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George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic Movement. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems <i>Don Juan</i> and <i>Childe Harold's Pilgrimage</i>, and the short lyric <i>She Walks in Beauty</i>.<br/><br/> Byron is regarded as one of the greatest British poets, and remains widely read and influential. He travelled widely across Europe, especially in Italy where he lived for seven years. Later in life, Byron joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which many Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died in 1824 at the young age of 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi.<br/><br/> Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was both celebrated and castigated in life for his aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs - with men as well as women, as well as rumours of a scandalous liaison with his half-sister - and self-imposed exile.
The Buddhas of Bamiyan were two 6th century monumental statues of standing Buddhas carved into the side of a cliff in the Bamiyan valley in the Hazarajat region of central Afghanistan, situated 230 km (143 miles) northwest of Kabul at an altitude of 2,500 meters (8,202 ft).<br/><br/> Built in 507 CE, the larger in 554 CE, the statues represented the classic blended style of Gandhara art. The main bodies were hewn directly from the sandstone cliffs, but details were modeled in mud mixed with straw, coated with stucco. This coating, practically all of which was worn away long ago, was painted to enhance the expressions of the faces, hands and folds of the robes; the larger one was painted carmine red and the smaller one was painted multiple colors. The lower parts of the statues' arms were constructed from the same mud-straw mix while supported on wooden armatures. It is believed that the upper parts of their faces were made from great wooden masks or casts.<br/><br/> The rows of holes that can be seen in photographs were spaces that held wooden pegs which served to stabilize the outer stucco. They were intentionally dynamited and destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban, on orders from leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, after the Taliban government declared that they were ‘idols’.<br/><br/> International opinion strongly condemned the destruction of the Buddhas, which was viewed as an example of the intolerance of the Taliban. Japan and Switzerland, among others, have pledged support for the rebuilding of the statues.
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in Romanticism. He travelled in the Ottoman Empire, especially in Albania and Greece.