1987

January

After many months of examination, scientists at Cornell are confident that the bar dates from about 403 BC, right after the end of the Peloponnesian War, and has a technetium center with an outside coating of an aluminum-lead alloy. Such a bar can only be of artificial origin- technetium has at most a half-life of a few hundred-thousand years, depending on the isotope, and is only made in the cores of stars or in nuclear reactors. Since the radioactive decay indicates that it MUST be about 2,400 years old and an aluminum-lead alloy can only be made in space, a team led by Carl Sagan concludes that it is of extraterrestrial origin. The world goes wild, with many people putting theories forth about the bar and it's relation to the disappeared village, now known as 'The First Alien Abduction in History', even through there is no direct evidence that the aliens actually had anything to do with the village or/and it's disappearance.

February

President Ronald Reagan of the United States announces that his administration is pushing ahead with the Star Wars missile defense system, using a purported threat of alien invasion to justify it. Skeptics and detractors note that any aliens invading Earth would very likely be much more advanced then us and a Star Wars system would be easily defeatable by them.

June

Elizabeth Ann Warren, born in South Philadelphia to a Naval Ship-building father and a factory working mother and wife of Senator James Warren (R-PA), a much older man (OOC: James is this timeline's version of Arlen Specter), graduates from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania with a Masters in Business Administration.

August

Upon review of archaeological evidence from around the world, the team led by Carl Sagan and Dr. Susan Bradley declares that they have found 9 more cases of villages suddenly disappearing around the same time as the first village, in 403 BC. The villages are located as follows:

1-India (southern)

1-Middle East

1-Greece (the first one found)

1-North America

1-South America

1- Europe (Britain)

1- China (northern)

1- Africa (Tanzania)

1- Polynesia

1- Southeast Asia (Indonesia)

Elizabeth 'Ella' Warren gets a job at struggling United Pennsylvania Steel as a lowly junior executive in Accounting. She impresses her superiors as a woman who can detect ways to tighten the company's belts without hurting the company's production, quality, or workers' benefits, and is quickly promoted.

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