The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, ended three and a half months with the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940; the League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the organisation. The Soviets made several demands, including that Finland cede substantial border territories in exchange for land elsewhere, claiming security reasons—primarily the protection of Leningrad, 32 km from the Finnish border; when Finland refused, the USSR invaded. Many sources conclude that the Soviet Union had intended to conquer all of Finland, use the establishment of the puppet Finnish Communist government and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact's secret protocols as evidence of this, while other sources argue against the idea of the full Soviet conquest. Finland repelled Soviet attacks for more than two months and inflicted substantial losses on the invaders while temperatures ranged as low as −43 °C.

After the Soviet military reorganised and adopted different tactics, they renewed their offensive in February and overcame Finnish defences. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland ceded 11 percent of its territory, representing 30 percent of its economy, to the Soviet Union. Soviet losses were heavy, the country's international reputation suffered. Soviet gains exceeded their pre-war demands and the USSR received substantial territory along Lake Ladoga and in northern Finland. Finland enhanced its international reputation; the poor performance of the Red Army both encouraged German leader Adolf Hitler to believe that an attack on the Soviet Union would be successful and confirmed negative Western opinions of the Soviet military. After 15 months of Interim Peace, in June 1941, Nazi Germany commenced Operation Barbarossa and the Continuation War between Finland and the USSR began; until the beginning of the 19th century, Finland constituted the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden.

In 1809, to protect its capital, Saint Petersburg, the Russian Empire conquered Finland and converted it into an autonomous buffer state. The resulting Grand Duchy of Finland enjoyed wide autonomy within the Empire until the end of the 19th century, when Russia began attempts to assimilate Finland as part of a general policy to strengthen the central government and unify the Empire through russification; these attempts were aborted because of Russia's internal strife, but they ruined Russia's relations with the Finns and increased support for Finnish self-determination movements. World War I led to the collapse of the Russian Empire during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Civil War of 1917–1920, giving Finland a window of opportunity; the new Bolshevik Russian Government was fragile, civil war had broken out in Russia in November 1917. Thus, Soviet Russia recognised the new Finnish Government just three weeks after the declaration. Finland achieved full sovereignty in May 1918 after a four-month civil war, with the conservative Whites defeating the socialist Reds, the expulsion of Bolshevik troops.

Finland joined the League of Nations in 1920, from which it sought security guarantees, but Finland's primary goal was co-operation with the Scandinavian countries. The Finnish and Swedish militaries engaged in wide-ranging co-operation, but focused on the exchange of information and on defence planning for the Åland Islands rather than on military exercises or on stockpiling and deployment of materiel; the Government of Sweden avoided committing itself to Finnish foreign policy. Finland's military policy included clandestine defence co-operation with Estonia; the period after the Finnish Civil War till the early 1930s proved a politically unstable time in Finland due to the continued rivalry between the conservative and socialist parties. The Communist Party of Finland was declared illegal in 1931, the nationalist Lapua Movement organised anti-communist violence, which culminated in a failed coup attempt in 1932; the successor of the Lapua Movement, the Patriotic People's Movement, only had a minor presence in national politics with at most 14 seats out of 200 in the Finnish parliament.

By the late 1930s, the export-oriented Finnish economy was growing and the nation's extreme political movements had diminished. After Soviet involvement in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, no formal peace treaty was signed. In 1918 and 1919, Finnish volunteers conducted two unsuccessful military incursions across the Soviet border, the Viena and Aunus expeditions, to annex Karelian areas according to the Greater Finland ideology of combining all Finnic peoples into a single state. In 1920, Finnish communists based in the USSR attempted to assassinate the former Finnish White Guard Commander-in-Chief, Marshal Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim. On 14 October 1920, Finland and Soviet Russia signed the Treaty of Tartu, confirming the old border between the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland and Imperial Russia proper as the new Finnish–Soviet border. Finland received Petsamo, with its ice-free harbour on the Arctic Ocean. Despite the signing of the treaty, relations between the two countries remained strained.

The Finnish Government allowed volunteers to cross the border to support the East Karelian uprising in Russia in 1921, Finnish communists in the Soviet Union continued to prepare for a revanche and staged a cross-border raid into Finland, called the Pork mutiny, in 1922. In 1932, the USSR and Finland signed a non-aggression pact, reaffirmed fo

1619 Ueta, provisional designation 1953 TA, is a stony asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt 11 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 11 October 1953, by Japanese astronomer Tetsuyasu Mitani at Kyoto University's Kwasan Observatory, near Kyoto, Japan, it was named after the former director of the discovering observatory. Ueta is a S-type asteroid, that orbits the Sun in the inner main-belt at a distance of 1.8–2.6 AU once every 3 years and 4 months. Its orbit has an inclination of 6 ° with respect to the ecliptic, it was first identified as 1926 RR at Johannesburg in 1926. Ueta's observation arc begins 22 years prior to its official discovery observation with a precovery taken at Lowell Observatory in 1931. Several rotational lightcurves of Ueta were obtained from photometric observations. Best rated lightcurves were obtained by astronomers Robert Stephens and David Higgins in September 2009, securing an identical rotation period of 2.720 hours with a brightness variation of 0.35 and 0.39 magnitude, respectively.

Modeled lightcurves from various photometric data sources gave a similar period of 2.717943 and 2.718238 hours. According to the survey carried out by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, Ueta measures between 7.13 and 9.93 kilometers in diameter, its surface has an albedo between 0.251 and 0.479. The Collaborative Asteroid Lightcurve Link assumes a standard albedo for stony asteroids of 0.20 and calculates a diameter of 11.04 kilometers with an absolute magnitude of 12.15. Ueta was named by the discoverer for the former Director of Kwasan Observatory who encouraged him to keep on with his observations of minor planets and comets; the official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 1 February 1965. Kwasan Observatory – Kyoto University Kwasan and Hida observatories Asteroid Lightcurve Database, query form Dictionary of Minor Planet Names, Google books Discovery Circumstances: Numbered Minor Planets - – Minor Planet Center 1619 Ueta at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info 1619 Ueta at the JPL Small-Body Database Close approach · Discovery · Ephemeris · Orbit diagram · Orbital elements · Physical parameters

Burt Goldblatt was an American art director, graphic designer and author. He was best known for designing the covers of jazz albums. Goldblatt fought in the Pacific theater as a member of the United States Army during World War II. After the war he attended the Massachusetts College of Art, took a job in a print factory while doing contract work as an artist in Boston. In the early 1950s, he relocated to New York City, in 1953 took a position with CBS, where he worked until 1955 doing advertising and design of show credits. During this time, as the long playing record became commercially viable, he began designing album covers for both major and independent labels, including Decca, Savoy and Bethlehem, as well as the bootleg label Jolly Roger. Among those he designed covers for were Chris Connor, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Herbie Mann, Carmen McRae, Charles Mingus, Oscar Pettiford, Eddie Shu, Kai Winding. While best-known for designing jazz covers in the 1950s and 1960s, he did some work for gospel and rock albums.

Goldblatt visited jazz clubs and studio recording sessions to photograph, some of which were incorporated into his album covers. He was well-known by jazz musicians; the New York Times wrote that his style "encompassed black-and-white portraits and studio photographs, inspired by film noir, as well as gritty street scenes abstractly overlaid with flat colors, evoking a sense of urban night life. Expressionistic line drawings of performers in action were in vogue."Later in his career, he concentrated on work as an author, writing or co-writing books on film, music and true crime. He died of congestive heart failure at age 82. Theodore O. Cron, Burt Goldblatt: Portrait of Carnegie Hall: A Nostalgic Portrait in Pictures. 1966 Paul D. Zimmerman, Burt Goldblatt: The Marx Brothers at the Movies. New York, Putnam's 1968 Robert Shelton and Burt Goldblatt: Country Music Story: A Picture History of Country and Western Music. New Rochelle, Arlington House 1971 Burt Goldblatt and Chris Steinbrunner: Cinema of the Fantastic.

New York, Galahad Books 1972 Hank Messick and Burt Goldblatt: The Mobs and the Mafia. The illustrated History of Organized Crime. New York, Th. Y. Crowell 1972 Hank Messick and Burt Goldblatt: Kidnapping: The Illustrated History. 1974 John Devaney and Burt Goldblatt: The Stanley Cup – A Complete Pictorial History.. Rand McNally & Company. Chicago, 1975 Martin Appel and Burt Goldblatt: Baseball's Best: The Hall of Fame Gallery. New York, McGraw-Hill, 1977 Burt Goldblatt: The Newport Jazz Festival: The Illustrated History. New York, Dial Press, 1977 John Devaney and Burt Goldblatt with Barbara Devaney: The World Series: A Complete Pictorial History. Chicago, Rand McNally, 1981