This is a timeline of events impacting the DK background. All of the events
listed below actually happened in history. Events marked with an asterisk
are particularly crucial turning points, and mark periods where the events
deviate from what is officially accepted as 'what really happened'.
1700s Voodoo emerges in secret amongst African slaves, begins to develop
1743 Toussaint l'Overture born
1774 Franz Anton Mesmer introduces hypnosis
1776 M.V.G. Malacarne publishes first book devoted to the cerebellum
1777 Toussaint l'Overture freed
1770s American Revolutionary War
1790s French revolution; beginnings of first Industrial revolution
1791 Luigi Galvani works on electrical stimulation of frog nerves
1791 Charles Babbage born
1792 Percy Bysshe Shelly born
1790s Toussaint l'Overture leads a slave revolt, taking the field as an
ally of Spain against France then as an ally of France against
England and Spain, playing the competing European powers against
each other, outmaneuvering the best diplomats of his day, causing
over 40,000 English casualties and even defeating Napoleon Bonaparte
1797 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin born, her mother dying of fever a few
weeks later; from an early age, her father takes her on daily trips
to the cemetery to visit her mother's gravesite, where she learns to
write her name by tracing the letters on the headstone
1800 Humphrey Davy synthesizes nitrous oxide
1800 Gabriel Prosser, a 24 year old religous man who wore his long hair in
imitation of Samson, organizes an uprising of more than 10 thousand
slaves; the uprising was betrayed and Gabriel was hanged.
1801 Mary Godwin's half-sister Claire is born after the remarriage of her
father to Mary Jane Clairmont
1806 Isambard Kingdom Brunel born
1803 Toussaint l'Overture captured, tortured, dies in French Alps; his
cohort Dessaline lead a large force against the French who, falling
victim to yellow fever, are wiped out; a treaty is signed giving
Saint Dominigue freedom, and it is renamed Haiti
1803 Defeated and weakened, Napoleon Bonaparte writes off the Louisiana
Territory and sells it to America for $15 million
1803 Lewis & Clark expedition
1803 Friedrich Serturner isolates morphine from opium
1804 All whites are kicked out of Haiti, many killed; Voodoo is suppressed
until 1815 by Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Henry Christophe
1808 Franz Joseph Gall publishes work on phrenology
1809 Luigi Rolando uses galvanic current to stimulate cortex
1809 Charles Darwin born
1809 Abraham Lincoln born
1810 Babbage goes to Trinity College, Cambridge; he soon discovers that he
understands mathematics better than his teachers
1811 Julien Jean Legallois discovers respiratory center in medulla
1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley elopes with Harriet Westbrooke
1812 Percy Bysshe Shelley begins to have a series of nervous attacks which
he combats with laudanum; this produces morbid fantasies and dreams,
an increase in his propensity for ghastly, gothic fantasies, severe
hallucinations and a general alienation from society
1812 Percy Bysshe Shelley finally meets William Godwin; over the next two
years, the two men will become great friends
1812 War of 1812 fought over impressment of American sailors
1814 Babbage marries Georgina Whitmore
1814 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Shelley meet; they soon declare
their love for one another, and Percy tells his wife Harriet that he
only feels a 'brotherly affection' for her; William Godwin confines
his two daughters to the house
1814 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Shelley run off to France,
accompanied by Claire Clairmont; Mary bears Shelley two children
despite Shelley's being married, and is ostracized from society;
the three return to London after a 6 week trip
1815 Battle of New Orleans is fought after the Treaty of Ghent officially
ends the War of 1812; although outnumbered, the Americans kill 2,000
British while taking less than 20 causalties
1815 One of Mary Godwin's daughters is born dead; Mary dreams of the
child being revived before a fire; Mary is having an affair with T.J.
Hogg, with Shelley's consent, and Shelley is having an affair with
Claire, Mary's half-sister
1815 Babbage and Georgina Whitmore settle down in London
1815 Ada Lovelace is born, the daughter of Lord Byron. Ada's mother fears
the child will grow up a dreamy poet and legally separates from
Byron five weeks later (January, 1816), getting sole custody of Ada
1815 Under Emperor Soulouque, voodoo becomes acceptable to the Haitian
regime and emerges publicly; during a 56 year period, voodoo develops
into an amalgamation of African spirit religion and Catholicism
1816 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin meets Lord Byron in London after Claire
becomes Byron's mistress
1816 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Shelley, accompanied by a very
pregnant Claire, pursue Byron to Italy; they eventually all catch up
at Byron's home in Geneva, Switzerland, and Mary begins to write
'Frankenstein'
1816 Babbage becomes a member of the Royal Society
1816 Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and Percy Shelley reluctantly marry after
the suicide by drowning of Shelley's pregnant wife Harriet in London
in early December
1817 Babbage receives his MA from Cambridge
1818 Mary Shelley publishes 'Frankenstein'; her daughter dies of dysentery
contracted during extended periods of travel
1819 William Shelley dies of malaria; Mary gives birth to another son,
Percy Florence
1820 Babbage founds the Analytical Society with Herschel and Peacock; he
also helps to found the Astronomical Society; Babbage begins to
develop his interest in calculating machinery
1820 The Missouri Compromise divides states into free and slave states
1821 Francois Magendie discusses functional differences between dorsal
and ventral roots of the spinal cord
1822 Mary Shelley miscarries and nearly dies from severe hemorrhaging
*1822 Percy Bysshe Shelley drowns in the bay of Spezzia, leaving Mary a
penniless widow with a two-year-old son; for her remaining life,
Mary lives miserably in London, dealing with a society that hates
her for her betrayal
*1823 Percy Bysshe Shelley's ashes are interred; attempts to bury his
ashes with those of his son are thwarted when an adult skeleton
is discovered in the child's grave
1823 Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens states that cerebellum regulates motor
activity
1823 Babbage builds a section of a calculating machine; he begins work on
the Difference Engine through British Government funding
1823 The Monroe Doctrine
1824 John C. Caldwell publishes 'Elements of Phrenology'
1824 Mary Shelley writes 'On Ghosts'
1824 F. Magendie provides evidence of cerebellum role in equilibration
1824 Lord Byron dies
1825 John P. Harrison first argues against phrenology
1825 Charles Bysshe Shelley, the son of Percy and Harriet, dies, making
Percy Florence, Mary's son, heir apparent to the baronetcy
1825 Robert B. Todd discusses role of cerebral cortex in mentation,
corpus striatum in movement and midbrain in emotion
1826 Johannes Muller publishes theory of 'specific nerve energies'
*1827 Babbage inherits his father's estate; his wife dies, and in despair
he travels to the Continent
1828 Babbage returns to England, his initial grant gone; he begins to
finance the construction himself
1828 Babbage appointed Lucasian chair of mathematics in Cambridge
1828 Mary Shelley contracts smallpox
1829 The Duke of Wellington, Prime Minister of England, views a model of
Babbage's engine and orders a grant of 3,000 pounds. Babbage enlists
the assistance of Clement
1830s American Indians forced off their lands onto reservations
1830 Babbage moves construction to his own house; Clement refuses to
move, so work on the Difference Engine ceases; Babbage had initally
planned for six decimal places and a second-order difference, but
now he plans for 20 decimal places and a sixth-order difference
1830 I.K. Brunel elected fellow of Royal Society.
1831 I.K. Brunel appointed engineer to Clifton Bridge
1831 Nat Turner leads a slave rebellion, killing hundreds of whites before
he was captured and killed
1832 Michael Sadler secures a parliamentary investigation of conditions
in textile factories
1832 Ada Lovelace meets Mary Somerville, who encourages her mathematical
studies and tries to put mathematics and technology into a human
context
1832 William Godwin, Jr., Mary Shelley's half brother, dies of cholera
1832 Babbage publishes 'On the Economy of Manufactures,' a scientific
study of manufacturing processes from needle-making to tanning
1833 I.K. Brunel appointed engineer to Great Western Railway
1833 An act is passed limiting hours of employment for women and children
in textile work
1833 Babbage begins work on an Analytical Engine
*1834 Ada Lovelace is introduced to Babbage's ideas while attending a
party at Somerville's house; they soon correspond
1834 Babbage proposes the idea of an Analytical Engine to the English
government; they refuse to grant him money until the first project is
completed; over the next 8 years, Babbage will spend 34,000 pounds
and continually apply for more money
1836 William Godwin dies
1836 The Alamo
1837 George E. McNeill ('father of the 8-hour work day') born
1837 Percy Florence Shelley enters Trinity College, Cambridge
1837 Jan Purkinje describes cerebellar cells; identifies neuron nucleus
and processes
1837 Babbage publishes his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, to reconcile his
scientific beliefs with Christianity. Babbage argues that miracles
are not violations of the laws of nature, but exist in a mechanistic
world; as Babbage could program a calculating machine, God could
program nature; upon exploring Biblical miracles, Babbage assumes
that the chance of a man rising from the dead is one in 10^12
1837 I.K. Brunel's PS Great Western launched
1837 Babbage conducts experiments for I. K. Brunel's Great Western
Railway, running from London to Bristol
1838 Robert Remak suggests that nerve fiber and nerve cell are joined
1839 Theodor Schwann proposes the cell theory
1839 Mary Shelley contracts a series of severe illnesses which will plague
her for the remainder of her life
1840 J.G.F. Baillarger discusses the connections between white and gray
matter of cerebral cortex.
1841 Percy Florence Shelley graduates from Trinity College, Cambridge
1841 Great Western Railway completed between London and Bristol
1842 Italian physicist Carlo Matteucci shows that an electric current
accompanies each heartbeat
1842 Ashley's Mine Commission explores dangerous and unsanitary
working conditions in mines
1842 Benedikt Stilling is first to study spinal cord in serial sections
1842 Crawford W. Long uses ether on man
1842 The Chancellor of the Exchequer tells Babbage to abandon work on the
Difference Engine, due to a lack of funds and a general belief that
the machine is 'worthless'; Babbage is offered a baronetcy in
recognition of his work, but Babbage requests a life peerage, which
is never granted
1843 I.K. Brunel's SS Great Britain launched
1843 Ada, Lady Lovelace publishes her notes explaining a computer; she
soon thereafter falls victim to a number of serious illnesses which
will plague her for the rest of her life
1844 Percy Florence Shelley inherits the Shelley estate with the death of
Grandfather Sir Timothy Shelley
1844 Morse's telegraph connects Washington and Baltimore
1844 Robert Remak provides first illustration of 6-layered cortex
1844 Friedrich Nietzsche born
1840s Irish potato famine kills 1 million and spurs waves of immigration to
America
1846 Mexican War fought over territory; ends in 1848, completing the dream
of Manifest Destiny and giving the United States land from coast to
coast
1848 Phineas Gage has his brain pierced by an iron rod
1849 Phineas Gage returns to work with a 'changed personality,' described
now as 'fitful, irreverent, grossly profane, impatient and obstinate'
1849 California Gold Rush
1849 Edgar Allen Poe dies
1850 Augustus Waller describes appearance of degenerating nerve fibers
*1851 Mary Shelley dies from a brain tumor; she is buried near her parents
*1851 Babbage gives up all hope of constructing the Analytic Engine; he is
hated by all - children and adults followed and cursed him, dead
cats and feces were thrown at his house, windows were broken, and
numerous death threats were made
*1852 Ada Lovelace dies
1852 Hermann von Helmholtz measures the speed of frog nerve impulses
1856 Sigmund Freud born
1856 Babbage proposes to the Smithsonian Institution that an effort be
made to produce 'Tables of Constants of Nature and Art,' which
would contain all facts which can be expressed numerically in all
of the sciences and arts
1856 Nicola Tesla born
1857 Joseph Conrad born
1858 I.K. Brunel's PSS Great Eastern launched
1859 I.K. Brunel dies
1859 Charles Darwin publishes 'The Origin of Species'
1860 South Carolina secedes from the Union following Lincoln's election;
other states follow before his inauguration
1860 Phineas Gage begins to have seizures, dies on May 21st
1860 Roman Catholic suppresses and eventually declares war against Voodoo
in the 1940s, eventually giving up
1860 Pony Express carries mail between St. Joseph, Mo. and Sacramento, Ca.
1860s Civil War
1861 Fort Sumter bombarded; Virginia secedes; Battle of Bull Run, July 21;
Vattle of Ball's Bluff, Oct. 21
1861 Telegraph brings Pony Express to an abrupt end
1862 The Monitor and the Virginia battle, March 9; Battle of Shiloh, April
6-7, (13K Union, 11K Confederates killed - more than the total killed
in the Revolutionary War, War of 1812 and Mexican War combined);
Second Battle of Bull Run, August 30; Battle of Antietam, Sept. 17,
(More than 10K dead on each side makes this the singlemost bloody day
of the entire war); Battle of Fredericksburg, Dec. 13 (12K Union, 5K
Confederates killed)
1862 President Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation
1863 Secretary of War authorizes the recruitment of black troops
1863 Battle of Chancellorsville, May 2-4 (10K+ Union, 10K+ Confederates
killed including Stonewall Jackson, shot by one of his own soldiers);
Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3 (23K Union, 28K Confederates killed
or wounded); Battle of Chickamauga, Sept. 19-20 (16K Union, 18K
Confederates killed)
1863 Bloody Kansas fighting led by partisan guerilla William Quantrill,
whose raiders include Bloody Bill Anderson, Jesse James and Cole
Younger; hundreds of civilians are killed, and a plan to assassinate
Lincoln is developed, but Quantrill is killed.
1863 I.M. Sechenov publishes 'Reflexes of the Brain'
1863 McCoys and Hatfields begin fueding
1864 John Hughlings Jackson writes on loss of speech after brain injury
1864 Sherman's March to the Sea, in which Sherman destroys everything in
his path, burning railroads, buildings and supplies; on Nov. 16 he
cuts a 40 mile wide swath of destruction from Atlanta to Savannah
1864 Battle of the Wilderness, May 5-6 (Many wounded die when brushfires
burn them to death);
1864 In Virginia, wireless electromagnetic waves are transmitted 14 miles
1865 Lee surrenders at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia; approximately
360,000 Union and 260,000 Confederate soldiers are dead
1865 Abraham Lincoln shot and killed by John Wilkes Booth; Booth is
cornered and shot dead 12 days later
1865 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, takes effect
1866 Julius Bernstein says that a nerve impulse is a 'wave of negativity'
1867 Theodore Meynert performs histologic analysis of cerebral cortex
1870 Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Fritsch discover cortical motor area of a
dog using electrical stimulation
1870 Ernst von Bergmann writes first textbook on nervous system surgery
1867 Alaska is bought by U.S. from Russia for $7.2 million
1870 U.S. population reaches 38.5 million
*1871 Great fire destroys Chicago (Oct 8-11)
*1871 Charles Babbage dies a disappointed and embittered man in London
1872 Amnesty Act restores civil rights to citizens of the South
1872 Simultaneous transmission from both ends of a telegraph wire
1873 Maxwell publishes theory of radio waves
1874 Roberts Bartholow electrically stimulates human cortical tissue
1875 Sir David Ferrier describes different parts of monkey motor cortex
1875 Richard Caton is first to record electrical activity from the brain
1875 Wilhelm Heinrich Erb and Carl Friedrich Otto Westphal describe the
knee jerk reflex
1876 Bell invents the telephone
1878 Cathode ray tube is invented by Crookes, English chemist
1878 British physiologists John Burden Sanderson and Frederick Page record
the heart's electrical current with a capillary electrometer
1879 Albert Einstein born
1879 Tesla attends university in Graz and Prague
1879 F.W. Woolworth opens his first five-and-ten store
1880 Edison invents the electric light
1882 Charles Darwin dies
*1880s Tesla invents the A/C current system.
*1884 Tesla arrives in America, works briefly with Edison
1885 Westinghouse Electric Company buys patent rights to Tesla's polyphase
system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors
1886 Geronimo, Apache Indian, finally surrenders
1887 Tesla opens his own laboratory in New York City
1887 British physiologist Augustus D. Waller of St Mary's Medical School,
London publishes the first human electrocardiogram; it is recorded
from Thomas Goswell, a technician in the laboratory
1887 Alfred Binet and C. Fere publish 'Animal Magnetism,' about hypnosis
1887 Comptometer multi-function adding machine is manufactured
1888 Heinrich Hertz proves the existence of radio waves
1888 Great blizzard in eastern U.S. 400 deaths (Mar 11-14)
1889 Johnstown, Pa., flood 2,200 lives lost (May 31)
1889 Percy Florence Shelley dies without an heir
1890 Ellis Island opens
1890 Vincent Van Gogh commits suicide
1890 Dr. Gottlieb Burckhardt drills holes in the heads of six patients and
extracts sections of the frontal lobes, altering their behavior. Two
of the patients die.
1891 Wilhelm von Waldeyer coins the term 'neuron'
*1891 Tesla invents the 'Tesla coil,' induction motor and other electrical
motors, new forms of generators and tranformers, a system of A/C
power transmission, fluorescent lights and a type of steam turbine
1892 Tesla begins work on a dynamic theory of gravity
1894 Marconi invents wireless telegraphy
1894 First steel-framed skyscraper built in Chicago
1894 Pullman Strike
1895 William His first uses the term 'hypothalamus'
1895 Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen invents the X-ray
1896 X-ray photography
1897 Bram Stoker writes 'Dracula'
1897 Charles Scott Sherrington coins term 'synapse'
1897 Ferdinand Blum uses formaldehyde as brain fixative
1898 Spanish-American War
1898 John Newport Langley coins term 'autonomic nervous system'
1898 Tesla invents a teleautomatic boat guided by remote control
*1899 Nicola Tesla tests a 'death ray' in Colorado Springs, Colorado;
all electrical apparatus of a Colorado fuel company rendered useless
*1899 Tesla discovers terrestrial stationary waves, proving that the earth
can be used as a conductor and would be responsive to electrical
vibrations of a certain pitch; he also lighted 200 lamps without
wires from a distance of 25 miles and created man-made lightning;
he claimed to have received signals from another planet in his
Colorado laboratory
*1900 Nicola Tesla tests his wireless transmission of energy in Colorado
Springs - dynamos of a Colorado electric company 6 mi. away disabled
1900 Sigmund Freud publishes 'The Interpretation of Dreams'
1900 The Boxer Rebellion
1901 McKinley assassinated; Roosevelt succeeds
1901 Picasso's Blue Period
1901 J.P. Morgan organizes US Steel Corporation
1902 Conrad writes 'Heart of Darkness'
1902 Croce writes 'Philosophy of the Spirit'
1903 The Wright Brothers fly at Kitty Hawk
1904 Construction of the Panama Canal started
1906 Major earthquake in California.
*1907 Nicola Tesla cannot pay for his building of his lab in Long Island,
and workers cease construction
1908 The Tunguska explosion
1908 After being preserved for 37 years in alcohol, Babbage's brain is
dissected by Sir Victor Horsley of the Royal Society, who calls
Babbage a 'very profound thinker'
1908 Model T popularity booms
1911 Thomas Lewis publishes 'The Mechanism of the Heartbeat'
1912 Titanic sinks, April 15
1914 Construction of the Panama Canal completed
1914 Archduke Ferdinand is assassinated; Austria-Hungary declares war on
Serbia, Russia declares war on Austria-Hungary, Germany declares war
on Russia and France, Great Britain declares war on Germany, Austria-
Hungary declares war on Russia, Japan declares war on Germany
1914 Battle of the Marne, Sept. 5 (500,000 casualties)
1915 Kafka writes 'The Metamorphosis'
1915 Tetanus epidemics in trenches
1917 Tesla receives the Edison Medal, the highest honour of the American
Institute of Electrical Engineers
1917 German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann attempts to incite Mexico
to declare war on the United States; the U.S. declares war on
Austria-Hungary and Germany
1918 In the last major battle of World War I, 120,000 are killed
1918 WW I ends. 116,000 Americans, 8.3 million total miltary casualties,
over 20 million civilians die of hunger and disease
1918-
1920 Massive influenza outbreaks in US and Spain kill 21 million
1919 Prohibition begins, and so do the Roaring Twenties, complete with
rum runners, gangsters, flappers and jazz music
1922 Howard Carter and George Herbert discover the tomb of Tutankhamen
*1923 Nicola Tesla makes a press release in which he claims he is in
frequent contact with ET's via radio; he also claims he can split
the earth like an apple, and destroy 10,000 airplanes, 250 miles
away with a new death ray
1920s Townsend Brown begins anti-gravity experiments and makes a 15 inch
metal plate which can lift itself
1924 Willem Einthoven wins the Nobel prize for the electrocardiograph
1924 Newspapers in different parts of the world carry stories about death
rays being able to destroy things from a distance
1924 Germany announces it possesses death rays able to stop tanks and cars
1927 Charles Lindbergh flies from New York to Paris
1929 Stock market in USA crashes (Oct. 29); the Great Depression follows
1932 Prohibition repealed
1937 Amelia Earhart disappears
1939 Germany invades Czechoslovakia, Italy invades Albania, Germany
invades Poland, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany,
Russia invades Poland
1939 Albert Einstein writes to Albert Sachs and President Roosevelt about
nuclear bombs; the project begins in earnest
1940 Italy formally allies itself with Germany against England and France;
France surrenders; The Battle of Britain, the first aerial attack on
England, takes place over 4 months
1941 Germany invades Russia, Japan invades French Indochina; Japan attacks
Pearl Harbor, Guam, Midway, Hong Kong and Singapore; Japan declares
war on the U.S., the U.S. declares war on Japan, Germany and Italy
declare war on the U.S.
1942 American troops land in Europe as they are being pummelled in the
Pacific, with the Philippines being surrendered to the Japanese;
The Battle of Midway ends the threat to Australia by the Japanese
navy; The Battle of Stalingrad will cost 100s of thousands of lives,
but turns the tide in favor of the Allied Powers
1942 The Manhattan Project is formed in September to secretly build an
atomic bomb before the Germans. The Army appoints General Leslie
Groves to oversee a project that will eventually employ 300,000
workers in Tennessee, Washington, New Mexico, New York and Calif.;
secrecy is so complete that most of the workers had no idea what they
were working on until they heard of the bomb being dropped 3 years
later; workers in Los Alamos were better informed, but were forbidden
to leave the area for security reasons; In December, Enrico Fermi
demonstrates the first nuclear chain reaction at the U. of Chicago
*1942 The Philadelphia Project begins in earnest, operating under a cloak
of secrecy deeper than that around the Manhattan Project. Nikola
Tesla discovers that high electromagnetic fields can cause physical
damage to sailors; he sabotages a test on a 1500 ton ship and
resigns his position in the Philadephia Project, a project which
supposedly sends navy warships and crew back and forth through time
and space via faster than light travel
*1943 Tesla is allegedly struck and killed by a cab under suspicious
circumstances in New York City, apparently killed by the government;
others report that he died in his sleep in his hotel room; He is
'posthumously' granted full priority over Guglielmo Marconi in
regards to fundamental radio patents
*1943 Philadelphia Project allegedly sends a battleship through time
1943 Rommel defeats U.S. forces, but is then defeated in turn by Patton;
the German army surrenders after the siege of Stalingrad, having
suffered 300,000 casualties; more than 350,000 Axis troops are
killed or captured in North Africa, as opposed to 18,500 American
casualties; the last of Polish guerillas in Warsaw are captured and
sent to death camps; The Invasion of Sicily, July (25K Allied, 167K
Germans and Italians killed or wounded); Italy surrenders and
declares war on Germany
1944 The War in the Pacific steps up with an invasion of the Marshall
Islands; The U.S. begins a bombing campaign against Germany; D-Day,
June 6, on which the largest invasion force in history lands in
Europe (4,000 ships, 600 warships, 10,000 planes, 175K troops);
Germany launches the first V-1 rockets; B-29 bombers attack Japan,
ultimately causing more than 27K Japanese casualties; an attempt
to assassinate Hitler fails; Guam falls to U.S. forces, with 17,000
Japanese casualties and 7,200 American casualties; Paris is retaken
by the Allies, August 25; Germany launches 500 V-2 rockets against
London; the Japanese resort to kamikaze attacks against ships as
MacArthur 'returns' to Leyte Island; The Battle of the Bulge
1945 Dresden is firebombed, killing 100K Germans; by March, all German
forces are pushed back into Germany; U.S. planes firebomb Tokyo,
killing some 100K Japanese; U.S. takes Iwoi Jima, suffering horrid
casualties; U.S. troops invade Okinawa, causing a 3-month battle
that will result in over 200K casualties, including 12,500
American dead and 160,000 Japanese dead.
*1945 President Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage; Truman becomes
President; Truman is told about the Manhattan project, which has
developed the atom bomb, but is initially reluctant. A search for
viable alternatives goes on.
1945 Hitler marries Eva Braun, poisons her and kills himself; his remains
are never recovered; the Germans formally surrender, May 7
1945 Leo Szilard and hundreds of scientists working on the Manhattan
Project draft a letter to President Truman urging him not to use
the atomic bomb as a weapon against Japan. General Leslie Groves,
Director of the Manhattan Project, holds the letter until after
August 1, when it is too late to stop events already in motion.
*1945 MacArthur completes the recapture of the Phillipines; the first
atomic bomb is detonated in Alamogordo, New Mexico at 5:30 am,
July 16, 1945; the Big Three powers (United States, Britain, and
the Soviet Union) meet for the Potsdam Conference to discuss
how to end the war with Japan without a costly invasion; President
Truman learns of Trinity's success and hears report that bombs will
be ready by early August; Churchill and Truman agree that the bomb
will end the war without an invasion and without Soviet help.
*1945 The Philadelphia Project is land-tested on Sunday, July 22, 1945 at
9 am Eastern time.
?1945 On July 26, the USA, Britain and China called for the unconditional
and immediate surrender of Japan; Japan refuses; The Enola Gay drops
the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, August 6, killing 80K immediately and
seriously injuring another 100K while destroying 98 percent of
the city's buildings; An atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki, Aug. 9;
Russia declares war on Japan and invades Manchuria; fighting ends
and Russia and the U.S. divide Korea; Japanese surrender, Sept. 2;
all told, World War II is the deadliest war in history, costing more
than 38 million lives, and more than 40 million civilian lives
