The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with 97 million volunteers and staff worldwide, founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, to prevent and alleviate human suffering. The movement consists of several distinct organizations that are independent from each other, but are united within the movement through common basic principles, symbols and governing organisations; the movement's parts are: The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution founded in 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland, in particular by Henry Dunant and Gustave Moynier. Its 25-member committee has a unique authority under international humanitarian law to protect the life and dignity of the victims of international and internal armed conflicts; the ICRC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on three occasions. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies was founded in 1919 and today it coordinates activities between the 190 National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies within the Movement.

On an international level, the Federation leads and organizes, in close cooperation with the National Societies, relief assistance missions responding to large-scale emergencies. The International Federation Secretariat is based in Switzerland. In 1963, the Federation was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the ICRC. National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies exist in nearly every country in the world. 190 National Societies are recognized by the ICRC and admitted as full members of the Federation. Each entity works in its home country according to the principles of international humanitarian law and the statutes of the international Movement. Depending on their specific circumstances and capacities, National Societies can take on additional humanitarian tasks that are not directly defined by international humanitarian law or the mandates of the international Movement. In many countries, they are linked to the respective national health care system by providing emergency medical services.

Until the middle of the 19th century, there were no organized and/or well-established army nursing systems for casualties and no safe and protected institutions to accommodate and treat those who were wounded on the battlefield. A devout Reformed Christian, the Swiss businessman Jean-Henri Dunant, in June 1859, traveled to Italy to meet French emperor Napoléon III with the intention of discussing difficulties in conducting business in Algeria, at that time occupied by France, he arrived in the small town of Solferino on the evening of 24 June after the Battle of Solferino, an engagement in the Austro-Sardinian War. In a single day, about 40,000 soldiers on both sides were left wounded on the field. Jean-Henri Dunant was shocked by the terrible aftermath of the battle, the suffering of the wounded soldiers, the near-total lack of medical attendance and basic care, he abandoned the original intent of his trip and for several days he devoted himself to helping with the treatment and care for the wounded.

He took point in organizing an overwhelming level of relief assistance with the local villagers to aid without discrimination. Back in his home in Geneva, he decided to write a book entitled A Memory of Solferino which he published using his own money in 1862, he sent copies of the book to leading political and military figures throughout Europe, people he thought could help him make a change. In addition to penning a vivid description of his experiences in Solferino in 1859, he explicitly advocated the formation of national voluntary relief organizations to help nurse wounded soldiers in the case of war, an idea, inspired by Christian teaching regarding social responsibility, as well as his experience after the battlefield of Solferino. In addition, he called for the development of an international treaty to guarantee the protection of medics and field hospitals for soldiers wounded on the battlefield. In 1863, Gustave Moynier, a Geneva lawyer and president of the Geneva Society for Public Welfare, received a copy of Dunant's book and introduced it for discussion at a meeting of that society.

As a result of this initial discussion the society established an investigatory commission to examine the feasibility of Dunant's suggestions and to organize an international conference about their possible implementation. The members of this committee, which has subsequently been referred to as the "Committee of the Five," aside from Dunant and Moynier were physician Louis Appia, who had significant experience working as a field surgeon. Eight days the five men decided to rename the committee to the "International Committee for Relief to the Wounded". In October 1863, the international conference organized by the committee was held in Geneva to develop possible measures to improve medical services on the battlefield; the conference was attended by 36 individuals: eighteen official delegates from national governments, six delegates from other non-governmental organizations, seven non-official foreign delegates, the five members of the International Committee. The states and kingdoms represented by official delegates were: Austrian Empire, Grand Duchy of Baden, Kingdom of Bavaria, French Empire, Kingdom of Hanover, Grand Duchy of Hesse, Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom of Prussia, Russian Empire, Kingdom of Saxony, Kingdom of Spain, United Kingdoms of Sweden and Norway, United Kingdom of G

Buksnes is a former municipality in Nordland county, Norway. The 102-square-kilometre municipality existed from 1838 until its dissolution in 1963, it comprised the western part of the island of Vestvågøya in. The administrative centre was located in the village of Gravdal where the main church for the municipality, Buksnes Church, is located; the municipality of Buksnes was established on 1 January 1838. On 1 July 1919, the southern district of Buksnes was separated from it to create the new municipality of Hol; the split left Buksnes with 3,188 inhabitants. During the 1960s, there were many municipal mergers across Norway due to the work of the Schei Committee. On 1 January 1963, the municipality of Buksnes was merged with the neighboring municipalities of Borge and Valberg to create the new Vestvågøy Municipality. Leonhard Christian Borchgrevink Holmboe, a Lutheran clergymen, the vicar in Buksnes Arnold Carl Johansen, a member of the Norwegian Parliament from Nordland Gerhard Schøning, a historian Harald Sverdrup, a poet and children's writer List of former municipalities of Norway

Joseph Force Crater was a New York State Supreme Court Justice who vanished amid political scandal. He was last seen leaving a restaurant on West 45th Street in Manhattan, entered popular culture as one of the most mysterious missing persons cases of the twentieth century. Despite massive publicity, the case was never solved and was closed forty years after he disappeared. Crater's disappearance fueled public disquiet about New York City corruption and was a factor in the downfall of the Tammany Hall political machine. Crater was born in Easton, the eldest of four children of Frank Ellsworth Crater and the former Leila Virginia Montague, he was educated at Columbia University. He was a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity. Crater's official title was Justice of the New York Supreme Court for New York County, a trial court despite the designation "supreme". Bank records revealed that he withdrew $20,000 shortly before taking up the position in April 1930 at the young age of 41; this caused suspicion that a payment to corrupt Tammany Hall politicians had secured his appointment.

While acting as official receiver in a bankruptcy, Crater sold a property at a tiny fraction of the $3 million that the city paid to get it back shortly afterward. The huge profit generated in the transaction caused speculation that Crater had been killed in a dispute over the money made on a corrupt scheme, although no evidence of corruption was found. Crater issued two published opinions: Rotkowitz v. Sohn, involving fraudulent conveyances and mortgage foreclosure fraud. In the summer of 1930, after the start of the first investigations of what would become the Seabury Commission and his wife Stella Mance Wheeler were vacationing at their summer cabin in Belgrade, Maine. In late July, Crater received, he offered no information to his wife about the content of the call, other than to say that he had to return to the city "to straighten those fellows out". The next day, he arrived at his 40 Fifth Avenue apartment, but instead of dealing with business, he proceeded onwards to Atlantic City, New Jersey, with his mistress, showgirl Sally Lou Ritzi.

Crater returned to Maine on August 1, traveled back to New York on August 3. Before making this final trip, he promised his wife that he would return by her birthday on August 9. Crater's wife stated that he was in good spirits and behaving when he departed for New York City. On the morning of Wednesday, August 6, Crater spent two hours going through his files in his courthouse chambers destroying several documents, he had his law clerk Joseph Mara cash two checks for him that amounted to $5,150. At noon, he and Mara carried two locked briefcases to his apartment and he let Mara take the rest of the day off; that evening, Crater went to a Broadway ticket agency, Supreme Tickets, bought one seat from William Deutsch, the proprietor of Supreme, for a comedy called Dancing Partner at the Belasco Theatre. He went to Billy Haas's Chophouse at 332 West 45th Street, where he ate dinner with Ritzi and William Klein, a lawyer friend. Klein told investigators that Crater was in a good mood that evening and gave no indication that anything was bothering him.

The dinner ended a little after 9 p.m. shortly after the curtain rose on the show for which Crater had bought a ticket, the small group went outside. Crater's dinner companions gave differing accounts of Crater's departure from the restaurant. William Klein testified that "the judge got into a taxicab outside the restaurant about 9:30 p.m. and drove west on Forty-fifth Street," and this account was confirmed by Sally Lou Ritz: "At the sidewalk Judge Crater took a taxicab". Klein and Ritz changed their story and said that they had entered a taxi outside the restaurant while Crater had walked down the street. There was no immediate reaction to Crater's disappearance; when he did not return to Maine after ten days, his wife began making calls to their friends in New York, asking if anyone had seen him. Only when he failed to appear for the opening of the courts on August 25 did his fellow justices become alarmed, they failed to find any trace of him. The police were notified on September 3 and, after that, the missing judge was front-page news.

Once an official investigation was launched, the case received widespread publicity. Detectives discovered that the judge's safe deposit box had been emptied and the two briefcases that Crater and Mara had taken to his apartment were missing; these promising leads were lost amid the thousands of false reports from people claiming to have seen the missing man. Crater had been involved with several women. In the aftermath of the case, two of the women he had been involved with left town abruptly and a third was murdered. Ritzi, the showgirl who had dined with him the evening that he vanished, left New York in August or September 1930, she was found in late September 1930, living in Youngstown, with her parents. She said that she had left New York because she had received word that her father was ill. Ritzi was still being subjected to interviews by police investigating the Crater case in 1937, by which time she was living in Beverly Hills, California. Showgirl June Brice had been seen talking to Crater the day.

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