This timeline originally appeared as the catalogue for ECCO at FELTspace in February of 2017.
50000000 years ago: Early ancestors of dolphins and humans appear on land.
10000000 years ago: After the early ancestors of humans become genetically distinct from them, dolphins return to the sea.
1324: All sturgeons, whales and dolphins in British waters are declared the property of the Queen.
1660: A ship sinks in the Dover straits. The only survivor is a man named Hugh Williams.
1767: Another ship sinks in the Dover straits. The only survivor is a man named Hugh Williams.
1820: A ship capsizes on the Thames. The only survivor is a man named Hugh Williams.
1835: Mark Twain is born as Halley’s Comet passes by Earth.
1895: The only two cars in Ohio crash into each other.
1898: Morgan Robertson writes Futility, or the Sinking of a Titan, which tells the story of a monstrous ocean liner, which sinks after hitting a iceberg 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland at 22 knots.
1902: Mark Twain dies, as he predicted, as Halley’s Comet passes Earth again for the first time since his birth.
1912: The RMS Titanic sinks after striking an iceberg 400 miles of the coast of Newfoundland at 22.5 knots.
1914: After a series of coincidences an assassin manages to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand, setting into motion a series of events that results in the first World War. The license plate of the vehicle he dies in is AIII118.
The British Navy convert a passenger liner, the RMS Carmania, into a makeshift war vessel. In order to to go undetected, they disguise it as a German passenger liner, the SMS Cap Trafalgar. It sails to Brazil, where it sinks a German vessel of the coast of Brazil. The ship it sinks is the SMS Cap Trafalgar, converted by the Germans into a makeshift war vessel. In order to escape detection they had disguised it as a British vessel, the RMS Carmania.
1918: WW1 armistice is signed. The date is the 11/11/18, (A111118)
1922: Construction of the Hoover Dam begins. Over the course of its construction 112 people will die. The first is a man named J. G. Tierney, on December 20th.
1934: While walking down a street in Detroit a man named Joseph Figlock catches a baby who has fallen from a high window.
1935: While walking down the same street Joseph Figlock catches the same baby who has, again, fallen from the same window. Construction of the Hoover Dam is completed. The last man to die is J.G. Tierney’s son, Patrick Tierney, on December 20th.
1940: A ship is destroyed by a German mine. The only survivor is a man named Hugh Williams.
1950: Soviet Russia begins its secretive weaponised dolphin training program
1960: USA begins its own dolphin training program.
1965: John C. Lilly gives Margaret and Peter LSD
1973: Lilly posits the existence of ECCO in his autobiography The Centre of the Cyclone: An Autobiography of Inner Space. The same year the film Day of the Dolphin is released, despite Lilly’s attempts to suppress it.
1974: The Dolphin Embassy is proposed by Ant Farm in Esquire Magazine. Neville Ebbin is killed after being struck by a taxi while riding his moped in Bermuda.
1975: Erskine Ebbin, the younger brother of Neville, is killed exactly one year after his brother, on the same street, on the same moped, after being struck by the same taxi, which was being driven by the same driver and carrying the same passenger.
1978: The Dolphin Embassy project is discontinued. ECCO butterfly breeding program begins. Hundreds of butterflies are dropped from aeroplanes around the world in the hope that the movement of their wings might instigate a greater number of coincidences. The largest concentration of butterflies are dropped off the east coast of South America.
1979: Super Typhoon Tip forms. It is as large as half of the North American Continent and makes landfall in Japan, causing large-scale flooding. The storm leaves 11,000 people homeless. The ECCO butterfly breeding program is discontinued.
1980: Lennon shot.
1981: Immediately after giving a speech on the inevitable and random nature of death, astronomer Daniel du Toit chokes to death on a breath mint.
1984: Douglas Adams publishes So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
1991: The Soviet Union collapses. Its dolphin training program is taken over by the Ukrainian government.
2002: Two seventy year old men are separately struck and killed by lorries 600km outside of Helsinki. It is later discovered that the men were identical twins.
2010: BP Oil Spill. Michael Dick travels to Sudbury, Suffolk in search of his estranged daughter, who he has not seen for ten years. She makes contact after spotting herself in the background of a photograph of him in the local newspaper.
2012: Near the Gulf of Mexico a dolphin is discovered stranded. Later scientists discover that she is deaf, but is able to understand some forms of sign language.
2014: After the Crimean Crisis Russia takes back control of the Ukrainian dolphin program.
2017: The year of conspiracy. Donald Trump becomes president of the United States. The term ‘alternate facts’ is coined by his counsellor Kellyanne Conway. ECCO is exhibited at FELTspace in Adelaide.
