Wolfgang Lettl was a surrealist painter who was born and who died in Augsburg, Germany.

In 1939, at the age of 20, Wolfgang joined the German Army and served as a communications officer in occupied Paris from 1940 to 1943, during which time he worked on his watercolours and first became exposed to surrealism. Later in the war, he became a reconnaissance airman in Norway, where he was captured at the end of the war and held for four months.

He returned to Augsburg in 1945, and worked there as a freelance painter from 1945 to 1948. In 1949, however, the currency reform forced him to turn to construction work to make ends meet. He continued working on his landscapes, portraits and surrealist art while working construction jobs and odd jobs. From 1954 onwards, he was able to concentrate on his art.

Alger Hiss was an American government official who was accused of spying for the Soviet Union in 1948, but statutes of limitations had expired for espionage. He was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial he was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department official and as a U.N. official. In later life he worked as a lecturer and author.

On August 3, 1948, Whittaker Chambers, a former U.S. Communist Party member, testified under subpoena before the House Un-American Activities Committee that Hiss had secretly been a communist while in federal service. Hiss categorically denied the charge. During the pretrial discovery process, Chambers produced new evidence indicating that he and Hiss had been involved in espionage. A federal grand jury indicted Hiss on two counts of perjury. After a mistrial due to a hung jury, Hiss was tried a second time, and in January 1950 he was found guilty and received two concurrent five-year sentences, of which he eventually served three and a half years.

The Battle of Legnano was a battle between the imperial army of Frederick Barbarossa and the troops of the Lombard League on May 29, 1176, near the town of Legnano in present-day Lombardy, in Italy. Although the presence of the enemy nearby was already known to both sides, they suddenly met without having time to plan any strategy.

The battle was crucial in the long war waged by the Holy Roman Empire in an attempt to assert its power over the municipalities of Northern Italy, which decided to set aside their mutual rivalries and join in a military alliance symbolically led by Pope Alexander III, the Lombard League.

The battle ended the fifth and last descent into Italy of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who after the defeat tried to resolve the Italian question by adopting a diplomatic approach. This resulted a few years later in the Peace of Constance, with which the Emperor recognized the Lombard League and made administrative, political, and judicial concessions to the municipalities, officially ending his attempt to dominate Northern Italy.