Amazing Facts about India and Indians!
- India is the world’s largest, oldest, continuous civilization.
- India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history.
- India is the world’s largest democracy.
- Varanasi, also known as Benares, was called “the ancient city” when Lord Buddha visited it in 500 B.C.E, and is the oldest, continuously inhabited city in the world today.
- India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.
- The World’s first university was established in Takshashila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.
- Sanskrit is the mother of all the European languages. Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software – a report in Forbes magazine, July 1987.
- Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans. Charaka, the father of medicine consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago. Today Ayurveda is fast regaining its rightful place in our civilization.
- Although modern images of India often show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus was attracted by India’s wealth.
- The art of Navigation was bornin the river Sindhu 6000 years ago. The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from Sanskrit ‘Nou’.
- Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: (5th century) 365.258756484 days.
- The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century long before the European mathematicians.
- Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11th century. The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10**53(10 to the power of 53) with specific names as early as 5000 BCE during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera 10**12(10 to the power of 12).
- IEEE has proved what has been a century old suspicion in the world scientific community that the pioneer of wireless communication was Prof. Jagdish Bose and not Marconi.
- The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.
- According to Saka King Rudradaman I of 150 CE a beautiful lake called Sudarshana was constructed on the hills of Raivataka during Chandragupta Maurya’s time.
- Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India.
- Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted complicated surgeries like cesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, urinary stones and even plastic surgery and brain surgery. Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India. Over 125 surgical equipment were used. Deep knowledge of anatomy, physiology, etiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics and immunity is also found in many texts.
- When many cultures were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilization).
- The four religions born in India, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, are followed by 25% of the world’s population.
- The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.
- India is one of the few countries in the World, which gained independence without violence.
- India has the second largest pool of Scientists and Engineers in the World.
- India is the largest English speaking nation in the world.
- India is the only country other than US and Japan, to have built a super computer indigenously.
Famous Quotes on India (by non-Indians)
- Albert Einstein said: We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.
- Mark Twain said: India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only.
- French scholar Romain Rolland said: If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.
- Hu Shih, former Ambassador of China to USA said: India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.
Facts to make every Indian proud
Q. Who is the co-founder of Sun Microsystems?
A. Vinod Khosla
Q. Who is the creator of Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of the
today’s computers run on it)?
A. Vinod Dahm
Q. Who is the third richest man on the world?
A. According to the latest report on Fortune Magazine, it is Aziz Premji,
who is the CEO of Wipro Industries. The Sultan of Brunei is at 6th
position now.
Q. Who is the founder and creator of Hotmail (Hotmail is world’s No.1 web
based email program)?
A. Sabeer Bhatia
Q. Who is the president of AT & T-Bell Labs (AT & T-Bell Labs is the creator
of program languages such as C, C++, Unix to name a few)?
A. Arun Netravalli
Q. Who is the GM of Hewlett Packard?
A. Rajiv Gupta
Q. Who is the new MTD (Microsoft Testing Director) of Windows 2000,
responsible to iron out all initial problems?
A. Sanjay Tejwrika
Q. Who are the Chief Executives of CitiBank, Mckensey & Stanchart?
A. Victor Menezes, Rajat Gupta, and Rana Talwar.
We Indians are the wealthiest among all ethnic groups in America, even
faring better than the whites and the natives.
There are 3.22 millions of Indians in USA (1.5% of population). ,
World’s Largest Liger
Know what’s a Liger? It’s a cross breed of a Lion male and Tiger female…
The 10ft Liger who’s still growing…
He looks like something from a prehistoric age or a fantastic creation from Hollywood . But Hercules is very much living flesh and blood – as he proves every time he opens his gigantic mouth to roar. Part lion, part tiger, he is not just a big cat but a huge one, standing 10ft tall on his back legs. Called a liger, in reference to his crossbreed parentage, he is the largest of all the cat species.
On a typical day he will devour 20lb of meat, usually beef or chicken, and is capable of eating 100lb at a single setting. At just three years old, Hercules already weighs half a ton.
He is the accidental result of two enormous big cats living close together at the Institute of Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, in Miami, Florida , and already dwarfs both his arents. “Ligers are not something we planned on having,” said institute owner Dr Bhagavan Antle. “We have lions and tigers living together in large enclosures and at first we had no idea how well one of the lion boys was getting along with a tiger girl, then loo and behold we had a liger.”
50mph runner… Not only that, but he likes to swim, a feat unheard of among water-fearing lions. In the wild it is virtually impossible for lions and tigers to mate. Not only are they enemies likely to kill one another, but most lions are in Africa and most tigers in Asia . But incredible though he is, Hercules is not unique. Ligers have been bred in captivity, deliberately and accidentally, since shortly before World War II.
Today there are believed to be a handful of ligers around the world and a similar number of tigons, the product of a tiger father and lion mother. Tigons are smaller than ligers and take on more physical characteristics of the tiger.
Look at the size of the head on this thing.. 
)
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Who Invented the First Computer?
The answer to this question depends of your definition of a computer.
The first known counting devices or tools were Tally Sticks from about 35,000 BC. The Abacus was then invented by the Babylonians in 2400 BC.
In 1837, Charles Babbage, a British professor of mathematics described his idea for the Analytical Engine, the first stored-program mechanical computer. The Analytical Engine was designed to be powered by a steam engine and was to use Punched Cards, which was used to program mechanical looms at the time.
What made the Analytical Engine unique was that it was designed to be programmed. It was because of this and the fact that it would be more than 100 years that any similar devices would be constructed, Charles Babbage, would be considered by many as the “father of computing”. Because of legal, financial, and political obstacles, the Analytical Machine would never be completed. Charles Babbage was also difficult to work with and alienated the supporters of his work.
In 1939, John V. Atanasoff and Clifford Berry developed the Atanasoff-Berry Computer (ABC) at Iowa State University, which was regarded as the first electronic digital computer. The ABC was built by hand and the design used over 300 Vacuum Tubes and had capacitors fixed in a mechanically rotating drum for memory.
The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), constructed in the US in 1943, is widely regarded as the first functionally useful electronic general-purpose computer. Influenced by the ABC, it was a turning point in the history of computing and was used to perform ballistics trajectory calculations and used 160 kW of power. World War II is known to be the driving force of computing hardware development and one of such use of computers was in communications encryption and decryption.
The UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer) was the first commercially available, “mass produced” electronic computer manufactured by Remington Rand in the USA and was delivered to the US Census Bureau in June 1951. It used 5,200 vacuum tubes and consumed 125 kW of power. 46 machines were sold at more than $1 million each.
The microprocessor eventually led to the development of the microcomputer, small, low-cost computers that individuals and small businesses could afford. By the 1990s, the microcomputer or Personal Computer (PC) became a common household appliance, and became even more widespread with the advent of the Internet.
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How Does an X-ray See Inside You?
X-rays are really like ordinary light rays, except for one thing, they have a much shorter wave length. Because of this, the ray has more energy and will be more penetrating than an ordinary light ray, even going through such solid substances as wood, metal, and concrete.
An X-ray machine has high-voltage electric current flowing through X-ray tubes. Inside each tube is an airtight glass container. Inside each container are two electrodes, or terminals, a negative one and a positive one. The negative one is called the cathode. It is a coil of tungsten which is heated by an electric current until it is glowing hot and releases electrons, or charged particles.
These electrons travel from the cathode to the anode, or positive terminal, at very great speeds, from 60,000 to 175,000 miles per second. The anode, also called the target, is usually a block of tungsten.
The anode stops the speeding electrons. Some of the electrons’ energy is changed into heat and the rest become X-radiation. This X-radiation, or X-ray, escapes from a window in the tube and is directed at the part of the body being X-rayed.
As these X-rays pass through the person’s body, they cast shadows on a piece of photographic film, which is then developed much like the film you use in a camera.
X-rays can either help or hurt mankind. In the hands of skilled technicians, X-rays can help save lives by killing cancerous cells, by helping doctors locate broken bones and diseased organs inside a person’s body, and even by sterilizing medical supplies which cannot be boiled.
X-rays are also used in business and industry to locate defects in products and to examine luggage at airports. But X-rays can also harm man by destroying healthy tissue, by causing cancer and skin burns, and even by changing genes which pass on traits from one generation to the next.
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Fact Sheet of Mount Everest
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Fact Sheet of Mount Everest
| Definition of Mount Everest | : | a mountain in the central Himalayas on the border of Tibet and Nepal; the highest mountain peak in the world. |
| Nepali Name | : | Sagarmatha (which means Goddess of the sky) |
| Tibetan Name | Chomolungma (which means mother Goddess of the Universe) | |
| Height | : | 8848 meters or 29,029 ft |
| Location | : | On the border between Nepal and Tibet, where all of the worlds 14 Eight thousand meter peaks are found. |
| Longitude |
86º55’40″ E |
|
| Latitude | latitude 270 45’ N and 280 0’ N and longitude 800 30’ E and 870 0’ E in the Solukhumbhu District of Sagarmatha Zone of the kingdom of Nepal | |
| Local People | : | Sherpas and Tibetan |
| Summit Record Holders: | ||
| Longest Stay on top | : | Babu Chiri Sherpa, who stayed at the summit for twenty one and half hours. |
| First Climbers | : | Tenzing Norgay from Nepal and Sir Edmund Percival Hillary from New Zealand, on 5/29/1953 via the South-East Ridge Route |
| First Nepali Women to Climb | : | Pasang Llamu Sherpa, on April 22nd, 1993 |
| One of the best climbers | : | Nepali, Apa Sherpa, climbed Everest 11 times. |
| Fastest Ascent | Babu Chhiri Sherpa on June 21 2000, ascent from south side Hans Kammerlander May 24,1996, ascent from north side |
|
| Youngest Climber | : | Nepali, Temba Tsheri Age 15 on May 22, 2001 |
| First Women Climber | : | In 1975 - The first woman to summit Everest was Junko Tabei, a Japanese, who reached the summit via the South-East Ridge route. |
| Oldest Person to Climb | : | Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura, 2003 |
| Oldest Women to Climb | : | Anna Czerwinska May 22, 2000 |
| Largest Group to reach the summit | : | 50 people on May 2002 |
| First Couple to ever get married on the summit | : | Nepalese Mona Mulepati and Pem Dorje Sherpa on May 30th 2005 |
| Number of Mount Everest Climbers So Far | : | About 1,500 men and women from 64 nations |
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Ruthless Killers – Piranha
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From the moment tiny baby piranhas hatch from their microscopic eggs, they come into the world armed and dangerous. Baby piranha will feast on tiny crustaceans, fruits, seeds, and aquatic plants. Once they reach about 1.5 inches in length they begin feeding on the fins and flesh of other fish that wander too closely. As they grow larger they begin to venture out in groups (schools) of about 20 fish where they use a variety of hunting strategies to kill and eat their prey. Heck, they don’t kill their prey first, they just start eating the victim alive - that’s what makes them so ferocious. Adult piranha have been known to eat their own babies. Talk about brutal!
When a school of piranha are in a feeding frenzy the water appears to boil and churn red with blood. They attack with such ferocity that they strip an animal of its flesh within a matter of minutes, even taking bites out of each other in the process.
There are approximately 20 species of piranha found living in the Amazon River, with only four or five of them posing any danger. Most piranha species are quite harmless and docile, but the ones with the nasty reputation for aggressive behavior are the red-bellied piranha, Pygocentrus nattereri.
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Which is the Biggest Snake?
Which is the Biggest Snake?
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If you look in the records there is a lot of controversy over which snake holds the world’s record for massive size. The dimensions that have earned the anaconda the title of king is its total body mass or its weight (the sheer physical bulk of it). The other snake that competes with the anaconda is the Asiatic Reticulated Python (Python reticulatus). The python holds the world’s record for length of a snake, with the longest ever measured at 33 feet. Even though the longest python is longer than the record-holding anaconda, the girth of the anaconda is far bigger. Anacondas in the jungles of South America can grow as big around as a grown man!
The Secret Life of an Anaconda
Anacondas in the wild spend most of their time hanging out in rivers hunting for their food. They are solitary creatures that are somewhat shy and not many of them are easily seen. They are very well camouflaged in the swamps and bogs in which they thrive. There are some historical reports of early European explorers of the South American jungles seeing giant anacondas up to 100 feet long and some
of the native peoples of the South American jungle have reported seeing anacondas up to 50 feet long. No one has caught and measured an anaconda anywhere near that size. It is important to note that when a dead anaconda’s hide or skin is laid out it can be stretched very easily, expanding to much longer lengths than the snake exhibited when alive. Reports of outsize anacondas that cannot be verified are usually due to distortions in perception, or a snake skin being disproportionately stretched and inaccurately measured. People are generally really bad at estimating length, especially for larger snakes. In fact, the larger the snake, the larger the margin of error.
Close view of the head of an anaconda
swimming in a river
Anacondas like to hang out in rivers so it would be difficult to estimate the length of one seen swimming, without seeing the entire snake. It’s the anaconda’s ability to remain partly hidden in the water that makes it difficult to accurately find (and document) a specimen that exceeds the current world’s record. (Would you want to jump in the water after a giant anaconda to try and measure a snake big enough to kill you?)
Killer Snake
Anacondas are members of the boa constrictor family of snakes. That means that they kill their prey by coiling their large, powerful bodies around their victims and squeezing until their prey suffocates or is crushed to death and dies from internal bleeding. Then the snake unhinges its jaw and swallows the victim whole. Anacondas are much more likely to eat aquatic creatures, such as fish. Occasionally they have been known to eat: caimans (a relative of the alligator), other snakes, deer, and even jaguars. Anacondas are rather slow-moving snakes, so they have to rely on stealth and the element of surprise to catch their unsuspecting prey.
Do Anacondas Bite?
Just about every species of snake on earth has teeth, but the anacondas’ teeth are not used for chewing. Snakes’ teeth are used for holding onto their prey, preventing them from escaping. Some snakes have venom in two specially designed, extra long teeth (called fangs) which they use to kill their prey. Anacondas have teeth, but they are not a venomous snake. They rely on their enormous size and power to subdue their victims. It is possible to be bitten by an anaconda, but the bite itself would not be fatal.
Snakes as Pets
For many people, snakes are a slithering, terrifying creature to be avoided at all costs, while others harbor a grim fascination or even fondness for them. Many people keep snakes as pets, including anacondas and reticulated pythons. Like any other pet, snakes can be a big responsibility that should be taken seriously. If you choose to keep a snake in captivity you must accept responsibility for its care and feeding, as well as preventing it from escaping into the wild.
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LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD
Languages spoken by the most people
(Native speakers only)
Chinese Mandarin 1 billion +
English 512 million
Hindi 501 million
Spanish 399 million
Russian 285 million
Arabic 265 million
Bengali 245 million
Portuguese 196 million
Malay-Indonesian 140 million
Japanese 125 million
German 100 million
Korean 78 million
French 77 million
Chinese, Wu 77 million
Javanese 75 million
Chinese. Yue 71 million
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MAJOR LAKES
Caspian Sea, Asia-Europe (371,000 sq km)
Superior, North America (82,100 sq km)
Victoria, Africa (69,500 sq km)
Huron, North America (59,600 sq km)
Michigan, North America (57,800 sq km)
Tanganyika, Africa (32,900 sq km)
Baikal, Asia (31,500 sq km)
Great Bear, North America (31,300 sq km)
Aral Sea, Asia (30,700 sq km)
Malawi, Africa (28,900 sq km)
Great Slave, Canada (28,568 sq km)
Erie, North America (25,667 sq km)
Winnipeg, Canada (24,387 sq km)
Ontario, North America (19,529 sq km)
Balkhash, Kazakhstan (18,300 sq km)
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MAJOR RIVERS
Nile, Africa (6,825 km)
Amazon, South America (6,437 km)
Chang Jiang (Yangtze), Asia (6,380 km)
Mississippi, North America (5,971 km)
Yenisey-Angara, Asia (5,536 km)
Huang (Yellow), Asia (5,464 km)
Ob-Irtysh, Asia (5,410 km)
Amur, Asia (4,416 km)
Lena, Asia (4,400 km)
Congo, Africa (4,370 km)
Mackenzie-Peace, North America (4,241 km)
Mekong, Asia (4,184 km)
Niger, Africa (4,171 km)
