One sleepy Thursday afternoon in February 1894, two astronomers at Greenwich Park’s Royal Observatory were working late when they heard a “sharp and clear detonation, followed by a noise like a shell going through the air”. They ran outside to find smoke rising on the path below. As they came closer, they saw a man kneeling by the railings, his head bowed. Only when they lifted him upright did they realize he was horribly injured, his left hand blown clean off, his intestines smeared over the path. He died half an hour later, without saying a word.
The man’s name was Martial Bourdin. A French anarchist, he had been carrying a homemade chemical bomb, intended for the observatory. Only moments from his target, he must have tripped and fallen, triggering the bomb beneath him. But why did he do it? And why the observatory?
