Who makes history? I analyzed 29,000 New York Times obituaries to find out. OC: Earlier this month, I [posted](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1sklv8t/i_built_an_explorer_of_25_years_of_new_york_times/) a dashboard for exploring 2.2 million New York Times articles going back to 2000. I’ve now added a way to explore all **29,000 obituaries** the paper has published during that period, and it reveals a lot about who makes history. An estimated 1.5 billion people have died worldwide since 2000, so the Times has memorialized roughly **0.0019%** of them. The number of obituaries rose briefly during COVID but has not grown much overall, despite the expansion of celebrity culture. Very few obituary subjects were under 25. **The youngest** was [Shannon Tavarez](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/theater/03tavarez.html), the 11-year-old who played Nala in *The Lion King*.…