“Maria Rosaria (Mara) Carfagna (born December 18, 1975 in Salerno) is an Italian politician and former showgirl and topless model. After obtaining a degree in law, Carfagna worked for several years on Italian television shows and as a model. She later entered politics and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Forza Italia party in 2006. On May 8, 2008, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi appointed her Minister for Equal Opportunity, a move that received international attention due to her background and her appearance. Carfagna has been called «The most beautiful minister in the world», and was ranked number one on Maxim's «World´s Hottest Politicians»”.

Photo: Minister Mara Carfagna attends a press conference for the Pink Box Project held at Palazzo Marino on November 24, 2008 in Milan, Italy. The Pink Box is a tracking device, designed to help women drivers in danger. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images). MILAN, ITALY – NOVEMBER 24 2008

“Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian-born, naturalized French, later naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1934 and a naturalized US citizen in 1945. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Composer Igor Stravinsky (right) and impresario Sergei Diaghilev in Seville during their Ballets Russes collaboration. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). 1921

“Itasha (痛車), literally “painmobile”, is a Japanese term for an otaku fad of individuals decorating the bodies of their cars with fictional characters of anime, manga, or video games (especially bishōjo game or eroge). These characters are predominately “cute” female. The decorations usually involve paint schemes and stickers. Automobiles are called Itasha, while similar motorcycles and bicycles are called itansha (痛単車) and itachari (痛チャリ), respectively”. – Wikipedia


Photo: A visitor takes pictures of an anime-decorated «Itasha» car displayed during the “Moe Fes in Washimiya” at Washimiya Town Hall on July 18, 2009 in Washimiya, Saitama, Japan. Itasha, a word derived from “itai” (painful) and “sha” (car), are vehicles decorated with mostly female characters from Japanese manga, anime and video games. (Photo by Kiyoshi Ota/Getty Images)

“Solar Impulse is a European long-range solar powered plane project being undertaken by Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg. The project eventually hopes to succeed in the first circling of the earth with a piloted fixed-wing aircraft using only solar power. The first aircraft, bearing the Swiss aircraft registration code of HB-SIA, is a single-seater, capable of taking off under its own power, and intended to remain airborne up to 36 hours. This aircraft first flew an entire diurnal solar cycle, including nearly 9 hours of night flying, in a 26-hour flight on 7–8 July 2010”. – Wikipedia


Photo: Workers prepare the Solar Impulse airplane HB-SIA for a first runway test on November 19, 2009 in Dubendorf, Switzerland. Solar Impulse chairman Bertrand Piccard, psychatrist and aeronaut, who made the first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight, and CEO and former fighter pilot Andrй Borschberg plan a round-the-world flight, driven only by solar energy, for 2012. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

“The Greek Civil War was fought from 1945 to 1949 between the Greek governmental army, backed by the United Kingdom and United States, and the Democratic Army of Greece (ΔΣΕ) (Greek initials DSE), the military branch of the Greek Communist Party (KKE), backed by Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania. It was the result of a highly polarized struggle between leftists and rightists which started in 1943 and targeted the power vacuum that the German-Italian occupation during World War II had created. One of the first conflicts of the Cold War, according to some analysts it represents the first example of a postwar Western interference in the internal politics of a foreign country, and for others, marked the first serious test of the theory of the so-called Churchill-Stalin percentages agreement. The first signs of the civil war occurred in 1942–1944, during the Occupation”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A Greek commando soldier, wearing a fur-collared jacket supplied by the Americans, waits for a guerrilla target to emerge during the Greek Civil War. (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Getty Images). 22nd May 1948

“SpaceShipOne was a suborbital air-launched spaceplane that completed the first manned private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. Its mothership was named “White Knight”. Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Paul Allen and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aviation company. Allen provided the funding of approximately US$25 million”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A chase plane follows SpaceShipOne after it reached a height of 62 miles in the first non-governmental flight to leave the Earth's atmosphere on June 21, 2004 in Mojave, California. SpaceShipOne spacecraft was carried to a height of 50,000 by the twin-turbojet high-altitude research aircraft, “White Knight”, where it was launched for its final climb. The space effort was funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and headed by aerospace engineer Burt Rutan. (Photo by Jim Campbell-Pool/Getty Images)

“Rapa das Bestas is the name of an operation that involves cutting the manes of the horses that are performed in the curros (enclosed which retain the horses) held in various locations in Galicia (Spain).

The best known is the Rapa das Bestas of Sabucedo, in the city hall of A Estrada, which lasts three days: the First Saturday, Sunday and Monday in July. In fact, the name given to the celebration (Rapa das Bestas of Sabucedo), while in most places speaking about curros, including curros de Valga, etc”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A wild horse leaps up during the Rapa das Bestas (shearing of the beasts) festival on July 2, 2011 in Sabucedo, Spain. Hundreds of wild horses are rounded up from the mountains and trimmed and marked in the corral. (Photo by Denis Doyle/Getty Images)

“Friedrich Christian Anton “Fritz” Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the “Master of Darkness” by the British Film Institute. His most famous films are the groundbreaking «Metropolis» (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and «M», made before he moved to the United States, his iconic precursor to the film noir genre”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Director Fritz Lang (right) and crew members inspect the robot from the film “Metropolis”, which is made to resemble the saintly Maria. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images). Circa 1926