The sight of loosed horses tearing through London city centre yesterday, blood smeared across the bright white forelegs and chest of one, unleashed a torrent of pre-modern speculation across social media as religious and atheist alike voiced their concern at the obvious portent playing out before their eyes.
As if that weren’t enough, like clockwork, Big Ben simultaneously ground to a halt with the hands stuck at 9am and the wrong number of bongs echoing discordantly across the city. While perhaps of less symbolic significance than a bloodied white horse and its midnight companion streaking through one of the global centres, some couldn’t help but tie today’s collapse of the Moulin Rouge cabaret club’s windmill blades to the ominous signs. The Parisian fixture has been in place since 1889 and despite a calm night in the French capital and no sign of technical fault, off they fell, the latest casualty in a long string of European landmarks falling down or going up in flames.
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