You wake from dreams of doom and — for a moment — you know: beyond all the noise and the gestures, the only real thing, love’s calm unwavering flame in the half-light of an early dawn.

— Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, translated by Leif Sjöberg & W.H. Auden

On 18 September 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld, second Secretary-General of the United Nations, died when the airplane he was in crashed in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He was traveling to negotiate a cease-fire in a conflict in the Republic of the Congo.