A vibrant city of poets, artists and thinkers in the early 1900s, it went down in a sea of swastikas after Hitler's triumphant return: Vienna after the Anschluss lost not only many of its people, but a great deal of its talent.

On March 12, 1938, Nazi troops marched into Austria. Three days later, Austrian-born Adolf Hitler gave a rousing speech from the balcony of Vienna's Imperial Palace to a jubilant crowd of 250,000 and Austria ceased to exist as an independent state.

A filthy oil painting locked away in a museum in the northeast of England was on Saturday revealed to be an original masterpiece by Van Dyck.

The portrait was spotted when it was photographed for an ambitious project to catalogue every single one of Britain's oil paintings in public ownership in an online museum.

Anyone who wants a beer in Haddonfield, New Jersey had better be ready for a drive: buying or selling alcohol anywhere within city limits is punishable with jail time.

Since long before Prohibition -- the 13-year national ban on alcohol that started in 1920 -- Haddonfield has been a "dry town." And the borough, just a stone's throw away from the big city of Philadelphia, has kept the laws on the books ever since.

Willy Wonka's golden ticket and Batman's mask are among some 30 movie costumes and props given Friday to the National Museum of American History in the U.S. capital.

U.S. production company Warner Bros. donated the items, which come from 13 feature films that came out between 1942 and 2005.

The 17-year-old beaten to death for refusing to marry a man old enough to be her grandfather. The teen dragged by her family to be raped to force her into marrying an elderly man. They are among 39,000 girls forced into marriage every day around the world, sold like cattle to enrich their families.

More than one-third of all girls are married in 42 countries, according to the U.N. Population Fund, referring to females under the age of 18. The highest number of cases occurs in some of the poorest countries, the agency figures show, with the West African nation of Niger at the bottom of the list with 75 percent of girls married before they turn 18. In Bangladesh the figure is 66 percent and in Central African Republic and Chad it is 68 percent.

Bulgaria's parliament for the first time admitted Friday failing to save over 11,000 Jews from territories under its control as it commemorated the start of deportations 70 years ago.

Bulgaria, an ally of Nazi Germany during World War II "refused the deportation of over 48,000 Jews -- Bulgarian citizens -- to the death camps," parliament said in a declaration.

Indonesia is deliberating criminalizing unmarried couples living together and lengthening jail terms for adulterers, a lawmaker said Friday, in plans that activists have dubbed regressive.

The proposals were drafted by the Justice and Human Rights Ministry as the House of Representatives revises the nation's dated criminal code, garnering support from several members.

Spain's top museums are raising entry prices, opening for longer hours and sending works abroad in touring exhibitions in a scramble for new revenue to offset steep government cuts to their budgets.

Spain's conservative government has slashed spending on culture by nearly 20 percent this year to 722 million euros ($940 million) as part of the steepest budget cuts since the country returned to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

India's remote northeast is home to an ancient tribe whose high regard for women makes it a striking anomaly in a male-dominated country.

But as the world marks International Women's Day this Friday, the region has become a staging ground for an unlikely battle in which men are trying to end a matrilineal tradition practised by more than a million people.

Defenders of women's rights in Morocco are inching closer to a long-awaited goal as the kingdom's parliament works to amend a law that allows a rapist to escape prison by marrying his victim.

Morocco was shocked in March 2012 by the suicide of Amina Filali, 16, who was forced to marry the man who had raped her. He remained a free man under Article 475 of the kingdom's penal code.