Cruiser Aurora

This guide to the Cruiser Aurora in Saint Petersburg opens with the single blank shot fired from her deck at 9:45pm on October 24th, 1917, long credited as the signal that launched the storming of the Winter Palace. Naval historians who studied the ship's log question whether the timing even works. A decade later, director Sergei Eisenstein's film October gave the Aurora a dramatic role in the story it may never have earned.