10 First Things on the Record Book

1.    10. Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr., the first black player to win The Wimbledon.

Born to Arthur Ashe Sr. and Mattie Cordell Cunningham Ashe in Richmond, Virginia, US. Lost his mother at the age of six. Arthur was first black player to win The Wimbledon (1975), the Australian Open (1970) and the US Open (1968). He was also the first black player to get selected for the US Davis cup team in 1963. He remain only black player to win any Grand Slam singles title, until France’s Yannick Noah won the French Open in 1983, which Arthur couldn’t win. Ashe died on February 6, 1993, from HIV AIDS which he contracted during a heart surgery in 1983. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton in 1993.

2.    9. Dennis Anthony Tito, the first paying Space Traveler.

Dennis Anthony Tito is the founder of Wilshire Associates Incorporated. He was former scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He became multimillionaire with the success of his firm which he founded in 1972 and is the CEO and the Chairmen that in 2001 he became the first paying space traveler when he flew with a Russian crew abroad the Soyuz TM-32 to the International Space Station, he spend almost 8 days in the space station. He paid about $ 20 million for the trip, which was conducted by Russian Federal Space Agency. He also announced his intension to send a privately financed spaceflights to Mars by 2018 in February 2013.

3.    8. Italy, first European country to win FIFA World Cup.

Spain won the FIFA World Cup 2010 held in South Africa and became undisputed champions of world of football. But do you know which country bought the Football World Cup to Europe for the first time? It was Italy who won FIFA World Cup in 1934 held in Italy, by defeating Czechoslovakia by 2 -1 at the extra time in the final. And consecutively they won the 1938 FIFA World Cup held in France by defeating Hungary 4 – 2. The Italian National Team lost 10 of their 11 players in the Superga Air Disaster in 1949.

4.    7. Trygve Halvdan Lie, the first Secretary General of the United Nations.

Trygve was Norwegian Foreign minister during the critical years of the Norwegian government in exile in London (1940 – 1945). After formation of the United Nations in 1945, he served as the first Secretary General of the United Nations, head of the United Nations Secretariat, from 1945 to1952, until he resigned from his position. He was recommended by Soviet Union.

5.    6. Sir Robert Walpole, the first prime minister of Great Britain.

Sir Robert Walpole was the first Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1921, although the term Prime Minister was not use, Actually Walpole became the First Lord of the Treasury in 1921 and from then he was honored as the First Prime Minister of Great Britain. He held the position from 1721 to 1742. He is regarded also as the longest served Prime Minister of Great Britain. He served under two Kings of Great Britain, George I and his son George II.

6.    5. Viking I, the first spacecraft successfully land on Mars.

NASA launched two spacecraft, Viking I and Viking II on August 20, 1975 and September 9, 1975 respectively and within one year of time, the two spacecraft reached orbit of the Mars. After taking many pictures of the surface of the Mars by the orbiter, landing site was selected. The lander then separated from the orbiters which was attached to each other and then they soft landed. The Viking I lander touched down on the surface of Mars on July 20, 1976 and become the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars while the Viking II landed on the Mars soil on September 3, 1976. The Viking I held the record for the longest Mars surface mission until the Opportunity Rover broke the record in 2010.

7.    4. John King, the first European to cross Australian continent and survive.

When Robert O’Hara Burke and William John Wills left Melbourne on 20 August 1860 to lead an expedition of 19 men with intention to cross totally unknown the continent of Australia, they didn’t thought they would die. It had not been explored by non- indigenous people and was totally unknown to the Europeans. On that mismanaged expedition only one man returned and he was John King.

John King was found by a relief expenditure, near to death and bought back to Melbourne, where he got a warm welcome.

8.    3. Lady Gaga, the first person to pass 20 million followers on Twitter.

Yeah you heard it right! After Akon convinced his producers to launched Lady Gaga, she became overnight success by her debut album “The Fame”. She became first person to followed by 20 million people in August of 2010. The number of her followers doubled in 2013 and became about 41 million. Don’t count me.

9.    2. Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks, first black to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Gwendolyn Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry book, Annie Allen in 1950 and became first African American to win the prize. She was born on 7 June, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, she was first child of her parents, who moved to Chicago shortly after her birth. This poet legend died of cancer at the age of 83 on 3 December, 2000.

10. 1. “Me at the Zoo”, the first ever video uploaded in YouTube.

Jawed Karim one of the three cofounders of the most popular video sharing website YouTube. On Saturday, 23 April, 2005 at 8:27 pm. The video was shot at the San Diego Zoo by Yakov Lapitsksy and is 19 seconds long. The video got about 14 million views and about Thousand comments. The feature Karim in front of the elephants. Wonder how YouTube got so famous, because we Indian believe Elephants as God of Luck.

General 30: October 13

NASA logo

The General 30 is the miscellaneous list of 30 questions from science, world, sports, environment, history and many more important topics. This is the first edition of this list. This unique list is published once in a month with 30 different questions in different months. So enjoy the questions.

1. In which year NASA was established?

Ans: 1958.

2. Who was the president of the USA when NASA was established?

Ans: David Dwight Eisenhower.

3. What is the full form of ISRO?

Ans: Indian Space Research Organisation.

4. Who was the inventor of wireless remote control?

Ans:  Eugene Polley.

5. How many moons Uranus have?

Russian Timezone

Ans: 27 (Twenty Seven).

6. How many time zones are there in Russia?

Ans: 9 (Nine).

7. Name the capital of Vietnam?

Ans: Hanoi.

Brazilian Currency "Real"

8. Name the hill which is geographical center of Europe.

Ans: Krahule (Slovakia).

9. Which country has the bible on its national flag?

Ans: Dominican Republic.

10. Name the currency of Brazil.

Ans: Real.

Oscar Pistorius

11. Which was the first host country to win Copa America?

Ans: Uruguay (in 1917).

12. Name the first double leg amputee athlete to participate in Olympics?

Ans: Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius.

13. Who was the player of the match in the final of ICC under 19 cricket world cup 2012?

Ans: Unmukht Chand (India).

Big B in The Great Gatsby

14. Name the club which organizes the Wimbledon Championships?

 Ans: All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

15. Which cricket ground has hosted the most Test matches in India?

 Ans: Eden Garden, Kolkata.

16. Name the first Hollywood movie of Amitabh Bachchan.

Ans: The Great Gatsby.

17. Who was the director of the 1982 Oscar winning film Gandhi?

Ans: Richard Attenborough.

18. How many Grammy Awards did Michael Jackson won?

Ans: 13 Grammy Award as well as the Grammy Legend Award and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Jennifer Lawrence

19. Who won the best actress in 85^th Academy Awards?

Ans: Jennifer Lawrence.

20. Name the first Miss Universe.

Ans: Armi Helena Kuusela (Findland).

21. Name the first bank in India.

Ans: Bank of Hindustan (1779).

22. Which is the first tea museum in India?

Ans: Munner, Kerala, established by the Tata Tea (2004).

23. When Unit Trust of India (UTI) was established?

Ans: 1963.

24. Name the biography on J.R.D Tata by R.M Lala?

Ans: Beyond the Last Blue Mountain.

25. Where the first oil well and oil refinery in India was established?

Ans: Diboi, Borbil (1890).

26. Who were the three sun Gods of the ancient Egyptians?

Greenpeace

Ans: Re, Amon and Aton.

27. Who was the 13^th and the last emperor of the Incas?

Ans: Mayan civilization.

28. When Greenpeace was founded and where?

Ans: 1971 in Vancouver, Canada.

29. Which is the strongest muscle of the human body?

Ans: Masseter muscle (located in jaw).

30. Which is the deepest point in the world?

Ans: Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench, Western Pacific Ocean (35,840 ft).

INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION

Mohenjo Daro

Indus Valley Civilization is one of the four earliest civilization of the world along with Mesopotamia civilization (Tigris and Euphrates), Egypt (Nile) and China (Hwang Ho). The civilization forms part of the proto- history of India and belongs to the Bronze Age. The most accepted period is 2500 – 1700 BC. The first city to be discovered by excavation (digging up) was Harappa and therefore this civilization is also known as 'Harappa Civilization'. The Indus Civilization may have had a population of well over five million at its peak. The city Mohenjo-Daro is one of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

RD Banerjee

1. Who first described the ruins of Harappa in 1842?

Ans: Charles Masson.

2. The Indus Valley Civilization extended west to the Makran coast of Baluchistan, east to Uttar Pradesh, the north to northeastern Afghanistan and south to Maharashtra.

3. Who discovered Mohenjo-Daro?

Ans: RD Banerjee (1922).

4. Over 1056 and settlements have been found out of which 96 have been excavated mainly in the general region of the Indus and Ghaggar- Hakra rivers and its tributaries until 1999. The most settlements founded were the major urban centres of Harappa, Lothal, Mohenjo-Daro, Dholavira, Kalibanga and Rakhigarhi.

5. What is the other name of Mohenjo-Daro?

Ans: Mound of the Dead.

Jewels of Indus Valley Civilization

6. They were first to produce cotton in the world. Greek called the cotton as “Sindon” derived from Sind. A fragment of woven cotton cloth was found at Mohenjo-Daro.

7. In April 2006, the scientific journal Nature announced that the oldest evidence for the drilling of human teeth in a living person was found. Where?

Ans: Mehrgarh.

The Great Bath

8. The world’s first known urban sanitation system was included in the urban plan of Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and the recently partially excavated Rakhigarhi. Among other things, they contain the world's earliest known system of flush toilets.

9. Who proposed that decline of the Indus Civilization was caused by the invasion of an Indo-European tribe from Central Asia called the Aryans but later rejected by scholars?

Ans: Sir Mortimer Wheeler (1953).

10. On 11 July, heavy floods hit Haryana in India and damaged the archaeological site of Jognakhera, where ancient copper smelting were found dating back almost 5,000 years. The Indus Valley Civilization site was hit by almost 10 feet of water as the Sutlej Yamuna link canal overflowed.

The Firsts

Arthur Ashe 

1. First black man to win singles in Wimbledon.

Ans: Arthur Ashe in 1975 (USA).

2. First space tourist.

Ans: Dennis Tito in 2001 (USA).

3. First American President to visit India.

Ans: Dwight David Eisenhower in 1959.

4.  First successful scuba dive at the North Pole.

Ans: Brett Cormick (UK), Michael Wolff (Austria) and Bob Wass (USA) in 1999.

5. Which country launched first radio telescope satellite into space?

Ans: Japan in 1997.

6. Who was first Indian to win Noble Prize?

Ans: Rabindranath Tagore in 1913.

Marco Polo

7. First European to visit China.

Ans: Marco Polo in 13^th century.

8. First country to send human to moon.

Ans: United States of America in 1969.

Viking I on Mars

9. First Space-ship to land on Mars.

Ans: Viking-I in 1976.

10. First European country to win football world cup.

Ans: Italy in 1934.

11. First country to issue paper currency.

Ans: China in 11^th century.

Chinese paper currency, present days

12.  First cloned human baby.

Ans:  Eve in 2002.

13. First Indian pilot.

Ans: JRD Tata in 1929.

14.  First city to be attacked with atom bomb.

Ans: Hiroshima in 1945.

The First woman in the Space, Valentina Tereshkova

15. First woman cosmonaut in space.

Jacobus Henricus

Ans: Valentina Tereshkova in 1963.

16. First Secretary General of UN.

Ans: Trygve Lie of Norway from 1946 to 1952.

17. First Indian prime minister to resingned before the full term.

Ans: Moraji Desai (24 March 1977 – 28 July 1979).

18. First to win Nobel Prize for Chemestry.

Ans: Jacobus Henricus van’t Hoff Jr in 1901.

19. First Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Ans: Robert Walpole (4 April 1721 – 11 February 1742).

20. First woman Prime Minister of a country.

Ans: Sirimavo Ratwatte Dias Bandaranaike (1960-1965).

Famous Places: ALASKA

Brown Bears of Alaska

 Alaska is the largest and state in the United States. Breathtakingly beautiful, it is spread over 570,374 square miles. Alaska shares its border with Canada in east, the Arctic Ocean in north and the pacific in west and south. The state got its name from the Aleut word alyeska which means great land. The state have incredible natural beauty of endless coastline, teeming wildlife, rivers, fjords, green temperate rain forests, majestic mountain peaks and glorious glaciers. The state is 4^th least populous and the least densely populated of the 50 US states.

1. Who sold Alaska to USA?

Ans: Russia.

2. On 3 January 1959, American President Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Alaska to the Union as the 49^th state of the USA although US had acquired Alaska on 30 March, 1867 for $ 7.2 million.

3. Name the region of the state which is home to over half of the state’s population?

Ans: The South-central region.

The Tsimshian people

4. Alaska’s mostly unpopulated areas of the Alaska Range and west of the Wrangell Mountains also fall within the definition of South-central.

5. Name the group of the indigenous people who came to Alaska from British Columbia in 1887.

Ans: The Tsimshian people.

6. US President Grover Cleveland granted the Tsimshians the permission to settle on Annette Island. They founded the town of Metlakatla.

7. Which national park was developed by the 1912 eruption of the Novarupta volcano?

Ans: Katmai National Park.

8. Major oil and gas reserves are found in the Alaska North Slope and Cook Inlet basins. Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope is the highest yielding oil field in the United States and on North America, typically producing about 400,000 barrels per day.

9. Which sporting event is annually held for the Eskimos of Alaska in every July?

Ans: World Eskimo- Indian Olympics.

10. Some of Alaska's popular annual events are the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race that starts in Anchorage and ends in Nome, World Ice Art Championships in Fairbanks, the Alaska Hummingbird Festival in Ketchikan, the Sitka Whale Fest, and the Stikine River Garnet Fest in Wrangell.

11. What is the nickname of Alaska?

Ans: The Last Frontier.

Mount McKinley

12. The motto of Alaska is “North to the Future”. “Forget me not” is the state flower of Alaska. The official state song of Alaska is "Alaska's Flag" which was adopted in 1955; it celebrates the flag of Alaska.

13. Name the tallest peak of the North America which is in Alaska?

Ans: Mount McKinley.

14. The highest recorded temperature in Alaska is 37.8 ºC in Fort Yukon on June 27, 1915 and the lowest recorded temperature is -62.2 ºC in Prospect Creek on January 23, 1971 (till this blog was published).

Nature Beauty

15. Name the earthquake which killed 133 people and several villages in 1964.

Ans: The Good Friday Earthquake.

16. The Battle of Attu was fought between United States and the Empire of Japan on Attu Island the coast of Alaska. The battle took place from 11 May to 30 May 1943.

ABBREVIATIONS

An abbreviation is a shortened form of a word or phrase. Abbreviations have been used as long as phonetic scripts have existed, in some sense actually being more common in early literacy, where spelling out a whole word was often avoided and initial letters commonly being used to represent words in specific application. Here I have presented 20 interesting abbreviations and after I wrote I found it to be important also. Enjoy it.

1. What is the full form of FIFA?

Ans: Federation Internationale de Football Association.

2. What is the full form of EMI?

Ans: Equated Monthly Installments.

3. What is the full form of HAL?

Ans: Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.

4. What is the full form of LCM?

Ans: Lowest Common Multiple.

5. What is the full form of JPEG?

Ans: Joint Photographic Experts Group.

6. What is the full form of MODEM?

Ans: Modulator-Demodulator.

7. What is the full form of OAPEC?

Ans: Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries.

8. What is the full form of PAT?

Ans: Profit After Tax.

9. What is the full form of COPRA?

Ans: Consumer Protection Act.

10. What is the full form of LASER?

Ans: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

11. What is the full form of MAD?

Ans: Mutually Assured Destruction.

12. What is the full form of PIGS?

Ans: Pre-implantation Genetic Screening.

13. What is the full form of UPS?

Ans: Uninterrupted Power Supply.

14. What is the full form of RTG?

Ans: Radio-isotope Thermoelectric Generator. 

15. What is the full form of WAN?

Ans: World Association of Newspaper.

16. What is the full form of NATO?

Ans: North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

17. What is the full form of NEWS?

Ans: North East West South.

18. What is the full form of EDMS?

Ans: Essential Services Maintenance Act.

19. What is the full form of ERM?

Ans: European Exchange Rate Mechanism.

20. What is the full form of SIFT?

Ans:  Sperm Intra-Fallopian Transfer.