On September 17, 2022, I saw the awe-inspiring “Thunderbirds” air demonstration squadron of the United States Air Force (USAF) perform at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, the home of Air Force One. The Thunderbirds squadron was was created in 1953 and is based in Nevada.
The USAF Thunderbirds are the third-oldest formal flying aerobatic team (under the same name) in the world, after the French Air Force Patrouille de France formed in 1931 and the United States Navy Blue Angels formed in 1946.
The Thunderbirds Squadron tours the United States and beyond performing aerobatic formation and solo flying in pristine, specially marked aircraft.
The Thunderbirds have performed at over 4,000 airshows worldwide, accumulating millions of miles in hundreds of different airframes over the course of their more than fifty-four years of service. Flying high-performance fighter jets is dangerous. And when flying in extremely close formation, the danger is compounded.
In total, twenty-one Thunderbirds pilots have been killed in the team’s history. Three fatal crashes have occurred during air shows, two of them in jets.
The Thunderbirds perform aerial demonstrations in the F-16C Fighting Falcon. Over 4,600 aircraft have been built since production was approved in 1976. Although no longer being purchased by the U.S. Air Force, improved versions are being built for export customers.
From 2000 until 2009, Cultural Tourism DC led “Art on Call”, a city-wide effort to restore Washington’s abandoned police and fire call boxes as neighborhood artistic icons. Cultural Tourism DC partnered with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the District Department of Transportation on this initiative. The project is now managed by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
The Musée Jacquemart-André is a private museum located at 158 Boulevard Haussmann in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. The museum was created from the private home of Édouard André (1833–1894) and Nélie Jacquemart (1841–1912) to display the art they collected during their lives.
Édouard André, the scion of a Protestant banking family, devoted his considerable fortune to buying works of art. He then exhibited them in his new mansion built in 1869 by the architect Henri Parent, and completed in 1875.
André married a well-known society painter, Nélie Jacquemart, who had painted his portrait ten years earlier. The couple travelled in Italy, amassing one of the finest collections of Italian art in France. When Edouard André died, Nélie Jacquemart completed the decoration of the Italian Museum and travelled in the Orient to add more precious works to the collection. Faithful to the plan agreed with her husband, she bequeathed the mansion and its collections to the Institut de France as a museum, and it opened to the public in 1913.
The Church of Saint-Sulpice is a Roman Catholic church in Paris, on the east side of Place Saint-Sulpice, in the Latin Quarter of the 6th arrondissement. It is only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame and thus the second-largest church in the city. It is dedicated to Sulpitius the Pious, a seventh century bishop and saint.
The present church is the second building on the site, erected over a Romanesque church originally constructed during the 13th century. Additions were made over the centuries, up to 1631. The current building was founded in 1646 by parish priest Jean-Jacques Olier (1608–1657) who had established the Society of Saint-Sulpice, a clerical congregation, and a seminary attached to the church.
The church is mentioned in Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, an international bestseller that brought crowds of tourists to Saint-Sulpice.
The Marquis de Sade and Charles Baudelaire were baptized in Saint-Sulpice in 1740 and 1821, respectively. The church also saw the marriage of Victor Hugo to Adèle Foucher in 1822.
The Memorial honors Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th President of the United States.
The Memorial is across the street from the National Air and Space Museum and is surrounded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Federal Aviation Administration, Voice of America, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Southwest Washington.
Architect Frank Gehry designed the Memorial. Gehry was born in Toronto in 1929 as Frank Owen Goldberg. His father was born in Brooklyn to Russian Jewish parents, and his mother was a Polish Jewish immigrant. Gehry has won major commissions and established himself as one of the world’s most notable architects. For example, his works include the Walt Disney Concert Hall (2003) in downtown Los Angeles.
Gehry’s design features three bronze statues of Eisenhower by the Russian-born sculptor Sergey Eylanbekov, one featuring General Eisenhower with troops from the 101st Airborne the day before the invasion of Normandy, another sculpture depicting President Eisenhower in the White House surrounded by civilian and military advisors, and a third portraying “Little Ike” in his boyhood.
The Memorial highlights passages from notable Eisenhower addresses. Framing the entire memorial is a stainless steel woven tapestry by artist Tomas Osinski , who was born in Poland. The tapestry depicts the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc on the Normandy coastline. Pointe du Hoc was the highest point between the American sector landings at Utah Beach to the west and Omaha Beach to the east. On D-Day, the United States Army Ranger Assault Group attacked and captured Pointe du Hoc after scaling the cliffs.
The Hope Diamond is a 45.52-carat diamond originally extracted in the 17th century from the Kollur Mine in Guntur, India. It is blue in color due to trace amounts of boron.
The earliest records of the diamond show that French gem merchant Jean-Baptiste Tavernier purchased it in 1666 as the Tavernier Blue. The stone was cut and renamed the French Blue (Le bleu de France); Tavernier sold the stone to King Louis XIV of France in 1668.
On September 11, 1792, while Louis XVI and his family were imprisoned in the Square du Temple during the early stages of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, a group of thieves broke into the Royal Storehouse—the Hôtel du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne (now Hôtel de la Marine)—stealing most of the Crown Jewels in a five-day looting spree. While many jewels were later recovered, including other pieces of the Order of the Golden Fleece, the French Blue was not among them and it disappeared from history.
In 1812, a deep blue diamond described by John Francillion as weighing 177 grains (4 grains = 1 carat) was documented as being in the possession of London diamond merchant, Daniel Eliason. Strong evidence indicates that the stone was the recut French Blue and the same stone known today as the Hope Diamond.
Several references suggest that it was acquired by King George IV of the United Kingdom. At his death, in 1830, the king’s debts were so enormous that the blue diamond was likely sold through private channels.
The first reference to the diamond’s next owner is found in the 1839 entry of the gem collection catalog of the well-known Henry Philip Hope, the man from whom the diamond takes its name. Unfortunately, the catalog does not reveal where or from whom Hope acquired the diamond or how much he paid for it.
Following the death of Henry Philip Hope in 1839, and after much litigation, the diamond passed to his nephew Henry Thomas Hope and ultimately to the nephew’s grandson Lord Francis Hope. In 1901 Lord Francis Hope obtained permission from the Court of Chancery and his sisters to sell the stone to help pay off his debts. It was sold to a London dealer who quickly sold it to Joseph Frankels and Sons of New York City, who retained the stone in New York until they, in turn, needed cash. The diamond was next sold to Selim Habib who put it up for auction in Paris in 1909. It did not sell at the auction but was sold soon after to C.H. Rosenau and then resold to Pierre Cartier that same year.
In 1910 the Hope Diamond was shown to Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, of Washington D.C., at Cartier’s in Paris, but she did not like the setting. Cartier had the diamond reset and took it to the U.S. where he left it with Mrs. McLean for a weekend. This strategy was successful. The sale was made in 1911 with the diamond mounted as a headpiece on a three-tiered circlet of large white diamonds. Sometime later it became the pendant on a diamond necklace as we know it today. Mrs. McLean’s flamboyant ownership of the stone lasted until her death in 1947.
Harry Winston Inc. of New York City purchased Mrs. McLean’s entire jewelry collection, including the Hope Diamond, from her estate in 1949.
For the next 10 years the Hope Diamond was shown at many exhibits and charitable events world wide by Harry Winston Inc., including as the central attraction of their Court of Jewels exhibition. On November 10, 1958, they donated the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution, and almost immediately the great blue stone became its premier attraction. It’s on display at the National Museum of Natural History.
The American Red Cross National Headquarters in Washington, D.C was built between 1915 and 1917. It serves both as a memorial to women who served in the American Civil War and as the headquarters building for the American Red Cross. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
The American Red Cross was founded in 1881 in the aftermath of the American Civil War as a public-private partnership to provide disaster relief and medical support for military forces.
Free, guided tours are offered Wednesdays and Fridays at 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. by reservation only.
The hôtel de la Marine (also known as the hôtel du Garde-Meuble) is an historic building located on Place de la Concorde in Paris, to the east of rue Royale. It was designed and built between 1757 and 1774 by the architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel, on the newly created square first called Place Louis XV. The identical building to its west, constructed at the same time, now houses the hôtel de Crillon and the Automobile Club of France.
The hôtel de la Marine was originally the home of the royal Garde-Mobile, the office managing the furnishing of all royal properties. Following the French Revolution it became the Ministry of the French Navy, which occupied it until 2015. It was entirely renovated between 2015 and 2021. It now displays the restored 18th century apartments of Marc-Antoine Thierry de Ville-d’Avray, the King’s Intendant of the Garde-Meuble, as well the salons and chambers later used by the French Navy.
Major historical events have taken place in the hôtel de la Marine:
On 16 September 1792, the Crown Jewels were stolen at the Hôtel de la Marine. At night, around forty people got inside the reception room where the jewels were displayed and stole goods worth around 30 million French francs. Most of the jewels were found again two years later. However, The French Blue (Le bleu de France) was not recovered. It reappeared 20 years later in England, completely recut with the largest section of the diamond appearing under the Hope name in an 1839 gem catalog from the Hope banking family. The Hope Diamond is now in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
In a room overlooking Place de la Concorde Marie Antoinette’s death warrant was signed. She was guillotined on 16 October 1793 on Place de la Concorde. She was 37 years old.
On 27 April 1848, in the office of minister François Arago in the Hôtel de la Marine, the decree to abolish slavery in the French colonies was signed in Paris. Victor Schœlcher, an ardent defender of human rights, was the man behind this historic decision.
The renovation is beautiful. The views of Paris monuments are exceptional.
The Sainte-Chapelle is the finest royal chapel to be built in France. The chapel is filled with 1,113 stained glass windows illustrating the Bible. Construction of the chapel began sometime after 1238 and it was consecrated on April 26, 1248. King Louis IX of France commissioned the chapel to house his collection of Passion relics, including Christ’s Crown of Thorns – one of the most important relics in medieval Christendom. This was later held in the nearby Notre-Dame Cathedral until the 2019 fire, which it survived.
Along with the Conciergerie, Sainte-Chapelle is one of the earliest surviving buildings of the Capetian royal palace on the Île de la Cité. The Capetian dynasty was the ruling house of France from 987 to 1328. Although damaged during the French Revolution and restored in the 19th century, Sainte-Chapelle has one of the most extensive 13th-century stained glass collections anywhere in the world.
Sainte-Chapelle, created so long ago, inspires awe in the modern world. You can buy timed tickets here.
Washington, D.C.’s Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library recently underwent a $210 million three-year renovation by Netherlands-based Mecanoo and New York firm OTJ Architects. The library, which originally opened in 1972, now boasts expanded and updated spaces. The renovation included a dramatic staircase, depicted here, that winds up the library’s six stories. The library is just a mile from the White House.
You can learn more about the library and its beautiful renovation in Architectural Digest.
