Facts about the Airlines of the World...

Let me wish all of you guys a very happy Sinhala and Tamil New Year.

It was through a casual chat with one of my friends that prompted me to make a post on this topic. I have tried to highlight the historical landmarks of the key airlines that operate right now, and also to point out the historical timelines of the airlines industry too.

Here we GO!!!

Logos of Emirates, Sri Lankan, KLM and Lufthansa Airlines clockwise

• The World’s first ever airline is identified as “DELAG” (Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft), which first operated in 1909 and was headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany.

• However, the oldest airline out of those that operate currently is “KLM”, the national airline of Netherlands, which operates from 1920, and is headquartered in Amstelveen, Netherlands. The merger of KLM with Air France, in May 2004 created Air France-KLM, which is incorporated under French law with headquarters at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport.

• Germany’s Lufthansa Airline, was formed in 1926, and is currently the airline is the world's fifth-largest airline in terms of overall passengers carried, operating services to 18 domestic destinations and 183 international destinations in 78 countries across Africa, Americas, Asia and Europe.

• Headquartered in Atlanta, Delta Airlines is the world's largest airline operating under a single certificate, operating flights on six continents across the globe. Delta operates an extensive domestic and international network, spanning North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Australia. The Airline was founded in 1924.

• The largest airline of the Middle East, Emirates was formed in 1985, and currently operates to 105 cities in 62 countries.

• Out of the Asian countries, India was also one of the first countries to embrace civil aviation. One of the first West Asian airline companies was Air India, which had its beginning as Tata Airlines in 1932.

• The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), was formed in 1947 (headquartered in Montreal, Canada) which is a specialized agency of the United Nations, works with the principles and techniques of international air navigation and focuses on the growth and sustainability of air travelling.

• International Air Transport Association (IATA) was formed in Havana, Cuba in 1945, which is also a regulatory body which works globally on maintaining the air travelling standards.

• Sri Lankan Airlines, the national carrier of Sri Lanka was formed in July, 1979 and is currently headed by its Chairman, Nishantha Wickremasinghe. In December 1992, the airline purchased its first Airbus A320.

African Countries and Capitals...

With the recent turmoil in the North African region and the Middle East, it’s not a surprise that such nations have caught the attention of ours.

I guess, this would be an ideal time to look into the basics once again. Remember I posted the list of capitals of the countries in Asia, South America and Europe earlier? Moving on from there, let’s now look at the capitals of the countries of the African continent.

Capital cities clockwise - Tunis (Tunisia), Harare (Zimbabwe), Cairo (Egypt), Accra (Ghana)

Please note that some countries like Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria have named new cities as their capitals in the recent past. Hope this would be useful.

Country	Capital
Algeria	Algiers
Angola	Luanda
Benin	Porto Novo
Botswana	Gaborone
Burkina Faso	Ouagadougou
Burundi	Bujumbura
Cameroon	Yaoundé
Cape Verde	Praia
Central African Republic	Bangui
Chad	N’Djamena
Comoros	Moroni
Cote d’Ivoire	Yamoussoukro
Democratic Republic of Congo	Kinshasa
Djibouti	Djibouti
Egypt	Cairo
Equatorial Guinea	Malabo
Eritrea	Asmara
Ethiopia	Addis Ababa
Gabon	Libreville
Gambia	Banjul
Ghana	Accra
Guinea	Conakry
Guinea-Bissau	Bissau
Kenya	Nairobi
Lesotho	Maseru
Liberia	Monrovia
Libya	Tripoli
Madagascar	Antananarivo
Malawi	Lilongwe
Mali	Bamako
Mauritania	Nouakchott
Mauritius	Port Louis
Morocco	Rabat
Mozambique	Maputo
Namibia	Windhoek
Niger	Niamey
Nigeria	Abuja
Republic of Congo	Brazzaville
Rwanda	Kigali
Sao Tome & Principe	Sao Tome
Senegal	Dakar
Seychelles	Victoria
Sierra Leone	Free Town
Somalia	Mogadishu
South Africa	Pretoria
Sudan	Khartoum
Swaziland	Mbabane
Tanzania	Dodoma
Togo	Lome
Tunisia	Tunis
Uganda	Kampala
Zambia	Lusaka
Zimbabwe	Harare

Oscar Awards - Records and Facts....

Ok, I’m back with my first post for March, 2011. I thought of switching from the usual topic these days, which is the Cricket World Cup. Instead for a change let’s have a look at some facts related to the field of Arts and Entertainment. This time it’ll be the Oscar Awards.

The Oscar Awards for 2011 has just been announced. My post today will outline some of the records and facts gathered from the history of this prestigious award ceremony. So here we go.

• The first Academy Awards ceremony was held on May 16, 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of the 1927/1928 film season.

• The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last CommandThe Way of All Flesh. In the inaugural awards ceremony held in 1929, the Best Picture award was won by the film “Wings”. and

• Art director Cedric Gibbons is credited with the design of the award trophy.

• At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27, 1957, the Best Foreign Language Film category was introduced. Until then, foreign language films were honored with the Special Achievement Award.

• In 1993, an In Memoriam segment was introduced, honoring those who had made a significant contribution to cinema who had died in the preceding 12 months.

• Three films have been awarded 11 Academy Awards each, making them the film with most awards being won. The three films are Ben-Hur (1929), Titanic (1997) and Lord of the Rings – The return of the King (2003).

• Walt Disney won 26 Oscars (22 competitive, 4 honorary), making him the person who has won the most number of Academy Awards.

• Most awards won by a woman, is Edith Head (who is a costume designer) who won 8 awards.

• John Ford has 4 Oscar Awards, making him the Director who has won the most number of awards. In acting, Katherine Hepburne has also won 4 Oscars, which the most number is won by an actor / actress.

• Three films have received the so-called Big Five Academy Awards (best picture, director, actor, actress, and writing). They are It Happened One Night (1934), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

• First woman to win Best Picture is Julia Phillips for The Sting (1973), while the first woman to win the Best Director award is Kathryn Bigelow for Hurt Locker (2009).

• Titanic (1997) and All About Eve (1950) has the record for most number of nominations (14).

Facts on the history of Cricket World Cup - 2

With the few days ahead of the Cricket World Cup, let’s look at some of more records and highlights of the previous tournaments. 

These are mostly related to individuals who excelled in their respective areas. Let’s see whether we are lucky enough to see any of these records being broken in 2011.

So once again, before we move into the post details, let’s wish our Sri Lankan Team all the very best, and that they’ll be able to make our paradise island proud, by winning the tournament.

• The first “Man of the Series” award was presented in the 1992 World Cup. For his 456 runs in the tournament and for the outstanding display of captaincy the award was won by Martin Crowe of New Zealand.

• Sachin Tendulkar holds the record for the most number of runs scored in World Cups. Upto the World Cup held in 2007, he had scored a total of 1796 runs. He also holds the record for the most number of runs in a single world cup (673), which he scored in the 2003 World Cup.

• Gary Kirsten holds the record for the highest score in a World Cup ODI, when he scored 188* against UAE in the 1996 World Cup. 

• The highest partnership for any wicket is 318, between Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly scored against Sri Lanka in 1999.

• Glenn McGrath dominates the bowling records, with the highest number of wickets in a single world cup (26), most career world cup wickets (71) and best bowling figures (15/7 – against Kenya, 2003 World Cup).

• The highest score in a World Cup ODI was scored by India who scored 413/5 against Namibia in 2007, while Canada were bowled out for the lowest score ever in 2003, when they were dismissed for 36 by Sri Lanka.

• Most consecutive wins in the history of World Cup is 23 by Australia.

Facts on the history of Cricket World Cup - 1

In one of my posts during last month (January, 2011), we looked at some of the key highlights of the history of the Rugby World Cup. This was targeting the fact that the next Rugby World Cup is scheduled to be held later this year.

Through this post, I’m taking you through some of the key highlights of the other ‘mega’ sporting event for this year, which is just around the corner.

The ICC Cricket World Cup is always an event that draws the attention of local spectators, and I’m sure you would be interested to know some of those fascinating highlights that I’m going to share now. So let’s start off wishing the Sri Lankan the very best for the World Cup 2011.

• The first three World Cups held in England in 1975, 1979 and 1983 were sponsored by the insurance giant Prudential Insurance.

• In the 1983 Sri Lanka took part as a Test-playing nation, and Zimbabwe qualified through the ICC Trophy. A fielding circle was introduced, 30 yards (27 m) away from the stumps.

• The World Cups of 1987, 1992 and 1996 were named as Reliance World Cup, Benson & Hedges World Cup and Willis World Cup respectively. In the 1987 World Cup held in the subcontinent the games were reduced from 60 to 50 overs per innings.

• The 1992 World Cup, held in Australia and New Zealand, introduced many changes to the game, such as coloured clothing, white balls, day/night matches, and an alteration to the fielding restrictions. The South African cricket team participated in the event for the first time, following the fall of the apartheid regime and the end of the international sports boycott.

• The current trophy was created for the 1999 championships, and was the first permanent prize in the tournament's history; prior to this, different trophies were made for each World Cup.

• The 2003 World Cup in South Africa was the first to sport a mascot, Dazzler the zebra. An orange raccoon-like creature known as Mello was the mascot for the 2007 Cricket World Cup. The mascot for the 2011 Cricket World Cup is Stumpi, the elephant.

• The locations for the 2015 and 2019 Cricket World Cups would be Australia/New Zealand and England respectively.

Highlights of the "Sarasaviya Film Festival"

I’m back with another topic that is related to “arts, literature and entertainment” area of quizzing. I thought of continuing from where we left with the last post on the history of the Sinhala cinema.

This time, I thought of focusing on one of the famous award festivals of the Sinhala cinema over the years, “The Sarasaviya Awards”. Just like the Oscars for the Hollywood fans and Filmfare Awards for the Bollywood fans, it's the Sarasaviya Awards for the Sri Lankan cinema fans which usually take place once a year. The awards ceremony is organized by the “Sarasaviya” Magazine, published by Lake House (Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited).

Now it’s time to dig into some of the highlights of the awards festival which has taken place almost over 50 years back.

• The first Sarasaviya film festival was held on May 9, 1964 at the Asoka Cinema Hall, Colombo.
• Gamperaliya was regarded as the best film in the inaugural festival, and it was awarded to its producer Anton Wickremasinghe. Sir Lester James Peiris and Regi Siriwardena won the awards for best director and best script-writer, respectively and that too was for Gamperaliya.
• D.R. Nanayakkara was awarded the best actor title for his performance in Sikuru Tharuwa, another popular film in the 1964 film festival. The best actress award was bagged by Punya Heendeniya for her performance in Gamperaliya.
• Over the years the actor who has won the “Best Actor” award as many as anyone else is the legendary actor, Joe Abeywickrema, who has won it 8 times.
• He was first awarded the “Best Actor” award in 1966, for the film “Sarawita”.
• Swarna Mallawaarachchi has won the “Best Actress” award in most occasions, by winning it 5 times, the first time being in 1972, for her performance in the film “Dadayama”.
• Ironically Malini Fonseka has only won the “Best Actress” award 3 times (1980, 1982 & 1983), while Gamini Fonseka has won the “Best Actor” award six times (1965, 1967, 1968, 1980, 1981 & 1986).
• One of the legendary directors of the Sinhala Cinema, Dr. Lester James Pieris has won the “Best Director” Award the most no. times (3), by winning it in 1964, 1967 & 1969.
• In 1964, Narada Disasekara won the inaugural award for the “Best Male Playback Singer” for “Ranmuthu Doowa”. Dr. W.D. Amaradewa is the artist to win this award most times.