Marshall Applewhite was a former university music teacher who founded the Heaven's Gate movement with his friend Bonnie Nettles. In the 1970s they travelled the United States and then California, gathering followers who believed extraterrestrials would give them new bodies and take them to another world. In 1996, members learned of Comet Hale-Bopp and rumours of a spaceship trailing it, and they concluded that this was their ride. In 1997 the group carried out a mass suicide in a rented mansion in California, which remains the largest mass suicide inside the United States. The discovery of the bodies produced a large media storm. Afterwards, commentators and academics debated whether Applewhite was a skilled manipulator or whether his followers were drawn in by the story he built.

Israeli reports also say the cabinet directed the military to prepare for a possible new attack on Iran.

Angkor, near Siem Reap in northern Cambodia, was the capital of the Khmer Empire, which ruled much of mainland Southeast Asia between roughly the 9th and 15th centuries. At its height the city spread across about 3,000 square kilometres, making it the largest pre-industrial city on Earth by area. Its growth depended on water: huge reservoirs called barays, along with canals and embankments, stored monsoon rain and carried it to rice fields. That system let farmers harvest more than once a year and fed a very large population through the dry season. The temple complex of Angkor Wat, built in the early 12th century, is the best-known monument and still stands at the heart of the park.