Everett Shinn was an American realist painter and member of the Ashcan School. He also exhibited with the short-lived group known as "The Eight," who protested the restrictive exhibition policies of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design. He is best known for his robust paintings of urban life in New York and London, a hallmark of Ashcan art, and for his theater and residential murals and interior-design projects. His style varied considerably over the years, from gritty and realistic to decorative and rococo.

Mihail G. Cantacuzino was a Romanian politician. After receiving doctorates in Law and Literature from the University of Paris, he became a prominent member of the Conservative Party. He served as Mayor of Bucharest from 1904 to 1907 and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Ialomița County in 1909. He was Justice Minister from December 1910 to January 1914 and again from December 1916 to January 1918 in the national unity government of Ion I. C. Brătianu. In 1922, together with other members of the late Take Ionescu's Conservative-Democratic Party, he joined the Romanian National Party, becoming its vice president for the former Old Kingdom.

The eldest son of Gheorghe Grigore Cantacuzino and brother of Grigore Gheorghe Cantacuzino, he married Maria Rosetti-Tescanu on November 26, 1898. He was a notorious womanizer and the marriage was an unhappy one, but it did allow the vain Maruca to use the title of "Princess Cantacuzino", which she retained until her death in 1969.

The Expedition of the Thousand was an event of the Italian Risorgimento that took place in 1860. A corps of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto, near Genoa and landed in Marsala, Sicily, in order to conquer the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, ruled by the House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.

The project was an ambitious and risky venture aiming to conquer, with a thousand men, a kingdom with a larger regular army and a more powerful navy. The expedition was a success and concluded with a plebiscite that brought Naples and Sicily into the Kingdom of Sardinia, the last territorial conquest before the creation of the Kingdom of Italy on 17 March 1861.

The sea venture was the only desired action that was jointly decided by the "four fathers of the nation" Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel II, and Camillo Cavour, pursuing divergent goals. However, the Expedition was instigated by Francesco Crispi, who utilized his political influence to bolster the Italian unification project.