X-Nico

34 unusual facts about Jaffna


A.P.N.C. De S. Vaas Gunawardene

In 1983 he was attached to the C Company of the First Battalion, SLLI Madagal, Jaffna.

Afonso VI of Portugal

Colonial affairs saw the Dutch conquest of Jaffnapatam, Portugal's last colony in Portuguese Ceylon (1658) and the cession of Bombay and Tangier to England (23 June 1661) as dowry for Afonso's sister, Catherine of Braganza, who had married King Charles II of England.

Amarapura Nikaya

It says that thirty two ‘senior’ members of the Sangha who opposed this change were banished to Jaffna by the leaders of the reform.

Battle of Pooneryn

The camp controlled the southern shore of the Jaffna lagoon and was being used as a command center for government forces preventing the Liberation Tigers from using the lagoon to supply the peninsula.

Black Tigers

The first Black Tiger was Vallipuram Vasanthan, who drove a small truck laden with explosives into a Sri Lanka Army (SLA) camp in Nelliady, Jaffna peninsula, on 5 July 1987, killing himself and between 39–100 Sri Lankan soldiers.

Chundikuli Girls' College

CGC is situated on Main Street in Chundikuli, an south-eastern suburb of Jaffna.

Commercial Bank of Ceylon

CBC got Mercantile Bank of India’s branches in Kandy, Galle and Jaffna as part of a deal that would remove the government’s limit on deposit taking in Mercantile’s remaining branches in Colombo and Pettah.

Digendra Kumar

Operation Pawan was the code name assigned to operations by the Indian Peace Keeping Force to take control of Jaffna from the LTTE in late 1987, enforcing the disarmament of the LTTE as a part of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord.

After fighting that lasted for about three weeks, the IPKF took control of the Jaffna Peninsula from the LTTE, something that the Sri Lankan army had attempted and failed to achieve for several years.

E. L. B. Hurulle

He completed his primary and secondary education at St Patrick’s College and Jaffna & Trinity College, Kandy where he passed the London Inter - Arts Examination.

Enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka

The victims of the abductions were predominantly Sri Lankan Tamils living in Jaffna and the capital Colombo.

Faculty of Agriculture, University of Jaffna

The Faculty of Agriculture is one of the nine academic faculties of the University of Jaffna in northern Sri Lanka.

Four Four Bravo

The instructions of the Brigadier were that the patrol should be back in Madagal before 2359 hours, if necessary shortening the prescribed route: Gurunagar - Jaffna - Naga Vihara - Nallur - Kopay - Urumpirai - Kondavil - Kokuvil - Jaffna- Kaliyan - kadu - Madagal.

Guru Chandrasekharan

At the close of the war in 1946 he was again invited to go on a tour of the Middle East, but that tour ended with only a preliminary performance in Jaffna, Ceylon.

Henry Richard Hoisington

Hoisington returned after two months to Jaffna and was stationed at Batticotta, while Todd remained as missionary at Madura mission station.

Jacob de Jong

He was promoted to Commandeur' of Galle in 1742 and, like his father, to Commandeur of Jaffna in 1748, before acting as Governor of Ceylon during an interregnum.

Jaffna Hindu Ladies' College

Jaffna Hindu Ladies' College (JHLC) is a provincial school in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.

Jaffna University Helidrop

The Jaffna University Helidrop was the first of the operations launched by the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) aimed at disarming the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by force and securing the town of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the opening stages of Operation Pawan during the active Indian mediation in the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Karaikal district

Sri Lankan Airlines Service connects Tiruchirapalli with Colombo and proposed service with Jaffna.

Koviar

They were prominent in one of them namely TELO that was eventually eclipsed by the LTTE that was also seen as to be associated with another minority but upwardly mobile Karaiyar caste in Jaffna.

Krishnaswamy Sundarji

In 1987, the Indian government agreed to a Sri Lankan request and the Indian Peace Keeping Force was sent to Jaffna to disarm the LTTE.

Kumaon Regiment

A Kumaon battalion was the first Indian Army unit to land in Jaffna at the Palali airfield.

Linguistic rights

Also in 1974, there was conference of Tamil studies organized in Jaffna.

M. H. Gunaratne

Later he became the commanding officer of the 4 (V) Design Ceylon Engineers; Army units in Mannar; Echelon Barracks; Army units in Jaffna; Sri Lanka Army Pioneer Corps and the 1st Reconnaissance Regiment, Sri Lanka Armoured Corps.

Media bias in South Asia

The Saturday Review, the English paper published in Jaffna and the Aththa, the Communist Sinhala language daily were banned in the early eighties under the PSO.

Mylanthanai massacre

On August 9, 1992 according to the government prosecutor Sri Lankan Army soldiers attacked the village of Mylanthanai, after the army's commanding officer in Jaffna was killed along with seven soldiers in a landmine explosion earlier the same day.

Operation Riviresa

Operation Riviresa (Operation Sunrays), was a combined military operation launched by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces in Jaffna.

Panushanth Kulenthiran

Panushanth Kulenthiran (born 26 July 1990 in Jaffna) is a Sri Lankan professional footballer who plays as an attacking midfielder or striker for Italian side A. S. D. Monreale Calcio and the Tamil Eelam national team.

Sihinaya Dige Enna

The film's premiere at the Raja Cinema in Jaffna marked the first time in 30 years that a film in Sinhalese with Tamil language subtitles was shown in the city.

St. Philip Neri Church shelling

It is believed that the LTTE was planning to overrun Jaffna.

Statue of Our Lady of Miracles, Jaffna patao

From 1614 to 1658 when the statue was in Jaffna, the devotees daily praised Our Lady of Miracles, singing the hymns with versicle and oration the "O Gloriosa Domina" in the morning, " Ave Maris Stella " in the afternoon and at night chanting Litanies beginning with the verse "Tota Pulchra es Maria".

Ubaya Madawela

He was the commander 554 Infantry Brigade in Kilaly, Jaffna and later became Centre Commandant of the Armoured Corps.

Undercover Princes

The contestants were Remigius Jerry Kanagarajah, in exile from the kingdom of Jaffna; Africa Zulu, a Zulu chief from South Africa; and Manvendra Singh Gohil of Rajpipla in north west India.

University of Sri Lanka

The University of Sri Lanka was abolished and its six campuses were each elevated to independent, autonomous universities in their own right: University of Peradeniya, University of Colombo, University of Sri Jayewardenepura (Vidyodaya), University of Kelaniya, University of Moratuwa (Katubedda) and University of Jaffna.


1989 Valvettiturai massacre

By November 1987 the Indian Army was in nominal control of all major towns within the Jaffna Peninsula.

Adele Ann Wilby

Adele Balasingham moved with her husband initially to Madras in India then on to northern part of Sri Lanka in Jaffna during the early stages of the Sri Lankan civil war that started after the 1983 Black July pogrom.

Bharti Airtel Lanka

airtel covers 30% of the population with 3G like Colombo, Kandy, Galle, Matara, Ampara Jaffna, Badulla, Bandarawela and airtel has covered Colombo and greater Colombo using the HSPA+ technology.

Daniel Poor

Poor pioneered the English education service to Tellippalai and its adjoining villages is magnanimous and admirable and to be remembered for ever by the poor, middle and the upper class folks of the region who had an advantage of high-standard education over the other rural areas of the Jaffna peninsula in the 19th century.

First Battle of Elephant Pass

The First Battle of Elephant Pass was a battle fought in July 1991 for the control of the Sri Lankan military base of Elephant Pass, which was of strategic importance as it linked the northern mainland known as Wanni with the Jaffna Peninsula.

G. A. Chandrasiri

In the final stages of the Sri Lankan Civil War he was appointed Commander Security Forces Headquarters - Jaffna, during which his command resisted several attacks on the Jaffna peninsula by the LTTE until a successful offensive by his divisions pushed the LTTE out of the Jaffna peninsula and recaptured the statistic Elephant Pass.

Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War

The Jaffna University Helidrop was the first of the operations launched by the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) aimed at disarming the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) by force and securing the town of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the opening stages of Operation Pawan during the active Indian mediation in the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Larry Wijeratne

Major General Larry A.R. Wijeratne USP, SLA (1950 – 14 May 1998) was the former Commanding Officer of 51-4 Brigade based in Jaffna.

Mavai Senathirajah

Mavai has represented the Jaffna multi-member electoral district in the Sri Lankan Parliament since October 2000, firstly for the TULF, then the Tamil National Alliance.

Nainativu Nagapooshani Amman Temple

The findings include Naga idols and suggest that serpent worship was widely practised in the Kerala and Jaffna region during the megalithic period.

Philippus Baldaeus

The Dutch campaign against the Portuguese began in Jaffna, passing Mannar, Tuticorin and Nagapattinam and ended in South India.

Selvarajah Rajivarnam

According to RSF, Jaffna journalists allege that a local paramilitary group known as the EPDP was involved in his murder as well as those of two other journalists from the same daily one year ago.

Show of force

Operation Poomalai, on 4 June 1987, the Indian Air Force mounted a mercy mission to airdrop humanitarian relief supplies over the besieged town of Jaffna in Sri Lanka during the Sri Lankan Civil War.

Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora

In only 10 years, "Little Jaffna", located at the last stretch of the winding street of Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in the 10th arrondissement, between metros Gare de Nord and La Chapelle, has sprung to life and begun to truly flourish.

Sri Lankan Tamil Dramas

Jaffna, Colombo, Batticaloa, Mannar and Hill country are some of the regions which have developed dramas involving their traditional identity.

Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups

Important achievement of the PLA was the 1984 kidnapping of American couple Stanley and Mary Allen from Columbus, Ohio, in Jaffna.Another minor but notable group was Tamil Eelam Army (TEA) of Panagoda Maheswaran involved in the attack against an Air Lanka flight in Madras, India.

Suresh Premachandran

Suresh returned to Parliament in April 2004, this time representing Jaffna for the TNA.

Thaipusam

In Nallur, Jaffna, Sri Lanka, Thai Pusam festival is conducted at Nallur Kandhasamy Temple.

Uthayan

".....I also saw the bullet holes above the sofa in the office of the editor of a Tamil language newspaper in Jaffna. Days after we visited the paper, its offices were trashed and employees beaten." - Hugh Segal.

Vijayakala Maheswaran

Vijayakala has represented the Jaffna multi-member electoral district for the United National Front in the Sri Lankan Parliament since April 2010.

W. I. M. Seneviratne

After the ceremonial opening of the outlet, de Silva proceeded towards his Mitsubishi Pajero vehicle belonging to the Sri Lanka Army Medical Corps to continue onto a meeting with officers in charge of rehabilitation work at the Jaffna Kachcheri.