12th September 2016
It is believed that the name ‘Spain’, of the beautiful European country and the land of the famous La Tomatina festival, has its origins in the Phoenecian word hispanihad, which means ‘the land of rabbits’. Indeed the country has a huge population of rabbits.
9th September 2016
Peter Henlein, a 16th-century locksmith and clockmaker from Nuremberg, Germany, is considered to be the architect of the first ‘watch’. Devices for reading time, like sundials, obelisks, and hourglasses were used to measure the passage of time since ancient ages. The credit for the first mechanical water clock goes to the Chinese genius Su Song, for which he used the principle of escapement.
3rd September 2016
Verkhoyansk, a Siberian town in Sakha Republic, Russia, is one of the coldest inhabited places on earth. This town holds the Guinness World Record of having the highest temperature range in the world.
2nd September 2016
Abstemious means ‘sparse use’ or ‘moderate intake of food and drink’; facetious means being ‘flippant’. Apart from their interesting meanings, the words have a unique connection between them. Both these words have all the vowels in alphabetical order. Such words are quite rare and form a very short list. Abstentious is another such word. The scientific words in the list, such as arsenious, acheilous, annelidous, fracedinous, etc., are hardly ever used in everyday language. The entire list would comprise about 20 words.
1st September 2016
This day in the year 1947 saw the establishment of Indian Standard Time (IST) as the official time for the entire country. It is the time observed in India and Sri Lanka. It is denoted as E.