Former Ethiopian distance runner Miruts Yifter is an interesting personality and no less than a mystery. He won the bronze medal in 10,000 m in the 1972 Munich Olympics, but could not arrive on time to compete in the 5,000 m final. His country labelled him a traitor, and even imprisoned him for missing the race. His absence, however, still remains a mystery. In 1976 Ethiopia…
Eminent physicist Albert Einstein was born in the year 1879. Mahatma Gandhi, the apostle of peace, was born in 1869 and Adolf Hitler, the epitome of terror, in 1889. Hence the expression that Einstein was born between peace and terror. Einstein admired Mahatma Gandhi. He even expressed this admiration in a letter written in 1931 addressed to the Indian…
The Nobel Prize is one of the most prestigious awards at the international level. The award honours academic, cultural and/or scientific advances. Literature was one of the five categories established according to the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish polymath, in 1895. The other four categories were physics, chemistry, peace and medicine. The first in the world to receive the…
16 March 1926. The world’s first liquid-fuelled rocket lifts off at Auburn, Massachusetts, paving the way for an era of space flight and innovation. And the man behind the feat is the American engineer and founding father of modern rocketry Robert H. Goddard (1882–1945). As a child Robert drew fascination from science around him in various forms. He was greatly inspired by H.G….
The word ‘quidnunc’ first appeared around the year 1710, in Irish writer and politician Sir Richard Steele’s journal The Tatler: ‘The infignificancy of my manners to the reft of the world, makes the laughers call me a quid-nunc, a phrafe which I neither underftand, nor fhall ever enquire what they mean by it.’ Since then, several writers…
The history of commercial and civil aviation in India dates back to 18 February 1911. Frenchman Henri Pequet flew a biplane from Allahabad to Naini with about 6,500 letters to deliver. He covered the 10-km distance between the two cities in 13 minutes. This is considered the world’s first official airmail service. In 1912, Indian Air Services Ltd collaborated with…
