Tuesday 30 December 2014

Despite being loosely supported for education initially & losing a job for socio-political reasons; this lady amused the world from home laboratory; the only nobel laureate to surpass 100 years life!!!



Rita Levi-Montalcini (22 April 1909 – 30 December 2012) is a Nobel Laureate honored for her work in neurobiology. She was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine alongside colleague Stanley Cohen for discovering nerve growth factor (NGF). Also, from 2001 until her death, she served in the Italian Senate as a Senator for Life. Rita Levi-Montalcini had been the oldest living Nobel laureate and the first ever to reach a 100th birthday. 
Her father discouraged her from attending college as he feared it would disrupt their lives as wives and mothers but he eventually supported Levi-Montalcini's aspirations to become a doctor anyway.After graduating with an M.D. in 1936, she went to work as Giuseppe Levi's assistant, but her academic career was cut short by Benito Mussolini's 1938 Manifesto of Race and the subsequent introduction of laws barring Jews from academic and professional careers.  During World War II, Levi-Montalcini would conduct experiments from a home laboratory, studying the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos, which laid the groundwork for much of her later research. Her first genetics laboratory was in her bedroom at her home.  Read more & watch the Video...

Monday 29 December 2014

This late speaker, challenger to orthodox thinking laid foundation to NANOTECHNOLOGY!!!


Richard Phillips Feynman (May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman, jointly with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. 

During his lifetime, Feynman became one of the best-known scientists in the world. In a 1999 poll of 130 leading physicists worldwide by the British journal Physics World he was ranked as one of the ten greatest physicists of all time. Feynman was a late talker, and by his third birthday had yet to utter a single word. In 1933, when he turned 15, he taught himself trigonometry, advanced algebra, infinite series, analytic geometry, and both differential and integral calculus. He applied to Columbia University but was not accepted.
Feynman has been called the "Great Explainer". He gained a reputation for taking great care when giving explanations to his students and for making it a moral duty to make the topic accessible. He opposed rote learning or unthinking memorization and other teaching methods that emphasized form over function. Clear thinking and clear presentation were fundamental prerequisites for his attention. It could be perilous even to approach him when unprepared, and he did not forget the fools or pretenders.

"There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" was a lecture given by physicist Richard Feynman at an American Physical Society meeting at Caltech on December 29, 1959. Feynman considered the possibility of direct manipulation of individual atoms as a more powerful form of synthetic chemistry than those used at the time. The talk went unnoticed and it didn't inspire the conceptual beginnings of the field. In the 1990s it was rediscovered and publicised as a seminal event in the field, probably to boost the history of nanotechnology with Feynman's reputation. Nanotechnology ("nanotech") is the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale. Read more & Watch the video...

Saturday 27 December 2014

Rejection from best engineering college in France & other hindrances didn't stop him from designing Iron lady & Eiffel!!!


Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (born Bönickhausen;15 December 1832 – 27 December 1923) was a French civil engineer and architect. A graduate of the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit viaduct. He is best known for the world-famous Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, France. After his retirement from engineering, Eiffel concentrated his energies on research into meteorology and aerodynamics, making important contributions in both fields. In 1881 Eiffel was contacted by Auguste Bartholdi who was in need of an engineer to help him to realise the Statue of Liberty.

Eiffel went on to attend the Collège Sainte-Barbe in Paris, in order to prepare for the difficult entrance exams set by the most important engineering colleges in France. Eiffel had hoped to enter the École Polytechnique, but his tutors decided that his performance was not good enough, and instead he qualified for entry to the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in Paris, which offered a rather more vocational training.Read more & Watch the video...

Friday 26 December 2014

Who's the Santa Anyway!!!


Santa Claus is generally depicted as a portly, joyous, white-bearded man—sometimes with spectacles—wearing a red coat with white collar and cuffs, white-cuffed red trousers, and black leather belt and boots and who carries a bag full of gifts for children. This image became popular in the United States and Canada in the 19th century due to the significant influence of the 1823 poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas and of caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast. This image has been maintained and reinforced through song, radio, television, children's books and films.

Santa Claus, also known as Saint Nicholas, Father of Christmas and simply "Santa" is said to bring gifts to the homes of the good children on December 24, the night before Christmas.
However, in some European countries children receive their presents on St. Nicholas' Day, December 6. The modern figure of Santa Claus is derived from the Dutch figure of “Sinterklaas”. PREDECESSOR FIGURES OF SANTA: ST.NICHOLAS (4th century), was a Greek Christian Bishop of MYRA now known as Demre a province in byzantine Anatolia now in Turkey. Read more & Watch the video...

Wednesday 24 December 2014

This Christmas(Kiritimati) is actually an island which has London & Paris within & is the first to celebrate the NEW YEAR!!


Kiritimati sometimes Christmas Island is a Pacific Ocean raised coral atoll in the northern Line Islands, and part of the Republic of Kiribati.

The name "Kiritimati" is a rather straightforward respelling of the English word "Christmas" in the Kiribati language, in which the combination ti is pronounced s, and the name is thus pronounced.
The island has the greatest land area of any coral atoll in the world, about 388 square kilometres (150 sq mi); its lagoon is roughly the same size. The atoll is about 150 km (93 mi) in perimeter, while the lagoon shoreline extends for over 48 km (30 mi). Christmas Island comprises over 70% of the total land area of Kiribati, a country encompassing 33 Pacific atolls and islands.
It lies 232 km (144 mi) north of the Equator, 6,700 km (4,160 mi) from Sydney, and 5,360 km (3,330 mi) from San Francisco. Kiritimati Island is in the world's farthest forward time zone, UTC+14, and is one of the first inhabited places on Earth to experience the New Year . Despite being 2,460 km (1,530 mi) east of the 180 meridian, a 1995 realignment of the International Dateline by the Republic of Kiribati "moved" Kiritimati to west of the dateline.

Nuclear tests were conducted on and around Kiribati by the United Kingdom in the late 1950s, and by the United States in 1962. During these tests islanders were not evacuated. Subsequently British, New Zealand, and Fijian servicemen as well as local islanders have claimed to have suffered from exposure to the radiation from these blasts.
The entire island is a Wildlife Sanctuary; access to five particularly sensitive areas is restricted.
At Western discovery, Christmas Island was uninhabited. As on other Line Islands there might have been a small or temporary native population, most probably Polynesian traders and settlers, who would have found the island a useful replenishing station on the long voyages from the Society Islands to Hawaiʻi, perhaps as early as AD 400. 
This trade route was apparently used with some regularity by about AD 1000. From 1200 onwards Polynesian long-distance voyages became less frequent, and had there been human settlement on Christmas Island, it would have been abandoned in the early-mid second millennium AD. Two possible village sites and some stone structures of these early visitors have been located. Today, most inhabitants are Micronesians, and Gilbertese is the only language of any significance. English is generally understood, but little used outside the tourism sector.

Christmas Island was discovered by the Spanish expedition of Hernando de Grijalva in 1537, that charted it as Acea. This discovery was referred by a contemporary, the Portuguese António Galvão, governor of Ternate, in his book Tratado dos Descubrimientos of 1563. Captain James Cook visited it on Christmas Eve (24 December) 1777. It was claimed by the United States under the Guano Islands Act of 1856, though little actual mining of guano took place.
The island's population has strongly increased in recent years, from about 2,000 in 1989 to about 5,000 in the early 2000s. Christmas Island has two representatives in the Maneaba ni Maungatabu. Today there are five villages, four populated and one abandoned, on the island: Tabwakea, London, Banana (Banana Wells), Poland & Paris (ruins), of which paris is in ruins now.

Permanent settlement started by 1882, mainly by workers in coconut plantations and fishermen but, due to an extreme drought which killed off tens of thousands of Coconut Palms – about 75% of Christmas Island's population of this plant – the island was once again abandoned between 1905 and 1912.

Tuesday 23 December 2014

Remembering the FATHER OF INDUSTRIALIZATION on his birthday !!!!



Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was self-made man, a leading entrepreneur during the early Industrial Revolution. Although the patents were eventually overturned, he is credited with inventing the spinning frame, which, following the transition to water power was renamed the water frame. He also patented a rotary carding engine that transformed raw cotton into cotton lap.


Arkwright's achievement was to combine power, machinery, semi-skilled labour and the new raw material (cotton) to create mass-produced yarn. His skills of organisation made him, more than anyone else, the creator of the modern factory system, especially in his mill at Cromford. Later in his life Arkwright was known as 'the Father of the Industrial Revolution'.

He was the youngest of 13 children, was born in Preston, Lancashire. His father was a tailor and a Preston Guild burgessHis parents, Sarah and Thomas, could not afford to send him to school and instead arranged for him to be taught to read and write by his cousin Ellen. Richard was apprenticed to a Mr. Nicholson, a barber at nearby Kirkham, and began his working life as a barber and wig-maker, setting up a shop at Churchgate in Bolton in the early 1750s. It was here that he invented a waterproof dye for use on the fashionable 'periwigs' (wigs) of the time, the income from which later facilitated his financing of prototype cotton machinery.

It was only after the death of his first wife that he became an entrepreneur.


On his own, Arkwright took an interest in spinning and carding machinery that turned raw cotton into thread. In 1768, he and John Kay, a clockmaker, relocated to the textile centre of Nottingham. In 1769 he patented the water-frame, a machine that produced a strong twist for warps, substituting wooden and metal cylinders for human fingers. This made possible inexpensive yarns to manufacture cheap calicoes, on which the subsequent great expansion of the cotton industry was based.



How does a Water Frame work ? For each spindle, the water frame used a series of four pairs of rollers, each operating at a successively higher rotating speed, to draw out the fiber,or fibre, which was then twisted by the spindle. The roller spacing was slightly longer than the fiber length. Too close a spacing caused the fibers to break while too distant a spacing caused uneven thread. The top rollers were leather covered and loading on the rollers was applied by a weight. The weights kept the twist from backing up before the rollers. The bottom rollers were wood and metal, with a flute along the length. The water frame was originally powered by horses at a factory built by Arkwright and partners in Nottingham. In 1770 Arkwright and partners built a water powered mill in Cromford, Derbyshire.


Arkwright's achievements: He served as high sheriff of Derbyshire and was knighted in 1786. Much of his fortune derived from licensing his intellectual rights; about 30,000 people were employed in 1785 in factories using Arkwright's patents. He died at Rock House, Cromford, on 3 August 1792, aged 59, leaving a fortune of £500,000.

Saturday 20 December 2014

This physicist succeeded in raising people's hair without giving them a shock!!!



Robert Jemison Van de Graaff (December 20, 1901 – January 16, 1967) was an American physicist, noted for his design and construction of high voltage generators, who taught at Princeton University and MIT. Van de Graaff was the designer of the Van de Graaff generator, a device which produces high voltages. In 1929, Van de Graaff developed his first generator (producing 80,000 volts) with help from Nicholas Burke at Princeton University. A Van de Graaff generator is an electrostatic generator which uses a moving belt to accumulate very high amounts of electrical potential on a hollow metal globe on the top of the stand.  Read more & watch the HAIR RAISING video

Friday 19 December 2014

This neuropatholologist's name was given to the Presenile demantia by the founder of modern psychiatry!!!


Dr. Aloysius "Alois" Alzheimer (German 14 June 1864 – 19 December 1915) was a Bavarian-born German psychiatrist and neuropathologist and a colleague of Emil Kraepelin. Alzheimer is credited with identifying the first published case of "presenile dementia", which Kraepelin would later identify as Alzheimer's disease.

In 1901, Dr. Alzheimer observed a patient at the Frankfurt Asylum named Auguste Deter. The 51-year-old patient had strange behavioral symptoms, including a loss of short-term memory. This patient would become his obsession over the coming years. In April 1906, Mrs Deter died and Alzheimer had the patient records and the brain brought to Munich where he was working at Kraepelin's lab. With two Italian physicians, he used the staining techniques to identify amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles.  Read more & watch the video...

Thursday 18 December 2014

Starting a farmhand, this clock-maker invented things, revolutionized mining & virtually contributed to Swedish development!!!


Christopher Polhammar (18 December 1661 – 30 August 1751), better known as Christopher Polhem was a Swedish scientist, inventor and industrialist. He made significant contributions to the economic and industrial development of Sweden, particularly mining. Polhem was born on the island of Gotland in the small village of Tingstäde, situated northeast of Visby.
The beginning of his career was the successful repair of the unfinished medieval (16th century) astronomical clock by Petrus Astronomus at Uppsala Cathedral, which had remained unfinished and broken for more than a century. In 1690 Polhem was appointed to improve upon the current mining operations of Sweden. His contribution was a construction for lifting and transporting ore from mines, a process that was rather risky and inefficient at the time. The construction consisted of a track system for lifting the ore, as opposed to wires; the construction was powered entirely by a water wheel. 
His greatest achievement was an automated factory powered entirely by water; automation was very unusual at the time.
Another product from the factory was the Scandinavian padlock ("Polhem locks", Swedish: Polhemslås), essentially the first design of the variation of padlocks common today. Read more & watch the video...

Wednesday 17 December 2014

This polymath chemist who invented numerous elements thanked for being left to himself & hired Faraday as a co-worker!!!



Sir Humphry Davy, 1st Baronet (17 December 1778 – 29 May 1829) was a Cornish chemist and inventor. He is best remembered today for his discoveries of several alkali and alkaline earth metals, as well as contributions to the discoveries of the elemental nature of chlorine and iodine. Berzelius called Davy's 1806 Bakerian Lecture On Some Chemical Agencies of Electricity "one of the best memoirs which has ever enriched the theory of chemistry." He was a 1st Baronet, President of the Royal Society (PRS), Member of the Royal Irish Academy (MRIA), and Fellow of the Geological Society (FGS). Davy was a pioneer in the field of electrolysis using the voltaic pile to split common compounds and thus prepare many new elements.

Davy was also a painter and three of his paintings dating from circa 1796 have been donated to the Penlee House museum at Penzance. Davy's first production preserved bears the date of 1795. It is entitled The Sons of Genius, and is marked by the usual immaturity of youth.
Davy conceived of using an iron gauze to enclose a lamp's flame, and so prevent the methane burning inside the lamp from passing out to the general atmosphere(used in mines). Read more & watch the video...

Monday 15 December 2014

To save his wife from allergies, this pharmacist invented egg-less custard & baking powder!!!


Alfred Bird (1811 – 15 December 1878) was a British food manufacturer and chemist. He was born in Nympsfield, Gloucestershire, England in 1811 and was the inventor of a series of food products mostly now taken for granted. Alfred Bird registered as a pharmacist in Birmingham in 1842, having served an apprenticeship to Phillip Harris of that city. He was a qualified chemistand druggist and went on to open an experimental chemist's shop in Bull Street.
Alfred Bird's first major invention was egg-free custard (1837). Bird was not content to revolutionize custard but went on to invent a baking powder in 1843 so he could make yeast-free bread for his wife. Baking powder is a dry chemical leavening agent, a mixture of a weak alkali and a weak acid, and is used for increasing the volume and lightening the texture of baked goods. Read more...

Saturday 13 December 2014

This father of modern Psychosurgery, left politics to resume his practice to treat mental disorders!!!



António Caetano de Abreu Freire Egas Moniz (29 November 1874 – 13 December 1955), known as Egas Moniz, was a Portuguese neurologist and the developer of cerebral angiography. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern psychosurgery, having developed the surgical procedure leucotomy—known better today as lobotomy—for which he became the first Portuguese national to receive a Nobel Prize in 1949. Cerebral angiography is a form of angiography which provides images of blood vessels in and around the brain, thereby allowing detection of abnormalities such as arteriovenous malformations and aneurysms.
Psychosurgery, also called neurosurgery for mental disorder (NMD), is the neurosurgical treatment of mental disorder. Psychosurgery has always been a controversial medical field. The modern history of psychosurgery begins in the 1880s under the Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt.
Lobotomy (Greek: λοβός lobos "lobe (of brain)"; τομή tomē "cut, slice") is a neurosurgical procedure, a form of psychosurgery, also known as a leukotomy or leucotomy (from the Greek λευκός leukos "clear, white" and tome). It consists of cutting or scraping away most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex, the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain.
Thorotrast is a suspension containing particles of the radioactive compound thorium dioxide, ThO2, that was used as a radiocontrast agent in medical radiography in the 1930s and 1940s. Read more & Watch the video...

Friday 12 December 2014

This forefather Darwin sow seeds of evolution much earlier; a polymath physician who declined King's offer to serve him!!!


Erasmus Darwin (12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802) was an English physician. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave-trade abolitionist, inventor and poet. His poems included much natural history, including a statement of evolution and the relatedness of all forms of life. He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family, which includes his grandsons Charles Darwin and Francis Galton. Darwin was also a founding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a discussion group of pioneering industrialists and natural philosophers. He turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. Darwin was the inventor of several devices, though he did not patent any. He believed this would damage his reputation as a doctor, and encouraged his friends to patent their own modifications of his designs.

A horizontal windmill, which he designed for Josiah Wedgwood (who would be Charles Darwin's other grandfather, see family tree below).
  • A carriage that would not tip over (1766).
  • A steering mechanism for his carriage that would be adopted by cars 130 years later (1759).
  • A speaking machine (at Clifton in 1799).
  • A canal lift for barges.
  • A minute artificial bird.
  • A copying machine (1778).
  • A variety of weather monitoring machines.
  • An artesian well (1783).

Thursday 11 December 2014

This founder of modern bacteriology who formulated FOUR POSTULATES had taught himself to read & write!!!


Robert Heinrich Herman Koch (11 December 1843 – 27 May 1910) was a celebrated German physician and pioneering microbiologist. The founder of modern bacteriology, he is known for his role in identifying the specific causative agents of tuberculosis, cholera, and anthrax and for giving experimental support for the concept of infectious disease. He created and improved laboratory technologies and techniques in the field of microbiology, and made key discoveries in public health. His research led to the creation of Koch’s postulates, a series of four generalized principles linking specific microorganisms to specific diseases that remain today the "gold standard" in medical microbiology. As a result of his groundbreaking research on tuberculosis, Koch received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1905.

Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects both humans and other animals. Cholera is an infection of the small intestine caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Tuberculosis or TB (short for tubercle bacillus) is a widespread, and in many cases fatal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Read more & Watch the video...

Wednesday 10 December 2014

We the humans & our Rights!!!


Human rights 365
On 10 December every year, Human Rights Day commemorates the date on which the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaiming its principles as the “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations.”

This year’s slogan, Human Rights 365, encompasses the idea that every day is Human Rights Day. It celebrates the fundamental proposition in the Universal Declaration that each one of us, everywhere, at all times is entitled to the full range of human rights, that human rights belong equally to each of us and bind us together as a global community with the same ideals and values. Read more & Watch the video...

Tuesday 9 December 2014

This NOBEL laureate started inventing even before learning academically & was literally blinded by his work!!!


Nils Gustaf Dalén (30 November 1869 – 9 December 1937) was a Swedish Nobel Laureate and industrialist, the founder of the AGA company and inventor of the AGA cooker and the Dalén light. In 1912 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "invention of automatic regulators for use in conjunction with gas accumulators for illuminating lighthouses and buoys".  In 1892 he invented a milk-fat tester to check milk quality of the milk delivered and went to Stockholm to show his new invention for Gustaf de Laval. de Laval was impressed by the self-taught Dalén and the invention and encouraged him to get a basic technical education. 

During his life, AGA was one of the most innovative companies in Sweden and produced a large variety of products that grew every year. In 1922 he patented his invention of the AGA cooker. Most of the testing for the cooker was made in his private kitchen in his Villa Ekbacken that was built when AGA moved to Lidingö in 1912 but that he never actually had a chance to see with his own eyes. Early in 1912, Dalén was blinded in an acetylene explosion during a test of maximum pressure for the accumulators. Later the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. 

Monday 8 December 2014

Albeit discovering photosynthesis this biologist pursued lifelong interest in electricity!!!



Jan Ingenhousz or Ingen-Housz FRS (December 8, 1730 – September 7, 1799) was a Dutch physiologist, biologist and chemist. He is best known for showing that light is essential to photosynthesis and thus having discovered photosynthesis. He also discovered that plants, like animals, have cellular respiration. In his lifetime he was best known for successfully inoculating the members of the Habsburg family in Vienna against smallpox in 1768 and subsequently being the private counsellor and personal physician to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. Read more & Watch the video...

Saturday 6 December 2014

Tribute to the STALWART who reformed the social system and architected Independent India's constitution !!!!



Ambedkar was voted as the "Greatest Indian" in 2012 by a poll organised by History TV18 and CNN IBN. He was an Indian jurist, politician, philosopher, anthropologist, historian and economist. As independent India's first law minister, he was principal architect of the Constitution of India. He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 1990. 

By 1912, he obtained his degree in economics and political science. He passed his M.A. exam in June 1915, majoring in Economics, with Sociology, History, Philosophy and Anthropology. He presented a thesis, Ancient Indian Commerce. In 1916 he completed his second thesis, National Dividend of India-A Historic and Analytical Study for another M.A.and finally he received his Ph.D. in Economics in 1917 for his third thesis, after he left for London. In October 1916 he enrolled for the Bar course at Gray's Inn, and also at the same time enrolled at the London School of Economics where he started work on a doctoral thesis. His thesis was on "Indian Rupee". At the London School Of Economics he took a Master's degree in 1921 and in 1923 he took his D.Sc.in Economics, and the same year he was called to the Bar by Gray's Inn. His third and fourth Doctorates (Ll.D, Columbia, 1952 and Ll.D., Osmania, 1953) were conferred honoris causa. He wrote three scholarly books on economics:
  • Administration and Finance of the East India Company,
  • The Evolution of Provincial Finance in British India, and
  • The Problem of the Rupee: Its Origin and Its Solution
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), formed in 1934, was based on the ideas that Ambedkar presented to the Hilton Young Commission. Read more & Watch the video...

Friday 5 December 2014

This immunologist, having keen interest in music, invented first effective polio vaccine!!!


Hilary Koprowski (December 5, 1916 – April 11, 2013) was a Polish and American virologist and immunologist, and the inventor of the world's first effective live polio vaccine. He authored or co-authored over 875 scientific papers and co-edited several scientific journals. Koprowski received many academic honors and national decorations, including the Belgian Order of the Lion, the French Order of Merit and Legion of Honour, Finland's Order of the Lion, and Poland's Order of Merit. He received a medical degree from Warsaw University in 1939. He also received music degrees from the Warsaw Conservatory and, in 1940, from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. He adopted scientific research as his life's work, but never gave up music and composed several musical works. Read more & Watch the video...

Thursday 4 December 2014

Tribute to SHOEMAKER’S apprentice who INVENTED ELECTRIC MOTOR, A GALVANOMETER!!!



William Sturgeon (22 May 1783 – 4 December 1850) was an English physicist and inventor who made the first electromagnets, and invented the first practical English electric motor. Sturgeon was born in Whittington, near Carnforth, Lancashire, and apprenticed to a shoemaker. He joined the army in 1802 and taught himself mathematics and physics. In 1824 he became Lecturer in Science and Philosophy at the East India Company's Military Seminary at Addiscombe, Surrey, and in the following year he exhibited his first electromagnet.  Read more & Watch the video...

Wednesday 3 December 2014

From starting as apprentice, opening a workshop hardly with some tools in it; he magnified his name in world of photography!!!



Carl Zeiss (11 September 1816 – 3 December 1888) was a German maker of optical instruments commonly known for the company he founded, Carl Zeiss Jena (now: Carl Zeiss AG). Zeiss made contributions to lens manufacturing that have aided the modern production of lenses. Raised in Weimar, Germany, he became a notable lens-maker in the 1840s when he created high-quality lenses that were "wide open", or in other words, had a very large aperture range that allowed for very bright images. He did this in the city of Jena at a self-opened workshop, where he started his lens-making career. At first his lenses were only used in the production of microscopes, but when cameras were invented, his company began manufacturing high-quality lenses for cameras. Read more & Watch the video...

Tuesday 2 December 2014

This misbehaved child, a self confessed political illiterate, stirred the global politics with reformers like CHE!!!


Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (August 13, 1926) is a Cuban politician and revolutionary who served as Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and President from 1976 to 2008. Politically a Marxist-Leninist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration the Republic of Cuba became a one-party socialist state; industry and businesses were nationalized, and state socialist reforms implemented throughout society. Internationally, Castro was the Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979 to 1983 and from 2006 to 2008. Although Castro took an interest in history, geography and debating at Belén, he did not excel academically, instead devoting much of his time to playing sport. Historian and journalist Richard Gott considered Castro to be "one of the most extraordinary political figures of the twentieth century", noting that he had become a "world hero in the mould of Garibaldi" to people throughout the developing world for his anti-imperialist efforts. Bourne described Castro as "an influential world leader" who commanded "great respect" from individuals of all political ideologies across the developing world. Read more & watch the video...

Monday 1 December 2014

Let us spread the Aid; not AIDS!!!


The 2014 theme for World AIDS Day is “Focus, Partner, Achieve: An AIDS-free Generation.”World AIDS Day, observed on 1 December every year, is dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection. Government and health officials observe the day, often with speeches or forums on the AIDS topics.

Human immunodeficiency virus infection / acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) is a disease of the human immune systemcaused by infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Prevention of HIV infection, primarily through safe sex and needle-exchange programs, is a key strategy to control the spread of the disease. There is no cure or vaccine; however, antiretroviral treatment can slow the course of the disease and may lead to a near-normal life expectancy. While antiretroviral treatment reduces the risk of death and complications from the disease, these medications are expensive and may be associated with side effects. Read more & Watch the video...

Saturday 29 November 2014

This doctor invented Basketball in order to calm down students of a rowdy class!!!


James Naismith (November 6, 1861 – November 28, 1939) was a Canadian American sports coach and innovator. He invented the sport of basketball in 1891. He wrote the original basketball rulebook, founded the University of Kansas basketball program, and lived to see basketball adopted as an Olympic demonstration sport in 1904 and as an official event at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, as well as the birth of both the National Invitation Tournament (1938) and the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship (1939).

Basketball is a sport played by two teams of five players on a rectangular court. The objective is to shoot a ball through a hoop 18 inches (46 cm) in diameter and 10 feet (3.0 m) high mounted to a backboard at each end. Basketball is one of the world's most popular and widely viewed sports. Read more & Watch the video...

Thursday 27 November 2014

This Philosopher, Poet, Fighter, Instructor, inventor and actor did it all in his own stride !!!


Bruce Lee (Born Lee Jun-fan; 27 November 1940 – 20 July 1973) was a Hong Kong American martial artist, Hong Kong action film actor, martial arts instructor, filmmaker, and the founder of Jeet Kune Do. He is widely to be one of the most influential martial artists of all time, and a pop culture icon of the 20th century. Lee's first introduction to martial arts was through his father, from whom he learned the fundamentals of Wu-style t'ai chi ch'uan. At the age of 18, Lee returned to the United States with $100 in his pocket. After living in San Francisco for several months, he moved to Seattle in 1959, to continue his high school education, where he also worked for Ruby Chow as a live-in waiter at her restaurant.mHe also studied philosophy, psychology, and various other subjects. 

Lee appeared in the 1964 Long Beach International Karate Championships and performed repetitions of two-finger push-ups (using the thumb and the index finger of one hand) with feet at approximately a shoulder-width apart. In the same Long Beach event he also performed the "One inch punch", His volunteer was Bob Baker of Stockton, California. Jeet Kune Do:The Jeet Kune Do emblem is a registered trademark held by the Bruce Lee Estate. The Chinese characters around the Taijitu symbol read: "Using no way as way" and "Having no limitation as limitation" The arrows represent the endless interaction between yang and yin.Lee emphasised what he called "the style of no style"
Lee had his first role as a baby who was carried onto the stage in the film Golden Gate Girl. By the time he was 18, he had appeared in twenty films. Enter the Dragon was one of the year's highest grossing films and cement Lee as a martial arts legend. It was made for US$850,000 in 1973 (equivalent to $4 million adjusted for inflation as of 2007). To date, Enter the Dragon has grossed over $200 million worldwide.
His books on martial arts and fighting philosophy are known for their philosophical assertionsboth inside and outside of martial arts circles. His eclectic philosophy often mirrored his fighting beliefs, though he was quick to claim that his martial arts were solely a metaphor for such teachings.He believed that any knowledge ultimately led to self-knowledge, and said that his chosen method of self-expression was martial arts. His influences include Taoism, Jiddu Krishnamurti, and Buddhism. In 1972, he was asked if he believed in God, and responded,"To be perfectly frank, I really do not".
Most of Bruce Lee's poems are categorized as anti-poetry or fall into a paradox. The free verse form of Lee's poetry reflect his famous quote "Be formless ... shapeless, like water." Read more & watch the video...

Wednesday 26 November 2014

The present that laid the country's FOUNDATION; the lengthiest living document of the world !!!


The Constitution was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on 26 November 1949, and came into effect on 26 January 1950. The date 26 January was chosen to commemorate the Purna Swaraj declaration of independence of 1930. With its adoption, the Union of India officially became the modern and contemporary Republic of India and it replaced the Government of India Act 1935 as the country's fundamental governing document. 26 November 1949 is also known as National Law Day.
The Constitution of India is the supreme law of India. It lays down the framework defining fundamental political principles, establishes the structure, procedures, powers, and duties of government institutions, and sets out fundamental rights, directive principles, and the duties of citizens. 
The Indian constitution is the world's longest constitution. At the time of commencement, the constitution had 395 articles in 22 parts and 8 schedules. It consists of almost 80,000 words and took 2 years 11 months and 18 days to build. It is the longest written constitution of any sovereign country in the world, containing 448 articles in 22 parts, 12 schedules and 118 amendments (Current constitution). Besides the English version, there is an official Hindi translation. 
A Draft Constitution was prepared by the committee and submitted to the Assembly on 4 November 1947. Draft constitution was debated and over 2000 amendments were moved over a period of two years. Finally on 26 Nov. 1949, the process was completed and Constituent assembly adopted the constitution. 284 members signed the document and the process of constitution making was complete.  Read more & watch the video....

Tuesday 25 November 2014

This lesser celebrated physician was overlooked by physicists for his path-braking THERMODYNAMICS & OXIDATION!!!


Julius Robert von Mayer (November 25, 1814 – March 20, 1878) was a German physician and physicist and one of the founders of thermodynamics. He is best known for enunciating in 1841 one of the original statements of the conservation of energy or what is now known as one of the first versions of the first law of thermodynamics, namely that "energy can be neither created nor destroyed". 

In 1842, Mayer described the vital chemical process now referred to as oxidation as the primary source of energy for any living creature. His achievements were overlooked and priority for the discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat was attributed to James Joule in the following year. He also proposed that plants convert light into chemical energy.
Although he had hardly been interested before this journey in physical phenomena, his observation that storm-whipped waves are warmer than the calm sea started him thinking about the physical laws, in particular about the physical phenomenon of warmth and the question: whether the directly developed heat alone or whether the sum of the amounts of heat developed in direct and indirect ways contributes to the temperature. After his return in February 1841 Mayer dedicated his efforts to solve this problem. Read more & watch the video...

Monday 24 November 2014

Brilliant cricketer invented a game which was given the name of the place where it was invented!!!


Rev. William Webb Ellis (24 November 1806 – 24 February 1872) was an Anglican (English) clergyman who is famous for allegedly being the inventor of Rugby football whilst a pupil at Rugby School.

Rugby is a market town in Warwickshire, England, located on the River Avon. The town has a population of 70,628 (2001) making it the second largest town in the county. The enclosing Borough of Rugby has a population of 100,500 (2011). The town is credited with being the birthplace of rugby football.

Rugby football is a style of football that developed at Rugby School and was one of several versions of football played at English public schools during the 19th century. The two main types of rugby are rugby league and rugby union. Although these two forms share the same objective of getting the ball over the line to score a try, the specific rules are different.  Read more & watch the video...

Saturday 22 November 2014

His invention was an answer to Eiffel tower, which is found in all the amusement parks!!!


George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. (February 14, 1859 – November 22, 1896) was an American engineer. He is mostly known for creating the original Ferris Wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition. Ferris was born on February 14, 1859, in Galesburg, Illinois, the town founded by his namesake, George Washington Gale.

Ferris left Nevada in 1875 to attend the California Military Academy in Oakland, where he graduated in 1876. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, in the class of 1881 with a degree in Civil Engineering. At RPI he was a charter member of the local chapter of Chi Phi Fraternity and a member of the Rensselaer Society of Engineers. He was made a member of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Alumni Hall of Fame in 1998. Read more & watch the video...

Friday 21 November 2014

The man who revealed acoustics depth & light scattering effect!!!


Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, (7 November 1888 – 21 November 1970) was an Indian physicist, born in the former Madras Province, whose ground breaking work in the field of light scattering earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize for Physics. He discovered that, when light traverses a transparent material, some of the deflected light changes in wavelength. This phenomenon is now called Raman scattering and is the result of the Raman effect. In 1954, he was honoured with the highest civilian award in India, the Bharat Ratna.

Venkata Raman was born, to a Tamil family, in Thiruvanaikaval, Trichinopoly, present-day Tiruchirapalli, Madras Presidency, inBritish India to Parvati Amma. He was self educated in the field of science. At an early age, Raman moved to the city of Visakhapatnam, and studied in St. Aloysius Anglo-Indian High School. Raman passed his matriculation examination at the age of 11 and he passed his F.A. examination (equivalent to today's Intermediate exam) with a scholarship at the age of 13.Read more & watch the video...

Thursday 20 November 2014

Tipu Sultan's Rockets, Tiger and sword !!!!


Tipu Sultan's father had expanded on Mysore's use of rocketry, making critical innovations in the rockets themselves and the military logistics of their use. Hedeployed as many as 1,200 specialised troops in his army to operate rocket launchers. Also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was a ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore and a scholar, soldier and poet.

Tipu expanded the iron-cased Mysorean rockets which he deployed in his resistance against military advances of the British. He laid the foundation for a dam where the famous Krishna Raja Sagara Dam across the river Cauvery was later built. He was a devout Muslim although the majority of his subjects were Hindus, and few were also Christian. At the request of the French, Tipu built a church, the first in Mysore. He was fluent in Kannada,Hindustani, Persian, Arabic, English and French. 

It is said that Tipu Sultan was hunting in the forest with a French friend. When he came face to face with a tiger, his gun did not work, and his dagger fell on the ground as the tiger jumped on him. He reached for the dagger, picked it up, and killed the tiger with it. That earned him the name "the Tiger of Mysore". He even had French engineers build a mechanical tiger for his palace. The device, known as Tipu's Tiger, is on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Not only did Tipu place relics of tigers around his palace and domain, but also had the emblem of a tiger on his banners and some arms and weapons. The British Army's National Army Museum named Tipu Sultan among the 10 Greatest Enemy Commanders that the British Army ever faced, including him among the ranks of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Read more & watch the video...

Wednesday 19 November 2014

IRON LADIES OF THE INTERNATIONAL MEN'S DAY !!! N Its WORLD TOILET DAY TOO...


Lakshmibai, the Rani of Jhansi  (19 November 1828 – 18 June 1858; was the queen of the Maratha-ruled princely state of Jhansi, situated in the north-central part of India. She was one of the leading figures of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 and for Indian nationalists a symbol of resistance to the rule of theBritish East India Company in the subcontinent

In the British report of this battle, Hugh Rose commented that Rani Lakshmibai is "personable, clever and beautiful" and she is "the most dangerous of all Indian leaders". Twenty years after her death Colonel Malleson wrote in the History of the Indian Mutiny; vol. 3; London, 1878 Whatever her faults in British eyes may have been, her countrymen will ever remember that she was driven by ill-treatment into rebellion, and that she lived and died for her country.
Wishing on their birthday to a few more women who made their name heard out loud:
Tatyana Afanseyeva, Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, Ann Curry, Zeenat Aman, Elizabeth Ann Hulette , Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra, known professionally as Meg Ryan, is an American actress and producer. Jodie Foster & Sushmita Sen

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL MEN'S DAY!!! Read more & watch the video...

Tuesday 18 November 2014

This passionate footballer won a nobel prize & had a lasting effect in the field of physics!!!


Niels Henrik David Bohr (7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr was also a philosopher and a promoter of scientific research.

Bohr developed the Bohr model of the atom, in which he proposed that energy levels of electrons are discrete and that the electrons revolve in stable orbits around the atomic nucleus but can jump from one energy level (or orbit) to another. Although the Bohr model has been supplanted by other models, its underlying principles remain valid. He conceived the principle of complementarity: that items could be separately analysed in terms of contradictory properties, like behaving as a wave or a stream of particles. The notion of complementarity dominated Bohr's thinking in both science and philosophy.
Niels was a passionate footballer as well, and the two brothers played several matches for the Copenhagen-based Akademisk Boldklub, with Niels as goalkeeper. Read more & watch the video...