Word: origin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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That reputation leads Westerners to think of Bulgaria, if they think of it at all, as a sort of 16th republic of the Soviet Union. The country's roots, in fact, lie elsewhere. Its name comes from the Bulgars, a people of Turkic origin that moved south of the Danube and into present-day Bulgaria in the 7th century. Conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1396, the Bulgarians spent the next 500 years under the yoke of Constantinople before being set free by the Tsar's forces. During both world wars the country sided with Germany...
...immediate cause of Mudge's pull-out was a dispute over national holidays. Four of ten red-letter days on the current Namibian calendar are of South African origin, and Mudge had proposed keeping only dates of purely local significance. Among the holidays to be dropped was the Dec. 16 Day of the Vow, a commemoration of an 1838 victory by white Afrikaners over the Zulu nation in the Battle of Blood River. Members of Namibia's white minority (75,600 out of a total population of more than 1 million) complained, and South Africa vetoed the legislation...
...life in drag. Bill Murray as Dorsey's bemused play wright of a roommate gives a witty performance with his occasional wry comments. Murray remains detached throughout the movie as his character tries to humor Dorsey. Rumor has it that Murray improvised his lines, but regardless of their origin his cryptic remarks are an interesting foil to his usual role as a blatantly funny...
...militants who had come to Lesotho over the past few months. According to Viljoen, the A.N.C. members were planning attacks in South Africa against political leaders in the black "homelands" of Transkei and Ciskei. South African defense officials displayed a rocket launcher, rifles and some grenades of Communist-bloc origin that they said had been captured in the raid...
James R. Killian Jr., retired president of M.I.T.: The five indispensable books are Darwin's Origin of Species, Freeman Dyson's Disturbing the Universe, Ernst Mayr's Growth of Biological Thought, the works of Thomas Huxley, James Watson's Double Helix, René Vallery-Radot's Life of Pasteur, Eric Ashby's Technology and the Academics: An Essay on Universities and the Scientific Revolution and Sir WiLliam Cecil Dampier's History of Science. And the Bible. And Fowler's Modern English Usage. Also Spengler's Decline of the West, Henry Adams...