#interactive article

The Washington Post | By Fritz Hahn | June 23, 2026

This is a gift 🎁 link to this informative & beautiful interactive history of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Above is a GIF made from some of the photos. Below are a few more photos, but I recommend you see and interact with the post for yourself, using the above link.

The Solidarity Marchers cooling off in the Reflecting Pool in 1968. (Keystone/Getty Images)

A midsummer morning surprise birthday breakfast at dawn in 1974. (The Washington Post/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

An inauguration celebration with tens of thousands on hand as Bill Clinton took office in 1993. (Dana Walker/Getty Images)

People exercise near the Reflecting Pool in November 2015. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

__________________________ GIF Photo Descriptions : 1) Civil rights activists gather in and around the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during the Poor People’s March on Washington in 1968. (Pictorial Parade/Getty Images); 2) Work begins on the new Lincoln memorial grounds and the Reflecting Pool. (Bettmann/Bettmann Archive); 3) An amphibious aircraft on the Reflecting Pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1923. (Library of Congress/Library of Congress); 4) A group of young boys playing in the Reflecting Pool in 1926. (Photo 12/Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images); 5) A group of men and boys prepare their toy sailboats for launch in 1928. (Interim Archives/Getty Images) Narrative on GIF's Second Slide: A reflecting pool at the western end of the National Mall was included in the 1902 McMillan Plan, which guided the creation of D.C.’s monumental core. Designed by Henry Bacon, also the architect of the Lincoln Memorial, it was dedicated in 1922 and quickly became a popular recreation destination for D.C. residents.

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

The English Elm: The Tree That Witnessed the Revolution

This tree, at the northwest corner of Washington Square Park [in New York City], is one of the only living beings in the city that experienced the American Revolution. Estimated to be more than 300 years old, it’s known as a “witness tree,” said Harold Holzer, the Manhattan borough historian. [....]

The English elm is popular among several creatures that we share the city with. One of its branches is curved in a way that makes it ideal for pigeons to perch and squirrels to splay out on, Ms. Seamans said. [....]

The English Elm is literally living history, holding the collective breath of New York over three centuries. In her book “When Trees Testify,” the plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery writes of how trees, through photosynthesis, capture the exhales of humans, which become part of their physical form. “That plants, including trees, hold the transformed breath of decades of human life in their physical form positions them as powerful vessels of the present, even as they represent and testify to history and those from their past.” [emphasis added] In this way, the English Elm has, in its body, the breaths of the centuries of people who’ve visited Washington Square. It holds the breaths of the civil rights activists who’ve rallied there, the jazz musicians who’ve played there, the skateboarders who’ve done flips on the fountain, the chess players who’ve sat there for hours.

This is a gift 🎁 link, so there is no paywall to read this NY Times interactive article that also visits five other sites to show how the past lives on today in Lower Manhattan.

THE NEW YORK OF THE PAST IS STILL VISIBLE TODAY YOU JUST HAVE TO LOOK

Anna Kodé reported on six New York sites that explore different facets of the city’s history and can all be visited in a Lower Manhattan walking tour.

The New York Times | By Anna Kodé | Photos/Video by Todd Heisler | Design by Eden Weingart and Umi Syam |July 25, 2026

This is an excellent NY Times interactive article, so the above link is a gift 🎁 link so anyone can read the entire article, even if they don't subscribe to the NY Times. Here are some excerpts.

Upending the outcome of a free and fair presidential election is no minor endeavor. It requires time, energy, money and, especially, an awful lot of people willing to do the wrong thing — or at least go along with it. The network of people who allegedly helped Donald Trump try, without success, to stay in power more than two and a half years ago may seem hopelessly chaotic, but there was a method to the madness. American elections are, by design, entrusted to the states and therefore decentralized. To meddle in them requires national masterminds working hand in glove with plotters at the state and local levels — a tangle of conspirators, enablers and indulgent bystanders as messy and sprawling as our democracy itself. And while it can be tempting to downplay or dismiss the entire nightmare as the pathetic machinations of crackpots and fringe figures or even to wave it off as ancient history, that would be a mistake. Those who worked to overturn the 2020 election are the same kinds of people and groups Mr. Trump would surely surround himself with if elected to a second term: unscrupulous or timid federal and state officials, ethically flexible lawyers and Republican yes men and women. Except that in 2025 those figures would have a better sense of how to dismantle the guardrails that once stood in their way and how to exploit the fault lines and weaknesses in our electoral process. [emphasis added]

Below is the final graphic in the article that shows all the people connected with Trump's coup attempt, including some who refused to go along with it:

This interactive article is well worth reading, and I invite you to use the above gift link to do so.

This is a troubling article by UT Austin economist Dan Spears on predictions that world population growth will peak sometime during the 2060s to 2080s, and then will rapidly decline. We all know on some level that human population growth cannot continue at this pace, but the sudden drop that experts predict in the near future is alarming--as are the predicted consequences of a rapid human population decline.

This is a gift 🎁 link that will enable anyone to read the full article, whether or not they subscribe to The New York Times. Here are some excerpts from this interactive article.

The global human population has been climbing for the past two centuries. But what is normal for all of us alive today—growing up while the world is growing rapidly—may be a blip in human history. Children born today will very likely live to see the end of global population growth.A baby born this year will be 60 in the 2080s, when demographers at the U.N. expect the size of humanity to peak. The Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital in Vienna places the peak in the 2070s. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington puts it in the 2060s. All of the predictions agree on one thing: We peak soon.

And then we shrink. Humanity will not reach a plateau and then stabilize. It will begin an unprecedented decline. Because most demographers look ahead only to 2100, there is no consensus on exactly how quickly populations will fall after that. Over the past 100 years, the global population quadrupled, from two billion to eight billion. As long as life continues as it has — with people choosing smaller family sizes, as is now common in most of the world — then in the 22nd or 23rd century, our decline could be just as steep as our rise.

The article goes on to say:

[...] What would happen as a consequence [of a rapid decline in human population]? Over the past 200 years, humanity’s population growth has gone hand in hand with profound advances in living standards and health: longer lives, healthier children, better education, shorter workweeks and many more improvements. Our period of progress began recently, bringing the discovery of antibiotics, the invention of electric lightbulbs, video calls with Grandma and the possibility of eradicating Guinea worm disease. In this short period, humanity has been large and growing. Economists who study growth and progress don’t think this is a coincidence. Innovations and discoveries are made by people. In a world with fewer people in it, the loss of so much human potential may threaten humanity’s continued path toward better lives.

I encourage you to read the rest of this article. Whether or not one agrees with Dr. Spears's arguments, they are thought provoking.

[edited]

Queen Elizabeth II: A visual timeline of her 70 years on the throne  | The Washington Post | May 31, 2022

The Washington Post put together a wonderful interactive pictural timeline to celebrate the 7 decades that Elizabeth II has been Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms. The above photos/gifs are just a sampling of what is in the article. It is well worth your time to take a look if you are interested in Elizabeth II and the British royal family. 

______________________

This interactive opinion article is well worth reading and listening to (as all the stories were recorded by the authors). Below is one of the seven stories. If you have the time, I encourage you to read and listen to the rest of these very moving stories.

________________