Félix González-Torres was a Cuban-born American visual artist. González-Torres's openly gay sexual orientation is often seen as influential in his work as an artist. González-Torres was known for his minimal installations and sculptures in which he used materials such as strings of lightbulbs, clocks, stacks of paper, or packaged hard candies. In 1987, he joined Group Material, a New York-based group of artists whose intention was to work collaboratively, adhering to principles of cultural activism and community education. González-Torres's 1992 piece "Untitled" sold for $4.6 million at Phillips de Pury & Company in 2010, a record for the artist at auction.

Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin, born de Gallatin was an American politician, diplomat, ethnologist and linguist. He is known for being the founder of New York University and for serving in the Democratic-Republican Party at various federal elective and appointed positions across four decades. He represented Pennsylvania in the Senate and the House of Representatives before becoming the longest-tenured United States Secretary of the Treasury and serving as a high-ranking diplomat.

Gallatin was born in Geneva in present-day Switzerland and spoke French as a first language. He immigrated to the United States in the 1780s, settling in western Pennsylvania. He served as a delegate to the 1789 Pennsylvania constitutional convention and won election to the Pennsylvania General Assembly. An opponent of Alexander Hamilton's economic policies, Gallatin was elected to the United States Senate in 1793. However, he was removed from office on a party-line vote after a protest raised by his opponents suggested he did not meet the required nine years of citizenship. Returning to Pennsylvania, Gallatin helped calm many angry farmers during the Whiskey Rebellion.

Korabl-Sputnik 1, also known as Sputnik 4 in the West, was the first test flight of the Soviet Vostok programme, and the first Vostok spacecraft. It was launched on May 15, 1960. Though Korabl-Sputnik 1 was unmanned, it was a precursor to the first human spaceflight, Vostok 1. Its mass was 4,540 kilograms, of which 1,477 kilograms was instrumentation. A bug in the guidance system had pointed the capsule in the wrong direction, so instead of dropping into the atmosphere the satellite moved into a higher orbit. The descent module re-entered the atmosphere on September 6, 1962. A 20 pound piece, still warm, was found in the middle of North 8th Street by two city police officers in Manitowoc, Wisconsin in the northern United States. An annual commemoration, "Sputnikfest", is now held near the same date each year at the Rahr-West Museum, located within a few dozen feet of the impact site.

This spacecraft, the first of a series of spacecraft used to investigate the means for manned space flight, contained scientific instruments, a television system, and a self-sustaining biological cabin with a dummy of a man.