Piero Fornasetti was an Italian versatile and eclectic artist, characterised by an unstoppable creative flair that made him one of the most prolific figures of the 20th century, and difficult to ascribe to a specific movement.

James Roosevelt II was an American businessman, Marine, activist, and Democratic Party politician. The oldest son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, he received the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism while serving as a Marine Corps officer during World War II. He served as an official Secretary to the President and in the United States House of Representatives representing California.

The Bengal famine of 1943 was a famine in the Bengal province of British India during World War II. An estimated 2.1–3 million, out of a population of 60.3 million, died of starvation, malaria, or other diseases aggravated by malnutrition, population displacement, unsanitary conditions and lack of health care. Millions were impoverished as the crisis overwhelmed large segments of the economy and catastrophically disrupted the social fabric. Eventually, families disintegrated; men sold their small farms and left home to look for work or to join the army, and women and children became homeless migrants, often travelling to Calcutta or another large city in search of organised relief. Historians have frequently characterised the famine as "man-made", asserting that wartime colonial policies created and then exacerbated the crisis. A minority view holds that the famine arose instead from natural causes.

Bengal's economy had been predominantly agrarian, with between half and three-quarters of the rural poor subsisting in a "semi-starved condition".