Jan Werich (Czech pronunciation: [ˈjan ˈvɛrɪx]) (6 February 1905, Prague – 31 October 1980, Prague) was a Czech actor, playwright and writer.

Between 1916 to 1924 he attended "reálné gymnasium" (equivalent to high school) in Křemencová Street in Prague (where his future partner, Jiří Voskovec, also studied). He studied law at the Law School of Charles University from 1924 to 1927, from which he made an early departure to begin his artistic career and forge one of the most important partnerships of his life.

They opened on April 19, 1927 with Vest Pocket Revue in Umělecká beseda on Malá Strana in Prague. July 1, 1929, Jan Werich married Zdenka Houskova. 1929 - first show "Líčení se odročuje" of Osvobozené divadlo theatre in main location "U Nováků Palace". In this location they continued until the very end of their theatre in 1938.

His collaboration with theatrical talent Jiří Voskovec and musical legend Jaroslav Ježek lasted for more than 10 years between the two world wars. Their partnership was a platform for their numerous lively left-wing political satires. The trio's work took inspiration from Dada, with its love of the absurd, a reaction against bourgeois values and the horrors of World War I. The two intellectual clowns attacked the inanities of totalitarianism as well as the mistakes of democracy.

Alexander Dubček (Slovak pronunciation: [ˈalɛksandɛr ˈduptʃɛk]; 27 November 1921 – 7 November 1992) was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia (1968–1969), famous for his attempt to reform the communist regime during the Prague Spring. Later, after the overthrow of the government in 1989, he was Chairman of the federal Czecho-Slovak parliament.

Dubček was born in Uhrovec, Czechoslovakia (Slovakia), and raised in the Kyrgyz SSR of the Soviet Union (now Kyrgyzstan) as a member of the Esperantist industrial cooperative Interhelpo. His father, Štefan, moved from Chicago to Czechoslovakia after World War I, when he refused to serve in the military for his pacifism. Alexander Dubček was conceived in Chicago, but born after the family relocated to Czechoslovakia. When Alexander Dubček was three, the family moved to the Soviet Union, in part to help build socialism and in part because jobs were scarce in Czechoslovakia. In 1938 the family returned to Czechoslovakia.

During the Second World War, Alexander Dubček joined the underground resistance against the wartime pro-German Slovak state headed by Jozef Tiso. In August 1944, Dubček fought in the Slovak National Uprising and was wounded. His brother, Július, was killed.