U Thant was born on 22 January 1909 in Pantanaw, a town in the Irrawaddy Delta of British Burma. He was educated at the National High School in Pantanaw and at University College, Rangoon, and went back to his old school to teach. While still in his twenties he became its headmaster.<\/p>\n
He also wrote for newspapers and was a devout Buddhist, and his writing and teaching brought him into the circle of U Nu, who became Burma\u2019s first Prime Minister after independence in 1948. Thant joined the new government, serving as press director, then director of broadcasting, and from 1955 as secretary to the Prime Minister. He was part of Burma\u2019s delegations abroad, including the 1955 Bandung Conference.<\/p>\n
In 1957 Thant became Burma\u2019s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He was known in New York as a quiet, patient and courteous negotiator.<\/p>\n
When Secretary-General Dag Hammarskj\u00f6ld was killed in September 1961, member states needed a successor who was acceptable to both the Western and Soviet blocs and to the many newly independent countries. On 3 November 1961 the General Assembly appointed Thant acting Secretary-General. A year later he was appointed to the post in his own right, and in 1966 he was reappointed. He was the first person from outside Europe to hold the office.<\/p>\n
Thant declined to serve a third term and left office on 31 December 1971. He died of lung cancer in New York on 25 November 1974, aged 65.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
U Thant was born on 22 January 1909 in Pantanaw, a town in the Irrawaddy Delta of British Burma. He was educated at the National High School in Pantanaw and at University College, Rangoon, and went back to his old school to teach. While still in his twenties he became its headmaster. He also wrote […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-251","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uthant.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uthant.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uthant.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uthant.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uthant.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uthant.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uthant.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}