On a frigid December day in 1857, the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg (now the site of the Hermitage museum) caught fire; in less than two days, the building was completely gutted. As with Notre-Dame, a renovation project helped the fire’s spread, and as with Notre-Dame, the nation’s leader (Tsar Nicholas I) vowed that the great monument would be rebuilt in an impractically short time. Historian Paul Werth recounts how the Russians pulled it off. – The Conversation