On December 7, 1941 USS Maryland was moored inboard of USS Oklahoma. The ship’s guns responded to the attack almost immediately. From their vantage point, the men witnessed the attacks that critically damaged Maryland’s sisters along battleship row, and faced attacks so fierce that the Japanese reported her sunk. They were wrong, and the “fighting Mary” would come back to haunt the empire of the rising sun, and feel the fury of the dreaded Kamikazes.
The Reconquista, or Christian reconquest of Iberia, took nearly 800 years. The fighting did not come without great attempts by Muslim powers across the strait trying to reestablish their presence in mainland Europe. The last gasp of that effort came in the 1330s, when the powerful Marinid sultanate of what is modern Morocco invaded in an attempt to reverse Christian gains and secure the perilous position of the Sultanate of Granada.