Guy Burgess (1911–1963) was a British diplomat and Soviet agent, a member of the Cambridge Five spy ring that operated from the mid-1930s to the early years of the Cold War. His defection in 1951 to the Soviet Union, with his fellow-spy Donald Maclean, led to a serious breach in Anglo-American intelligence co-operation, and caused long-lasting demoralisation in Britain's foreign and diplomatic services. Born into a wealthy middle-class family, Burgess was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he embraced left-wing politics and joined the British Communist Party. He was recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1935, on the recommendation of the future double-agent Kim Philby. After working for the BBC as a producer, Burgess joined the Foreign Office in 1944 and served in several sensitive posts, including a spell as secretary to Hector McNeil, the deputy to Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary. In the critical postwar period Burgess had access to information on all aspects of Britain's foreign policy, and may have passed thousands of documents to his Soviet controllers. He fled to Moscow in May 1951 and never left the Soviet Union.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Burgess
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1869:
Das Rheingold, the first of four operas in Der Ring des Nibelungen by German composer Richard Wagner, was first performed in Munich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Rheingold
1948:
Led by Gail Halvorsen, the U.S. Army Air Forces began Operation "Little Vittles", delivering candy to children as part of the Berlin Airlift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Halvorsen
1965:
The United Nations Security Council unanimously passed a resolution calling for an unconditional ceasefire in the Indo-Pakistani War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1965
1993:
A tugboat towing a barge collided with a rail bridge in Mobile, Alabama, U.S., deforming the tracks and causing the derailment of a passenger train eight minutes later, which killed 47 people and injured an additional 103. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bayou_Canot_rail_accident
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
abase: 1. (transitive) To lower, as in condition in life, office, rank, etc., so as to cause pain or hurt feelings; to degrade, to depress, to humble, to humiliate. 2. (transitive, archaic) To lower physically; to depress; to cast or throw down; to stoop. 3. (transitive, obsolete) To lower in value, in particular by altering the content of alloys in coins; to debase. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/abase
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the informations of others. --Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Philip_Stanhope,_4th_Earl_of_Chesterfield