My university is on winter break this week, but that doesn’t mean a break from the work of looking back on the recent history of terrorism. It does mean, however, that this week’s entry gets a slightly different introduction than I’ve been offering.

Nearly five years ago I ran across an interview with Art Garfunkel that was loaded with poetic observations on life, music, the challenges of collaboration, and more. In it was this gem, a reflection on college campuses:

As I mentioned, I’ve walked across the U.S. and now Europe, so I know the land. There are many different versions of the land: industrial, wasteland, uninspired land. But campuses are a Walt Disney movie. They’re a dream come true. They’re such a cut above almost all of it. Campuses are so pretty, if only the kids realized it. The rest of the earth is something less than that. The skyscrapers downtown, the used-car lots, the hamburger chains, everything that makes up the normal American scene. But not the campuses. They’re pretty. Those trees …

I suspect that it’s the rare student who realizes just how much a world apart a college campus really is, not just intellectually, but aesthetically. Even one like mine, an under-funded state university in a state that has been systematically disinvesting in higher education for more than two decades.

Now on to this week’s look back:

• Feb. 25, 1972 — Armagh, Northern Ireland: John Taylor, Minister of State for Home Affairs, survives an attempted assassination carried out by the Official Irish Republican Army. Taylor was hit five times in the neck and head when the two-man OIRA team raked his car with automatic weapons.
• Feb. 26, 1993 — New York City: A truck bomb is detonated in the underground parking structure beneath the North Tower of the World Trade Center. Six people are killed and more than 1,000 injured in the incident. According to trial testimony, the plotters had hoped to topple one WTC tower into the other, leading to the collapse of both and what they believed could be as many as 250,000 casualties.
• Feb. 27, 1980 — Bogota, Colombia: Seventeen members of the organization M-19 storm and seize control of the embassy of the Dominican Republic. They take 60 people, including some 15 ambassadors, hostage in a siege that lasts 61 days. The crisis ends when the 16 surviving members of the M-19 assault team and a dozen of their diplomatic hostages are allowed to fly to Cuba with a reported $2.5 million in ransom. All hostages are subsequently freed.
• Feb. 28, 1985 — Newry, Northern Ireland: Nine members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary are killed in a mortar attack on a police station carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Another 30 RUC officers were wounded by the home-made weapon.