Dark Earth Timeline 1946-1969

[Simon Darkshade]

A repost, initially of 1968 and 1969, then 1966 and 1967.

The other years will follow, but I do plan to extend and clean up some of the entries, particular in the 1940s and 1950s. When they were originally written, I was working with some much more stringent word/character limits on individual posts, as well as having some stylistic changes I’d like to implement.


1968

January 1968
January 1: Reports of the nuclear escalation in South Vietnam reverberate around the world. The US Ambassador to the Soviet Union Llewelyn Thompson delivers a note to Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko stating that any further use of atomic or strategic chemical weapons in Indochina will be regarded by the United States as a direct attack by the Soviet Union. Gromyko responds that the USSR will guarantee North Vietnam against invasion with all weapons in its arsenal and that there would be no repetition of the fall of North Korea.
January 2: A 12 year old boy reportedly singlehandedly slays a rogue dragon in Northern Sweden.
January 3: President Kennedy proposes a direct conference with Premier Kosygin and the Soviet leadership in Geneva to deescalate the mounting crisis in Vietnam.
January 4: US troops engaged in a sweep and clear operation near Dak To capture a 5 page classified document outlining a planned VC attack on Pleiku.
January 5: Norman Shumway performs the first successful heart transplant in the United States at Stanford University Hospital.
January 6: The first atomic powered submarine of the Imperial Japanese Navy is laid down at Yokohama.
January 7: Britain conducts an underground thermonuclear test in Outback South Australia.
January 8: The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau debuts on ABC in the United States.
January 9: Big Ben is stopped by extreme cold weather at 0628 and not restarted for almost four hours.
January 10: HM Submarine Grampus is caught up in the nets of a French trawler for six hours before being finally cut free.
January 11: 18,000 new US troops land at Da Nang and Cam Ranh AFBs in a single day in a mass display of force and will.
January 12: Filming begins on motion picture of Star Trek in Hollywood.
January 13: Establishment of STANAFORLANT and STANAVFORMED, two joint Western Alliance standing navy task forces in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean, each consisting of an aircraft carrier, battleship and supporting cruisers, destroyers, frigates and submarines. They are designed for a rapid reaction capacity.
January 14: Royal Laotian Army forces defeat a large force of Pathet Lao at Nam Bac, aided greatly by heavy US air support and long range American artillery based at Luang Prabang.
January 15: An earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter Scale near Berlice, Sicily kills over 400 people.
January 16: A combined operation by the USAF and USSF drops the converted hull of the decommissioned super dreadnought USS South Carolina on Haiphong harbour from a height of 58,000ft. The ship slightly misses its target of the docks, but inflicts devastating localised damage on the port facilities and surrounding district, which had already been heavily damaged by previous US bombing raids, equivalent to almost three thousand tons of TNT and sparking immediate fears of the use of an atomic bomb
January 17: Edward Rogers is sworn in as the new Prime Minister of Australia in Canberra.
January 18: Prime Minister Stanley Barton gives a speech at the London Guildhall on the global role of the British Empire, declaring that "the Union Jack will continue flying high and proud east of Suez until the sun sets on the world and King Arthur returns from Avalon!"
January 19: A 1 megaton bomb is initiated in Nevada as part of Operation Crosstie, a large experimental underground test of the results of atomic detonation along fault lines.
January 20: Renowned eccentric scientist Nikola Tesla unveils what he describes as a breakthrough in the wireless transfer of electrical energy at his Wardenclyffe Tower facility, successfully sending electrical power to a receiving station in Panama.
January 21: Opening of the Battle of Khe Sanh, with the strategic fort complex garrisoned of three USMC regiments attacked by an NVA force of at least four divisions in an effort to break the Liberty Line, the increasing strong defensive fortification along the Demilitarized Zone.
January 22: A USAF B-52 Stratofortress crashes whilst operating near Thule AFB in Greenland; all seven crew escape safely and none of the eight thermonuclear bombs onboard initiate.
January 23:Orion 4 establishes a clear lead in the Race for Saturn over the Kosmos as the impact of an extra acceleration several months previously begins to be felt.
January 24: Introduction of Mark I Ford Escort medium family car by Ford of Britain, with similar new automobiles projected as being released over the course of the year by Vauxhall, Morris, Austin and Rover.
January 25: The Israeli submarine HMIS Dakar goes missing in the Mediterranean.
January 26: Riots and civil disorder in Marseilles, Toulon and Nice reach their third day. Commanders of the Army of Africa indicates their capacity to provide troops to help restore order given the improved conditions in Algeria.
January 27: Mysterious disappearence of French submarine Minerve in the Mediterranean
January 28: Release of The Cooking of Mexico, the final volume of 32 of Time Life's landmark Foods of the World series on international cuisine.
January 29: Commissioning of the new Argentine aircraft carrier Independencia in Buenos Aires, with a further large British built ship still under construction at Cammell Laird.
January 30: British meat consumption in 1967 is reported by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the League of Nations as 256lb per capita, coming in sixth place in the world behind the United States with 329lb, Australia 304lb, Argentina 297lb, New Zealand 285lb and Canada with 268lb.
January 31: Boeing unveils a huge new atomic spaceplane over twice the size of both their own Starclipper and the Rockwell Starraker, the largest current American 'space shuttle', designed for direct service between Earth and Luna.

[Simon Darkshade]

February 1968
February 1: The US Joint Intelligence Committee notes that beginning of scrapping of four Soviet light fleet carriers at Severodvinsk indicates that their feared transfer to Soviet satellites and neutral states will not occur.
February 2: Governor George Romney announces that he will run for the Republican nomination for President.
February 3: Princess Benedikte of Denmark marries Prince Michael of Kent in Copenhagen.
February 4: Loss of a third British merchant ship off the coast of Iceland. RN investigations and the garbled report of the sole survivor indicate a sea monster attack.
February 5: A massive eruption of Popocatapetl sends volcanic ash clouds billowing into the atmosphere, shutting down air traffic into Mexico City and sending thousands fleeing the flowing lava.
February 6: Emperor Alexander of Byzantine Greece announces that he is willing to meet with the Ottoman Sultan in order to normalise the mutual border and relations between the two states.
February 7: NVA forces equipped with PT-85 and T-55 tanks overrun a US Special Forces camp on the Khe Sanh complex perimeter, leading to a massive American response, with naval gunfire from five battleships and air strikes from eight aircraft carriers halting the NVA advance.
February 8: The largest artillery barrage of the Vietnam War to date marks the beginning of Operation Eagle, the US counteroffensive at Khe Sanh aimed at destroying the enemy and severing the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It consists of four main thrusts. Firstly, the 3rd Marine Division and the 1st Marine Raiders are to reinforce Khe Sanh in a massed Rotodyne airlift and push forward to the Liberty Line. Secondly, the I Marine Amphibious Corps commanding the 1st and 5th Marine Divisions and the South Vietnamese Marine Division are to strike from Dong Ha up Route 9 tothe Laotian border. Thirdly, the US Army’s XXV Corps, consisting of the 1st Air Cavalry, 17th Airborne, 23rd Americal and 101st Airborne Divisions and supported by Special Forces and three Army Ranger regiments, is to dropped and airlifted north from their current positions in the A Shau Valley to cut off any retreat into Laos. Finally, XX Corps is to advance to the DMZ from Quang Tri with the 15th Infantry, 29th Infantry, 32nd Infantry and 10th Armored Division, eliminating enemy support bases and preventing reinforcement. Following the barrage, over 400 USAF, USMC and USN tactical aircraft provide continual close air support of advancing troops, whilst 219 B-47s and B-52s carpet bomb NVA positions around Khe Sanh.
February 9: Ceremonial opening of the Rotterdam Metro by Crown Princess Beatrice and her husband, King Baldwin of Belgium. In Vietnam, hundreds of American aircraft are employed against NVA forces now in full retreat from Khe Sanh. Forward elements of I MAC report limited link ups with the reinforced Marine garrison, whilst the offshore battleship force provides continual support fires.
February 10: Extremely heavy fighting at Khe Sanh as US Marines, supported by tanks and armoured carriers, relentlessly push back NVA forces towards the airborne blocking force. F-111s bomb Hanoi heavily overnight.
February 11: The world’s largest man made structure, the KXJB Tower in North Dakota, is knocked over by a USMC helicopter on a training mission.
February 12: Unveiling in London of the new Crusader main battle tank currently under development, along with the privately developed Vickers Valiant and Armstrong-Whitworth Ardent tanks.
February 13: The expiry of the original concession for the Suez Canal Zone is met by heavy protests against the ongoing British military presence in Egypt.
February 14: US Army Vietnam Headquarters in Saigon announce the successful conclusion of Operation Eagle, declaring that five enemy divisions have been destroyed with losses of over 30,000 killed in exchange for 1572 US KIA or MIA and 9682 WIA.
February 15: President Kennedy gives a prime time speech on Vietnam on all five networks, laying out a clear timetable for victory and rejecting any need for further use of nuclear weapons. He states that the victory at Khe Sanh is just the beginning in a greater victory in Indochina.
February 16: Two Irish schoolboys are rescued by helicopter from a County Cork cliff after fleeing the consequences of an escalating child war between two rival gangs from neighbouring villages; they are subsequently remanded to the Craggy Island Reformatory.
February 17: Mu Gia Pass is attacked by over 350 US bombers, with the raid inflicting shattering damage on the road and surrounding area.
February 18: Opening of a US-Soviet special meeting in Geneva. Soviet diplomats are surprised by an immediate US push for an agreement to avoid escalation in Vietnam and their willingness to guarantee that the United States will not invade North Vietnam.
February 19: Debut of the children’s television programme Mr Rogers’ Neighbourhood, which combines educational tours with a puppet neighbourhood populated by an array of characters.
February 20: Senator Hubert Humphrey announces that he will run for the Democratic nomination as President.
February 21: The British Empire Trans-Arctic Expedition departs Point Barrow, Alaska on what is described as one of the last great pioneer expeditions left for mankind on Earth.
February 22: Thor Heyerdahl proposes an international effort to search for the lost continent of Atlantis at an adventurer’s congress in New York City.
February 23: Pravda publishes an unusually candid editorial which discusses how the Soviet Union has caught up to the West and where it still requires additional efforts, stating that the current circumstances of Soviet citizens having only a third as many automobiles and radios per capita as the United States and half the meat and dairy consumption were factors that would be caught up in 10 years.
February 24: British germ warfare scientists at Porton Down successfully develop a new combination of a novel Congolese haemorrhaging fever, the Red Death and gangrenous blackpox. It is ordered destroyed three days later by express order of the Prime Minister on the grounds of it being a threat to mankind.
February 25: French special forces and commandos stage Operation Chacal, a series of midnight raids across Algeria, arresting or killing several hundred FLN operatives and decapitating its command structure after several months of painstaking planning and intelligence gathering. Am Armee d’Afrique spokesman states to foreign journalists that the “enemy would long rue the day of the Chacal.”
February 26: An Anglo-American special naval task force tracks down and destroys a massive 120ft super megalodon off Cape Matapan, towing its corpse back to Crete.
February 27: CBS News broadcasts ‘A Special Report from Vietnam’ presented by Walter Cronkite, where he states that the triumph at the Battle of Khe Sanh indicates that victory for the United States and its allies is in sight.
February 28: A special meeting of the General Assembly of the League of Nations passes a resolution endorsing an international campaign to wipe out the megalodon.
February 29: First public exhibition of the French Exocet anti-ship missile.

[Simon Darkshade]

March 1968
March 1: Five North Vietnamese armed trawlers are sunk by USN destroyer escorts in coordinated actions off the coast of South Vietnam. Elsewhere, the ANZAC Division concludes Operation Coburg, a large scale sweep and clear operation of Phuoc Toy Province and French air strikes destroy a large base area in the Mekong Delta.
March 2: Leeds defeat Arsenal 1-0 to win the Football League Cup in front of a crowd of 128,736 at Empire Stadium.
March 3: The oil tanker Ocean Eagle sinks, blocking the entrance to San Juan Harbor in Porto Rico, trapping eight USN and RCN vessels.
March 4: World release of Franco Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet in London.
March 5: South Vietnamese, American and Laotian troops advance up to the extended Liberty Line in Laos.
March 6: The CBS series Lost in Space ends with the return of the Jupiter 2 spaceship to Earth.
March 7: US, Soviet, British, French and Chinese negotiators at Geneva reach an agreement in principle on the viability of strategic nuclear limitation.
March 8: Soviet Golf class SSB K-129 goes missing without trace northwest of Hawaii.
March 9: First public use of the term 'Green Revolution' in a speech by USAID Administrator William
March 10: A government decree in North Vietnam outlaws all forms of opposition to its conduct of the war, imposing a range of punishments from imprisonment in a liquidation camp to the death penalty.
March 11: Three South Korean and American divisions launch a concentrated search and destroy operation in Binh Dinh Province.
March 12: An experimental British flying car successfully escapes an isolated Bulgarian barony, exposing its illegal anti-child policies and leading to a crackdown by the Royal Bulgarian Army.
March 13: VX nerve gas is accidentally released from the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, killing over 10,000 sheep.
March 14: A nefarious plan by SPECTRE to attack NORAD's Southern Headquarters in Cuba is foiled by the intervention of a British secret agent.
March 15: The Emperor of Brazil is shot and killed by Che Guevara whilst reviewing a military parade in Rio de Janeiro. Guevara escapes by rocket pack amid the resultant chaos.
March 16: British Minister of Defence George Brown resigns for reasons of ill health; he had been in poor condition since his recent visit to Peru.
March 17: General Abrams flies to Hawaii for a conference with President Kennedy, setting out the next three offensives planned as a follow up to the success of Operation Eagle.
March 18: Philippine soldiers execute 28 mutinying Moro conscripts on Corregidor.
March 19: The King of Libya declares that he will seek the renegotiation of terms for the American and British basing rights.
March 20: General Motors opens its first English plant in Wolverhampton, with newspapers hailing the renaissance of the Black Country.
March 21: General William Westmoreland is appointed as CINCUSAREUR and Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
March 22: TIME Magazine releases a feature dedicated to the 'Rise and Rise of Middle America'.
March 23: Pope Paul VI proclaims the establishment of the Sacred Military Order of the Guardians of the Dawn.
March 24: George Best makes his England debut in an international against Ruritania in Strelsau.
March 25: North Vietnamese Army forces heading onto the Ho Chi Minh trail through Mu Gia Pass report suffering strange intense attacks of nausea, vomiting, skin blistering and hemorrhaging.
March 26: Unveiling of a new Mitsubishi supersonic long range fighter in Tokyo.
March 27: Jesuit investigators confirm reports of a 10 year old child with stigmata in Portugal.
March 28: Nigeria places a large defence order with Britain to equip its armed forces for the ongoing Biafran Rebellion.
March 29: Introduction of the hazelnut spread Nutella into Britain.
March 30: Establishment of the Federation of Arab Emirates, a grouping of British protectorates on the Persian Gulf coast of Arabia.
March 31: Israeli and Egyptian destroyers collide at sea off the coast of Sinai.

[Simon Darkshade]

April 1968
April 1: London Bridge is sold to an American oil millionaire for $3.5 million. It is to be replaced by a new 1525ft grand bridge to suit the Imperial capital.
April 2: Release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick’s speculative future history of mankind’s putative first interstellar expedition.
April 3: Saab and IKEA unveil the world's first flatpack car; Allen keys are not included.
April 4: First launch of the US Nova superheavy rocket at Cape Canaveral, carrying the new NASA Solaris spaceship on a test flight to Venus.
April 5: President Kennedy presents the Medal of Honor to US Army Special Forces Colonel Mike Kirby and Sergeants John Rambo and Michael Ransom for their valor at the Battle of Dak To.
April 6: Celebration 50th official birthday of the Royal Air Force with a spectacular air show over London, including a new Hawker-Siddeley Hurricane leading four Hunters through and under Tower Bridge and a much anticipated flight by the supersonic Supermarine Victory bomber and the prototype Armstrong-Whitworth Solaris nuclear powered aircraft.
April 7: Release of The Charge of the Light Brigade, an enthralling historical war epic about the Crimean War and the eponymous victory at the Battle of Balaclava.
April 8: French military forces begin the evacuation of Hainan in accordance with their earlier declaration, removing equipment and even some monuments prior to the handover to Imperial China.
April 9: NBC broadcasts the first episode of The War in Korea, an adaption of Sir Winston Churchill’s acclaimed three volume history of the conflict, featuring an introduction by the Duke of London himself.
April 10: Soviet MiG-23 and Su-21 fighters shoot down 6 USAF F-105 fighter-bombers and 2 B-47s over Northern Laos, leading to the cessation of the use of the latter aircraft outside of secured airspace in the daytime. This is seen as an escalation of the complexity of the air battle over North Vietnam by USAF commanders.
April 11:The Fellowship of the Ring wins Best Picture, David Lean wins Best Director and Christopher Lee wins Best Actor at the 40th Academy Awards, three of a total of a record twelve Academy Awards for the smash hit epic.
April 12: Delivery of the first operational Royal Ordnance FV525 Warrior Mechanised Armoured Combat Vehicles to the British Army of the Rhine in a ceremony attended by new BAOR and NORTHAG Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Sir John Hackett and his predecessor, the new Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Richard Sharpe. The latter describes the 32 ton armoured fighting carrier as "a (very) good vehicle and the best in the d_____ world right now", with its heavy armour and the long range firepower of the 50mm automatic cannon being considerable advances over the FV432 Saxon.
April 13: The Soviet Central Committee orders the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy to make certain unspecificed modifications to the design of the RBMK nuclear reactor.
April 14: British Prime Minster Stanley Barton is returned to power resoundingly in the British General Election, with Labour winning 379 seats and forming a majority government in their own right for the first time. Conservative Opposition Leader John Profumo indicates that he will step down in the aftermath of the defeat in a late night speech, paving the way for an intriguing leadership contest between Enoch Powell, Sir Randolph Churchill, Lord Wooster and Peter Thorneycroft.
April 15: Congress passes the National Trails Systems Act, specifying twelve notable trails for special preservation and exploration across America.
April 16: The US XXV Corps launches Operation Turpentine, the next rolling offensive in South Vietnam and Laos, aimed at destroying North Vietnamese base areas along the Ho Chi Minh Trail and clearing the area up to the Liberty Line. It begins with a large scale diversionary air and naval attack on the coast of North Vietnam immediately above the DMZ, followed by an artillery bombardment beginning at twilight. American troops are heavily supported by combat helicopters, including the AH-56 Cheyenne making its debut, and employ new darkvision sights to great effect in the initial advances.
April 17: The Malayan Government declares a state of emergency in response to the reemergency of the communist terrorist threat to internal security and issues a request to Britain for further direct military support. GOC Malaya Command General Sir John Howard orders the deployment of troops of the Far Eastern Strategic Reserve from Singapore in an immediate response.
April 18: Foreign diplomats in Peking report a series of disturbing rumours of troubles in the Imperial Court in the Forbidden City. Troop presence in the Chinese capital is seen to notably increase.
April 19: Colonel Jean-Bedel Bokassa stages a coup in Ubangi-Shari with the aid of a surprising number of well armed and equipped troops.
April 20: In a series of attacks to mark Hitler's birthday, ODESSA and Neo-Nazi terrorists attack eighteen banks and government buildings across Europe, killing 139 and injuring over 600 people, sparking international outrage.
April 21: The French Armee d'Orient launch Operation Ouragan, a major offensive against remaining Viet Cong base areas in the Mekong Delta, heavily supported by French, South Vietnamese and USN riverine forces.
April 22: General Hassan, a close ally of the young King and a staunch nationalist, is appointed Prime Minister of Egypt.
April 23: Commencement of the Deep Sea Drilling Project off the coast of New York.
April 24: Collapse of the French government over the Hainan affair, with new elections called for May.
April 25: Surrey Police arrest 30 year old Brian Lunn Field for the rape and murder of a 14 year old schoolboy.
April 26: The United States conducts a 2 megaton underground nuclear test in Nevada as part of Operation Crosstie.
April 27: Seven suspected Securitate spies are arrested in a Stuttgart biergarten by German counterintelligence agents.
April 28: Detectives of Scotland Yard's Flying Squad foil a gold bullion robbery in West London, with Detective Inspector Jack Regan awarded the George Cross for outstanding gallantry after pursuing the villains across streets and rooftops in his police Jaguar and rescuing
April 29: Cassius Clay defeats the Soviet champion Vladimir Zheleznyy at Madison Square Gardens and being hailed as a national hero for his victory in the Cold War clash, making an irresistible case for a return bout against Henry Cooper after their hugely controversial 1967 fight.
April 30: Soviet and VPAF fighter airfields in North Vietnam are hit with over 200 Condor missiles launched by low level USAF F-111s in a surprise night strike prior to a heavy coordinated B-52 attack on North Vietnamese air defences.

[Simon Darkshade]

May 1968
May 1: May Day is marked by a wave of socialist marches and unrest across Europe, Asia and the Americas, with strikes being called in France and Germany. Radical university students and communist sympathisers occupy part of the Sorbonne University and there is an outbreak =and riots in the outer bidonvilles of the capital, with goblinoids and migrants alike set upon in the street fighting.
May 2: Paris is beset by running street battles between CRS riot police and coordinated riotous anarchist, communist and socialist protesters coordinated by the Communist Party of France and would-be revolutionist students. King Louis issues a call for calm and The Marquis d'Ambreville holds a press conference on RTF regarding the mounting unrest in Paris, declaring that all loyal Frenchmen and the Army will not tolerate the spectre of communist revolution.
May 3: A curfew is declared across Paris, yet certain arrondissements remain as running battle zones. The French Army moves up units close to the capital to provide for the restoration of order, yet it is unclear who currently is possessed of the authority to do so; French wizards additionally detect an extraordinary amount of enchantment and illusion magics being employed around the capital. Trade union representatives and certain politicians remain ensconced in secretive discussions through the day.
May 4: French airborne troops from Corsica land at Orly Airport before midnight and move to secure locations in the capital in conjunction with Gardes Royale and armoured forces. Key locations are surrounded by tanks and fighter planes, armed helicopters and dragons criss-cross the city. Thousands of protestors, students and rioters are rounded up and arrested by troops in the crackdown.
May 5: The United States, Soviet Union, Britain, France and the Empire of China sign the Spaceman Rescue Agreement in Montevideo.
May 6: Ilich Ramírez Sánchez is selected by the KGB for its special international development programme at Lumumba University.
May 7: SFPD Captain Harry Callahan shoots dead a crazed man whilst investigating a series of murders in Riverside; the man is found in possession of occult and astrological paraphernalia.
May 8: In what is termed the Second Battle of the Gulf of Tonkin, seven North Vietnamese destroyers and torpedo boats are sunk by a USN surface task force lead by USS New Jersey and USS Congress.
May 9: The King of France makes a special appearance on television and radio, declaring that the state of emergency will continue for the time being and that a caretaker government of national unity will be appointed until national elections can be held. This gravity of this announcement is overshadowed by the news of the arrival of Orion 4 in the Saturnian system, with a landing on Titan to occur in the coming days.
May 10: British troops begin operational testing of a ground launched enlarged variant of the Javelin general purpose missile in Southern Africa. It is designed to augment artillery, mortars, rockets and aircraft in the tactical indirect support of infantry but its relative expense remains a considerable factor in its development and procurement.
May 11: Enoch Powell wins the first round of the Conservative Party leadership election with 76 votes to Churchill's 43, Wooster's 29 and Thorneycroft's 24.
May 12: The House of Commons passes the first reading of the Civil Defence Act 1968, which sets out new requirements for food stocks, public and private shelters and improved warning systems. A further proposal to lift the ban on ghost trains in place since the Blackpool Haunting of 1934 is defeated in committee.
May 13: Arrival of the first Israeli brigade on combat deployment to South Vietnam, following on from the January rotation of a Golani battalion to the Congo.
May 14: England Test cricket allrounder and footballer Jack Shaw is selected for the British Olympic team, mirroring the achievement of C.B. Fry.
May 15: Five US and South Vietnamese divisions totalling 160,000 men launch Operation Courier a concentrated offensive against Viet Cong and NVA positions in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Courier marks the first widespread use of M60 tanks in the Vietnam War and the combat debut of the M165 125mm self propelled howitzer.
May 16: Northern Japan is struck by an earthquake registering 8.9 on the Richter Scale, killing 90 and causing a localised tsunami.
May 17: Publication of The Adventures of You on Sugar Cane Island by Edward Packard, the first in a series of multi-outcome gamebooks of the Adventures of You series, later known as Choose Your Own Adventure, and the introduction of Mattel's Hot Wheels robotic children's cars.
May 18: United States astronauts land on the Saturnian moon of Titan, with John Glenn being the first to set foot on the surface. Initial pictures show a remarkable alien planet teeming with plant and animal life.
May 19: 12 year old Emperor Sebastião of Brazil makes his first public appearance since his father's assassination, shoring up public support for the teetering government and demonstrating his continuing presence in the country; the boy is said to appear absolutely terrified.
May 20: The Commonwealth Corps begins Operation Stallion, a concentrated search and destroy offensive against remaining VC forces in Bin Duong Province, spearheaded by dwarven troops and specialist underground mining vehicles.
May 21: A multinational rescue force saves the Norwegian cruise ship MV Blenheim in the North Sea, with British, German, Danish and Norwegian helicopters, Rotodynes and warships taking the passengers and crew aboard and towing the stricken vessel to the safety of Stavanger.
May 22: USS Scorpion is lost 500nm off the coast of the Azure Islands without any apparent trace.
May 23: The former USSF Echo communications space station deorbits and crashes to Earth, its debris impacting a large swathe of Jallisco state in Mexico.
May 24: Corporal William Connolly, 25 PARA, is awarded the Military Medal for valour in an engagement at Phước Long.
May 25: A Dutch farmer near Eindhoven is left bereft as his record breaking 10ft tall Holstein cow Boterbloem is kidnapped by a nefarious villain who is seemingly abducting the largest animals in Europe.
May 26: Birth of a firstborn son to the Crown Princess of Denmark.
May 27: Pravda announces that Alexei Sergeyev has been unanimously elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
May 28: British monthly tank production exceeds 350 for the first time in seven years as earlier expansion of production facilities begins to show results; small arms, artillery and MACV production is similarly showing a marked increase, but bottlenecks in the output of rocket fuel still act to constrain increases in tactical missile output.
May 29: Equatorial, Sudan, Tanganyika and Uganda are granted self government within the British Commonwealth, the first step towards independence.
May 30: TIME Magazine runs a cover story on ‘The Economy That Won’t Quit’, an analysis of the continued US economic growth of the last decade, as industrial production has risen by more than 85% since 1960, gross national product by almost 70% and corporate profits after tax by 140%.
May 31: Cavendish Foods opens the first branch of its premium grocery and retail ‘supermarkets’ outside of London.

[Simon Darkshade]

June 1968
June 1: Beginning of The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, a solo round the world yacht race with a prize of £250,000.
June 2: Ottoman Turkey issues a formal protest at unannounced British naval exercises off the southern coast of Cyprus and the arrival of a squadron of RAF Vulcans and an airborne brigade on the island in response to purely peaceful Turkish warships conducting purely peaceful cultural activities just outside of British territorial waters.
June 3: Student protests break out in Belgrade after a dispute over theatrical seating, resulting in rioting and street fighting.
June 4: A Hungarian prince discovers his long lost son working in a Doncaster grocer's shop.
June 5: The Spanish Inquisition stages a number of surprise midnight raids and arrests of various student and socialist groups, accusing them of anarchism, atheism and other crimes.
June 6: German, Austro-Hungarian and Italian troops destroy a Viet Cong regiment in Operation Edelweiss, a concentrated search and destroy operation in South Vietnam.
June 7: Prime Minister Stanley Barton gives an expansive speech on the features and goals of the British National Plan in an address opening the National Economic Congress at Imperial Hall.
June 8: The King of Yemen is attacked in his palace by a group of masked Assassins and is rescued by a trio of rocket-pack wearing heroes including a man bearing a close resemblance to Sir Charles Ratcliffe.
June 9: Deployment of a British Army brigade to Congolese Katanga on request of the provincial and national governments to support the restoration of security, despite opposition from the ANC.
June 10: Italy beat Germany in 2-0 in the replay of the final of the 1968 European Championship.
June 11: The asteroid Icarus makes its closest pass of the Earth at a distance of some 5 million miles, monitored by US, Soviet and British facilities on the moon in a joint operation of Project Spaceguard.
June 12: President Kennedy calls for a national effort to modernise and reinvigorate the nation's railway system.
June 13: Commissioning of the first five of the Royal Navy’s new fast multi purpose corvettes, following on from the reclassification of certain vessels as frigates in last year’s White Paper as part of the introduction of new ship designation categories.
June 14: Wargame enthusiast E. Gary Gygax holds the first public Lake Geneva Gaming Convention in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. An eccentric passing wizard accidentally stumbles upon the event at the Horticultural Hall and leaves behind a mysterious ring, a large book, a cheque for $10,000 and a pouch of 1d4 valuable objects.
June 15: The President of Uruguay declares a state of emergency in response to increasing attacks by the Tupamaros urban guerrilla group, which are suspected of being supported by the International Revolutionary Army.
June 16: A pair of convicted murderers are executed in Geneva, Switzerland.
June 17: RAN guided missile destroyer HMAS Voyager DDG narrowly avoids being accidentally hit by two USAF AIM-7 Sparrows inadvertently fired by American fighters off the coast of Vietnam, shooting them down with her newly installed Legion close weapons system.
June 18: ACTU President Bob Hawke is elected into the Australian House of Representatives as MP for the seat of Wills in a by-election.
June 19: Unveiling of a range of new Chinese missiles in a parade in Peking.
June 20: 256 USAF B-52s and 90 FB-111s, 108 RAF Vulcans and 56 Royale Service Aéronautique Mistrals, escorted by 120 F-111D night-fighters and 72 RB-58C strategic pathfinders, strike Hanoi in the heaviest air raid of the war to date, inflicting extremely heavy damage and destroying a number of SAM sites defending the North Vietnamese capital.
June 21: Argentine destroyer ARA Santa Cruz fires upon two Soviet fishing vessels that it alleged were violating its territorial waters and takes them into custody.
June 22: Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir James Bigglesworth, VC and two Bars, Chief of the Air Staff and First Air Lord unveils the first operational prototype of the Sopwith Camel VSTOL multirole aircraft, describing it as a 'wizard kite' and ideal for the RAF and the Special Air Police.
June 23: Seventy-four people are killed and over two hundred are injured in a stampede in a football game in Buenos Aires.
June 24: Twenty-five French anarchist, socialist and student leaders, including Daniel Cohn-Bendit, arrested in the crackdown following the May Days are guillotined, whilst others remain imprisoned.
June 25: The British Post Office Savings Bank is formally renamed the National Savings Bank.
June 26: First test flight of a Soviet atomic airship powered by a lead cooled reactor over Siberia. The footage of the flight is played repeatedly by Soviet Central Television, with German rebroadcasts dubbing it Der Blei Zeppelin.
June 27: The USAF issues its Long Term Combat Aircraft Requirements Plan, setting out its major priorities of a new supersonic interceptor for ADC, fielding of the FX and LFX with TAC, acquisition of the YB-72 to replace the B-58 fleet and the B-56, B-66 and B-68 forces, initiation of the LAX attack plane to replace the A-4 and A-7 light attack fleet and initiation of a replacement for the B-52 strategic bomber, as well as increased orders for the AX ground attack fighter.
June 28: Bilateral US-Soviet discussions on the potential limitation of strategic forces break down over the sticking issue of the vast American quantitative superiority over the USSR in long range ballistic missiles, with the balance currently standing at 2739 US missiles compared to 920 Soviet.
June 29: Former Prime Minister Sir William Richardson is appointed Governor-General of Canada.
June 30: The 26th Amendment of the United States Constitution is ratified, repealing the 22nd Amendment which set limits on the number of terms a US President can serve.

[Simon Darkshade]

July 1968
July 1: A US Army chartered jet carrying 324 soldiers to South Vietnam is forced down to land in the Kurile Islands after straying into Soviet airspace
July 2: Premiere of Dad's Army, a respectful semi-comedic television series on the experiences of the Home Guard in the Second World War, on BBC1.
July 3: The British Army takes delivery of its first armoured trains since the Second World War.
July 4: President Kennedy announces that, should he be prevailed upon to stand as the Democratic candidate for President, he would reluctantly accept in order to bring the war in Vietnam to a victorious end and pursue a lasting peace with the Soviet Union.
July 5: Round-the-world yachtsman Alec Rose is greeted by a crowd of 200,000 as he completes his voyage, sailing home into Portsmouth Harbour.
July 6: Laying down of the Royal Navy’s newest guided missile atomic super battlecruiser at Cammell Laird; the new ships dwarf the wartime Orion class that they are finally replacing and are thought to be an appropriate counter to recent Soviet, Chinese, Polish and GDR ships.
July 7: Merger of the Northrop Aircraft Corporation and the Grumman Aerospace Corporation, the second major consolidation in the US aerospace sector following on from last year’s creation of McDonnell-Douglas and ongoing talks between North American and Convair.
July 9: Enoch Powell wins the second round of the Conservative Party leadership contest and is formally elected as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition.
July 10: The Royal Navy introduces a dual purpose air-launched anti-ship/land attack version of the Hawker-Siddeley Paladin supersonic missile into experimental service with carrier-based Blackburn Buccaneers and Supermarine Excaliburs of the Grand Fleet. It is a smaller and shorter range weapon than the ship launched Paladin and the ground-based coastal defence missile still under development.
July 11: Opening of the first direct commercial air service between the United States and USSR with Panam and Aeroflot flying between New York City and Moscow.
July 12: Reports of increased unrest in rural Venezuela cause a brief crash in the local stock market under suspicious circumstances.
July 13: Doctors in Hong Kong identify a new, highly virulent strain of influenza that displays alarming features of other diseases.
July 14: First performance of The Great Passion Play, the largest outdoor dramatic performance in the United States, in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
July 15: Ground is broken on the first stage of the Port Victoria Deepwater Ship Terminal and Skyport on the Isle of Grain, alongside the BP oil refinery and gasworks, Imperial Steel ironworks and the Grain Power Station.
July 16: Rebel Armée Nationale Congolaise forces engage British troops deployed on stabilisation operations in Northern Katanga and are defeated in a brief pitched battle notable for heavy use of firepower.
July 17: Local authorities are puzzled by the overnight appearance of a huge beanstalk in Bavaria; the plant is destroyed by Luftwaffe jets armed with incendiary and herbicidal missiles as a precaution shortly before noon.
July 18: Intelcorporation unveils the prototype of what it terms a 'microcomputerprocessor'.
July 19: US forces seize their final objects along the extended Liberty Line in Laos, having lost 296 men in the operation in exchange for an estimated 6000 NVA dead.
July 20: The first running of the British Grand Prix on its new circuit at Silverstone, with Jim Clark narrowly defeating Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart, whilst Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren rounded out the top five.
July 21: Soviet cosmonauts begin assembly of a very large spacecraft in Earth orbit, closely monitored by the United States Space Force.
July 22: Mexican police and Imperial troops are attacked by peasant groups in a coordinated uprising in the southern state of Chiapas.
July 23: The Office of the Witchfinder General conclude an investigation into a strange case of a infant biting his brother's finger and erupting into uncontrollable demonic laughter, finding that the child's actions were apparently not inspired by the agency of the Evil One, but rather innocent childish play.
July 24: Incorporation of new monastic order of the Church of the United States of America, the Brotherhood of St. Cuthbert in Boston.
July 25: First clandestine flight of the Northrop SR-72 Aurora at an altitude of 125,000ft in the night skies over Nevada.
July 26: The Home Office indicates that it will not pursue any relaxation of theatre censorship, despite the presentation of a large petition organised by the Royal National Theatre.
July 27: Korean troops report increased Chinese activity across the demilitarised strip along the heavily fortified Yalu River border.
July 28: A Swedish chef subdues a rabid roc during a cooking demonstration in Brussels with a fortuitously placed antique blunderbuss.
July 29: Eighty-seven people are killed in the eruption of Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica.
July 30: Arrival of the Soviet Kosmos spacecraft in the Saturnine system.
July 31: International Revolutionary Army commandos attempt to attack the Royal Exchange and Bank of England, resulting in an intense firefight with Metropolitan Policemen, outraged passers-by and the Bank guard detachment, prior to the arrival of the Special Patrol Group, two companies of Grenadier Guards from the Tower of London and a Centurion tank from the Barbican Fortress. The nine surviving terrorists attempt to escape back on the Thames, but are cornered, pinned down by an RN frigate and their lair stormed by the SAS two hours later, with all inside killed and their thirty hostages rescued. 25 IRA members, 4 policemen and 2 Guardsmen are killed in the ‘Battle of London’.

[Simon Darkshade]

August 1968
August 1: London is flooded with troops and police in the aftermath of yesterday’s outrage, with security particularly high around Buckingham Palace and Parliament. Home Secretary James Callaghan announces an inquiry into how the attack was able to take place.
August 2: Commissioning of the Argentine super battleship Argentina in Buenos Aires. Nationalist Prime Minister Diego Sebastian de Rodriguez hails it as the most powerful ship in South America and, along with Argentina’s future aircraft carriers, new jet bombers, domestically produced tanks and her long range missile programme, are indications of het status as a true great power. Foreign observers note that he avoids the question of Argentina’s nuclear weapons in his expansive and rousing speech.
August 3: A paralysed boy is miraculously healed by a passing stranger at a travelling carnival in Oklahoma.
August 4: Australian Prime Minister Sir Edward Rogers announces to Parliament in Canberra that the Royal Australian Navy will order two new guided missile battlecruisers, the RAAF will procure 300 new long range air to surface missiles to equip their strike bombers defence and the Australian Army will form two new specialist regiments.
August 5: A coup attempt by elements of the Iraqi Army is ruthlessly put down by the Arab Legion.
August 6: Newcastle police detectives arrest Mary Bell, 11, and her neighbour, Norma Bell, 13, for the murder of a local three year old boy. The announcement is met by shock and outrage across the country, with some calling for the Office of the Witchfinder General to investigate.
August 7: Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York wins the Republican nomination for President, narrowly beating Governor Ronald Reagan of California by 1249 delegates to 1053, with Senator Thurston Ballard Morton of Kentucky selected unanimously as his running mate; President Kennedy's late re-entry into the race, although always perceived as possible, has turned the election from a winnable one to a long shot in the view of many Republicans. Rockefeller's victory is not welcomed by the increasingly strong conservative wing of the party.
August 8: A Soviet probe of the Saturnine moon of Iapetus apparently crashed after detecting signs and images of some sort of strange plant life.
August 9: The citizens of Vienna are horrified as the giant image of Count Dracula engages the infamous werewolf Lukos Bane in single combat in the night sky above the city.
August 10: The Middle East Journal, the area’s most popular English language newspaper, features a story on the Green Revolution and Agricultural Renaissance of Iraq, detailing how rainfall and fertility in Muthanna and Najaf Provinces now exceeds estimated conditions during the Mesopotamian Golden Age, over five and a half thousand years ago.
August 11: A gang of British master criminals steal $5 million in gold bullion from an armoured lorry in a daring raid in Turin, basing their plan upon a paralysation of city traffic in the manner of the infamous December 1956 Milan traffic jam, which allows them to make a spectacular escape in a trio of enchanted Austin Minis.
August 12: The US Army begins testing of a new, wrist mounted personal information device.
August 13: Famed halfling cook Michael Bunce becomes the first British chef to be awarded a coveted fifth Michelin star for his London restaurant Albion.
August 14: The Irish Office commissions a White Paper on Irish economic development in the concern that Ireland is lagging behind the other Home Countries in its performance; recent investments in Western Ireland are being held up as the general standard to be emulated.
August 15: An earthquake off the coast of Celebes sets off a tsunami that kills over 500 people.
August 16: The United States conducts test launch of three prototype strategic long range ballistic missiles in a single day, all of them equipped with the new Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle warheads. The USN Solaris is launched from USS Theodore Roosevelt off the coast of Florida to a target range north of Ascension Island, the USAF Peacemaker from Vandenburg Air Force Base to Manus Island and the US Army Hercules from Fort Sill to Kwajelein.
August 17: The Wiener Zeitung carries a front page expose on covert KGB support of Czech and Slovak separatist organisations.
August 18: Vietnam: Six US and South Vietnamese divisions launch Operation Elmtree, a concentrated offensive against Viet Cong positions and operational zones in Darlac and Quang Duc Provinces, supported by extremely heavy airpower, artillery and dragonfire.
August 19: The Wholesome Poultry Act enters US law, establishing strict minimum standards for the inspection and quality of poultry.
August 20: USS Sea Devil fires a Mark 45 ASTOR atomic torpedo at an unidentified underwater contact in the Central Pacific, thinking that it was Godzilla, the Pacific Monster; subsequent investigations of the sonar record lead to the belief that the creature was a large kraken.
August 21: After meeting at a writer’s conference in London, noted New Zealand poet John Lennon spends a day with English music teacher and writer Paul McCartney in Hyde Park, beginning a long friendship and artistic collaboration. The event will later be commemorated in a charming film, A Day in the Life.
August 22: Pope Paul VI becomes the first Pontiff to visit South America, landing in Bogota, Colombia.
August 23: Christopher Lee recovers the stolen Iron Crown after seemingly being caught up in pursuit of the thieves whilst in Venice for the filming of Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon, cornering the villains in his flying Aston-Martin DB5 and subduing them with sword and bartitsu.
August 24: President John F. Kennedy is unanimously nominated as the Democratic candidate for the 1968 Presidential election.
August 25: General Abrams gives an expansive briefing on Saigon on the progress of the Vietnam War, declaring that the enemy has suffered at least 125,000 killed in the first half of 1968 and demonstrating how a combination of air strikes and ground interdiction have succeeded in reducing traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail by 70%. He states that this current counteroffensive stage will continue for up to 6 months, followed by a 12 month period of defensive consolidation, concluding with a confident statement: “The time when the enemy could win is long past and the period of deep war is now over.”
August 26: Eleven communist insurgents are executed in Rhodesia after being found guilty of treachery and rebellion. The ongoing Bush War along the northern and western border has recently seen a decrease in intensiry following the elimination of rebel base areas in the Congo by Commonwealth forces.
August 27: A special team of American doctors dispatched from the Centre for Disease Control to Hong Kong successfully cure severe cases of the Hong Kong Flu with an advanced new medicine.
August 28: Assassination of the United States Ambassador to Guatemala in a machine gun attack in Guatemala City.
August 29: Crown Prince Harald of Norway marries Princess Alexandra of Kent in Oslo.
August 30: The United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Network computer system becomes operational, connecting sixteen 'nodes' of advanced computing engines across universities and major corporations.
August 31: West Indian Test cricketer Garfield Sobers hits 6 sixes in an over for Nottinghamshire against Glamorgan, with the final hit seen flying out of the ground and bouncing into Swansea Bay.

[Simon Darkshade]

September 1968
September 1: The USSF unveils a new advanced space fighter in a live telecast from Lunar orbit.
September 2: Scientific adventurers searching for the lost continent of Atlantis report the discovery of anomalous undersea features in the Mid Atlantic.
September 3: In an open letter to The Times, the Civil Defence Association calls for an increase in civil defence spending and a world-leading modernisation of Britain’s public fallout shelter network; this new campaign is thought to be related to a recent donation of funds by interested companies, including the American Vault-Tech Corporation.
September 4: An attempted coup against the Congolese government is suppressed by loyal troops supported by white mercenaries and British advisors, but Léopoldville is wracked by riots and unrest throughout the night, accentuated by foreign backers of the competing factions.
September 5: A Nigerian prince is arrested for multiple counts of suspected fraud after a joint investigation by Scotland Yard, the FBI and Interpol investigated a series of mysterious letters promising a fabulous fortune. The final discovery of the mastermind was facilitated by an intrepid group of four American teenage amateur detectives and their leader, a talking Great Dane; as he was arrested, Prince Adedayo was heard to cry out that he would have got away with it if it wasn't for the meddling kids.
September 6: The Israeli Army unveils an innovative conversion of the Centurion tank to a heavy armoured infantry fighting vehicle in Tel Aviv.
September 7: World famous film star and motor racer Steve McQueen wins the US Grand Prix.
September 8: US Army biological warfare scientists and research wizards begin an experimental breeding programme for the development of an intelligent weapon crossing a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a number of other dinosaurs, a giant chameleon and a manticore; a proposal to include megalodon material was deferred at this time.
September 9: Opening of the Pryor Mountains Wild Horse Range, a national refuge for mustangs on the border of Montana and Wyoming.
September 10: Hanoi and Haiphong are struck by a large USAF/USN bombing raid and missile strike overnight aimed at drawing North Vietnamese attention away from Operation Firethorn, a new consolidation offensive in Southern Laos along the Cambodian border.
September 11: Britain conducts an underground atomic test in South Australia, the first of a new enhanced radiation bomb.
September 12: A special team of doctors and engineers at MIT unveil the 'Boston Digital Arm', a new robotic prosthetic covered in synthetic flesh and skin that it controlled by a special neural interface. One commentator predicts that robots that cannot be told apart from humans will be possible before the year 2000.
September 13: The BBC’s Panorama screens the first part of a special series being recorded with British and Commonwealth forces in the field in Katanga, simply entitled Soldier. It receives very positive initial reviews for its ‘fly on the wall’ style of depicting the lives and action of troops in a brushfire campaign, as well as attracting considerable attention for the range of new weapons systems being utilised, including automatic mortars, the Challenger Medium Armoured Vehicle, jumping jeeps, tactical reconnaissance flying saucer drones equipped with Battlevision and new precision strike missiles. However, there is some criticism of the lack of objectivity of the BBC crews from certain quarters.
September 14: Beginning of Exercise Reforger, an Atlantic Alliance exercise based around the movement of US forces across the Atlantic by sea and air to reinforce Europe in the event of crisis.
September 15: Sven Tyrsson's Conservative-Liberal-Centre coalition narrowly retains power in the Swedish general election for the Second Chamber of the Riksdag, with his foreign policy becoming an increasingly contentious issue.
September 16: Indonesian President Sukarno declares in a four hour speech in Jakarta that Western New Guinea is the rightful territory of Indonesia and that it will never resile from this, whilst also indicating that it is prepared to undertake no acts of aggression to change the current status quo should Dutch forces be withdrawn from the area. He notably avoids mention of the Moluccas.
September 17: Saunders-Roe begins operational tests of an enormous new hybrid super hovercraft/flying boat in the English Channel off the Isle of Wight.
September 18: A German dwarf wins the International Sandwich Competition in New York City, consuming 148 sandwiches and having his own creations adjudged both first and third place in the anonymous Top 100 judging and is awarded the prestigious Golden Wedge.
September 19: Establishment of the Ashante Confederation, a union of the Gold Coast and Ivory Coast.
September 20: A seemingly tremendous tragedy is prevented at the Farnborough Airshow, where a costumed hero bedecked in the colours of the Union Jack prevents a French Atlantique from plummeting into a crowd of hundreds of horrified spectators after it spun out of control.
September 21: British Railways commissions a new report on future rail transport in the British Isles.
September 22: San Francisco police detectives Frank Bullitt, Frank Drebin and Harry Callahan evade a group of murderous criminals in an extended car chase through the Frisco streets.
September 23: President John F. Kennedy records a clear victory in the US Presidential debate with Republican candidate Nelson Rockefeller, with much of the discussion focusing on international events and the war in Vietnam
September 24: A gang of very ambitious thieves attempt to steal the Queen Mary from Long Beach, neglecting to account for its permanently moored status.
September 25: Willie Furman is sentenced to death in Georgia for murder; he will go to the electric chair on February 8th 1969.
September 26: World premiere of Oliver!, a British musical film directed by Carol Reed based upon Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, in London.
September 27: Unveiling of a new large Soviet bomber at a Moscow aerial display.
September 28: Several bombs are uncovered in downtown Cape Town and Johannesburg after anonymous tip offs to the South African Police.
September 28: Formation of a unified Ministry of Agriculture of the Arabian Union, with a direct mandate for farming and land reforms from the governing Council.
September 29: Orion 5 and Kosmos perform a link up in the orbit of Titan, allowing the first meeting of Soviet and American spacemen beyond the bounds of the inner planets.
September 30: The CIA delivers a special report on zombie activity in Haiti to the National Security Council.

[Simon Darkshade]

October 1968
October 1: President Kennedy orders an immediate full scale invasion of Haiti in response to the revelations of yesterday’s report. 75,000 US Marines and US Army paratroopers begin their surprise assault 10 hours later, supported by hundreds of planes of the Twenty-Fifth Air Force. The President gives a national address on all television networks that night, announcing that intelligence had revealed the direct involvement of the Duvalier regime with the ongoing zombie plague and that all means would be used to wipe it out and protect humanity.
October 2: Entry into service of the Austro-German Leopard MBT, described as one of the most heavily armoured tanks in the world.
October 3: Historical reenactors travelling along the Oregon Trail as part of an ABC special miniseries are struck with acute dysentery, throwing the filming schedule into chaos.
October 4: A British SAS team destroys the subterranean South American headquarters of the IRA in remote Venezuela, with Che Guevara narrowly escaping the surprise attack.
October 5: The Peruvian government is deposed in a coup d‘stat whilst the King is abroad.
October 6: France conducts an underground H-Bomb test at Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific.
October 7: Reverend Elvis Presley, visiting London on vacation, subdues a beserk giant robot dragon that is attempting to destroy Tower Bridge after it escaped a nearby circus, using his trusty laser sword and his exotic karate skills in an incredible display of daring.
October 8: A special Viet Cong commando force attempts to assault the US Embassy in Saigon, but is quickly pinned down by fire from the reinforced U.S. Marine guard detachment and the Gurkha platoon from the British Embassy across the road before being wiped out by the US and South Vietnamese quick reaction force.
October 9: An open letter signed by 56 renowned marine biologists is published in The Washington Post, calling for a reappraisal of the international crusade to wipe out the megalodon due to the possible impact upon oceanic food chains.
October 10: Flight International reports that new orders for the Boeing 2707 have once more been overtaken by the Hawker-Siddeley Concord, with the Nord-Renault Super-Caravelle and the Lockheed L-2400 rounding out the top four; the presence of the Junkers Ju-625 in the top five is ascribed purely to Lufthansa’s expansive order.
October 11: The first of a new US class of nuclear attack submarine is laid down at Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut; eleven other boats are on order in all five of the other atomic submarine yards in the United States - Newport News, New York Shipbuilding and Fore River and Portsmouth and Mare Island Naval Shipyards.
October 12: Opening of the XIX Summer Olympics in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
October 13: German monthly car production tops 700,000 for the first time.
October 14: Jamaican Lennox Miller becomes the first West Indian athlete from the unified Federation team to win an Olympic gold medal, triumphing in the final of the 100 metres sprint in a thriller over American Jim Hines.
October 15: US Marine Raiders capture President Duvalier in an isolated mountain village, being cursed by the dying words of a strange voodoo priest in the process. General Max Viers, commander of Joint Task Force 101, hails the capture as the harbinger of the first phase of victory, stating that he is prepared to wipe out voodoo if it will end the zombie menace to the United States and the world.
October 16: The US Supreme Court does not invalidate the prohibition on teaching of evolution in Epperson v Arkansas.
October 17: Fortune Magazine controversially proclaims Sir Charles Ratcliffe as the richest man in the world, shifting their definitions to exclude royalty for the first time.
October 18: Japanese Prime Minister Akira Tanaka gives an expansive speech before the Diet, proclaiming that the time had come for Japanese rearmament in defence of her interests and of peace.
October 19: A gang of mysterious criminals steal four Tyrannosaurus Rexes from New York Zoo.
October 20: Introduction of commercial television to Britain with the beginning of broadcasts of the new independent Imperial Television network (ITV) joining the BBC; the Postmaster General has indicated that advances in technology can accommodate up to another three further nationwide channels in coming years.
October 21: Arrest of a suspected serial kidnapper in Birmingham, as intrepid detectives free six captives from his dungeon.
October 22: An episode of The Big Picture highlights the US Army of the Future, displaying cutting edge combat robots, large war machines, power armour, supersonic guided missiles and advanced tanks.
October 23: Bishop William Langham of Nottingham is appointed as the new Archbishop of York. He is noted for being the first member of the Church Militant to ascend to the position since the 17th century, as well as being a strong High Church traditionalist and the author of widely read spiritual commentaries.
October 24: Military personnel and civilian contractors report seeing a UFO flying at low altitude over Minot AFB, ND in the early hours of the morning before executing a series of seemingly impossible aerial manoeuvres and then climbing up beyond 200,000ft and disappearing.
October 25: An eccentric French tourist is pursued by an angry mob of outraged locals after inadvertently spotting the famed Albino Dalmatian of Dubrovnik until rescued by a passing American academic.
October 26: Beginning of Operation Stormbringer, a joint Anglo-American offensive push in South Vietnam by 30,000 British and 48,000 US troops. It’s opening aerial attacks see the combat debut of the Fairchild-Republic A-10A Thunderbird ground attack jet and the Bristol Strikemaster light COIN fighter-bomber.
October 27: Closing ceremony of the Buenos Aires Olympics, hailed as one of the most successful in recent memory.
October 28: Resignation of the Syrian Prime Minister after news of an Israeli spy scandal breaks.
October 29: Scotland Yard detectives conclude an investigation into a flying boy seen visiting a children’s hospital in West London, finding that the matter was entirely benign.
October 30: USAF pilots report a new a advanced Chinese fighter operating in squadron strength over North Vietnam.
October 31: Enraged Tyrannosaurs are let loose in downtown Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland and Pittsburgh in what is dubbed the “Halloween Horror”. Although the beasts are swiftly subdued and recaptured by police wizards, the attacks cause considerable trauma, particularly to children engaged in ‘trick or treating’.

[Simon Darkshade]

November 1968
November 1: Launch of Operation Sealords, a seaborne and riverine drive to isolate and eliminate Viet Cong forces around the Mekong River along the Cambodian border involving USMC, USN and US Army forces in conjunction with South Vietnamese and French troops moving up from the secured Mekong Delta zone. It is a preliminary action prior to Operation Hydra, the invasion of Cambodia scheduled for early 1969
November 2: First operational deployment of RAF drone combat aircraft over Katanga, along with field testing by the Army of new active camouflage colour-shifting battle capes.
November 3: The Ministry of Space issues a report on interstellar travel, finding that the continuing construction of an Imperial starship represents a significant but worthwhile expense whilst new propulsion technologies are developed. Many space journalists seize upon the report as evidence of wasteful government spending, whilst a very few others observe that the conclusions of the report indicate that something unsaid in the report is driving its confidence.
November 4: Raymond Leslie Morris is arrested after the attempted abduction of a 10 year old girl in Walsall, Staffordshire. A subsequent search of his house uncovers suspicious material leading to him being charged with the Cannock Chase murders of 1965-67; he will be tried, sentenced to death and hanged on January 7th 1969 at Stafford Prison before a crowd of 15,000.
November 5: President John F. Kennedy becomes the first US President since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a third term in power, winning 432 electoral votes to 126 of Nelson Rockefeller, with Whig candidate Eugene McCarthy winning 17 and Conservative Strom Thurmond winning 20. November 6: Signing of an Arab-Egyptian Friendship and Cooperation Pact in Cairo.
November 7: Opening of an integrated steelworks and heavy mechanical engineering factory at Stratford, East Ham.
November 8: Pravda features an extensive front page article setting out a new doctrine promulgated by General Secretary Sergeyev, whereby the Soviet Union should lead the world in all the great indices of power - national wealth, industrial goods, steel, coal, oil, electricity, technology, nuclear weapons, ships, warplanes, tanks, robots and missiles.
November 9: An earthquake registering 5.4 on the Richter Scale with an epicentre in Hamilton, Illinois, is felt across much of the Midwest of the United States, but miraculously causes no fatalities.
November 10: 118 US Redstone missiles are launched from bases in Thailand to strike air defence targets in North Vietnam in a night of exceptionally heavy bombardment. In contrast to previous rocket attacks have been, their mass use here is intended to identify new North Vietnamese radar systems and communication nets as well as damage fighter bases and SAM sites.
November 11: Establishment of the International Liberation Front of Central America, an alliance of anti-government revolutionary groups in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Los Altos and Yucatan.
November 12: Italy conducts its largest underground nuclear test to date in Libya.
November 13: The first reactor at the experimental British nuclear fusion plant at Darkmoor achieves criticality and is projected as producing 2500 MW, with a further three reactors to be constructed.
November 14: Yale University admits its female students, leading to notable alumnus and donor C. Montgomery Burns withdrawing his financial support.
November 15: Indian Army forces in Burma are reinforced by two full corps as part of a build up for a strategic offensive against communist backed insurgents in the Shan States, having pacified the Chinese supported rebels in Kachin over the last three years.
November 16: A top secret message from the commander of the Soviet Group of Forces in North Vietnam to Moscow reports that the Ho Chi Minh Trail has been decisively severed.
November 17: The Crown Prince of Egypt shoots and kills Prime Minister Hassan in the Abdeen Palace amid ongoing nationalist riots in Cairo. The Prince was heard loudly berating the Prime Minister for allegedly wishing to engineer another 1956-like crisis with Britain, evoking the potentially disastrous results and declaring that he had no wish to have his final sight be that of a battlecruiser falling on the Royal Palace. He is discreetly removed to Ceylon later that afternoon by British advisors seeking to deescalate the mounting civil unrest.
November 18: Sergeants Talaiasi Labalaba and William Bodie, Captain Michael Jackson and Lieutenants Peter Skellen and Aidan Dempsey are awared the Victoria Cross for valour in action in South Vietnam in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
November 19: A bloodless coup d'etat overthrows the Premier of Mali; French forces in Timbuktu remain assiduously aloof.
November 20: Seventy-eight coal miners are trapped underground after an explosion in Farmington, West Virginia, but are saved through the intervention of a caped superhero who excavates them.
November 21: Commissioning of the Royal Navy's newest and fastest patrol boat, HMS Speedy, first in its class of a new interceptor craft equipped with light strike missiles, rapid fire guns and other advanced weapons systems.
November 22: Tragedy is averted as JAL Flight 2, a recently delivered DC-10, crashes towards San Francisco Bay where the skilled captain is able to perform a perfect water landing, saving all 280 passengers and crew onboard.
November 23: Princess Victoria of Ruritania arrives in Britain for an extended private visit to the Royal Family.
November 24: Toronto makes an official bid for the 1976 Summer Olympics, joining Moscow, Bombay and New York City as contenders.
November 25: Persia signs an extensive agreement with Britain for the supply of almost 1200 million worth of arms. The prosperity of the Shah's empire has seen a marked increase over the 1960s with increases oil revenues from the renegotiated royalty agreement with British Petroleum and a diversifying modernising economy.
November 26: Dreadnought arrives in the Saturnine system, creating the brief situation of all three Earthly spaceships being in orbit around Titan.
November 27: Beginning of talks between Japan and the United States regarding the future status of Okinawa.
November 28: Reverend Elvis Presley is knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for his valour in the Tower Bridge Incident.
November 29: Romanian General Secretary Mihai Florescu goes missing from his luxury apartment in Bucharest, leaving no signs of a struggle save for drops of blood on his pillow.
November 30: First reported outbreak of the Venusian flu in East Africa.

[Simon Darkshade]

December 1968
December 1: The Dow Jones Industrial Average records its highest daily average for the year with 1893.62.
December 2: Hundreds of witnesses report seeing a bright light coursing across the sky in Central Indiana, culminating in a large crash on the western outskirts of Indianapolis. The crash site is rapidly secured by US military forces and unspecified government officials.
December 3: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg sign the Treaty of Brussels, establishing a full economic and monetary union between the Benelux states.
December 4: The French franc is devalued by 25% to a flat exchange rate of 5 francs to the dollar.
December 5: Formation of the Hong Kong Division, an administrative command of all British and Imperial land forces in the Crown Colony.
December 6: US medical researchers begin testing a cure for diabetes in humans following successful preliminary tests.
December 7: The Emperor of Brazil signs a decree imposing martial law on several provinces.
December 8: Project Schooner, a peaceful nuclear explosion carried out under the broader Project Plowshare releases an unexpectedly large amount of radiation, contaminating a carnival train en route to Las Vegas and a local mail courier of the New Vegas Express Company; US military officials swiftly place them in confinement for specialist treatment.
December 9: CBS’s news magazine flagship, 60 Minutes runs a special report on The Tomorrow Children, an exploration of the recent phenomenon of children with extraordinary special powers and abilities around the world.
December 10: Armed robbers in Tokyo ambush an armoured car delivering cash and escape with over 500 million yen.
December 11: Newly re-elected President Kennedy’s releases the changes to his Cabinet, with John Kenneth Galbraith nominated for Secretary of Health,Welfare and Education, Bruce Wayne as Secretary of Defense and Reverend Martin Luther King as Secretary for Housing, Urban Development and Social Equity.
December 12: Filming begins of a new BBC military series on board the nuclear aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, with the 26 episode season to record her cruise of the North Atlantic and Mediterranean prior to her deployment to the Far Eastern Fleet for combat operations off South Vietnam.
December 13: First general public release of the US Government’s annual Soviet Military Power report. It is notable for its declaration that the Soviet Armed Forces are at their highest level of strength since 1945 and very detailed assessments of new Eastern Bloc weapons systems. It’s sister publication, Imperial Chinese Military Power, remains classified.
December 14: SAS, Iberia, Alitalia and KLM announce large orders for Concord supersonic airliners.
December 15: Six USN battleships conduct a long range bombardment of North Vietnam, the largest such assembly of capital ships on a single mission since the Second World War.
December 16: The King of Spain and the Pope formally order the revocation of the Alhambra Decree of 1492.
December 17: Mary Bell and Norma Bell are found guilty of murder and manslaughter respectively. The latter is sentenced to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but the former receives the sole sentence prescribed for multiple murders of children, death by hanging. Mr. Justice Cusack gives a recommendation for mercy given her age.
December 18: Former Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Christopher Foyle and the current Commissioner Sir Frank Burnside inadvertently foil an attempted robbery of the Royal Mint whilst filming a BBC special.
December 19: President John F. Kennedy announces that he will be nominating Supreme Court Justice Richard Nixon for the position of Chief Justice of the United States. This is seen by many as a political manoeuvre to further the growing Republican split, but is actually driven by judicial political strategy to create a vacancy and repayment of complex favours that delivered the traditionally Republican heartland of California to the Democrats in the recent election.
December 20: The Bulgarian Orthodox Church announces a shift in the date of Christmas to December 25-27 from January 7th. Spokeselves for Father Christmas express a quiet sense of relief.
December 21: British Chancellor Denis Healey announces a surprise income tax cut as part of a special Christmas budgetary statement, additionally stating that the government’s plan to pay off the national debt will be achieved by 1971.
December 22: NASA announces that Orion 5 will begin its return voyage to Earth in early 1969.
December 23: Completion of the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanking, finally linking Shanghai and Peking by rail.
December 24: An incredibly daring joint special operation by United States Army Special Forces, the new Delta Force and Navy SEALs commanded by Colonel Charles Beckwith simultaneously raids three North Vietnamese POW camps around Hanoi, freeing 156 prisoners and flying them to safety in hitherto top secret supersonic VTOL transports and Jolly Green Giant rotodynes. The raids are coordinated with precision airstrikes by USAF and USN F-111s on high value targets in Hanoi using new laser guided bombs and strike missiles. 3 SEALs, 2 Delta Force operators and 2 Green Berets are killed in the raids and a number of recommendations for decorations are made. As a result of Operation White Christmas, Marshal Stepin Berkoff, commander of the Group of Soviet Forces in North Vietnam, has the remaining US POWs taken into Soviet custody.
December 25: Queen Elizabeth II makes her traditional Christmas broadcast to the Empire and Commonwealth, emphasising the centrality of peace, family and love and the eternal promise of the hope and joy of Christmas.
December 26: US Marines begin a buildup along the Cambodian border with South Vietnam.
December 27: Chinese and Soviet border troops clash along the Amur frontier.
December 28: Unveiling of the first prototype of a new RAF ‘Super ICBM’, a long range heavyweight missile intended to augment the Blue Streak force.
December 29: A special team of Interpol detectives successfully locate the infamous ‘Grand Animal Snatcher’ in the Black Forest and free his captives, including Boterbloem the cow, who has a joyously tearful reunion with her owner hours later.
December 30: Uganda and Tanganyika are granted internal self government within the British Empire, the first major step towards independence as Commonwealth Dominions.
December 31: Soviet seismic monitors indicate an underground nuclear explosion in Japan.

[Simon Darkshade]

Even looking back at the entries for this year, there are some that are a bit ‘light on’ for detail. As such, I might go back and add on a few bits and pieces even to this year.

It is the big year of decision in Vietnam, as well as other significant occurrences elsewhere.

[jemhouston]

I happy to see Mr. Lee is staying busy. He tends to get into trouble when he's idle.

[Simon Darkshade]

He is a busy fellow indeed this year, what with the voyage down to the Congo for the events of Return to Charlotteville as a personal royal bodyguard.

[jemhouston]

Simon, I'm enjoying this verse.

[Simon Darkshade]

I'm extremely glad to hear that, Jem. I remember you commenting on it back on the previous (2020-2022) board.

This was a bit of a transitional year in writing terms, starting to get more extensive, but still having a few one line events. It certainly has a lot of progression in ongoing 'event chains' and storylines.

[Simon Darkshade]

1968 Notes
January
- The tactical nuclear use at the end of 1967 was inadvertent rather than by design, so both the US and Soviets are interested in de-escalation
- The boy dragonslayer is both an example of a developing tendency and the seed for a future story
- The capture of VC plans at Pleiku is an OTL event
- Japanese SSNs are the culmination of a developing plot line starting in 1960’s From Sea to Shining Sea
- The missing subs in the Med were unconnected in @, but here are the work of a monstrous creature possessed of an enhanced intelligence and malign intent…
- Star Trek makes an earlier transition to the silver screen, with a different script. I’ll have to do a write up on DE Star Trek
- The two NATO/Western standing naval forces are fully fledged carrier strike groups rather than destroyer-frigate forces of @. They are based around the CVs and BBs of navies other than Britain, France and the USA
- Laos is a different, more open front in the broader Indochina war than @, with no treaty prohibition on open US intervention
- Dropping a battleship on Haiphong is an attempt to cause devastating damage without crossing the nuclear threshold. It serves to show that not every hairbrained plan turns out ti be a masterstroke
- Edward Rogers is an entirely original character and a sign that Australian politics will be different on both sides
- Barton’s Guildhall speech serves several purposes: it sends the message that Britain is very much still in the global superpower game EoS, albeit that having to say so out loud wouldn’t have been necessary even a generation ago; it is a statement of resolute intent for a variety of regional players and opponents; and it is a bit of an authorial hat tip to what Wilson was up to at this point, illustrating the divergence of strategy, which will drive force composition
- A very old Tesla emerges with the result of decades of research, which will play into satellite power transmission, as well as other areas. In his absence, his work had been better known for its ray gun applications
- Khe Sanh is bigger, more decisive and more direct a battle, akin to how it was portrayed in American propaganda flicks of the time
- The Orion/Kosmos race provided an interesting challenge by nature of physics, but does provide some degree of captivating the terrestrial audience
- Whilst the mere debut of the Ford Escort doesn’t seem much, it is what it is accompanied by that counts. There is more British competition and a fair whack more quality control to boot, as well as an absence of the restive labour union problems of @. The British car industry of 1968 is no more or less moribund or sickly than the French, German, Italian, Austrian-Hungarian or Japanese at the time and is holding its own. In the long term, Germany and Japan are both seemingly going to outproduce Britain, but differing patterns of international trade and protection mean that they won’t do so in the same manner, style and consequence as @
- The French troubles begin organically, but are then harnessed by elements in the military and their political backers to build up to something
- Time Life’s Foods of the World, a magnificent artefact of social history on its own in @, is larger, reflecting the more distinct regional cuisines of some areas. I actually have a list if anyone cares about food history
- Argentina has one new modern carrier and another on the way, one fully modern battleship plus another coming, new cruisers, heavy jet bombers, ballistic missile plans and their own tank under development. It is as if there is an arms race going on in South America
- Meat consumption is markedly higher, reflecting greater affluence
- The new Boeing spaceplane is the first designed for the full hop to Luna or Minerva; the others are more suited to the first half of it, or out to the big space stations in geostationary orbit

February
- The Soviet light carriers were the vestige of Stalin Sr's post WW2 naval expansion and have rapidly become obsolete; their air group in the early 60s was perhaps 18 older and smaller jets. There was some consideration to converting them to amphibious helicopter carriers, but their relative quality made conversion a non-economical proposition. There were some fears from Western intelligence that they would be transferred for that purpose to the GDR or Poland, but these turned out to be baseless; the WP are looking for amphibious assault ships, but larger ones that can deploy a decent number of rotodynes
- Different royal weddings are still being used as an arm of statecraft
- Sea monsters sinking merchant ships is an ongoing problem with expanding trade
- Popocatapetl erupting is not an OTL event and quite a dangerous one
- Khe Sanh comes to a head earlier, with Eagle being a much wider scale operation
- The Crusader is in the M1/Challenger 1 class of @, or a heavily armoured MBT for the European and Middle East battlefields. The Valiant, like the @ Vickers MBT Mk.4, is lighter and designed for export, with the largest expected markets being the Indian Army and the Royal Marines. The Ardent is a bit lighter still and is going for the South American and African markets
- The Suez Canal Zone lease has been extended under strong pressure, creating an ongoing problem for Anglo-Egyptian relations, to put it mildly
- The case of the Irish schoolboys is lifted directly from the charming 1994 Irish adaption of The War of the Buttons, but here the ingenuity and leadership of the boys gets them a slap on the wrist and then being marked for better things in a few years; being sent to Craggy Island is a fairly heavy punishment
- Mu Gia Pass gets hit with radiological weapons for area denial
- Heyerdahl's expedition for Atlantis will have some interesting results. The tech for deep ocean exploration is now present
- The candid Soviet economic confession is from @, although was in a Komsomol paper. The approximate levels of cars and radios have been boosted to account for Dark Earth changes
- The decision to eliminate the devil's brew put together at Porton Down is a smart one. Any relationship to modern viruses and development is purely coincidental...
- The Day of the Chacal is a little hat tip to the book, reflecting the ongoing Algerian kerfuffle
- Cronkite saying victory is in sight in Vietnam is a 180 degree difference from @ and there will be wide reaching and long lasting consequences
- Wiping out the megalodon is a decision taken somewhat in haste and fear, with potentially damaging consequences for the oceanic food chain, but has to be chosen nonetheless. They are too big and too dangerous to be allowed to live in the wild and naturally can't live in captivity
- This Exocet is a supersonic Mach 1.1 missile with a range of 54nm

March
- Lost in Space has a definitive ending
- Initial strategic arms limitations talks are starting to show some slow progress, but are somewhat constrained by the lack of the @ US freeze in ICBMs and in its overall stockpile, the complicating factor of British and French missiles and China being ahead of where it stood at this point. The Soviets haven’t had and won’t have the same opportunity to achieve parity and an advantage in land based missiles
- The flying car incident results in the arrest of a wicked baron, baroness and their wicked child catcher
- SPECTRE is foiled again
- The public assassination of the Emperor of Brazil horrifies the world and throws an already troubled country into chaos. Guevara is regarded as international Public Enemy #1 in the West
- George Brown was that tired and emotional after his Peru trip that he resigned. The @ story about the Archbishop of Lima is true here: “ Brown was said to have lumbered over to a tall, elegant vision in red, and requested the honour of the next dance, to be told, ‘I will not dance with you for three reasons. The first is that you are drunk. The second is that the band is not playing a waltz, but the Peruvian national anthem. The final reason is that I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima.’ “
- The aftermath of Eagle/Khe Sanh sees a rolling series of offensives that is deliberately reminiscent of the Hundred Days of fifty years previous
- Libya doesn’t experience a coup, keeping the Anglo- American presence
- Britain isn’t experiencing deindustrialisation, but growth of heavy and medium industry in some of the old heartlands
- Westmoreland wasn’t the right general for Vietnam in @, but could well be a decent fit for the more conventional SACEUR role
- The new Papal military order has a nickname of the Dawnguard
- George Best playing for England is a result of different international FIFA rules whereby a player born in one of the Home Nations and playing at a junior can be qualified for another as a senior, provided the application goes through before 21 and they fulfil residency rules for 6 years. Here, Best scrapes in through some clever paperwork and is enticed over by a very lucrative payment and the chance of playing for the world champions
- The North Vietnamese start to run into the no go area of Mu Gia Pass after it has been dusted
- The Mitsubishi LR fighter will get a familiar nickname
- Establishment of the FAE is different from the UAE, not least of which because of the continuing British presence

April
- The sale of London Bridge was a historical one, with the backward rationalisation that the American chap thought he was getting Tower Bridge, a proposition that does not seem to be supported. It is a longer bridge, reflecting the greater width of the Thames due to the larger world, with the extra ~100ft coming from localised adjustment. It will be a more ornate and rather grander bridge than the current one, which is rather pedestrian and modernist in its appearance for my tastes
- 2001 has a slightly different plot, reflecting the more advanced space situation, and a somewhat less surreal ending, given the lower popular acceptance of surrealism
- The Allen keys for the IKEA/SAAB flatpack car have to be purchased separately, typical of IKEA. Something like a 1960s version of this www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/flatpack- ... hour-23472
- The Nova rocket is about 50% larger than an @ Saturn V, whilst the Solaris is a cutting edge spaceship with innovative new nuclear engines and secondary aetheric ion drives embedded with cavorite; long story short, it aims to cut the longest Venus travel time to 25 days and Mars to ~90 days. The experimental Rigel took 81 days to reach Mars in 1963 due to favourable positioning and a test of the Orion engine used for the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn, but it is not really ideally suited to the inner solar system due to its design
- Mike Kirby is John Wayne's character from The Green Berets, Michael Ransom is Reb Brown's character from Strike Commando and John Rambo should be familiar
- The 50th anniversary/birthday of the RAF is marked by greater festivities here, with the Hunters (and others) flying through and under Tower Bridge being officially scheduled
- The Charge of the Light Brigade is a very different movie tonally, given the different outcome of that particular charge
- France pulls out of Hainan, despite American displeasure, as it can neither afford it or defend it. This does serve as the final catalyst for the unrest of May and subsequent coup
- The War in Korea is something like Victory at Sea in its style and reveals the in-universe author of the Korean War history that I really need to get back to at some point
- New Soviet fighters up the ante over North Vietnam. The Su-21 is an improved version of the (cancelled in @) Su-19, with two 24000lbf turbofan engines, an ogival wing, look down/shoot down radar and a heavier armament of longer range missiles, whilst the MiG-23 is more of a bona fide challenger to the F-4. This provides more impetus to the fielding of the F-15
- The Fellowship of the Ring sweeps the Oscars and Christopher Lee, who has a very busy year, collects a Best Actor Oscar that he never got the opportunity to challenge for in @
- The FV525 Warrior is designed to overmatch the BMP-1, but does so at a markedly increased price
- The Kurchatov Institute acts to improve the safety performance of the RBMK reactor after the KGB apparently obtains top secret American and British analysis of it. In practice, the information derived from Lapcat ended up be transferred by the British via an agent who feeds the Soviets a variety of intelligence; the KGB think they have an excellent double cross/double agent who is in fact an unwitting triple agent. Wheels within wheels. Why? To prevent the chance of something like Chernobyl occurring in a much, much worse manner, with the associated potential for much wider effects; whilst preventing the enemy from making a mistake may be counterintuitive in most cases, it was viewed by PM Barton as a case of risk management for the wider world. There are many consequences to this, particularly after 3.5 years of Barton largely being able to achieve what he is trying to do without being struck by disaster, war or economic downturn. When we look at what happened historically to the British economy and its performance in this era, it sets things up for a very different experience of the 1970s. As for the Conservative leadership contest, Thorneycroft has the least votes as of the first round and Powell ends up winning; observers may note a more successful and sober Randolph Churchill still about as one of the Tory grandees
- Operation Turpentine sees the AH-56 Cheyenne debut, providing an earlier heavy attack helicopter for the US Army
- Rumblings in Malaya come from an internal return of Communist insurgency, but Britain is naturally concerned that Jakarta had something to do with it. Konfrontasi continues well and truly in DE 1968, with Borneo a steady but continuing commitment
- Something is going on in China...
- Bokassa's coup is apparently backed by rogue French elements as well as others
- ODESSA continue to stir up trouble, but in doing so, increase the political pressure to do something about them
- Jack Regan ends up quite cross that his car gets messed up
- Cassius Clay vs Vladimir Zheleznyy is a grand old Cold War bout
- F-111s launching Condor ASMs is just a small indicator of the more advanced air to ground capacity that has developed out of an extended Korea and the subsequent higher intensity Vietnam

May
- Matters kick off on May Day, with the French protests starting as a more Marxian revolutionist spasm compared to the New Left chienlit of @, exacerbated by magical intervention by other parties
- The French Army then puts its own contingency plans into action to reestablish order and quite coincidentally back the national unity government of the recently retired Marquis d'Ambreville. Absolutely nothing suspicious going on and no hint of manipulating the far left into creating the circumstance to clear house
- The Spaceman Rescue Agreement is the @ Astronaut RA
- Carlos is selected for special training…
- Dirty Harry shoots the Zodiac Killer
- North Vietnamese surface ships run into a battleship and battlecruiser and come off worse. What a shock
- Javelin is an all rounder missile, with some shades of the much later Exactor in some respects
- Civil defence remains a matter of very high importance, rather than being deprecated
- Shaw is a fictional character, but reflects the ongoing role of the amateur; professionalism militates against dual internationals, let alone triple
- The M165 is a powerful middleweight replacement for the 105mm in GP artillery; the 105 persists as an airborne Howitzer for now
- John Glenn gets his moment on Titan
- Emperor Sebastião is scared stiff of getting the same treatment as his father
- Billy Connolly sees action
- Boterbloem‘s abduction is eventually solved
- Sergeyev is a very different original leader
- Cavendish Foods is from To The Manor Born

June
- Ottoman Turkey finds the presence of stronger external forces rather non conducive to the more expansive of her ambitions
- The son of the Hungarian prince and former Doncaster grocer's boy keeps fetching his cloth for the time being out of affection for his uncle, although he now has a fair bit more time off
- The Spanish Inquisition continues its raids and actions against the more modernist and radical elements of Spanish society
- Plenty of European militaries are getting a bit more direct combat experience in Vietnam, but it is of comparatively less utility for the type of mechanised battlefield they generally face
- The British National Plan is where Stanley Barton and Labour delve a bit more into the socialist side of things, with a distinctly British flavour and a difference from anything really done in @. Broad national goals of production and growth are set and resource needs calculated, but unlike the Eastern Bloc, the overwhelming majority of the economic does remain in private ownership. Britain does have some fairly large conglomerates akin to Japanese zaibatsu/kereitsu. Goals and the optimal means of achieving them are determined through consultation with labour unions and big business. The overall approach has a strong influence of dirigisme, with use of advanced cybernetic computer systems to assist in calculations. However, there is the flipside of this, which is a preference for lower taxes and facilitating internal economic freedom. If it seems like a bit of a confused devil's brew, then you're on the right track
- Someone keeps trying to crack Yemen open, for the important reason that it is seen as a bit of a backdoor into Arabia and the Middle East and could be used to pressure the British out of Aden
- The Congolese deployment has its own story
- The replay of the UEFA European Cup final is not an influence on the introduction of penalty shootouts
- 1566 Icarus making a relatively close pass of Earth results not in a student project, but a test of new systems in space as part of the international Project Spaceguard
- Rail is treated as less of a redheaded stepchild in the USA
- Gary Gygax has his career and ideas kickstarted by a wandering wizard. D&D enthusiasts may recognise the reference to the pouch of 1d4 random valuable objects; they inspire Gygax to create a table for that. The man loved his tables
- The Tupamaros are getting support from outside, making for a troubled situation in Uruguay that flies beneath the radar of most world attention
- Switzerland, like the rest of Europe, continues on with capital punishment
- Historically, there was nothing to stop the accidental striking of two AIM-7s on HMAS Hobart off Vietnam. Here, Voyager, which survived her run-in with Melbourne does have a Legion Close Weapons System, which consists of a 37mm rotary autocannon on a mount similar to Phalanx in @. Gun based defences were never fully abandoned by the RN and USN here, but continued on as counters to threats other than those present in the @ 1950s/60s. This has a flow on effect for coming years. The larger surface ships with a lot of AAA are not quite the same as the WW2 era stuff that we'd be familiar with, as a lot of it is unmanned, externally controlled and has quite superior sky arcs
- Bob Hawke enters Parliament 15 years earlier
- The raid on Hanoi by American, British and French bombers is a sign of cooperation after the kerfuffle of May, and of the French change in policy post Hainan
- Biggles is quite enthusiastic about the new Sopwith Camel, and rightly so
- The French crackdown is quite brutal, with Dany le Rouge only the first of many to meet an unfortunate end
- Christopher Lee, freshly back in Venice from 2 weeks in the Congo, can't manage to stay out of trouble. The result will be a knighthood and some other goodies
- The Long Term Combat Aircraft Requirements Plan is ambitious, complex, detailed, expensive and a bit of a mouthful to boot
- 2739-920 is a rather decisive margin. If the Soviets go up, the Americans won't stand still; hence limitations talks are a bit difficult
- Ratification of the 26th Amendment/repeal of the 22nd scrapes in just in time for Kennedy, throwing the election into a tizzy

July
- Dad’s Army is less overtly comedic, given the differing culture and the Home Guard being an ongoing institution
- Armoured trains are being introduced for rather different purposes to those of old. They are to be used for patrol and strategic transport in the case of mobilisation
- JFK’s protestations that he would only reluctantly accept nomination are mainly for public consumption
- The RN gets into the battlecruiser business, with the type being markedly smaller than battleships and suited for a variety of missions - carrier escort, surface action, trade protection and strategic air defence
- Northrop and Grumman merge earlier, followed a pattern of partial consolidation of US aerospace companies into very big and powerful conglomerates
- Diversification of the Paladin follows the direction chosen earlier in the 1960s to increase options for land attack
- The Hong Kong flu fizzles in the face of new drugs and treatments. Butterflies abound
- Development on the Isle of Grain takes the form of a deep water port (@ Thamesport on steroids) and a large airport. Good for jobs and economic growth, not so good for marsh birds
- The Congo skirmish is extremely one sided; it is what the British wanted - a lopsided battle to use as a free fire zone for new weapons and tactics
- No one wants to take any risks with a beanstalk
- Intel, having been founded earlier, is rather more advanced
- Something is awry in Chiapas
- The W-G’s investigation into a baby named Charlie biting his brother’s finger is both a little joke at a news story and a sign that they are just a tad overzealous
- Mention of the Church of the United States is something with consequences if thoroughly thought through
- The SR-72 is a bloody paralyser of a strategic recon plane
- Theatre censorship, among other types, is still going strong in Britain, in quite marked contrast to the relaxation of @
- Swedish chefs always get up to hijinks.
- The Battle of London. Well. Quite a lot going on there and there are some large short, medium and long term consequences. I’d be interested in guesses as to what they are

August
- Argentine armament seems to be headed somewhere. Their young, vigorous Nationalist PM is a bit like Peron, but more realistic, ruthless, intelligent and active
- The healing at the carnival is a bit of a hat tip to Carnivale
- Australia continues its reaction to Konfrontasi and a Red Indonesia
- The Arab Legion is acting as a bit of a Praetorian Guard, with all that entails
- Mary Bell is nicked for only one murder, but still inspires a huge reaction and revulsion
- Rockefeller wins the Republican nomination, but it is a bit of a poisoned chalice with the late re-entry of Kennedy
- Something happened on Iapetus
- Dracula fighting in the night sky is never a good sign
- Over decades, the very climate, nature and culture of Southern Iraq is changing through the change to the land
- The geezers who pulled the Italian Job live happily ever after
- The US Army thought about naming the wrist mounted device a Pip Boy, but decided against it for copyright reasons
- In Dark Earth, the top Michelin level is 5 stars, rather than three
- Ireland is about to see a lot more investment and development
- ICBM class missiles being fielded by the US Army, USN and USAF is a sign of very high level rivalry
- The KGB is trying to get some sort of path "into" Central Europe, with Czech nationalists being one roundabout path
- A suspected Godzilla contact gets an ASTOR in the face, demonstrating how big a threat he is considered
- Lennon and McCartney, whilst living different and arguably happier lives, still manage to meet and become friends
- The Soviet Lead Zeppelin can't carry a tune
- Vietnam enters its next phase
- Rhodesia is shifting into a different phase; with only one really open front and both flanks a bit more secure through the Portuguese, there isn't the basis for an existential threat
- On top of previous royal unions, further ties are forged between Norway and Britain, as part of a general Anglo-Scandinavian policy
- ARPANET becomes operational much earlier

September
- Space fighter and spacecraft technology is advancing, albeit at a reduced rate compared to terrestrial planes due to the cost involved
- It seems as if Atlantis, or some vestige of it, has maybe been found
- Civil Defence is a very important issue in Britain, but the astroturfing campaign by Vault Tec is above and beyond that
- The Congolese coup was launched by an American backed faction and its failure is the harbinger of further trouble
- Nigerian princes and Scooby-Doo make for a glorious combination
- The Israeli heavy APC/AIFV built out of a Centurion is much earlier than @, but here is an experimental attempt at developing a clear overmatch. The threat of the Soviets rolling down through the Middle East remains a real one
- Steve McQueen gets to engage in his preferred job as well as acting
- The US Army combat beasts are noted for the deathly claws
- Laos is the big theatre in Indochina in the second half of the year
- Britain building and testing neutron bombs is a sign of some things to come when we consider the utility of such weapons
- Whilst the Boston Digital Arm is from @, the synthetic flesh and cyborg-y elements are not
- Soldier is one of the first military ‘fly on the wall’ series and showcases military equipment that is radically advanced compared to what is thought of as “the Army’s gear”. In popular culture understanding, the British Army is thought of as an amalgam of late WW2/Korea (Centurions, 25pdrs, Vickers GPMGs, Land Rovers, APCs and wartime camo uniforms) and some aspects of the 1950s (helicopters and Rotodynes, SLRs and self propelled guns); this comes through in children’s cartoons, Commando comics, children’s plastic and metal soldiers, dress up play kits, war films, comedy sketches and newspaper cartoons. The War Office and Army are trying to modernise that through television and MoI films
- Exercise Reforger begins in a slightly different context here, as there is no LBJ pullback of troops from (West) Germany, but rather a longer term plan put in place as a result of the lessons of 1960. Some of the initial process and ideas are discussed in From Sea to Shining Sea
- Sweden is in a very different place politically
- Sukarno starts to modify his position vis a vis Western New Guinea
- Saro are dabbling with something like an ekranoplan but a bit unique
- The Ashante Confederation isn’t a throwback Ashante kingdom, but rather a use of the older name in a similar manner to Ghana in @
- Superhero intervention prevents a Farnborough tragedy
- Bullit, Drebin and Callahan is a heck of a team
- Silly thieves trying to pinch the Queen Mary is a set up for a future potential story involving Sgt Joe Friday
- Willie Furman becomes but a brief footnote here
- The Arabian Union begins to react to some of the changing agricultural circumstances in the renewed Fertile Crescent
- The Orion-Kosmos link up is quite the feat, as they aren’t quite designed for the process in the same way as Apollo and Soyuz
- The CIA’s report on zombies in Haiti begets swift action. The Americans had been acting against outbreaks there for a number of years, but now there is a decision to crack down in a major way

October
- A very quick invasion of Haiti reflects that there were forces ready for the contingency
- The Leopard is more akin to the @ Leopard II
- The unfortunate attack of dysentery refers to one of the iconic deaths on The Oregon Trail
- The IRA gets dealt a very heavy blow in the SAS raid
- Reverend Presley can’t avoid trouble even when on holiday
- The attempted VC hit on the Embassy is decisively smashed by heavy security
- As said the decision to get rid of the meg is not uncontroversial but is darn popular
- SSTs are becoming the perceived way of the future
- The USN SSN class is a parallel to the 688s of @ with certain improvements
- Argentina gets the Olympics rather than Mexico
- The unified West Indies Olympic team is a nascent titan for it’s smaller size
- Duvalier is captured, with the stinger that there may be a voodoo curse at play. General Max Viers does look very much like the Star Wars character of similar name
- A more conservative US SC does yield some quite different results
- Different patterns to the world rich list
- Tanaka’s speech makes sense when viewed in the context of the year as a whole
- The T-Rex thieves nab some of the younger ones in order to wreak havoc
- After a long time, Britain gets a new ITV to join the BBC. It ends up being a bipartisan idea for different reasons and will be added to in a much more expedited fashion than @
- The Big Picture continues to be reasonably popular and it’s very ambitious future predictions here are very much on the money
- The Anglican Church hasn’t experienced the liberal shift of the @ 1950s and 60s
- The French tourist is Monsieur Hulot
- A Peter Pan-esque entity is more than benign
- Someone has an interest in using Halloween, as it is a powerful date

November
- The prelude to Hydra outlines what the Allies hope will be the endgame in South Vietnam
- RAF drones over the Congo are rather more advanced; through use of magical links with crystal ball operators, they are capable of a fair bit of manoeuvre and are armed with a cannon, rockets and bombs. At this point, they are fairly inaccurate and limited to general area attack, but are good for recon and photography. The colour shifting battle capes are a form of active camouflage and quite, quite capable
- The journos are right and there is something that is missing from the public account
- Morris gets sentenced to death, which would have been on the cards anyway without abolition in @, but the offhand mention of public execution does cast a lot of matters in a different light
- JFK wins comfortably, which is no surprise. This does set up 1972 as a very different and significant election
- Heavy industry being opened up in Stratford/Greater London is very much the opposite of the @ trend
- The Sergeyev Doctrine is very ambitious, but he is an ambitious man. His character is a mix of Gorby, Khrushchev, Kennedy and Putin, which makes him more dangerous than Stalin Jr or Sr
- Old stocks of Redstones are being used up for the bombardment of North Vietnam and, in the process, getting the enemy to show some of the radars and comms
- The founding of the ILFCA (or FLIAC in Spanish) is a precursor to trouble in the region far greater than @
- Italy has an agreement allowing it to test in Libya based on the French in Algeria
- Darkmoor is going to be the first of several big fusion power plants that will transform British energy and replace a lot of older capacity
- Monty Burns does not approve of female students. Whatever could be next?!
- India has been the leading force in Burma in the 1960s and, after over 20 years, the insurgencies are crumbling
- Right, here we go: The Ho Chi Minh Trail has been severed. The dusting of Mu Gia Pass was bad enough, but there is now an extended line going through Laos towards the Thai border. This would not be possible or viable without a shedload of troops and can’t be maintained ad infinitum; rather, it will be followed by a big push in Cambodia and ongoing sweep and clear ops in South Vietnam. Without supply, the Viet Cong are doomed
- The Crown Prince of Egypt does his block and ends up doing a very silly thing in shooting PM Hassan, albeit for all the right reasons; what wasn’t viable in 1956 is still not viable now. The callback to the Haiphong Battleship Drop is a way of showing it as an unintended consequence; some think of it as a fearsome precision attack rather than a bit of a crazy idea that went into action
- The VC winners may be familiar. Lalabala died at the Battle of Mirbat in Oman in 1972, single-handedly firing a 25pdr; Bodie is Lewis Collins’ character from The Professionals; Jackson commanded British forces in Kosovo; Skellen is Lewis Collins’ character from Who Dares Wins and Dempsey is Miles Anderson’s character from Ultimate Force.
- HMS Speedy is indeed a bit of a game changer, designed for very fast speeds and heavy firepower, a bit like the LCS of a different world, but a bit smaller and more focused in its role without so much mission creep. It is designed as a ‘Super FAC/FAC Killer’ for ops in the North Sea, Baltic and up in the Norwegian north as well as a QRF boat for operations around Gibraltar. One part that is different from any @ ship is that there is an intent that it can be deployed globally by skyship. I’ll put together something on Light/Coastal Forces in due course
- Princess Victoria of Ruritania is intended as a match for HRH Prince Charles. There is a general desire for him to get married and settle down as soon as possible, rather than the more extended bachelor years he had in the @ 1970s
- NYC will get the 1976 Summer Games for the US Bicentennial
- Persia is entering a very prosperous period without some of the ticking time bombs of @
- Dracula kills another Romanian communist leader, or does he?
- The Venusian flu isn’t an Andromeda Strain or anything like that, but when Earthly influenza is cured, what else can throw a spanner in the works?

December
- The Indianapolis UFO incident is the largest yet and can’t be covered up effectively
- The Benelux states move ever closer together, being the only European states that don’t have multiple issues holding them back from economic integration
- A cure for diabetes is another advanced bit of medical progress, reflecting the role of magic and the butterflies from a bit more ancient knowledge surviving (Alexandria, Constantinople and Baghdad’s House of Wisdom)
- Schooner results in some trouble. The carnival train is a bit of a thematic reference to the HBO series Carnivale, among other works, whilst the New Vegas Courier Company refers to Fallout New Vegas, where the player takes the role of a courier. One of the best games ever made in my view
- The advanced children is a reference to The Tomorrow People and Chocky, in addition to other shows of that vintage
- Kennedy’s cabinet includes some very big names. His brother has gone to the Senate to prepare for a 1972 run. On the other side of politics, Rockefeller has shot his bolt and the nomination is Governor Ronald Reagan’s to lose
- Filming begins on what will become Sailor. It will be somewhat different, involving a combat cruise on a younger carrier in the full prime of her service life and something more of her escorts, including the guided missile battleship Hood. In addition to the captain, officers young and old, fleet master at arms, chaplain, doctor, it’s television entertainment (including a cleaned up Wilf) and the matelots, there will also be a bit more on the nuclear engineers working on her reactors (with a fair bit of censorship), the large and capable carrier air wing and the various defences of a ship going into harm’s way. Ark Royal will be crossing the equator, providing emergency aid after an earthquake and tidal wave, going through the Suez Canal, calling in at various Middle Eastern and Indian ports then making her arrival at Singers before operations off Vietnam
- Soviet Military Power appears early and in substantial detail; this sends a message East
- Big Concord orders are a shot in the arm for the British aerospace industry just when it looked like the Americans were beginning to roll over them. There are some more twists and turns to come, some courtesy of Barnes Wallis
- Mary Bell is sentenced to death due to the absence of any other option, putting the cat among the pigeons at the Home Office. The recommendation for mercy is very likely to succeed, given her age, but in that event, she won’t be getting out in 11 years or even double that; the idea of life imprisonment hasn’t really come up much in British sentencing. The very act of getting the ultimate sentence really succeeds in getting a reaction from the girl, but also the press. More than a few voices start asking whether this was really the best course of action and what can be done to at least expand sentencing options. Prior to her case, no one had really given thought to what might happen if a child came up on a capital charge, as it just seemed so darned unlikely. Once she and her accomplice were bought to trial, there was some realisation that some laws had not been repealed from back in the 1700s, but the comparative swiftness of the trial got inside the “reaction loop” of Parliament. I guess this is a bit of a convoluted way of showing how some aspects of Dark Earth are behind their own times, coloured somewhat by my legal interest in the interplay of obsolete laws and modern cases. Therefore, she won’t be famous for getting out anytime soon, but for the legal question raised; shades of the West Lothian question in some ways
- Foyle and Burnside make for an interesting if very unlikely team. The former ascends to the top job in the 1950s and has a reputation as one of the top cops in Europe, if not the world
- Richard Nixon as Chief Justice of the United States. It works both in universe due to the political machinations involved and out of universe due to the sheer difference involved
- Healey’s announcement is likely to be a correct one. This has the potential to change many of the well established ideas and indeed tropes of British economic performance by freeing up the extra funds for investment, tax cuts and more defence spending; there are also calls from the party’s Left for social spending to be boosted. This then becomes the defining internal conflict of Barton’s second term
- The US POW rescue operation is a success on Christmas Eve, timed to perfection for propaganda purposes. John Rambo is involved, along with a range of similar characters from action flicks: Captain James Braddock (Chuck Norris from Missing in Action), his cousin Lieutenant Scott McCoy (Chuck Norris in The Delta Force) and Sergeant Michael Ransom (Reb Brown from Strike Commando). Meanwhile, Marshal Stepin Berkoff is based on Steven Berkoff’s character in First Blood Part II
- The new RAF ICBM project aims to develop the fastest missile possible given its operational requirements
- The Japanese then throw the cat amongst the pigeons on the last day of the year, as has become traditional

[Simon Darkshade]

January 1969
January 1: The USSR recalls its ambassador to Japan for consultations in the aftermath of the suspected nuclear test. Tokyo publicly denies that it has tested a nuclear weapon.
January 2: The News of the World is bought by British tycoon Sir Denzil Carey, beating off a bid by an Australian newspaper proprietor.
January 3: Confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Richard Nixon as the new Chief Justice of the United States in an extraordinary session of the Senate.
January 4: Moroccan liberation militias attempting to attack the Spanish exclave of Ifni are repulsed by artillery fire from the well prepared Spanish garrison, with the lightly armed forces having little protection against gas shells.
January 5: The Royal West Indian Air Force deploys its first fighter squadron into combat, operating Hawker-Siddeley Phantoms out of Thailand over South Vietnam and Malaya.
January 6: Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos is assassinated by a Communist gunman in Manila on live television, leading to a state of emergency and widespread international shock.
January 7: Lieutenant William 'One-Eye' Clinton is assigned to his previous unit of A Company, 4th Battalion, 222nd Infantry Regiment, 42nd Infantry Division as a staff officer, having lost his left eye in a Viet Cong mortar attack the previous October.
January 8: Four FBI Special Agents are shot and killed whilst trying to apprehend a dangerous bank robber in Maryland, the most ever lose in a single incident. It leads to a number of changes to FBI and general law enforcement armament in reaction to the tragedy, in addition to providing support to those calling for the formation of a specialist armed response team within the FBI.
January 9: PVO Strany missiles shoot down an unidentified flying object 400km north of Krasnoyarsk at 0328. KGB troops take the craft and its occupants into custody. An emergency meeting of the Politburo is called in the early hours of the morning.
January 10: The ailing Saturday Evening Post is purchased by a mysterious benefactor just as it looked on the verge of folding.
January 11: USAF B-47 and B-52 bombers begin preliminary bombardment operations against suspected Viet Cong base areas in Cambodia in the build up to the invasion.
January 12: Swiss food scientists in Geneva unveil a new highly advanced food bar that can provide a four course meal and the equivalent of 1200 calories in a single 150g bar.
January 13: Establishment of Samsung Electronics, the latest expansion of the Samsung chaebol in Korea.
January 14: 25 sailors are killed after an explosion on board the atomic supercarrier USS Enterprise near Hawaii starts a major fire.
January 15: Noted revolutionary Carlos Marighella narrowly escapes a shootout with Brazilian police in Rio de Janeiro.
January 16: Consolidated Railroad's Super Metroliner breaks the record for the Washington-New York City journey, covering the 362 miles between Union Station and Pennsylvania Station in 52 minutes.
January 17: A madman sets fire to a French schoolhouse, endangering the lives of 110 pupils who are miraculously rescued by a caped and striped-shirted superhero who also apprehends the villain before he can inflict further damage.
January 18: The Royal Syrian Army forms a sixth armoured division, bringing the collective Arab regular military forces to a total of 50 divisions.
January 19: US Space Force satellites report that operations have commenced at three large new integrated steelworks in Central China, the latest step in the burgeoning industrial progress taking place behind the Great Wall.
January 20: President John F. Kennedy is inaugurated for the third time in Washington D.C. His speech focuses on the progress made in foreign and domestic policy, calling for victory in Vietnam to be matched by victory for all at home.
January 21: A nuclear meltdown at the underground Lucens nuclear reactor in Switzerland is narrowly averted by swift action by gnomish engineers.
January 22: Home Secretary James Callaghan commutes Mary Bell’s sentence of death by hanging to imprisonment at Her Majesty’s Pleasure on the grounds of her tender years.
January 23: British Ministry of Forestry dendromancers report the eradication of the final known cases of Dutch Elm Disease in the British Isles; plans are formulated for foresters to expand their protective efforts to the Continent.
January 24: A U.S. Joint Intelligence Committee report states that the military industrial capacity of the German Democratic Republic continues to defy logic and previous predictions and that the only rational explanations for the 'Mystery of East Prussia' appeared to be that the Soviets were subsidising its military forces well beyond the levels of its other satellite states and that the Thalmann regime was maintaining an unsustainably high military posture.
January 25: Launch of a nuclear research mini-submarine in Groton, Connecticut; it is noted for its striking red paint, which contrasts with the bright yellow submarine operated by the Royal Navy for research purposes over the last two years.
January 26: Whilst on his Journey of Mastery through India, English wizard George Harrison, 25, is hailed as a hero after rescuing a village from a landslide through a combination of swift thinking and skilful magic.
January 27: Two Iraqi divisions move up to positions around Baghdad as part of maneuvers designed to test the Royal Iraqi Army's capacity in urban warfare, temporarily obstructing traffic between the capital and RAF Habbaniya.
January 28: An accident on a oil drilling rig six miles off the coast of Santa Barbara, California leads to the largest oil spill in U.S. history, with the blowout leading to thousands of barrels of oil gushing out into the ocean.
January 29: Australian weather sorcerers begin large scale rainfall enchantments over Central and Western Australia to stimulate expansion of arable land and long term development of the centre of the continent.
January 30: The Committee of Imperial Defence approves the third stage in the Long Range Missile Defence of the United Kingdom plan, authorising the procurement of the third and fourth tranches of the Violet Friend anti-ballistic missile, full deployment of the Black Beauty medium range missile, development of twenty new Blue Sky short range defensive missile sites and four Skyguard energy weapon facilities. Further interception sites are to be built in the Low Countries and Scandinavia pending agreement with the relevant foreign powers.
January 31: World premiere of The Two Towers, the second picture in David Lean’s epic trilogy The Lord of the Rings in London. The 269 minute film is immediately hailed as a masterpiece, with the set piece Battle of Helm’s Deep attracting particular praise for its scope and spectacle.

[Simon Darkshade]

February 1969
February 1: Signing of initial agreements for the construction of a new planned city of over 250,000 inhabitants in Wyoming.
February 2: Five North Vietnamese Silkworm anti-ship missiles are fired at USS Montana whilst it operates on the gunline off the coast of the DMZ, but all are shot down by her defensive missiles and anti-aircraft guns.
February 3: Establishment of a special FBI task force for the investigation of strange or paranormal incidents that defy ordinary natural or supernatural explanation; it is dubbed the ‘Y-Files Group’ by assigned officers as a homonymous pun.
February 4: Arnd Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, heir to the Krupp dynasty and fortune, is kidnapped by masked assailants in broad daylight off the streets of Frankfurt.
February 5: Star Trek debuts on the BBC, attracting favourable reviews for the international crew of the USS Enterprise (particularly the British first officer William Sanderson), clever parallels to Cold War political rivalries in space and ground-breaking special effects.
February 6: Boeing unveils a model of its proposed successor to both the 747 and the 2707, a very large supersonic intercontinental jetliner.
February 7: Monitoring stations record the highest ever gust of wind in the British Isles at Kirkwall in Orkney, with the freak wind measuring 245mph. A meteorologist in situ is alarmed by the sight of a tartan-clad elderly lady holding on to her tam o’shanter as she is seemingly blown to her demise, but is assured by authorities that nothing is awry and that her presence is part of a secret sorcerous experiment being carried out by United Dairies.
February 8: The inhabitants of Pueblito de Allende in Chihuahua are roused from their slumbers in the middle of the night by a large meteor that explodes in the atmosphere above the village, raining it with strange fragments. Many villagers immediately fall ill, with children being particularly affected.
February 9: Introduction of a new series of trams by the London Passenger Transport Board in the iconic green livery of the previous Feltham trams.
February 10: General elections in Thailand result in ruling Democrat Party being reduced to a minority government.
February 11: Donald Campbell sets a new landspeed record of 962.5 mph in his Bluebird Mach 1.25 rocket car in South Australia.
February 12: Jean-Louis Beaucourt, the Marquis d’Ambreville is formally appointed by King Louis as the new Prime Minister of France.
February 13: Canada's population passes 80 million, with CBC marking the occasion with a reflective special on the future of Canada as a great power, noting that whilst the Dominion's population remains under a quarter of her southern neighbour, her relative economic position has improved drastically since 1940 rising from a tenth of US GDP to just under a fifth and now comfortably exceeding that of Italy and Austria-Hungary.
February 14: The United States Navy announces the expansion of the SEALAB Program into two permanent undersea facility for up to a thousand scientists and aquanauts each off the coasts of California and Florida.
February 15: LIFE Magazine carries an extended feature profile on 'The 1960s Generation', writing admiringly of their answer to the call of duty in warfare, science and industry and how 'affluence has not spoiled them, nor the years of peace contemned'.
February 16: A group of luxury yachts stray into Chinese territorial waters whilst travelling from Hong Kong to Macao and are promptly boarded and detained by Imperial Chinese Navy gunboats. As they being moved towards the Chinese side of the Pearl Delta, Royal Navy patrol boats supported by the cruiser HMS Telamon, RAF Lightnings and Army Tiger gunships react to the sorcerous distress call of one of the yachts, sparking a tense standoff that sees coastal artillery on Hong Kong Island trained upon the Chinese flotilla. After almost 12 hours of careful negotiations, during which time USN and RN carrier aircraft and two Chinese destroyers join the arrayed forces, the yachts and their crew are released after an effusive apology by their skippers.
February 17: Opening of an unofficial US-Soviet back channel for dialogue in a Kabul library, with productive discussions on the reduction of tensions and the potential resolution of the Indochina conflict being conducted between diplomats in hushed tones after being told off by the librarian for talking too loudly.
February 18: Successful launch of the largest German satellite to date from the Imperial Spaceport in Lamu, Kenya.
February 19: The International Union for Conservation of Nature shifts the African tiger from its 'vulnerable' category to 'not threatened', with its President, Sir Christopher Walker, hailing the dedicated efforts of international conservationists lead by Tarzan and African governments in reducing poaching and the illegal trade in tiger skins.
February 20: Dissolution of the Senate Subcommittee on Indian Affairs in line with ongoing policy of Indian termination.
February 21: A powerful new volcanic eruption begins on Deception Island in the South Shetland islands.
February 22: The British Joint Special Intelligence Committee reports that a new Red Army main battle tank is entering production. It is believed to be 54t, has a main armament of a new 130mm gun and is powered by a gas turbine engine.
February 23: Launch of Operation Rumble, the invasion of Cambodia. Over 500,000 South Vietnamese, US and Allied troops strike across the border in five large thrusts aimed at encircling and destroying remaining Viet Cong base and support areas, supported by hundreds of airstrikes.
February 24: Prince Charles and Princess Victoria of Ruritania are noted for their close attendance upon each other at a grand royal ball at Windsor Castle after a successful hunt of hinds, wild boar and aurochs in the Royal Park.
February 25: President Kennedy authorises the development of a new series of modern biological weapons in response to intelligence on Soviet programmes.
February 26: Golda Myerson becomes the first woman to be appointed as Prime Minister of a Commonwealth country, as she ascends to the premiership of Israel.
February 27: The Indian government narrowly avoids losing a vote of no confidence in the House of the People over long running disputes regarding international relations and alignment with the West. The National Party, lead by the popular Sanjay Prasad, advocate for a more independent Indian foreign policy in contrast to the resolutely pro-Western position supported by the governing Democratic-Union Party coalition.
February 28: British and West Indian battalions arrive in Guiana to assist in the suppression of an Indian uprising.