Word: siam
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...Anna's day, the King of Siam had 61 wives. His great-grandson, Thailand's King Bhumibol, has only one. But the celebration that marked the 32nd birthday of Queen Sirikit would have sufficed for at least three ordinary royal consorts. On the first day, the army and navy fired 21-gun salutes, while roses smothered Bangkok's main boulevard. On the second, Buddhist monks chanted as the Queen lit candles in the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. On the third, the royal household organized a charity fete, with a specially built nightclub resounding to the King...
Died. Luang Pibul Songgram, 66, Thai strongman, who as Prime Minister from 1938 to 1941 and again from 1948 to 1957 changed the country's name from Siam to Thailand, turned it westward, or so he thought, with such Occidental laws as ordering men to kiss their wives before leaving for work each morning, ruled with a generally competent, militantly anti-Communist hand until a 1957 economic crisis led the Thai army to overthrow him; of a heart attack; in Tokyo...
Died. Prince Chula Chakrabongse, 55, expatriate member of Thailand's royal family, who in revenge for The King and I wrote Lords of Life, an insider's report of Siamese royalty, leaving little doubt that Yul Brynner's resemblance to any King of Siam ended with his shaven head, and incidentally debunking the belief that King Chulalongkorn had 3,000 wives and 370 children (it was 92 wives and 77 children); of cancer; in Tredethy, Cornwall...
White Model. Nostalgic Thais recall the glorious days when Siam's elephant corps was its dreaded force de frappe.*As a member of SEATO, Thailand nowadays sets more store by its U.S.-supplied M-24 tanks. Nonetheless, allows Colonel Damnern Lekhakul, a military historian attached to the Thai general staff, "If a war comes, we may have to rely on elephants for jungle combat...
...Buddhist nonviolence embraces bugs but not Catholics. Besides the thousands martyred by Buddhists in China, India, Ceylon, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Siam, Burma and Malaya, the extremely conservative martyrology of the church lists eight bishops, 184 priests, 2,370 nuns and 75,380 lay persons beheaded, strangled, starved or dismembered by Vietnamese Buddhists between the Edict of Jan. 6, 1833 and the Peace of June...