clockwise around the Caspian Sea
- World Report 2024: Azerbaijan (hrw.org)
Long-term human rights concerns persisted in Azerbaijan in 2023. The government severely restricted freedoms of expression, assembly, and association. Despite some progress on a notorious torture case, torture and ill-treatment in police custody and places of detention persisted.
- James Buchanan (allthetropes.org)
James Buchanan was the only President to never marry (his niece fulfilled the duties of First Lady). He was engaged to a woman at one point, but they broke up and she died (likely suicide) shortly after. Although each of the three previous Presidents had played a part in creating the circumstances that led to the Civil War (Zachary Taylor’s belligerent approach to the slave states got things off on the wrong foot, Millard Fillmore created an ultimately ill-advised compromise agreement, and Franklin Pierce proceeded to piss off the slave states by breaking the terms of said agreement), the final, fatal lurch towards the conflict happened on Buchanan’s watch.
- Azerbaijan (Wikipedia)
Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and West Asia. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia’s republic of Dagestan to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia and Turkey to the west, and Iran to the south. Baku is the capital and largest city.