George W. Bush

George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, at Grace-New Haven Hospital (now Yale–New Haven Hospital) in New Haven, Connecticut.

Both George W Bush and his father George H W Bush have ‘Walker’ as a middle name.

George was head cheerleader at high school.

George W. Bush's favorite summer job was working as a sporting goods salesman at Sears. He was the leading salesman of ping pong balls.

George W Bush graduated from Yale University with a degree in history, and then earned an MBA from Harvard University. He is the only president to have a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree.

Lt. George W. Bush while in the Texas Air National Guard

Bush found himself overly devoted to alcohol and in 1976 he was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, in Kennebunkport, Maine where his father has a summer home. He was fined and suspended from driving for 30 days.

Bush was bought up an Episcopalian and in 1985 a meeting with Billy Graham led to what he described as ‘a gradual warming of the heart’.  Bush joined his wife’s United Methodist Church denomination, gave up alcohol and began reading the Scriptures and praying.

Bush up drinking alcohol for good on his 40th birthday after his wife Laura threatened to leave him if he carried on habitually getting drunk.

Bush was the managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team from 1989-1994.

George W. Bush is the only president to have attempted and successfully completed a marathon. He ran the 1993 Houston Marathon in 3 hours, 44 minutes, and 52 seconds.

George Bush Jnr likes eating regular American food. While staying at his Crawford, Texas ranch he likes to drop in on the Coffee Station where he always orders a cheeseburger with onion rings. At the White House he kept to a low-calorie diet. His favourite dishes included pea soup and chicken followed by chilli.

George W Bush's succession to the Presidency was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, after a month-long battle over who actually won the election. A divided U.S. Supreme Court reversed a state court decision for recounts in Florida's contested election, transforming George W. Bush into the president-elect.

Official photograph portrait of former U.S. President George W. Bush.

Bush was the first president to lose the popular vote and to win the electoral vote since Benjamin Harrison in 1888.

George W Bush is the first U.S. President to receive an acting nomination and then subsequently the win, from the Razzie Awards. He was nominated for and won Worst Actor in the film Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). Though technically he was not acting in the film, merely playing himself via archive footage.

George W Bush is the only US president to have been the father of twins.

Spot the brown-and-white Springer Spaniel born to Millie in the White House during his father President H.W. Bush’s presidential term was the first pet to live in the White House twice. He returned to the presidential mansion after the inauguration of the second President Bush and was joined by Barney, a black Scottish Terrier and a cat, Willy.

George W Bush was the second man to follow his father as US president. First was John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, second US president.

The Pet Goat (popularly known as My Pet Goat) is a children's story contained in the book Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1, by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner. The book is part of the thirty-one volume Reading Mastery series published by the SRA Macmillan early-childhood education division of McGraw-Hill.

The story gained notoriety when U.S. President George W. Bush, as part of a photo op, was reading it to Florida schoolchildren at the time he was informed of the September 11, 2001 attacks. He remained seated for roughly seven minutes and followed along as the children read the book, and the story became an important symbol to Bush's opponents both in the United States and abroad.

During a December 14, 2008 press conference in Baghdad, George W. Bush was forced to duck to avoid being hit on the head by shoes that were thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist at a press conference. Muntadhar al-Zaidi shouted, "This is a farewell kiss from the Iraqi people, you dog". Al-Zaidi's shoeing inspired many similar incidents of political protest around the world.

Al-Zaidi's shoe flying over George Bush's head.

Bush collects autographed baseballs and owns over 250.

He considers his hidden talent to be his knowledge of baseball trivia.

Bush's desert island necessities, he said, would be a Bible, running shoes and a fishing rod.

In 1999, when he was Governor of Texas, Bush wrote an overview of his life and political philosophy, titled A Charge to Keep. The title comes from Charles Wesley's hymn, "A Charge to Keep I Have" (1762). Wesley's title is a paraphrase of Leviticus 8:35: "keep the charge of the LORD, so that you may not die."

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is George W. Bush's cousin. Hefner is Bush's 9th cousin twice removed.

President Bush and Saddam Hussein both had their shoes made by the same Italian shoemaker.


Actor

George H. W. Bush

George Herbert Walker Bush was born at 173 Adams Street in Milton, Massachusetts on June 12, 1924.

George H. W. Bush, c. 1925

Bob Hope’s golf buddy was Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of presidents George H.W. Bush (b 1924) and George W. Bush.

Before he went to college, Bush served in the Navy until the end of World War II.

In 1943, Bush was the youngest pilot in the Navy at the time.

After Bush's promotion to Lieutenant (junior grade) on August 1, 1944, his squadron commenced operations against the Japanese in the Bonin Islands.

Bush in his Grumman TBM Avenger on the carrier USS San Jacinto, 1944

Bush was one of nine airmen who escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on Chichi Jima, a small island 700 miles (1,100 km) south of Tokyo, on September 2, 1944. Eight of the nine were murdered, Five of those eight were cannibalized. Bush was the lone survivor, as a result of being rescued by the lifeguard submarine USS Finback. This experience shaped Bush profoundly, leading him to ask, "Why had I been spared and what did God have for me?"

For the next month Bush remained on Finback, and participated in the rescue of other pilots.

During World War II, Bush flew 58 combat missions for the Navy and was awarded three Air Medals and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service.

After World War II, Bush went to Yale University. He graduated with honors in 1948 with a degree in economics.

He finished his Yale college degree in just two and a half years.

Bush  captained the Yale baseball team, and as a left-handed first baseman, played in the first two College World Series.

George H.W. Bush married Barbara Pierce on January 6, 1945 at the First Presbyterian Church in Rye, New York. They had six children.

Bush began his career in 1948 working in the oil industry in Texas.

George Washington, George Bush Sr and Henry VIII (to Anne of Cleves) all married on January 6th.

He became active in the Republican party. In 1967, Bush won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. From 1981-89, he served as Vice President under Reagan.

Bush gained the nomination in 1988 to run for president. He won with 54% of the popular vote and 426 out of 537 electoral votes.

George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president, was the only one to have four names.

Portrait of President George H.W. Bush cropped and reuploaded by Emiya1980

A springer spaniel, Mildred Kerr Bush, was "first dog" of the White House during George Bush's presidency. Known as Millie, the dog "dictated" the 1990 best-seller Millie's Book' to Barbara Bush, offering readers a dog's-eye view of the presidency.

Millie the White House dog earned more than four times as much as President Bush in 1991.

George H.W. Bush disliked broccoli so much that he banned it from Air Force One. Shortly after a journalist from U.S. News and World Report broke the story that Bush had banned the vegetable, broccoli growers sent the First Lady ten tonnes of broccoli - most of it was donated away.

In 1991 both George Bush Senior and his wife Barbara contracted a thyroid condition called Graves’ disease whilst in the White House. When their dog Millie also developed a thyroid condition, conspiracy theories flourished.

Shortly after George H. W. Bush vomited and fainted at a meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister in 1992, a man named James Edward Smith, called CNN posing as the president's physician claiming Bush had died. CNN was within seconds of publishing the story, but stopped the anchor mid sentence.

After President Bush vomited on the Japanese Prime Minister, a new word entered the Japanese language. "Bushusuru" means “to do the Bush thing,” or to publicly vomit.

His eldest son, George W Bush, became president in 2001, and another son, Jeb (John Ellis) Bush (1953– ), governor of Florida in 1999.

He was the second president to be the father of another U.S. president. (John Adams was the first).

In 2014, George H.W. Bush celebrated his 90th birthday with a tandem parachute jump, just as he had on his 75th, 80th and 85th birthdays.

Bush resided during the summer in his Kennebunkport home — an estate that has been in the Bush family since the late 19th century. When he was home, a Texas flag flew from the compound.

Bush was known for his colorful and eccentric socks. The Republican National Committee sold “Official George H.W. Bush socks” for $19. The brightly colored footwear included an embroidered elephant and Bush’s signature.

He suffered from Parkinson's disease in his last years and Bush was forced to use a motorized scooter or wheelchair from at least 2012.

George H.W. Bush died on November 30, 2018, aged 94, at his Houston home.

U.S. President George H. W. Bush's service dog Sully slept next to Bush's coffin before his state funeral, which occurred over a period of three days from December 3–6, 2018.

Source The Daily Signal, Fox News

Bus

'Bus’ is an abbreviation of ‘omnibus’, the Latin for ‘for all’, as they were transport for all people.

The word ‘omnibus’ was first recorded in English in 1829. ‘Bus’ first appeared in 1832.

The first London bus service was established on July 4, 1829 and ran between Marylebone Road, Paddington and the Bank of England. The buses ran every three hours and passengers could flag them down anywhere. The bus carried 22 people, who paid a shilling fare each and was pulled by three horses.

The phrase 'busman's holiday', means a break spent doing the same thing as at work. It comes from the days of horse-drawn buses, when drivers were said to spend days off riding their route to see if their horse was treated well.

Before 1907, London buses were in different colors to signify their route.

Vaudevillian Jack Norworth wrote "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in 1908 after seeing a sign on a bus advertising BASEBALL TODAY - POLO GROUNDS.

In 1912 it was reported that London’s 2500 buses were being driven so recklessly that they were killing one pedestrian every two days.

Greyhound buses began in 1914 in Minnesota.

Britain's first female bus and tram conductors went to work in October 1915 as nearly a quarter of the male population were away at war. Transport companies paid them less than men because they were regarded as less reliable.

Thick fog on December 12, 1946 in London resulted in bus conductors walking in front of their buses, holding lighted newspapers.

On December 30, 1952 Albert Gunton, a London city bus driver, was driving the number 78 bus over Tower Bridge towards Shoreditch, when the bridge began to rise to allow a ship to pass. He made a split decision and accelerated clearing the 6ft drop. Gunton later was awarded £10 for bravery.

In 1955 Rosa Parks, a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The incident galvanized the black community and lead to a successful year long boycott of the Montgomery bus system and the birth of the American civil rights movement.

In 1958 a school bus in Floyd County, Kentucky hit a wrecker truck and plunged down an embankment into the rain-swollen Levisa Fork River. The driver and 26 children died in what remains the worst school bus accident in U.S. history.

Before he was a movie director, James Cameron was a school bus driver.

The father of Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks was the president of Greyhound bus lines.

The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, the longest guided busway in the world, opened in England on August 7, 2011. The first guided bus left St Ives at 09:00 after the busway had been opened by Andrew Lansley MP. It connects Cambridge, Huntingdon and St Ives in the English county of Cambridgeshire.

A Go Whippet Route C bus leaving St Ives on 7 August 2011.

An Egyptian bus driver once tried to bypass a mandatory drug test by using his wife's urine. He found out he failed when his boss handed him the results and said, "congratulations, you're pregnant."

American school buses are yellow because you see yellow faster than any other color, 1.24 times faster than red in fact.

In New Hampshire it is illegal to inhale bus fumes with the intent of inducing euphoria.

Low-floor buses may be designed with special height adjustment controls that permit a stationary bus to temporarily lower itself to ground level, permitting wheelchair access. This is referred to as a kneeling bus.

Japanese bus drivers turn the vehicle off at red lights to reduce pollution.

Residents in Surabaya, Indonesia can pay for the bus with plastic waste instead of money. Paying with plastic grants them two hours of travel. The aim is to reduce plastic waste whilst getting more people to use public transport, thus lowering the number of cars on the road.

95% of Londoners live within 400m of a bus stop.

The lowest number not used by a London bus is 218.

Source Daily Express

Burundi

The Republic of Burundi is a tiny landlocked nation of 14.3 million people in East Africa about the size of Belgium. The major part of its territory is covered by mountains, lakes, tropical jungles (about the 30% of the land) and rivers.

Burundi is bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and southeast, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west. It lies along Lake Tanganyika, one of the world's oldest and deepest freshwater lakes.

The country's landscape is dominated by rolling green hills, which are vital for agriculture, including crops like coffee, tea, and bananas.

Mount Heha is Burundi's highest point at 2,685 meters (8,810 feet), while Lake Tanganyika marks its lowest elevation at 772 meters (2,532 feet).

Burundi has two capitals—Gitega (political capital) since 2019 and Bujumbura (economic capital), which lies on Lake Tanganyika's northeastern shore

The Kingdom of Burundi dates back to the late 16th century and was ruled by a monarch known as the mwami. The kingdom featured a hierarchical society with fluid social mobility between Hutu and Tutsi groups.

Burundi was part of German East Africa from 1890 to 1916, later becoming a Belgian mandate under the League of Nations after World War I. It gained independence on July 1, 1962.

Army officer Michel Micombero abolished the Burundian monarchy and declared the country a republic with himself as president on November 28, 1966. 

Micombero ruled Burundi as a military dictator for 10 years. His regime finally collapsed in 1976 when he was ousted in a coup d'état by another army officer Jean-Baptiste Bagaza, who installed himself as president. 

Ethnic tensions between Hutu and Tutsi groups have shaped much of Burundi's modern history, including a civil war that lasted from 1993 to 2005

Burundi's runner Venuste Niyongabo led his country to earn an Olympian title in the 5000 meters at the 1996 Augusta Olympics. It was Burundi's first ever gold medal, as prior to 1996, Burundi had not competed in the Summer Games due to ethnic conflicts and coups d'etat.

In 2014, President Pierre Nkurunziza banned jogging due to fears that group runs were being used as a cover for political subversion.

Rural women in Burundi greet each other with an intricate musical ritual called akazehe. A traditional practice, akazehe is a call-and-response chant that typically involves two or more women. The women stand facing each other and begin the chant with a series of high-pitched ululations, known as "ikombe." They then engage in a rhythmic exchange of phrases, often improvising on the spot. The chant is accompanied by hand gestures and sometimes by stomping or clapping.

Coffee contributes more income to the country's economy -- like neighboring Rwanda-- than any other single economic activity.

About 60 percent of Burundi's people are Christians. The religion was introduced into the country during the European colonial period.

The Hutu make up the nation's largest ethnic group (80%), followed by Tutsis (14%) and Twa (1%).

Source: EzineArticles.com

Richard Burton

Richard Burton insisted that his way out of an impoverished Welsh childhood was due not to acting, but to books; he read one a day. He was once bought a complete set of The Everyman Library by Elizabeth Taylor as a present.

Burton was widely admired for his command and understanding of English poetry, which he taught for a term at Oxford University in the early 1970s.

He once got into a contest with Robert F. Kennedy, whom he greatly admired, in which they tried to outdo the other by quoting Shakespeare's sonnets. Both were word-perfect, and Burton was forced to "win" the contest by quoting one of the sonnets backwards.

Richard Burton indulged Elizabeth Taylor's love of jewellery. He once gave her a £127,000 ring "just because it was a Tuesday."

Source IMDB

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Edgar Rice Burroughs was born on September 1, 1875, in Chicago, the fourth son of businessman and Civil War veteran Major George Tyler Burroughs (1833–1913) and his wife Mary Evaline (Zieger) Burroughs (1840–1920).

He attended the Brown School, then, due to a diphtheria epidemic, Miss Coolie's Maplehurst School for Girls, then the Harvard School, Phillips Andover and the Michigan Military Academy. Burroughs was a mediocre student and flunked his examination for West Point.

He ended up as an enlisted soldier with the 7th U.S. Cavalry in Fort Grant, Arizona Territory. After being diagnosed with a heart problem and thus ineligible to serve, Burroughs was discharged in 1897.

After his discharge, Burroughs worked a number of different jobs. He drifted and worked on a ranch in Idaho for time. By 1911, after seven years of low wages, he was working as stationery salesman.

Edgar Rice Burroughs published his first magazine story in 1912 about an abandoned English boy raised by African apes. Tarzan, "King of the Jungle," became one of the 20th century's best-known fictional characters.

In 1916 Edgar Rice Burroughs was paid a record $5,000 cash advance on royalties for the film rights of the first Tarzan novel plus five per cent of the gross receipts. Tarzan of the Apes went on to take a million dollars at the box office.

Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote 26 Tarzan books without ever visiting Africa.

Burroughs purchased a large ranch north of Los Angeles in 1919, which he named "Tarzana." The citizens of the community that sprang up around the ranch voted to adopt that name when their community, Tarzana, California was formed in 1927.

He also wrote a series of novels about life on Mars, including A Princess of Mars (1917) and Synthetic Men of Mars (1940).

Burroughs became a pilot in the 1920s, purchasing an Security Airster S-1, and encouraging his family to learn to fly.

At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Burroughs was a resident of Hawaii and, despite being in his late 60s, he applied for permission to become a war correspondent. This permission was granted, and so he became one of the oldest war correspondents for the U.S. during the Second World War.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Burroughs died alone in his Encino, California home of a heart attack after many health problems, on March 19, 1950, He had spent his last hour alive reading the Sunday comics in bed.

He wrote 91 novels in total selling hundreds of millions of copies in over thirty languages. Burroughs once said "I write to escape ... to escape poverty."

American film director Wes Anderson is Burroughs' great-grandson.

Source Wikipedia

Robert Burns

Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1796. He was the eldest son of a poor peasant tenant farmer, William Burnes, with six younger brothers and sisters. His mother Agnes Brown Burnes earned extra cash making soft white cheese. She was a fine singer and knew many folk songs.

His father spelt the name as "Burnes" but Robert adopted the spelling without the "e" when his father died.

He was born two miles (3 km) south of Ayr, in Alloway, in a house built by his father (now the Burns Cottage Museum), where he lived until Easter 1766, when Robert was seven years old.

The Burns Cottage in Alloway, Ayrshire. CC BY-SA 3.0, $2

Although poverty limited his formal education, Burns' father took pains that young Robert read widely, including Dryden, Milton and Shakespeare. He had three short periods of formal study when his father could afford it, and gained a knowledge of French and mathematics.

Burns published his first book in order to gather enough money to burn his bridges and emigrate to Jamaica where there was a job as a plantation manager waiting for him. Due to its success he stayed in Scotland.

Robbie Burns was a passenger when Patrick Miller experimented with a steam-driven vessel on Dalswinton Loch in 1788. Though successful Miller abandoned the project due to the cost.

In 1784, Burns' father died. Robbie worked as a farm laborer with his brother Gilbert and two sisters on the cold and grudging acres of their leased farm. It was not successful. By this time he was also writing poetry.

Robert Burns was never called Rabbie or Robbie – though he did occasionally call himself Spunkie.

Robbie Burns was dark haired with keen glowing eyes and pink coloring. He walked with a slight stoop because of his years of hard work on the farm and didn't have a particularly strong Scottish accent.

He wore his hair long and tied back in a ponytail and he had size 8 feet.

Burns was a heavy drinker, but not an alcoholic; he often drunk in the Globe Tavern, Dumfries. Indeed he fathered a baby by a Globe barmaid.

Burns was renowned for his drinking and womanizing life-style and he claimed that he was haunted rather than helped by his religion. Despite this he was by no means irreligious, retaining a belief in a good and pure God but his preference was for the more liberal Christianity rather than the more traditionally rigid Scottish Calvinism.

He circulated satirical poems on religion amongst friends including his Holy Fair, which slammed Calvinist bigotry by contrasting the admonishments of the church leaders preaching hellfire and damnation with the genial sociability of the congregation at the local Calvinist church prayer meeting.

In 1785 Burns fell in love with Jean Armour, the daughter of a building contractor. Jean was a sweet and attractive brunette, always smiling, with an affectionate nature. She soon became pregnant, and although Burns offered to make her his wife, her father forbade their marriage because of his rebellion against Calvinist religion. In 1787 he resumed their relationship and in the following year Robert and Jean were finally married.

In 1788 Robert Burns wrote the poem Auld Lang Syne, based on fragments of an old ballad dating from over 150 years previously. He transcribed it from "an old man singing," having been deeply moved by the words and in particular the line "should old acquaintances be forgot." Burns added at least two new verses, to those which already existed and sent it to his friend James Johnson, the publisher of Scots Musical Museum as an old Scottish song. Johnson delayed publishing it until after Burns’ death.

After the outbreak of the French Revolution, Burns became an outspoken champion of the Republican cause. His enthusiasm for liberty and social justice dismayed many of his admirers.

Burns' bristling independence, blunt manner of speech, and occasional social awkwardness alienated admirers, but in 1791 appreciative Edinburgh society helped secure him a position as a tax inspector where he spent his time snooping and tax levying throughout his district.

Burns kept a pet ewe called Poor Mallie and wrote two poems in her honor. He also had a favorite dog named Luath.

Robert Burns had a keen musical ear and a great feeling for rhythm. He wrote 250 songs, mainly in Scots vernacular, including "Scots Wha Nae," the unofficial Scottish national anthem. Despite frequently borrowing other peoples fragments of verse he became known mainly through his songs as the National Poet of Scotland.

The flat Scottish wool cap with a pompom at its center, the tam-o’-shanter, was named after the hero in Burns' 1791 poem Tam O’Shanter.

Arduous farm work and undernourishment in his youth permanently injured Burns health, leading to the rheumatic heart disease from which he died in his Dumfries home after the removal of a tooth on July 21, 1796. His last words were "Don't let the awkward squad fire over me."

Robert Burns' death room

Burns fathered 12 children with four different women in total. His youngest, Maxwell, was born on the day of his funeral.

He was at first buried in the far corner of St. Michael's Churchyard in Dumfries. Burns' body was eventually moved to its final location in the same cemetery, the Burns Mausoleum, in September 1817, amid concerns his grave was insufficiently grand. The mausoleum was paid for by public donation; contributors included King George III and Sir Walter Scott.

Burns Night is celebrated on Burns's birthday, January 25th, with Burns suppers around the world, and is more widely observed in Scotland than the official national day, St. Andrew's Day.

Piping in the haggis on Burns Night. By Glenlarson - Wikipedia

The first Burns supper in The Mother Club in Greenock was held on what was thought to be his birthday on January 29, 1802; in 1803 it was discovered from the Ayr parish records that the correct date was January 25, 1759.

Robert Burns is very popular in Russia. His works have been translated more into Russian than all the other languages put together.

The USSR was the first country to issue a commemorative postage stamp for Robert Burns in 1956 (see below).

There are said to be more statues of Burns worldwide than any non-religious figure apart from Queen Victoria and Christopher Columbus.

Both New York and Oregon have towns called Burns named after the Scottish bard.

Some phrases that came from Robert Burns:
(1)" Be to the poor like on ie whun stane. And havd their noses to the grunstane"  (nose to the grindstone)
(2) "Man's inhumanity to man. Makes countless thousands mourn." (From Man Was Made to Mourn)
(3) "The best laid schemes o'mice an men. Gang aft-a-gley"  (From To a Mouse)

Source Daily Express

Burma

Shin Ditha Pamauk, a Buddhist monk, negotiated with Emperor Kublai Khan in 1287 for a treaty that ended the Mongol occupation of northern Burma in exchange for annual tribute

Bayinnaung Kyawhtin Nawrahta (January 16, 1516 – October 10, 1581) was king of Toungoo Dynasty of Burma (Myanmar) from April 30, 1550 to his death in 1581. During his 31-year reign, Bayinnaung assembled the largest empire in the history of Southeast Asia, which included much of modern-day Burma, Chinese Shan states, Lan Na, Lan Xang, Manipur and Siam.

Statue of Bayinnaung in front of the National Museum. Author Phyo WP Wikipedia Commons

In 1599, the Burmese king Nanda Bayin laughed himself to death when informed by a visiting Italian merchant that Venice was a free state without a king.

The British conquered Burma after three Anglo-Burmese Wars in the 19th century and the country became a British colony.

U Ottama died of hunger on September 9, 1939, during a strike against British colonialism. The ethnic Theravada Buddhist monk had been imprisoned several times by the British colonial government for his anti-colonialist political activities. He is considered one of the national heroes of modern Myanmar.

Venerable Martyr Ven.Ottama Sayadaw of Burma. By Chaungoothar -Wikipedia

Burma became an independent nation on January 4, 1948, initially as a democratic nation and then, following a coup d'état in 1962, a military dictatorship.

After 1962, the Burma Socialist Programme Party  ruled the country as a totalitarian one-party state, headed by General Ne Win.

General Ne Win. was obsessed with numerology. He removed 50 Kyat and 100 Kyat banknotes from circulation, replacing them with 45 Kyat and 90 Kyat banknotes. The economic instability which followed led to a coup d'êtát in 1988.

In 1989, the military government officially changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar. The capital also changed its name from Rangoon to Yangon but in 2006 moved to Nay Pyi Taw.

Source Daily Express

Burlesque

Burlesque is a multifaceted form of entertainment with a rich history. It originated in the 18th century as a response to popular crazes like opera and ballet. The word "burlesque" comes from the Italian word "burlesco," meaning "mockery" or "joke".

In the 18th century, Burlesque was a form of satirical comedy parodying a particular play or dramatic genre. For example, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) was a burlesque of 18th-century opera, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Critic (1777) satirized the sentimentality in contemporary drama.

William Hogarth painting of a Beggar's Opera scene

Victorian burlesque, popular in London from the 1830s to 1890s, parodied well-known culture such as opera and Shakespeare.

American burlesque's origins are complex and confusing, though it owes most to American farces, minstrel show sketches, and saloon or honky-tonk entertainment. Historians most frequently date its beginnings to the 1860s and the performance in 1866 of a musical extravaganza called The Black Crook in New York City.

Early American burlesque shows were structured similarly to minstrel shows, featuring musical acts, sketches, and female performers.

During the 1920s striptease was introduced in order to counteract the growing popularity of the movies; Gypsy Rose Lee was the most famous stripper. Burlesque was frequently banned in the USA.

Burlesque had its own colorful lingo, with terms like "the wheel" (the circuit of towns shows traveled).

Many famous comedians started their careers in burlesque, including Fanny Brice, Mae West, and Abbott and Costello

Lady Gaga started performing as a burlesque dancer after dropping out of college. She originally made a name for herself playing gigs at downtown Manhattan club venues with a performance art show billed as Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue (co-featuring performance artist Lady Starlight), which was when music industry insiders initially to take note.

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia

Edmund Burke

The Irish statesman, political theorist and philosopher Edmund Burke was born on January 12, 1729 in Dublin, Ireland, to a prosperous solicitor father (Richard; d. 1761) of the Church of Ireland.

Burke was raised in his father's faith and remained throughout his life a practicing Anglican.

He received his early education at a Quaker school in Ballitore, County Kildare, some 30 miles from Dublin, and remained in correspondence with his schoolmate Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of the school's owner, throughout his life.

In 1744, Burke went to Trinity College, Dublin and, in 1747, set up a debating society, "Edmund Burke's Club", which, in 1770, merged with the college's Historical Club to form the College Historical Society, now the oldest undergraduate society in the world.

Burke's father wished him to study for the law, and with this object he went to London in 1750. He entered the Middle Temple, but soon gave up legal study to travel in continental Europe. After giving up law, he attempted to earn a livelihood through writing.

Edmund Burke

In 1756 Burke stayed at Circus House in Bath, the house of his Catholic physician, Dr Christopher Nugent. Here he met the doctor's daughter, Jane Mary Nugent (1734 -1812)

Burke married Jane on March 12, 1757. Their son Richard, who became a barrister was born on February 9, 1758. Another son, Christopher, died in infancy. Burke also helped raise a ward, Edmund Nagle (later Admiral Sir Edmund Nagle), the son of a cousin orphaned in 1763.

In December 1765, Burke entered the British Parliament as a member of the House of Commons for Wendover, a pocket borough in the control of Lord Fermanagh, later 2nd Earl Verney, a close political ally of Rockingham.

After Burke's maiden speech, William Pitt the Elder said Burke had "spoken in such a manner as to stop the mouths of all Europe" and that the Commons should congratulate itself on acquiring such a member.

In 1769, Burke purchased Gregories – a 600-acre estate near Beaconsfield – for £20,000. He had to borrow most of the money and although it included saleable assets such as art works by Titian, Gregories was a heavy financial burden in the following decades and Burke was never able to pay in full for the estate.

The Gregories estate, purchased by Burke in 1768

Burke was a member of the the circle of leading intellectuals and artists in London with Samuel Johnson as its central luminary, also including David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, and Joshua Reynolds. Although Johnson admired Burke's brilliance, he found him a dishonest politician.

Burke opposed the government's attempts to coerce the American colonists, outlining his beliefs in Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770).

In 1774, Burke was elected member for Bristol, at the time "England's second city" and a large constituency with a genuine electoral contest. However his support for unpopular causes, notably free trade with Ireland and Catholic Emancipation, led to Burke losing his seat in 1780. For the remainder of his parliamentary career, Burke sat for Malton, another pocket borough controlled by the Marquess of Rockingham.

In 1780, during the Gordon Riots, Burke became a target and his home was placed under armed guard by the military.

Burke was a vehement opponent of the French Revolution, which he denounced in Reflections on the Revolution in France, The book, which was published on November 1, 1790, was read all over Europe.

In 1794 Edmund Burke resigned his seat in parliament for Malton, North Yorkshire over the failure to convict Warren Hastings in a parliamentary impeachment. His son, Richard, was elected in succession to his father, but fell ill soon afterwards, and died in South Kensington at the early age of thirty-six. Edmund Burke and his wife suffered grief on a huge scale. The Dictionary of National Biography article describes the grief of the parents as "almost uncontrollable", and his father considered himself ‘marked by the hand of God’

Burke died in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, on July 9, 1797 and was buried there alongside his son and brother. His wife survived him by nearly fifteen years.

Burke's basic political credo – that liberty is only possible within the strict framework of law and order – ensured that since the 20th century, he has generally been viewed as the philosophical founder of modern conservatism.