A pregnant woman poses on June 19, 2018 in Vertou, western France. France had an estimated population of 68.4 million by January 1, 2024, representing a further year-on-year increase of 0.3 percent, limited by a marked drop in the birth rate, the INSEE national statistics bureau of France reported on January 16, 2024. In 2023, 678,000 babies were born in France, 6.6 percent fewer than the previous year, the lowest number of births in any year since 1946. Over the same period, there were 631,000 deaths, down 6.5 percent on 2022, a year marked by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and episodes of extreme heat. (Photo by Loic Venance/AFP Photo)

Chinese Kazakh eagle hunters sit on horseback as they travel to a local competition on January 29, 2015 in the mountains of Qinghe County, Xinjiang, northwestern China. The festival, organised by the local hunting community, is part of an effort to promote and grow traditional hunting practices for new generations in the mountainous region of western China that borders Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. The training and handling of the large birds of prey follows a strict set of ancient rules that Kazakh eagle hunters are preserving for future generations. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Women in yukatas, or casual summer kimonos, take their selfie in front of paper lanterns during the annual Mitama Festival at the Yasukuni Shrine, where more than 2.4 million war dead are enshrined, in Tokyo, Japan July 13, 2017. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

June 21: “World War Z”. Brad Pitt battles zombie apocalypse in $170 million film by “Quantum of Solace” director Marc Forster. This publicity photo released by Paramount Pictures shows, center, Brad Pitt as Gerald Lane in a scene from the film, “World War Z”, from Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions in association with Hemisphere Media Capital and GK Films. (Photo by Jaap Buitendijk/AP Photo/Paramount Pictures)

French photographer and director Romain Laurent started making portrait-based GIFs as a way to produce work outside his commercial jobs, a spontaneous project that would encourage him to produce consistently for himself rather than clients.

American rapper Ashnikko poses as she arrives for the Brit Awards at the O2 Arena in London, Britain on February 11, 2023. (Photo by Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters)

For more than a century, the Barcelona skyline has been graced (or marred, depending on who’s talking) by the spectacle of the Basilica designed by Anton Gaudi, first started in 1882. If you want to know what it’ll look like when finished, don’t fret — 2026 is right around the corner. Or you can watch this video, released last week on YouTube by Basílica de la Sagrada Família and titled simply “2026 We Build Tomorrow,” a 3-D artists’ rendering of the building stages through completion.
(If 144 years sounds like a long time to finish a cathedral, keep in mind that there were decades that they didn’t work on it — and that Notre Dame de Paris took 182 years, although the 13th century Parisians didn’t have diesel-powered industrial cranes.) Now, if only the video could show us what the admission and hours will be in 2026 (and how to avoid the inevitable long lines).

“Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, screenwriter, author, playwright, journalist, poet, comedian, television presenter and film director, and a director of Norwich City Football Club. He first came to attention in the 1981 Cambridge Footlights Revue presentation “The Cellar Tapes”, which also included Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson and Tony Slattery. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie, and the duo also played the title roles in Jeeves and Wooster”. – Wikipedia

Photo: English comic Stephen Fry hosts the comedy revue “Hysteria 3” in support of the Terrence Higgins Trust, 1991. (Photo by Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)