Fifty-nine years ago today, legal apartheid in America came to an abrupt end. President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation from the East Room of the White House:

"I am about to sign into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964 …. Let us close the springs of racial poison."

Afterward, ours was a changed nation, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The back of Jim Crow, with its false promise of "separate but equal" public accommodations, was broken, as America fulfilled its most sacred ideal: "All men are created equal."

Since then, the Civil Rights Act has become as fundamental to our national identity as any of our founding documents, deeply rooted in the fabric of a nation that strives to be "more perfect" and to move ever forward.

Exactly 1,000 years ago this month, construction started on a magnificent island building off the coast of France that, as it rose improbably from the choppy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, would become a lasting symbol of national fortitude.

The medieval abbey atop Mont Saint-Michel, a cascade of walls and buttresses descending from a lofty central spire, was a spectacular creation which has played crucial roles in French history over the centuries.

Today, as it marks a millennium since work began, it’s one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions outside of Paris – at times overwhelmed by its own popularity to such a degree that its custodians have urged people to stay away.

The abbey, which lies off the coast of France’s Normandy region, west of Paris, has pulled in legions of pilgrims over the centuries. Today, it attracts 1.3 million tourists each year.