The crash occurred just after midnight on August 31, 1997. A limousine carrying Diana, the divorced Princess of Wales, and her then-paramour Dodi Al Fayed, the son of an Egyptian billionaire, collided with a pillar in the Alma Tunnel in central Paris. Al Fayed and the driver, Henri Paul, were pronounced dead at the scene. Diana was taken by ambulance to Pitié-Salpétrière Hospital, where she died a few hours later of cardiac arrest. Only Al Fayed's bodyguard survived the accident.
When Diana was laid to rest on September 6, millions of people lined the streets of London to observe the funeral procession; at least two billion more throughout the world watched on TV. Her brother, the 9th Earl of Spencer, eulogized Diana as 'the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty.' Then he added: 'It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this: a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.'
He was referring, of course, to the paparazzi. From the moment it was revealed in 1980 that Prince Charles had taken an interest in the youthful and attractive Lady Diana Spencer, she had been hounded by the press. She was to become the most famous woman in the world — her every deed, no matter how private or trivial, meticulously photographed, documented, and splashed across the front pages of tabloids everywhere. Right up until the mom.