Empire of the Clouds story of the R101 airship, which crashed on its maiden voyage in northern France on 5 October 1930. The song was written entirely by the band's lead vocalist, Bruce Dickinson, who initially intended it to be about "World War I fighter airplanes;" Dickinson abandoned the idea after using the same theme for the song "Death or Glory," also from "The Book of Souls". At the time of recording, Dickinson was reading "a big, sort of encyclopedic crash report" of the R101, entitled "To Ride the Storm", which gave him the idea for the song's eventual subject. Dickinson describes it as
The First 48: Missing Persons cases, beginning with the report of a missing person and ending with either a resolution or the point when the case reaches an extended dead end. The First 48: Missing Persons The First 48: Missing Persons is an American documentary television series on A&E that debuted on June 2, 2011 and ended on February 7, 2013. The series name comes from the statistic that the odds of solving a case decrease by 50% if a solid lead is not found within the first 48 hours after the person has gone missing. Filmed in Chicago, the series gives an inside look