Dark Earth Timeline Discussion

[Simon Darkshade]

I’m employing a different title to before as something of a placeholder, as hopefully stuff can be recovered from the board copy (everything that was posted up to late 2020 on Board A) or reassembled from what was up on Board B.

Luckily I remember that the stuff up on Board B was:

Timeline entries for 1966-1969
The Return to Charlotteville story (in progress)
Never Had it So Good Part 23
The Siege of Charlotteville
A New Jerusalem
Castellan
General Discussion: Where everything else went

The good news is that none of the story stuff or timeline entries are lost in any way, as I’ve got a lot of back ups and put them up on a few sites. I hope, somehow, that some of the comments can be recovered, as that has always been my great favourite - the discussion that grows. I’ll do some digging.

My aim is to get the DEverse stuff together from what was up on Board A and rebuild 2021-2022’s stuff from Board B

Meantime, to mark the return…

[Simon Darkshade]

1970

January
January 1: USN, USAF and USSF aircraft, skyships and satellites begin an immediate massive search for the missing Enterprise, with Pacific Command raised to DEFCON 3 and Department of Magic wizards flying to the Pacific to assist. Whilst no leaks have occurred to civilian press or the general international community, the operation is detected by a Royal Navy cruiser and Soviet satellites; General Secretary Alekseyev declines to make the loss of the carrier public at this time and sends a guarded late night message offering help over the Hotline.
January 2: USS Enterprise reappears 525nm south of Ascension Island, a little worse for wear, but with all aircraft and personnel unscathed, with the latter extremely disoriented and unclear as to what happened. Only a few pilots, the carrier’s captain and his senior officers have a different tale to tell upon making contact with USN top brass on Ascension that night, then latter having flown down to Ascension by hypersonic rocketplanes. The matter is immediately classified Top Secret/Majestic and the carrier is to proceed through Drake’s Passage to the South Pacific and then make for Hawaii.
January 3: A very large meteor breaks up whilst re-entering the atmosphere over Oklahoma, with several fragments reportedly having some curious properties.
January 4: Elements of North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao forces reach advance reaches their stopline 25 miles north of the Liberty Line in Laos, although the Royal Lao Army continues to fight fiercely around Vientiane and the Plain of Jars.
January 5: World release of The Return of the King in London. The 324 minute epic leaves audiences and critics astounded with its combination of epic battles, enthralling action, spectacular magic and fantastical landscapes.
January 6: Reports of a strange death cult in the depths of exotic Madagascar reach South Africa, with the adherents apparently casting themselves from cliffs and mountain tops.
January 7: Over 80 U.S. and North Vietnamese fighters clash in the largest air to air battle of the Vietnam War over the DMZ and Laos after substantive reinforcements from the Soviet Union, Mongolia and China are thrown into the fray in a last ditch attempt to gain advantage. 29 VPAF fighters are shot down for only 6 US losses, with 8 captured Red pilots revealed to be Soviet ‘volunteers’.
January 8: First test flight and five of the Avro Canada Mystic aerosub.
January 9: A Red Navy task force hunts and kills two megalodons in the North Pacific, the first found in almost four months. Both monstrous sharks seem to be young and on the small side.
January 10: Eruption of the 'First Quarter Storm' in the Philippines, a series of increasingly strident student protests against the Philippine dictator President Salvador Garcia, whose grip on power since the assassination of President Marcos the previous year has been built upon violent crackdowns against suspected communist insurgency.
January 11: Dockworkers in Albania report a ship being taken over by a rampaging mummy in the middle of the night and disappearing out of the main port of Durres. Church of Albania investigators conclude that it is most likely Ramesses the Great attempting to return to Egypt and appeal to King Zod for help.
January 12: Emergence of Samson Mulumba as the new strongman head of the ruling faction in the Congo, with his position as President to be confirmed in a later election. A British intelligence report indicates that there are suspicious holes in records of his past and that there might be a suggestion that he is not who he purports to be.
January 13: NASA places orders for the construction of 140 large rockets amid a large increase in its procurement budget.
January 14: The ocean liner SS Oronsay and the 2000 passengers and crew are put into quarantine in Vancouver after an outbreak of typhoid fever onboard.
January 15: Tokyo overtakes London to become the largest city in the world by population.
January 16: Socialist MP Will Owen is personally arrested for espionage by the Commander of Scotland Yard, Sir Spencer Blake.
January 17: Orion 5 reaches Mars on its journey back to Earth from the outer Solar System, not entering orbit due to the speed of their return home.
January 18: Noted American daredevil Evel Knievel successfully jumps across the Grand Canyon in his specially adapted rocket motorcycle, astounding the world not only with his achievement, but the cool style of his landing and reaction.
January 19: Royal Air Force aircraft use new ground penetrating radar systems over Southern Rhodesia to search for gold deposits during operational trials and testing, discovering an immense anomaly deep in the jungle.
January 20: The USAF, USN, RAF and RN begin a tactical symposium on the aerial lessons of the Vietnam War.
January 21: Retirement of the Iraqi Minister of Defence, with his replacement being the latest (relatively) young nationalist officer to achieve promotion to lofty ranks over the last three years.
January 22: Conclusion of submissions in Duran v Duran, a novel case of inheritance and defamation, with the younger nephew said to have sullied his uncle’s reputation by claiming that he was ‘hungry like the wolf’ for his deceased father’s estate, an oblique reference to a 19th century werewolf disgrace within the extended family.
January 23: A French Foreign Legion company successfully engages and destroys a threatening rebel force ten times their size in Upper Volta.
January 24: Wales defeats South Africa for the first time in a rugby test in front of a crowd of 175,000 spectators in Cardiff, winning the match 8-6 after a Gareth Edwards conversion kick in the final seconds.
January 25: Negotiators in Geneva reach an agreement in principle on an armistice in Vietnam, with the conditions now relayed to Moscow and Washington for discussion.
January 26: Greek tenor Artemios Ventouris-Roussos makes his debut at the Imperial Opera in Constantinople alongside Maria Callas in Alexander the Great.
January 27: British introduction of new series of tactical nuclear warhead for use in gravity bombs, submarine torpedoes, strike missiles, depth charges and battlefield rockets.
January 28: Bewildered miners discover an immense solid silver snake measuring quarter of a mile in length and four yards thick underground in Manitoba.
January 29: General elections in Persia result in a narrow majority for a nationalist coalition, who have been careful to avoid sparking a military response from the Shah or Western intervention with more extreme policy statements.
January 30: Imperial China tests a powerful new ballistic missile in the Gobi Desert, causing a frenzy of reaction by foreign intelligence observers regarding its characteristics.
January 31: President Kennedy gives a nationally televised speech reporting on the US space programme, discussing the potential opportunities and challenges of the interstellar signal and what can be revealed about the recent increased incidence of UFO incidents. He assures the American people that they are well defended and that the frontiers of knowledge are being constantly expanded.

[Simon Darkshade]

February
February 1: 346 people are killed and hundreds injured in a horrific train collision in Benavidez, Argentina, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Prime Minister Rodriguez seizes upon the tragedy as evidence of the need for reform of the railway system.
February 2: Announcement of a special charity boxing match between Cassius Clay and Rocky Marciano.
February 3: Sherlock Holmes returns to his country estate, carried on the back of a strange and unknown dragon, having solved his last case, the Case of the Eldritch Twins.
February 4: The Australian stock market surges to a record high driven by the thirst for raw materials and foodstuffs driven in part by the Vietnam mobilisation.
February 5: Destruction of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in a mysterious nocturnal explosion. Police and investigators are flummoxed at the apparent inexplicable occurrence, suspecting dark magic.
February 6: Completion of the last phase of the integration of the Welsh Mountains Scheme and the Grand Contour Canal, an expansive water engineering project providing for irrigation of South and Eastern England and substantially developing the national water grid well into the 21st century.
February 7: Contract killer Charles Harrelson is executed in the electric chair for the murder of Sam Degelia in Texas.
February 8: The oil tanker SS Arrow breaks apart four days after running aground in Chedabucto Bay, Nova Scotia, spilling thousands of tons of oil into the sea.
February 9: A Soviet naval squadron lead by the super battleship Lenin and the atomic carrier Moskva departs Murmansk on a world goodwill cruise of Europe, the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia and South America. Upon its emergence from Soviet waters, it is shadowed by the USAF skyship carrier USS Victory and British and American nuclear submarines. Following the distraction of their high profile egress, the first Delta class ballistic missile submarine attempts to sortie from Severodvinsk, but is tracked by USS Devilfish, which had remained silently on station.
February 10: Launch of Mexico’s first modern spaceship, the Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli, from the newly established Mexican spaceport in the exclave of Playa del Carmen on the Yucatan Peninsula.
February 11: A meeting of female activists in London passes a motion calling for a new movement in the spirit of the 19th century suffragettes to pursue the goals of equal pay for women and fully equal opportunity for education and jobs; it is met with a derisory cartoon in Punch picturing the participants as bickering tea ladies.
February 12: Emperor Alexander of Greece ceremonially overturns the first sod of earth of a new planned Imperial city in Vilazora, Central Macedonia
February 13: Introduction of new flying taxi cabs in London, with initial congestion along the designated sky lanes.
February 14: The new Congolese government delivers a lengthy note to the Rhodesian ambassador listing several grievances over the ongoing border crisis over Katanga. The provincial government of the Congolese state is poised to declare its independence from the new regime after more than a decade of unresolved disorder and separatist violence.
February 15: Communist Party officials in Tartary report increased Chinese subversive activities.
February 16: German newspaper Bild publishes a scurrilous and sensational rumour that Prince Siegfried, 24, second in line to the German throne and grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm IV, is a member of a secret crime fighting adventuring group alongside heartthrob schlager singer and actor Franzi, Vietnam War hero Konrad Nachtschicht and the one-eyed super scientist Ulric Winter.
February 17: Terrorist guerillas of the Central American Revolutionary Front launch a series of bank raids and bombings across the region, seemingly syncronised in simultaneous savagery.
February 18: Satellite and seismological data indicates a suspected underground atomic event in Sumatra. Jakarta denies any knowledge of any such event. Not that there was an event.
February 19: A British mining engineer submits a paper on an incredibly large and pure platinum deposit in Zangaro.
February 20: The Special Branch of the Royal Irish Police Force receives credible reports of the establishment of a shadowy new organisation, the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, drawn from disparate renegade druids and the tiny Dublin socialist underworld.
February 21: Signing of an Armistice by South Vietnam, North Vietnam, the United States, the Soviet Union, France and Britain. formally bringing hostilities on land, sea and air in the Vietnam War to an end until a final peaceful settlement can be achieved. It provides for the establishment of a 15 mile wide Demilitarised Zone from the coast to the Thai border, the temporary partitioning of Laos into a communist North Laos and democratic South Laos, a full exchange of prisoners of war and the clearing of mines from the coast of North Vietnam and a lifting of the blockade. Previous Soviet and North Vietnamese insistence upon the withdrawal of Allied forces from South Vietnam was dropped in exchange for acquiescence on the terms of the Laotian partition.

Whilst both sides can claim victory by virtue of survival as state entities, the effective destruction of the Viet Cong provides for the best possible evidence of a strategic victory for South Vietnam, the United States and their Free World allies. Whilst Saigon still has significant progress to make until it it is militarily self sufficient, it is greatly advanced from its position of a decade ago. The cost in lives, treasure and damage to the natural environment has been great for all involved. South Vietnam has suffered an estimated 360,000 military and 500,000 civilian dead and missing and over 1 million wounded; the United States 79,248 killed or missing and 398,532 wounded; France 12,823 KIA/MIA and 65,612 WIA; Britain 10,376 KIA/MIA and 56,934 wounded; Korea 8741 KIA/MIA and 25,938 WIA; the Commonwealth 8692 KIA/MIA and 35,624 WIA; India 6983 KIA/MIA and 27,445 WIA; and other Free World Military Forces 12,579 KIA/MIA and 70,628 WIA. North Vietnam and the Viet Cong lost an estimated 2 million military dead or missing and upwards of 300,000 civilian deaths due to bombing and other military action.

The economic cost of the Vietnam War to the United States in the 1960s is difficult to measure, but from 1964 to 1970, $307 billion was spent on direct war costs alone; aid to South Vietnam and subsidies and support to numerous member states of the Free World Military Forces was in addition to this expenditure. US forces peaked in 1969 with a total of 2,139,526 men deployed in 27 Army and Marine divisions and a total of 2954 fixed wing planes and 3877 helicopters were lost due to combat or accidents, but only 426 tanks were lost. Like the Korean War, naval losses were comparatively small, with only a handful of ships sunk, but numerous battleships and carriers sustained casualties from enemy fire and accidents and sea during the six and a half years of major combat operations. Enemy air to air combat losses are claimed as 524 shot down in aerial combat in exchange for 178 US, 65 British, 40 South Vietnamese and 23 French planes.

The increasing use of chemical and radiological weapons in the final years of the war has rendered some certain parts of North Vietnam and Laos uninhabitable for the next ten millennia, whilst the use of chemical defoliant and assorted biological agents has inflicted considerable damage. Significant parts of Hanoi, Haiphong and other strategic North Vietnamese cities have been destroyed by the heavy bombing campaign of Operation Rolling Thunder and over 24 million tons of explosive ordnance was dropped by the USAF, USN and Allied forces, ranging from 3” rockets to a former battleship. It saw the last combat employment of the F-51 Mustang and the de Havilland Mosquito and the first use of nuclear weapons in a war since the British in 1956.
February 22: President Kennedy delivers a triumphant State of the Union address to Congress, being met with a rapturous reception after the effective victory in Vietnam. His approval ratings reach an unprecedented 89%.
February 23: Formation of a unified republican movement in Guyana; several of the contingents are already heavily infiltrated by British intelligence.
February 24: A series of massive avalanches across the Alpa kill 36 people.
February 25: SFPD officers arrest a Frenchman for attempting to eat the Golden Gate Bridge.
February 26: Astronomer Marcus Wolff reports that the noted star Rallax has disappeared, a discovery confirmed by a bewildered NASA in the coming days.
February 27: Thirty two military ethicists across the West sign a public letter in The New York Times expressing their concerns regarding the fielding of robot gun turrets.
February 28: The Indian princely state of Nepal is transfixed by the spectacle of the royal wedding of Crown Prince Birendra to Princess Aishwarys in Kathmandu.

[Simon Darkshade]

March
March 1: The grave of Karl Marx is painted pink, adorned with balloons and stuffed animals and the bust replaced with the head of a cartoon mouse overnight.
March 2: Death of Emperor Yeong of Korea in Seoul at 72.
March 3: NBC reports on the curious youth fads of adventure roller skating, gnome lifting and skeet surfing, including an interview on the latter with young pop singer Nick Rivers.
March 4: British and Commonwealth forces in Malaya begin to consolidate their deployments to the major base areas at Butterworth, Kuala Lipis and Johore.
March 5: The Congolese government announces its intention to pursue a policy of nationalisation of certain key industries, a move popular with the general public and the 400,000 strong ANC.
March 6: The first group of US and Allied prisoners of war held by North Vietnam are released into US custody at the DMZ.
March 7: Discovery of a prehistoric ancient causeway in the Somerset Levels by peat cutter Ray Sweet.
March 8: New Zealand conducts an underground nuclear test in South Australia.
March 9: Buckingham Palace announces that Princess Victoria of Wales is pregnant, leading to immense national excitement and interest.
March 10: Opening of the Arctic Winter Games in Northern Canada.
March 11: Pravda announces the success of the ongoing expansion of the Aral Sea, which is almost double its 1954 size.
March 12: USN and RN ships begin searching for a USO (Unidentified Submerged Object) in South Atlantic after several sightings.
March 13: France proposes an agreement for greater space cooperation and engagement with the Benelux countries.
March 14: A CIA report on the possibility of Soviet subversion and the danger of communism in Chile is presented to the NSC.
March 15: Expo 70 opens in Osaka, Japan.
March 16: Argentina launches its first domestically produced skyship.
March 17: Under the auspices of Swiss observers, the process of combatant and populace exchange between North and South Laos begins.
March 18: John Dredd is appointed as the youngest district judge in recent English legal history at the age of 27.
March 19: A tense meeting between German Chancellor Richard Muller and GDR General Secretary Ernst Thalman in Warsaw leads to the former concluding to his RND advisors that Thalman was not fully human.
March 20: 21 people are killed in a suspicious fire at the Ozark Hotel in Seattle.
March 21: Celebration of the first ‘World Earth Day’ on the first day of the northern spring, organised by LNESCO and the OCESW (Organisation of Concerned Environmental Scientists and Wizards).
March 22: Field Marshal Sir Charles Ratcliffe, world famous adventurer, Sovereign’s Champion and Royal Standard Bearer of England, is endorsed as the Conservative candidate for Buckingham.
March 23: Time publishes an extensive article on The Baltic Sea Balance, featuring detailed analysis on the shifting strategic balance in the Baltic over the last 10 years.
March 24: Tanganyika becomes the leading groundnut producing country in the world after the US crop is reduced by peanut blight.
March 25: Former West Indies cricket captain Sir Frank Worrell becomes the first black Prime Minister of the Federation of the West Indies.
March 26: Empire Toy Company releases its new fully operational toy tanks, capable of reaching 18 miles an hour and firing plastic rounds from its turreted cannon and coaxial machine gun, for preliminary sales in Britain. The ‘Junior Chieftain’ can seat one and is expected to be the smash hit boy’s toy of the forthcoming summer.
March 27: The Royal Israeli Air Force carries out a multi layered air defence exercise over Sinai and the Eastern Mediterranean.
March 28: The town of Gediz in Ottoman Turkey is destroyed by an earthquake registering 7.2 on the Richter scale.
March 29: New Zealand poet John Lennon returns to England with his family to pursue his writing career and expanded creative interests, such a collaboration with his close friend, music teacher Paul McCartney.
March 30: The German ambassador to Guatemala fights off kidnap by unknown masked assailants with the aid of a passing kung fu master.
March 31: Local police investigating reports of bizarre animal deaths near the Hawkins National Laboratory in Hawkins, Indiana find no evidence of misadventure or stranger things going on whatsoever.

[Simon Darkshade]

April
April 1: After winning a special newspaper competition, a party of Wombles from the Wimbledon colony are given a special tour of HMS Ark Royal in Portsmouth, conducted by Wilf, the ship's enchanted puppet.
April 2: Time Magazine publishes the first part of journalist Sean Flynn's epic story Peace?, a striking exploration of the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
April 3: The US Census begins, with the process greatly streamlined through the use of advanced computing engines and survey robots.
April 4: French authorities in Algiers proclaim a city wide curfew for the first time in seven years as the recent outbreak of violence continues to spiral out of control.
April 5: Five California Highway Patrol officers are killed in a shootout with two criminals in Newhall, California.
April 6: King Frederik of Denmark flips his Bentley several times in an accident in Copenhagen, but insists on walking back to Amalienberg Palace rather than riding in an ambulance.
April 7: The Return of the King wins Best Picture at the Academy Awards, with Charlton Heston winning Best Actor as Aragorn, Sir Laurence Olivier winning Best Supporting Actor as Denethor and David Lean winning Best Director.
April 8: Opening of the last stage of the new Burma Coastal Railway, providing the final link in the modern high speed Cape to Singapore Railway.
April 9: Police and Security Service personnel begin investigation of an incredible report of a man turning into a tree near the Darkmoor nuclear research facility in Scotland.
April 10: Dauphin Henri of France begins a state visit of Germany, the first major royal visit in peacetime between the neighbours in over a century.
April 11: A squadron of Royal Navy battleships calls in Alexandria en route to Haifa, becoming the first major British naval vessels to visit the Egyptian port in five years.
April 12: Sinking of the Soviet November class nuclear submarine K-8 in the Bay of Biscay after a catastrophic fire. 67 of the 132 crew escape, but all 24 nuclear weapons carried are lost.
April 13: A 16 year old Indian boy washes up on the Pacific coast of Mexico after being adrift for 227 days in a life raft with a Bengal tiger.
April 14: Orion 4 returns to Earth orbit after its epic 4 year journey to Jupiter and Saturn. The astronauts, lead by their commander Neil Armstrong, are transferred to the surface in a special flight in the same shuttle that landed on Ganymede and are greeted at Cape Canaveral by President Kennedy and a crowd of dignitaries.
April 15: Brazilian Premier Alvares is ushered out of a public reception by aides after the latest episode in his recent bizarre behaviour, this time insisting that he was a small village in Lincolnshire.
April 16: An avalanche near Sallanches in the French Alps buries a children’s tuberculosis sanatorium, but all 84 occupants are miraculously rescued by a mysterious white Shaolin monk.
April 17: The stranded Venezuelan aircraft carrier Simon Bolivar is finally rescued in a complex towing operation employing several large mercantile skyships.
April 18: Public unveiling of the Morris Major, a new large and versatile family car, in London.
April 19: The Colombian general election results in confusion and dispute after both the Conservative and Liberal Parties win the same number of seats. The matter is further complicated by King Tomas III’s deteriorating health.
April 20: Hoover Dam police and FBI agents fail to find any trace of a reported group of men in Roman costumes acting suspiciously in the vicinity of the Dam.
April 21: Announcement of a 'Great Air Race Around the World' in The Times on the 60th anniversary of the 1911 Circuit of Europe air race.
April 22: Yugoslav Prime Minister Josip Broz announces that he will retire before the next election due in 1972.
April 23: Andorra grants women over the age of 25 the right to vote.
April 24: A Canadian cowboy in Saskatchewan discovers a fabulous hoard of treasure whilst pursuing a lost cow.
April 25: The British Army orders a new version of the refurbished Robin Hood rocket as a conventional tactical battlefield strike missile.
April 26: The General Assembly of the League of Nations passes a resolution on the protection of the 'Wonders of the Natural World', including the Amazon Jungle, Silver Mountain, the Great Barrier Reef and the Challenger Plateau.
April 27: AvtoVAZ begins production of the VAZ-2101 Zhiguli small sedan in Stavropol-on-Volga.
April 28: The final £75 million installment of the British national debt is paid, paying it off in full for the first time since its establishment 299 years previously.
April 29: A joint BBC and EABC (East African Broadcasting Corporation) special on wildlife conservation in East Africa features a rare interview with George and Joy Adamson and Elsa the Lioness; the latter is noted for valuing her privacy and refusing previous Hollywood offers of her own film series.
April 30: English schoolboy Jack Sexton, 12, accidentally comes into contact with an experimental arcane serum whilst on an excursion to Valiant Alchemical Systems and shortly afterwards begins to display signs of Rapidly Evolving Special Capabilities. Ministry of Magic and Home Office officials escort him and his family to St. Swithins under the contingency plans set out under the Musa Protocol, put in place after the Acacia Avenue Incident of 1967.

[Simon Darkshade]

May
May 1: Television and radio reception across the Midwest is disrupted by a series of five strange musical notes.
May 2: A secret agreement for the coordination of Finnish and Swedish stay behind forces is concluded in Karlskrona amid increasing moves to broader Scandinavian defence cooperation; sale of the Saab Viking jet fighter to Finland is thought to be imminent.
May 3: Completion of an extensive series of coastal flood defences in Bengal, India integrated with advanced spell triggers and contingency enchantments.
May 4: A Home Office paper finds that there is no operational need for the recruitment of further female police across England beyond the current level of 970 police matrons, lady searchers and the membership of the specialist women and children’s units.
May 5: Eruption of the volcano Hekla in Iceland, causing evacuation of the surrounding villages and dwarven settlements.
May 6: Japanese adventurer Yuichiro Maura becomes the first man to ski down Mount Everest, taking off into the air and descending on his parachute.
May 7: Return of the first full US Army division from South Vietnam, the 27th Infantry Division, in San Francisco.
May 8: Musician Paul McCartney, poet John Lennon, mystic and wizard Master George Harrison and actor Richard Starkey form an group for the aim of doing good deeds, solving mysteries and exploring strange happenings after a remarkable series of events involving a flaming pie, a field of strawberries and a blue police box.
May 9: US optical scientists produce the world’s first completely shatterproof and scratch resistant eye glasses.
May 10: Establishment of the British Army’s newest infantry regiment, the Queen’s Own Mountain Regiment, joining the Rangers, Gurkhas, Commandos and Royal Dwarven Mountain Legion as specialist forces trained in alpine, cold weather and high altitude operations.
May 11: The International Olympic Committee formally announces New York City as the host city of the 1976 Summer Games.
May 12: A tornado is dispelled near Lubbock, Texas, before it can touch ground.
May 13: The British Army and Royal Navy complete the first stage of Project Chamberlain, the emplacement of new long range heavy coastal defence missile batteries to augment legacy coastal artillery.
May 14: World premiere of The Book of Three, the first live action film of a planned adaption of Lloyd Alexander’s Celtic fantasy The Chronicles of Prydain, in London.
May 15: A secret IRA training camp in the Sumatran jungle is destroyed by an apparent missile strike equipped with advanced chemical warheads.
May 16: A 14 year old boy at a baseball game at Dodger Stadium narrowly avoids being struck square in the head by a foul line drive; when viewed in ultra slow motion, television footage indicates that something managed to push young Alan Fish out of the way, but only a red and blue blur could be briefly seen.
May 17: Thor Heyerdahl sets out on across the Atlantic from Morocco in a reed boat based on Ancient Egyptian designs and named after the sun god Ra.
May 18: Soviet actor, bard, film star and poet Vladimir Vysotsky begins a goodwill tour of Western Europe.
May 19: A crack commando unit is sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit and promptly escape the maximum security stockade into the Los Angeles Underground.
May 20: The Football Association ends its long running ban on women’s football teams playing on FA affiliated grounds.
May 21: Awarding of the second Presidential Unit Citation to the Lyonesse Regiment from the recently concluded Vietnam conflict, for their glorious achievements in battle in last year’s Operation Ladder.
May 22: Expansion of the school lunch program in USA with additional federal funding to provide for additional healthful foods and beverages.
May 23: The British Cabinet approves a proposal for the construction of a Channel Tunnel between Dover and Calais, with the proviso of the inclusion of certain security features that would permit its destruction in the case of a military emergency.
May 24: Beginning of excavation of the Kola Superdeep Borehole the Soviet Union.
May 25: A mysterious samurai foils a bank robbery in Arizona, striking down three of the four robbers and literally disarming the wretched survivor before strolling down a nearby alleyway and apparently disappearing.
May 26: The US Army Corps of Engineers completes construction of a dual railway and highway through the Darien Gap, linking the transport systems of the Americas.
May 27: A general election in Ceylon results in a strong swing to the governing Labour Party.
May 28: Completion of the exchange of prisoners of war at the demilitarised zone between South Vietnam and North Vietnam. In total, 5426 South Vietnamese, 1992 American, 246 British, 139 French and 22 Canadians are released in exchange for 68,257 Viet Cong and NVA prisoners.
May 29: Departure of the La Balsa expedition from Guayaquil, Ecuador, bound across the South Pacific to Australia.
May 30: Opening of the 1970 World Cup in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany.
May 31: A massive earthquake in Andean Peru kills over 100,000 and causes numerous disastrous avalanches. The catastrophe results in the crumbling of a mountainside, revealing strange underground ruins.

[Simon Darkshade]

June
June 1: Commonwealth Police and ASIO raids across Australia arrest 25 suspected Soviet agents in a spying scandal that soon stretches across the Tasman to New Zealand.
June 2: Release of the ICM (Imperial Computing Machines) Mercury, what is later regarded as the first ‘personal computing machine’.
June 3: Death of Portuguese Great War veteran Aníbal Milhais, dubbed Soldado Milhões for his valour and value in the terrible conflict, in Murça, Portugal at the age of 74.
June 4: Opening of the ferrovia direttissima Firenze-Roma , Italy’s first substantive high speed railway line.
June 5: A deluded man is arrested for air piracy at Franklin D. Roosevelt International Airport in Washington D.C. after disguised FBI agents paralyse him with an invisible curare tipped dart.
June 6: Two extremely valuable paintings are stolen from a North London mansion in a mysterious burglary. They are to be recovered two months later in a raid by the Artistic Protection Commando Squad of the Italian Caribinieri in Turin.
June 7: A controversial referendum in Switzerland for the amendment of the constitution to force non-citizens to leave the country is passed narrowly on the popular vote, but fails due to not enough cantons being in favour. The intervention of Prince Albrecht in his strong disapproval of the measure is seen as decisive.
June 8: Argentine Premier Rodriguez declares a new Revolucion Nacional as loyal troops from the Armada Real Argentina and Real Fuerza Aerea Argentina flood Buenos Aires, taking over army headquarters and suppressing an alleged planned coup. He delivers a fiery speech on national television and radio, claiming that national destiny required a strong battle against communism, loyalty to the King and Argentine control of her unjustly suppressed greatness.
June 9: The Orion astronauts are honoured with a ticker tape parade through New York City in front of a crowd of an estimated 2 million people.
June 10: 60,000 troops of the Portuguese Exército Colonial launch Operation Gordian Knot, a large scale sweep and clear operation in the rebellious northern provinces of Portuguese Mozambique along the border with Azania and Tanganyika, supported by air and naval forces.
June 11: The Ministry of Information and the Empire Marketing Board’s successful joint ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign comes to an official conclusion, with it having resulted in an increase in exports of 9.6%, a 12% shift towards British and Commwealth imports away from foreign goods, increased personal savings and an estimated 5% increase in national productivity over the last 24 months.
June 12: The Soviet general election results in a turnout of 99.8%, with all 2487 CPSU candidates for the Supreme Soviet being elected unanimously and unopposed.
June 13: A Colonial Office paper estimates that the South Pacific Federation will be prepared for self governance with forty years.
June 14: England defeat Italy 3-2 in the World Cup quarter final in Munich, with Duncan Edwards, George Best and Geoff Hurst scoring and Gordon Banks making a crucial save just before the full time whistle.
June 15: Twelve Soviet ‘refusenik’ dissidents escape the USSR by taking over an Antonov An-2 biplane and flying to the Aland Islands at sea level. Their defection to Sweden leads to a minor diplomatic crisis with the Soviets demanding their return for trial and execution.
June 16: Rover unveil the Range Rover, an enlarged and up market four wheel drive vehicle designed for the full range of urban, rural and rough terrain environments.
June 17: Brazil defeat England 5-4 in a thrilling semi-final in Hamburg, thanks to a Pele hat trick, the last of which comes deep into extra time. In the other semi-final, Germany
defeats Sweden 2-1 in Stuttgart.
June 18: Spanish Legion forces arrest dozens of separatist subversives in a crackdown on unrest in Spanish Sahara.
June 19: The doctor wife of the young police constable of the small village of Aidensfield, North Riding, having been grievously ill since giving birth, recovers miraculously from a seemingly terminal illness after a visitation from an unknown pair of American travellers.
June 20: American brothers David and John Kunst begin an epic walk around the world, departing from Waseca, Minnesota.
June 21: Brazil wins a thrilling 1970 World Cup final against Germany with a score of 4-3 in front of over 200,000 spectators at the Olympiastadion in Berlin.
June 22: Commencement of the British Army’s Summer Manoeuvres, Exercise Marlborough, with two field armies of the Regular Army and Territorial Army engaging each other across Southern England. In the largest military exercise since 1964’s Warhammer, a range of new armoured vehicles are utilised for the first time, including the Crusader main battle tank and the Anglo-American-German LARS 5” wheeled multiple rocket launcher, as well as the latest artillery in the form of the 375mm howitzer. Press coverage of Marlborough further highlights the new protective kilts worn by the Scottish regiments and the modern manifestation of the fearsome Highland charge.
June 23: HRH The Prince of Wales officially graduates from Oxford University with first class honours in classics, history and philosophy, politics and economics.
June 24: Death of the Maharaja of Jaipur, one of the most powerful members of the Indian House of States and a key figure in the defeat of proposed changes to the constitutional circumstances of the Princely states.
June 25: Publication of The Dawn of the Shadow, a 1984 page epic historical fantasy by Sir J.R.R. Tolkien. A prequel to his best known work, it describes the rise of the Dark Lord Sauron in the Second Age of Middle Earth, the creation of the Rings of Power, his war with the Elves and his defeat by the armies of High King Gil-Galad, the returned elflord Glorfindel and the hosts of Numenor.
June 26: Opening of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge in Glasgow, by Queen Elizabeth II, the 1406ft long twelve lane bridge providing for the future capacity for 250,000 vehicles to pass each day.
June 27: Completion of the final stage of the Sentinel Program, the fielding of a comprehensive anti-ballistic missile defence system across the United States, integrating the USAF’s Excalibur ABM and US Army’s Spartan and Sprint missiles.
June 28: A vacationing young boy is rescued from falling to his death in a scalding hot geyser in Yellowstone National Park by a quick thinking US Forest Service bear Ranger, who was visiting his distant cousin.
June 29: Mrs Jeremy Thorpe, wife of the rising Liberal MP, escapes a nasty automobile accident with minor injuries.
June 30: Italian mountaineer Gunther Messner is rescued by yeti after becoming lost whilst descending Nanga Parbat. The reclusive beasts deposit the shaken climber at his base camp after all hope had been thought lost.

[Simon Darkshade]

July
July 1: Residents of halfling villages of the traditional English area of Hartshire complete a march to London with the presentation of a petition calling for their young males to be included in National Service.
July 2: The 3278th and final de Havilland Comet, a Super Comet 6 destined for Hyderabad Airlines, rolls off the assembly line at Hatfield, concluding the production run after 23 years.
July 3: France conducts an underwater semi-atmospheric hydrogen bomb test at Muroroa Atoll in French Polynesia.
July 4: Over 50,000 personnel from all of the US Armed Services take part in the Victory Parade in New York City in front of a crowd of several millions to mark the official victory in the Vietnam War. Clean up of the tickertape only takes two hours in the evening due to new cleaning enchantments.
July 5: Archaeologists discover ruins in Cyprus that appear to be over ten thousand years old.
July 6: Death of King Umberto II of Italy from injuries sustained in a fall whilst hunting.
July 7: Entry into Soviet Navy service of the Yakovlev Yak-36 'Forger', a VSTOL fighter-bomber developed in response to the British Harrier.
July 8: A feature article in The Manchester Guardian describes the impact of foreign and Imperial immigration on British food in the 1960s, approving of the expanded range of foodstuffs and restaurants, noting that the number of Indian restaurants alone had increased from under 60 to 300. The increased popularity of certain foreign dishes such as spaghetti bolognese is dealt with less positively, questioning if the Tommies who fought and died in North Africa and Sicily did so only to enrich the spaghetti farmers of the Po.
July 9: President Kennedy formally establishes the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the latest manifestation of growing awareness of man’s impact on the natural environment.
July 10: The Prime Minister of Iceland is presumed dead after a shock troll attack whilst on a countryside walk.
July 11: US Army troops and equipment are embarked at Da Nang for redeployment to Australia on the new fast sealift vessel USNS Paul Bunyan.
July 12: Thor Heyerdahl's Ra II raft successfully arrives in Barbados, where he is greeted by a reception of hundreds of civilian boats and the cruiser HMWIS Jamaica.
July 13: An RAF Germany HS.681 flight is forced to land at Bielefeld Airport in early morning fog and extremely confused circumstances, with air traffic controllers claiming that the airport did not exist.
July 14: Opening of the British Empire Games in Edinburgh.
July 15: The Premier of Argentina announces that the Argentine Army will be increased by 130,000 men over the next six years, in addition to being equipped with new modern weapons.
July 16: The state funeral of King Umberto II is held in Rome, with his successor, King Vittorio Emmanuele IV, being lauded for his stoicism.
July 17: The Imperial Governor of Oaxaca is assassinated by a gang of men clad in the costume of Aztec Jaguar Knights.
July 18: The Arab Union orders 300 Dassault Mirage F2 fighter-bombers as part of an economic investment deal with France.
July 19: The Royal Space Force and Ministry of Magic launch an experimental dimensional craft 300nm west of Easter Island.
July 20: Commencement of the annual Sky Shield air defence exercise in the United States and Canada, with RAF Bomber Command taking part for the twelfth year running as part of the opposing force.
July 21: A proposal to make USN ships ‘dry’ is resoundingly rejected by Secretary of the Navy Victor Henry
July 22: Britain and the new government of the Congo come to an agreement on autonomy for the Katanga border region for the next five years.
July 23: The Sultan of Oman is deposed by his son and heir in a well-organised coup d’état.
July 24: Completion of the rationalisation of the strength of the Territorial Army in accordance with the Barton government’s defence reforms, formalising the division between the first and second line TA and TA Reserve formations, completing the reassignment of former Anti-Aircraft Command regiments as it’s role transfers to the Home Guard and forming a number of new combat units, including the 5th Airborne Division. These expansive steps are somewhat overshadowed by the announcement of the contentious decision to form a number of Royal Flying Corps Harrier squadrons.
July 25: President Kennedy arrives in Moscow for a state visit and conference with General Secretary Sergeyev on superpower relations in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
July 26: The National Technological Exposition at the Crystal Palace sees a number of new electronic devices unveiled to the public for the first time, including the British Electronic Industries portable radio/cassette player, the Albion video cassette recording machine, English Electric Watchman portable television and the IEC mobile cellular telephone.
July 27: Death of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio de Salazar, who served as premier between 1932 and 1948.
July 28: The General Assembly of the League of Nations passes a resolution calling for the protection of vulnerable marine species in the light of the extinction of the great white shark and extermination of the megalodon.
July 29: Sears, Roebuck & Company announce plans for a 1500ft tall skyscraper in Chicago.
July 30: Introduction of the Royal Ordnance L204 25pdr multirole airborne field/anti-tank/infantry support gun, a new lightweight weapon utilising advanced technology and materials to fulfill its different missions. It is also intended to be carried on the new FV625 Squire Lightweight High Mobility Tactical Vehicle in the light assault gun mission.
July 31: Tupamaro guerrillas kidnap Dan Mitrione, US Chief Public Safety Advisor to Uruguay.

[Simon Darkshade]

August
August 1: An Imperial Durbar is held at Delhi in front of a crowd of over two millions to mark the state tour of India of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. A special motion picture is made of the grand event.
August 2: Western intelligence sources indicate the increased presence of Soviet forces in Africa, including elements those drawn from the Black Russian minority and trained Africans. Evidence is also presented of the issuing of new Soviet small arms, including their new assault rifle and general purpose machine gun.
August 3: A scientific expedition to the Amazon announces the discovery of an entire new species of subterranean mammals after returning from a year in the depths of the vast jungle.
August 4: The largest oil field in North Sea found to date is discovered in what is considered to be the British sector.
August 5: Indonesian leader Sukarno releases a new book of socialist political philosophy. Amid the usual denunciations of colonialism and rapacious capitalist imperialism, foreign readers begin to find a rather Indonesian adaption of scientific socialism that has distinct differences from the Soviet line without being so radical as to directly seem so.
August 6: Release of The Mahabharata, the most expensive picture yet produced by the Indian film industry
August 7: Further victory parades are held in Chicago, Detroit and Boston to welcome home returning National Guard units returning from South Vietnam.
August 8: The African Liberation Front issues a statement calling for the true independence of former European colonies, decrying their present governments as illegitimate.
August 9: The Ottoman Turkish lira is devalued by 19% in the latest effort to revitalise the Turkish economy.
August 10: The Equal Rights Amendment is passed by voters in Sylvania and Sequoyah, taking it over the necessary threshold of states to be formally ratified.
August 11: Opening of the first branch of the Olde England restaurant in London, offering fast and cheap roast meats, traditional meals and sandwiches; it is later to expand to a chain stretching across Britain, the Commonwealth and the wider world, becoming one of the ‘Big 5’ of the British variation of ‘fast-food’ the Berni Inn steakhouse, Jolly Roger’s Fish and Chips, Lyons Tea Shops sandwiches and Miggins pieshops. American attempts at entering the British casual dining and short order food market, such as McDonald’s ham-burgers and Kentucky Fried Chicken, remain limited at this time.
August 12: Discovery of several dozen dead and desiccated bodies in a small Egyptian fishing village in the Nile Delta along with an abandoned Albanian tramp steamer.
August 13: Donald Campbell breaks the world land speed record on Lake Burke in South Australia, with the attempt being the last such possible before the endoheric salt lake is permanently flooded in the latest works of the Bradfield Scheme.
August 14: US inflation increases by 2.4% in the second quarter of the year and unemployment rises by 0.6% as the the national economy continues to readjust in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.
August 15: The Lancet runs a feature on the medical advances of the 1970s, describing the uses, theories and possible impact of developments including autosutures, blood cleaning, arcanely assisted organ regeneration and handheld diagnostic scanning devices.
August 16: The British Army formally reestablishes two cavalry brigades.
August 17: A range of artificial sweeteners are banned for human consumption in the United States after a report on their deleterious health effects.
August 18: Jeremy Newton and Riduc Carter are hanged outside Newgate Prison for murder in front of a crowd of thousands.
August 19: A wave of seven car bombs are exploded across the Middle East, with no terrorist groups claiming immediate responsibility.
August 20: Two French submarines collide with each other near Toulon.
August 21: A British astronomer claims to have discovered an exoplanet with strange characteristics in the Alpha Centauri system.
August 22: An article in The News of the World estimates that the coloured population of Britain will reach 200,000 by 1975.
August 23: Three USN CVLs and two RN CVEs take part in Exercise Burgundy, a joint anti submarine warfare training exercise in the Caribbean Sea in conjunction with West Indian, Newfoundland and New Avalon escort ships. The new carriers collectively deploy over 150 helicopters and rotodynes in addition to new ASW planes and Harrier jump jet fighters, giving their task force a very powerful capacity against submarine threats.
August 24: Export data published by the Board of Trade shows an increase in British electrical goods exports by 7% in the first quarter of 1970.
August 25: 7 year old Hong Kong boy Tang Kwok-hin survives a fall from the ninth storey of a building, bouncing off awnings in a miraculous display of luck.
August 26: Introduction of the Fairey Rotodyne Avenger, a new heavy attack variant carrying a large armament of rockets, guided missiles, cannon and bombs.
August 27: A planned IRA attack on the Vatican City is foiled by a raid by Swiss Guards acting on a CIA tip off. Six terrorists are apprehended, swiftly tried in camera and sentenced to death by burning at the stake; this is commuted to death by mazzatello and quartering as an act of mercy.
August 28: Introduction of the USN’s new submarine launched ballistic missile, the UGM-98 Triton, which provides a considerably greater range of 4800nm compared with the first generation Polaris and a much greater throw weight of up to ten MIRVed 100kt warheads.
29: Kaiser Wilhelm is taken ill with a mysterious ailment that leaves him greatly pale and weakened.
August 30: A group of British adventurers claim to have discovered the lost Inca treasure commonly known as ‘Atalhualpa’s Gold’ on a mountain trail high in the Andes.
August 31: France conducts an underground hydrogen bomb test at Muroroa, concluding its latest round of testing.

[Simon Darkshade]

September
September 1: Assassins attempt to slay the King of Jordan as he travels to receive his daughter at the airport in Amman, being gunned down by his royal bodyguards.
September 2: Beginning of an intense series of British rocket launches from Woomera Spaceport, with 42 large Saunders-Roe Black Star IVs carrying equipment and parts for the British Commonwealth starship project on Luna being launched over the next 100 hours.
September 3: Reverend Elvis Presley and his indomitable posse captures Dr Gaylord Gristlethwaite in his underground lair in rural Paraguay and flies the miscreant back to the USA in Presley’s supersonic biplane. The mad scientist is responsible for the poisoning deaths of seven people in Little Rock that saw a local husband and wife proprietor of a sandwich shop sent to death row, with the Reverend’s investigative actions coming in the nick of time to save them.
September 4: Socialist candidate Salvador Allende is elected Premier of Chile.
September 5: A crazed killer goes on a murder spree in British Columbia, slaying eight before being captured by Mounties. He is swiftly tried, sentenced to death and hanged on December 3rd in Cranbrook.
September 6: Five passenger jet airliners are hijacked and flown to Jordan in a coordinated act of sky terrorism. The airfield at Dawson’s Field is surrounded by troops of the Royal Jordanian Army.
September 7: Japanese scientist Count Katsumata Takeshi unveils a sonic ray in his clifftop castle, claiming that it is capable of warding off future attacks by Godzilla.
September 8: Deployment of the first Hawker-Siddeley Hurricane squadron of RAF Germany, a move described as considerably increasing its capability and qualitative edge over the Soviet Air Force. It is regarded by the RAF as a superior fighter/interceptor than the Phantom, whilst being equally capable in the fighter-bomber, ground attack and atomic strike roles.
September 9: The 36th and 43rd Infantry Divisions begin arriving back in the United States, allowing for the demobilisation of Army Reserve divisions; the active strength of the Army is scheduled to fall below 4,000,000 by the end of 1970 and to its target active personnel level of 2.5 million by 1972.
September 10: Ford and General Motors unveil their latest full sized family cars, continuing the distinct divide between American vehicles and smaller Japanese and European imports.
September 11: A freak tornado in Venice kills 40 people, with several vaporettos blown into the air by the strange gale.
September 12: Formal initiation of the Sky Marshal Program in the United States in response to the recent increase in air piracy.
September 13: Congressmen query the inclusion of 2560 goats in the latest US Army appropriations, with the War Department stating that they are required for highly classified innovative research.
September 14: Jordanian commandos assisted by a force British SAS assault the captured jets at Dawson’s Field, freeing the 326 hostages and killing or capturing the 23 terrorists.
September 15: Two Royal Israeli Navy guided missile destroyers begin their first major operational deployment with STANAFORMED. Whilst Soviet naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea have increased in strength, Allied Forces Mediterranean have undergone their own modernisation with the replacement of warbuilt British, French and Italian ships.
September 16: Two reinforced British airborne and infantry brigades are airlifted to Jordan is response to a request for military support from the Jordanian government, with a Royal Marine brigade landing at Aqaba and three fighter wings deploying directly from Britain.
September 17: The West African drought finally breaks after five months, providing much needed relief for millions.
September 18: The Ministry of External Affairs of Imperial China announces that long standing restrictions on the volume of foreign trade and business in Shanghai, in place since the Second World War, are to be abolished.
September 19: Entry into active USAF service of the McDonnell-Douglas F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter. Capable of a top speed of over Mach 3 and a combat radius of 1250 miles, over 2400 of the supercruising Eagles are projected as being ordered for Tactical Air Command, USAFE and the Pacific Air Forces Aerospace Defense Command.
September 20: The Social Democrat lead coalition wins the largest number of seats in the Swedish general election.
September 21: Imperial Mining exploratory geologists confirm the discovery of massive gold deposits in Uganda equal to those found in 1910.
September 22: A large wildfire begins in the Laguna Mountains near San Diego.
September 23: A gang of radical would-be revolutionists steal weapons from a National Guard armoury and rob a bank in Brighton, Massachusetts before being caught following a gunfight with police killing one officer. The three men and two women are captured, tried and sentenced to death, going to the electric chair in February 1971.
September 24: CIA assets report the operational testing of a new Soviet heavy strategic bomber over the Urals.
September 25: President Kennedy visits Dallas to tour new US Space Force production facilities, give a speech at the University of Texas on the nation’s economic future and plant a ceremonial tree on a grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza to mark the occasion. He uncharacteristically stumbles twice whilst planting the mallorn sapling before succeeding and joking self-deprecatingly with reporters “Somebody just shoot me!”.
September 26: Collingwood defeat Carlton in the VFL Grand Final by 1 point 125-124 thanks to a Peter McKenna goal after the siren after seemingly squandering a 44 point half time lead.
September 27: Air Force One briefly encounters a UFO whilst flying over Nevada en route to California, but none of its escorting USAF F-4 Phantoms are able to intercept it.
September 28: Broadcast of the first episode of Warship, a BBC military drama set on the fictional cruiser HMS Theseus.
September 28: A flock of starlings fly into the Empire State Building after its lights are turned off, resulting in a rain of dead birds onto the street below.
September 29: Filming begins on Richard Attenborough’a epic war picture on Operation Market Garden, the successful airborne and armoured offensive leading to the liberation of the Netherlands in 1944.
September 30: The Home Office rejects a paper calling for the liberalisation of gambling and lottery laws.

[Simon Darkshade]

October
October 1: Release of When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, an exciting prehistoric adventure produced by Hammer Studios, featuring special effects by the great Ray Harryhausen and real footage of dinosaurs from Africa and South America.
October 2: The International Union for the Conservation of Nature issues an official report on the apparent extinction of the megaladon, with over six thousand of the monsters exterminated over the 1960s.
October 3: The Premier of Bolivia resigns after a lengthy and highly charged confrontational meeting with Army commanders.
October 4: Jim Clark wins the Formula One World Driving Champion, equalling Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio's record of four titles.
October 5: Twelve experimental military reptiles escape from a secret research facility in Arizona, eating the well-intentioned radical scientist who clandestinely attempted to smuggle them out to freedom.
October 6: The first million dollar lottery prize in U.S history, the New York State Lottery, is won by George Ashton, who elects to receive $50,000 a year for 20 years, which amounts to $30,000 a year after taxes.
October 7: Soviet dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn is announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
October 8: Nazi hunters Simon Wiesenthal and Ezra Lieberman, assisted by track down and capture the notorious German war criminals Reiner Schwarzheim, Dr Christian Szell, the so-called ‘Weisse Engel’, and Eduard Roschmann, the Butcher of Riga, in a isolated Paraguayan villa.
October 9: The Colonial Office authorises a White Paper on the status of the Crown Colony of Kuwait.
October 10: Debut of the Canadian cooking variety programme The Galloping Gourmet on ITV, presented by the ebullient Graham Kerr, who cooks roast sirloin of beef. The acquisition of the successful programme from across the Atlantic sparks interest in furthering the arrangement for other nominally Canadian televisual material as a means of complying with Commonwealth content rules.
October 11: 20 French soldiers are killed in an ambush in Chad, sparking plans for immediate retaliation by French garrison command against rebel forces.
October 12: An outbreak of a particularly virulent strain of cholera is reported in Eastern Turkey.
October 13: Beginning of the largest Warsaw Pact military manuevers conducted to date, with over 490,000 troops involved across Poland, the GDR and Bukovina.
October 14: In what is considered to be an incredible coincidence, four nuclear tests are conducted on the same day by different countries, with the United States and Britain conducting underground tests of new ICBM warheads in Nevada and South Australia, whilst the Soviet Union tests a nine megation warhead beneath Novaya Zemlya and China conducting an atmospheric hydrogen bomb test in the Gobi Desert.
October 15: Four dozen schoolboys are killed in a crash between a school bus and train in the Korean capital of Seoul.
October 16: Indian Army intelligence officers report the presence of several new types of Soviet general purpose and heavy machine guns in the hands of dissident tribesment in Northern Afghanistan.
October 17: The President of Liberia declares that registration of foreign vessels under the Liberian flag as a matter of convenience will not be permitted, espousing his particular personal doctrine of national autonomy and dignity.
October 18: Death of renowned US Army General George S. Patton at 84, regarded as America's finest armoured general of the Second World War.
October 19: Production of the BGM-85 TOW (Tube Launched Optically Tracked Wire Guided) anti tank guided missile begins in the United States.
October 20: The North Tower of the new World Trade Center becomes the tallest building in New York City and the United States, overtaking the Empire State Building.
October 21: A US Army plane carrying two generals travelling in Northern Persia is blown off course by freak winds, landing by mistake across the border in Turkmenistan on a Soviet military airfield. They are detained by the Soviets and released on October 30.
October 22: The commanding general of the Chilean Army is assassinated by unknown assailants whilst driving through the streets of Santiago.
October 23: Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip arrive in Hong Kong, becoming the first reigning monarch to visit the colony in a brief stopover en route to Philippines
October 24: British paratroopers and Royal Marines begin redeploying from Jordan by air as they are replaced by heavier troops of the 10th Infantry Division.
October 25: The Administrator of General Services certifies the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment in a ceremony at the White House.
October 26: Release of Waterloo, a multinational epic war film about the eponymous battle in 1815, directed by David Lean, produced by Dino de Laurentis and accompanied by a majestic score by John Barry. It features over 36,000 British, French and German troops filmed in action over a painstakingly accurate arcanely-augmented recreation of the battleground in Belgium and stars Rod Steiger as Napoleon and Christopher Plummer as the Duke of Wellington.
October 27: Ceylon becomes the world’s leading exporter of tea due to a blight in China, with only India producing more overall. The small country’s economy is diversifying, as rubber and silk production, gold mining and farming of fruit and rice being increasingly important.
October 28: The West Indies defeat the United States in Boston in the First Test, lead by a double century by Gary Sobers, who scores 269.
October 29: Der Spiegel features a story on ‘The German Tourist’, an examination of the ever increasing affluence of postwar Germany and its influence on patterns of European tourism.
October 30: American, British and Canadian troops newly arrived from South Vietnam take part in Exercise Kangaroo 70, an Australian war game based on the defence of Darwin and Northern Australia against a foreign invader.
October 31: Tropical Storm Louise sees widespread flooding across both North and South Vietnam.

[Simon Darkshade]

November
November 1: Large protests on the streets of Paris, Lyons and other major French cities proceed peacefully without attracting any active response from the police or security forces.
November 2: King Zod arrives in Britain in the first official state visit of an Albanian monarch, accompanied as ever by Queen Ariu and his silent hulking ogre bodyguard Non.
November 3: In the US mid term elections, the Republican Party gains three seats in the Senate, including former Congressman George Bush narrowly winning in Texas against sitting Senator Ralph Yarborough. Despite this, the Democrats retain control over the Senate, holding 54 seats to 51 Republican, 4 Whig and 1 Conservative.
November 4: Californian authorities take custody of a 12 year old girl held in isolation by her father for the entirety of her life.
November 5: Bonfire Night celebrations occur across Britain in accordance with the Observation of the 5th of November Act 1605, with the BBC covering the largest community bonfires and festivities as part of the annual completion to with the title of the year’s best.
November 6: Egyptian officials begin talks with Sudan for further integration of economic ties, with Egyptian moves towards potential political association being stymied by British influence.
November 7: Opening of 1914 in London, the first film in an intended war epic series depicting the course of The Great War. The sequences of the miraculous Battle of Mons and the end of the Race to the Sea are particularly acclaimed by audiences, whilst the cast of Barry Foster as Kaiser Wilhelm II, Richard Burton as Von Falkenhayn, Louis Jourdan as Marshal Joffre, Sir Laurence Olivier as Sir John French and Robert Hardy as Sir Winston Churchill all deliver noteworthy performances.
November 8: Sonny Liston is narrowly defeated by Cassius Clay in an extremely contentious decision in a fight in Los Angeles, with Clay coming back from being floored twice in the third round.
November 9: The Prince of Wales becomes the first immediate member of the British Royal Family to visit Luna on an official basis.
November 10: Maiden flight of the Lockheed Jetstar 'jumbo jet', a four engine very long range counterpart to the Boeing 747, McDonnell-Douglas DC-10, Convair-Bell 1550 and the Curtiss-Wright Super Condor. Noted Daily Planet journalist Clark Kent opines that the United States’ aviation industry is approaching the verge of having too many major companies in some particular aircraft markets.
November 11: Restructuring of the British Army of the Rhine begins, providing for the reinforcement of four Territorial Army divisions in the event of mobilisation and the augmentation of the two combined arms field forces attached to each corps by Territorial and Army Reserve units. The present peacetime regular strength of the BAOR, set at 160,000 men in 6 British (4 in Germany and 2 in the United Kingdom) and 2 Canadian divisions, is not scheduled to increase in the foreseeable future, but may be subject to some subsequent alterations depending on mooted increases to Commonwealth corps strength currently being debated.
November 12: The Syrian government is overthrown in a coup d'etat by elements of the Royal Syrian Army, with the new regime immediately sure to pledge ongoing allegiance to the King and eschew any hint of movement towards a neutralist or pro-Soviet line.
November 13: Reestablishment of the Women's Auxiliary Balloon Corps, a famed home defence formation of both World Wars.
November 14: Japanese Prime Minister Akira Tanaka announces that he will step down at the end of 1971, having served 16 years as Nippon's premier and being the current longest ruling head of government in the Free World. Whilst there is no word of his formal successor, his expected heir apparent Yukio Mishima, the Governor of Tokyo, waits in the wings.
November 15: Debut of The Renaissance Men, an animated American children's cartoon that depicts Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael and Caravaggio as a secret group that works against France during the Italian Wars under the direction of Machiavelli, with their identities concealed by blue, orange, red and purple masks
November 16: A New York schoolgirl claims to have rescued her infant brother from the clutches of a fey goblin king who had concealed the wean in the depths of a mystical labyrinth. Subsequent investigations by FBI wizards are unable to substantiate the story, amid outraged denials from local goblin communities and threats of civil rights law suits, and the wretched girl is firmly chastised and sent off to live with her aunt in South Park, Colorado.
November 17: The Aircraft (National Preference) Act 1970 is given Royal Assent, setting out a mandated requirement for preferential purchases of British or Commonwealth aircraft by the Armed Forces and publicly owned entities, such as Imperial Airways, and making access to certain taxation exemptions for private corporations contingent upon compliance with the Act. This measure is designed to provide further encouragement and protection for the British aerospace sector, which has seen a marked recent increase of foreign sales and orders in both military and civil aircraft.
November 18: The foreign ministers of Germany and Poland sign a peace treaty recognising their border as lying along the Oder-Neisse Line. resolving one of several of the outstanding diplomatic disputes between the states.
November 19: The first black member of the South African cabinet is sworn into office by Governor-General Earl Pienaar of Tobruk, marking the increasing inclusion of the black African population in the political process.
November 20: Initiation of Protect and Survive, a public information campaign by the Ministry of Information and the Civil Defence Service on the protection of British households in the event of a nuclear attack. The booklets provide localised information on the nearest public fallout shelters and general advice on the purchase and preparation of private shelters for home use.
November 21: The arrival back on Earth of the Soviet cosmonaut crew of the Kosmos expedition sees them paraded in triumph through Moscow in front of a massive crowd of well wishers. Commanders Yuri Gagarin and Alexei Leonov are personally awarded the Order of Lenin and made Heroes of the Soviet Union by General Secretary Sergeyev in Red Square.
November 22: Portuguese Colonial Army troops launch a series of limited strikes and cross-border raids into Guinea under the putative justification of hot pursuit of rebel guerillas.
November 23: The Royal Artillery introduces a new rapid-fire computerised multi-directional barrage designed for support of rapidly advancing mobile infantry and armoured units alike, utilising a full range of its new guns, howitzers and rocket launchers.
November 24: Completion of Canada’s first operational atomic fusion plant at Prince John, Saskatchewan, joining other such facilities in the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain
November 25: Proposals for votes for animals in Britain are declined at this stage, with the official Home Office report stating that the sheer variability in differences between talking beast and ordinary animals of the same species made any such measures impractical in the extreme; an appendix goes into further arguments, such as cats being likely to vote for fascist parties out of sheer feline contempt and dogs inevitably voting like their masters, not to mention the potential for treats to profoundly corrupt the electoral process.
November 26: A valuable painting by Diego Velazquez is sold for over 3 million pounds at auction in Christie's in London, narrowly beating the offer by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with the agents of the anonymous bidder, a local band of adventurers from Cricklewood known as The Goodies, promptly donating the masterpiece to the National Gallery. This event is later seen by some observers as beginning the peculiar series of events known as 'The Art Wars'.
November 27: Pope Paul VI arrives in Philippines and, while greeting the faithful at Manila Airport, is stabbed by a deranged Brazilian artist wielding a kris, with the blows being fortunately deflected by his blessed vestments and collar. The assailant is seized and beaten by Swiss Guards before being handed over to outraged Philippines authorities. He is bought before a military court later that day and, after a 12 minute trial, found guilty of attempted assassination of a head of state and outrages against religion and sentenced to death by the gas chamber; after the personal intercession of the Pontiff, his execution is indefinitely postponed.
November 28: A travelling band of Swedish cooks causes alarm at a Scottish marketplace fair with their Scandinavian cooking exposition featuring alarmingly cavalier use of swords, battleaxes and warhammers and madcap culinary alchemy. The local constabulary is about to place then under arrest, but they are saved from a spell in the stocks by a passing professor from a nearby magical school, who offers to stand surety for them and convey them out of the shire.
November 29: RAF Middle East issues an approving report on the performance of the Sopwith Camel supersonic VSTOL assault transport in operational testing in Aden, highlighting its flexibility and speed of response, but also noting that its armament and versatility could potentially lead to inter-service disputes as to its proper control, given the recent RFC acquisition of Hawker-Siddeley Harrier jet fighters. The concluding paragraph puts the matter pithily: "We set out to get a transport, but ended up with a genuine army co-operation plane that can perform the full range of missions, with all that entails."
November 30: Sir Winston Churchill, the Duke of London, celebrates his 96th birthday with a special luncheon at Simpsons-on-the-Strand, alongside family, royalty and close friends from both sides of the Atlantic and across the Empire.

[Simon Darkshade]

December
December 1: The Italian National Assembly votes resoundingly to reject a bill legalising divorce 568-243, reflecting the strength of traditional Roman Catholic influence and the strong parliamentary Conservative majority.
December 2: A secret USN-RN conference is held to discuss the potential threat of an Atlantic Monster counterpart to Godzilla, following on from a series of alarming sightings and encounters over the preceding several years.
December 3: Australian oil prospectors discover a large offshore deposit off the southern coast of New Guinea.
December 4: The BND arrests four alleged Stasi agents working on the personal staff of the leader of the Social Democrat opposition in the Reichstag.
December 5: Death of the Maharajah of Kashmir, the fabulously wealthy Sir Hari Singh, at the age of 75. Ascending the throne of the peaceful and prosperous Indian princely state is his highly esteemed son, Sir Karan Singh, who won renown in the Korean War.
December 6: A rail accident in western New York threatens to spill dangerous chemicals out into the surrounding area, but the incident sees no fewer than three superheroes attend due to a new monitoring system. The National Incident Response Program, administered by numerical expert Count Wladislaw von Graf, utilises the new HAL-2000 intelligent supercomputer and is capable of tracking thousands of incidents around the country.
December 7: President Kennedy signs the Poison Prevention Packaging Act into law, providing for the packaging of certain dangerous substances in containers resistant to the attentions of curious children.
December 8: The Italian general election, delayed by the death of the King, results in the National Front, a grouping of various nationalist and neo-fascist parties, emerging as the second largest group in the National Assembly, behind the ruling Christian Democrats and in front of the resurgent Communist-Socialist bloc.
December 9: Formation of the Red Army Faction, a German subsidiary of the International Revolutionary Army under the command of Andreas Baader.
December 10: Buckingham Palace announces that Princess Victoria of Wales has given birth to a healthy son.
December 11: Time Magazine’s feature story is on the forthcoming ‘Technological Revolution’, describing the great leap forward in computers, microchips and electronics as being the harbinger of immense change.
December 12: Heavy rains cause a series of floods and landslides in Southern Colombia, killing over 100 people and cutting many roads through the region.
December 13: The strength of US Army Vietnam reaches its interim level of six divisions, deployed alongside remaining French, Korean and British Commonwealth divisions and the US 5th Marine Division; the million strong Armée Royale Vietnamienne (ARVN) maintains its force of 18 divisions.
December 14: Newly enchanted dweomers at Toronto International Airport successfully prevent the crash landing of a stricken Pan Am Boeing 737.
December 15: Opening of a large integrated steelworks in Londonderry, funded in part by the targeted industrial investment of the Barton government.
December 16: Emperor Haile Selassie issues and imperial proclamation of a state of emergency in Eritrea.
December 17: Polish communist dictator Władysław Gomułka retires due to sudden attack of ill health, apparently unconnected to the movement of Red Army forces to the outskirts of Warsaw.
December 18: Release of the film version of Erich von Däniken‘s Chariots of the Gods, the highly speculative and widely decried ‘secret history’ of mankind’s past. It attracts mixed reviews for its content, but plaudits for its soundtrack and cinematography.
December 19: Testing begins on a new Multirole Shoulder Launched Anti-Tank Rocket at British Army Training Unit Suffield in Canada.
December 20: President Kennedy awards Reverend Elvis Presley with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a ceremony in the White House, honouring the adventurer for his many good deeds across the country; the humbled Reverend simply says “Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much.”
December 21: Cavendish Foods unveils it’s new Automaton Biscuit Selector, able to provide appropriate biscuits for up to 1024 different social occasions and circumstance.
December 22: The Imperial Persian Army orders an extensive package of modern equipment from Britain, including 2500 Chieftain tanks and hundreds of other armoured vehicles.
December 23: The US Department of Labor estimates that unemployment following the end of the Vietnam War will peak in the latter half of the next financial year before declining as the civilian economy reabsorbs over 3 million men.
December 24: In a Christmas Eve surprise present to the nation, the great wyrm Selentrius Cosmogrox gives the entirety of his fabled treasure hoard (worth several thousand million pounds) to the British people, announcing that he is relocating to Madagascar to become an ascetic on his upcoming 4000th hatching day.
December 25: Queen Elizabeth II delivers her annual Royal Christmas Message to Britain, the Commonwealth and Empire, focussing on the prospects of world peace after the end of the Vietnam War and the value of family.
December 26: US defence satellites detect a strange double flash over the southern Indian Ocean that seems to match the signature of an atomic initiation; subsequent aerial sampling does not detect any significant traces of radiation in the atmosphere.
December 27: The New York Times publishes its biannual ranking of European military powers, placing Germany at the head of the list above France, followed by Italy, Austria-Hungary, Sweden, Spain, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia and Romania and noting that both major communist states were on a rising trajectory.
December 28: Archaelogists exploring the inner secrets of the Great Pyramid discover a hitherto unknown series of catacombs beneath the Pyramids, leading through a vast series of tunnels and chambers to a hidden room. It contains a sarcophagus that defies all efforts to open it and the room displays a number of strange gravitational properties, in addition to dimming all lights and flames. Upon mapping, the subterranean complex seems to match the shape and dimensions of an inverted pyramid, causing an immediate flurry of concern and interest in Egyptological circles.
December 29: Removal of obstacles at the border between Hong Kong and China as the latest sign of easing tensions between China and Britain.
December 30: PVO Strany fighters force an unidentified flying object to land intact in Siberia, whereupon it is captured by KGB troops.
December 31: Launch of Orion 6 on a four year voyage to the outer solar system, bound for Neptune and Uranus before returning by way of Mars. Planning for the Orion 7 mission to Orcus and Pluto, scheduled for launch in 1972, continues at a high pace.

[Simon Darkshade]

I reckon January-August were up before the last board went down, as I remember discussion of Miggins’ Pie Shops.

That makes it the debut, for some readers, of September-December.

I’ll put up some notes I’ve prepared earlier in a few days to give the opportunity for any organic talking points to emerge first.

When (hopefully) the rest of the TL stuff makes it’s way here, then I’ll convert this thread to discussion of TL related issues and ideas.

[bobbins66]

Simon
Great to see this back and entertaining as usual. I have the ongoing fun of identifying your pop culture Easter eggs on top on the timeline as a whole. Great work and appreciate the work you put in.

[Simon Darkshade]

Thank you kindly, Bobbins. I aim to provide something that fills a particular niche and build a believable and interesting world and the Eggs are part of that.

[bobbins66]

Could I suggest that when you have a chance doing an index with links to the relevant stories would be useful. Like you’ve done over the other site?

Also had a thought for another topic (again when you have time) would be a brief history of the world covering pre history, expanding on your bestiary timelines etc to give an overall context?

[Simon Darkshade]

I had one one of those back in September 2020 before tboverse.us went down. I'm going to wait to get the old 2020 forum copy back up before putting it back up, as that will have a good 85-90% of stuff on there.

Brief histories of the world are rarely brief. They also have a function of pulling away the curtain to reveal some aspects of the past. By not having a definitive, canonical one at this point, I keep some scope for ideas being open for me to change them if necessary. If that seems a bit vague, it is partly deliberate, as it involves issues regarding Atlantis, time and space that I want to ruminate on fully first. I like having prehistory and indeed the early stages of recorded history being a bit murky, as the romance of the past is rooted in mystery.

The HBO series Carnivale had a lovely little intro spiel delivered by a dwarf:

Before the beginning, after the Great War between Heaven and Hell, God created the Earth and gave dominion over it to the crafty ape he called Man; and to each generation was born a creature of light and a creature of darkness; and great armies clashed by night in the ancient war between Good and Evil. There was magic then, nobility, and unimaginable cruelty; and so it was until the day that a false sun exploded over Trinity, and Man forever traded away wonder for reason.

That last line stuck with me since 2003 and a world where there is more wonder than reason has always intrigued me as a writer.

What I can do is answer specific questions relatively directly.

Harping back for a moment to the original post's contents, I reckon I have near enough to 100% of my expanded replies to some discussion points on the TL et al, as I fortuitously cross posted them on AH and Lordroel's forum. Some of the incidental responses might be more difficult.

As such, if I could make a request to the reader base, it would be to save the threads going up here for your own records on an irregular or regular basis if it suits you. I'm going to do the same this time around and hopefully get a decent archive out of it.

[Simon Darkshade]

1970 Notes

January
- Enterprise’s disappearance was down to accidentally passing through a long dormant Atlantean portal at just the right/wrong time. The principle is related to goings on south of Bermuda
- Top Secret/Majestic is a classification used deliberately…
- The Oklahoma meteor does have an eventual follow up coming
- The Return of the King is a much better picture than Jackson’s adaption
- Death cults in Madagascar have an interesting story behind them
- Even as negotiations in Vietnam are taking place, the wrestle for advantage continues, including aerial combat. The US and Allies are starting to get the upper hand back from some of the earlier closer run battles
- The Soviet naval force inadvertently kills the last two megs without realising it
- Trouble is brewing in the Philippines
- Not even King Zod can foil the rampaging Ramesses
- Samson Mulumba is a cover identity operated by the leader of the African Liberation Front. Talk about hiding in plain sight
- NASA increasing rocket orders means sending more gear up to the moons and the US starship construction dock
- Tokyo overtakes it’s competition a bit later, but the trajectory and reasons are still fairly plain
- Will Owen faces a different outcome
- Evel Knievel gets to jump the Grand Canyon
- Something valuable is found in Rhodesia
- Even as Vietnam is still nominally going, there is an effort to study and analyse it in order to improve
- Iraqi Minister of Defence is a bit of a poisoned chalice. The latest youngish officer comes into office, intent on *this* time being the chance for a successful coup. Then they get the big picture/secret details, as well as a friendly welcome visit from the British advisory forces. So far, all have preferred to go with the flow and retire alive and rich rather than the alternative
- Duran v Duran is a novel case indeed
- Very quietly and very effectively, French forces remain the real power in numerous nominally independent African countries
- Wales gets more success than @ in sport, mirroring their different economic trajectory in a bit of thematic parallelism
- Demis Roussos ending up as an opera singer seems fitting
- The new British tac nuke is similar to the WE.177, but with some more optional settings and a fitting name
- Someone put the silver snake there, somehow…
- In Persia, we see some reticence to aggravate the outside powers into intervening. The USA and Britain are not seen as paper tigers, but state actors with a history of pressing the coup or military intervention buttons if a ‘friendly state’ looks like becoming unfriendly
- China is building a powerful missile, but the cutting edge is now what is on top of them
- JFK’s speech is generally accepted, as there is far less distrust of the word of the government

[Simon Darkshade]

February
- The Argentine train crash is entirely accidental, but is used very deliberately for political ends
- Clay vs Marciano is based on the historical 1970 film 'The Super Fight'
- The Sherlock Holmes reference is going to be a story one day
- Demand for Australian raw materials does lead to some big highs, but the cause for that demand is going to wind down soon, requiring consideration of measures to avoid being left in the lurch
- The Chesapeake Bridge is a victim of dark magic, building on a few other strings laid out in prior years
- English water developments may slip by the wayside in the views of most, but the linking of the Welsh Mountains Scheme (an expansive system of dams and reservoirs created for hydroelectricity as well as water supply) and the Grand Contour Canal creates an even large water supply grid for future droughts. Additionally, the GCC does provide a major modernisation of the canal network linking most of the major cities of England - London, Bristol, Southampton, Coventry, Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby, Chester, Manchester, Blackburn, Bradford, Hartlepool and Newcastle - providing for improved industrial transport infrastructure
- Charles Harrelson, father of future actor Woody, faces the consequences of there being no pre Furman de facto moratorium on capital punishment in the United States; not that there will be a Furman decision
- The Soviet naval squadron's world cruise is a sign of a profoundly different naval strategy; the Delta trying to slip out in their wake is something a bit more familiar to us
- The meaning of the (bit of a mouthful) Nahuatl name of the Mexican spaceship is the Morning Star Venus
- Women's rights are not so far behind our 1970 as a general rule, but the perception of the women's liberation movement is even more mean and negative than in @, reflecting more of a mid 1950s social attitude basis
- The new imperial city being built in @ North Macedonia is a bit to the east of @ Veles, which upon examination of a map of the Balkans is fairly close to their geographic centre, or, to put it another way, close to the geographic centre of Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia. That is deliberate and symbolic, rather than coincidental
- Even flying taxis don't solve the issue of traffic congestion in a large city like London!
- Katanga edging towards 'independence' is the latest roll in the ongoing dice game
- Prince Siegfried really is involved in the adventuring super group
- As well as alliteration, the deeds of the Central American Revolutionary Front are paving the way for future ...developments...
- The underground nuclear event in Sumatra is an attempted test that turned out to be a rather disappointing fizzle. Whilst there isn't public follow up, it does get the attention of Australia, Britain, the USA and India
- The platinum deposit in Zangaro may be familiar to readers of Frederick Forsyth's The Dogs of War
- This IRB is different ideologically and materially from the @ Provos, as different as chalk and cheese, but their mention is a sign that not everything is peaceful cakes and ale in Ireland
- The Armistice post is very detailed and speaks for itself. It should be noted that the ratio of North Vietnamese/Red losses to US/Allied/Blue ones of 524:306 (or 1.7:1) is better than the @ one of 1.5:1, but is still regarded as unacceptably high by the USAF, USN and their associated Allied air forces
- Unsurprisingly, victory in Vietnam rubs off on the political leadership of the day
- The Frenchman trying to eat the Golden Gate Bridge is based on this chap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito
- Disappearing stars?
- The concern over robotic gun turrets and their ilk is perhaps warranted, given their mixture of extreme utility and the technology not being up to distinguishing between "valid targets" and "innocent Asian or African peasant boy going about his business"
- The key piece of information in the news of the Nepalese royal wedding is the description of Nepal as an 'Indian princely state', with the correct implication that Nepal is part of India