Majuli (pronounced as mazuli) in Assam is a river island on the Brahmaputra. Spread in around 400 sq. km, Majuli stands as the world’s largest river island. Somewhere during the 17th century, a devastating flood that lasted for 15 long days split the rivers in two – the Brahmaputra on the north and Burhidihing on the…
Minerals are naturally occurring inorganic substances that have specific chemical compositions and physical properties of their own. They are solid in nature and have definite crystalline structures, and are an outcome of geological processes. They can be formed by cooling of hot melting material, evaporation, or by precipitation. Their composition ranges from pure elements to complex silicates….
Tales of Indian dairy production will be incomplete without the story of Amul and Operation Flood. Operation Flood was launched in 1970 by the National Dairy Development Board. It was the biggest dairy development program of the world. The project revolutionized dairy farming in India, propelling the country from being dairy-deficient to the world’s largest…
Akira Kurosawa (1910–1998), the man who ruled Japanese cinema for five decades, was born to a samurai family, in Tokyo. Young Kurosawa was introduced to cinema by his father, who took his eight children to the movies to familiarize them with Western culture. In his school days, he was attracted to art and painting, after being…
Usain Bolt, the only person who holds a ‘triple treble’ Olympic record, is currently the fastest man alive. The Jamaican sprinter is the first person to hold the 100 meters and 200 meters world records. His popularity worldwide soared with his victory at the two individual sprint events in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Bolt won 9…
Kolkata is often called the city of ‘bhadralok’, or ‘noble people’ – a city that has been home to educational elites for more than a century. Remarkably, it is also the city that has bred five Nobel laureates. Sir Ronald Ross, an Indian-born British doctor, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1902. While working…
