Word: archipelagos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...RETIRED. Jaime Cardinal Sin, 75, Archbishop of Manila, whose call for Filipinos to defy former Philippine strongman Ferdinand Marcos started the People Power revolution of 1986; in Manila. In the predominantly Catholic archipelago, Sin wielded enormous influence on such issues as government support for birth control, which he opposes. But the height of his power came in 1986-and again in January 2001, when Sin encouraged a second such public demonstration, which forced President Joseph Estrada from office. The ailing Sin, who suffered a mild stroke this past March, cloaked determination with a puckish sense of humor, greeting visitors...
...sculptural relief of a jaunty schooner, its bow thrust upward by a swell, carved some 1,200 years ago at Borobudur, the magnificent Buddhist monument not far from Yogyakarta. Roaming across the Indonesian islands on a grant to study traditional ships, Beale had read that sailors from the Malay Archipelago regularly crossed the Indian Ocean, and even established colonies in East Africa, centuries before Borobudur was built. As he gazed at the sculpture, a great idea possessed him: this, he thought, was the very ship that the ancient Indonesians sailed to Africa. With the boldness and singular clarity of youth...
...Though largely unknown outside of the region, this was one of the first great achievements in marine exploration: centuries before anybody else engaged in regular long-distance voyages, mariners from the Malay Archipelago ruled the Indian Ocean. The Roman historian Pliny wrote in the first century A.D. about sailors arriving in Africa from the eastern sea on rafts, propelled not by sails but by "the spirit of man and human courage," carrying cinnamon and other spices...
...very difficult to obtain, were suddenly not a problem. The Western boom in Thai cuisine and a massive promotional campaign made the Thai kingdom a hot destination; the buoyant rise of tourism in Bali in the early 1990s encouraged the building of resorts in new destinations in the Indonesian archipelago, such as in neighboring Lombok. Even creepy Burma tried to polish its image and let in private tourism companies...
DIED. NATALYA RESHETOVSKAYA, 84, Russian pianist and scientist better known for her tumultuous two marriages to dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; in Moscow. In a 1974 memoir of their life together, she questioned some of the descriptions of Stalin's prison camps in Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago, calling them "camp folklore." She split from her husband in 1970 but as recently as last year said, "I love him right up to this moment...