Dark Earth Timeline

So 7 out of 10 things you listed here, Germany is above the United Kingdom.

But I doubt we see a round 3.

That is going to be a big pile of work for you.

1967 Notes
- Reagan’s first term as Governor of California occurs in a somewhat different social climate
- Donald Campbell survives, which isn’t worldchanging, but will lead to some changes in records and popular culture
- The new moon of Saturn is unexpected and the cause of some concern; the grear spacegoing powers begin planning some missions
- The death of the Shah opens the door to a young, malleable heir
- Ban Naden turns out to be a bigger prize
- Yukio Mishima is persuaded to go into mainstream politics.
- The Chinese space launch, as well as being a tribute to Space Odyssey 2: 2010, opens a new phase of the space race
- Holes in the road = A Day in the Life
- Argentina starts tooling up even more. It is buying new fighter jets, strategic bombers, battleships, carriers, missile cruisers and submarines from abroad, developing its own armoured vehicles and working on its own atomic bombs and rockets. Whilst there are strong drivers for continued Western leanings, there is also some grounds for a late 1960s nationalist caudillo.
- The defeat of the abortion bill in the House of Commons shows some change, but the rather strong continual force of traditionalism
- The RN super hovercraft are one part of Coastal Forces, which continues as a cutting edge force in a variety of theatres
- The Communist insurgency in Bolivia is one of many different problems confronting South America
- Ronald Ryan’s execution in Victoria attracts far less note and controversy
- Kosygin’s reception in London is extremely correct, but the lack of a full state visit highlights the distance between the USSR and Britain
- Italy’s naval developments are slipping beneath the radar to a certain extent
- Kennedy’s advocacy for national healthcare reflects his political capital and will be a big issue in 1968
- CR gas is becoming a more prevalent weapon
- The hotel in Torquay has a notably fawlty sign
- Air raids and action by the NVAF start to step up, begetting an escalation of US counter response and eventually leading to something a lot bigger...
- King Zod leads a different Albania and his occasion mentions are not just for flavour
- Franz Stangl goes to Israel. It is a one-way trip
- Irish development is occurring very differently, yet the south and west are still not as industrialised as the north and east. Shannon Airport is integrated with an RN base and RAF airfields and Galway has an atomic power plant, supporting an aluminium refinery, chemical plants and a textile mill; there are plans for cement works, offshore oil and gas, an automotive plant, aircraft factories and a Royal Ordnance armaments manufactory.
- India’s election will have interesting consequences
- The Congo is on the verge of boiling over
- Bigfoot rights begin to emerge into public discourse, following on from previous developments
- Operation Castellan provides a short, sharp shock in Aden, as well as some more mixed results
- The San Diego megalodon attacks are the tipping point for concentrated hunting and extermination efforts
- The British housing standards report outline proposed changes to heating, sanitation, garden size and various minimum standards. The great tower blocks of the 1950s, 60s and 70s have not gone up in Dark Earth Britain, with the maximum height being much reduced.
- Dinosaurs in South Vietnam are a symptom of trying to throw the kitchen sink at the Viet Cong, as well as trying to employ conventional tactics and methods as much as possible
- The Tu-132 is a long range wide body jet airliner that is designed as a people hauler, but will encounter some issues.
- The list of endangered species in the United States provided a somewhat subtle way of showing how some species are better off and highlighting the survival of certain creatures who historically went out during the Holocene extinctions
- Henry Cooper’s victory over Cassius Clay is an extremely divisive and contentious one, sparking calls for a rematch almost immediately; it was based on a historical very close call.
- The brief sojourn of the ballooning Germans in Walmington on Sea leads to some quite comical reactions by local Home Guard veterans.
- The role of police lions is primarily psychological deterrence, as there are very, very few miscreants with the bottle to stand up to a 6ft tall charging lion
- The Minutemen UFO incident sets off a few alarm bells in the corridors of power
- SS Torrey Canyon is sunk rather more quickly by Buccaneers and the oil spill contained through arcane means
- The substantial sentence of imprisonment for possession of cannabis does serve to show how it is considered more of a deviant threat
- The acquisition of a special Concord for the Queens Flight is part of a rather less parsimonious approach to Royal transport in general. The Flight itself consists of the Concord, two VC10s, four Bristol 200s, two Brabazons, several smaller planes for individual use and half a dozen Fairey Rotodynes
- The 64000lb bomb is the successor to the T12 Cloudmaker and has been given the nickname “Answer”
- German rocketry is now starting to take off in a bigger way, if you can excuse the pun, although it will be a few more years before Germany really starts to find its place in space. It definitely has the economic, industrial and scientific strength to overleap France and Italy.
- The Firearms Act is very, very different, on the one hand tightening up on automatic weapons and machine guns to reflect the changing age and the threat of extremist groups, but on the other coming up against a more liberal (bordering on Swiss style) home storage regime, that grew from a marriage of older traditions and the reaction to the Second World War. To get a full picture of firearms laws in DE Britain, we need to take into account the different drivers. There was no Pistols Act of 1903 nor a Firearms Act of 1920 as there wasn't the same fear of armed insurrection, so that the general principle still at play is the Bill of Rights of 1689. Self protection is considered valid grounds to own a firearm. The first major change comes in WW2, when there was a large distribution of weapons during the invasion concern of 1940-42. Throw in returning military personnel bringing home 'souvenirs' and the notion of automatic weapons and machine guns becomes a concern, but primarily in the form of Brens, semi-auto SMLE battle rifles, submachine guns and German Sturmgewehrs. Certain units of the TA and Reserve have home storage of service firearms similar to the old situation in Switzerland, based on the need for very swift reaction, but this isn't all units, by any stretch of the imagination
- Ecuadorian rumblings do result in some quite dramatic draconic troubles down the line
- JFK visiting Luna is more than just an opportunity for a quick joke, representing the increasing importance of space
- The ‘Miracle Man’ is Jonathan Smith from Highway to Heaven
- Discussions on strategic air defence will lead to some interesting and different conclusions regarding modernisation
- The Brussels conference on the interstellar signal is a bit of a teaser; suffice it to say that there is a lot going on behind the scenes
- The film of Henry VIII takes the place of ‘A Man for All Seasons’ due to the King’s different life and slightly less headchoppy habits
- Operation Amur takes place in Paraguay, but rather than the movement of rockets, it is the infiltration of Soviet special forces and paramilitary intelligence assets to support the growing uprisings in South America. It just so happens that Paraguay is the base of another group as well...
- US B-52 strikes in Congo mark the end of the first phase of the conflict and the beginning of something a lot more confused and a lot worse
- There is something of a concerted push for a consideration of modern cavalry from both sides of the Atlantic in a rather curious bit of intra-service rivalry and power games
- The British African Army, mooted in @, is intended as a replacement for the Indian Army as the British Empire’s ace in the hole. However, it is emerging as the African colonies are starting inexorably to peel away
- The Greek Future Naval Plan is a contentious one, but not entirely illogical. However, such a radical change is very difficult for a more traditionalist regime and society
- Thalmann looking like a younger, more powerful and taller individual does set the Western intelligence service buzzing
- The FV-525 is a powerful response to the BMP-1, being a 36t AIFV, a top road speed of 50mph and a range of 450 miles and an armament of a 50mm automatic cannon, ATGM launcher, a coaxial .303” machine gun and a secondary armament of another .303” machine gun.
- The Red Polish battleship is notable for its amidships VLS farm, very large armoured missile launchers for suspected anti-ship weapons, its considerable beam, a sizeable flying platform and various other more unclear features. One caustic observer stated that it looked like “the product of a deranged mind.”
- The New England referendum in NSW has a lot of hoops to get through and will fail at the next one.
- The NYC bar mage is a reference to the 1950s film Invasion USA
- The Hong Kong crisis brews up and almost boils over into conflict before cooler heads prevail. China is trying to push in a lot of directions to see how far it can get.
- The Italian-Spanish Royal marriage is not going to have any direct political consequences, but is symbolic of the states drawing together
- Canadian Army reforms are focused upon reducing the total number of active corps by one and increasing the active divisional strength of each from three to four, along with a number of other measures. I might add it as an appendix to the British Defence White Paper if I write that.
- Egyptian-Arab military talks are wide reaching and fruitful, but don’t quite amount to the significance of a formal pact; there is at this stage a bit too much distance and rivalry between them to see that.
- The chef responsible for the world record Swedish meatball has bushy eyebrows, a large tocque and a strong Dalecarlian accent
- The Super Freedom Fighter 76 is very unsuited to guerilla warfare, but its deployment is a very public step to show that the USA is in South East Asia to the hilt
- The new Israeli missile is somewhere between the Jericho 1 and Jericho 2 in performance
- ODESSA is building up to something large and nasty
- The launch of the Canadian rocketship Arcadia can really be seen as a sign of Canada's rising technological power and independent capacity
- The I’m Backing Britain movement isn't quite the same movement, being more of a combined export push + patriotic work and savings + preference for British and Commonwealth made goods, rather than a drive to work extra hours to boost productivity. It isn't a reaction to a downtime, but an exhortation to try and turn success into a genuine boom
- Reverend Elvis Presley continues to have incredible adventures and solve mysterious crimes to the extent that he is beginning to attract national attention
- The British Defence White Paper is complex and I'll try and write something up on it
- Formation of a French Expeditionary Force is primarily for Africa and is somewhat similar to the later Rapid Action Force of @
- The major issue in the way of an ‘East Africa’ is Kenya’s Dominion status and large white minority populace. Kenya has ~3.7 million whites out of 15 million, whereas Uganda has 250,000 out of 10 million and Tanganyika has 800,000 out of 20 million. The difference between ~25% and 10.4% is substantial
- The anointment of Edward Rogers as the next Prime Minister of Australia is both a sign of the greater importance of defence and a move to avoid some of the hackneyed names of 1966-1975 from @
- The superpower summit is an indication that despite the escalating war in the Far East, there is still something of an interest from both East and West in preventing the descent into all out confrontation
- The reference to the destruction of a vampiric neighbour is a hat tip to the 1985 picture Fright Night
- The Race for Jupiter is very close in the end, but is won clearly by the USA
- The discovery of some forms of life on Callisto causes a big fuss, albeit not as much as it would in @. Nevertheless, that first sign that the spark of life extends out beyond the inner planets is a moment of import
- The Canadian naval and air review is, like many, a demonstration of every aircraft and ship that can be scraped together/towed into place rather than a realistic picture of the operational strength of the RCAF and RCN; in the former case, substantial numbers come from the Commonwealth Air Training Scheme units operating in Canada. The percentages are 15% modern frontline planes, 35% reserves, 30% trainers and 20% WW2/1940s planes (Britannias, Hunters, Canberras, Meteors, Vampires etc).
- Defeat of the latest attempt to decriminalise homosexuality in the House of Commons is notable by the substantially decreased margin, with many abstentions from the Conservative left, Liberal right and Labour centre and left; the main votes in favour are from the Liberal + Radical + Socialist bloc, whilst those against are the Conservative right, the Nationals, Imperialists and ~60 MPs from the Labour Right.
- 747
- Karol Wojtyla is increasingly coming to the fore in Communist Poland and, given its frontline status, will be even more significant than in @
- The Supermarine advanced fighter is in the general class of the F-15 and will have a familiar name
- Neil Armstrong gets his moment in being the first to land on a Jovian moon. Armstrong has a lot of achievements to come, but couldn’t be the first man to walk on Jupiter for obvious reason
- The foot powder election in Ecuador is a fascinating historical event
- Here, the bill for rat eradication in American slums is not defeated in Congress
- The New York types driving cattle is a reference to City Slickers
- The giant kitten marauding through Dar Es Salaam is a reference to The Goodies episode Kitten Kong
- The Space Nazis, whilst still crippled by their defeats in 1960, are starting to nip around the edges once more
- The young boy rescuing his sister from the water accident is a reference to John Wyndham’s Chocky.
- The Super TurboTrain has a top speed of 240mph and will retain some nominal interest and utility so long as the oil price remains very low
- The Ganymede energy event is very strange indeed and starts people thinking
- Long Bien Bridge is dropped by precision bombing, helping to give the new F-111 a very strong and favourable reputation
- Corby Steelworks is in the process of modernising and expanding rather than moving towards contraction, which is an example of the trajectory of heavy industry in 1960s DE Britain; the British steel industry is not being concentrated on South Wales, South Yorkshire, Scunthorpe, Teesside and Scotland, but also carrying on in Corby, Durham, Barrow (one of the largest modern plants in the world), Sheerness, Staffordshire, North Yorkshire and the Black Country
- The Suez Treaty is a red rag to a bull for the Egyptian nationalists, but a grudgingly good deal for the moderates. The issue is that the latter are very much outnumbered on the streets. I haven't fully made up my mind on Egypt yet, as there really isn't a viable path towards a 1952 style Revolution given the good old correlation of forces
- The Aboriginal population of Australia is only just starting to recover from its nadir
- Bandit mice in Mexico have managed to foil the efforts of the Federales to stop them.
- The priority given to Royal Highways the British Isles is secondary to the rail network, even if the length is greater than in @ in 1967. There is a ring road around Greater London; an M4 out west to Wales; M1 from London to Newcastle through Sheffield and Leeds; M2 from London to Dover; M3 from London to Plymouth through Southampton; M5 from Exeter to Birmingham; M6 from Catthorpe to Glasgow; M7 from Newcastle to Edinburgh; and the M8 from Glasgow to Edinburgh.
- The swashbuckling craze is a pop culture function of the confluence of popular television and cinema, akin to beach movies in the @ 1960s
- New British ministries provide for both some additional efficiency as well as some empire building
- The introduction of VAT comes earlier and raises a decent amount of income over its initial years
- The Anglo-American strategic transport will turn out something larger than the historical C-5
- The MPAA Code is not relaxed in the same manner as in @, but rather experiences some modernisation in what are the most pressing aspects to censor
- The flying nun refers to the eponymous television character
- The RN escort carriers are built to a US lead standard design of ~24,000t that bear a resemblance to a mixture of the Invincible class of @ and the Japanese large ‘helicopter cruisers’. They are designed to augment the 36,000t CVSLs in service by operating with convoys and escort groups as compared to hunter killer/support groups and will be built by the RN, USN and RCN
- Senator Norcross is from the late 1960s children's cartoon Super President
- The Hawker P.1204 Hurricane is a single engine multi-role fighter with a top speed of Mach 2.5, a ceiling of 70,000ft, a combat radius of 480nm and an armament of four 25mm ADEN cannon and a maximum bomb load of 18000lb.
- Continuation of free school milk in Britain doesn't end up costing much
- Rasputin appearing in the sky is enough to spoil anyone's afternoon
- Bruce Lee is developing a reputation as a deadly international crime fighter and secret agent
- The different Big Mac both reflects personal tastes and a slightly higher quality for American fast food
- Merchant sinkings indicate some nasty characters out there
- US starship construction is very much a long, long term project
- Anglo-Japanese relations seem to be becoming closer
- The literal 'bull in a china shop' incident is largely from @, with the exception of their salvation at the hands of the wealthy eccentric
- Sky pirates are making something of a comeback, begetting a reaction
- Project Knight is a highly secret programme aimed at developing some useful prototype powered armour for infantry battlefield employment. Some breakthroughs have already been made, but on a scale and manner that is more limited than sci-fi versions such as Warhammer or Fallout
- Cancer treatments continue to advance successfully and the butterflies will start to flap
- The East German Balloon Corps deploy a total of 99 (red, naturally) balloons
- The accidential forestation of the Falkland Islands will have some strange consequences
- Interplanetary migration is buzzing along at a low but steady level
- QE2 makes her maiden voyage a bit earlier and will stay on the North Atlantic run for longer
- US Vietnam strength reaches a very high level by the end of the year and will continue to be boosted prior to the planned major offensive of 1968
- British naval increases reflect some of the ongoing discussion in A New Jerusalem and the rising operational tempo of deployments in the Far East
- The Spaceguard Treaty is a sign that there is a fair bit of extra interest in the chances of anything coming from outer space...
- Something strange is emerging at Tiahuanaco
- The development of the Rainbow Agent chemical weapons is an indicator of nasty things to come
- The goings on in a Yorkshire village are a reference to Heartbeat
- The Fellowship of the Ring is well received as an epic film with some rather cutting edge effects and a literal cast of thousands
- New Red Army weapons start to cause consternation in the West. They do not include the new MBTs
- Mongolian troops deploying to Vietnam is a direct measure of escalation and support by the USSR
- Norman Stanley Fletcher ends up doing porridge
- Che continues to haunt the international scene
- The Arabs continue a process of quiet, gradual unification of key measures of hard power and are starting to assert their independence by acquiring Soviet weaponry. This may or may not be a wise step
- The Ecuador dragon attack is both a sign of the nature of the world, but of its intersection with increasing modern development
- Fred West is caught early and doesn't extend his career
- The double storey Golden Gate Bridge will allow for an increased flow of traffic without looking too different
- Fusion technology continues to advance and seems to be directly on the horizon, opening the door to many different calculations
- The presence of Red superheroes shows that not everything is going one way
- The successful heart transplant surgery in South Africa is a crossover with Earthly history, but transplant surgery is going to surge ahead with advances in medicine
- The aftermath of the Desolation Island eruption and evacuations gives a hint about secret British Antarctic bases
- Pepper pots present in Vienna indicates that someone, somewhere is up to some rather nasty experiments with battle robots; the broader question of the inspiration for them...who knows the answer?
- Flashman succeeds where others far better and braver than him fail, as usual
- The blackwater fever outbreak in South Vietnam is the result of deliberate action.
- HMS Faerie Queen’s detection of the USO is directly linked to the eruption as whatever it has awoken...
- Arms talks between the Soviets and Americans are taking shape somewhat similar to @, but have a very different political background. The USA has not stopped its early 1960s pace of atomic production.
- Rhodesia isn’t looking at the same type of bush war, without any appreciable threat from Mozambique and only having a hostile northern frontier with the Congo. It does have some common features with the 1960s bush war, combined with the Congo chaos, which is starting to really push the threat towards a medium intensity.
- d’Ambreville will be heard from again in France, as the differing circumstances of the post de Gaulle era take shape
- The events of Home Alone take place in a somewhat darker context
- The Christmas link up between the American and Soviet spacecraft is a sign of hope and recognition of the very small nature of Earth in the cosmos
- However, back on Earth, the end of the year brings nuclear crisis in Vietnam, where US escalation begets reaction and then there is the big nuclear shock. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail...