Although Earth was not truly a perfect sphere, the equator and 0 degrees latitude were easy enough to determine.
Meridians, on the other hand—the currently recognized prime meridian had been surveyed by Greenwich Observatory in 1767. The British Nautical Almanac, based on the Greenwich Observatory prime meridian, was then published and soon came into use by numerous navigators.
Father Piazzi's friend, Oriani, director of the Milan Observatory, was tasked not only with overseeing the new system of weights and measures, but also with measuring the meridian arc from Rimini to Rome.
It was also Georgiana's first time hearing of a place called Rimini, so she had someone bring her a map. The one who brought it was none other than Colonel Alexandre de Mazis.
Murat was the true son of commoners. During the Reign of Terror, someone had tried to prove that Murat was of noble birth so he could be classified as a legally defined suspicious person. Murat had therefore obtained his father's marriage contract and his own baptismal certificate from the Labastide government. The marriage contract showed that although Pierre Murat belonged to the upper stratum of the village, he had still been registered as a "worker" (travailleur) rather than even the lowest rank of landowner when he married.
Pierre Murat and his wife Jeanne Loubier were quite wealthy, for he not only ran the village inn and post office, but also served as the agent of the local great landowning Talleyrand family.
Like Bessières, Murat was filled with the passion of Southern France. He loved adventure. It was hard to imagine what he looked like in a priest's cassock.
Joachim was not the eldest son, and there was no law at the time requiring equal division of inheritances. Thus, his brother Andre would inherit the inn and