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Workers were making repairs to the roof of Notre Dame on a fine April day. A fire broke out, too high to be quickly doused with water, and onlookers could only stare in disbelief as the building was consumed by flames.
That scene played out 140 years ago, at the University of Notre Dame, the Indiana school famous for its Fighting Irish football team. By the time the fire was out, the campus’s main building was ruined.
And then on Monday, across the Atlantic at the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, an intense fire felled the spire and tore apart the roof of a building known for its stone gargoyles, flying buttresses and the legend of the hunchbacked Quasimodo.