Dark Earth Timeline

July 10: The young King of Egypt appoints a new nationalist Prime Minister, Sayed Ahmed, under intense pressure from his ministers and military; Ahmed is considered to be somewhat more circumspect than his late predecessor, but still acceptable to the increasingly robust calls for Egyptian self-assertion.

July 23: Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Charles and Princess Victoria of Ruritania, causing an immediate flurry of attention by the media and general public alike.

May
May 1: Operations begin at the Springfield Army Tank Plant in Springfield, Indiana, the newest and largest tank factory in the world. It is projected as building up to 150 M-70 Marshall tanks per month, with the cheap, plentiful power supplied by the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant being one of the major reasons for the selection of the location.
May 2: Launch of the new Cunard superliner Queen Mary 2 at Harland and Wolff in Belfast by Queen Elizabeth II in front of a crowd of 100,000. The sister ship to RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is due to be completed late next year and the pair is rivalled in size only by White Star Line’s new liners still under construction.
May 3: Foundation of a special commando unit of the Italian caribinieri, the Division for the Protection of Artistic Heritage, with the express mission of investigating thefts of antiquarian art and other related crimes.
May 4: An article appears in The Times on the strange reported appearance of a blue police box in a number of different locations, ranging from Trafalgar Square and the White Cliffs of Dover to the South Pole of Venus. It quotes a government spokesman as blaming high spirited university students for the phenomenon.
May 5: Argentine Prime Minister de Rodriguez gives a fiery three hour speech in Buenos Aires, expounding on the destiny of Argentina as the greatest power in South America and calling for a move towards full Argentine ownership of her resources and expansion of her domestic industries to match the states of Europe and North America.
May 6: First flight of the Hughes XV-21 quadjet heliplane, one of several American VTOL projects designed to compete with recent British advanced developments.
May 7: The Los Angeles Times runs a feature on 'The Reagan Era', analysing California Governor Ronald Reagan's first two years in office, noting his very high approval ratings, popular law and order policies and success in balancing the budget.
May 8: 60,000 South Vietnamese, British and Commonwealth troops launch Operation Ladder in Long Khanh Province, a localised offensive aimed at clearing and destroying remaining VC strongholds. Operations are supported by long range artillery and the new Hawker-Siddeley Salamander turboprop ground attack aircraft, which ably augments the Bristol Strikemasters and refurbished de Havilland Vampires used for tactical close air support.
May 9: Downtown St. Louis is struck pitch dark at noon for a period of 17 minutes in what is described as an arcane industrial accident, resulting in hundreds of motor vehicle crashes and widespread confusion.
May 10: Deployment of the Canadian 32nd Airborne Brigade to the expansive Commonwealth base complex at Tobruk as part of the Middle Eastern Strategic Reserve alongside British, Australian, South African and Gurkha units. Tobruk is being increasingly built up to serve as a replacement for Alexandria, which is seen as being of less military utility in the light of Egyptian strategic divergence; the Suez-Sinai base remains the fulcrum of the British Empire’s position in the Near East.
May 11: Two groups of drunken cowboys engage in a shootout in Tombstone, Arizona, resulting in three deaths.
May 12: Soviet weather sorcerors successfully test an advanced weather control enchantment in the ‘Virgin Lands’ of the northern Kazakh SSR.
May 13: A USAF F-4 Phantom narrowly misses an English school in a crash in the Oxfordshire village of Steeple Aston; the pilot staying with his plane to steer it to safety rather than eject, sacrificing his life for that of the pupils below.
May 14: Victorian police begin searching Melbourne for a vampire after finding the bodies of two drained women discarded on the banks of the Yarra.
May 15: The US Navy atomic submarine Guitarro (SSN-655) sinks whilst under construction at Mare Island Navy Shipyard due to miscommunication leading to too much ballast being taken on board, leaving only the conning tower above water.
May 16: Race riots hit several southern Malayan cities as anti-Chinese sentiment boils over into violence between elements of the Malay and Chinese populations. This is seen as a challenge for the independent Malay government to manage and suppress without recourse to having to call for the intervention of British and Commonwealth troops.
May 17: Premiere of the first episode of Civilisation, a BBC documentary series on the history of Western art and thought presented by Sir Kenneth Clark.
May 18: The British Ministry of Defence begins a comprehensive review and modernisation of The War Book, the master plan for British mobilisation, military operations, grand strategy, operational deployments, contingency war plans and strategic atomic warfare contained in a single magical volume enchanted with its own intelligence. The process aims to link up the mighty artifact with the growing networks of intelligent supercomputers that coordinate much of the British economy and war machine.
May 19: Residents of Trondheim report the complete disappearance of all rats and vermin from the city overnight.
May 20: Germany and Austria-Hungary sign an extensive trade and rail transport agreement, the centrepiece of which will be the construction of a high speed railway from Berlin to Budapest via Prague, Vienna and Bratislava.
May 21: The Imperial Byzantine Navy announces that the previous decision to retire its capital ships without replacement is under reconsideration, following intense internal political squabbling and the intervention of Emperor Alexander.
May 22: Ten separate heavy raids strike North Vietnam overnight, with USAF B-52 bombers attacking from bases in Thailand, the Philippines and Guam as well as South Vietnam.
May 23: A USAF mechanic attempts to steal a C-130 Hercules transport from RAF Mildenhall in order to return to the United States, but is apprehended and overpowered by a security robot. Investigators later determine his actions were due to a freak chemical interaction between anti-depressant medication and the Scotch and strong English cheddar he had been consuming the night before.
May 24: World premiere of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first motion picture adaptation of C.S. Lewis’ children’s fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia.
May 25: Sudanese Army officers planning an attempt to overthrow the government in Khartoum are arrested by loyalist troops and police.
May 26: Orion 5 begins the first stage of acceleration for her journey home to Earth from the outer reaches of the Solar System.
May 27: The British Army of the Rhine begins introduction of the Royal Ordnance L324 375mm Long Range Heavy Cannon, a new mobile strategic artillery piece.
May 28: 20 workers are killed in a suspicious explosion in an Arequippa, Peru dynamite factory.
May 29: A flight of five USN TBM Avengers that disappeared on a training flight over the Bermuda Triangle land at Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale after having disappeared on December 5, 1945. The crew do not appear to have aged at all and were unaware of anything untoward, reporting only a bright scintillating flash of light.
May 30: Mario Andretti wins the Indy 500 for the first time, narrowly defeating Steve McQueen.
May 31: British troops in Nigeria begin supervision of a phased ceasefire between Nigerian and rebel Biafran forces after a breakthrough in negotiations.

Steve,

You've given me a lot to catch up with! Much appreciated.

1.) Historically, the Indian Summer of the ocean liner extended into the early-mid 1970s or so, prior to air travel costs lowering enough to break through. Here, that is pushed a bit further out due to the greater size of the oceans and the comfort/room provided by a ship. The American and British superliners were subsidised by their governments for potential wartime trooping use.
2.) Who know who it could be?
3.) Brazil would dispute it, naturally, but Argentina are on the up in many different indices of power. Chile would be quite worried, as well as having their own internal issues, and Prydain would find it downright threatening as the smaller next door neighbour. It also concerns London, initially from an economic perspective.
4.) The pre inflation era in the 1960s was a time when tax rises had not yet achieved the same power of repulsion over the Republican Party,
5.) Absolutely. The type of freak supernatural events known of in Dark Earth exacerbate this vulnerability.
6.) It is very much still a British dominated state. As to any coups, we'll see.
7.) Alas, there is a bit more to play out on that event yet...
8.) Not everything can go well and ongoing tensions in a multi-racial state are not easily resolved.
9.) The occupants are completely mystified, rather than having hired a piper...
10.) The way home will be somewhat faster due to the vagaries of orbital mechanics.
11.) It is large, on the scale of the Soviet Kondensator 2P and Oka, but rather more mobile. It is to be fielded at far lower levels than existing British siege guns, as well as in the Middle East, Africa and the Far East.
12.) More than that, it will spark a host of questions as to the nature of the Bermuda Triangle.
13.) It isn't the same rebellion/civil war as in @, but a bit lower level. Combined with a more interventionist policy by Britain in Africa, there isn't quite the scope for it to blow up as it did. There has been no major famine.

Simon