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Pope John Paul II (Latin: Ioannes Paulus II; Italian: Giovanni Paolo II; Polish: Jan PaweÅ‚ II; born Karol Józef WojtyÅ‚a; 18 May 1920 – 2 April 2005) served as Pope and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 to 2005.
Poland: Engraved portrait of Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer and mathematician, c. 1850. Nicolaus Copernicus (19 February 1473 - 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance astronomer and mathematician from Royal Prussia, part of the Kingdom of Poland. Copernicus was a polyglot and polymath, and obtained a doctorate in canon law. Throughout his life, he served also as a governor, diplomat, economist, physician, translator and classic scholar.
Nicolaus Copernicus (German: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than the Earth at its center. The publication of this model in his book <i>De revolutionibus orbium coelestium</i> (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) just before his death in 1543 is considered a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution.<br/><br/> Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been a part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. He was a polyglot and polymath, obtaining a doctorate in canon law and also practising as a physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat and economist.
Felix Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet secret police forces; serving as their director from 1917 to 1926. Later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats; while being the chief of the Soviet secret police.<br/><br/> The Cheka soon became notorious for mass summary executions; performed especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil War.
'Nazi plunder' refers to art theft and other items stolen as a result of the organized looting of European countries during the time of the Third Reich by agents acting on behalf of the ruling Nazi Party of Germany. Plundering occurred from 1933 until the end of World War II, although most plunder was acquired during the war. In addition to gold, silver and currency, cultural items of great significance were stolen, including paintings, ceramics, books, and religious treasures.<br/><br/> Although most of these items were recovered by agents of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program (MFAA), affectionately referred to as the Monuments Men, on behalf of the Allies immediately following the war, many are still missing.
Moses Wilhelm Shapira was born in 1830 to Polish-Jewish parents in Kamenets-Podolski, which at the time was part of Russian-annexed Poland (in modern-day Ukraine). Shapira's father emigrated to Ottoman Palestine and in 1856, at the age of 25, Moses Shapira followed.<br/><br/> On the way, while in Bucharest, Moses Shapira converted to Christianity and applied for German citizenship. Once in Jerusalem, he joined the community of Anglican missionaries and converts and in 1861 opened a store in the Street of the Christians, today's Christian Quarter Road. He sold the usual religious souvenirs enjoyed by pilgrims, as well as ancient pots he acquired from Arab farmers.<br/><br/> In 1883 Shapira presented what is now known as the Shapira Strips, a supposedly ancient scroll written on leather strips which he claimed had been found near the Dead Sea. The Hebrew text hinted at a different version of Deuteronomy, including a surprising eleventh commandment. Shapira sought to sell them to the British Museum for a million pounds, and allowed them to exhibit two of the 15 strips. The exhibition was attended by thousands.<br/><br/> After close examination, French scholar Clermont-Ganneau declared them to be forgeries. Soon afterward British biblical scholar Christian David Ginsburg came to the same conclusion. Later Clermont-Ganneau showed that the leather of the Deuteronomy scroll was quite possibly cut from the margin of a genuine Yemenite scroll that Shapira had previously sold to the Museum.<br/><br/> Shapira fled London in despair, his name ruined and all of his hopes crashed. Six months later, on March 9, 1884 he shot himself in Hotel Bloemendaal in Rotterdam.
Anna Maria Elisabeth Lisinska Jerichau-Baumann (November 21, 1819 – July 11, 1881, Copenhagen) was a Polish-Danish painter. She was married to the sculptor Jens Adolf Jerichau.<br/><br/> Fellah (Arabic: fallah, plural Fellahin) is a peasant, farmer or agricultural labourer in the Middle East and North Africa. The word derives from the Arabic word for ploughman or tiller.
Felix Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet secret police forces; serving as their director from 1917 to 1926. Later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats; while being the chief of the Soviet secret police.<br/><br/> The Cheka soon became notorious for mass summary executions; performed especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil War.
Lady with an Ermine (Italian: Dama con l'ermellino) is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci from around 1489–1490. The subject of the portrait is Cecilia Gallerani, painted at a time when she was the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and Leonardo was in the service of the duke.<br/><br/> The painting is displayed at Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, Poland.
Moses Wilhelm Shapira was born in 1830 to Polish-Jewish parents in Kamenets-Podolski, which at the time was part of Russian-annexed Poland (in modern-day Ukraine). Shapira's father emigrated to Ottoman Palestine and in 1856, at the age of 25, Moses Shapira followed.<br/><br/> On the way, while in Bucharest, Moses Shapira converted to Christianity and applied for German citizenship. Once in Jerusalem, he joined the community of Anglican missionaries and converts and in 1861 opened a store in the Street of the Christians, today's Christian Quarter Road. He sold the usual religious souvenirs enjoyed by pilgrims, as well as ancient pots he acquired from Arab farmers.<br/><br/> In 1883 Shapira presented what is now known as the Shapira Strips, a supposedly ancient scroll written on leather strips which he claimed had been found near the Dead Sea. The Hebrew text hinted at a different version of Deuteronomy, including a surprising eleventh commandment. Shapira sought to sell them to the British Museum for a million pounds, and allowed them to exhibit two of the 15 strips. The exhibition was attended by thousands.<br/><br/> After close examination, French scholar Clermont-Ganneau declared them to be forgeries. Soon afterward British biblical scholar Christian David Ginsburg came to the same conclusion. Later Clermont-Ganneau showed that the leather of the Deuteronomy scroll was quite possibly cut from the margin of a genuine Yemenite scroll that Shapira had previously sold to the Museum.<br/><br/> Shapira fled London in despair, his name ruined and all of his hopes crashed. Six months later, on March 9, 1884 he shot himself in Hotel Bloemendaal in Rotterdam.
Frederic Francois Chopin (22 February or 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849), born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era, who wrote primarily for the solo piano.<br/><br/> He gained and has maintained renown worldwide as one of the leading musicians of his era.
Felix Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet secret police forces; serving as their director from 1917 to 1926. Later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats; while being the chief of the Soviet secret police.<br/><br/> The Cheka soon became notorious for mass summary executions; performed especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil War.
Constantine I (272-337), also known as Constantine the Great and Saint Constantine, was the son of Emperor Constantius. His father sent him east to serve under Emperors Diocletian and Galerius, spending some time in the court of the latter. After his father died in 306 CE, Constantine was proclaimed his successor and emperor by his army at Eboracum (York).<br/><br/> He at first remained officially neutral in the efforts of Emperor Galerius to defeat the usurper Maxentius, but after Galerius' death, Constantine was dragged into the conflict. He eventually defeated Maxentius in 312 CE, and then fought against his erstwhile ally, Emperor Licinius, for sole control of both western and eastern portions of the Roman Empire. Licinius was defeated in 324 CE, and Constantine became emperor of a united empire.<br/><br/> Constantine enacted many reforms strengthening the empire, ending the tetrarchy system and restructuring government. He became the first emperor to claim conversion to Christianity, and he called the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, overseeing the profession of the Nicene Creed. He renamed Byzantium to Constantinople after himself, which would become the new capital. He died in 337 CE.
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 Berdichev, Ukraine – 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist who wrote in English, after settling in England.<br/><br/> Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honour. Conrad was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors.<br/><br/> Films have been adapted from or inspired by Conrad's Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rover, The Shadow Line, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Almayer's Folly.<br/><br/> Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a worldwide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul.
Frederic Francois Chopin (22 February or 1 March 1810 – 17 October 1849), born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era, who wrote primarily for the solo piano.<br/><br/> He gained and has maintained renown worldwide as one of the leading musicians of his era.
Felix Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet secret police forces; serving as their director from 1917 to 1926. Later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats; while being the chief of the Soviet secret police.<br/><br/> The Cheka soon became notorious for mass summary executions; performed especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil War.
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent farmers in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union. The word kulak originally referred to independent farmers in the Russian Empire who emerged from the peasantry and became wealthy following the Stolypin reform, which began in 1906. The label of kulak was broadened in 1918 to include any peasant who resisted handing over their grain to detachments from Moscow.<br/><br/> According to the political theory of Marxism–Leninism of the early 20th century, the kulaks were class enemies of the poorer peasants. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin described them as 'bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine'. Marxism–Leninism had intended a revolution to liberate poor peasants and farm laborers alongside the proletariat. In addition, the planned economy of Soviet Bolshevism required the collectivisation of farms and land to allow industrialisation or conversion to large-scale agricultural production. In practice, government officials violently seized kulak farms and murdered resisters; others were deported to labor camps.
Photograph from Jürgen Stroop Report to Heinrich Himmler from May 1943, one of the most infamous and distressing pictures of World War II.
Felix Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet secret police forces; serving as their director from 1917 to 1926. Later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats; while being the chief of the Soviet secret police.<br/><br/> The Cheka soon became notorious for mass summary executions; performed especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil War.
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 Berdichev, Ukraine – 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist who wrote in English, after settling in England.<br/><br/> Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honour. Conrad was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors.<br/><br/> Films have been adapted from or inspired by Conrad's Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rover, The Shadow Line, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Almayer's Folly.<br/><br/> Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a worldwide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul.
David Ben-Gurion, born David Grün; (16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary founder and the first Prime Minister of Israel.<br/><br/> Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946. As head of the Jewish Agency, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he became the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in The British Mandate of Palestine.<br/><br/> On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write. Ben-Gurion led Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Subsequently, he became known as 'Israel's founding father'.
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 Berdichev, Ukraine – 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist who wrote in English, after settling in England.<br/><br/> Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honour. Conrad was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors.<br/><br/> Films have been adapted from or inspired by Conrad's Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rover, The Shadow Line, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Almayer's Folly.<br/><br/> Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a worldwide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul.
In 1772, following the First Partition of Poland, Lvov was annexed by Austria. Known in German as Lemberg, the city became the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. The city grew dramatically under Austrian rule, increasing in population from approximately 30,000 at the time of Austrian annexation in 1772 to 206,100 by 1910. In the early stage of World War I, Lviv was captured by the Russian army in September 1914 but retaken by Austria–Hungary in June the following year. Lviv and its population therefore suffered greatly during the World War as many of the offensives were fought across its local geography causing significant collateral damage and disruption.
World War One was to have a devastating impact on Russia. When World War One started in August 1914, Russia responded by patriotically rallying around Nicholas II.<br/><br/> Military disasters at the Masurian Lakes and Tannenburg greatly weakened the Russian Army in the initial phases of the war. The growing influence of Gregory Rasputin over the Romanov’s did a great deal to damage the royal family and by the end of the spring of 1917, the Romanovs, who had ruled Russia for just over 300 years, were no longer in charge of a Russia that had been taken over by Kerensky and the Provisional Government.<br/><br/> By the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks led by Lenin had taken power in the major cities of Russia and introduced communist rule in those areas it controlled. The transition in Russia over the space of four years was remarkable – the fall of an autocracy and the establishment of the world’s first communist government.
The Polish–Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921) was an armed conflict that pitted Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic over the control of an area equivalent to today's Ukraine and parts of modern-day Belarus. At some points the war also threatened Poland's existence as an independent state. It followed on from the Soviet westward offensive of 1918–19.<br/><br/> A formal peace treaty, the Peace of Riga, was signed on 18 March 1921, dividing the disputed territories between Poland and Soviet Russia. The war largely determined the Soviet–Polish border for the period between the World Wars. Much of the territory ceded to Poland in the Treaty of Riga became part of the Soviet Union after World War II, when Poland's eastern borders were redefined by the Allies in close accordance with the British-drawn Curzon Line of 1920.
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 Berdichev, Ukraine – 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist who wrote in English, after settling in England.<br/><br/> Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honour. Conrad was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors.<br/><br/> Films have been adapted from or inspired by Conrad's Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rover, The Shadow Line, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Almayer's Folly.<br/><br/> Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a worldwide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul.
Copernican heliocentrism is the name given to the astronomical model developed by Nicolaus Copernicus and published in 1543. It positioned the Sun near the center of the Universe, motionless, with Earth and the other planets rotating around it in circular paths modified by epicycles and at uniform speeds.<br/><br/> The Copernican model departed from the Ptolemaic system that prevailed in Western culture for centuries, placing Earth at the center of the Universe, and is often regarded as the launching point to modern astronomy and the Scientific Revolution.
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 Berdichev, Ukraine – 3 August 1924) was a Polish novelist who wrote in English, after settling in England.<br/><br/> Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, although he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (and then always with a marked Polish accent). He wrote stories and novels, predominantly with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit by the demands of duty and honour. Conrad was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature. While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors.<br/><br/> Films have been adapted from or inspired by Conrad's Victory, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, An Outcast of the Islands, The Rover, The Shadow Line, The Duel, Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, and Almayer's Folly.<br/><br/> Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a worldwide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul.