1. the northern constellation Ursa Minor; also : North Star
2. one that serves to direct or guide
3. a center of attraction or attention

Aleksei Yeliseyevich Kruchyonykh, a well-known poet of the Russian "Silver Age", was perhaps the most radical poet of Russian Futurism, a movement that included Vladimir Mayakovsky, David Burliuk and others. Together with Velimir Khlebnikov, Kruchenykh is considered the inventor of zaum. Kruchyonykh wrote the libretto for the Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun, with sets provided by Kazimir Malevich. He married Olga Rozanova, an avant-garde artist, in 1912; four years later, in 1916, he created his most famous book, Universal War.

He is also known for his Declaration of the Word as Such: "The worn-out, violated word "lily" is devoid of all expression. Therefore I call the lily éuy – and original purity is restored."

The Russian punk band Grazhdanskaya Oborona have a reggae-styled song called "Posveshtenie A. Kruchyonykh" on their 1990 concept album Instruktsiya po vyzhivaniyu.

Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans", is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War, and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. She was born to Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée, a peasant family, at Domrémy in northeast France. Joan claimed to have received visions of the archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The unanointed King Charles VII sent Joan to the Siege of Orléans as part of a relief army. She gained prominence after the siege was lifted only nine days later. Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII's consecration at Reims. This long-awaited event boosted French morale and paved the way for the final French victory.

On 23 May 1430, she was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction, a group of French nobles allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English and put on trial by the pro-English bishop Pierre Cauchon on a variety of charges.

The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 was a culmination of skirmishes that took place between April 1965 and September 1965 between Pakistan and India. The conflict began following Pakistan's Operation Gibraltar, which was designed to infiltrate forces into Jammu and Kashmir to precipitate an insurgency against Indian rule. India retaliated by launching a full-scale military attack on West Pakistan. The seventeen-day war caused thousands of casualties on both sides and witnessed the largest engagement of armored vehicles and the largest tank battle since World War II. Hostilities between the two countries ended after a United Nations-mandated ceasefire was declared following diplomatic intervention by the Soviet Union and the United States, and the subsequent issuance of the Tashkent Declaration. Much of the war was fought by the countries' land forces in Kashmir and along the border between India and Pakistan. This war saw the largest amassing of troops in Kashmir since the Partition of India in 1947, a number that was overshadowed only during the 2001–2002 military standoff between India and Pakistan.