U Thant

U Thant,  (born Jan. 22, 1909, Pantanaw, Burma [now Myanmar]—died Nov. 25, 1974, New York, N.Y., U.S.), Myanmar educator, civil servant, and third secretary general of the United Nations (1962–71). Neutralist by inclination and in practice, he criticized both West and East for actions and attitudes that he considered threatening to world peace. Thant was educated at the University of Yangon (Rangoon), later the Arts and Science University, where he met Thakin Nu (afterward U Nu, who became prime minister of Myanmar in 1948). The death of Thant’s father (1928) forced him to leave the university before graduation, and he returned to his hometown as a teacher at the National High School and later (from 1931) as headmaster. In 1942 he was secretary to the educational reorganization committee of the government of Japanese-occupied Burma. From 1943 to 1947 he once more was headmaster at Pantanaw. After World War II Thant was recruited for government service by U Nu and General U Aung San, leader of the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League. He was appointed press director (1947), director of broadcasting (1948), and secretary of the Ministry of Information (1949). In 1952–53 he was a Myanmar (Burmese) delegate to the UN, becoming his country’s permanent UN representative in 1957. He was vice president of the UN General Assembly in 1959. After the death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, the United States and the Soviet Union, failing to agree on a permanent successor, accepted U Thant as a compromise candidate for the acting secretaryship, to which he was elected on Nov. 3, 1961. On Nov. 30, 1962, he was elected permanent secretary general, and he was re-elected for five years on Dec. 2, 1966; he retired at the end of 1971. A devout Buddhist, he sought to apply the principles of detachment and concentration to the solving of international problems. U Thant died in New York City of cancer, and his body was returned to Yangon for burial. There it became involved in a bizarre tug of war between university students, who seized it on Dec. 5, 1974, and buried it in a hastily built mausoleum in the grounds of the Arts and Science University, and police, who retrieved it by force on December 11, buried it privately, and sealed the tomb in concrete. Subsequent rioting led to the military regime’s declaration of martial law in the city and to several deaths. Thant wrote (in Burmese) books on the history of cities, the League of Nations, and Myanmar education, as well as a three-volume history of post-World War II Myanmar (1961). A collection of his public addresses and essays from 1957 to 1963 was published as Toward World Peace (1964), and View from the UN (1978), an account of his years as secretary general, was published posthumously.

U Thant Island U Thant Island, or officially Belmont Island, is a tiny 100 x 200 foot (30 x 60 metre) artificial island in New York City's East River, just to the south of Roosevelt Island. It lies across from United Nations headquarters at 42nd Street, and is legally considered a part of the Borough of Manhattan and New York County. The islet is currently protected as a sanctuary for migrating birds, including a small colony of Double-crested Cormorant, and access is prohibited to the public. The island has its origins in the 1890s as a side-effect of the construction by William Steinway, of piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons, of trolley tunnels under the river to link bustling Manhattan to his eponymous company town in Steinway, Queens. The island was built up on the existing granite outcrop Man-o'-War Reef with excess landfill from a shaft dug down the reef to the tunnels. But Steinway died before his tunnels' completion, and it was financier August Belmont, Jr. who finished the project in 1907, leaving the finished islet as a bonus. The Steinway Tunnels are still in use as part of the 7-Flushing Line, in the New York Subway, and trains still pass directly beneath the island many times a day. Belmont Island, after the financier, became the legal name of the island. The little inconvenient island was unused and almost forgotten for nearly a century, until in 1977 it was adopted by employees at nearby UN headquarters following the controversial guru Sri Chinmoy, who served as an interfaith chaplain there. The group, called Sri Chinmoy: The Peace Meditation at the United Nations, leased the islet from New York State, greened its surface and unofficially renamed it after Burmese Buddhist United Nations Secretary General U Thant, a friend of Chinmoy. U Thant Island was the secretary-general of the United Nations between 1961 and 1971. As a name, U Thant Island, is today that most commonly used. The islet is now the site of a thirty-foot "oneness arch" preserving personal items of the island's namesake. Caples Jefferson Architects proposed for The New York Times Capsule, the New York Times year 2000 time capsule, an obelisk on U Thant Island, designed to gradually disintegrate over the next millennium. Another entrant won the competition, but there may still be some effort to accomplish the project. Reference: http://www.wikipedia.org According to Steede, all of the bricks were carefully photographed, and copies sent to the Epigraphic Society of San Diego, California, where the languages were identified and verified. Several of the bricks had Mayan inscriptions and another language---typical translations. Some of the bricks were decorated with elephants, and other creatures not indigenous to the Americas.