Dark Earth Timeline Discussion

[Bernard Woolley]

Don't you DARE have England win the FIFA World Cup again

Can you imagine what they’d be like? There’d be no living with them!

[Simon Darkshade]

It is quite within the realms of possibility for them to win further World Cups, to go with 1966, at some stage from 1978 forward. It isn’t the same England team in terms of the media or supporter culture as was brought up by Jotun back in 2016 or so.

History of the DE World Cup to date:

1970: Brazil d Germany 4-3
1966: England d France 4-2
1962: England d Brazil 4-2
1958: Brazil d Sweden 5-4
1954: Germany d Austria-Hungary 4-3
1950: England d Brazil 3-2
1938: Austria-Hungary d Italy 3-1
1934: England d Italy 5-2
1930: Britain d Argentina 4-0 (Unified Home Nations due to Depression)

[Bernard Woolley]

If you want to include something that really shows that DE is a realm of magic, have Scotland qualify for the second round!

[Simon Darkshade]

Reading up on 1978, even if the same teams qualify, there is no guarantee that Scotland will get the same draw of Peru, Iran (still Persia in DE) and the Dutch, as there will likely be a different qualifying 16 (if for no other reason than the absence of separate Austria and Hungary). Looking at that performance, getting through to the second round isn’t that difficult to engineer.

[Simon Darkshade]

January 1974
January 1: A party of four British food writers, as part of a promotion by Barclaycard, order a 32 course dinner costing £10,000 at Rules in London, with one remarking afterwards that they may have overdone things ever so slightly, before being felled by an immediate attack of gout.
January 2: Completion of the USSF orbital space station Independence, completing the network consisting of Liberty, United States and Columbia. Plans for the new NASA and USSF 'Space Shuttle', an atomic powered spaceplane designed to link the orbital stations with the moons, call for the construction of 50 Shuttles at $500 million apiece over the next 12 years.
January 3: Sub-Inspector Bajirao Singham of the Imperial Indian Police defeats a gang of thugs in a skirmish near the border with Goa, beating the miscreants with a lamp post he plucked from the ground.
January 4: Exercise Stopwatch, a surprise test of the emergency mobilisation and deployment of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force's fighter defences begins in the British Isles, with a total of 624 de Havilland Spectres, 972 Hawker-Siddeley Hunters, 528 Supermarine Sunstars, 432 English Electric Lightnings, 576 Gloster Javelins and 648 Fairey Deltas successfully taking part in the first day of the exercise.
January 5: Over eighty people are feared drowned in the capsizing of a ferry in a storm off the coast of Bagacay Point, Cebu in the Philippines.
January 6: The Global Television Network begins broadcasting in Canada as the fourth major national television network after CBC, the Canadian Television Network and the Imperial Broadcasting Company, with coast to coast coverage provided by the new Global Television System satellite.
January 7: Beginning of what will later be dubbed the 'Gombe Chimpanzee War' in Tanganyika, with primatologist Jane Goodall observing the first skirmish between two rival groups of Eastern chimpanzees following on from a meteor shower three days earlier, with both groups displaying some advanced use of tools, makeshift weapons and elementary tactics beyond their previously demonstrated capacity.
January 8: A meeting of the National Intercollegiate Athletic Association rejects a motion to delegates to alter the blanket ban on allowing any professional payments for athletes engaged in multiple sports, maintaining the strict amateur ethos that has governed the association since its establishment in 1904.
January 9: The British Army of the Rhine and RAF Germany begin a rolling series of winter exercises across Western Germany, the Low Countries and France, involving participation of the Army’s new Field Forces, testing of advanced missile systems and the fielding of new armoured vehicles by the attached Commonwealth Corps.
January 10: France conducts an underground nuclear test deep in the Sahara Desert in Algeria, with the new warhead for the S5 heavyweight LRBM yielding 4.2 megatons.
January 11: Lord Lucan, best known of late for his April 1972 Buenos Aires kidnapping and newly returned from the Argentine to London, takes up a new position with his longtime acquaintance Lord Godalming's secretive association dedicated to the protection of the night, the Carfax Circle.
January 12: Ethiopian adventurers report that they may have discovered the lost tomb of Prester John high in the Hindu Kush in the borderlands between Tibet, India and Shangri-La. Curiously, they identify the presence of what seem to be Khmer artifacts about the floor of the antechamber and what appear to be both Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan glyphs on the as-yet impenetrable door to the tomb itself.
January 13: In an upset at Rice Stadium in Texas, the Minnesota Vikings are defeated by the Wyoming Mustangs 10-7 at Super Bowl VIII, in a game noted for the increasing frustration of fans at the ongoing reforms and safety measures put in place by the National Football League.
January 14: The Hawker-Siddeley Hawk enters service with the Commonwealth air forces as part of the joint training units of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, with over 1000 jets to be procured by the RAF and RN alone. Powered by a Rolls-Royce Eden turbofan with 12500lbf of thrust (20000lbf reheat) to a top speed of Mach 1.6, the Hawk is described as having a combat radius of 500 miles when configured as a light fighter.
January 15: A panel of document historians, cartographers and experts from the Great Library of Alexandria confirm the authenticity of the Vinland Map, with certain features corresponding to several of the Piri Reis maps, creating quite the conundrum for historians.
January 16: Release of Charlemagne, an expansive 287 minute historical epic directed by Franco Zeffirelli on the life of the King of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor, starring Christopher Lee in the title role, Frank Finlay as Alcuin of York, Robert Shaw as Pepin the Short, Omar Sharif as Harun al-Rashid, Harry Andrews as Einhard, Stanley Baker as Desiderius, Charlton Heston as Pope Leo III and Robert Redford as Roland.
January 17: Communist guerrillas from the M-19 group break into the Quinta de Bolivar in Bogotá and steal the magic sword of Simon Bolivar from its locked display case, leaving a cryptic note behind. The Grandmaster of the Bolivarian Knights in Caracas orders that a special circle of sworn brother knights be dispatched to recover the blade lest the Prophecy of Mandingas come to pass.
January 18: A special team of Polish industrial sorcerers and wiedźmin seconded to the Wyższy Urząd Górniczy report that they have successfully extinguished a hexed coal fire burning since 1933.
January 19: The British Ministry of Housing issues a report on the completion of slum clearance across the United Kingdom, with further New City and New Town construction to be coordinated to accommodate natural population growth and relocation from the largest metropolises of London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Dublin and the Yorkshire conurbation of Leeds and Sheffield. It reaffirms the standing policy against the high rise blocks of flats seen in the USA, Soviet Union, Japan and parts of Europe, with the restrictions of (and statutory exceptions to) the London Building Act and National Building Height Act being seen as being fit for purpose.
January 20: A spokesdwarf for the Football Association indicates that the FA continues to absolutely refuses to consider a proposal for soccer matches on Sundays, in line with the strong public backing for the maintenance of the Sabbath and the lack of any apparent capacity for exceptions within current legislation.
January 21: Communist terrorists of the Argentine People's Revolutionary Army assault an Army barracks in Azul, Buenos Aires Province, killing the commanding colonel before being driven off by heavy counterattack. Argentine Premier Rodriguez declares in a televised address to the nation that the outrage represented "more than a crime, but the clearest of attacks against our people and our beloved motherland, requiring the strongest and most vigorous of responses."
January 22: Broadcast of the first episode of The War Game, a charming BBC children’s television drama about a mock battle between children of two neighbouring towns, using ‘artillery’ (ingenious homemade cannons firing paint-filled water balloons), toy tanks, cavalry charges, ambushes and several substantive trenches.
January 23: Villagers in Llandrillo, Denbighshire, report a strange series of flashing lights in the sky immediately before a small earthquake in the nearby Berwyn Mountains. A wizened local wag was heard to quip that 'Perhaps the Army has gone and captured one of them there newfangled UFO thingamadoobers!”
January 24: The 1974 Empire Games in Christchurch are opened by His Royal Highness Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, with over 3200 athletes to compete in 204 events from 25 sports and disciplines.
January 25: The Soviet Union conducts a test launch of a new long range ballistic missile from a test facility deep within the USSR to a target range in the Northern Pacific Ocean. It is suspected that the new UR-500 is capable of carrying up to 20 multiple independent reentry vehicles.
January 26: Police in Reykjavik uncover a drained body whilst searching for missing labourer Guðmundur Einarsson and fear that this might be indicative of the first vampire attack in Iceland's history. A number of telegrams requesting assistance are sent out to the United States, Rome, London and Amsterdam.
January 27: A party of adventurers lead by Sir Charles Ratcliffe defeat an occultist named Sardo Numspa in High Tibet, thwarting the attempts of his cult to sacrifice a young boy hailed by monks as a 'Golden Child'.
January 28: Over 12,000 armed peasants block roads in Cochabamba Department, Bolivia, in protest against the rapidly rising cost of staple foods. The Bolivian Premier orders the deployment of the Army in response, suspecting that this is the latest manifestation of the long running communist insurgency of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia lead by the elusive Adolfo González.
January 29: Publication of a British Government White Paper on a raft of proposed reforms to pension schemes, with the chief measure proposed being a phased universal introduction of superannuation schemes with compulsory employer contributions; this would be underpinned by the universal old age pension, which would remain non-means tested.
January 30: Acting on intelligence from sources within the communist guerilla movements, aerospace imagery and arcane prediction, a Rhodesian SAS and Selous Scouts strike force supported by RRAF Hunters, Tornadoes and Warspites, stages a raid on a rebel camp in Angola, which was hosting a meeting of the various factions in the ongoing Bush War. Operation Taxman results in a complete success, killing or capturing all of the leadership targets present and acting to decapitate the enemy effort.
January 31: A report by the US Department of the Interior estimates the potential economic value of the prospective mineral deposits around South Park, Colorado as being over $32 billion, which could have a transformative impact on the Coloradan and national economies. The presence of an endangered group of duck like creatures in the heavily forested mountains nearby is described as not seriously impeding the prospects for the development of the cluster of mines.

[Simon Darkshade]

The 32 course meal outlined above on January 1st, as a preliminary to further notes incoming. Some of the wines/spirits are DE only varieties, but I’ve tried to put together a decent list of ones that go with the food. At even a single glass per course, along with the rather rich cooking (heavy on butter, cream, truffles etc), the acute attack of gout is not too much in the realm of the literary flourish. Recipes available on enquiry.

1st Amuse Bouche
Smoked Scottish Salmon and North Sea Whitebait
1912 Grand Muscat

2nd Hors d'oeuvre
Beluga Caviar
Oysters Ratcliffe
1899 Schloss Johannisberger Riesling

3rd Consommé
Beef Consommé Royale
1949 Chateau de Rene Beaujolais

4th Bisque
Scottish Lobster Bisque
1925 Grand Cru Chablis

5th Eggs
Eggs Drumkilbo
1954 Rubis d'Egypt Rosé

6th Rice
Imperial Rice Pudding
1950 Sancerre

7th Seafood
Cornish Dressed Crab and Welsh Mussels
1889 Krug Champagne

8th Fish
Dover Sole Meuniere with Potted Shrimps, Anchovy Butter and Potatoes Dauphinoise
1910 Pol Roger Brut

9th Lobster
Lobster a la Renaissance (Cream, Brandy, Bearnaise Sauce, English Mustard, Garlic, Lemon, Roasted Tomatoes, Parmesan and Cheddar)
1925 South African Chardonnay

10th Salad
English Salad
1930 Alsatian Gewürztraminer

11th Poultry Entrée
Pheasant Royale Buckingham
1925 Chateau Lafite‐Rothschild

12th Meat Entrée
Rack of Welsh Lamb with Mint Sauce
1952 Penfolds Grange Hermitage

13th Meat Entrée
Prime Scottish Beef Fillet with Béarnaise Sauce, Foie Gras and Silver Truffle
1932 Chateau Mouton Rothschild

14th Sorbet
Strawberry Champagne Sorbet and Persian Lemon Sherbet
1924 Moscato d'Asti

15th Game
Roast Saddle of Scottish Venison with Cumberland Sauce
1935 Chateau Petrus Merlot

16th First Releve
Roast Haunch of Lyonesse Wild Boar with Shireapple Sauce
1925 Brunello di Montalcino

17th Second Releve
Roast Sirloin of English Beef and Yorkshire Pudding with Bone Marrow Gravy
1936 Romanée Conti

18th Second Roast
Roast Chicken with Bread Sauce, Bacon, Redcurrant Jelly and Sauce William
1950 Côtes du Rhône Villages Sablet

19th First Roast
Roast Goose with Apple Sauce and Sage and Onion Stuffing
1954 Morey-Saint-Denis Premier Cru Burgundy

20th Vegetable
Lyonesse Silver Asparagus with Chantilly Sauce
1959 Prydainian Semillon Sauvignon Blanc

21st Punch
Punch Romaine

22nd Grand Salad
Salmagundi Royale
1952 Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo

23rd Aspic
Galantine of Irish Veal in Aspic
1950 Lyonesse Silvaner

24th Cold Buffet
Canadian Salmon Mayonnaise
1964 Verdigny Sancerre

25th Sweets
Kentish Apple, Pear and Cherry Tart
1950 Chateau d'Yquem Sauternes

26th Ices
Lyonesse Peaches with Iced Cream
1932 Imperial Tokay

27th Savouries
Canapes Ivanhoe in Bacon, Welsh Rarebit, Devilled Prawns
1956 New Zealand Carménère

28th Dessert
Macédoine of Fruits in Jelly
Mousse of Strawberry a la Reine
1928 Azure Islands Skywine

29th Pudding
Plum Pudding with English Custard, Clotted Cream and Brandy Sauce
1874 Ruby Port

30th Sweetmeats
Honeyed Marzipan and Turkish Delight
1850 Madeira

31st Friandice
Venusian Wilderberry Cakes
Chocolate liqueurs
1836 Tawny Port

32nd Cheese and Fruit
West Indian Tropical Fruit Salad
Stilton
1824 Glastonbury Abbey English Brandy

The event is based upon this historical dinner, held at Chez Denis in 1975 sponsored by American Express: https://www.nytimes.com/1975/11/14/arch ... -4000.html

"And so, we sat down to our $4,000 dinner. The hors d'oeuvre was presented: fresh Beluga caviar in crystal, enclosed in shaved ice, with toast. The wine was a superb 1966 Champagne Comtesse Marie de France.

Then came the first service, which started with three soups. There was consomme Denis an inordinately good, rich, full‐bodied, clear consomme of wild duck with shreds of fine crepes and herbs. It was clarified with raw duck and duck bones and then lightly thickened as many classic soups are, with fine tapioca. The second soup (still of the first service) was a creme Andalouse, an outstanding cream of tomato soup with shreds of sweet pimento and fines herbes, including fresh chives and chervil. The first two soups were superb but the third, cold germiny (a cream of sorrel), seemed bland and anticlimactic. One spoonful of that sufficed.

The only wine served at this point was a touch of champagne. The soups having been disposed of, we moved on to a spectacularly delicate parfait of sweetbreads, an equally compelling mousse of quail in a small tarte, and a somewhat salty, almost abrasive but highly complementary tarte of Italian ham, mushrooms and a border of truffles.

The wine was a 1918 Chateau Latour, and it was perhaps the best bordeaux we had ever known. It was very much alive, with the least trace of tannin.

The next segment of the first service included a fascinating dish that the proprietor said he had created. Belon oysters broiled quickly in the shell and served with a pure beurre blanc, the creamy, lightly thickened butter sauce.

Also in this segment were a lobster in a creamy, cardinal‐red sauce that was heavily laden with chopped truffles and, after that, another startling but excellent dish, a sort of Proveneale pie made with red mullet and baked with tomato, black olives and herbs, including fennel or anise seed, rosemary, sage and thyme.

The accompanying wine was 1969 Montrachet Baron Thenard. which was extraordinary (to our taste, all first‐rate Montrachet whites are extraordinary).

The final part of the first service consisted of what was termed filets et sots l'y laissent de poulard de Bresse, sauce supreme aux copes (the so‐called “fillet” strips of chicken plus the “oysters” found in the afterbackbone of chicken blended in cream sauce containing sliced wild mushrooms).

There followed another curious but oddly appealing dish, a classic chartreuse of partridge, the pieces of roasted game nested in a bed of cooked cabbage and baked in a mosaic pattern, intricately styled, of carrot and turnip cut into fancy shapes and a tender rare‐roasted fillet of Limousin beef with a rich truffle sauce. The wine with the meat and game was a 1928 Chateau Mouton Rothschild. It was ageless and beautiful.

The first service finally ended with sherbets in three flavors—raspberry, orange and lemon. The purpose of this was to revive the palate for the second service, and it did. We were two hours into the meal and going at the food, it seemed, at a devilish pace.

The second service included the ortolans en brochette, an element of the dinner to be anticipated with a relish almost equal to that of the caviar or the foie gras.

The small birds, which dine on berries through their brief lives, are cooked whole, with the head on, and without cleaning except for removing the feathers. They are as fat as butter and an absolute joy to bite into because of the succulence of the flesh. Even the bones, except for the tiny leg bones, are chewed and swallowed. There is one bird to bite.

The second service also included fillets of wild duck en salmis in a rich brown game sauce. The final dish in this segment was a rognonade de veau, or roasted boned loin of veal wrapped in puff pastry with fresh black truffles about the size of golf balls. The vegetables served were pommes Anna—the potatoes cut into small rounds and baked in butter—and a puree rachel, a purée of artichokes.

Then came the cold meat delicacies. There was butter‐rich fresh foie gras in clear aspic, breast meat of woodcocks that was cooked until rare and served with a natural chaudfroid, another aspic and cold pheasant With fresh hazelnuts. The wines for this segment consisted of a 1947 Chateau Lafite‐Rothschild, a 1961 Chateau Petrus and the most magnificent wine of the evening, a 1929 Romanée Conti. The dinner drew near an end with three sweets—a cold glazed charlotte with strawberries, an fle flottante and poires alma. The wine for the sweets was a beautiful unctuous 1928 Chateau d'Yquem, which was quite sweet yet “dry.”

The last service consisted of the pastry confections and fruits, served with an 1835 madeira. With coffee came a choice of a 100‐year‐old calvados or an hors d'age cognac.

And for the $4,000, logic asks if was a perfect meal in all respects? The answer is no.

The crystal was Baccarat and the silver was family sterling, but the presentation of the dishes, particularly the cold dishes such as the sweetbread parfait and .quail mousse tarte, was mundane. The foods were elegant to look at, but the over‐all display was undistinguished, if not to say shabby. The chartreuse of pheasant, which can he displayed stunningly, was presented on a most ordinary dish. The food itself was generally exemplary, although there were regrettable lapses there, too. The lobster in the gratin was chewy and even the sauce could not compensate for that. The oysters, of necessity,.. had to be cooked as briefly as possible to prevent toughening, but the beurre blanc should have been very hot. The dish was almost lukewarm when it reached the table, and so was the chartreuse of pheasant.

We've spent many hours reckoning the cost of the meal and find that we cannot break it down. We have decided this: We feel we could not have made a better choice, given the circumstance of time and place. Mr. Denis declined to apply a cost to each of the wines, explaining that they contributed greatly to the total cost of the meal because it was necessary to open three bottles. of the 1918 Latour in order to find one in proper condition.

Over all, it was an unforgettable evening and we have high praise for Claude Mornay, the 37‐year‐old genius behind the meal. We reminded ourselves of one thing during the course of that evening: If you were Henry VIII, Lucullus, Gargantua and Bacchus, all rolled into one, you cannot possibly sustain, start to finish, a state of ecstasy while dining on a series of 31 dishes. Wines, illusion or not, became increasingly interesting, although we were laudably sober at the end of the meal. "

[Simon Darkshade]

January 1974 Notes
- The Shuttle programme is a lot larger, reflecting the greater advances made in space. Ultimately, their role is going to be as very regular freight runs for the long term starship construction project; no one really gets the scale of what they are trying to do yet in its entirety. They are not the @ shuttles
- Singham is from a very Indian movie of that name
- Stopwatch, coming soon after Christmas and New Year, highlights the capacity of the RAuxAF, a slightly different reserve structure, and the type of aircraft in the second line of Britain’s air defences
- Something different is going on with the chimps
- The position regarding amateur and professional athletes in the USA is different
- Field Forces, similar to @, are independent (reinforced) brigades with their own organic logistical support. There is a goal to develop them as intermediate level formations for some theatres and circumstances
- France is trying very hard to keep up with the big boys
- Lord Lucan, Vampire Hunter
- Haile Selassie’s men are onto something rather interesting…
- Gridiron is going through a rough patch
- The H-S Hawk is quite the capable little plane, with trainer units based on Britain having some mobilisation roles as point defence fighters
- The Vinland Map isn’t a fraud here
- Surprisingly, there have never been any major motion pictures made about Charlemagne in the English speaking world in @. Having Christopher Lee in the title role is an Easter Egg some will understand
- Stealing the sword was a bad move
- Even Communist Poland still has witchers
- Slum clearance complete without tower blocks is another bit of difference, which some might view as better
- The FA’s spokesdwarves do not take kindly to rude journalists, and have taken to wearing their axes to conferences, as a purely ceremonial measure, of course
- There is something of a game of mirrors going on in the Argentine
- The War Game will join Threads as wholesome family entertainment with a happy moral for children and adults alike
- There is nothing to see in Llandrillo. Move on, please
- The Empire Games (@ British Commonwealth Games) are substantially larger
- Moscow is starting to catch up a bit, but they face defences that are about to experience a generational shift
- Rather than being the start of a notorious miscarriage of justice, events in Iceland are going to turn out differently
- An earlier manifestation of the Golden Child results in different rescuers
- Curious stuff in Bolivia. Gonzalez looks strangely familiar
- British private and state pensions start to shift in a different direction; as stated, this is distinct from the OAP
- The Rhodesian Army hits the jackpot
- As well as mining, the newly founded South Park Tourism Office declares that there are “Friendly faces everywhere, “ample parking, day or night” and “humble folks without temptation”

[Rocket J Squrriel]

<looks at the 32 course dinner>



I could do justice to this meal but it would be over the course of a week because I don't wish to 'sample' each item. It would be disrespectful to the chef and kitchen to waste their work.

[Simon Darkshade]

The 31 or 32 courses is very much a formal flourish never seen on practical menus; it also needs to be taken into account that the multiple fish, entrees and releves is very much a creature of this (and the @ Chez Denis) contrived dinners, where usually they would be grouped together in single entries

Looking back, there were a couple of 21 course menus at special events in the 19th century, but in general practice in America, Britain and France, this shrank down to ~ 12 (by way of some dalliances around 14 to 15) by the height of the Edwardian Indian Summer that was the only voyage of the Titanic.

By having 4 diners, I was able to (theoretically) do a bit more justice to the dishes than the @ pair of American journalists, allowing some dishes to be prepared on a more reasonable level with less potential wastage. Courses 10-12 and 15-20 naturally came with appropriate vegetables.

[bobbins66]

I imagine that in OTL it was more like a modern tasting menu? Whereas in DE with their greater appetite and metabolism it would be a true feast?

[Simon Darkshade]

It wasn’t quite a modern tasting menu, as this was before the tiny portions of horrid nouvelle cuisine, and was rather a properly sized meal of grande cuisine. It was originally designed for 4 diners, which influenced my DE number of participants, but had only 10 wines; I deduce from Clairborne’s writing that they didn’t have entire bottles per man, but between them.