IN: The Sinhalese (Sinhala: siNhl jaatiy Sinhala Jathiya, also known as Hela) are an Indo-Aryan-speaking ethnic group native to the island of Sri Lanka. They constitute about 75% of the Sri Lankan population and number greater than 16.2 million. The Sinhalese identity is based on language, historical heritage and religion. The Sinhalese people speak the Sinhalese language, an Indo-Aryan language, and are predominantly Theravada Buddhists, although a small percentage of Sinhalese follow branches of Christianity.

Prince Vijaya and his 700 followers left Supparaka, landed on the island at a site believed to be in the district of Chilaw, near modern-day Mannar, and founded the Kingdom of Tambapanni. It is recorded the Vijaya made his landing on the day of Buddha's death. Vijaya claimed Tambapanni his capital and soon the whole island come under this name. Tambapanni was originally inhabited and governed by Yakkhas, having their capital at Sirisavatthu and their queen Kuveni. According to the Samyutta Commentary, Tambapanni was one hundred leagues in extent. After landing in Tambapanni Vijaya met Kuveni the queen of the Yakkhas, who was disguised as a beautiful woman but was really a 'yakkini' (devil) named Sesapathi. At the end of his reign, Vijaya, having trouble choosing a successor, sent a letter to the city of his ancestors, Sinhapura, in order to invite his brother Sumitta to take over the throne. However, Vijaya had died before the letter had reached its destination, so the elected minister of the people Upatissa, the Chief government minister or prime minister and leading chief among the Sinhalese became regent and acted as regent for a year. After his coronation, which was held in the Kingdom of Tambapanni, he left it, building another one, bearing his own name. While he was king, Upatissa established the new capital Upatissa, in which the kingdom was moved to from the Kingdom of Tambapanni. When Vijaya's letter arrived, Sumitta had already succeeded his father as king of his country, and so he sent his son Panduvasdeva to rule Upatissa Nuwara. Upatissa Nuwara was seven or eight miles further north of the Kingdom of Tambapanni. It was named after the regent king Upatissa, who was the prime minister of Vijaya, and was founded in 505 BC after the death of Vijaya and the end of the Kingdom of Tambapanni.

Was Vijaya a king?

OUT: Prince Vijaya

IN: The Verve were an English rock band formed in Wigan in 1990 by lead vocalist Richard Ashcroft, guitarist Nick McCabe, bass guitarist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury. Guitarist and keyboard player Simon Tong later became a member. Beginning with a psychedelic sound with their debut LP

The band's physical and mental turmoil continued into the chaotic recording sessions of the band's second album, 1995's A Northern Soul, produced by Owen Morris. The band departed from the experimental psychedelic sounds of A Storm in Heaven and focused more on conventional alternative rock, with Ashcroft's vocals taking a more prominent role in the songs, although reminiscent of some of the early work. Around this period, Oasis guitarist and friend of Ashcroft, Noel Gallagher, dedicated the song "Cast No Shadow" on the album (What's the Story) Morning Glory? to Ashcroft, and Ashcroft returned the gesture by dedicating the song "A Northern Soul" to Noel. The band released the album's first single "This Is Music" in May, and it reached No. 35, their first single to reach the Top 40. It was followed by "On Your Own" in June which performed even better, reaching No. 28. This single was particularly new for the Verve as it was a soulful ballad. The album reached the UK Top 20 upon its release in July, but Ashcroft broke up the band three months later, just before the release of the third single "History", which reached No. 24 in September. Ashcroft later stated: "I knew that I had to do it earlier on, but I just wouldn't face it. Once you're not happy in anything, there's no point living in it, is there? But my addiction to playing and writing and being in this band was so great that I wouldn't do anything about it. It felt awful because it could have been the greatest time of our lives, with "History" doing well, but I still think I can look myself in the mirror in 30 years time and say, 'Yeah man, you did the right thing.' The others had been through the same thing. It was a mixture of sadness and regret, and relief that we would have some time away." Ashcroft reunited with Jones and Salisbury just a few weeks after the break-up, but McCabe did not rejoin them. The new band hired former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, but he spent only a couple of days with the band. The band then chose Simon Tong, a school friend credited with originally teaching Ashcroft and Jones to play guitar. The band made no live appearances for all of 1996, apart from a solo performance from Ashcroft supporting Oasis in New York. The rest of the year was spent playing and recording songs for a new album.

Did they tour to promote the album?

OUT:

IN: Johanna "Hannah" Arendt (; German: ['a:R@nt]; 14 October 1906 - 4 December 1975) was a German-born American political theorist. Her eighteen books and numerous articles, on topics ranging from totalitarianism to epistemology, had a lasting influence on political theory. Arendt is widely considered one of the most important political philosophers of the twentieth century. As a Jew, Arendt chose to leave Nazi Germany in 1933, and lived in Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, and France before escaping to the United States in 1941 via Portugal.

Arendt was born into a secular family of German Jews in Linden (now a part of Hanover), the daughter of Martha (born Cohn) and Paul Arendt. She grew up in Konigsberg (renamed Kaliningrad when it was annexed to the Soviet Union in 1946) and Berlin. Arendt's family was thoroughly assimilated and she later remembered: "With us from Germany, the word 'assimilation' received a 'deep' philosophical meaning. You can hardly realize how serious we were about it." Arendt came to define her Jewish identity negatively after encountering antisemitism as an adult. She came to greatly identify with Rahel Varnhagen, a nineteenth-century Prussian hostess who desperately wanted to assimilate into German culture, only to be rejected because she was born Jewish. Arendt later said of Varnhagen that she was "my very closest woman friend, unfortunately dead a hundred years now." After completing her high school studies in 1924, she enrolled at the University of Marburg, where she spent a year studying philosophy with Martin Heidegger. According to Hans Jonas, her only German-Jewish classmate, in her year at the university, Arendt began a long and problematic romantic relationship with Heidegger, for which she was later criticized because of his support for the Nazi Party while he was rector at the University of Freiburg. After a year at Marburg, Arendt spent a semester at Freiburg University, attending the lectures of Edmund Husserl. In 1926 she moved to the University of Heidelberg, where in 1929, she completed her dissertation under the existentialist philosopher-psychologist Karl Jaspers. Her thesis was Der Liebesbegriff bei Augustin: Versuch einer philosophischen Interpretation ("On the concept of love in the thought of Saint Augustine: Attempt at a philosophical interpretation").

Who were her parents?

OUT:
daughter of Martha (born Cohn) and Paul Arendt.