Re: Dark Earth Timeline Discussion
Posted: Wed Feb 05, 2025 2:41 pm
July
July 1: A mass strike of NFL players begins during a pay and conditions impasse in the lead up to summer training camps, with some team owners beginning to talk of mass sackings as a response to the strike.
July 2: BBC’s Panorama carries a feature on the impact of the North Sea and Irish Sea oil rig construction boom on the British shipbuilding industry, which, along with extensive orders for supertankers, bulk carriers and container ships, and new modules for the Floating Fortresses, is experiencing record breaking growth and performance.
July 3: Sweden defeats Germany 5-4 in a thrilling Soccer World Cup semi-final in Berlin, whilst England upset the Netherlands 3-2 in the corresponding final in Munich, setting up an enticing final between the aging English and the burgeoning Scandinavian juggernauts, whose fast running and high scoring game has won many plaudits across the tournament.
July 4: USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer successfully raises a portion of the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 containing cryptographic machinery, code books, nuclear armed torpedoes and her three SS-N-5 Serb SLBMs.
July 5: The Soviet ambassadors to the United States, Britain and France pass on official notes indicating that the Soviet Union is giving notice of its right of withdrawal from the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, under Article V of the Treaty, citing the need to conduct a limited but unspecified series of underwater and partially atmospheric tests at some point in the near future. NSA and GCHQ sources note an increased amount of signals traffic occurring between Moscow and certain closed cities in the Northern Urals, whilst a British source alleges that the withdrawal is actually preemptive cover for the eventuality of a need to use thermonuclear weapons against certain facilities with the USSR which have had...issues...of late.
July 6: Opening of the Arlberg Road Tunnel under the Arlberg Mountains between Tyrol to Vorarlburg by Kaiser Otto. It is the longest road tunnel in the world at just over 14 miles and capable of allowing 5000 vehicles per hour to pass through it, with over 10,000 dwarven engineers and tunnellers having completed the structure in eighteen months.
July 7: Sweden win the Soccer World Cup Final, beating slight favourites England 4-2 in front over 200,000 spectators in Berlin in a commanding display of attacking soccer, with the margin made slightly more acceptable by a late goal by retiring champion Duncan Edwards.
July 8: Over 50 leading NFL players have their contracts cancelled in a concerted response to perceived ring leaders in the player's strike. The firm action has an unexpected immediate effect, with students scheduled to play in the College All-Star Game voting not to practice until the strike is resolved.
July 9: A lawsuit filed by the National Organisation for Women in the New Jersey Superior Court on behalf of a 13 year old girl for the opening of Little League Baseball to girls is resolved, with the court finding in favour of the defendant, citing previous precedents from higher courts whereby provision of separate and equal programmes is seen as being in compliance with legal obligations. An accompanying amicus brief filed on behalf of a purported organsation known as GROSS is dismissed without being heard.
July 10: Merger of Knight Newspapers and Rider Publications to form America’s largest newspaper company, Knight-Ridder; the revenue of the new conglomerate is expected to help offset the recent investments of sister-company Knight Industries in the Knight Industries Two Thousand, a new intelligent computing engine fitted in a special robotic automobile.
July 11: A Sikh marksman of the Indian Army's Corps of Guides records the longest sniper shot on record during operations against revolting tribesmen in the foothills around the Khyber Pass on the North West Frontier, destroying a machine gun nest with an L79 25mm heavy automatic rifle at 2987 yards.
July 12: The South African Ministry of Home and Internal Affairs publishes a white paper on the implications of the 1970 Census. The population of 36,967,276 (now estimated to be over 40 million with subsequent growth over the intervening years) consisted of 16,524,811 Blacks, 15,236,367 Whites (over 10 million being of Anglo-South African, British or European extraction, with the Afrikaner fraction of the population continuing to steadily shrink), 2,489,425 Coloured, 2,216,422 Indians and 500,251 Orientals (principally Chinese and Malays), with immigration trends indicating that a white plurality may be reached at some point prior to 1980, if it has not already, but strong Black African birth rates are expected to continue over that time.
July 13: The Home Office declines an application for a construction permit for a proposed new mosque in London, citing potential inconsistency with the Supremacy of the Crown Act 1562 and the additional precedent of the recent refusal for a similar permit for the establishment of a Mormon tabernacle. The total number of mosques in Britain remains two, consisting of those in Woking and Southfields, built in 1965 and 1970 respectively.
July 14: Commissioning of USS Pegasus, the first in a new class of hydrofoil Fast Attack Strike Craft designed expressly for littoral operations, particularly around the Americas and Eurasia. The Pegasus class is the first of several new lighter surface combatants whose development was first postulated in the Torry Plan of 1963, named after then CNO Admiral Rockwell Torry, with the others being the Navy's first dedicated corvette design, the 2500t New London class, and the intermediate multipurpose 1200t Hawk class Light Combat Sloop.
July 15: A joint study by the government of North Vietnam and the Soviet advisory mission indicates that the state will need to at least 10 years to recover from the damage of the war, with full modernisation of her industrial capacity and rearmament likely to take longer than that.
July 16: France conducts a hybrid underwater/underground thermonuclear test at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, with a new 50kt warhead for a multipurpose submarine launched missile performing satisfactorily.
July 17: President Reagan gives a speech from the Oval Office on the recent successes of America's journey into space, providing an update to the American people on the planned expansion in size and role of both NASA and the USSF, and setting very ambitious goals for the decades to come. One interesting section sees the apparent canvasing of free world cooperation with the British, French, Germans, Italians and Europe on the U.S. starship project.
July 18: A group of Korean dissidents are sentenced to lengthy periods of imprisonment for sedition by a civilian court over a recent wave of demonstrations in what is regarded as harsh sentences, but not approaching the crushing ones desired by the military and the government.
July 19: The Egyptian Ministry of Defence begins a new review of the next steps in its ongoing armament, expansion and modernisation programme, with an unspoken aim of diluting the relative political power of certain current commands and officers who regard the ongoing British Imperial presence in the Suez Canal Zone as something of an imposition upon future ambitions.
July 20: HM Treasury report that major British economic indicia have now exceeded their expected levels prior to last year’s recession, with new jobs up by 5.2% in the second quarter, house construction exceeding projections with 375,922 new dwellings over the same time, and exports of electronics, cars, aircraft, machine tools, textiles , ships and North Sea oil and gas and petrochemicals all showing very strong growth. The potential for future export of British electricity to the Continent also provides for further positive projections.
July 21: An informal transatlantic air race occurs between strategic reconnaissance planes of the USAF and RAF, with a SAC SR-71 Blackbird scheduled to deploy to RAF Fairford from Griffiss AFB and a Bomber Command Bristol Bluebird scheduled to make an appearance at an air show in Kansas both agreeing to synchronise their take offs. The Blackbird wins relatively comfortably by 38 minutes.
July 22: Vampire hunters affiliated with SOE, operating clandestinely behind the Iron Wall in Communist Romania, report that investigations of the infamous Castle Duckula, home for many centuries to a dreadful dynasty of vicious vampire ducks, have uncovered that an undead scion of the Duckulas has apparently been restored to existence. The team, headed by noted hero Captain Fantastic and including an undercover surrealistic music hall band, reports that this latest reincarnation has not run according to plan, and that tentative contacts have been made with the vegetarian Count Duckula; a preliminary offer of a recurring role on a British variety television show, such as The Two Ronnies, in return for cooperation in operations against both the Soviets and other nosferatu (such as his more humanoid namesake) has apparently been received with much interest.
July 23: Completion of the expansion of the British Commonwealth base complex on Cyprus, with two new airfields, a number of missile silos and a large SAGW installation in the centre of the island adding to the facilities of the great Imperial bastion of the Eastern Mediterranean.
July 24: Quarterly oil and gas revenue from fields on and around the Falkland Islands passes £40 million for the first time, with some locals ruminating on the societal consequences of the influx of new workers to what had been quite an insular community of but 30,000.
July 25: General Alexander Haig is promoted to Supreme Allied Commander Europe, with General George Patton IV assigned command of Seventh Army, controlling US Army forces in Germany, and by extension command of CENTAG. Plans to stand up a separate U.S. Army field army in Austria-Hungary under SOUTHAG, mooted by Reagan Administration officials last year, continue to be finalised.
July 26: Criminal Paul Knowles seriously injures a Jacksonville prison guard whilst attempting to escape from a Florida jail. He subsequently attempts to confess to a number of murders in California, which cannot be proved, and is tried and sentenced to a total of 25 years imprisonment for assault, attempting to escape and aggravated battery.
July 27: A delayed broadcast from the Soviet Kosmos 17 spacecraft en route to Neptune is aired on the All Union Programme of Soviet television, with Mission Commander Alexei Leonov and his bridge crew of Vladimir Komarov, Valentin Bondarenko and Georgy Dobrovolsky showing the audience the bridge, scientific module, crew quarters and engineering module of the Kosmos in their 20 minute telecast.
July 28: Spanish aircraft carrier Purísima Concepción apparently spots the Flying Dutchman whilst moving to conduct flight qualifications off the Canary Islands.
July 29: British and Canadian agronomistic research wizards produce a new series of ‘super strains’ of staple crops after a five year experimental project costing over £600 million. Special varieties of wheat, barley, corn, rice, potatoes, oats, spelt, amaranth, rye and bulgur that are highly disease resistant and produce yields upwards of 250% of current leading seeds offer the potential for the widescale elimination of most modern incidences of famine, in concert with the incredible advances made under the Green Revolution.
July 30: A special conference of a sub-committee of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington D.C. agrees upon a raft of logistical cooperation arrangements between the military forces of the USA and the British Commonwealth, with field rations, personal equipment, war machines, and tactical signals equipment being the first to be addressed. It is considered that the advantages of coordinated production and some degree of relevant standardisation are even more marked given recent projections of the probability of a more protracted and largely conventional war due to ongoing scientific advances.
July 31: Boeing completes the 4256th and final Minuteman long range ballistic missile (LRBM), a Minuteman V destined for the 820th Strategic Aerospace Division at Volk AFB, Wisconsin.
July 1: A mass strike of NFL players begins during a pay and conditions impasse in the lead up to summer training camps, with some team owners beginning to talk of mass sackings as a response to the strike.
July 2: BBC’s Panorama carries a feature on the impact of the North Sea and Irish Sea oil rig construction boom on the British shipbuilding industry, which, along with extensive orders for supertankers, bulk carriers and container ships, and new modules for the Floating Fortresses, is experiencing record breaking growth and performance.
July 3: Sweden defeats Germany 5-4 in a thrilling Soccer World Cup semi-final in Berlin, whilst England upset the Netherlands 3-2 in the corresponding final in Munich, setting up an enticing final between the aging English and the burgeoning Scandinavian juggernauts, whose fast running and high scoring game has won many plaudits across the tournament.
July 4: USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer successfully raises a portion of the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 containing cryptographic machinery, code books, nuclear armed torpedoes and her three SS-N-5 Serb SLBMs.
July 5: The Soviet ambassadors to the United States, Britain and France pass on official notes indicating that the Soviet Union is giving notice of its right of withdrawal from the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, under Article V of the Treaty, citing the need to conduct a limited but unspecified series of underwater and partially atmospheric tests at some point in the near future. NSA and GCHQ sources note an increased amount of signals traffic occurring between Moscow and certain closed cities in the Northern Urals, whilst a British source alleges that the withdrawal is actually preemptive cover for the eventuality of a need to use thermonuclear weapons against certain facilities with the USSR which have had...issues...of late.
July 6: Opening of the Arlberg Road Tunnel under the Arlberg Mountains between Tyrol to Vorarlburg by Kaiser Otto. It is the longest road tunnel in the world at just over 14 miles and capable of allowing 5000 vehicles per hour to pass through it, with over 10,000 dwarven engineers and tunnellers having completed the structure in eighteen months.
July 7: Sweden win the Soccer World Cup Final, beating slight favourites England 4-2 in front over 200,000 spectators in Berlin in a commanding display of attacking soccer, with the margin made slightly more acceptable by a late goal by retiring champion Duncan Edwards.
July 8: Over 50 leading NFL players have their contracts cancelled in a concerted response to perceived ring leaders in the player's strike. The firm action has an unexpected immediate effect, with students scheduled to play in the College All-Star Game voting not to practice until the strike is resolved.
July 9: A lawsuit filed by the National Organisation for Women in the New Jersey Superior Court on behalf of a 13 year old girl for the opening of Little League Baseball to girls is resolved, with the court finding in favour of the defendant, citing previous precedents from higher courts whereby provision of separate and equal programmes is seen as being in compliance with legal obligations. An accompanying amicus brief filed on behalf of a purported organsation known as GROSS is dismissed without being heard.
July 10: Merger of Knight Newspapers and Rider Publications to form America’s largest newspaper company, Knight-Ridder; the revenue of the new conglomerate is expected to help offset the recent investments of sister-company Knight Industries in the Knight Industries Two Thousand, a new intelligent computing engine fitted in a special robotic automobile.
July 11: A Sikh marksman of the Indian Army's Corps of Guides records the longest sniper shot on record during operations against revolting tribesmen in the foothills around the Khyber Pass on the North West Frontier, destroying a machine gun nest with an L79 25mm heavy automatic rifle at 2987 yards.
July 12: The South African Ministry of Home and Internal Affairs publishes a white paper on the implications of the 1970 Census. The population of 36,967,276 (now estimated to be over 40 million with subsequent growth over the intervening years) consisted of 16,524,811 Blacks, 15,236,367 Whites (over 10 million being of Anglo-South African, British or European extraction, with the Afrikaner fraction of the population continuing to steadily shrink), 2,489,425 Coloured, 2,216,422 Indians and 500,251 Orientals (principally Chinese and Malays), with immigration trends indicating that a white plurality may be reached at some point prior to 1980, if it has not already, but strong Black African birth rates are expected to continue over that time.
July 13: The Home Office declines an application for a construction permit for a proposed new mosque in London, citing potential inconsistency with the Supremacy of the Crown Act 1562 and the additional precedent of the recent refusal for a similar permit for the establishment of a Mormon tabernacle. The total number of mosques in Britain remains two, consisting of those in Woking and Southfields, built in 1965 and 1970 respectively.
July 14: Commissioning of USS Pegasus, the first in a new class of hydrofoil Fast Attack Strike Craft designed expressly for littoral operations, particularly around the Americas and Eurasia. The Pegasus class is the first of several new lighter surface combatants whose development was first postulated in the Torry Plan of 1963, named after then CNO Admiral Rockwell Torry, with the others being the Navy's first dedicated corvette design, the 2500t New London class, and the intermediate multipurpose 1200t Hawk class Light Combat Sloop.
July 15: A joint study by the government of North Vietnam and the Soviet advisory mission indicates that the state will need to at least 10 years to recover from the damage of the war, with full modernisation of her industrial capacity and rearmament likely to take longer than that.
July 16: France conducts a hybrid underwater/underground thermonuclear test at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, with a new 50kt warhead for a multipurpose submarine launched missile performing satisfactorily.
July 17: President Reagan gives a speech from the Oval Office on the recent successes of America's journey into space, providing an update to the American people on the planned expansion in size and role of both NASA and the USSF, and setting very ambitious goals for the decades to come. One interesting section sees the apparent canvasing of free world cooperation with the British, French, Germans, Italians and Europe on the U.S. starship project.
July 18: A group of Korean dissidents are sentenced to lengthy periods of imprisonment for sedition by a civilian court over a recent wave of demonstrations in what is regarded as harsh sentences, but not approaching the crushing ones desired by the military and the government.
July 19: The Egyptian Ministry of Defence begins a new review of the next steps in its ongoing armament, expansion and modernisation programme, with an unspoken aim of diluting the relative political power of certain current commands and officers who regard the ongoing British Imperial presence in the Suez Canal Zone as something of an imposition upon future ambitions.
July 20: HM Treasury report that major British economic indicia have now exceeded their expected levels prior to last year’s recession, with new jobs up by 5.2% in the second quarter, house construction exceeding projections with 375,922 new dwellings over the same time, and exports of electronics, cars, aircraft, machine tools, textiles , ships and North Sea oil and gas and petrochemicals all showing very strong growth. The potential for future export of British electricity to the Continent also provides for further positive projections.
July 21: An informal transatlantic air race occurs between strategic reconnaissance planes of the USAF and RAF, with a SAC SR-71 Blackbird scheduled to deploy to RAF Fairford from Griffiss AFB and a Bomber Command Bristol Bluebird scheduled to make an appearance at an air show in Kansas both agreeing to synchronise their take offs. The Blackbird wins relatively comfortably by 38 minutes.
July 22: Vampire hunters affiliated with SOE, operating clandestinely behind the Iron Wall in Communist Romania, report that investigations of the infamous Castle Duckula, home for many centuries to a dreadful dynasty of vicious vampire ducks, have uncovered that an undead scion of the Duckulas has apparently been restored to existence. The team, headed by noted hero Captain Fantastic and including an undercover surrealistic music hall band, reports that this latest reincarnation has not run according to plan, and that tentative contacts have been made with the vegetarian Count Duckula; a preliminary offer of a recurring role on a British variety television show, such as The Two Ronnies, in return for cooperation in operations against both the Soviets and other nosferatu (such as his more humanoid namesake) has apparently been received with much interest.
July 23: Completion of the expansion of the British Commonwealth base complex on Cyprus, with two new airfields, a number of missile silos and a large SAGW installation in the centre of the island adding to the facilities of the great Imperial bastion of the Eastern Mediterranean.
July 24: Quarterly oil and gas revenue from fields on and around the Falkland Islands passes £40 million for the first time, with some locals ruminating on the societal consequences of the influx of new workers to what had been quite an insular community of but 30,000.
July 25: General Alexander Haig is promoted to Supreme Allied Commander Europe, with General George Patton IV assigned command of Seventh Army, controlling US Army forces in Germany, and by extension command of CENTAG. Plans to stand up a separate U.S. Army field army in Austria-Hungary under SOUTHAG, mooted by Reagan Administration officials last year, continue to be finalised.
July 26: Criminal Paul Knowles seriously injures a Jacksonville prison guard whilst attempting to escape from a Florida jail. He subsequently attempts to confess to a number of murders in California, which cannot be proved, and is tried and sentenced to a total of 25 years imprisonment for assault, attempting to escape and aggravated battery.
July 27: A delayed broadcast from the Soviet Kosmos 17 spacecraft en route to Neptune is aired on the All Union Programme of Soviet television, with Mission Commander Alexei Leonov and his bridge crew of Vladimir Komarov, Valentin Bondarenko and Georgy Dobrovolsky showing the audience the bridge, scientific module, crew quarters and engineering module of the Kosmos in their 20 minute telecast.
July 28: Spanish aircraft carrier Purísima Concepción apparently spots the Flying Dutchman whilst moving to conduct flight qualifications off the Canary Islands.
July 29: British and Canadian agronomistic research wizards produce a new series of ‘super strains’ of staple crops after a five year experimental project costing over £600 million. Special varieties of wheat, barley, corn, rice, potatoes, oats, spelt, amaranth, rye and bulgur that are highly disease resistant and produce yields upwards of 250% of current leading seeds offer the potential for the widescale elimination of most modern incidences of famine, in concert with the incredible advances made under the Green Revolution.
July 30: A special conference of a sub-committee of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington D.C. agrees upon a raft of logistical cooperation arrangements between the military forces of the USA and the British Commonwealth, with field rations, personal equipment, war machines, and tactical signals equipment being the first to be addressed. It is considered that the advantages of coordinated production and some degree of relevant standardisation are even more marked given recent projections of the probability of a more protracted and largely conventional war due to ongoing scientific advances.
July 31: Boeing completes the 4256th and final Minuteman long range ballistic missile (LRBM), a Minuteman V destined for the 820th Strategic Aerospace Division at Volk AFB, Wisconsin.
