The hallic urge to build towers — from the mysterious "round towers" of ancient Ireland through the Crusaders' Krak des Chevaliers and hypercapitalist monuments like the Shanghai World Financial Center — as concrete symbols of power and virility, has been equalled only by the opposite, castrating urge of other malcontents to tear them down.
While al-Qaida's toppling of the World Trade Center, and the proposed Freedom Tower that will be erected in its place, are only the latest examples of this duality, we should turn instead to a less remembered moment, from August 1974, when a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit found another way to conquer towers.
Petit, an obsessed tightrope-walker, managed to infiltrate a small group of equally crazy friends into both towers of NYC's World Trade Center, string a 200 kg cable between them, and — as astonished commuters were jolted out of their early morning hum — cross between the towers eight times, 110 floors above the ground.