Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built for Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the ship was laid down at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg in July 1936 and launched in February 1939. Work was completed in August 1940. Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were the largest battleships built by Germany, two of the largest built by any European power. In the course of the warship's eight-month career under its sole commanding officer, Captain Ernst Lindemann, Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation, lasting 8 days in May 1941, codenamed Rheinübung; the ship, along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, was to break into the Atlantic Ocean and raid Allied shipping from North America to Great Britain. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, British naval units were deployed to block their route. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, the battlecruiser HMS Hood engaged Prinz Eugen by mistake, while HMS Prince of Wales engaged Bismarck.

In the ensuing battle Hood was destroyed by the combined fire of Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, which damaged Prince of Wales and forced her retreat. Bismarck suffered sufficient damage from three hits to force an end to the raiding mission; the destruction of Hood spurred a relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy involving dozens of warships. Two days heading for occupied France to effect repairs, Bismarck was attacked by 16 obsolescent Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. In her final battle the following morning, the already-crippled Bismarck was damaged during a sustained engagement with two British battleships and two heavy cruisers, was scuttled by her crew, sank with heavy loss of life. Most experts agree; the wreck was located in June 1989 by Robert Ballard, has since been further surveyed by several other expeditions. The two Bismarck-class battleships were designed in the mid-1930s by the German Kriegsmarine as a counter to French naval expansion the two Richelieu-class battleships France had started in 1935.

Laid down after the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, Bismarck and her sister Tirpitz were nominally within the 35,000-long-ton limit imposed by the Washington regime that governed battleship construction in the interwar period. The ships secretly exceeded the figure by a wide margin, though before either vessel was completed, the international treaty system had fallen apart following Japan's withdrawal in 1937, allowing signatories to invoke an "escalator clause" that permitted displacements as high as 45,000 long tons. Bismarck displaced 41,700 t as built and 50,300 t loaded, with an overall length of 251 m, a beam of 36 m and a maximum draft of 9.9 m. The battleship was Germany's largest warship, displaced more than any other European battleship, with the exception of HMS Vanguard, commissioned after the end of the war. Bismarck was powered by three Blohm & Voss geared steam turbines and twelve oil-fired Wagner superheated boilers, which developed a total of 148,116 shp and yielded a maximum speed of 30.01 knots on speed trials.

The ship had a cruising range of 8,870 nautical miles at 19 knots. Bismarck was equipped with three FuMO 23 search radar sets, mounted on the forward and stern rangefinders and foretop; the standard crew numbered 1,962 enlisted men. The crew was divided into twelve divisions of between 220 men; the first six divisions were assigned to the ship's armament, divisions one to four for the main and secondary batteries and five and six manning anti-aircraft guns. The seventh division consisted of specialists, including cooks and carpenters, the eighth division consisted of ammunition handlers; the radio operators and quartermasters were assigned to the ninth division. The last three divisions were the engine room personnel; when Bismarck left port, fleet staff, prize crews, war correspondents increased the crew complement to over 2,200 men. 200 of the engine room personnel came from the light cruiser Karlsruhe, lost during Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of Norway. Bismarck's crew published.

Bismarck was armed with eight 38 cm SK C/34 guns arranged in four twin gun turrets: two super-firing turrets forward—"Anton" and "Bruno"—and two aft—"Caesar" and "Dora". Secondary armament consisted of twelve 15 cm L/55 guns, sixteen 10.5 cm L/65 and sixteen 3.7 cm L/83, twelve 2 cm anti-aircraft guns. Bismarck carried four Arado Ar 196 reconnaissance floatplanes, with a single large hangar and a double-ended catapult; the ship's main belt was 320 mm thick and was covered by a pair of upper and main armoured decks that were 50 mm and 100 to 120 mm thick, respectively. The 38 cm turrets were protected by 220 mm thick sides. Bismarck was ordered under the name Ersatz Hannover, a replacement for the old pre-dreadnought SMS Hannover, under contract "F"; the contract was awarded to the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, where the keel was laid on 1 July 1936 at Helgen IX. The ship was launched on 14 February 1939 and during the elaborate ceremonies was

The Scania-Vabis L55/L56/L66 was a series of trucks produced by Swedish automaker Scania-Vabis between 1959 and 1968. In the spring of 1958, Scania-Vabis introduced the L75 model, it was the first vehicle in a new generation of trucks, with newly designed six-cylinder engines, stronger chassis components and a new, more spacious and comfortable cab. The cab would be used for all conventional trucks until 1980. In the summer of 1959 Scania-Vabis presented the smaller L55, with a seven-litre engine; the truck was offered with a trailing axle. This version was called the LS55, with an “S” for "support axle". All L55 series trucks came with air brakes. In the autumn of 1962 the improved L56/LS56 series was introduced, with an eight-litre engine and dual circuits brakes. In the spring of 1963 Scania-Vabis introduced the L66 truck; this vehicle combined the strong chassis from the L76 series, built for heavy duty, with the smaller engine from the L56 series. The L66 was intended for export, but was sold on the domestic market.

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Wilhelm Xylander was a German classical scholar and humanist. He served as rector of Heidelberg University in 1564. Born at Augsburg, he studied at Tübingen, in 1558, when short of money, he was appointed to succeed Jakob Micyllus in the professorship of Greek at the University of Heidelberg. In Heidelberg church and university politics, Xylander was a close partisan of Thomas Erastus. Xylander was the author of a number of important works, including Latin translations of Dio Cassius and Strabo, he edited the geographical lexicon of Stephanus of Byzantium. He translated the first six books of Euclid into German with notes, the Arithmetica of Diophantus, the De quattuor mathematicis scientiis of Michael Psellus into Latin. Marcus Aurelius, De seipso, seu vita sua, libri 12 ed. and trans. by Xylander. Zurich: Andreas Gessner, 1558. Fritz Schöll, "Xylander, Wilhelm", Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 44, Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 582–593 Works of Wilhelm Xylander available at the Munich Digitisation Centre