The dome of Les Invalides was a direct influence on the U.S. Capitol dome, after the designer Thomas U. Walter visited here and was impressed by it.

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Les Invalides, or more officially known as L'Hôtel national des Invalides (French for "The National Residence of the Invalids"), is a series of museums and crypts dedicated to French military history.

Under the central dome of the structure is the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821), whose remains were repatriated here in 1840, and then placed in their present tomb (made of red quartzite and resting on a green granite base) in 1861.

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On January 27, 1967, NASA was running a test launch for their first manned space mission- Apollo 1. Due to design flaws in the initial construction (and the use of pure oxygen in the capsule), there was a fire during the test that claimed the lives of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee.

The site was used to successfully test a number of Saturn I and Saturn IB rockets, but was eventually razed. The launch platform remains as a memorial with a plaque that lists the time of the accident and the names of the astronauts, as well as the following inscription:

They gave their lives in service to their country in the ongoing exploration of humankind's final frontier. Remember them not for how they died but for those ideals for which they lived.

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Located at this location since 1965, the Explorers Club is a group of professionals dedicated to the advancement of field research.

Members of the group were the first explorers to the North Pole (Robert E. Peary & Matthew Henson in 1909), first to the South Pole (Roald Amundsen in 1911), first to the summit of Mt. Everest (Sir Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay in 1953), and first to the surface of the Moon (Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin & Michael Collins in 1969).

Today, the off-world colony group known as Mars One hold regular meetings to plan for a proposed manned mission to Mars in 2025.

Source: New Yorker, April 25, 2014

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On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese forces entered Saigon while U.S. government forces were evacuated.

Dutch photographer Hubert van Es, working for UPI, captured a defining image of that distinct point in the conflict, as Americans crowded the roof of this building to evacuate by helicopter.

As with the city's name (Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City), the street name was also changed to Lý Tự Trọng Street, in honor of a 17-year-old communist executed by the French. Today, the building still stands, but the roof is off-limits.

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