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Catalina Island is a popular tourist destination that receives more than a million visitors each year. But the trajectory of the island and its only incorporated town, Avalon, was dramatically changed 109 years ago by a devastating fire, the subject of a still enduring mystery, and possibly a dark secret.
In 1891, British humorist Jerome K. Jerome wrote that “Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories.”
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.
The plot of the Rue of Saint Nicaise and its use of an infernal machine played a vital role in the career of Napoleon Bonaparte, and transformed the very concept of assassination, resulting in a new definition of a word all too familiar today: terrorist.
