New York City's 31st Anual Fleet Week : The yearly invasion of thousands of our brave service men and women in uniform kicked off on May 22 through the 27, 2019 to coincide with Memorial Day Celebration honored the contributions of maritime service men and women. It is also one of the best times to fall in love with a man in uniform! The Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard have been making a social-media splash by encouraging people to snap photos with the troops #FleetWeekNYC – a totally cool idea!
A France in Turmoil Weeps for a Symbol of Paris’s Enduring Identity. For centuries, Notre-Dame cathedral has enshrined an evolving notion of what it means to be French. As smoke and flames wafted into the sky on Monday, the symbolism was hard to miss. Notre-Dame has occupied the heart of Paris for the better part of a millennium, its twin medieval towers rising from the small central island wedged between the storied left and right banks. Now, France is burning.
New Zealand Picks Up the Pieces After the Worst Massacre in Its History. New Zealand’s low-slung second city was cloaked in mourning, shops shuttered and residents zombified, struggling to comprehend the mass shooting that claimed 50 lives — the worst massacre in the history of this nation of five million. Police continued to sweep for evidence outside the Al Noor mosque, where a lone gunman killed 41 people, live-streaming his barbarous crimes in ghastly detail. Seven more people were gunned down at a mosque on the other side of the city in the suburban Linwood neighborhood. One more died in hospital, where another 48 wounded are still receiving care, two in a critical condition. Children are among them.
Architect Zaha Hadid captured the world's attention and shattered glass ceilings (in addition to designing some) by becoming the first woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. She was also the first woman awarded the Royal Gold Medal by the Royal Institute of British Architects. Initially dubbed the “paper architect”, Dame Zaha Hadid’s plans were once perceived to be unbuildable. She died in London at the age of 65 of a heart attack in March of 2016.
To commemorate the multicultural harvest feast of 1621 at Plymouth Rock, about three million New Yorkers and visitors annually station themselves on freezing late-November streets to watch giant inflatable branded cartoon characters, all promoting a department store that filed for bankruptcy protection more than 25 years ago. Something like that. More than 40 million people watch it on television. Even compared to eating turkey, a dish that few people truly make well, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, now in its 92nd year, is a bit of a head-scratcher. See historic photographies from the New York Times coverage.