Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka ranks 115th in number of biographies on Pantheon, behind Somalia, Uganda, and Dominican Republic. Memorable people born in present day Sri Lanka include Ranil Wickremesinghe, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Memorable people who died in Sri Lanka include Arthur C. Clarke, Buddhaghosa, and Sirimavo Bandaranaike. Sri Lanka has been the birth place of many politicians, and cricketers and the death place of many politicians, and religious figures.

Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It is located in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and is separated from India by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. Sri Lanka shares a maritime border with the Maldives to the southwest and India to the northwest, and lies across the Bay of Bengal from Bangladesh and Myanmar to the northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India to the east. Its capital is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, while Colombo is its largest city and the political, financial and cultural centre. Sri Lanka's population is 22 million; with the Sinhalese people, who speak the Sinhala language, forming the vast majority—while Tamil is spoken by the large Tamil minority. Other long-established ethnic groups include the Moors, Indian Tamils, Burghers, Malays, Chinese, and Vedda. Read more on Wikipedia