GeekPol's evil twin

Quick one question quiz

The date is August 31, 2005. We already know what the top story in the U.S. was that day. How about the top story in Europe that day? A bit of a hint: it was a tragic event with an appalling loss of life - about 1000 dead.

Sounds like Katrina, eh? Well, you'd be wrong. Just so happens that I was in Barcelona August 31 and September 1 (recommendation: GO!), and the biggest headline according to CNN International and the Spanish and Catalan papers was in Iraq, where 965 people died in a stampede on the al-A'imma bridge in Baghdad. Don't get me wrong, Katrina was pretty damn big - I saw the remnants of it flying over Newfoundland on the flight home on September 1 - and it was below the fold on Page 1, but the stampede was above the fold.

No idea what the big story over there was as everything was unfolding and the stampede became more distant. I was back here, where it was all Katrina all the time, which is much more important than CNN's new policy of all dead or missing blonde suburban chicks all the time.