the man they thought their savior was napoleon bonaparte. 1815, in the aftermath of napoleon's defeat at waterloo, czar alexander of russia visited paris and saw the vendome column, crowned by its imperial statue of napoleon. "were i to be so highly elevated," he quipped, my head would surely spin with vertigo." even a czar could not imagine such dizzying heights of glory, "but," as he added, the higher you climb, the harder you fall." and what heights napoleon fell from. in those brief few years, he led french armies to italy, egypt, spain, austria, prussia, and even moscow itself, and during that meteoric time, this room, his library at the chateau of malmaison, was his still point-- a place to which he could return. it was here, for example, that he worked on his famous law code, le code napoleon, at this desk painted by david. here he returned after his abdication in 1814 in such despair

and in 1811, nobody was predicting that napoleon bonaparte would be gone from the national scene by 1813. in 1811, no one was counting on napoleon going away any time soon. in response to that situation, madison called the congress into a 12:30 session. his reason for doing so was that he had decided that he now had no other option to prepare for a war against great britain. again, he took this decision weeks and weeks before the 12th congress met in washington, before congressmen knew what policies they might have to pass judgment on. so how can we say that the faction of warhawks forced madison into a war that he did not want? quite simply, we cannot say that and we should not say it. it's one of these myths that's very hard to kill off, but it's simply not true. the role of the warhawks at times was very different. they were not the makers of american policy towards great britain, though an immediate spokesman worked its way through committees and votes in the house of representatives as congress prepared for war in the first six months of november -- late after november 1811. but the

. >> man being napoleon bonaparte.l a million dollars to spend, you could be in the running to own one of his black felt hats. it was a popular style at the time but he wore it side wafrmentsz instead of front to back. it is being auctioned off in narrows november. the pablo picasso museum re-opened today. thousands of paintings and sculpt sculptures. $60 million. his 1969 painting sold for almost $700,000 in an talk information shanghai friday. it was more than 60 pieces of 20th century art that fetched $132 million, the biggest serial was by a contemporary chinese artist that sold for $3.2 million. after more than 35 years, new york city's biggest theatre is getting a long overdue facelift. the people bringing the loew's. >> mr. brooklyn has lived here his entire life and fought to preserve every piece of its history. >> look at that. >> is really something. >> but one spot hodes a special place in his heart the. the kings theatre. >> the first time i came here was in 1969. my wife and i had just gotten married. we l

another famous image of the bonaparte cult shows napoleon walking fearlessly into the plague house at jaffa in the holy land unafraid of contagion because of his almost divine power to heal. his first officer, a mere mortal, holds a cloth to his face to shield himself from the plague, revolted by the stench. less ethereal, more practical arab and french medical officers are desperately trying to provide medical aid to the plague victims. bonaparte's great deeds during his life as a soldier would continue to be recorded and represented throughout his reign. it has been said that modern propaganda was napoleon's invention. now first painter of the empire, david was given his most important commission-- a monumental work called le sacre-- the coronation. his early sketches show napoleon audaciously crowning himself. the final canvas portrays napoleon crowning josephine. david painted himself sketching the scene. everyone had to be recognizably portrayed including the members of the church and the pope, sitting quietly and unhappily as he watches josephine kneel before the emperor who hol

friend and advisor to napoleon, fourier is said to have become obsessed with heat while accompanying bonaparten cycle of temperatures. the french mathematician developed his understanding of heat flow in terms of newton's law of cooling that says that the movement of heat between two bodies is proportional to their temperature difference. translating this to the infinitesimal scale of temperature differences between infinitely close positions in an object gives the famous differential equation called the "heat equation." in fourier's solution of the heat equation, he found these periodic solutions of sinusoids mirroring the cycle of temperatures over the year as the accumulation of periodic effects, such as the regular orbit around the sun and the daily spinning of the earth on its axis. fourier found that no matter how complicated a wave is, it's the sum of many simple waves. this was an astounding discovery. but for many years, few people believed his theories. after all, how could a complicated wave be reduced to the sum of seemingly many incompatible shapes: square waves and v-shaped waves