Grand Slam Tennis - 1

During the last few weeks, I saw some riveting performances on clay, where Novak Djokovic defeated the current world number one, Rafael Nadal twice in two weeks (Madrid Masters - 7/5, 6/4 & Italian Masters 6/4. 6/4). This together with the fact that the 2nd Grand Slam tournament for the calendar year, French Open is just around the corner gave me the idea of posting something on the records of Grand Slam Tennis.

I guess it's not easy to jot down all those records and highlights in the history of the Grand Slam tournaments through a single post. Therefore, I've names this as "Grand Slam Tennis - 1". I will continue the topic with few more posts in the near future. So here we go!!!

(Clockwise) Maureen Connolly, Andre Agassi, Steffi Graf, Roger Federer and Rod Laver

• The Grand Slam tournaments in Tennis are the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open, played in that order. Currently, both the Australian Open and the US Open are played on hard courts, while the French Open is played on clay, and Wimbledon is played on grass.

• Winning all four majors with an Olympic Gold medal is known as a “Golden Slam”, and in 1988 Steffi Graf achieved this rare feat by winning all four majors and the Gold Medal in 1988 Seoul Olympics.

• Andre Agassi, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have all won these four majors, but NOT in a single calendar year.

• In 1938, Don Budge became the first ever tennis player (male or female) to win a Grand Slam in a single calendar year, by winning all four majors.

• Maureen Connolly is the first woman to win all four Grand Slam tournaments, when she won all of them in 1953.

• Rod Laver of Australia is the only tennis player to have won all four Grand Slam majors twice, in a single calendar year, by winning them in 1962 & 1969.

• Frank Sedgeman and Ken McGregor are the only men’s doubles partners to have won all four major tournaments in a single calendar year in the history of tennis (1951).

• Roger Federer, whom I consider as the greatest tennis player of all time, holds the record for most number of Grand Slam titles (singles) in the history of tennis with a total of 16 titles. Federer also holds the record for the most number of Grand Slam finals (singles – men) with 22 appearances.

• Margaret Court holds the record for the most number of Grand Slam singles titles in the history of tennis (male or female) with a total of 24 titles.

• The table below outlines the most number of Grand Slam winners in each of the majors.

Tournament	Most Number of Wins (singles)
	Men’s	Women’s
Australian Open	Roy Emerson (6)	Margaret Court (11)
French Open	Bjorn Borg (6)	Chris Evert (7)
Wimbledon	William Renshaw, Pete Sampras (7)	Martina Navratilova (9)
US Open	Bill Larned, Bill Tillden, Richard Sears (7)	Molla Mallory (8)

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).