Well points I noted.
1961
January
January 13: Three U.S. Army Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals are deployed to South Vietnam to support South Vietnamese and French operations. - MASH still active.
January 14: Dissolution of the Association of Football Players' and Trainers' Union. - Is this UK or US?
January 24: A USAF B-52G Stratofortress carrying four Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs crashes near Goldsboro, North Carolina. - Think this was OTL.
February
February 17: U.S Secretary of Defence Clark Savage approves a Strategic Air Command plan to expand the US ICBM force to 2500 missiles by 1967. - I had to dig through his Wiki entry to confirm this was the Doc.
March
March 1: Beginning of drilling for Project Mohole, an attempt to drill through the Earth's crust into the Mohorovičić discontinuity. - This may be OTL but not sure how far they got. Given the greater size of DarkEarth is the discontinuity also a lot further down?
March 6: The experimental XB-72 nuclear powered superbomber makes a successful flight between Carswell AFB, Texas and Andersen AFB, Guam. - That could make USAF crashes even worse!
March 17: Albert DeSalvo is arrested for breaking and entering in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He will later be charged with rape, tried, convicted and executed on January 3rd, 1962. -Got him quicker.
March 20: First public trials of a vaccine for malaria begin in the United States. - That would be a huge step forward for many people around the world.
April
April 1: A BBC radio news programme on the dangers of hydroxylic acid attracts a number of complaints. - I take it this is the notorious toxin also know as dihydogen oxide that kills thousands of people every year.
April 16: Stirling Moss wins the Vienna Grand Prix. - Why do I have the feeling that he will this year lose the title of the best British driver never to win the world championship?
April 24: Raising of the Swedish ship Vasa from the Baltic Sea where it had lain until 1628. - that's a bit earlier than OTL.
April 25: The British Colonial Office states that Sierra Leone will not be granted independence in the forseeable future. - Probably not a good move.
May
May 2: Publication of an article outlining a putative cure for Huntington's chorea in The Lancet. -
May 6: Manchester United win the FA Cup over Tottenham Hotspur 4-2, with Duncan Edwards scoring a brace of second-half goals. - No double for Spurs this year then. Did they still win the league or did ManU or someone else take that as well?
May 15: Gary Cooper makes his first public appearance since recovering from cancer. - Hope he makes a few more good films.
May 20: Tarzan gives an extensive interview to the Washington Post on the future of Africa, arguing fiercely that independence for current colonies should be expedited. -
May 25: President Kennedy gives an address to a special joint session of Congress on space exploration, calling for the United States to send a manned expedition to Jupiter and Saturn by the end of the decade and to commit itself to the larger goal of launching an interstellar starship to Alpha Centauri before 2000. - Now that last could be a real challenge.
May 26: Norman Borlaug's newest strain of semi-dwarf wheat is introduced to India. - Good to see this still happens, especially with the markedly larger world population.
May 29: Assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, allegedly by an unidentified British man. - OTL the assassin was thought to be an American. I wonder if this one prefers a martini?
May 30: KLM Flight 897 crashes shortly after taking off from Lisbon bound for Caracas. All 61 passengers and crew are killed. - Was this OTL?
June
June 10: A strange energy event takes place in the vicinity of London and the Home Counties. - Will we learn more about this later?
June 13: The Orient Express begins an extended service through to Angora for the first time. - Must admit I initially misread this as Angola and thought what!!!
June 30: Cuba reaches an agreement to join the West Indies Federation in 1963. - That's hopefully a more successful future than OTL. Forgot it was British here.
July
July 8: The Ku Klux Klan is declared an illegal organisation by a federal court. -
July 10: Deciphering of the Voynich Manuscript is completed by an apprentice wizard in the service of Dr. Simon Gallows. - Must admit Dr Gallows means nothing to me but did they find out of it meant anything.
July 11: The British Ministry of Defence refuses to comment on a story in the Belgian press about the presence of tactical nuclear artillery and missiles in Hong Kong. - Of course we wouldn't base tactical nukes there. They can reach Peking/Beijing
.
July 21: Australia announces a new series of atomic tests to be conducted at Maralinga. - Hopefully underground. Is this still the prime site for British tests as well or have we moved to the NTS?
July 31: IBM unveils a new commercial computing engine linked to an electric typewriter and trackball. - So big blue is being more competitive TTL.
August
August 4: Hundreds of people report seeing a flying car in the skies above Surrey, England. - ?
August 5: The Hawker Siddeley White Knight solid fuelled medium range ballistic missile enters service with the British Army. With a range of 2500 miles, it is considered to provide an effective deterrent and counter to Soviet missiles targeted on Britain and India in conjunction with the RAF's Black Arrows. - That provides some very useful security.
August 10: First successful use of chemical defoliant in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. - Ugh!
August 11: A solar eclipse over South America leads to a very brief increase in vampiric activity and a number of subsequent embarrassing disintegrations. -
August 22: First game of the Imperial Cup is played Milmoor, with Rotherham defeating Aston Villa; the competition pits the best 100 Association football teams in the British Empire against each other. - This is going to be challenging to organise, especially given the size of this Earth.
August 29: Queen Elizabeth II gives birth to a third son and fourth child at Buckingham Palace, who is given the name Edward Alexander Richard Louis. - Well this is 3 years earlier than OTL.
September
September 2: President Kennedy and Prime Minister Eden sign an agreement on U.S. submarine basing in Scotland, Ireland, Lyonesse and Wales at the White House. - That sounds rather excessive with at least 4 bases. Not to mention your excluding England.
Not sure if there's suitable easy access to deep water from Wales so I would suspect one base, probably either in W Ireland or Lyonesse would be more practical.
September 5: Legislative elections in the British colony of the Gold Coast result in major gains for nationalist candidates and supporters of expedited independence. -
September 11: Establishment of the World Wildlife Fund in Switzerland. -
September 15: A group of children exploring abandoned tunnels in Birmingham narrowly escape being eaten by an enormous white worm. -
September 16: RAF Canberra pilots flying a geographic surveying mission over Southern Iraq report considerable numbers of trees growing along the border with Arabia in what had been a desert just twenty years previously. - Magic??
September 21: A thirsty giant drinks 247 glasses of beer in a single sitting in New York City. - So he's on a diet.
October
October 5: Margaret Thatcher is appointed Parliamentary Undersecretary for the Ministry of Pensions. - The following day she gets run over and killed by a Walkman.
Otherwise this could be very bad for the countries pensioners.
October 17: The Assembly of the League of Nations votes to extend the effective ban on commercial whaling by a further 10 years. -
October 19: A special international conference of the world's best physicians is called, with no indication as to the reason they have been summoned to Washington D.C. - That sounds worrying. Especially if it includes people from Imperial China and the Soviet Union.
November
November 1: A joint Anglo-American skyship carrier exercise takes place over the South Pacific. - Would this be looking for a certain rather large character?
November 4: Birth of Prince David, first son of Princess Margaret and Prince Gustav Adolf of Sweden. - Now this is different.
November 8: British Rail machinist Richard Starkey is commended for his swift actions in preventing a train derailment in Liverpool, saving dozens of lives. He demures the most effusive praise, stating that he does not want to beat his own drum. -
- although it will be a loss for the world of music.
December
December 19: Godzilla emerges from the Pacific Ocean off the coast of the principal Hawaiian island of Oahu, sparking an immediate full defence alert and widespread public panic. USAF fighter jets attack the monster with conventional missiles to no avail and even the deployment of tactical nuclear bombs is contemplated before the sudden deployment of an experimental radio weapon drives the creature away into the depths of the sea. - Ah. He only wanted to go surfing.
December 24: The Scrooge Benevolent Fund enters its 90th year, with this year's charitable donations expected to exceed 25 million pounds. -
December 29: Belgium announces that the Congo will be granted full independence in March 1962, agreeing to the withdrawal of its remaining armed forces some six months after that date. - Hopefully it won't be the chaotic mess of OTL.
December 30: The Times publishes a report of positive tests on a new drug that appears to provide a cure for cancer. - That could be very useful.
December 31: The Soviet Foreign Ministry issues a guarded statement expressing their general acquiescence to an agreement banning the atmospheric testing of atomic weapons. - Ditto.
Steve
1.) This era is the heyday of the MASH and they will get a bit of a workout in the 1960s.
2.) It is the British association, which has encountered rather less overall success. The maximum wage is still in place, albeit at a higher level of £50 per week.
3.) The nuclear incidents are all OTL; there will be others as Chrome Dome continues.
4.) Savage's tenure as SecDef will be marked by many distinct differences with that of McNamara.
5.) Mohole didn't work in @, but drilling a bit deeper may uncover some different discoveries here.
6.) A nuclear powered bomber crashing would be very dangerous, but it will also have some other effects.
7.) The increased role of magic in crime fighting, such as forensic sorcery, is starting to have some very noticeable impacts.
8.) Elimination of malaria is one of several large steps forward in global public health.
9.) Dihydrogen monoxide is a terrible scourge!
10.) Your estimation on Moss's success is correct.
11.) Vasa will prove to be an interesting rallying point for Swedish historical interest in the old imperial era.
12.) There haven't been the same drivers for independence, particularly in British colonies in West Africa. Whilst Nigeria and the Gold Coast, for example, will eventually be granted independence within the next decade or so, Sierra Leone has a fair bit of further development to do. This will not win with the approval of everyone involved, both in Africa and the wider world.
Earlier decolonisation: Kenya; Rhodesia is an independent Dominion, encompassing Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland and Katanga
Independent by 1961 in @ but not here: Sudan, Ghana/Gold Coast, Nigeria, British Somaliland, Tanganyika and Sierra Leone.
13.) This example of more advanced medicine and healthcare will have some noticeable results.
14.) The Spurs won the league, but Manchester United are having a great deal of success without the losses of the Munich Air Disaster.
15.) He has a good amount of work left to him/
16.) The earlier publication is an indicator of a slightly different life for Tolkien and a much more expansive Silmarilion, consisting of long versions of his First Age tales that have only been published in the last two decades in @.
17.) Tarzan has a distinctly independent point of view, reflecting his view of himself as an African.
18.) The goal of a starship (any thoughts on names?
) by 2000 is a very, very ambitious one that will need an ongoing space race with the Soviets (and others) to justify it, along with other factors...
19.) Certainly. Even with early reforms in agriculture, the Green Revolution provided the means to totally eliminate famine and raise countless millions from poverty.
20.) The assassination was carried out by a man who would be more familiar to us as The Jackal, suspected to be one Charles Calthrop.
21.) The crash is OTL.
22.) The strange energy event is Sam Johnson returning home to our time and world from
Never Had it So Good.23.) Ankara's traditional name is still generally used here.
24.) It has a substantially brighter future. Both Cuba in particular and the West Indies in general will have a better 1960s and beyond.
25.) The KKK runs into the problem of an earlier end to segregation and being tarred with the brush of Nazi collaboration from the Second World War. We won't really hear from them again.
26.) Dr. Gallows is a character from a work I haven't put up here yet that I'm in the process of editing and rewriting.
27.) It is a sign that Britain takes the defence of Hong Kong seriously. It is still a doubtful proposition that a successful defence could be organised against the sheer odds in favour of China, hence the leak of the presence of nuclear weapons; whether they are actually there is a matter of speculation. The Chinese definitely know there are British SSBNs operating in the Pacific out of Singapore.
28.) The Australian tests are scheduled to be underground. British atmospheric tests take place on Christmas Island in the Pacific; underground testing goes on in Australia and South Africa.
29.) IBM is reacting to more competition across the Atlantic.
30.) The flying car is a Harry Potter reference. Here, it isn't quite as outlandish, but still worthy of mention.
31.) The British deterrent is being built up with multiple layers of redundancy, some of which come from the problems of rivalry between the Army, RAF and RN.
32.) Not everything that occurs is pleasant. Chemical warfare became quite commonplace in Korea, unfortunately.
33.) Vampires are formidable, but not all are very intelligent.
34.) It is a very challenging logistical exercise, one that will be made easier by the eventual development of supersonic air transport.
35.) He is born earlier and won't be the Queen's last child.
36.) The Gold Coast is one of the colonies furthest along the road to independence.
37.) Animal rights and the WWF's cause are assisted by the presence of talking beasts.
38.) The great white worm is not the only one of its kind.
39.) It is the latest development in ongoing work in weather control magics and experimental microclimate changes carried out in Iraq since the Second World War. A different Middle East.
40.) His capacity is based on the historical deeds of the wrestler Andre the Giant.
41.) Her role is not a huge one at this time, so won't have an impact on pensioners. It is more of a mention to set the stage for the future.
42.) Cetacean rights are far more advanced.
43.) It is something that could potentially bode quite ill...
44.) The exercise was in search of Godzilla, yes.
45.) It is quite different, with closer links between Britain and Sweden through the royal connection and a different life for Margaret.
46.) Starkey, like Lennon before him, has a different life that isn't necessarily a worse one. British popular music is quite different, with skiffle not taking off.
47.) It could have been a lot, lot worse for Hawaii in a variety of ways.
48.) Scrooge's impact has been felt for generations.
49.) The Congo is going to be even more chaotic, sadly.
50.) This is a big game changer.
51.) The Soviets are moving towards acquiescence for public relations reasons.
