Keisai Eisen was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist who specialised in bijin-ga. His best works, including his ōkubi-e, are considered to be masterpieces of the "decadent" Bunsei Era. He was also known as Ikeda Eisen, and wrote under the name of Ippitsuan.

Alain Berset is a Swiss politician serving as a member of the Federal Council since 2012. A member of the Social Democratic Party, he has served as head of the Federal Department of Home Affairs since his election. From 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018, he served as President of the Swiss Confederation; at age 45, Berset was the youngest President of the Confederation since Marcel Pilet-Golaz in 1934.

Before being elected to the Federal Council in 2011, he was a member of the Council of States for the canton of Fribourg, serving as the chamber's president during the 2008–2009 term. Berset speaks Swiss German, Standard German, French, Italian, Romansh and English.

On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory. The single-seat aircraft, flown by pilot Francis Gary Powers, was hit by an S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missile and crashed near Sverdlovsk. Powers parachuted safely and was captured.

Initially, the US authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA, but were forced to admit the mission's true purpose when a few days later the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases taken during the mission.

The incident occurred during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the premiership of Nikita Khrushchev, around two weeks before the scheduled opening of an east–west summit in Paris. It caused great embarrassment to the United States and prompted a marked deterioration in its relations with the Soviet Union, already strained by the ongoing Cold War.