March 26: A Generation Captured, Polio Conquered, Peace Signed When a novel defined an era, when science defeated a scourge, and when enemies became partners in peace March 26 has witnessed three moments when breakthroughs reshaped their fields. A 23-year-old writer published a novel that captured post-war youth's restless disillusionment so perfectly it made him instantly famous and defined Jazz Age literature. A scientist announced a vaccine that would virtually eliminate a disease that had terrorized parents and paralyzed thousands of children annually, demonstrating that determined research could conquer humanity's oldest enemies. And two nations that had fought four wars in three decades signed a peace treaty that seemed impossible until it happened, proving that even the bitterest enemies could choose diplomacy over continued conflict. Together, these events remind us that understanding a generation requires someone to articulate what everyone feels, that scientific breakthroughs can save millions of lives, and that peace requires courage from leaders willing to defy expectations and take risks for a better future. The Voice of a Generation On March 26, 1920, Charles Scribner's Sons published This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a 23-year-old writer from Minnesota who had been struggling to establish himself. The novel follows Amory Blaine, a privileged young man navigating Princeton, war service, and romantic disappointments while searching for purpose in a world that seemed to have lost its moorings after World War I. Fitzgerald wrote in a style that was conversational, irreverent, and unapologetically modern, capturing how his generation spoke and thought. The novel wasn't perfect—critics noted its structural weaknesses and occasional pretentiousness—but it crackled with energy and authenticity that resonated immediately with young readers who recognized themselves in Amory's restlessness and disillusionment. This Side of Paradise became an instant bestseller, selling out its initial print run within days. Fitzgerald became famous overnight—suddenly he was the voice of his generation, the writer who explained the "Lost Generation" to itself. The success allowed him to marry Zelda Sayre, who had broken their engagement when he seemed unlikely to support her in the style she expected. Fitzgerald and Zelda became symbols of Jazz Age glamour and excess, living the lifestyle Fitzgerald wrote about. The novel demonstrated that great literature doesn't require perfect craftsmanship if it captures something essential about its moment, that sometimes articulating what everyone feels but can't express is more important than technical perfection, and that commercial success and literary significance can occasionally coincide. Fitzgerald would write better books—The Great Gatsby is technically superior—but This Side of Paradise changed American literature by proving that modern fiction could be colloquial, immediate, and honestly youthful without sacrificing intelligence or ambition. The novel gave a generation permission to see their own experiences as worthy of serious literature, not just the experiences of their parents' generation.   Fitzgerald captured Jazz Age youth so perfectly he became its defining voice overnight The Vaccine That Saved a Generation Thirty-three years after Fitzgerald's breakthrough, on March 26, 1953, Dr. Jonas Salk announced that he had developed an effective vaccine against polio. The disease had terrorized American parents for decades, striking seemingly at random during summer months, leaving thousands of children paralyzed or dead. Polio epidemics closed swimming pools and movie theaters; parents kept children indoors during outbreaks; the sight of children in leg braces or iron lungs haunted a generation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself had been paralyzed by polio in 1921. The March of Dimes, founded to fight the disease, had funded Salk's research. His announcement came after years of painstaking work developing a "killed virus" vaccine and testing it on himself, his family, and eventually thousands of children. The largest medical trial in history followed Salk's announcement—1.8 million children participated in tests of the vaccine in 1954. Results announced in April 1955 confirmed: the vaccine worked, was safe, and was 80-90% effective. Salk became an instant hero. Asked who owned the patent, he famously replied, "The people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" Mass vaccination campaigns began immediately. Within two years, polio cases in the U.S. dropped by 85-90%. By 1979, the disease was eliminated from the United States. Salk's vaccine (and later Sabin's oral vaccine) virtually eradicated one of humanity's most feared diseases from most of the world. The triumph demonstrated that scientific research could conquer ancient scourges, that public health campaigns could succeed spectacularly when properly funded and executed, and that some scientists prioritize human welfare over profit. Salk refused to patent his vaccine, forgoing potential billions in royalties to ensure maximum distribution. While Fitzgerald captured a generation's spirit, Salk saved countless members of the next generation from paralysis and death, proving that sometimes the greatest contribution isn't expressing what we feel but preventing what we fear. Salk's vaccine conquered polio, the disease that terrorized parents for generations ❦ When Enemies Chose Peace On March 26, 1979, twenty-six years after Salk's announcement, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a peace treaty on the White House lawn, with President Jimmy Carter serving as witness. The treaty formally ended the state of war that had existed between Israel and Egypt since 1948. The two nations had fought four wars—1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973—with immense costs in lives and resources. The treaty emerged from the Camp David Accords negotiated the previous September, when Carter had essentially locked Begin and Sadat in the presidential retreat until they reached agreement. The peace treaty required enormous courage from both leaders: Israel agreed to return the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt, and Egypt became the first Arab nation to officially recognize Israel. The treaty was immediately controversial. Arab nations condemned Egypt; the Arab League suspended Egypt's membership. Palestinian groups denounced Sadat as a traitor. Israeli right-wing groups protested giving up territory. Yet the peace held. Israel withdrew from Sinai; Egypt maintained diplomatic and trade relations with Israel. Two years after signing, Sadat was assassinated by extremists who considered the treaty a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. Begin faced ongoing criticism but remained committed to the agreement. The Egypt-Israel peace treaty demonstrated that even the bitterest enemies could choose peace over perpetual conflict, that territorial compromise could produce lasting stability, and that leaders willing to take political risks for peace could achieve what seemed impossible. While Fitzgerald had captured a generation's voice and Salk had saved generations from disease, Begin and Sadat showed that generations of enmity could end if leaders possessed sufficient courage. The treaty didn't solve all Middle Eastern conflicts—the Palestinian issue remained unresolved—but it proved that peace between Israel and Arab nations was achievable, setting a precedent that would eventually lead to peace with Jordan and normalized relations with several Gulf states. Sometimes the most revolutionary act is choosing to stop fighting.   On the White House lawn, enemies signed peace that would outlast its architects

March 21: Beauty, Friendship, and the Stories Art Tells On March 21, 2026, Washington, D.C. opens the 114th National Cherry Blossom Festival and New York's MoMA unveils Frida and Diego: The Last Dream — two celebrations of beauty, culture, and the enduring power of art as a bridge between people and nations. On this first full day of spring, two of America's great cultural institutions mark occasions that are, at their heart, about the same thing: the capacity of beauty to outlast conflict, and art's stubborn insistence on connection. In Washington, nearly 4,000 cherry trees ring the Tidal Basin in a canopy of pale pink and white as the National Cherry Blossom Festival opens its 114th celebration of a diplomatic gift that almost never arrived. And in New York, the Museum of Modern Art opens Frida and Diego: The Last Dream — an immersive new exhibition placing the works of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera in a theatrical setting inspired by a new Metropolitan Opera production of their story. Both events invite us to remember that the objects and gestures of culture often outlive everything else. The Trees That Crossed the Pacific The story of Washington's cherry trees begins not with a diplomat but with a journalist. In 1885, Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore — the first woman ever elected to the board of the National Geographic Society — returned from her first trip to Japan and spent the next 24 years petitioning every Army superintendent she could find to plant cherry trees along Washington's reclaimed Potomac waterfront. She was ignored for two decades. Then in 1909, she wrote directly to the new First Lady, Helen Herron Taft. This time, the idea took hold. Tokyo's Mayor Yukio Ozaki — grateful for American mediation in ending the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 — agreed to make the gift official. The first shipment of 2,000 trees arrived in Washington on January 6, 1910, and was immediately destroyed. Agriculture inspectors found them infested with insects, nematodes, and disease. President Taft ordered the entire shipment burned. Mayor Ozaki did not give up. He authorized a second donation — this time 3,020 trees, scions taken from famous specimens along the Arakawa River in Tokyo, carefully grafted and grown in disinfected ground. They arrived by ship in Seattle on February 14, 1912, traveled across the country in heated, insulated railroad cars, and on March 27, 1912, First Lady Helen Herron Taft and Viscountess Iwa Chinda, wife of the Japanese ambassador, planted the first two trees on the north bank of the Tidal Basin. Those two original trees still stand today. The friendship they represent would be tested severely — four of the trees were cut down in the days following Pearl Harbor, and the festival was canceled from 1942 to 1947 while Washington became the nerve center of the Allied war effort. But the trees survived, and so did the tradition. Today's festival marks the 114th anniversary of that original gift, with peak bloom expected between March 29 and April 1.   Nearly 4,000 cherry trees ring Washington's Tidal Basin each spring — the living descendants of 3,020 trees sent from Tokyo in 1912 as a gift of friendship that had to be given twice. The Elephant and the Dove When Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera married in a civil ceremony in Coyoacán on August 21, 1929, her father called it a "marriage between an elephant and a dove" — a reference to their difference in stature, but also, perhaps, in temperament. He was 42, already the most celebrated muralist in Mexico, a man of enormous physical presence and boundless appetites. She was 22, a survivor of childhood polio and a catastrophic bus accident that had shattered her spine and pelvis at 18, who had turned her long recovery into a painting practice of extraordinary intensity. They shared Communist politics, a passion for Mexican identity and pre-Columbian culture, and a volatile intimacy that would produce one divorce, one remarriage, and a combined legacy that reshaped 20th-century art. Today, MoMA opens Frida and Diego: The Last Dream — an exhibition presenting key works by both artists from MoMA's permanent collection in an elaborate theatrical installation designed by Jon Bausor, the set designer of the Metropolitan Opera's new production El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego, which premieres at Lincoln Center in May. The exhibition holds particular resonance for MoMA, whose history is intertwined with both artists. Rivera came to New York in 1931 for a solo exhibition at the museum — one of MoMA's earliest retrospectives — while Kahlo's Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940) and Fulang-Chang and I (1937) have been fixtures in MoMA's collection for decades. Rivera's colossal public murals — painted for the Mexican government, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and famously destroyed at Rockefeller Center when he refused to remove the face of Lenin — aimed to make history visible to the masses. Kahlo's intimate self-portraits, nearly 55 of the 150 paintings she completed, turned inward: chronicling her physical pain, her fractured identity, her impossible longing for the child she could not carry to term. "There have been two great accidents in my life," she once wrote. "The terrible crash — and Diego." Both, she implied, had made her. Frida and Diego: The Last Dream opens today at MoMA, presenting key works from MoMA's collection in a theatrical installation designed in dialogue with the Metropolitan Opera's new production of their story. What connects a grove of cherry trees on the Potomac to two Mexican artists whose tumultuous lives played out in murals and self-portraits? Perhaps this: both endure because they were rooted in something real — in a genuine act of friendship between two nations, and in two artists who refused to paint anything other than the truth as they experienced it. The cherry trees were burned once and survived. Frida Kahlo was largely dismissed during her lifetime and is now considered one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. Diego Rivera's Rockefeller Center mural was destroyed, but the work survived in countless reproductions. Art and beauty have a way of outlasting the forces arrayed against them. On this first full day of spring, Washington and New York offer two reminders of exactly that.