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.
On November 11, 2004 some thirteen thousand coalition troops were in Anbar province, Iraq, fighting the deadliest battle of the War in Iraq. Armistice Day, 2004, was war at its most horrible.