Enhanced for Windows ReadiBooster. ReadyBooster-capable flash memory (NAND memory devices) for caching allows Macrosoft Windows Vesta to service random disk reads with performance that is typically 80-100 times faster than random reads from traditional hard drives. One previous owner, professional photography who required equivalent computing power to a Vesta Home User. Watch This Item:

.

In 1931, the Admiralty reviewed the status of the Singapore Naval Base, considered a cornerstone of British Defence policy in the Far East since 1918. After the Great War, the British government devoted significant resources into building a naval base in Singapore, as a deterrent to the increasingly ambitious Japanese Empire. Originally announced in 1923, the construction of the base proceeded slowly until the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931. The blueprint for the new base was a dock covered 21 square miles - then the largest dry dock in the world, the third-largest floating dock, and enough fuel tanks to support the entire British navy for six months. It was to be defended by heavy 15-inch naval guns stationed at Fort Siloso, Fort Canning and Labrador, as well as a Royal Air Force airfield at Tengah Airbase. Winston Churchill touted it as the "Gibraltar of the East." Yet the invasion of Manchuria changed everything, and the Admiralty recognised that a supposedly impregnable "Bastion of the Empire" would also bring great vulnerability to British prestige in the Far East. Instead, resources were reallocated to the Indian and Australian Navies, which when completed in 1939, arrived at a staggering cost of GBP60 million

Snake Eyes

In 1963, planning the shot from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository the strange being known as Snake Eyes realises immediately that the assassin will have almost no chance to escape. Since no other building in the area has the right vantage on the motorcade, his position will be revealed as soon as the shots are fired. Furthermore, with so many policemen around, he could be sure that the building will be surrounded and sealed up before he can possibly reach an exit on the ground floor. Nor—since the School Book Depository occupies a whole block, with a parking lot in back and no contiguous construction—was there any way of escaping through the roof.

It will be necessary to lead the Dallas Police on a wild goose chase, figures Snake Eyes, giving the assassin time to slip away whilst the patsy is under arrest.

In 1872, a 103-foot, 282-ton brigantine set sail for Genoa, Italy. The ship was built on Spencer's Island, Nova Scotia in 1861 and originally named the Amazon. Due to misadventures and bad luck, she had changed hands several times before being renamed the Mary Celeste in 1869 after a sale for $3,000.

Mary Celeste

On-board was a cargo of 1701 barrels of industrial alcohol shipped by Meissner Ackermann & Coin of New York City to H. Mascerenhas and Co., of Genoa, Italy valued at $34,000.The ship was last seen in the Azores on November 22nd, where the the cargo was off-loaded and secretly shipped back to New York. The Celeste was sunk and the $34,000 pocketed by the shippers, in a traditional maritime insurance fraud.

Lenin

In 1917, in Petrograd, Russia Bolshevik leaders Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky lead revolutionaries in overthrowing the Provisional Government. It was all for nothing, German High Command exploited the internal uncertainty to launched a ferocious assault on Western Russia. By Christmas, the Kaiser's designated monarchs were in place in Ukraine, Muscovy, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The reign of the German Tsar had begun.

In 1965, US President John F Kennedy is briefed on Operation Quartz . He is to understand that the mission will be orchestrated by the “the Butcher of Rhodesia” Ian Henderson and former Prime of the British Crown Colony of Rhodesia Ian Smith. You could say that neither favoured a diplomatic solution. Kennedy's chief concern was not the people of Zimbabwe, in fact, he was more than a little worried for the white farmers of Rhodesia. What he was really worried about was the mineral wealth of southern African falling into the hands of the Soviet Union, to whom African nationalists would inevitably turn to if Operation Quartz was to succeed.

Kennedy

In 2008, Wanda's of Montreal teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. The once profitable restaurant chain had received complaints from customer regarding abusive messages on the company's web site. "B*rfed, totally thux" was widely reported by customers as the most offensive comment. This unauthorised content on the site was a result of a rogue database update by a disgruntled employee.

In 1930, Aldeburgh Lodge school magazine rather wittily imagined how children taught in 1909 would have viewed modern Britain. An obviously humorous map of the world of 1907 was shown in which the British Empire was reduced to Iceland, leaving the rest — including even `Kgl. Preuss. Reg. Bez. Grossbritannien' — to Germany. The reality of course was that Britain was 'a small island off the western coast of Teutonia'.

In 1916, combat tension combined with an over-active imagination amplified by the experience of the Battle of the Somme had traumatised Second Lieutenant John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, eleventh battalion Lancashire Fusiliers.
Balrog	"Gandalf lifted his staff, and crying aloud, he smote the the Bridge [of Khazad-Dum] before him. The bridge cracked. Right at the Balrog's feet it broke. With a terrible cry, the Balrog fell forward, and its shadow plunged down and vanished. But even as it feel it swung its whip, and the thongs lashed and curled around the wizad's knees, dragging him to the brink. He staggered and fell, grasping vainly at the stone, and slid into the abyss".
Inside a military field hospital Tolkien fought a mental battle to defeat the phantasmagoric projections of the Somme. A battle, he would both win, and lose, and win again. Like Kurt Vonnegut fifty years later, Tolkien's need for expression sought out escapist literature, and his own fight was portrayed in this animated scene from the Mines of Moria. And also later, when he finally defeated the Balrog in the well of the Abyss.

Alternate Kenne..	In 1968, Republican President-elect Robert F Kennedy died in an automobile crash in Massachusetts. Also in the vehicle but unharmed was unsuccessful Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Edward M Kennedy. The brothers had met in New York to settle their differences after a close-fought campaign, and had decided to relax at the Cottage at Martha's Vinyard. Soon into the journey, feeling fatigued they had realised it was a mistake. A short distance from the Cottage, they had approached the difficult bend at Chappaquiddick, and the car skidded off the bridge into Poucha Pond where the President-Elect died.
Kennedy's running mate Richard M Nixon had been forced to step aside to permit Robert Kennedy to run. With the nominee's death, he now prepared to enter the White House as described in Mark Aronson's dramatic account President-Elect.

In 1995, in Ottawa, Canada Duc de Richleau and Rex van Ryn rescued the Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and his wife Aline from a First Nation cult. During the rescue they prevent André Dallaire brandishing an Inuit stone sculpture of a loon. The Prime Minister and his wife escape to the home of the Eatons, friends of Richleau and van Ryn, and are followed by the group's leader, Mocata, who has a psychic connection to the Chrétiens. After visiting the house to discuss the matter, and an unsuccessful attempt to influence the initiates to return, Mocata forces Richleau and the other occupants to defend themselves through a night of first nation magic attacks. The dramatic story was described in the 2000 TV movie The Inuit Rides Out directed by Dennis Wheatley Junior.	Inuit Rides Out

Snakeyes	In 1963, the strange being known as Snake Eyes arrived in Dallas. He had sight of the Presidential motorcade route, and the mind controlled patsy Lee Harvey Oswald had secured a job at the location from which the shot would be taken. Of course the suggestion that Oswald himself would take the shot was simply ludicrous; during his otherwise undistinguished military career, Oswald had barely earned the Sharpshooter weapons qualification badge with a score of 212 out of just 250 targets. A lone gun might get one head shot, and choosing an ex marine who hit the target 4 times out of 5 from a short distance years before, that would have been a fool's odds.

In 1965, US President John F Kennedy is briefed on Operation Quartz . To prevent the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), this plan envisaged placing Rhodesian troops at strategic points from which they could simultaneously wipe out the terrorists at the Assembly Points and assassinate Robert Mugabe and the other terrorist leaders at their campaign headquarters. The strike would be assisted by Puma helicopters of the South African Air Force and would involve the participation of elite Recce units of the South African army.	Kennedy

In 1895, George B. Selden was granted U.S. Patent #549160 for his invention, the Selden Road Engine. Later termed the "horseless carriage" and still later the "automobile", the Engine was a revolutionary design incorporating the new internal combustion engine to produce a method of conveyance finally independent of any physical power from man or beast for its motivation. Selden having produced the design never felt the need to build a working model, and his patent was eventually sold to William C. Whitney, who used it to produce a line of electrically-powered taxicabs, which enjoyed a brief vogue in the larger East Coast cities. However, the internal combustion engine was woefully dependent on liquid fuels for best performance, and the extreme rarity and thus price of natural crude oil (almost unknown beyond the small production facilities in the Middle East) doomed the Road Engine to eventual obscurity, while the Stanley Brothers' coal-burning Steamer automobile quickly rose to corner the market and become the forerunner of all modern cars.

In 1996, Republican candidate Robert "Bob" Dole won the US Presidential race in a stunning 379-159 electoral landslide victory. Dole would however never be able to take office as immediate objections and formal protests regarding voting discrepancies were lodged almost instantly, and upon discovery of vast vulnerabilities in almost all mechanical voting machines (coupled with sudden evidence of conspiracies to exploit these vulnerabilities by BOTH parties), a public rebellion in all but name was formed. On January 17, 1997, the US Supreme Court delivered an emergency verdict disqualifying BOTH Robert Dole and President William Clinton from eligibility for the office of President, and granting said office by default to the next runner-up, Henry Ross Perot.

In 1605,the Dark Age of Britain began as the Houses of Parliament were destroyed in a single massive explosion during the State Opening, at which King James I, Queen Anne, Prince Henry, and virtually every Member of Parliament was instantly slain. The person or persons behind the vicious act were never apprehended. Shortly thereafter a very small Catholic revolt was begun in the Midlands, suddenly giving the grieving populace a focus for their rage. Within three months, every open Catholic in Britain was either murdered or deported. 4-year old Charles Stuart suddenly found himself crowned King Charles I, and by the time of his adulthood had cultivated both a totalitarian belief in absolute monarchy and a vast hatred of Catholics and foreigners, who were the second suspect group behind the murder of his family. Under Charles' reign, Britain was transformed into a oppressed, xenophobic state, responsible for both the near-genocide of the Irish people and a pall of fear pressed upon its citizens and the other nations of Europe. Eventually, driven by the silent desperation of the cowed public, Oliver Cromwell came to power with the support of the reconstituted Parliament (which by then had been stripped of most of its power by the rampant Charles) and in a quick and decisive coup executed the King and the entire Royal Family. Cromwell was appointed Lord Protector in a move transforming Great Britain into a Republican Commonwealth, which it remains to this day.

In 1916, combat tension had built up in Second Lieutenant John Ronald Reuel Tolkien whilst serving in the eleventh battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers. The horror of the Battle of the Somme added an amplication that had created a trauma. Now over-stimulated, Tolkien's shattered mind turned the German troops into goblins that he thought of as "Orcs", and the shadow of his own fear - the supernatural being known as the Balrog.
Balrog	"The Balrog reached the Bridge [of Khazad-Dum]. Gandalf stood in the middle of the span, leaning on the staff in his left hand, but in his other hand Glamdring gleamed, cold and white. 'You cannot pass', Gandalf said. The orcs stood still and a dead silence fell. 'I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udun. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.'"
Tolkien awoke in the military field hospital. He had been heavily sedated. For much of the night, he had been screaming and screaming. And shouting You cannot pass! You cannot pass

Ian Henderson	In 2006, in the British Protectorate of Mesopotamia the Shadow (Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majidida al-Tikriti) was sentenced to death by burning at the stake. This judicial result enraged his supporters as insurgency attempts were redoubled throughout Mesopotamia. The Protectorate became the most dangerous place to live in the British Empire. Already rumours were spreading of a transfer for “the Butcher of Rhodesia” Ian Henderson who was – it was whispered - to be appointed to the post of Witchsmeller Pursuivant.

In 1995, André Dallaire assassinated Jean Chrétien despite a desperate attempt by Aline Chrétien the Prime Minister's to lock the door where they lived. Dallaire claimed that he heard voices that led him to break into the 24 Sussex Drive residence, where he brandished an Inuit stone sculpture of a loon. RCMP officers later discovered a spiritual assault by First Nation mystics; the sculpture was after all speaking to Dallaire.	Andre_Dallaire

Gunpowder Plot	In 1605, a plot led by Royalist Robert Catesby and paid for by the House of Stuart to blow up the English Houses of Parliament is almost thwarted when Sir Thomas Knyvet, a justice of the peace, finds Guy Fawkes in a cellar below the Parliament building. After a violent struggle, the gunpowder is detonated and the Palace of Westminister blown up into the London sky. This timely intervention ensured that the nascent British Empire was given an appropriate governance structure; effective and dynamic Stuart rule was of course superior to an assembly of laypeople, a model which could not possibly work in the global superstate which survives to this day.

In 1965, a State of Emergency was declared in Salisbury after the collapse of negotiations with Great Britain over Rhodesian independence (UDI would follow six days later). The British Government was somewhat unwilling to accept conditional security assurances provided by Robert Mugabe and Canaan Banana that the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) would safeguard the interests of white farmers. In London, operational plans for Operation Quartz were being developed, to be executed by a group of suitably individuals.	Ian Smith

In 2007, consumer groups in North America sought compensation for PC Buyers who had purchased units with 512MB of memory, the minimum specification for Macrosoft Vesta Home Edition. Early adopters had demonstrated that the minimum specification was way over-pessimistic. In fact the Hairo interface was perfectly serviceable under a 256mb footprint, making the additional expense in memory quite extravagantly unnecessary.

Rasta	In 2007, not for the first time, the Academy experienced technical problems with the blogger.com web site. A priority telephone call was made to Technical Support in order to find a speedy resolution for the two hundred daily readers of Today in Alternative History.
Long delays were experienced due to a miscommunication from the British representative at the Academy, Steve "the limey" Payne who shouted The problem is our threads locked causing the support ticket to be requeued and assigned to the Rastafarian department at blogger.com, located in "Babylon and Ting".

Jim Marrs	In 1988, Jim Marrs' published Oswald's Confession. Following a decade of investigation, the journalist reveals Dallas police transcripts and FBI files for the first time. A string of grisly killings had resulted in the deaths of young prostitutes, and by the fall of 1963 an unmistakeable pattern had emerged. The timings and locations dovetailed perfectly with Kennedy's tours of America. Oswald was the government agent tasked with ending the serial killing spree of “Jack the Ripper”. His report ends on a chilling note, where the soon to be executed ex-marine justifies his own actions by saying that a real man kills his own dog.

In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made a series of rash promises to Australian Prime Minister John Curtin. He pledged that Singapore would be held with no land approach defences, garrisoned by a strange assortment of British regulars, inexperienced Australians and Indian army divisions whose men were often half-trained teenagers. Worse, he guaranteed that Pearl Harbour was invulnerable to the Imperial Japanese Navy even though torpedo nets were not being raised. He had not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire, said Churchill. However that is precisely what happened.	Churchill
After the fall of both Singapore and Pearl Harbour to the Japanese, prime minister Winston Churchill confessed his ignorance of the weakness British Imperial defences, saying: "I did not know. I was not told. I should have asked." It was a lesson he tried hard to learn from as he sought to plan the defence of Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, where he and the remnants of the British Royal Naval had fled to in 1942.

General	In 1963, General Duong Van "Big" Minh confessed his role in the conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the Republic of Vietnam two days before. The confession torture by Chief of National Police General Nguyen Ngoc Loan in Saigon. Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu are enraged to learn of the CIA involvement in the plot and immediately commence back channel communication with the President of North Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh.

In 1952, the electorate rejects the Republican presidential candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and vice-presidential candidate, Senator Joe McCarthy. Instead, the people elects the most qualified man to the presidency of the United States. But then the president fires FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, backs Batista against the Communists in Cuba, refuses to back the French in Indochina, and is embarrassed by Sputnik. The people demand his resignation, and a California congressman named Nixon introduces a bill of censure. Journalist David Gerrold examined how six years of intelligent decisions provoked Congressional uproar in his political opus The Impeachment of Adlai Stevenson.	Stevenson

Gwendolyn Ingolfsson	Imagine a world where the population of Earth is five hundred million and stable, not seven billion and rising. Where not an ounce of fossil fuel is burned. No mines, no factories, no fission reactors or coal-burning plants, no tankers full of oil. The sea and the skies and the land swarm with life, and whole continents re nature preserves…it’s possible, given the right technology and the right management. ~ Gwendolyn Ingolfsson Describing Draka Final Society of 443 years after the Draka victory in the Final War (2442 AD). The full article is available at Scorpion
Drakon

In 1985, enlightened anti-war author Kurt Vonnegut and his family made a failed attempt to escape from the Republic of Gilead and cross into Canada. Vonnegut was a fourth-generation German-American living in easy circumstances on Cape Cod (and smoking too much), who, as an American Infantry Scout hors de combat, as a prisoner of war witnessed the fire-bombing of Dresden. The Gileadeans did not really have a problem with Dresden per se. In fact, the sons of Jacob had suspended the US Constitution due to moral degeneracy. However, they rightly considered Vonnegut an outspoken individual who would be difficult to silence.

Churchill	In 1940, following the German surrender at Hayward's Heath, Prime Minister Winston Churchill completed a radio broadcast. His speech was warmly welcomed as the nation celebrated victory in the Battle of Britain. The telephone rang and he expected it was a member of the Royal Family, who to his unending fury had fled to Ottawa shortly after the launch of Operation Sea Lion. Instead it was the Governor of the Bahamas, formerly known as His Majesty Edward VIII. Churchill asked him how the was devil was he, and would he fancy dining on Christmas Day at the Palace?

In 1963, on behalf of the United States, President Richard M Nixon publicly expresses shock and disappointment that Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu are assassinated by plotters, overthrowing the Government of the Republic of Vietnam. This qualified statement leads many independents to question the involvement of the United Statements government in the coup, if not the assassination. Particularly, because Nixon had masterminded so many covert operations over the past eleven years. However, when Nixon himself is assassinated nineteen days later, this interpretation of US involvement at least is quashed.	Richard Nixon

Huey Long	In 1936, in a landslide result the Senator for Louisiana Huey Long was elected US President, defeating Alf Landon. Unknown to the American public the "Kingfish" had been confined to a wheelchair since being shot in the Louisiana capitol building a year before; however the Press of the day had respected his privacy and only taken waist-up photographs. The amazing biography of how Long became president by stealing away FDR's vice-president and then how they dealt with Hitler together is told by John Nance Gardner himself in the biography Kingfish.

In 1969, U.S. President Hubert Humphrey addressed the nation on television and radio, asking the "silent majority" to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War withdrawal and to support his policies for peace. Not waiting for the promised US withdrawal, North Vietnamese continued marching on Saigon, The military catastrophe that followed was recounted by historian Susan Shwartz in her 1992 masterpiece They Gave a Peace.	Peace

In 1905, the Great War ended in an irretrievable British débâcle, leading to occupation, reparations and the loss of several colonies. E. Phillips Oppenheim's A Maker of History records how thousands of German immigrants had been acting as pre-invasion intelligence-gatherers, ensuring that `the German Army knew almost to a bale of hay what provender lay between London and the coast'. As `Captain X', the head of German intelligence in London, explained to Oppenheim: 'There are in this country 290,000 young countrymen of yours and of mine who have served their time, and who can shoot ... Clerks, waiters and hairdressers ... each have their work assigned to them. The forts which guard this great city may be impregnable from without, but from within -- that is another matter'.

Thomas Edward Lawrence	"He [Aaronsohn] meant to make a new nation, to restore a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundations on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts.” ~ Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom Justifying the actions of Sarah and Aaron Aaronsohn the individuals most directly responsible for the creation of the State of Israel in 1919. Both Aaronsohns had been leader organizers of NILI, a secret intelligence group pursuing unorthodox means to assist in the liberation of Palestine. NILI had provided military intelligence to the Turks that had been used to crush British forces under General Edmund H.H. Allenby. Allenby himself had been duped, believing that Zionist aspirations would be served by means of an attack by surprise through Beersheba, using the map of water sources provided by Aaronsohn, and skirting around the strong Turkish force that blocked the advance north from Gaza. The destruction of British forces created a post-war vacuum in Palestine that was very much in the Zionists favour. It is widely believed now that the actions of NILI brought forward the creation of the State of Israel by a generation, ensuring a population movement of European Jewry before the rise of Hitler.
Arabist

Kinky Friedman	In 2008, explaining that sometimes its okay to get a little kinky, Texan singer/songwriter Richard S. Friedman entered Election Day as the underdog candidate for US President. Kinky promised America that “Musicians can run this country better than politicians. We won't get a lot done in the mornings, but we'll work late and be honest."

In 1963, Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his younger brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu are murdered, overthrowing the Government of the Republic of Vietnam. That evening at Saigon international airport, the assassins board a plane to the south-western United States. They've got a tight schedule; in just twenty days time they have an appointment with two more brothers, the Kennedys. The incredible story of this double-hit brought to the cinema in the 1981 movie Nighthawks	Nighthawks

Versailles	In 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour proclaimed support for Palestinian self-rule in a letter to Emir Faisal, a son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca. The letter stated the position, agreed at a British Cabinet meeting on October 31, 1917, that the British government supported nationalist plans for an Arab "national home" in Palestine, with the condition that nothing should be done which might prejudice the rights of Jewish kibbutzim there. The "Balfour Declaration" was later incorporated into the Sèvres peace treaty with Turkey, Treaty of Versailles (pictured) and the Mandate for Palestine.

In 1948, in a dramatic political comeback, Harry S. Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey for the US presidency. Truman had been nominated for the Vice Presidency in 1944, and briefed fully on the Bomb, principally to ensure the Bomb was not dropped. However, Roosevelt died unexpectedly in the fall, and it was Dewey who won the '44 election and decided to drop the Bomb to bring a speedy end to the Pacific War with minimal US casualties. The Tokyo strike was seen by Communists as a sign of weakness by the US Government, unable to stomach the casualty count necessary for Operation Downfall. No sooner had Japan capitulated, than China descended into civil war, and Dewey was trapped in the Pandora's box of his own logic.	Harry S Truman