Interface

I think that I have the interface pretty much nailed! It's fairly intuitive—

Menus and timeline navigation will always be on the left.

Information: text and images, will always be to the right and will correlate to whatever period of time you have selected in the timeline/navigation.

There will be a help button on the top which will bring up an overlay over the site which will use arrows and brief written explanations to show the user how the site works and where to find the information (which I feel is pretty self evident, but just in case...)

You can browse the timeline for information by Topic if you wish—selecting a topic will hight-light points on the timeline that contain relevant information. Otherwise as you hover over dates within the timeline on the top right there will be a brief overview of what happened that year. One image that relates to that year will display below the overview. This way the user can quickly scroll through time and easily scan information. If the user would like to delve into more information about a year they simply select "Learn More"—which will flip to the back of the large picture box where the user will find body copy as well as a grid of images to select from.

The time-line will have light reflections moving inward to create the sense of it being a vortex/tunnel with depth. These reflections also help create the illusion that the time-line is an eye—which are the reason we see depth and 3D in the first place.