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>
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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>
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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>
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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>