I love finding the unexpected connections that link things together. I loved that book Connections by James Burke (still highly recommended, both as a book and for the videos), and the ways in which connections can be found between animals, plants, ecosystems, and people.

We’ve talked about these kinds of discovered connections before (example: about a femme fatale and an executive chef), so you know how I feel.

I really enjoy finding these unexpected discoveries about people.

So you can imagine my delight when I accidentally discovered the connection between the two people depicted in the images below. The pictures themselves were wonderful moments when I literally ran across these sites at two very disparate locations (yes, I took these images while running through these two locations on different dates).

It turns out that these two gentlemen had dinner together once upon a time.

But the remarkable thing is that they were sworn enemies at the time.

And that delightfully discovered connection leads to today’s Challenge:

1. Who are these two gentlemen?

2. When / where / why did they have dinner together?

3. And why is the night of their dinner such a memorable event?

Can you figure this one out?

I certainly had no idea that they’d dined together, let alone on date that would go down in history. What was it about that one evening that left such an impression?

Let us know how you figured it out!

Search on!

(Note that I’ve given you two images of the gravestone. It was difficult to get a clear shot of the writing, especially while running, so I’m giving you two different views of the same thing to help out in the decoding.)

Be sure to click on the images to get the full resolution versions.