David A. Fahrenthold

Right.

A much bigger project and a much bigger pool.

I think this is the preparations for the UFC fight.

I think this is the preparations for the UFC fight.

That's right.

And so much of the city is engineered, even the heights of the buildings, the widths of the avenues, making sure that when you're at one landmark, you can see another and that you sort of get that message that these, you know, the branches of government, the parts of our history are linked together.

In a country that changes this much and is so focused on progress, Washington is frozen and changes so slowly to provide that kind of reminder, right?

We're reminded both of the origins of our government, but also, like, of the history that created that country.

And we're not, you know, we don't change that, even small details of that, without really, really thinking about it.

So the reflecting pool was built in the 20s along with the Lincoln Memorial.

And the point of it is to amplify both the Lincoln Memorial at one end and the Washington Monument at the other.

So you stand at one, you look across and you see a mirror image of the other great monument.

You see sort of them double.

And it was designed to be invisible in that way.

You don't look at the pool to see the pool.

You look at it to see a reflection of both the monuments around it and also the sort of history-making events that have happened along the sides of it.

Right, which are many.

Which are many.

People may know a fictionalized one, which is the scene in Forrest Gump, where Jenny jumps into the pool to see Forrest.

But there also have been many famous real events going back to the 1960s.