- The year that read the same upside down was 1961. That won't happen again until 6009.
- You share your birthday with at least 9 million other people in the world.
Franz Anton Maulbertsch was an Austrian painter and engraver, one of the most renowned exponents of roccoco painting in the German region.
Maulbertsch was born in Langenargen and studied in the Academy of Vienna. Through the knowledge of Paul Troger, he was influenced by the Venetian painters Piazzetta and Giovanni Battista Pittoni. He also studied the frescoes by Sebastiano Ricci in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, and frequented Giambattista Tiepolo, who was active in Würzburg starting from 1750.
An appreciated frescoer, he received numerous commissions, mostly of ecclesiastical theme. He produced art for churches in Bicske, Kalocsa, Vienna’s Michaelerkirche and Piaristenkirche Maria Treu. He also decorated the Porta Coeli in Moravia, the Kroměříž Archbishop's Palace and the villa of Halbturn.
Heydar Alirza oglu Aliyev was an Azerbaijani politician who served as the third President of Azerbaijan from October 1993 to October 2003. As national president he held constitutional powers, but his influence on Azerbaijani politics had begun years earlier. As a young man he had joined the Azerbaijan SSR People's Commissariat for State Security and quickly rose to the rank of Major-General.
The regime established by Heydar Aliyev in Azerbaijan has been described as dictatorial, authoritarian, and repressive. Political commentators highlight that Aliyev ran a heavy-handed police state, that he rigged elections and muzzled the media whereas others emphasize that his balanced policy brought stability to Azerbaijan.
The occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II (1939–1945) began with the German-Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, and it was formally concluded with the defeat of Germany by the Allies in May 1945. Throughout the entire course of the occupation, the territory of Poland was divided between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union both of which intended to eradicate Poland's culture and subjugate its people. In the summer-autumn of 1941, the lands which were annexed by the Soviets were overrun by Germany in the course of the initially successful German attack on the USSR. After a few years of fighting, the Red Army drove the German forces out of the USSR and crossed into Poland from the rest of Central and Eastern Europe.
Sociologist Tadeusz Piotrowski argues that both occupying powers were hostile to the existence of Poland's sovereignty, people, and the culture and aimed to destroy them. Before Operation Barbarossa, Germany and the Soviet Union coordinated their Poland-related policies, most visibly in the four Gestapo–NKVD conferences, where the occupiers discussed their plans to deal with the Polish resistance movement