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On July 11, 1897, at 2:30 in the afternoon, a balloon dubbed “the Eagle” took off from the Norwegian archipelago of Spitzbergen, headed, or so its occupants believed, for the north pole. It was a daring plan, years in the making, that promised to reach the elusive north pole in a way faster and safer than trudging across the ice.
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.
