Opening paragraphs..........................

      It was as if two powerful birds had entered the sky within a single year, The Eagle in the south, The Raven in the north, each circling and gaining strength, each progressing in the consolidation of its own powers.  For forty-tow tempestuous years the adversaries would fly in ever-widening orbits until confrontation became inevitable.  They would meet only once, a clash of eighteen minutes in the spring of 1836 which would change the history of the world.

-James A. Michener,  The Eagle and The Raven