Top 10 politics facts

He wanted to impress Jodie Foster. Hinckley became obsessed with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which a disturbed protagonist plots to assassinate a presidential candidate. Failing to develop any meaningful contact with Jodie Foster, who played a child prostitute in the film, Hinckley developed a plot to assassinate the president to get her attention.

Chinese Taipei. The People's Republic of China opposes the use of "Republic of China" or the common name "Taiwan" for the country because it would imply an acceptance of Taiwan as a sovereign state. The Taiwanese also rejected "Taiwan" as they officially still claim the sole legitimate government of all of China.

Mao Tse-Tung. In 1966, all regions across China were ordered to build hundreds of new printing houses to publish the "Quotations of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung". The most popular versions were printed in small sizes that could be easily carried and were bound in bright red covers, becoming commonly known in the West as the Little Red Book. The book was printed in about 1 billion copies, which makes its second only to the Holy Bible.

David Ben-Gurion born David Grün (16 October 1886 – 1 December 1973) was the primary national founder of the State of Israel and the first Prime Minister of Israel.

KGB is a civilian intelligence and counterintelligence agency. In 1995, it changed its name to FSB. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was an officer of KGB in 1975-1990. In 1985-1990 he had served in the territory of Eastern Germany (GDR), where he'd take care of recruiting spies.

Type of political murder. Defenestration is the act of throwing someone or something out of a window. The term originates from two incidents in history, both occurring in Prague. In 1419, seven town officials were thrown from the Town Hall, precipitating the Hussite War. In 1618, two Imperial governors and their secretary were tossed from Prague Castle, sparking the Thirty Years War.

Fidel Castro. Castro's speech from 1960 at the United Nations was 4 hours and 29 minutes long. His longest speech on record in Cuba was 7 hours and 10 minutes in 1986 at the III Communist Party Congress in Havana.

J. Edgar Hoover built the agency into a highly effective arm of federal law enforcement. However, later in life and after his death, he became a controversial figure as evidence of his secretive abuses of power began to surface. He used the FBI’s enormous surveillance and information-gathering powers to collect damaging information on politicians, which put him in a position to intimidate even sitting presidents.

The rivalry between the British and Russian Empires in Central Asia. Russia was fearful of British commercial and military inroads into Central Asia, and Britain was fearful of Russia adding "the jewel in the crown", India, to the vast empire that Russia was building in Asia. This resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and the constant threat of war between the two empires for the most of the 19th century.

Sweden is a neutral country and chose not to join NATO. However, Sweden became a "NATO Affiliate" in 2016 , and signed a treaty allowing NATO operations to take place within the country's borders.