On March 31, 1942, the crew of the Standard Oil company's tanker T.C. McCobb would experience a first for the Second World War, and what came next would represent the risks faced by the merchant seamen caught in the middle of the vast Battle of the Atlantic.
More Essex class aircraft carriers were built than any other capital ship in the 20th century, and the class would be witness to events that would come to define the modern world, and the age of the aircraft carrier.
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.