Bavaria

Did you know? In his mid-twenties, Ernst Mayr trekked through the jungles of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and described 38 new bird species. The expedition helped make him one of the most important evolutionary biologists ever — "the Darwin of the 20th century". He lived to 100 and wrote more than half of his books after the age of 65.

Did you know? The last crown prince of Austria-Hungary helped open the Iron Curtain: Otto von Habsburg was patron of the "Pan-European Picnic" on 19 August 1989 at the Hungarian-Austrian border. When the gate was opened for one symbolic hour, around 660 East Germans fled to the West – one of the first cracks in the Wall, months before it fell.

Did you know? Georg Ratzinger and his younger brother Joseph — the future Pope Benedict XVI — were ordained as priests together on the same day, 29 June 1951, in Freising Cathedral. Almost seventy years later, in June 2020, the retired pope travelled to Regensburg against his doctors' advice to say goodbye to his gravely ill brother. Georg died a few days later.