The young man stood at the bus stop and waited. He was wearing a full military uniform and had an M16 rifle over his shoulder. His beard was long, and on either side of his face, two dark, curly locks of hair hung and caressed his cheeks. On his head, he wore a kippah, a hemispherical traditional Jewish skull cap often worn by ultra-Orthodox Jewish men to symbolize their religious affiliation. In addition, he had an orange ribbon h...

Every year, on the 14th of July, thousands of people pour into the streets of France. France's National Day, also called Bastille Day, is celebrated here. It is considered the starting point for the French Revolution, which started on the 14th of July 1789 and has been celebrated every year since. The day is celebrated all over France, and in the warm South of France, the day can be spiced up with a swim, cocktail and magnific...

The young Dane sat naked in the military tent while the scornful comments poured down on Ham. The year was 2001 and he was in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan. The man was bound with chains on his hands and feet. He could do nothing about the soldiers' disgusting comments, or when they began to shave off his hair and long beard. It was humiliating, but he tried to calm himself by reciting the Qur'an. For a long t...

Jordan and Andre Anchondo had a busy morning. The couple, who had just celebrated their first wedding anniversary, had invited friends and family to their eldest daughter Skylin's 6th birthday that day. It was Saturday, 3 August 2019. When they dropped off their daughter for cheerleading practice, they drove towards the local supermarket Walmart in El Paso in the southernmost part of Texas in the USA. The thermometer already s...

The elderly Arab man tried to catch his breath as he made himself as small as possible in the cramped, smelly drain he had taken refuge in. Sweat ran down his face and his khaki pants and shirt were soaked with sweat. Perhaps he knew even then that all hope was lost. Maybe he did not even think about it in the few moments he was alone on the phone. Outside the drainage pipe, there was chaos of gunfire and screeching car tires from ...

On Via Fani, a downward-sloping hill in northern Rome, Italy, four small, angular Fiat cars were parked. In the cars sat men and women wearing crew uniforms belonging to the staff of the Italian airline Alitalia. It was 08:45 on the morning of March 16, 1978. The sun was shining and the weather forecast predicted a pleasant day with temperatures up to 16 degrees. A few minutes to nine, a blue and larger and more exclusive edition F...

The sultan straightened his uniform. Then he put his ribbons across his uniform, attached his medals, and finally donned his red fez. Then he took one last look at himself in the mirror before heading out of the palace to the horse-drawn carriage that would take him to the Yildiz Mosque for the weekly Friday prayer. It was July 21, 1905, in Istanbul, the capital of the gigantic Ottoman Empire. But just as Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the...

US District Court Judge Raymond Dearie sat behind the raised judge’s table in the Eastern District of New York. The 74-year-old former prosecutor looked down at the case file before him and then raised his gaze, which he directed at a dark-haired, South Asian-looking man in his early 30s. So said the judge
 “Is this the same Mr Zazi I saw many years ago?”
The judge almost rhetorically answered his own questions.
“All in...

It was August 1 2009, in Israel's largest city, Tel Aviv. The weather was over 30C, even though it was approaching 11pm. The Aguda building Bar-Noar, which housed the Tel Aviv Gay and Lesbian Association, is a restored Bauhaus building in Meir Park in the city centre. As always, the centre was attended by gay teenagers who participated in social activities and listened to music. This evening, several young people gathered for ...

It was Saturday, June 22, 1985, at 13:30 in the afternoon in the city of Vancouver in Canada. The phone rang at the Air India ticket office.
"Hello. It is "Manjit Singh". I would like to confirm that my bookings on Air India Flight 181/182”.
The friendly employee at the office informed him that he was still on the waiting list and offered him a number of alternatives, which he declined.
At 3:50 p.m., 2 ½ ...

Friday morning, July 19, 1946, three men stood and talked in a building in Jerusalem’s Bukharian quarter. These four were briefed first because their plan for a terrorist attack on the hotel required them to arrive first. The other members who were to take part in the attack, the exact number of which is unknown, would gather later.
One of them jumped into a pair of baggy white trousers, wrapped a red scarf around his waist...

25-year-old Marc Lépine sat on the floor before the university secretary’s office. He was on the 2nd floor of the École Polytechnique, a three-story engineering school affiliated with the Université de Montréal in Montreal, Canada. He had arrived shortly before this Wednesday, 6 December 1989. Marc Lépine rummaged a little in a plastic bag. He looked pretty lost as he sat there, and most of all, he looked like someone who had b...

An eight-year-old boy was walking home through the dark streets of Belfast in the biting evening chill. On his way home, he passed the family-owned pub McGurk's, which was a popular meeting place for many of the locals in the New Lodge area of ​​the Northern Irish capital. The moment he passed the pub, he saw a man wearing a dark overcoat and a mask get out of a car and leave a box in front of the pub. A guest was passing ...

It was five o'clock in the morning on November 20, 1979. The ageing Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca was preparing for the day's prayer meeting. 

Meanwhile, the mosque's courtyard, where the audience could follow the day's ceremony, was slowly filling up. Many had spent the night on brought blankets in several of the mosque's thousands of rooms. But just as the Imam approached the microphone, h...

It was 9.10 AM in the American city of Oklahoma City. The city was waking up, and the citizens were going about their everyday routines. Families were handing over their children in daycare and heading to work. But an ordinary morning was soon to develop into the biggest nightmare. A nearly six-foot-tall, lanky man with a narrow face and dark blond, crewcut hair drove his truck across the city. The tall man had a giant bomb with hi...