In 1766, Rip Van Winkle, driven out of home by his wife for his broken promises to repair the house wandered into the Castkill mountains with his dog “Wolf”. A band of men hailed from the river. The whole group reminded Rip of the figures in an old Flemish painting, in the parlor of Dominie Van Schaick, the village parson, and which had been brought over from Holland at the time of the settlement. Together they drank a flagon of “Hollands” together, and Rip fell deep asleep.

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The Shadow	In 1941, Orson Welles strikes out in a new direction following the release of Citizen Kane. In order to make himself more appealing to the movie studios, Welles made a movie out of his radio show The Shadow. The protagonist is a fictional character created by Walter B. Gibson in 1931 in a semimonthly series of pulp magazines. The first story was titled "The Living Shadow". The character is one of the most famous of the pulp heroes of the 1930s and 1940s. In print, he wore a slouch hat and a black, crimson-lined cloak with an upturned collar (while in later comic books and the movie, The Shadow wore a crimson scarf around the lower part of his face). He also skulked in the shadows using his skill at concealing himself -- at first. In due course, and in his most famous incarnation, The Shadow became an invisible man who supposedly learned "while traveling through East Asia ... the mysterious power to cloud men's minds, so they could not see him."
Walter B. Gibson

In part, that new incarnation was born of necessity; radio's time constraints made it difficult to describe The Shadow in hiding and nearly invisible. Some believe the Shadow was a hypnotist, as explicitly mentioned in at least a few radio episodes; others contend that the Shadow could manipulate Qi. Because radio was not a visual medium, audiences found The Shadow's invisibility easy to accept. The big screen takes the character to a new level of imagination, and ”The Shadow – the Movie” is the box office hit of 1942.Welles was taken in a new and unexpected direction that eventually lead to the goth classic “Batman”.

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Tom Cruise	In 2007, (KP International) Tom Cruise's reps were reportedly angry about the release of photos of the actor looking bald and fat during filming for his role in the upcoming comedy, Tropic Thunder. "Mr Cruise's private appearance was supposed to be a secret for his fans worldwide. [Paparazzi] have ruined what should have been an upsetting discovery for moviegoers," read a statement from the actor's reps, World Entertainment News Network reported. Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr, Nick Nolte and Matthew McConaughey star in the film, which is expected to hit theatres next summer.
Old and Fat

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Kennedy	In 1979, Stanley Shapiro wrote the second in a series of articles entitled A Time to Remember in which the journalist was sharply critical of post-Vietnam Foreign Policy. Better for the US to have been humbled by the war in Vietnam and then this ultra-belligerance would have been nipped in the bud, and Westmoreland sent off into a quiet retirement was Shapiro's view.
In Eisenhower and Kennedy, the US had been led by careful crisis managers that had steered the nation away from disaster. Ike had assaulted the congressional military industrial complex with Kennedy threatening to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces. In fact Bay of Pigs showed the world exactly what would happen if congressional military industrial complex drove events - a disaster.

In 1941, French Marine Minister François Darlan sent orders to the French Naval Base at Mers-el-Kébir to increase combat preparedness (e.g., deploy torpedo nets in the harbor), with immediate effect. Due to a catalogue of disasters, the orders were not received in good time before six British carriers under the command of British Admiral James Somerville. Launched a first wave of 181 planes composed of torpedo bombers, dive-bombers, level bombers and fighters. Overall, twenty-one ships of the French Mediterranean fleet were damaged and the death toll reached 1,297 with 350 injured. Conspiracy theorists point to a German plot. That aside, the result was very much in favour of the Nazis, with opinion in France swinging strongly behind the Vichy Regime which became a genuine partner in a new european community.

Snakeyes

In 1963, the strange being known as Snake Eyes is still working hard to tie up loose ends. Even though the body count has already reached ten and all the principles are dead. Today's problem is the bullet casings ejected when a bullet or bullet fragment struck a nearby curb. Agents are sent to take away the evidence and store it somewhere safe. Like in the Grand Canyon, thinks Snake Eyes, his mood breaking for a moment.

In 1963, on this day Dallas night club owner Jacob Rubenstein aka Jack Ruby was shot and killed by W. Guy Banister in the basement of Dallas police headquarters. Unconscious, Ruby was put into an ambulance and rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where both JFK ad Lee Harvey Oswald had died over the last three days. Doctors operated on Ruby, but Banister's single bullet had severed major abdominal blood vessels, and the doctors were unable to repair the massive trauma. At 48 hours and 7 minutes after the President's assassins death, Ruby was pronounced dead. After a full autopsy, Ruby's body was returned to his family.

Ruby dies

Cordell Hull

In 1941, the Hull note, formally called "Outline of proposed Basis for Agreement Between The United States and Japan" was delivered on this day. The US Government accepted efforts toward the establishment of peace through the creation of a new order in East Asia. President Charles Lindbergh had no time for colonialism, and astutely foresaw that the Empire of Japan could be a strategic partner in the region for the forthcoming battle with communism.

In 1980/1941, a fleet of six aircraft carriers commanded by Japanese Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo left Hitokapu Bay for Pearl Harbour under strict radio silence. The fleet was in the path of the US aircraft carrier Nimitz, which had collided with an unnatural storm and the crew were transported to the same location. Captain Captain Matthew Yelland decided to interfere with the past and stop the Japanese Fleet from attacking the US base. The true story of the voyage was portrayed in the movie Final Countdown. Played by actor Kirk Douglas, Yelland made the decision to intercept the incoming Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, but during the attempt, the freak storm returned and sends both the Americans and Japanese back to 1980.	Final Countdown
The result is that America does not enter the war, and Asia, including Oceania is absorbed into the Empire of Japan.

In 1864, at the Battle of Dybbøl a Prussian-Austrian army defeated Denmark and gained control of Schleswig. Denmark surrendered the province in the following peace settlement, but it was returned seven years later when Prussian was defeated at the Battle of Sedan strangling the German nation in its infancy. Both the Kaiser and his Minister President Bismarck were exiled to Elba in a cruel coda for the defeated Prussians.

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In 1865, on this day Lewis Thornton Powell assassinated United States Secretary of State William H. Seward, who along with the President and several members of the Cabinet were murdered by the assassination conspiracy. Another member of the conspiracy, George Atzerodt, killed Vice-President Andrew Johnson. The Union was caste into disarray, throwing a lifeline that General Robert E. Lee called the Confederacy's Last Chance. He took it.

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In 1951, regarding the proposed escalation of the Korean War, and in order to defeat the rapidly advanced Chinese Armies, US President Harry S. Truman cabled UN Commander-in-Chief Douglas MacArthur. Whilst he very reluctantly accepted the need to drop thirty to fifty nuclear weapons on Manchuria, he would not permit the war heads to be further armed. MacArthur was keen to deploy the bacteriological weapons that Unit 731 surrendered to him in 1945. This illegal handover had secured the amnesty of the Japanese scientists against trial for the extermination of 200,000 Chinese citizens during World War II. Absolutely not, said Truman.

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In 979, King Aethelred the Unready proved just how unready he was when he fell to Danish intrigue, placing the English under the crown of Denmark. The Danish Empire conquered the rest of the British Isles over the next century, and threatened to conquer the whole of the continent in the 1200’s.

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In 1799, Italian Emperor Buonaparte declares that he will reestablish the kingdom of Israel, and conquers Jerusalem to make his point. The Jews of Europe begin flocking to their ancestral home at the Emperor’s request.

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In 1865, Giles Nelson, an officer in the Army taking leave from the Civil War in Washington, D.C., foils an assassination attempt on President Lincoln at the Ford Theatre. Nelson had noticed a suspicious character trying to sneak into the president’s box and stopped him. After a brief struggle, he subdued the assassin, southern sympathizer John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln, decorating him later, called him “my personal saviour”.

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In 1972, on this day Spiro Agnew was sworn in as the new President of the United States. Earlier in the day Richard M. Nixon was shot in the head by Arthur Brehmer after he unwisely decided to leave the window of the Presidential limonsine open as he was leaving a speech in Canada.

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In 1912, lookouts manage to warn the RMS Titanic of an iceberg in time to avoid a fatal collision. The iceberg crushes part of the hull, but the ship is able to limp its way to the Canadian coast. The White Star line faced large doses of negative publicity afterwards, but at least they were able to keep up their reputation of being unsinkable.

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In 1986, in retaliation for supposed Libyan sponsorship of terrorism, American planes bombed several targets in the African nation. Unfortunately, several of the planes were shot down, and the captured Air Force and Navy pilots were paraded through the streets of Tripoli. President Reagan called this “an unbelievable act of barbarity,” and asked Congress for a declaration of war against Libya.

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Element: Who row: 1051	In 1970, critical explosions crippled Apollo 13, killing Captain James Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise.
Element: Who_Title row: 1051

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