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Weekly Update: Birthday of famed monument to love
AGRA: Tourists flocked to the Indian city of Agra on Monday for the start of marathon celebrations marking the 350th anniversary of the Taj Mahal, the architectural wonder built by a Mughal emperor in memory of his dead wife.
The 17th-century white marble Taj Mahal with four slender minarets was built by the heartbroken Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his second wife, Empress Mumtaz Mahal, who died in childbirth.
Some 20,000 workers toiled for years to build the onion-domed shrine in an age of opulence when the dynasty mined precious gems to fund construction of majestic projects.
The celebrations come amid controversy among Indian historians about the actual year of the 350th anniversary.
While the state government of Uttar Pradesh where the Taj is located says it got its dates right, Indian historians say the festivities are up to a decade too late. The debate has been ignited by contemporary accounts and inscriptions at the site.—AFP
British tycoon unveils plan for commercial space flights
LONDON: British airline magnate Richard Branson announced a hugely ambitious plan on Monday for the world’s first commercial space flights, saying he would send “thousands” of fee-paying astronauts into orbit in the next five years.
Branson, a flamboyant communicator and high-profile tycoon, said his Virgin Atlantic airline had signed a technology licensing deal with the US company behind SpaceShipOne, which in June became the first private manned craft to travel to space.
Addressing reporters in central London, Branson said that the new firm — Virgin Galactic — would launch its maiden flight in only three years, and that he would join the very first trip into space.
“Within five years, Virgin Galactic will have created over 3,000 new astronauts from many countries,” Branson said.
Would-be space tourists will pay fees starting at 115,000 pounds and receive three days of flight training before embarking on the real trip.
In a near-messianic speech, Branson pledged that his principal aim was to make space travel possible for ordinary people. “Virgin Galactic will be run as a business, but as a business with a sole purpose of making space travel more and more affordable to people throughout the world,” he said.—AFP
Feathers fly in South African pillow fight record attempt
JOHANNESBURG: On Tuesday, thousands of students at a South African university had a mass pillow fight which organizers hope will be recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest ever staged.
“We are trying to break a record set in March this year at a university in the United States by some 2,400 pillow-fighters,” said Paul Booth, organizer of the brawl at Johannesburg’s Wits University before the fight.
The last official record, according to the Guinness World Record website, was set by 645 pillow-slingers at the Anderson County Courthouse Square in Gannet, Kansas, in June last year.
Since then, there had been several other attempts, but it was not known whether they had been officially recognized by Guinness. —AFP
Uncovered Hemingway story to be auctioned
NEW YORK: A newly discovered story by the 20th century literary giant Ernest Hemingway will be auctioned at Christie’s in New York in December, with the proviso that it not be published — at least for now.
The comic manuscript, together with a signed letter, were written in 1924 when the future Nobel laureate was 25, shortly before publication of his first important work, the short story collection “In Our Time.”
“My Life in the Bull Ring with Donald Ogden Stewart,” was penned after a rowdy sojourn in Pamplona, Spain with the novelist John Dos Passos and the Stewart of the title — a well known satirist and playwright in the 1920s.
“It’s a deliberate attempt at writing a comic story, and is interesting in that way, because it’s a form Hemingway didn’t try very often,” said Patrick McGrath, an expert at Christie’s.
The manuscript and letter have been estimated at between 12,000 and 18,000 dollars.—APP
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