: Swedish arcane surgeons successfully repair the severed spinal cord of a paralysed road accident victim.
August 17: Hurricane Camille is dispelled by a circle of US wizards in the Gulf of Mexico before it can make landfall along the Gulf Coast.
August 18: A propane tanker crashes on a highway outside of Cleveland, causing a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion and killing 27.
August 19: The Indian Ministry of Agriculture reports that average rice crop yields has risen to 4 tons/hectare, putting India on the brink of being a net food exporter.
August 20: DeBeers announces that the huge Kimberley diamond discovered last month will be presented to Queen Elizabeth II in conjunction with the South African government as an official gift.
August 21: The Spanish nuclear submarine Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe detects a large undersea object 150nm north of Tenerife that disappears at very high speed to the depths before it can be further investigated.
August 22: Signing of a new bilateral agreement in Christiana between Britain and Norway setting out coordinated command and control for Allied forces in Northern Norway; the sale of new artillery, air defence systems, missiles and 100 de Havilland Tornadoes; establishment of four new underground prepositioned stores facilities; and expansion of the Royal Navy base at Trondheim.
August 23: A field force of Omani Marxist rebels is wiped out by RAF air strikes in Dhofar in the latest setback to their beleaguered campaign.
August 24: 50,000 US and South Vietnamese troops launch Operation Fletcher, a large anti-Viet Cong sweep in the Central Highlands using extensive heliborne assault forces and new aerial rocket artillery units.
August 25: Opening of the first branch of The Atlantic Grill restaurant chain outside of London in Manchester, noted as the first American style restaurant in the British Isles serving curious American foodstuffs such as ‘ham-burgers’ and ‘hot Franfurt dogs’; initial reviews in The Manchester Guardian comment approvingly on the serving sizes and value for money of what is described as a ‘cheesed ham-burger’, but describe the fare as lacking in substantial wholesomeness and being somewhat deceptive in their nomenclature, with the main dish being in fact a minced beef concoction.
August 26: Austria-Hungary defeats Germany 2-1 in a friendly football international in Prague in front of a crowd of 140,000.
August 27: Royal Air Force TSR-2 bombers strike against Malayan insurgents in the north of the country using new guided bombs and heat seeking missiles in coordination with reconnaissance by independent robotic flying saucers. The operation is featured in the opening episode of Airmen, a BBC ‘fly on the wall’ documentary series showing the RAF in action around the world.
August 28: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Central American launch a series of attacks across Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala on government facilities and military forces, killing 45.
August 29: First official mention of the 'poverty line' by the US Government, defined as a family income less than half of median national household income.
August 30: The first electronic mail message is sent via the US ARPANET computer network.
August 31: Australia conducts a simulated test of its mobilisation system using a newly imported super computing engine. The exercise demonstrates a need for expanded stockpiles of several types of military equipment and extension of dedicated military railways, but succeeded in the call up of over 600,000 reservists and their simulated deployment.
August 1: The Chinese spaceship Tienchow arrives in the Jovian system, having completed the journey faster than the previous US and Soviet spacecraft.
August 2: An agreement for the opening negotiations regarding an armistice in Vietnam to take place in Geneva is reached by Soviet and American representatives in Tehran.
August 3: Opening of the Coronado Bridge that spans the 3.4 miles over San Diego Bay between San Diego and Coronado at a height of 300ft to permit the passage of USN ships beneath it.
August 4: 90,000 North Vietnamese Army troops begin moving into Northern Laos to reinforce the Pathet Lao prior to a major offensive on the Plain of Jars.
August 5: USS California sets a new record for the longest range battleship gunfire mission against an enemy target, successfully firing 32 experimental 24" rounds at suspected Viet Cong bases in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam at a distance of 149nm.
August 6: An F-4 Phantom of the US Navy's Blue Angels break numerous windows in the Canadian town of Kelowna, British Columbia after making an inadvertent supersonic pass overhead.
August 7: The entire population of Greenfield, Iowa vow to give up smoking as part of a comedic film directed by Norman Lear supported by the Girl Scouts.
August 8: President Kennedy proposes a guaranteed minimum income for families in poverty of $100 per month in addition to current welfare support.
August 9: A diabolical Satanic cult attacks a mansion in Hollywood intent upon slaughtering the occupants in an obscene blood ritual, but meet their comeuppance at the hands of a party of visiting adventurers lead by the redoubtable Reverend Elvis Presley.
August 10: The Premier of the Congo calls for an international conference under the auspices of the League of Nations to attempt to resolve the long running crisis.
August 11: Two Indonesian infiltration patrols that had crossed the border with Borneo are struck by long range 8" artillery bombardments with VX shells in a calculated demonstration of British response to the recent expansion of Indonesian border operations.
August 12: Argentine naval and air forces begin a substantial joint exercise in the Argentine Sea, with two carrier task forces operating against each other in conjunction with long range anti-ship missions flown by bombers of the Real Fuerza Aérea Argentina.
August 13: Soviet and Chinese tanks begin a tense stand-off against each other on the Sinkiang border in a concerning escalation in tensions.
August 14: Two British dragons come of age, increasing the ranks of the Royal Flying Corps’ draconic force to their largest ever number.
August 15: Death of Sultan Osman V of Ottoman Turkey in Angora in a mysterious accident in the seraglio of the Imperial Palace. He is succeeded by his eldest son, the feared and respected Vali Ahad Suleiman.
August 16: Swedish arcane surgeons successfully repair the severed spinal cord of a paralysed road accident victim.
August 17: Hurricane Camille is dispelled by a circle of US wizards in the Gulf of Mexico before it can make landfall along the Gulf Coast.
August 18: A propane tanker crashes on a highway outside of Cleveland, causing a boiling liquid expanding vapour explosion and killing 27.
August 19: The Indian Ministry of Agriculture reports that average rice crop yields has risen to 4 tons/hectare, putting India on the brink of being a net food exporter.
August 20: DeBeers announces that the huge Kimberley diamond discovered last month will be presented to Queen Elizabeth II in conjunction with the South African government as an official gift.
August 21: The Spanish nuclear submarine Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe detects a large undersea object 150nm north of Tenerife that disappears at very high speed to the depths before it can be further investigated.
August 22: Signing of a new bilateral agreement in Christiana between Britain and Norway setting out coordinated command and control for Allied forces in Northern Norway; the sale of new artillery, air defence systems, missiles and 100 de Havilland Tornadoes; establishment of four new underground prepositioned stores facilities; and expansion of the Royal Navy base at Trondheim.
August 23: A field force of Omani Marxist rebels is wiped out by RAF air strikes in Dhofar in the latest setback to their beleaguered campaign.
August 24: 50,000 US and South Vietnamese troops launch Operation Fletcher, a large anti-Viet Cong sweep in the Central Highlands using extensive heliborne assault forces and new aerial rocket artillery units.
August 25: Opening of the first branch of The Atlantic Grill restaurant chain outside of London in Manchester, noted as the first American style restaurant in the British Isles serving curious American foodstuffs such as ‘ham-burgers’ and ‘hot Franfurt dogs’; initial reviews in The Manchester Guardian comment approvingly on the serving sizes and value for money of what is described as a ‘cheesed ham-burger’, but describe the fare as lacking in substantial wholesomeness and being somewhat deceptive in their nomenclature, with the main dish being in fact a minced beef concoction.
August 26: Austria-Hungary defeats Germany 2-1 in a friendly football international in Prague in front of a crowd of 140,000.
August 27: Royal Air Force TSR-2 bombers strike against Malayan insurgents in the north of the country using new guided bombs and heat seeking missiles in coordination with reconnaissance by independent robotic flying saucers. The operation is featured in the opening episode of Airmen, a BBC ‘fly on the wall’ documentary series showing the RAF in action around the world.
August 28: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Central American launch a series of attacks across Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala on government facilities and military forces, killing 45.
August 29: First official mention of the 'poverty line' by the US Government, defined as a family income less than half of median national household income.
August 30: The first electronic mail message is sent via the US ARPANET computer network.
August 31: Australia conducts a simulated test of its mobilisation system using a newly imported super computing engine. The exercise demonstrates a need for expanded stockpiles of several types of military equipment and extension of dedicated military railways, but succeeded in the call up of over 600,000 reservists and their simulated deployment.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
September 1969
September 1: An attempted palace coup by nationalist officers in Tripoli plunges the Libyan capital into chaos, before loyalist Royal Guards gain the upper hand, supported by naval bombardment from the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Arethusa and air strikes by RAF Hawker-Siddeley Merlins. There are some garbled, unconfirmed reports of British special operations forces engaging in ground combat with rebel troops before all outgoing radio traffic around Tripoli is jammed. By nightfall, the main energy of the coup attempt seems to have dissipated and several thousand loyalist Bedouin troops are airlifted in from Tobruk to restore order; hundreds of rebels and suspected supporters are arrested in the crackdown.
September 2: Legendary retired detective Sir Sherlock Holmes is reported missing from his farm in Sussex by his housekeeper.
September 3: The Imperial Japanese Army introduces a new design of modern katana.
September 4: Charles Elbrick, the US Ambassador to Brazil, is kidnapped by a gang of Marxist revolutionary guerrillas in Rio de Janeiro in broad daylight.
September 5: The Chicago Tribune carries an article criticising the sheer scale of expenditure on the United States starship program, sparking a wave of angry letters in response from public supporters of American space exploration.
September 6: Heavy air combat takes place over the DMZ and Laos between USAF and VPAF fighters, with 12 North Vietnamese planes shot down for the loss of 2 American aircraft. Eight enemy pilots are recovered by US ground forces, with four of them revealed to be Red Air Force personnel from the Soviet Union.
September 7: A GI on leave from Vietnam visiting his great aunt in the Upper West Side of New York City on a sunny day is rescued from being lost in the metropolis by a friendly giant yellow bird, who is able to show him how to get to his destination of Sesame Street.
September 8: Scottish zoologists report that they have completed domestication of the giant deer, the second deer species domesticated since the red deer in the 16th century.
September 9: Completion of a record-breaking round-the-world flight by a specially modified Vickers Swallow supersonic jet with its designer Barnes Wallis onboard for the historic event, among other celebrity guests.
September 10: The US Atomic Energy Commission conducts Project Rulison, a peaceful nuclear explosion in Colorado with the aim of facilitating access to an underground natural gas deposit.
September 11: A solar eclipse over much of South America leads to dozens of sightings of Count Dracula in La Paz.
September 12: A Philippines Airlines VC10 narrowly avoids crashing whilst landing at Manila International Airport thanks to a newly installed crash prevention enchantment.
September 13: Soviet bacteriologists working on an experimental bacteriophage designed to destroy yersinia pestis report that it has escaped their high security laboratory in Siberia after a mysterious fire.
September 14: The icebreaking supertanker SS Manhattan becomes the first mercantile vessel to pass through the Northwest Passage, over 120 years after the heroic Franklin Expedition became the first modern transit of the frozen northern seas.
September 15: A criticality accident in a Korean atomic research facility near Wonsan kills five scientists and injures several others; one scientist was exposed to a large dose of radiation, but the effects seem to be completely different to the other victims.
September 16: British Petroleum places orders for construction of a new class of thirty supertankers with five British shipyards in the largest order of its type in recent years.
September 17: Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon apprehend a renegade mad scientist just before he successfully dumps a truckload of a hallucinogenic chemical substance into the Los Angeles Aqueduct
September 18: A mysterious quartet of armoured knights clad in white satin rescue a hamlet in Rutland from the grips of an insane necromancer.
September 19: Jack Smith becomes the first man to swim across the English Channel in under 6 hours.
September 20: Several schoolboys are apparently chased down a New York street by a white furred flying draconic canine-faced creature ridden by another child, but NYPD investigators and US Army air defense radars report no known aerial incursions over the metropolis. The frightened children are rescued from their hiding place in a dumpster by passing Daily Planet journalist Clark Kent, former Secretary of the Air Force Bruce Wayne (who was being interviewed by Kent on sanitation developments) and an unnamed grouch.
September 21: The British Army successfully concludes Project Knight, the secret operational testing of powered battle armour suits and associated weapons systems in the Kalahari Desert by MD1. The Board of Ordnance authorises the production of an initial set of 250 suits for the next stage of field testing with the 1st Infantry Division in Germany.
September 22: Vickers unveils a mock up of an experimental hypersonic ‘super jumbo jet’ in Birmingham.
September 23: Food scientists in California announce the development of a new large bean with double the nutritional value and calorific benefit than the lima bean, the first in a promising series of experimental crops derived from Amazonian plant species.
September 24: Japanese daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun begins transmission of electronic editions directly to subscribers via a facsimile receiving machine, offering a full sized page in just 30 seconds.
September 25: A rogue griffon is subdued by Canadian Governor-General and former Prime Minister Sir William Richardson after it disrupts a ceremony in Montreal; his successful efforts require little more than stern words and a few chastening whacks with his enchanted walking cane.
September 26: Debut on ABC of The Brady Bunch, a charming family situation comedy about a blended family, a concept regarded as quite daring in some parts of the United States.
September 27: Fitzroy defeats Geelong to win the 1969 VFL Grand Final 154-147 in a thrilling game in front of 144,239 spectators at the MCG, winning their first premiership for 25 years.
September 28: The British Army begins experimental deployment of the L132 36pdr super velocity antitank gun.
September 28: Australia defeat India by 297 runs in Bombay in the First Test, with debutant Greg Chappell making a stylish 125 in his first innings.
September 29: 27 people are killed in an earthquake in the Western Cape town of Tulbagh in the Union of South Africa.
September 30: The Foreign Ministry of Imperial China gives notice that it will be withdrawing from the Limited Test Ban Treaty.
September 1: An attempted palace coup by nationalist officers in Tripoli plunges the Libyan capital into chaos, before loyalist Royal Guards gain the upper hand, supported by naval bombardment from the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Arethusa and air strikes by RAF Hawker-Siddeley Merlins. There are some garbled, unconfirmed reports of British special operations forces engaging in ground combat with rebel troops before all outgoing radio traffic around Tripoli is jammed. By nightfall, the main energy of the coup attempt seems to have dissipated and several thousand loyalist Bedouin troops are airlifted in from Tobruk to restore order; hundreds of rebels and suspected supporters are arrested in the crackdown.
September 2: Legendary retired detective Sir Sherlock Holmes is reported missing from his farm in Sussex by his housekeeper.
September 3: The Imperial Japanese Army introduces a new design of modern katana.
September 4: Charles Elbrick, the US Ambassador to Brazil, is kidnapped by a gang of Marxist revolutionary guerrillas in Rio de Janeiro in broad daylight.
September 5: The Chicago Tribune carries an article criticising the sheer scale of expenditure on the United States starship program, sparking a wave of angry letters in response from public supporters of American space exploration.
September 6: Heavy air combat takes place over the DMZ and Laos between USAF and VPAF fighters, with 12 North Vietnamese planes shot down for the loss of 2 American aircraft. Eight enemy pilots are recovered by US ground forces, with four of them revealed to be Red Air Force personnel from the Soviet Union.
September 7: A GI on leave from Vietnam visiting his great aunt in the Upper West Side of New York City on a sunny day is rescued from being lost in the metropolis by a friendly giant yellow bird, who is able to show him how to get to his destination of Sesame Street.
September 8: Scottish zoologists report that they have completed domestication of the giant deer, the second deer species domesticated since the red deer in the 16th century.
September 9: Completion of a record-breaking round-the-world flight by a specially modified Vickers Swallow supersonic jet with its designer Barnes Wallis onboard for the historic event, among other celebrity guests.
September 10: The US Atomic Energy Commission conducts Project Rulison, a peaceful nuclear explosion in Colorado with the aim of facilitating access to an underground natural gas deposit.
September 11: A solar eclipse over much of South America leads to dozens of sightings of Count Dracula in La Paz.
September 12: A Philippines Airlines VC10 narrowly avoids crashing whilst landing at Manila International Airport thanks to a newly installed crash prevention enchantment.
September 13: Soviet bacteriologists working on an experimental bacteriophage designed to destroy yersinia pestis report that it has escaped their high security laboratory in Siberia after a mysterious fire.
September 14: The icebreaking supertanker SS Manhattan becomes the first mercantile vessel to pass through the Northwest Passage, over 120 years after the heroic Franklin Expedition became the first modern transit of the frozen northern seas.
September 15: A criticality accident in a Korean atomic research facility near Wonsan kills five scientists and injures several others; one scientist was exposed to a large dose of radiation, but the effects seem to be completely different to the other victims.
September 16: British Petroleum places orders for construction of a new class of thirty supertankers with five British shipyards in the largest order of its type in recent years.
September 17: Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon apprehend a renegade mad scientist just before he successfully dumps a truckload of a hallucinogenic chemical substance into the Los Angeles Aqueduct
September 18: A mysterious quartet of armoured knights clad in white satin rescue a hamlet in Rutland from the grips of an insane necromancer.
September 19: Jack Smith becomes the first man to swim across the English Channel in under 6 hours.
September 20: Several schoolboys are apparently chased down a New York street by a white furred flying draconic canine-faced creature ridden by another child, but NYPD investigators and US Army air defense radars report no known aerial incursions over the metropolis. The frightened children are rescued from their hiding place in a dumpster by passing Daily Planet journalist Clark Kent, former Secretary of the Air Force Bruce Wayne (who was being interviewed by Kent on sanitation developments) and an unnamed grouch.
September 21: The British Army successfully concludes Project Knight, the secret operational testing of powered battle armour suits and associated weapons systems in the Kalahari Desert by MD1. The Board of Ordnance authorises the production of an initial set of 250 suits for the next stage of field testing with the 1st Infantry Division in Germany.
September 22: Vickers unveils a mock up of an experimental hypersonic ‘super jumbo jet’ in Birmingham.
September 23: Food scientists in California announce the development of a new large bean with double the nutritional value and calorific benefit than the lima bean, the first in a promising series of experimental crops derived from Amazonian plant species.
September 24: Japanese daily newspaper Asahi Shimbun begins transmission of electronic editions directly to subscribers via a facsimile receiving machine, offering a full sized page in just 30 seconds.
September 25: A rogue griffon is subdued by Canadian Governor-General and former Prime Minister Sir William Richardson after it disrupts a ceremony in Montreal; his successful efforts require little more than stern words and a few chastening whacks with his enchanted walking cane.
September 26: Debut on ABC of The Brady Bunch, a charming family situation comedy about a blended family, a concept regarded as quite daring in some parts of the United States.
September 27: Fitzroy defeats Geelong to win the 1969 VFL Grand Final 154-147 in a thrilling game in front of 144,239 spectators at the MCG, winning their first premiership for 25 years.
September 28: The British Army begins experimental deployment of the L132 36pdr super velocity antitank gun.
September 28: Australia defeat India by 297 runs in Bombay in the First Test, with debutant Greg Chappell making a stylish 125 in his first innings.
September 29: 27 people are killed in an earthquake in the Western Cape town of Tulbagh in the Union of South Africa.
September 30: The Foreign Ministry of Imperial China gives notice that it will be withdrawing from the Limited Test Ban Treaty.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
October 1969
October 1: Release of The Masters of Darkness, Ingmar Bergman's latest expansive cinematic epic, a two and a half hour historical drama about two families of minor Swedish aristocrats in Småland and their generational feud over a local glassworks, starring Max von Sydow, Sven-Bertil Taube and former child star Pippi Longstocking.
October 2: A Canadian-American underground nuclear test with a yield of 1.2 megatons, Project Milrow , is conducted on the Canadian island of Amchitka in the Aleutians.
October 3: Completion of the Skynet satellite system, a multipurpose British Empire military project for the provision of global communications, radionavigation and reconnaissance.
October 4: Unveiling of a flock of six foot tall sheep at an agricultural exhibition in Norfolk.
October 5: Soviet diplomats in Peru make a backchannel proposal to the United States government for a potential exchange of prisoners of war taken in Vietnam.
October 6: US Marines begin withdrawing from Haiti at Operation Haversack draws towards its conclusion. No zombies have been encountered for almost three months, leading to an increasing belief that the current outbreak has been successfully suppressed.
October 7: The United States Department of Agriculture issues an interim ban on the use of high fructose corn syrup for human consumption after the publication of an extensive report by USDA agricultural research wizards.
October 8: The Soviet Union institutes changes to its pay system, allowing for greater pay based on greater productivity in the latest sweeping economic reform championed by the General Secretary.
October 9: An Anglo-Saxon Petroleum oil tanker is torpedoed in the Arabian Sea, sparking immediate alarm and a rush to assist the beleaguered vessel.
October 10: Over fifty warships from the Royal Navy and ten other Commonwealth fleets begin Exercise Scythian, a large scale anti-submarine warfare exercise in the Caribbean Sea aimed at testing a number of new weapons systems including the Calypso long range ASW mortar and the Sepoy ASW homing rocket torpedo.
October 11: North Vietnamese, Pathet Lao and Mongolian troops launch a major offensive across Northern Laos, advancing up to 20 miles in the first day along the contested frontline and attacking multiple cities with rockets.
October 12: Voting in the Turkish general election is marred by violence, but does not result in a single party gaining a majority in the Grand Divan.
October 13: US and British orbital assets and satellites report a rash of Soviet space launches, with a total of twelve rockets launched from spaceports across the USSR throughout the day.
October 14: Over three hundred Royal Navy, Commonwealth and foreign warships assemble in the Solent for a Royal Fleet Review as part of the celebrations leading up to the Royal Wedding. Pride of place is taken by the Royal Navy’s flagship, the atomic super battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Ark Royal, recently returned from war service in the Far East.
October 15: The mummy of the Ancient Egyptian Pharoah Ramesses XII on display at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin after being recently discovered in the Valley of the Kings, suddenly awakes and escapes after rampaging through the Egyptology and Persian sections.
October 16: The New York Mets win the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles in an upset 5-4 result in the final game.
October 17: Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Victoria at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The grand spectacle sees the streets of London lined by millions and the global television audience smashing all previous records.
October 18: The US Air Force and NASA release a short statement on Indianapolis UFO Incident of 1968 to the effect that investigations remain ongoing and that no clear outcome is yet apparent.
October 19: The government of Somalia is overthrown in a bloodless coup. Initial international reaction is cautious yet measured.
October 20: American Motors buys Kaiser Jeep in one of the largest and most significant business deals in the US automotive sector in the 1960s, putting the lucrative new U.S. Army jeep contract in the hands of one of the ‘Big Four’ car companies.
October 21: Three Soviet spies convicted of spying for a potential enemy are hanged at separate prisons across England.
October 22: Talks in Beirut aimed at reducing mounting tensions between the Arab Union and Israel break down in rancour and disagreement.
October 23: Initial production of the new Crusader main battle tank begins in Leeds and Sheffield.
October 24: Thomas Kelly is convicted at the Old Bailey of sedition for advocating the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a socialist republic and sentenced to twenty five years imprisonment with hard labour.
October 25: Four US divisions based at Pleiku and Kontum launch Operation Rumpelstiltskin, an offensive aimed at destroying some of the last remaining Viet Cong base areas along the Cambodian border. In its briefing announcing the offensive USARV states that enemy losses for the year to date are estimated at 50,000, putting the prospect of victory clearly in sight.
October 26: Investigative journalist Carl Kolchak publishes a controversial expose in The Chicago Tribune about an English accented vigilante aiding people through extra-legal means for no cost, providing an 'equalizing effect.'
October 27: Alan Turing gives a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calling for the combination of the computing systems of the United States and British Empire into ‘a network of liberty spanning the world entire.’
October 28: King Sihanouk of Cambodia arrives in Washington D.C. for a formal state visit, thought to be the harbinger of a shift in Cambodian engagement in the war in South Vietnam.
October 29: Publication of the first major series of photographs of the underwater ruins of Atlantis in a world exclusive of The Times.
October 30: The Prime Minister of Kenya declares a state of martial law in the country’s far west and orders the deployment of the feared Royal African Lion Corps to suppress rebel insurgency.
October 31: Halloween celebrations in the United States are struck by horror as a coordinated series of apparent vampire attacks results in the death and disappearance of 26 children across New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
October 1: Release of The Masters of Darkness, Ingmar Bergman's latest expansive cinematic epic, a two and a half hour historical drama about two families of minor Swedish aristocrats in Småland and their generational feud over a local glassworks, starring Max von Sydow, Sven-Bertil Taube and former child star Pippi Longstocking.
October 2: A Canadian-American underground nuclear test with a yield of 1.2 megatons, Project Milrow , is conducted on the Canadian island of Amchitka in the Aleutians.
October 3: Completion of the Skynet satellite system, a multipurpose British Empire military project for the provision of global communications, radionavigation and reconnaissance.
October 4: Unveiling of a flock of six foot tall sheep at an agricultural exhibition in Norfolk.
October 5: Soviet diplomats in Peru make a backchannel proposal to the United States government for a potential exchange of prisoners of war taken in Vietnam.
October 6: US Marines begin withdrawing from Haiti at Operation Haversack draws towards its conclusion. No zombies have been encountered for almost three months, leading to an increasing belief that the current outbreak has been successfully suppressed.
October 7: The United States Department of Agriculture issues an interim ban on the use of high fructose corn syrup for human consumption after the publication of an extensive report by USDA agricultural research wizards.
October 8: The Soviet Union institutes changes to its pay system, allowing for greater pay based on greater productivity in the latest sweeping economic reform championed by the General Secretary.
October 9: An Anglo-Saxon Petroleum oil tanker is torpedoed in the Arabian Sea, sparking immediate alarm and a rush to assist the beleaguered vessel.
October 10: Over fifty warships from the Royal Navy and ten other Commonwealth fleets begin Exercise Scythian, a large scale anti-submarine warfare exercise in the Caribbean Sea aimed at testing a number of new weapons systems including the Calypso long range ASW mortar and the Sepoy ASW homing rocket torpedo.
October 11: North Vietnamese, Pathet Lao and Mongolian troops launch a major offensive across Northern Laos, advancing up to 20 miles in the first day along the contested frontline and attacking multiple cities with rockets.
October 12: Voting in the Turkish general election is marred by violence, but does not result in a single party gaining a majority in the Grand Divan.
October 13: US and British orbital assets and satellites report a rash of Soviet space launches, with a total of twelve rockets launched from spaceports across the USSR throughout the day.
October 14: Over three hundred Royal Navy, Commonwealth and foreign warships assemble in the Solent for a Royal Fleet Review as part of the celebrations leading up to the Royal Wedding. Pride of place is taken by the Royal Navy’s flagship, the atomic super battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Ark Royal, recently returned from war service in the Far East.
October 15: The mummy of the Ancient Egyptian Pharoah Ramesses XII on display at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin after being recently discovered in the Valley of the Kings, suddenly awakes and escapes after rampaging through the Egyptology and Persian sections.
October 16: The New York Mets win the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles in an upset 5-4 result in the final game.
October 17: Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Victoria at Saint Paul’s Cathedral. The grand spectacle sees the streets of London lined by millions and the global television audience smashing all previous records.
October 18: The US Air Force and NASA release a short statement on Indianapolis UFO Incident of 1968 to the effect that investigations remain ongoing and that no clear outcome is yet apparent.
October 19: The government of Somalia is overthrown in a bloodless coup. Initial international reaction is cautious yet measured.
October 20: American Motors buys Kaiser Jeep in one of the largest and most significant business deals in the US automotive sector in the 1960s, putting the lucrative new U.S. Army jeep contract in the hands of one of the ‘Big Four’ car companies.
October 21: Three Soviet spies convicted of spying for a potential enemy are hanged at separate prisons across England.
October 22: Talks in Beirut aimed at reducing mounting tensions between the Arab Union and Israel break down in rancour and disagreement.
October 23: Initial production of the new Crusader main battle tank begins in Leeds and Sheffield.
October 24: Thomas Kelly is convicted at the Old Bailey of sedition for advocating the abolition of the monarchy and the creation of a socialist republic and sentenced to twenty five years imprisonment with hard labour.
October 25: Four US divisions based at Pleiku and Kontum launch Operation Rumpelstiltskin, an offensive aimed at destroying some of the last remaining Viet Cong base areas along the Cambodian border. In its briefing announcing the offensive USARV states that enemy losses for the year to date are estimated at 50,000, putting the prospect of victory clearly in sight.
October 26: Investigative journalist Carl Kolchak publishes a controversial expose in The Chicago Tribune about an English accented vigilante aiding people through extra-legal means for no cost, providing an 'equalizing effect.'
October 27: Alan Turing gives a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calling for the combination of the computing systems of the United States and British Empire into ‘a network of liberty spanning the world entire.’
October 28: King Sihanouk of Cambodia arrives in Washington D.C. for a formal state visit, thought to be the harbinger of a shift in Cambodian engagement in the war in South Vietnam.
October 29: Publication of the first major series of photographs of the underwater ruins of Atlantis in a world exclusive of The Times.
October 30: The Prime Minister of Kenya declares a state of martial law in the country’s far west and orders the deployment of the feared Royal African Lion Corps to suppress rebel insurgency.
October 31: Halloween celebrations in the United States are struck by horror as a coordinated series of apparent vampire attacks results in the death and disappearance of 26 children across New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
-
Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
November 1969
November 1: Discoveries of large deposits of gold in Southern Rhodesia lead to the largest gold rush in decades.
November 2: The Admiralty Board indicates that it does not support abolition of the rum ration given its negligible effect on any major combat effectiveness in its current diluted form.
November 3: Demographic projections show that the population of Florida is on track to reach 16 million by the end of the 1970s, having already overleaped Massachusetts to become the eighth most populous state.
November 4: President Kennedy announces that final victory in South Vietnam is in sight speech in a special address to a joint session of Congress, stating that the United States would not seek any territorial changes to the prewar status quo in Vietnam, which is seen as the most direct olive branch yet offered to the North.
November 5: Brazilian communist revolutionary Carlos Marighela evades a police ambush in São Paulo with the aid of a KGB warrior-witch.
November 6: Swedish heavyweight boxing champion Wulf Storm defeats Cassius Clay in an extremely contentious bout in Stockholm.
November 7: Four young girls go missing in Baltimore in a single day in an apparent occult incident, sparking an immense police search and a call for special assistance from the father of one of the girls.
November 8: The Armstrong-Whitworth Argonaut strategic intruder enters service with the Royal Air Force, being the first aircraft of its type to be developed since the Second World War and featuring innovative elements of flying wing design.
November 9: Reverend Elvis Presley arrives in Baltimore to assist in the search for the missing schoolgirls, assisted by his loyal posse and allosaur companion.
November 10: Completion of the Sydney Opera House after a fourteen year construction period. The new vast new building has already been hailed as a classic of the Modern Imperial style and arguably the masterwork of architect Sir Edward Lutyens long career.
November 11: Sir Joseph Michel, Prime Minister of the Ashanti Federation, announces that a parliamentary subcommittee will be formed to explore the issue of the new country’s name. Since independence, the Federation has had the fastest growing economy in West Africa, being the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans and having very large gold, diamond and oil deposits; Michel is known to favour economic modernisation and industrial development over political gestures.
November 12: Completion of the British Atomic Energy Plan by the Royal Atomic Energy Commission and the Ministry of Power, a detailed programme for the construction of 23 new 'super' atomic power plants over the next twelve years, increasing the total percentage of national energy provided by atomic power from its current 21% to 85% in concert with the current completed 24 plants and the 32 currently projected or under construction.
November 13: Israeli archaeologists uncover a giant headless skeleton over 9ft high in the Valley of Elah whilst excavating near the castle of Blanchegarde.
November 14: A British Army report to the Committee of Imperial Defence indicates that Katanga has been effectively pacified and that no further military purpose was served by protracted operations north of the Rhodesian border based on current orders.
November 15: USS Gato collides with a suspected Soviet submarine whilst on operations in the Barents Sea.
November 16: Two German leutnants become the first to be awarded the Pour le Mérite since the end of the Second World War after extreme acts of valour in combat in South Vietnam.
November 17: Adjournment of strategic arms talks between the nuclear great powers in Geneva, with further progress being noted.
November 18: British explorers on Venus discover what appears to be the ruins of a large alien ‘city’ buried deep in the jungles of the southern continent of Aos Thamys.
November 19: Interpol agents arrest fourteen suspected Nazi members of ODESSA in raids across Western Europe, narrowly missing their commander, General Martin Hessler.
November 20: First spaceplane launch from the new British Empire spaceport in Ceylon, built to augment existing facilities in Kenya.
November 21: The United States and Japan sign a formal agreement for the return of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty in April 1970.
November 22: Opening of a new expanded international terminal at Entebbe Airport, Uganda, built with Commonwealth funding by an Israeli construction conglomerate and designed to serve as a dual use civilian/military facility for Imperial forces in East Africa.
November 23: Austrian popular singer Siegfried Zoller becomes the first German speaking artist to reach the top of the US music charts with his charming hit Sommerzeit.
November 24: Release of The Bulge, a Columbia Pictures epic war film on the 1944 Battle of the Bulge starring Henry Grace as General Eisenhower, George C. Scott as General Patton, Hardy Kruger as Field Marshal Rommel, Harry Morgan as General Bradley, David Niven as Field Marshal Montgomery, and Alec Guinness as Adolf Hitler.
November 25: Japanese Professor Tenma, head scientist of the Ministry of Science and Technology, unveils his new highly realistic boy android in Tokyo, leading many to marvel at its realism.
November 26: The British Postmaster General announces plans to open up tendering for licences for two further television stations in 1972 and 1974.
November 27: The Soviet General Staff issue requirements for Perspektivnyy Frontovoy Istrebitel ('advanced frontline fighter') and a Perspektivnyy Lyogkiy Frontovoy Istrebitel ('advanced lightweight frontline fighter') designs to counter Western developments.
November 28: French Premier d'Ambreville arrives in Washington for a state visit, with the secondary aim of securing a new trade and arms agreement with the United States.
November 29: New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Keith Holyoake is returned to office with an increased majority in the New Zealand general election.
November 30: Publication of The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below, a masterly semi-autobiographical novel by Peruvian author José María Arguedas that ends with the seeming death of the author in an unravelling of reality.
November 1: Discoveries of large deposits of gold in Southern Rhodesia lead to the largest gold rush in decades.
November 2: The Admiralty Board indicates that it does not support abolition of the rum ration given its negligible effect on any major combat effectiveness in its current diluted form.
November 3: Demographic projections show that the population of Florida is on track to reach 16 million by the end of the 1970s, having already overleaped Massachusetts to become the eighth most populous state.
November 4: President Kennedy announces that final victory in South Vietnam is in sight speech in a special address to a joint session of Congress, stating that the United States would not seek any territorial changes to the prewar status quo in Vietnam, which is seen as the most direct olive branch yet offered to the North.
November 5: Brazilian communist revolutionary Carlos Marighela evades a police ambush in São Paulo with the aid of a KGB warrior-witch.
November 6: Swedish heavyweight boxing champion Wulf Storm defeats Cassius Clay in an extremely contentious bout in Stockholm.
November 7: Four young girls go missing in Baltimore in a single day in an apparent occult incident, sparking an immense police search and a call for special assistance from the father of one of the girls.
November 8: The Armstrong-Whitworth Argonaut strategic intruder enters service with the Royal Air Force, being the first aircraft of its type to be developed since the Second World War and featuring innovative elements of flying wing design.
November 9: Reverend Elvis Presley arrives in Baltimore to assist in the search for the missing schoolgirls, assisted by his loyal posse and allosaur companion.
November 10: Completion of the Sydney Opera House after a fourteen year construction period. The new vast new building has already been hailed as a classic of the Modern Imperial style and arguably the masterwork of architect Sir Edward Lutyens long career.
November 11: Sir Joseph Michel, Prime Minister of the Ashanti Federation, announces that a parliamentary subcommittee will be formed to explore the issue of the new country’s name. Since independence, the Federation has had the fastest growing economy in West Africa, being the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans and having very large gold, diamond and oil deposits; Michel is known to favour economic modernisation and industrial development over political gestures.
November 12: Completion of the British Atomic Energy Plan by the Royal Atomic Energy Commission and the Ministry of Power, a detailed programme for the construction of 23 new 'super' atomic power plants over the next twelve years, increasing the total percentage of national energy provided by atomic power from its current 21% to 85% in concert with the current completed 24 plants and the 32 currently projected or under construction.
November 13: Israeli archaeologists uncover a giant headless skeleton over 9ft high in the Valley of Elah whilst excavating near the castle of Blanchegarde.
November 14: A British Army report to the Committee of Imperial Defence indicates that Katanga has been effectively pacified and that no further military purpose was served by protracted operations north of the Rhodesian border based on current orders.
November 15: USS Gato collides with a suspected Soviet submarine whilst on operations in the Barents Sea.
November 16: Two German leutnants become the first to be awarded the Pour le Mérite since the end of the Second World War after extreme acts of valour in combat in South Vietnam.
November 17: Adjournment of strategic arms talks between the nuclear great powers in Geneva, with further progress being noted.
November 18: British explorers on Venus discover what appears to be the ruins of a large alien ‘city’ buried deep in the jungles of the southern continent of Aos Thamys.
November 19: Interpol agents arrest fourteen suspected Nazi members of ODESSA in raids across Western Europe, narrowly missing their commander, General Martin Hessler.
November 20: First spaceplane launch from the new British Empire spaceport in Ceylon, built to augment existing facilities in Kenya.
November 21: The United States and Japan sign a formal agreement for the return of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty in April 1970.
November 22: Opening of a new expanded international terminal at Entebbe Airport, Uganda, built with Commonwealth funding by an Israeli construction conglomerate and designed to serve as a dual use civilian/military facility for Imperial forces in East Africa.
November 23: Austrian popular singer Siegfried Zoller becomes the first German speaking artist to reach the top of the US music charts with his charming hit Sommerzeit.
November 24: Release of The Bulge, a Columbia Pictures epic war film on the 1944 Battle of the Bulge starring Henry Grace as General Eisenhower, George C. Scott as General Patton, Hardy Kruger as Field Marshal Rommel, Harry Morgan as General Bradley, David Niven as Field Marshal Montgomery, and Alec Guinness as Adolf Hitler.
November 25: Japanese Professor Tenma, head scientist of the Ministry of Science and Technology, unveils his new highly realistic boy android in Tokyo, leading many to marvel at its realism.
November 26: The British Postmaster General announces plans to open up tendering for licences for two further television stations in 1972 and 1974.
November 27: The Soviet General Staff issue requirements for Perspektivnyy Frontovoy Istrebitel ('advanced frontline fighter') and a Perspektivnyy Lyogkiy Frontovoy Istrebitel ('advanced lightweight frontline fighter') designs to counter Western developments.
November 28: French Premier d'Ambreville arrives in Washington for a state visit, with the secondary aim of securing a new trade and arms agreement with the United States.
November 29: New Zealand Prime Minister Sir Keith Holyoake is returned to office with an increased majority in the New Zealand general election.
November 30: Publication of The Fox From Up Above and the Fox From Down Below, a masterly semi-autobiographical novel by Peruvian author José María Arguedas that ends with the seeming death of the author in an unravelling of reality.
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
December 1969
December 1: Release of The Last Battle, the twelfth book and triumphant conclusion to the long-running Narnia series of children’s fantasy novels by C.S. Lewis.
December 2: CIA intelligence analysts are alarmed by a snippet of apparently authentic film footage of the Emperor of China that does not appear to show him needing to breath.
December 3: The Venezuelan aircraft carrier Simon Bolivar runs aground near La Guaira on Lake Maracaibo after falling victim to a complex illusion.
December 4: Millionaire British chocolatier Willy Wonka announces an international competition for tours of his fabled London factory, the first in almost fifteen years.
December 5: Initiation of the Royal Rainmaking Project in Thailand after years of complex research.
December 6: A group of Vermont schoolchildren inadvertently create a living snowman after adorning their creation with a magician’s hat and dubbing him ‘Frosty’.
December 7: Six murderers and three insurrectionists are guillotined around France as the new government continues with its popular populist approach to law and order.
December 8: The Soviet negotiating delegation in Tehran issues a proposal for an armistice based on the cessation of hostilities, the lifting of the blockade of North Vietnam, American and South Vietnamese recognition of the North Vietnamese government, partition of Laos, a full exchange of prisoners of war, establishment of a 15km wide demilitarised border zone through to the Thai border and a phased withdrawal of US and Western troops from South Vietnam.
December 9: Construction is completed of the Federal Reserve Bunker inside Mount Pony, Virginia, a deep underground storage facility designs for the safekeeping of bullion and currency in the event of nuclear war.
December 10: Sir Derek Barton is awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, whilst Sir Henry Moseley becomes just the third person to win two Nobel Prizes in becoming the Physics laureate. No Peace Prize is awarded, whilst Professor Sir J.R.R. Tolkien is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
December 11: An Italian astronomer in Padua spots a supernova in the NGC 6946 galaxy, some 24 million years after it occurred.
December 12: Outbreak of a renewed, well-armed Communist insurgency in Northern Afghanistan.
December 13: A boy is inadvertently trapped in a hot air balloon that breaks loose during an NFL game in Minneapolis and flies free until crashing into a nearby river. The intrepid gridiron fan swims free and manages to return to catch the end of the game.
December 14: Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka indicates that he will not seek to contest another general election and that, whilst he had no specifically favoured successor, he approved of the performance of the Governor of Tokyo, Yukio Mishima.
December 15: The supertanker SS Marpessa sinks off the coast of Senegal whilst en route to the Persian Gulf.
December 16: Germany and Ottoman Turkey sign an extensive arms agreement worth more than $1400 million for a range of new aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles, guns, rockets and missiles.
December 17: Police investigating repeated reports of an invisible boy in Trieste find nothing despite looking all over the middle of the city.
December 18: USS America breaks the previous record for the number of combat sorties in a day, launching 173 in daylight hours whilst deployed on Yankee Station off Vietnam.
December 19: American Department of Magic diviners and seers report several days of dire portents and dark, mysterious dreams.
December 20: The Soviet Ministry of Railways announces the successful development and testing of an atomic locomotive for use on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
December 21: Japanese scientists display a large meteor in Tokyo containing a number of unknown minerals and new elements discovered in Antarctica.
December 22: Two French gangsters are arrested after being caught attempting to steal from the British Empire Strategic Tea Reserve in Arnescote, Oxfordshire.
December 23: The United States announces that it will abide by a Christmas truce and cease the bombing of North Vietnam until the new year, holding out the separate possibility of an extended bombing pause.
December 24: Norwegian petroleum prospectors discover a very large offshore oil deposit off the coast of Central Norway.
December 25: Queen Elizabeth II’s Christmas message to the British Empire and the world focuses on the joys of family, peace and hope, touching upon the Royal Wedding and the joy it brought.
December 26: US military personnel serving in Vietnam and the surrounding theatre receive a special Christmas bonus of $100.
December 27: The first squadron of Royal Air Force Blue Streak LRBMs equipped with five new Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles apiece becomes operational.
December 28: American doctors report success in trials for a cure for shaking palsy; following on from the breakthrough cures for cancer and the common cold, the next frontier in the human body is seen by many as the diseases and afflictions of the mind.
December 29: A special Egyptological expedition announces the discovery of the fabled Tomb of Nefertiti.
December 30: The Congolese government resigns, apparently to head off a suspected imminent coup, but none of the four major factions planning coups had one scheduled for this week, on account of Christmas. Confusion reigns before being replaced by a quintipartite caretaker administration including the Presidential Palace caretaker.
December 31: USS Enterprise goes missing in the Pacific whilst en route between Subic Bay and Pearl Harbor.
December 1: Release of The Last Battle, the twelfth book and triumphant conclusion to the long-running Narnia series of children’s fantasy novels by C.S. Lewis.
December 2: CIA intelligence analysts are alarmed by a snippet of apparently authentic film footage of the Emperor of China that does not appear to show him needing to breath.
December 3: The Venezuelan aircraft carrier Simon Bolivar runs aground near La Guaira on Lake Maracaibo after falling victim to a complex illusion.
December 4: Millionaire British chocolatier Willy Wonka announces an international competition for tours of his fabled London factory, the first in almost fifteen years.
December 5: Initiation of the Royal Rainmaking Project in Thailand after years of complex research.
December 6: A group of Vermont schoolchildren inadvertently create a living snowman after adorning their creation with a magician’s hat and dubbing him ‘Frosty’.
December 7: Six murderers and three insurrectionists are guillotined around France as the new government continues with its popular populist approach to law and order.
December 8: The Soviet negotiating delegation in Tehran issues a proposal for an armistice based on the cessation of hostilities, the lifting of the blockade of North Vietnam, American and South Vietnamese recognition of the North Vietnamese government, partition of Laos, a full exchange of prisoners of war, establishment of a 15km wide demilitarised border zone through to the Thai border and a phased withdrawal of US and Western troops from South Vietnam.
December 9: Construction is completed of the Federal Reserve Bunker inside Mount Pony, Virginia, a deep underground storage facility designs for the safekeeping of bullion and currency in the event of nuclear war.
December 10: Sir Derek Barton is awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, whilst Sir Henry Moseley becomes just the third person to win two Nobel Prizes in becoming the Physics laureate. No Peace Prize is awarded, whilst Professor Sir J.R.R. Tolkien is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
December 11: An Italian astronomer in Padua spots a supernova in the NGC 6946 galaxy, some 24 million years after it occurred.
December 12: Outbreak of a renewed, well-armed Communist insurgency in Northern Afghanistan.
December 13: A boy is inadvertently trapped in a hot air balloon that breaks loose during an NFL game in Minneapolis and flies free until crashing into a nearby river. The intrepid gridiron fan swims free and manages to return to catch the end of the game.
December 14: Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka indicates that he will not seek to contest another general election and that, whilst he had no specifically favoured successor, he approved of the performance of the Governor of Tokyo, Yukio Mishima.
December 15: The supertanker SS Marpessa sinks off the coast of Senegal whilst en route to the Persian Gulf.
December 16: Germany and Ottoman Turkey sign an extensive arms agreement worth more than $1400 million for a range of new aircraft, tanks, armoured vehicles, guns, rockets and missiles.
December 17: Police investigating repeated reports of an invisible boy in Trieste find nothing despite looking all over the middle of the city.
December 18: USS America breaks the previous record for the number of combat sorties in a day, launching 173 in daylight hours whilst deployed on Yankee Station off Vietnam.
December 19: American Department of Magic diviners and seers report several days of dire portents and dark, mysterious dreams.
December 20: The Soviet Ministry of Railways announces the successful development and testing of an atomic locomotive for use on the Trans-Siberian Railway.
December 21: Japanese scientists display a large meteor in Tokyo containing a number of unknown minerals and new elements discovered in Antarctica.
December 22: Two French gangsters are arrested after being caught attempting to steal from the British Empire Strategic Tea Reserve in Arnescote, Oxfordshire.
December 23: The United States announces that it will abide by a Christmas truce and cease the bombing of North Vietnam until the new year, holding out the separate possibility of an extended bombing pause.
December 24: Norwegian petroleum prospectors discover a very large offshore oil deposit off the coast of Central Norway.
December 25: Queen Elizabeth II’s Christmas message to the British Empire and the world focuses on the joys of family, peace and hope, touching upon the Royal Wedding and the joy it brought.
December 26: US military personnel serving in Vietnam and the surrounding theatre receive a special Christmas bonus of $100.
December 27: The first squadron of Royal Air Force Blue Streak LRBMs equipped with five new Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles apiece becomes operational.
December 28: American doctors report success in trials for a cure for shaking palsy; following on from the breakthrough cures for cancer and the common cold, the next frontier in the human body is seen by many as the diseases and afflictions of the mind.
December 29: A special Egyptological expedition announces the discovery of the fabled Tomb of Nefertiti.
December 30: The Congolese government resigns, apparently to head off a suspected imminent coup, but none of the four major factions planning coups had one scheduled for this week, on account of Christmas. Confusion reigns before being replaced by a quintipartite caretaker administration including the Presidential Palace caretaker.
December 31: USS Enterprise goes missing in the Pacific whilst en route between Subic Bay and Pearl Harbor.
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jemhouston
- Posts: 4191
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
Given the endangered status of the Andean dragon and protections given to it, is anyone going after the one that attacked the chopper?
The fact that the F-4 pilot staying with aircraft doesn't surprise me.
How is Sir Holmes's research into Royal Jelly going?
Can any Enterprise stay out of trouble?
The fact that the F-4 pilot staying with aircraft doesn't surprise me.
How is Sir Holmes's research into Royal Jelly going?
Can any Enterprise stay out of trouble?
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
Going after a wild dragon of unknown type isn’t a job with a good retirement plan, to put it a certain way. The unfortunate demise was put down as just one of those freak events that sometimes happen, like the @ King of Greece dying from a monkey bite.
I’m afraid the Royal Jelly research is highly classified, but he might soon come across something interesting.
The Phantom incident is this one https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/154619
with a different aircraft. The late Major Sipes will get more than a plaque from Steeple Aston.
The last Enterprise to avoid a truly eventful career was a pre WW1 battlecruiser, which even then had an ‘incident’ that would later be identified as a UFO sighting…
I’m afraid the Royal Jelly research is highly classified, but he might soon come across something interesting.
The Phantom incident is this one https://asn.flightsafety.org/wikibase/154619
with a different aircraft. The late Major Sipes will get more than a plaque from Steeple Aston.
The last Enterprise to avoid a truly eventful career was a pre WW1 battlecruiser, which even then had an ‘incident’ that would later be identified as a UFO sighting…
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
1969 Notes
January
- The USSR isn’t too happy about the prospect of Japan getting the Bomb, but it isn’t the worst thing they have to deal with
- Denzil Carey is no Rupert Murdoch; above and beyond his business and personal differences, he is a descendant of the heroic family used in many of the works of Ronald Welch
- Chief Justice Nixon is a result of an attempt to pay off favours and remove potential Republican barriers to JFK’s 3rd term agenda
- The Moroccan irregular militias get short shrift from artillery and gas, as a lot of such forces would when there are less political restraints
- The RWIAF is a new force, but has a large population to draw from
- Marcos being offed in the Philippines leads to some significant changes
- One Eye Clinton’s loss of his left eye (and hence not having a left wing…) is no bar to his service. Not sure if he’ll go into politics, though
- The result of the FBI shootout tragedy is that there will be a move to more powerful automatic pistols and the earlier formation of a HRT/FBI SWAT team (here standing for Special Wizardry and Tactics)
- The Soviets down their own UFO in the Krasnoyarsk Incident…
- The Saturday Evening Post lives on, with some new Norman Rockwell covers for a few years to come
- B-47s continue to be used, mainly in the benign air environment over South Vietnam
- The new Swiss food bars provide a literal meal in a bar; three of them feed a grown man working in a physical job for a day. They won’t quite sweep the market as it turns out people like food, cooking and the social act of breaking bread
- Marighela surviving is part of a different turn in Brazil
- The USA is keeping up at the cutting edge of high speed rail as a result of Cold War politics, industrial support and powerful rail interests
- France, too, has its own superheroes
- Syria in particular and the Arab Union in general is really spending a fair bit on their military and shifting the regional balance. Whereas in 1956, the Arab kingdoms were individually dependent on British support and quite vulnerable, they have progressed markedly and, in the Arab Union, built an increasingly powerful confederacy. Even Iraq, Syria, Arabia and Jordan together aren’t quite as powerful as Qajar Persia or Ottoman Turkey, yet. This power shift does go some way towards explaining the British agricultural aid + weather experiments in the region, as it provides a way of building up influence different from hard power. Incidentally, the Arab decision to buy weapons from East and West has been encouraged so they can be…acquired…
- China continues to gird its industrial loins
- JFK’s third term will be interesting…
- Mary Bell’s commutation was inevitable, but she will not be getting out any time within the next 50 years
- Dutch Elm Disease does not cut a swathe through Britain’s trees, nor indeed those on the Continent
- Essentially, what is known of the GDR/East Prussia is that it is being built up by the Soviets as a sort of Potemkin state, rather than it somehow being the most industrialised nation in the world
- The Royal Navy operates its own Yellow Submarine since 1967
- George Harrison travelling through India will impact his character. He might even end up joining a musical group when he gets home
- The Iraqi Army actions were a test to see if the British jump on them. There are preparations for a coup going on, but by whom?
- Trying to change the climate of Central Australia, even in a circumstance where there is a filled Mega Lake Eyre, is a challenge. Certainly not a short term job
- The Long Range Missile Defence of the United Kingdom Plan is ambitious, but is being funded as a matter of profound national importance
- The Two Towers stands an excellent chance of being the first sequel to win Best Picture; the Godfather trilogy won’t appear here on account of the lack of a Mafia/Italian organised crime presence of the same extent
February
- The planned city in Wyoming isn’t just a fit of centralist madness, but reflects some future construction projects that need to be in the heart of the country
- The Silkworm attacks on Montana were just what it’s modern defences were built to counter; the missiles took out 4 of them and long range 5” guns destroyed the last
- The Y-Files Group will have many, many strange cases to deal with…
- Star Trek is notably different in small ways with British, French and German characters as well as Chekov, but the general character is familiar
- The Boeing child of the 747 and 2707 is a very big, powerful plane
- The flying old lady has more bottle than United Dairies
- The Mexican village sees some strange effects from the meteor, similar in some ways with the Midwich Event
- New green trams in London join the red buses, black cabs and blue Underground trains
- Donald Campbell is not only still alive, but is setting new records
- French PM Jean-Louis Beaucourt, the Marquis d’Ambreville is a mixture of Napoleon I, de Gaulle, Conde and Massu
- Canada is really coming along in leaps and bounds, on a profoundly different path than @, but with great power comes increasing introspection on its role
- SEALAB is not abandoned, but expanded. The Sea Race is on
- This is a very different 1960s generation, without the ‘generation gap’, counterculture, significant anti war movement, rock and roll and with universal military service in both Britain and the USA
- The Hong Kong incident begins with a historical accident, but the presence of large British forces that are looking to be assertive makes it blow up
- The librarian could have potentially caused an extension to the Vietnam War if she had kicked out the diplomats for talking too loudly
- African tigers are interesting enough, but Kit Walker getting involved raises the phantom of even more strange happenings
- Indian termination continues, which is a very unfortunate course of action
- The new Soviet MBT is a more powerful T-72
- Cambodia being invaded is not nearly as controversial as @, but opens up the end game
- The early marriage of the Prince of Wales begins to develop
- The US does not end biological warfare research and development
- Golda Meyerson has the Anglicised surname as an indicator of relative influence
- India continues to dabble in greater independence of action
March
- County Cricket undergoes an earlier transformation into a tiered competition
- The establishment of Top Gun is driven by some intense fighter combat in Vietnam, even as there has been no outright abandonment of guns
- The Goodies are quite the group of intrepid adventurers; they still have the trandem
- Swiss voters are a bit more conservative on the question of female suffrage, but change will come eventually
- Harry Callahan's method of dealing with armed robbers is very similar to the filmed adaption in The Enforcer, except a bit less soft and caring
- Dog sleds continue to be used in the Far North, which is quite the military frontier
- The BBC adaption of The Tripods has a bigger budget than @ and is quite a faithful version
- Franco-American talks on the Congo are designed to cut out the British, but their Thai meetings aren't quite as clandestine as they think
- The Soviet fishing trawler was taken by something big and nasty, possibly one of the last few megalodons. Once it was decided to hunt them down, the ability of modern man to wipe out a species is quite effective, which some might view as sad
- The March 14th Massacre points out that not every paranormal individual is a nice, law abiding superhero type. There is also much darkness
- Cleansing of the Thames is a significant step in what can be done with the modern combination of science, alchemy and magic to counteract pollution. It has some flow on effects, if you'll forgive the pun, with regard to consumption of fish and shellfish from the Thames and Thames Estuary and accompanying cultural/culinary trends
- The RAN's new carriers are large, but not nuclear powered. The older Sydney and Melbourne will require replacement by the early 1980s, leaving time to fund other significant naval programmes, including the replacement of the RAN's two battleships
- The lost city in Colombia has quite a few secrets...
- The success of the invasion of Cambodia comes down to the combination of a heck of a lot of troops and the Ho Chi Minh Trail being cut
- It might appear that the de Havilland Blue Moon medium range SLBM is a throwback, but it is intended for conventional or at least non-strategic use, giving the Submarine Service a long range strike capacity. It will also be deployed on cruisers in due course
- The Colorado investigations are a bit of an Easter Egg, as they take place in the small town of South Park
- The King of Jordan dismissed his PM and cabinet because they wanted to distance themselves from defence ties with Britain and the US; he knows the narrow path he has to walk and the stakes at play
- Suslov represents the old school/conservative wing of the CPSU
- The IJN rocket torpedoes turn out to have multiple uses and bring about a potential renaissance for ASuW ship torpedoes in some circumstances
- Advanced British Army body armour will reduce casualties quite markedly over time, being the 'light' end of armour; the 'heavy' comes through Project Knight and its power armour
- Alcatraz continues as a working prison
April
- The wizardly pranks of April Fools Day are harmless fun, but show the capacity of powerful people
- Kipling still going at the sprightly old age of 103
- The Free Polish Armed Forces have probably not been actually deployable for a decade and this retirement finally acknowledges this. It was very much a political entity for the last decade or so, representing the legitimacy of Free Poland. It was made up of the aging wartime veterans as the officer and NCO corps, with the rank and file provided by the children of the exile community and the Polish diaspora from the USA, British Empire and France; even then, it was more of a symbolic hollow force than a useful or deployable element. In terms of units, they almost entirely marched on paper and formed a bit of a social club, with the exception of the ceremonial Royal Polish Guards battalion and Winged Hussars regiment. First to go was the Royal Polish Navy, which was laid up by the mid 1950s after being perpetuated as part of the RN
- A slightly different Supreme Court comes down on the other side of the obscenity question in Stanley v Georgia. As of 1969, rather than Warren CJ, Black, Fortas, Douglas, Stewart, Marshall, Harlan, White and Brennan, it is Nixon CJ (1960), Black, Douglas, Alan Parker (1959), Potter Stewart (1958), Byron White (1962), Warren Burger (1956), Thurgood Marshall (1969) and Herbert Brownell (1954). Historically, there was a big shift between Roth in 1957 (6-3) and Stanley in 1969 (0-9) on the question of the protection of pornography. A very large part of this came down to the shifting social standards of the Sexual Revolution rather than a really dramatic shift in the alignment of the Supreme Court, although the Warren Court was very much a liberal one given to broad and creative interpretation. Here, the US Supreme Court is rather more conservative, reflecting a more socially conservative society and new Chief Justice Nixon is absolutely no Earl Warren. Some cases will not change, given logic and legal arguments, but where the change was driven by more than a decade of social changes absent on Dark Earth, we won't see them. I'm half wearing my legal hat for the cases out of general interest in exploring how and why very different decisions could eventuate, rather than conservatism for its own sake.
- The French use the Maginot Line ouvrages as they did in @
- Kondo Simba is absolutely a nom de guerre and the ALF is playing a long game
- John Wyndham has a longer life and career. He is already kicking on further than @ and will do so for many years to come. In a way, he will be part of a British 'triumvirate' of science fiction authors (akin to the international one of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke) along with John Christopher/Sam Youd and Nicholas Fisk, or at least a bit of younger readers/older children's sci-fi. That is one of the few flourishes of personal preference I'm allowing to creep in, having discovered their works in the late 1980s as a boy through the Thames TV adaption of Wyndham's Chocky and then developed a taste for the written works of all three in 1990-1992. Fisk's Trillions of 1972 is an extremely British science fiction story that I was introduced to on audio cassette tape, followed by discovering John Christopher's The Sword of the Spirits trilogy and Wyndham's Day of the Triffids; The Tripods came years later, but appealed to me as an interesting example of British children's science fiction television and an interesting little written work to boot. Christopher and Fisk wrote their best stuff in the late 1960s and early 1970s (as distinct from Wyndham's 1950s pomp) which was and is an era of literature of that genre that I enjoy and appreciate.
- The CIA agent in the GDR discovered some sort of production or copying facility before meeting a most terrible demise
- Aquanautical exploration continues to grow
- Square Eye Syndrome has only one, very horrific cure - cessation of television privileges for the afflicted boys for a year and a day
- The SRAM entering service here has the range of the @ SRAM II with a much higher speed. It will be followed by a long range ALCM and a medium range weapon. These, in addition to Skybolt, give SAC a fair bit of flexibility going forward
- There simply isn't the political support for lowering the voting age in Britain and the rest of the Western world is sticking to 21 for the moment; indeed, historically, the youngest in @ 1969 was Czechoslovakia with 20. The cultural normality of school, then national service, then work or study has been drilled in for multiple generations, rather than being a fairly recent phenomenon and, whilst the postwar generation is large, it isn't truly culturally distinct in the manner of @. As of 1969, the year group turning 18 are 1951 drops. Their early childhood was one of war in Korea, followed by a big war in the Middle East. By the time they entered secondary school in 1962/63, they'd lived through another war scare in 1960 and then have seen Vietnam progress through their 'teenage' years (the very word not being widely used). Their parents are either WW2 veterans or lived through both it and the Depression. They've had a lot of affluence, but not the same rebellion in dress, movies and music.
- The international supervillain who escapes his Swiss mountain lair is exactly who it would seem to be - Blofeld, complete with white cat
- Mobile heat rays have been under development since the War of the Worlds, but the problem of power supply has held them up until now. . Those captured by the British in the 1890s were reverse engineered and tinkered with for over 30 years until they could utilised effectively, initially on skyships and airships, but they never really found an ideal niche. On land, in tactical combat, it offers some advantages, but these continue to be tested and refined into two major streams. The first is a directed energy weapon/laser cannon a la Warhammer 40k, whilst the second is a more genuine heat ray for anti-personnel use: something like the Area Denial System, which can cause pain on its lowest setting all the way up to a beam of superheated energy that can set groups of enemy personnel on fire without vaporising/disintegrating them like some of the film versions of the Heat Ray.
- The news about the success of Rumble is one salient feature, with the other being that journalists have been kept out of the combat zone until the fighting has come to an end. This is one aspect of keeping the news and information war under close control
- JFK has a lot of political capital, but Universal Healthcare will use up all of it
- 250,000 year old large humanoid bones in Colorado poses a lot of questions
- The Northern Irish meteor isn't anything nasty, but the general procedure at this point is to treat everything as an act of the enemy or a dangerous alien object
- General Barrientos had an older, louder helicopter. That ended up making him lunch
- Ping? Pong!
- The RN presence mission in the Shatt al Arab is a reminder to Iraq and Persia to play nicely. Britain controls Abadan, having annexed it decades ago and has a general interest in local peace and quiet
May
- The Springfield Army Tank Plant is more modern than Detroit and Grand Blanc (GM), Marion (Ford) and Lima (Chrysler), but they will all work together for tank and armoured vehicle production. The big ace in the hole is Willow Run, which has stayed in Ford's hands and has been planned for re-conversion to military production. Springfield also has a lovely nuclear power plant and Monty Burns has a fair bit of political clout
- QM2 joins QE2, with two new White Star superliners following. The names of the latter can possibly be surmised. Historically, the Indian Summer of the ocean liner extended into the early-mid 1970s or so, prior to air travel costs lowering enough to break through. Here, that is pushed a bit further out due to the greater size of the oceans and the comfort/room provided by a ship. The American and British superliners were subsidised by their governments for potential wartime trooping use.
- The Italian 'art commandos' are historical, but here are motivated by some of the more daring art thefts out there
- Presence of a blue police box all over the place? It must be the doing of those silly university boys!
- PM de Rodriguez of Argentina is building up to something, but it will happen in stages
- The XV-21 will see some interesting use over time, as the Americans try to steal a march back on the British success with the Rotodyne and VTOL
- Governor Reagan is very popular in California and across the Western states
- Operation Ladder is an increasingly South Vietnamese show, as are many operations across South Vietnam, backed up by foreign airpower and artillery. The Hawker-Siddeley Salamander's closest @ equivalent is a combination of the Pucara and OV-1 Mohawk
- The shift from Alexandria to Tobruk occurs in stages. As said, the Suez Canal zone will remain a vital area of interest well into the 1970s
- Vampires in Melbourne is a very rare event
- The War Book is not just a collection of mobilisation plans, but a magical artifact used to carry them out. A very Dark Earth thing
- Rats disappearing from Trondheim suggests a paranormal event
- Berlin to Budapest via Prague, Vienna and Bratislava is around 870 miles, which is a fair distance for a high speed railway
- The Greeks/Byzantines have decided that they can't quite afford to retire its capital ships whilst the Turks still have theirs
- The case of the USAF mechanic going crazy after his meds mixed up with cheese and Scotch is an OTL event
- Narnia comes to the silver screen a lot sooner and in the same serious treatment and grandeur as seen in The Lord of the Rings, with appropriate tonal adjustments
- African coups in self governing countries are turning out to be a bit more difficult when the governments have some powerful big friends
- The L324 375mm Long Range Heavy Cannon is designed for heavy very long range fire support and interdiction on a mobile platform
- The return of the flight of Avengers lost over the Bermuda Triangle is very, very mysterious
- Biafra never really cooks off to the same extent
June
- There are some slight changes to the details of Charles’s investiture as Pragger Wagger and a larger TV audience…due to more people with TVs
- HMAS Melbourne has an unfortunate habit of slicing up destroyers
- This is a different Secret Army, at least in scale. It covers operations across the whole of Europe and beyond, bearing some resemblance to The Secret War, but in a dramatised format. The @ TV show will be made as ‘Lifeline’
- The 25th anniversary of D-Day is a very big event, with both Ike and Churchill being present
- North Vietnamese Foxtrots are just the start of Soviet efforts to rearm their client
- Spain really shouldn’t have played the Gibraltar game with a Britain at war under current leadership.
- Use of Cloudmakers speaks more to the end of the conflict being in sight and using up old ammunition than any dramatic escalation
- Heyerdahl and Cousteau discovering Atlantis is a very big event
- Portugal is facing increasing difficulty in Mozambique
- England has a few new players joining what is already a pretty strong England Test cricket team
- Albanian goat tragedies are a terrible thing
- Someone is responsible for tainting the Comintern’s fish eggs…
- Canada is the first Dominion and first state beyond the topline powers to begin a nuclear powered surface ship
- The Turkish Connection, or is it French, is going to be a hard one to break properly
- Burning rivers and midair collisions are sadly OTL evened
- Conventional Lance missiles are accompanied by a shorter range battlefield missile that counters the FROG-7. The Army is very interested in missiles
- Peruvian land reform is the first step towards something
- The FBI super computer will counter the emergence of a particular 1970s criminal phenomenon…
- What could be underground in the Mojave?
- Versailles hasn’t been impugned by historians to anywhere near the same extent
July
- Capricorn is designed to test air defences against the developing Soviet threat of third generation jet aircraft. The RAF in particular faces Long Range Aviation heavy bombers coming in from the Norwegian Sea, both bombers and strike aircraft from the Baltic over Scandinavia and anything that can get through the contested airspace over Germany
- Warspite’s partial reentry over Spain is quite intimidating; many nations have ships and planes, but a space battlecruiser streaking overhead is something above and beyond Spain
- US cricket continues its high profile and they are climbing the unofficial rankings of the Test nations (South Africa, England, West Indies, Australia, USA, India, Canada, New Zealand, Rhodesia, New Avalon; Ceylon, Prydain, Israel, Argentina, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are non Test playing)
- Who might be the supposed emissaries of the Incas?
- Kosmos and Orion head straight for Earth, whereas Dreadnought has her Belt mission and the Chinese are still on their way
- New British military rations are designed to cater to evolving tastes and utilise modern technologies
- Fratellini’s predictions of global cooling come from a very oblique reference to John Christopher’s 1962 novel The World in Winter, a post apocalyptic treatment of the consequences of a new ice age
- Egypt continues to contort itself towards nationalist self assertion in a paradigm that is closer to the 1930s than 1969 in @
- The US airmen hanged in Washington historically had their sentences commuted and I think one is still around
- The US Mint continues issuing of high denomination bills, as there is less of a reason not to
- The notorious Football War is worth its own story one day
- Indonesia’s campaign in Borneo and general Konfrontasi continues
- Matthew Gore’s deeds are a reference to John Wyndham’s Chocky
- Increased cattle sizes are driven by a quest for more beef and a more efficient yield. It is notable that mass feedlots are yet to take over and that it will be unlikely that huge antibiotic use in cows will develop. The bigger challenge is working out reasoning for preventing destruction of the Amazon, but the larger world does have a lot of space
- Barton’s speech on the National Plan does seem to focus on traditional industries, but consider where it is made
- The Royal engagement sparks a fair bit of interest and economic activities from souvenirs et al
- Advances in the treatment of sight issues and eye conditions will have an impact across the world; not needing glasses will occur firstly in the First World and then trickle down
- Arms talks with multiple parties will always be difficult
- Blösche was historically executed by East Germany, which didn’t have the same degree of coddling of Nazis as West Germany when it came to punishment. Here, Germany does not abolish capital punishment in 1949, which was driven in @ by a number of different factors, but continues to utilise it with widespread public support through the 1950s and 60s
- New ships and aircraft make the reinforcement of Europe in a short time truly viable
- The huge diamond found in South Africa makes the Cullinan look small in comparison
- Mention of the Cult of Cthulhu in Mexico is a worry
- JFK’s Manila Speech will later be known as the ‘Olive Branch Speech’
August
- The Chinese had the advantage of the planets being in a different position when they launched
- Progress towards an armistice in Vietnam takes time
- The Coronado Bridge is higher to allow for full sized carriers to go underneath it
- North Vietnam needs to ensure that Northern Laos is in friendly hands to get something out of the war
- California’s long range shoot is the result of 25 years of consistent advances and development in LR naval gunfire, which was at 80nm in 1946. US and British research and development is on the cusp of going a lot further
- The population of Greenfield were quite irritable in the quitting process
- Guaranteed minimum income is rather ambitious liberal program
- Elvis ends up halting an analogue to the Manson Family attacks and dealing justice to the would-be murderers
- The Congo doesn’t seem to have any easy solutions to their problems
- Use of VX against the Indonesians on the British side of the border is a very clear message to pull back while they still can
- The Argentine air and naval exercises are a sign that they want to project power a bit more, but isn’t an obvious Falklands precursor. Remember the presence of Prydain in Patagonia and how it is naturally a more concerning issue to any revanchist types in Buenos Aires; however, it is a Commonwealth Dominion of a British Empire that isn’t in retreat
- Sino-Soviet tensions shift to Sinkiang, their other major mutual border
- Increases in the numbers of dragons isn’t as vital as it once was, but is still significant
- Sultan Osman’s death is no accident
- Repairing severed spinal cords opens the door to significant advances
- Dispelling hurricanes will have some positive and negative results
- The Green Revolution really impacts India for the better
- Giving the diamond to the Crown is seen as the best step politically
- The Spanish found something off Tenerife and it does not bode well. The ocean conceals many secrets…
- Anglo-Norwegian ties are very strong, as a powerful ally an hour away is quite useful
- The Dhofar Rebellion ends up fizzling when faced by more powerful forces
- American food and fast food in general remains peripheral to British cuisine at best. Historically, hamburgers were sold from 1954 in Wimpys/Lyons without truly making a breakthrough into the mainstream of British food. Here, there has been a lag of 15 years driven by a variety of factors and there will be a continuing lack of penetration by US fast food chains
- Austria-Hungary has a very powerful soccer team
- The RAF’s operational testing of guided and heat seeking weapons is deliberately chosen for broadcast in ‘Airmen’ to get the other side thinking
- The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Central America will have a busy decade
- The first email comes earlier
- Australian mobilisation exercises highlight the need for a lot more gear and better mass transit links; military railways will be coming
September
- The Libyan coup attempt is put down with extreme prejudice. The role of British forces is a key, which ultimately does King Idris no favours and furthers the idea that he is a foreign puppet. The Crown Prince managed to escape the fate put in place for him and, at 23, has a fairly hot youthful head. He considers that the 1956 plotters in Egypt who were publicly impaled in Ismailia Square got off rather lightly. Ultimately, the Libyans and other governments need to be able to rely on their own forces and means to stay in power
- Sherlock Holmes is off on another adventure at the sprightly old age of 115
- The new IJA katanas are quite handy and their presence indicates that Japanese military practice still makes use of the sword
- Criticism of the starship program and space in general gets short shrift after the excitement of the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn and the interstellar signal. The chance of anything significant being Proxmired is nil
- Soviet involvement in air battle over Vietnam represents an escalation and also an indication that North Vietnam has been hit pretty badly
- The GI managed to find out how to get to Sesame Street, on a sunny day, no less
- Domestication of the giant deer will be followed by some other species; livestock species are being broadened
- Barnes Wallis gets to fly in his Swallow and isn't done with his designing days yet
- Project Rulison is a technical success, but there is limited demand for possibly radioactive natural gas
- Dracula actually was in Bolivia, pursuing his wicked goals wickedly
- Crash prevention enchantments at international airports will save quite a few lives, considering how many crashes occur just after take off or during landing
- Escape of the Soviet bacteriophage could have some very nasty consequences. The lab fire is suspicious as well as mysterious
- SS Manhattan's voyage is not only notable for the present, but gives a little hint on the past with the reference to the Franklin Expedition
- Something very, very strange happens after the Korean atomic research accident
- British Petroleum's supertanker orders are a huge bonus to industry in key areas, with each region/manufacturer getting 6 ships. The economic impact of the ship orders is such to provide a huge boost to shipbuilding employment and downstream industrial orders for a good 5 years in Tyneside, Clydeside, Belfast, Merseyside and Teeside, good profits and investment in larger facilities. The orders consist of 5 Batilus class sized ULCCs of 600,000t and 25 slightly smaller ships of only 300,000t capacity. This is in addition to the quite huge boon of warship orders, oil platform construction, new Floating Fortresses, spaceship components and ordinary shipbuilding. The decline of the 1970s, closures of the 1980s and the general decline of the industrial North and Scotland won’t be happening here. I’d be interested in any thoughts and opinions on the social, cultural economic and other consequences of this
- Friday and Gannon caught the mad scientist through the use of an effective dragnet
- The Knights in White Satin
- Jack Smith's swim across the Channel is 35 miles, making his achievement even greater
- The schoolboys being chased down a NYC street is a reference to The Neverending Story; they were rescued by Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne and a grouch named Oscar
- Project Knight will result in a section of heavy infantry/power armoured infantry per company, with all the capacity for heavy weapons and options that comes with that. A bit of influence from both Fallout and 40K
- The Vickers 'super jumbo jet' is at a very early stage of development, like its Boeing equivalent
- A modified lima bean from the Amazon will only be the first of a new series of staple crops
- Japanese facsimile newspapers are going to have some further development in a path not taken
- Canadian G-G Sir William Richardson brooks no nonsense from any quarter, let alone a griffon
- The Brady Bunch is seen as daring because of the blended family idea, not because of any cutting edge content
- Aussie Rules football knowledge might not be great in the reader base due to being overseas, but Fitzroy winning a premiership is a very sentimental flourish
- The L132 is a lightweight 105mm gun that is being trialed for use by certain forces. A comeback for anti-tank guns? Maybe. There is also a much lighter 75mm weapon under development (akin to ARES)
- Greg Chappell has an earlier debut
- China pulling out of the LTBT is a real spanner in the works and not expected at all
October
- The alternate Bergman film not only showcases his style, but begins Pippi’s big comeback
- Skynet is a combination of very precise recon + proto GPS + satellite communications + some other military goodies
- The six foot sheep is the consequence of a lot of selective breeding and enhancements to create an animal with a lot more 'bang for baa’
- The Haitian intervention appears to be a success on the face of it
- HFCS doesn’t make an entry into the human diet, with many positive results
- No one knows who torpedoed the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum tanker
- Exercise Scythian sees some interesting new weapons tested. The Sepoy is equivalent to a souped up Sting Ray in a heavier 'calibre', whilst Calypso is similar to some of the Saab/Bofors developments, albeit with a bit more 'oomph'.
- Turkish elections are a sign of some changes along the way
- The Soviet space launches are no major issue. There was a big historical launch burst at this time, putting 7 men into space at once. Here, there is a similarly innocent explanation, but the West doesn't know it
- The Royal Wedding Fleet Review is a very grand spectacle, befitting the occasion
- Ramesses has some scores to settle
- The Royal Wedding is earlier, for reasons of locking in an heir and securing greater old fashioned dynastic ties with other royal families and the aristocracy rather more conservative views on bachelorhood as well as coming from a genuine attraction and fondness. It will be a bit more like Victoria and Albert than the historical marriage with Diana and is seen as a great fairytale occasion
- The report on the Indianapolis UFO Incident is one that Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud of
- Somalia was a bloodless coup historically. Here, no one much cares about Somalia to even contemplate intervention, in contrast to Libya and the Middle East. Perhaps this will pave a path for other African events
- American Motors will make a fair bit out of the Jeep
- Executions for espionage are big signs of the different times
- The Crusader begins production ahead of schedule
- Thomas Kelly’s sentence reflects the atmosphere of politics in a chillier Cold War. With a shooting conflict against the enemy within recent memory, there isn't a lot of scope or sympathy for radical views that hove too close to the Soviets. Combine that with statutory penalties and we get this situation
- The end is now clearly in sight in Vietnam
- Kolchak joins Callan, the Equalizer
- Turing is not only still around, but on the ball
- The response to the photographs of Atlantis is big. Combine the fuss over the Titanic with a genuine historical mystery that some had written off as myth
- The Royal African Lion Corps is a fearsome unit
- Coordinated vampire attacks is a fresh horror
November
- The Rhodesian gold rush will have some interesting effects on its economy
- Continuation of the rum ration is a small measure as in its diluted measure would not have any real impact on blood alcohol
- Florida's rise, like that of the Sunbelt in general, follows on large trends and technological capacity
- The final stages of the Vietnam War are akin in some ways to the last stages of the Great War - the outcome is known, the general principles of negotiation points are known and only the last few details are being wrestled over
- Marighela lives on and the circumstances indicate a much larger KGB effort
- Cassius Clay isn't invulnerable, as he was not in @. Storm is a very big and strong fellow
- The Armstrong-Whitworth Argonaut is a genuine intruder, designed to fly into Soviet airspace and engage fighters, bombers and SAM sites. It bears some resemblance in role to the F-117, but doesn't have the same stealth characteristics; it has some other features that enable its missions. Think active stealth
- Reverend Presley going after the case of missing schoolgirls is a sign that there may be success. He has a good strike rate
- The Sydney Opera House looks very different to Jørn Utzon's @ design, with the Lutyens designed building looking more like his putative Liverpool Cathedral with a bit more of the Hagia Sophia thrown in
- The Ashanti Federation (@ Ghana + Ivory Coast, with Togo likely to join and Upper Volta being intensely courted) will change its name; it is just a matter of what
- The British Atomic Energy Plan, when completed, will revolutionise British energy, reduce costs and open up a lot of industrial opportunities in a period where there was @ contraction
- The skeleton found in the Valley of Elah could well be Goliath
- Pacifying Katanga was relatively easy; the difficult part follows on
- German Army personnel are getting quite substantial active combat experience, albeit in a different type of war than that which confronts them in Europe
- The Venusian ruined 'city' opens up a load of questions
- The commander of Odessa, General Martin Hessler, is Robert Shaw's character from The Battle of the Bulge
- Ceylon spaceport operations meet with approval from Arthur C. Clarke
- Entebbe Airport will likely not have a certain future event occur there
- Professor Tenma's robotic creation may well be known as Astro Boy
- New British television stations will result in some distinctly different developments
- The PFI is the Su-27 and the PLFI is the MiG-29
- José María Arguedas doesn't end up knocking himself off prior to his novel being published
December
- The Chronicles of Narnia goes on a lot longer and has a slightly different ending to @. C.S. Lewis lives a fair bit longer as well
- The CIA may well be barking up the wrong tree regarding the Emperor of China and their guesses multiply from there
- Getting the Simon Bolivar free will cost a lot and the Venezuelans aren't the most flush with cash at the present. Who could benefit from the accident?
- Willy Wonka's competition and its results will be a bit different
- The Thai Royal Rainmaking Project is a response to quite a bit of drought, enough to get the King's attention. An admirably hands-on monarch
- Frosty the Snowman is thankfully a benign creation
- The Soviet position in Tehran will be rejected, based on the last article
- Tolkien winning a Nobel for Literature gives him recognition in his lifetime
- The prospect of Yukio Mishima rising to the leadership of Japan is an ...interesting... one
- German arms exports have a market in countries that fall between East and West
- Finding an invisible boy in Trieste is naturally a difficult task
- The Department of Magic picks up on some strange portents, which point towards what happens on December 31
- Soviet atomic locomotives are an interesting development. Every major power had a go at designing atomic trains in @, so here, the most likely suspect comes out with a very special one
- The attempted French tea theft is an absolutely dastardly crime has been prevented. It would have struck at the very heart of Britain and the Empire; it is a very big store, spread out over Britain and points abroad, comprising a 5 year supply of tea for a country of over 130 million people. It has been built up (and rotated) for over fifteen years. The two gangsters are sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment, with full deprivation of coffee and breadstuffs; they are to be fed from an exclusively English menu
- Norway getting in on North Sea oil will pay off for them
- MIRVing ICBMs/LRBMs complicates strategic calculus
- A successful cure for the Shaking Palsy, or Parkinson's Disease, will help a lot of people
- The Tomb of Nefertiti has a lot of goodies
- Congolese confusion is part farce, part reflection on the degeneration into chaos
- Oh yes, USS Enterprise goes missing
January
- The USSR isn’t too happy about the prospect of Japan getting the Bomb, but it isn’t the worst thing they have to deal with
- Denzil Carey is no Rupert Murdoch; above and beyond his business and personal differences, he is a descendant of the heroic family used in many of the works of Ronald Welch
- Chief Justice Nixon is a result of an attempt to pay off favours and remove potential Republican barriers to JFK’s 3rd term agenda
- The Moroccan irregular militias get short shrift from artillery and gas, as a lot of such forces would when there are less political restraints
- The RWIAF is a new force, but has a large population to draw from
- Marcos being offed in the Philippines leads to some significant changes
- One Eye Clinton’s loss of his left eye (and hence not having a left wing…) is no bar to his service. Not sure if he’ll go into politics, though
- The result of the FBI shootout tragedy is that there will be a move to more powerful automatic pistols and the earlier formation of a HRT/FBI SWAT team (here standing for Special Wizardry and Tactics)
- The Soviets down their own UFO in the Krasnoyarsk Incident…
- The Saturday Evening Post lives on, with some new Norman Rockwell covers for a few years to come
- B-47s continue to be used, mainly in the benign air environment over South Vietnam
- The new Swiss food bars provide a literal meal in a bar; three of them feed a grown man working in a physical job for a day. They won’t quite sweep the market as it turns out people like food, cooking and the social act of breaking bread
- Marighela surviving is part of a different turn in Brazil
- The USA is keeping up at the cutting edge of high speed rail as a result of Cold War politics, industrial support and powerful rail interests
- France, too, has its own superheroes
- Syria in particular and the Arab Union in general is really spending a fair bit on their military and shifting the regional balance. Whereas in 1956, the Arab kingdoms were individually dependent on British support and quite vulnerable, they have progressed markedly and, in the Arab Union, built an increasingly powerful confederacy. Even Iraq, Syria, Arabia and Jordan together aren’t quite as powerful as Qajar Persia or Ottoman Turkey, yet. This power shift does go some way towards explaining the British agricultural aid + weather experiments in the region, as it provides a way of building up influence different from hard power. Incidentally, the Arab decision to buy weapons from East and West has been encouraged so they can be…acquired…
- China continues to gird its industrial loins
- JFK’s third term will be interesting…
- Mary Bell’s commutation was inevitable, but she will not be getting out any time within the next 50 years
- Dutch Elm Disease does not cut a swathe through Britain’s trees, nor indeed those on the Continent
- Essentially, what is known of the GDR/East Prussia is that it is being built up by the Soviets as a sort of Potemkin state, rather than it somehow being the most industrialised nation in the world
- The Royal Navy operates its own Yellow Submarine since 1967
- George Harrison travelling through India will impact his character. He might even end up joining a musical group when he gets home
- The Iraqi Army actions were a test to see if the British jump on them. There are preparations for a coup going on, but by whom?
- Trying to change the climate of Central Australia, even in a circumstance where there is a filled Mega Lake Eyre, is a challenge. Certainly not a short term job
- The Long Range Missile Defence of the United Kingdom Plan is ambitious, but is being funded as a matter of profound national importance
- The Two Towers stands an excellent chance of being the first sequel to win Best Picture; the Godfather trilogy won’t appear here on account of the lack of a Mafia/Italian organised crime presence of the same extent
February
- The planned city in Wyoming isn’t just a fit of centralist madness, but reflects some future construction projects that need to be in the heart of the country
- The Silkworm attacks on Montana were just what it’s modern defences were built to counter; the missiles took out 4 of them and long range 5” guns destroyed the last
- The Y-Files Group will have many, many strange cases to deal with…
- Star Trek is notably different in small ways with British, French and German characters as well as Chekov, but the general character is familiar
- The Boeing child of the 747 and 2707 is a very big, powerful plane
- The flying old lady has more bottle than United Dairies
- The Mexican village sees some strange effects from the meteor, similar in some ways with the Midwich Event
- New green trams in London join the red buses, black cabs and blue Underground trains
- Donald Campbell is not only still alive, but is setting new records
- French PM Jean-Louis Beaucourt, the Marquis d’Ambreville is a mixture of Napoleon I, de Gaulle, Conde and Massu
- Canada is really coming along in leaps and bounds, on a profoundly different path than @, but with great power comes increasing introspection on its role
- SEALAB is not abandoned, but expanded. The Sea Race is on
- This is a very different 1960s generation, without the ‘generation gap’, counterculture, significant anti war movement, rock and roll and with universal military service in both Britain and the USA
- The Hong Kong incident begins with a historical accident, but the presence of large British forces that are looking to be assertive makes it blow up
- The librarian could have potentially caused an extension to the Vietnam War if she had kicked out the diplomats for talking too loudly
- African tigers are interesting enough, but Kit Walker getting involved raises the phantom of even more strange happenings
- Indian termination continues, which is a very unfortunate course of action
- The new Soviet MBT is a more powerful T-72
- Cambodia being invaded is not nearly as controversial as @, but opens up the end game
- The early marriage of the Prince of Wales begins to develop
- The US does not end biological warfare research and development
- Golda Meyerson has the Anglicised surname as an indicator of relative influence
- India continues to dabble in greater independence of action
March
- County Cricket undergoes an earlier transformation into a tiered competition
- The establishment of Top Gun is driven by some intense fighter combat in Vietnam, even as there has been no outright abandonment of guns
- The Goodies are quite the group of intrepid adventurers; they still have the trandem
- Swiss voters are a bit more conservative on the question of female suffrage, but change will come eventually
- Harry Callahan's method of dealing with armed robbers is very similar to the filmed adaption in The Enforcer, except a bit less soft and caring
- Dog sleds continue to be used in the Far North, which is quite the military frontier
- The BBC adaption of The Tripods has a bigger budget than @ and is quite a faithful version
- Franco-American talks on the Congo are designed to cut out the British, but their Thai meetings aren't quite as clandestine as they think
- The Soviet fishing trawler was taken by something big and nasty, possibly one of the last few megalodons. Once it was decided to hunt them down, the ability of modern man to wipe out a species is quite effective, which some might view as sad
- The March 14th Massacre points out that not every paranormal individual is a nice, law abiding superhero type. There is also much darkness
- Cleansing of the Thames is a significant step in what can be done with the modern combination of science, alchemy and magic to counteract pollution. It has some flow on effects, if you'll forgive the pun, with regard to consumption of fish and shellfish from the Thames and Thames Estuary and accompanying cultural/culinary trends
- The RAN's new carriers are large, but not nuclear powered. The older Sydney and Melbourne will require replacement by the early 1980s, leaving time to fund other significant naval programmes, including the replacement of the RAN's two battleships
- The lost city in Colombia has quite a few secrets...
- The success of the invasion of Cambodia comes down to the combination of a heck of a lot of troops and the Ho Chi Minh Trail being cut
- It might appear that the de Havilland Blue Moon medium range SLBM is a throwback, but it is intended for conventional or at least non-strategic use, giving the Submarine Service a long range strike capacity. It will also be deployed on cruisers in due course
- The Colorado investigations are a bit of an Easter Egg, as they take place in the small town of South Park
- The King of Jordan dismissed his PM and cabinet because they wanted to distance themselves from defence ties with Britain and the US; he knows the narrow path he has to walk and the stakes at play
- Suslov represents the old school/conservative wing of the CPSU
- The IJN rocket torpedoes turn out to have multiple uses and bring about a potential renaissance for ASuW ship torpedoes in some circumstances
- Advanced British Army body armour will reduce casualties quite markedly over time, being the 'light' end of armour; the 'heavy' comes through Project Knight and its power armour
- Alcatraz continues as a working prison
April
- The wizardly pranks of April Fools Day are harmless fun, but show the capacity of powerful people
- Kipling still going at the sprightly old age of 103
- The Free Polish Armed Forces have probably not been actually deployable for a decade and this retirement finally acknowledges this. It was very much a political entity for the last decade or so, representing the legitimacy of Free Poland. It was made up of the aging wartime veterans as the officer and NCO corps, with the rank and file provided by the children of the exile community and the Polish diaspora from the USA, British Empire and France; even then, it was more of a symbolic hollow force than a useful or deployable element. In terms of units, they almost entirely marched on paper and formed a bit of a social club, with the exception of the ceremonial Royal Polish Guards battalion and Winged Hussars regiment. First to go was the Royal Polish Navy, which was laid up by the mid 1950s after being perpetuated as part of the RN
- A slightly different Supreme Court comes down on the other side of the obscenity question in Stanley v Georgia. As of 1969, rather than Warren CJ, Black, Fortas, Douglas, Stewart, Marshall, Harlan, White and Brennan, it is Nixon CJ (1960), Black, Douglas, Alan Parker (1959), Potter Stewart (1958), Byron White (1962), Warren Burger (1956), Thurgood Marshall (1969) and Herbert Brownell (1954). Historically, there was a big shift between Roth in 1957 (6-3) and Stanley in 1969 (0-9) on the question of the protection of pornography. A very large part of this came down to the shifting social standards of the Sexual Revolution rather than a really dramatic shift in the alignment of the Supreme Court, although the Warren Court was very much a liberal one given to broad and creative interpretation. Here, the US Supreme Court is rather more conservative, reflecting a more socially conservative society and new Chief Justice Nixon is absolutely no Earl Warren. Some cases will not change, given logic and legal arguments, but where the change was driven by more than a decade of social changes absent on Dark Earth, we won't see them. I'm half wearing my legal hat for the cases out of general interest in exploring how and why very different decisions could eventuate, rather than conservatism for its own sake.
- The French use the Maginot Line ouvrages as they did in @
- Kondo Simba is absolutely a nom de guerre and the ALF is playing a long game
- John Wyndham has a longer life and career. He is already kicking on further than @ and will do so for many years to come. In a way, he will be part of a British 'triumvirate' of science fiction authors (akin to the international one of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke) along with John Christopher/Sam Youd and Nicholas Fisk, or at least a bit of younger readers/older children's sci-fi. That is one of the few flourishes of personal preference I'm allowing to creep in, having discovered their works in the late 1980s as a boy through the Thames TV adaption of Wyndham's Chocky and then developed a taste for the written works of all three in 1990-1992. Fisk's Trillions of 1972 is an extremely British science fiction story that I was introduced to on audio cassette tape, followed by discovering John Christopher's The Sword of the Spirits trilogy and Wyndham's Day of the Triffids; The Tripods came years later, but appealed to me as an interesting example of British children's science fiction television and an interesting little written work to boot. Christopher and Fisk wrote their best stuff in the late 1960s and early 1970s (as distinct from Wyndham's 1950s pomp) which was and is an era of literature of that genre that I enjoy and appreciate.
- The CIA agent in the GDR discovered some sort of production or copying facility before meeting a most terrible demise
- Aquanautical exploration continues to grow
- Square Eye Syndrome has only one, very horrific cure - cessation of television privileges for the afflicted boys for a year and a day
- The SRAM entering service here has the range of the @ SRAM II with a much higher speed. It will be followed by a long range ALCM and a medium range weapon. These, in addition to Skybolt, give SAC a fair bit of flexibility going forward
- There simply isn't the political support for lowering the voting age in Britain and the rest of the Western world is sticking to 21 for the moment; indeed, historically, the youngest in @ 1969 was Czechoslovakia with 20. The cultural normality of school, then national service, then work or study has been drilled in for multiple generations, rather than being a fairly recent phenomenon and, whilst the postwar generation is large, it isn't truly culturally distinct in the manner of @. As of 1969, the year group turning 18 are 1951 drops. Their early childhood was one of war in Korea, followed by a big war in the Middle East. By the time they entered secondary school in 1962/63, they'd lived through another war scare in 1960 and then have seen Vietnam progress through their 'teenage' years (the very word not being widely used). Their parents are either WW2 veterans or lived through both it and the Depression. They've had a lot of affluence, but not the same rebellion in dress, movies and music.
- The international supervillain who escapes his Swiss mountain lair is exactly who it would seem to be - Blofeld, complete with white cat
- Mobile heat rays have been under development since the War of the Worlds, but the problem of power supply has held them up until now. . Those captured by the British in the 1890s were reverse engineered and tinkered with for over 30 years until they could utilised effectively, initially on skyships and airships, but they never really found an ideal niche. On land, in tactical combat, it offers some advantages, but these continue to be tested and refined into two major streams. The first is a directed energy weapon/laser cannon a la Warhammer 40k, whilst the second is a more genuine heat ray for anti-personnel use: something like the Area Denial System, which can cause pain on its lowest setting all the way up to a beam of superheated energy that can set groups of enemy personnel on fire without vaporising/disintegrating them like some of the film versions of the Heat Ray.
- The news about the success of Rumble is one salient feature, with the other being that journalists have been kept out of the combat zone until the fighting has come to an end. This is one aspect of keeping the news and information war under close control
- JFK has a lot of political capital, but Universal Healthcare will use up all of it
- 250,000 year old large humanoid bones in Colorado poses a lot of questions
- The Northern Irish meteor isn't anything nasty, but the general procedure at this point is to treat everything as an act of the enemy or a dangerous alien object
- General Barrientos had an older, louder helicopter. That ended up making him lunch
- Ping? Pong!
- The RN presence mission in the Shatt al Arab is a reminder to Iraq and Persia to play nicely. Britain controls Abadan, having annexed it decades ago and has a general interest in local peace and quiet
May
- The Springfield Army Tank Plant is more modern than Detroit and Grand Blanc (GM), Marion (Ford) and Lima (Chrysler), but they will all work together for tank and armoured vehicle production. The big ace in the hole is Willow Run, which has stayed in Ford's hands and has been planned for re-conversion to military production. Springfield also has a lovely nuclear power plant and Monty Burns has a fair bit of political clout
- QM2 joins QE2, with two new White Star superliners following. The names of the latter can possibly be surmised. Historically, the Indian Summer of the ocean liner extended into the early-mid 1970s or so, prior to air travel costs lowering enough to break through. Here, that is pushed a bit further out due to the greater size of the oceans and the comfort/room provided by a ship. The American and British superliners were subsidised by their governments for potential wartime trooping use.
- The Italian 'art commandos' are historical, but here are motivated by some of the more daring art thefts out there
- Presence of a blue police box all over the place? It must be the doing of those silly university boys!
- PM de Rodriguez of Argentina is building up to something, but it will happen in stages
- The XV-21 will see some interesting use over time, as the Americans try to steal a march back on the British success with the Rotodyne and VTOL
- Governor Reagan is very popular in California and across the Western states
- Operation Ladder is an increasingly South Vietnamese show, as are many operations across South Vietnam, backed up by foreign airpower and artillery. The Hawker-Siddeley Salamander's closest @ equivalent is a combination of the Pucara and OV-1 Mohawk
- The shift from Alexandria to Tobruk occurs in stages. As said, the Suez Canal zone will remain a vital area of interest well into the 1970s
- Vampires in Melbourne is a very rare event
- The War Book is not just a collection of mobilisation plans, but a magical artifact used to carry them out. A very Dark Earth thing
- Rats disappearing from Trondheim suggests a paranormal event
- Berlin to Budapest via Prague, Vienna and Bratislava is around 870 miles, which is a fair distance for a high speed railway
- The Greeks/Byzantines have decided that they can't quite afford to retire its capital ships whilst the Turks still have theirs
- The case of the USAF mechanic going crazy after his meds mixed up with cheese and Scotch is an OTL event
- Narnia comes to the silver screen a lot sooner and in the same serious treatment and grandeur as seen in The Lord of the Rings, with appropriate tonal adjustments
- African coups in self governing countries are turning out to be a bit more difficult when the governments have some powerful big friends
- The L324 375mm Long Range Heavy Cannon is designed for heavy very long range fire support and interdiction on a mobile platform
- The return of the flight of Avengers lost over the Bermuda Triangle is very, very mysterious
- Biafra never really cooks off to the same extent
June
- There are some slight changes to the details of Charles’s investiture as Pragger Wagger and a larger TV audience…due to more people with TVs
- HMAS Melbourne has an unfortunate habit of slicing up destroyers
- This is a different Secret Army, at least in scale. It covers operations across the whole of Europe and beyond, bearing some resemblance to The Secret War, but in a dramatised format. The @ TV show will be made as ‘Lifeline’
- The 25th anniversary of D-Day is a very big event, with both Ike and Churchill being present
- North Vietnamese Foxtrots are just the start of Soviet efforts to rearm their client
- Spain really shouldn’t have played the Gibraltar game with a Britain at war under current leadership.
- Use of Cloudmakers speaks more to the end of the conflict being in sight and using up old ammunition than any dramatic escalation
- Heyerdahl and Cousteau discovering Atlantis is a very big event
- Portugal is facing increasing difficulty in Mozambique
- England has a few new players joining what is already a pretty strong England Test cricket team
- Albanian goat tragedies are a terrible thing
- Someone is responsible for tainting the Comintern’s fish eggs…
- Canada is the first Dominion and first state beyond the topline powers to begin a nuclear powered surface ship
- The Turkish Connection, or is it French, is going to be a hard one to break properly
- Burning rivers and midair collisions are sadly OTL evened
- Conventional Lance missiles are accompanied by a shorter range battlefield missile that counters the FROG-7. The Army is very interested in missiles
- Peruvian land reform is the first step towards something
- The FBI super computer will counter the emergence of a particular 1970s criminal phenomenon…
- What could be underground in the Mojave?
- Versailles hasn’t been impugned by historians to anywhere near the same extent
July
- Capricorn is designed to test air defences against the developing Soviet threat of third generation jet aircraft. The RAF in particular faces Long Range Aviation heavy bombers coming in from the Norwegian Sea, both bombers and strike aircraft from the Baltic over Scandinavia and anything that can get through the contested airspace over Germany
- Warspite’s partial reentry over Spain is quite intimidating; many nations have ships and planes, but a space battlecruiser streaking overhead is something above and beyond Spain
- US cricket continues its high profile and they are climbing the unofficial rankings of the Test nations (South Africa, England, West Indies, Australia, USA, India, Canada, New Zealand, Rhodesia, New Avalon; Ceylon, Prydain, Israel, Argentina, Ireland, Scotland and Wales are non Test playing)
- Who might be the supposed emissaries of the Incas?
- Kosmos and Orion head straight for Earth, whereas Dreadnought has her Belt mission and the Chinese are still on their way
- New British military rations are designed to cater to evolving tastes and utilise modern technologies
- Fratellini’s predictions of global cooling come from a very oblique reference to John Christopher’s 1962 novel The World in Winter, a post apocalyptic treatment of the consequences of a new ice age
- Egypt continues to contort itself towards nationalist self assertion in a paradigm that is closer to the 1930s than 1969 in @
- The US airmen hanged in Washington historically had their sentences commuted and I think one is still around
- The US Mint continues issuing of high denomination bills, as there is less of a reason not to
- The notorious Football War is worth its own story one day
- Indonesia’s campaign in Borneo and general Konfrontasi continues
- Matthew Gore’s deeds are a reference to John Wyndham’s Chocky
- Increased cattle sizes are driven by a quest for more beef and a more efficient yield. It is notable that mass feedlots are yet to take over and that it will be unlikely that huge antibiotic use in cows will develop. The bigger challenge is working out reasoning for preventing destruction of the Amazon, but the larger world does have a lot of space
- Barton’s speech on the National Plan does seem to focus on traditional industries, but consider where it is made
- The Royal engagement sparks a fair bit of interest and economic activities from souvenirs et al
- Advances in the treatment of sight issues and eye conditions will have an impact across the world; not needing glasses will occur firstly in the First World and then trickle down
- Arms talks with multiple parties will always be difficult
- Blösche was historically executed by East Germany, which didn’t have the same degree of coddling of Nazis as West Germany when it came to punishment. Here, Germany does not abolish capital punishment in 1949, which was driven in @ by a number of different factors, but continues to utilise it with widespread public support through the 1950s and 60s
- New ships and aircraft make the reinforcement of Europe in a short time truly viable
- The huge diamond found in South Africa makes the Cullinan look small in comparison
- Mention of the Cult of Cthulhu in Mexico is a worry
- JFK’s Manila Speech will later be known as the ‘Olive Branch Speech’
August
- The Chinese had the advantage of the planets being in a different position when they launched
- Progress towards an armistice in Vietnam takes time
- The Coronado Bridge is higher to allow for full sized carriers to go underneath it
- North Vietnam needs to ensure that Northern Laos is in friendly hands to get something out of the war
- California’s long range shoot is the result of 25 years of consistent advances and development in LR naval gunfire, which was at 80nm in 1946. US and British research and development is on the cusp of going a lot further
- The population of Greenfield were quite irritable in the quitting process
- Guaranteed minimum income is rather ambitious liberal program
- Elvis ends up halting an analogue to the Manson Family attacks and dealing justice to the would-be murderers
- The Congo doesn’t seem to have any easy solutions to their problems
- Use of VX against the Indonesians on the British side of the border is a very clear message to pull back while they still can
- The Argentine air and naval exercises are a sign that they want to project power a bit more, but isn’t an obvious Falklands precursor. Remember the presence of Prydain in Patagonia and how it is naturally a more concerning issue to any revanchist types in Buenos Aires; however, it is a Commonwealth Dominion of a British Empire that isn’t in retreat
- Sino-Soviet tensions shift to Sinkiang, their other major mutual border
- Increases in the numbers of dragons isn’t as vital as it once was, but is still significant
- Sultan Osman’s death is no accident
- Repairing severed spinal cords opens the door to significant advances
- Dispelling hurricanes will have some positive and negative results
- The Green Revolution really impacts India for the better
- Giving the diamond to the Crown is seen as the best step politically
- The Spanish found something off Tenerife and it does not bode well. The ocean conceals many secrets…
- Anglo-Norwegian ties are very strong, as a powerful ally an hour away is quite useful
- The Dhofar Rebellion ends up fizzling when faced by more powerful forces
- American food and fast food in general remains peripheral to British cuisine at best. Historically, hamburgers were sold from 1954 in Wimpys/Lyons without truly making a breakthrough into the mainstream of British food. Here, there has been a lag of 15 years driven by a variety of factors and there will be a continuing lack of penetration by US fast food chains
- Austria-Hungary has a very powerful soccer team
- The RAF’s operational testing of guided and heat seeking weapons is deliberately chosen for broadcast in ‘Airmen’ to get the other side thinking
- The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Central America will have a busy decade
- The first email comes earlier
- Australian mobilisation exercises highlight the need for a lot more gear and better mass transit links; military railways will be coming
September
- The Libyan coup attempt is put down with extreme prejudice. The role of British forces is a key, which ultimately does King Idris no favours and furthers the idea that he is a foreign puppet. The Crown Prince managed to escape the fate put in place for him and, at 23, has a fairly hot youthful head. He considers that the 1956 plotters in Egypt who were publicly impaled in Ismailia Square got off rather lightly. Ultimately, the Libyans and other governments need to be able to rely on their own forces and means to stay in power
- Sherlock Holmes is off on another adventure at the sprightly old age of 115
- The new IJA katanas are quite handy and their presence indicates that Japanese military practice still makes use of the sword
- Criticism of the starship program and space in general gets short shrift after the excitement of the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn and the interstellar signal. The chance of anything significant being Proxmired is nil
- Soviet involvement in air battle over Vietnam represents an escalation and also an indication that North Vietnam has been hit pretty badly
- The GI managed to find out how to get to Sesame Street, on a sunny day, no less
- Domestication of the giant deer will be followed by some other species; livestock species are being broadened
- Barnes Wallis gets to fly in his Swallow and isn't done with his designing days yet
- Project Rulison is a technical success, but there is limited demand for possibly radioactive natural gas
- Dracula actually was in Bolivia, pursuing his wicked goals wickedly
- Crash prevention enchantments at international airports will save quite a few lives, considering how many crashes occur just after take off or during landing
- Escape of the Soviet bacteriophage could have some very nasty consequences. The lab fire is suspicious as well as mysterious
- SS Manhattan's voyage is not only notable for the present, but gives a little hint on the past with the reference to the Franklin Expedition
- Something very, very strange happens after the Korean atomic research accident
- British Petroleum's supertanker orders are a huge bonus to industry in key areas, with each region/manufacturer getting 6 ships. The economic impact of the ship orders is such to provide a huge boost to shipbuilding employment and downstream industrial orders for a good 5 years in Tyneside, Clydeside, Belfast, Merseyside and Teeside, good profits and investment in larger facilities. The orders consist of 5 Batilus class sized ULCCs of 600,000t and 25 slightly smaller ships of only 300,000t capacity. This is in addition to the quite huge boon of warship orders, oil platform construction, new Floating Fortresses, spaceship components and ordinary shipbuilding. The decline of the 1970s, closures of the 1980s and the general decline of the industrial North and Scotland won’t be happening here. I’d be interested in any thoughts and opinions on the social, cultural economic and other consequences of this
- Friday and Gannon caught the mad scientist through the use of an effective dragnet
- The Knights in White Satin
- Jack Smith's swim across the Channel is 35 miles, making his achievement even greater
- The schoolboys being chased down a NYC street is a reference to The Neverending Story; they were rescued by Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne and a grouch named Oscar
- Project Knight will result in a section of heavy infantry/power armoured infantry per company, with all the capacity for heavy weapons and options that comes with that. A bit of influence from both Fallout and 40K
- The Vickers 'super jumbo jet' is at a very early stage of development, like its Boeing equivalent
- A modified lima bean from the Amazon will only be the first of a new series of staple crops
- Japanese facsimile newspapers are going to have some further development in a path not taken
- Canadian G-G Sir William Richardson brooks no nonsense from any quarter, let alone a griffon
- The Brady Bunch is seen as daring because of the blended family idea, not because of any cutting edge content
- Aussie Rules football knowledge might not be great in the reader base due to being overseas, but Fitzroy winning a premiership is a very sentimental flourish
- The L132 is a lightweight 105mm gun that is being trialed for use by certain forces. A comeback for anti-tank guns? Maybe. There is also a much lighter 75mm weapon under development (akin to ARES)
- Greg Chappell has an earlier debut
- China pulling out of the LTBT is a real spanner in the works and not expected at all
October
- The alternate Bergman film not only showcases his style, but begins Pippi’s big comeback
- Skynet is a combination of very precise recon + proto GPS + satellite communications + some other military goodies
- The six foot sheep is the consequence of a lot of selective breeding and enhancements to create an animal with a lot more 'bang for baa’
- The Haitian intervention appears to be a success on the face of it
- HFCS doesn’t make an entry into the human diet, with many positive results
- No one knows who torpedoed the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum tanker
- Exercise Scythian sees some interesting new weapons tested. The Sepoy is equivalent to a souped up Sting Ray in a heavier 'calibre', whilst Calypso is similar to some of the Saab/Bofors developments, albeit with a bit more 'oomph'.
- Turkish elections are a sign of some changes along the way
- The Soviet space launches are no major issue. There was a big historical launch burst at this time, putting 7 men into space at once. Here, there is a similarly innocent explanation, but the West doesn't know it
- The Royal Wedding Fleet Review is a very grand spectacle, befitting the occasion
- Ramesses has some scores to settle
- The Royal Wedding is earlier, for reasons of locking in an heir and securing greater old fashioned dynastic ties with other royal families and the aristocracy rather more conservative views on bachelorhood as well as coming from a genuine attraction and fondness. It will be a bit more like Victoria and Albert than the historical marriage with Diana and is seen as a great fairytale occasion
- The report on the Indianapolis UFO Incident is one that Sir Humphrey Appleby would be proud of
- Somalia was a bloodless coup historically. Here, no one much cares about Somalia to even contemplate intervention, in contrast to Libya and the Middle East. Perhaps this will pave a path for other African events
- American Motors will make a fair bit out of the Jeep
- Executions for espionage are big signs of the different times
- The Crusader begins production ahead of schedule
- Thomas Kelly’s sentence reflects the atmosphere of politics in a chillier Cold War. With a shooting conflict against the enemy within recent memory, there isn't a lot of scope or sympathy for radical views that hove too close to the Soviets. Combine that with statutory penalties and we get this situation
- The end is now clearly in sight in Vietnam
- Kolchak joins Callan, the Equalizer
- Turing is not only still around, but on the ball
- The response to the photographs of Atlantis is big. Combine the fuss over the Titanic with a genuine historical mystery that some had written off as myth
- The Royal African Lion Corps is a fearsome unit
- Coordinated vampire attacks is a fresh horror
November
- The Rhodesian gold rush will have some interesting effects on its economy
- Continuation of the rum ration is a small measure as in its diluted measure would not have any real impact on blood alcohol
- Florida's rise, like that of the Sunbelt in general, follows on large trends and technological capacity
- The final stages of the Vietnam War are akin in some ways to the last stages of the Great War - the outcome is known, the general principles of negotiation points are known and only the last few details are being wrestled over
- Marighela lives on and the circumstances indicate a much larger KGB effort
- Cassius Clay isn't invulnerable, as he was not in @. Storm is a very big and strong fellow
- The Armstrong-Whitworth Argonaut is a genuine intruder, designed to fly into Soviet airspace and engage fighters, bombers and SAM sites. It bears some resemblance in role to the F-117, but doesn't have the same stealth characteristics; it has some other features that enable its missions. Think active stealth
- Reverend Presley going after the case of missing schoolgirls is a sign that there may be success. He has a good strike rate
- The Sydney Opera House looks very different to Jørn Utzon's @ design, with the Lutyens designed building looking more like his putative Liverpool Cathedral with a bit more of the Hagia Sophia thrown in
- The Ashanti Federation (@ Ghana + Ivory Coast, with Togo likely to join and Upper Volta being intensely courted) will change its name; it is just a matter of what
- The British Atomic Energy Plan, when completed, will revolutionise British energy, reduce costs and open up a lot of industrial opportunities in a period where there was @ contraction
- The skeleton found in the Valley of Elah could well be Goliath
- Pacifying Katanga was relatively easy; the difficult part follows on
- German Army personnel are getting quite substantial active combat experience, albeit in a different type of war than that which confronts them in Europe
- The Venusian ruined 'city' opens up a load of questions
- The commander of Odessa, General Martin Hessler, is Robert Shaw's character from The Battle of the Bulge
- Ceylon spaceport operations meet with approval from Arthur C. Clarke
- Entebbe Airport will likely not have a certain future event occur there
- Professor Tenma's robotic creation may well be known as Astro Boy
- New British television stations will result in some distinctly different developments
- The PFI is the Su-27 and the PLFI is the MiG-29
- José María Arguedas doesn't end up knocking himself off prior to his novel being published
December
- The Chronicles of Narnia goes on a lot longer and has a slightly different ending to @. C.S. Lewis lives a fair bit longer as well
- The CIA may well be barking up the wrong tree regarding the Emperor of China and their guesses multiply from there
- Getting the Simon Bolivar free will cost a lot and the Venezuelans aren't the most flush with cash at the present. Who could benefit from the accident?
- Willy Wonka's competition and its results will be a bit different
- The Thai Royal Rainmaking Project is a response to quite a bit of drought, enough to get the King's attention. An admirably hands-on monarch
- Frosty the Snowman is thankfully a benign creation
- The Soviet position in Tehran will be rejected, based on the last article
- Tolkien winning a Nobel for Literature gives him recognition in his lifetime
- The prospect of Yukio Mishima rising to the leadership of Japan is an ...interesting... one
- German arms exports have a market in countries that fall between East and West
- Finding an invisible boy in Trieste is naturally a difficult task
- The Department of Magic picks up on some strange portents, which point towards what happens on December 31
- Soviet atomic locomotives are an interesting development. Every major power had a go at designing atomic trains in @, so here, the most likely suspect comes out with a very special one
- The attempted French tea theft is an absolutely dastardly crime has been prevented. It would have struck at the very heart of Britain and the Empire; it is a very big store, spread out over Britain and points abroad, comprising a 5 year supply of tea for a country of over 130 million people. It has been built up (and rotated) for over fifteen years. The two gangsters are sentenced to lengthy terms of imprisonment, with full deprivation of coffee and breadstuffs; they are to be fed from an exclusively English menu
- Norway getting in on North Sea oil will pay off for them
- MIRVing ICBMs/LRBMs complicates strategic calculus
- A successful cure for the Shaking Palsy, or Parkinson's Disease, will help a lot of people
- The Tomb of Nefertiti has a lot of goodies
- Congolese confusion is part farce, part reflection on the degeneration into chaos
- Oh yes, USS Enterprise goes missing
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jemhouston
- Posts: 4191
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
My Grandfather was on the trial of Levodopa, so a treatment for Parkinson's is welcome news.
The nice thing about liners, getting there is half the fun.
Who was the captain of the Enterprise when it went missing? I don't suppose Pete Mitchell's father was on it?
The nice thing about liners, getting there is half the fun.
Who was the captain of the Enterprise when it went missing? I don't suppose Pete Mitchell's father was on it?
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Simon Darkshade
- Posts: 1127
- Joined: Thu Nov 17, 2022 10:55 am
Re: Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969
When there is mention of a successful development of a cure, it is an interesting aspect of what will flow on as a result; think of the lives no longer shortened by cancer or those whose twilight years aren’t blighted by Parkinson’s. There is more to come.
(As a side note, what might a cure for cancer do to smoking rates?)
Liners do allow the passengers to take their trip in luxury, with the cross over that occurred ~15 years earlier in @ now hitting.
In command of Enterprise was Captain Elisha ‘Smokey’ Stover; better known in @ as the late ‘Smokey from Arkansas’ in the 1944 documentary ‘The Fighting Lady’. Duke Mitchell was KIA in 1965.
(As a side note, what might a cure for cancer do to smoking rates?)
Liners do allow the passengers to take their trip in luxury, with the cross over that occurred ~15 years earlier in @ now hitting.
In command of Enterprise was Captain Elisha ‘Smokey’ Stover; better known in @ as the late ‘Smokey from Arkansas’ in the 1944 documentary ‘The Fighting Lady’. Duke Mitchell was KIA in 1965.