The Securitate

The thing I learned today is that the Securitate (from Department of State Security, or DSS) was the brutal secret police of Communist Romania from 1948 to 1991.

Haganah

The thing I learned today is that the Haganah was a Jewish paramilitary organization from 1920 to 1948 in British Palestine.  It was preceded by the Hashomar and, after the Haganah was disbanded in 1948, replaced with the IDF.

SHAPE

SHAPE is Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, the military headquarters of NATO, located in Casteau, near Mons, Belgium.  SHAPE's commander is titled Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), and is always a U.S. four-star general officer or flag officer who also serves as Commander, U.S. European Command.

Eric Drummond, Earl of Perth, was a Scottish statesman who became the first Secretary General of the League of Nations in 1920.

The Barbizon school was a movement of realist landscape painters in France in the 19th century, inspired by the work of John Constable. The most prominent of the Barbizon painters was Jean-Francois Millet.

Group f/64 was a group (named after the smallest aperture setting on a camera) of photographers in the '30s who espoused objective, "straight" photography, especially of the American West. Ansel Adams was a prominent member and a Sierra Club adherent as well.

OPEC stands for Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries. Its members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela.