Gyaat

Monday 18 May 2015

Celebrating the Preservatives of the culture, system and eternity: Happy International Museum day!!!

International Museum Day (IMD) is a celebration that held every year on or around 18 May, coordinated by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). Since 1977, ICOM has organises International Museum Day (IMD), which represents a unique moment for the international museum community. On this day, participating museums plan creative events and activities related to the International Museum Day theme, engage with their public and highlight the importance of the role of museums as institutions that serve society and its development.

In 2015, the event will celebrate the theme: Museums for a sustainable society.

One of the most important contemporary challenges shared by people all over the world is to adapt new ways of living and developing within the limits of nature. This transition towards a sustainable society requires inventing new methods of thinking and acting. Museums play a key role in this transition, promoting sustainable development and serving as real laboratories for best practices. Modern museums must take a strong position in this context and make their voices heard.

The theme Museums for a sustainable society recognises the role of museums in raising public awareness about the need for a society that is less wasteful, more cooperative and uses resources in a way that respects living systems.

Bringing museums to the forefront of this model of a sustainable society, the International Museum Day theme aims to foster awareness among the whole society about the current consequences of human action in our planet and the absolute necessity of changing its economic and social model.

Read more & watch the Video... : Happy International Museum day!!!

Sunday 17 May 2015

The barely literate blacksmith; whose agricultural implements are used world over !!!

John Deere (February 7, 1804 – May 17, 1886) was an American blacksmith and manufacturer who founded Deere & Company, one of the largest and leading agricultural and construction equipment manufacturers in the world. He invented the first commercially successful steel plow in 1837. After a meager education, he was apprenticed in 1821 at age 17 to Captain Benjamin Lawrence, a prosperous Middlebury blacksmith, and entered the trade for himself in 1825.

In 1868, Deere incorporated his business as Deere & Company. He served as President of the National Bank of Moline, a director of the Moline Free Public Library, and was a trustee of the First Congregational Church. Deere also served as Moline's mayor for two years.

John Deere, is an American corporation based in Moline, Illinois, and one of the largest manufacturers of agricultural machinery in the world.

Deere and Company agricultural products, sold under the John Deere name, include tractors, combine harvesters, cotton harvesters, balers, planters/seeders, sprayers, and UTVs.

The company is also a manufacturer of construction equipment and forestry equipment, as well as a supplier of diesel engines and drivetrains (axles, transmissions, gearboxes) used in heavy equipment. Additionally, John Deere manufactures equipment used in lawn, grounds, and turf care, such as walk-behind lawn mowers, zero-turn lawn mowers, lawn tractors, and snowthrowers. To support the core businesses, John Deere also provides financial services and other related activities.

Monday 11 May 2015

One of the earliest complete survival of a dated printed book - Diamond Sūtra/Mahāyāna (Buddhist) sūtra [Sanskrit title of this text is the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra]

The Diamond Sūtra is a Mahāyāna (Buddhist) sūtra from the Prajñāpāramitā, or "Perfection of Wisdom" genre, and emphasizes the practice of non-abiding and non-attachment. The full Sanskrit title of this text is the Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra.

There is a wood block printed copy in the British Library which, although not the earliest example of block printing, is the earliest example which bears an actual date. The book displays a great maturity of design and layout and speaks of a considerable ancestry for woodblock printing.

The extant copy has the form of a scroll, about 5 meters (16 ft) long. The archaeologist Sir Marc Aurel Stein purchased it in 1907 in the walled-up Mogao Caves near Dunhuang in northwest China from a monk guarding the caves - known as the "Caves of the Thousand Buddhas".

This is approximately 587 years before the Gutenberg Bible was first printed.

Friday 8 May 2015

The RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT DAY and its HUMBLING FOUNDER!!!

World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day is an annual celebration of the principles of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement (ICRC). World Red Cross Red Crescent Day is celebrated on 8 May each year. This date is the anniversary of the birth of Henry Dunant, the founder of ICRC. Jean Henri Dunant (8 May 1828 – 30 October 1910), also known as Henry Dunant, was a Swissbusinessman and social activist. During a business trip in 1859, he was witness to the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in modern-day Italy.

Read more & watch the video... : Gyaat:The RED CROSS AND RED CRESCENT DAY and its HUMBLING FOUNDER!!!

Monday 4 May 2015

And this guy gave people an awesome musical instrument to make melody!!!

Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco (4 May 1655 – 27 January 1713) was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the fortepiano.

The quiet nature of the piano's birth around 1700, therefore, comes as something of a surprise. The first true piano was invented almost entirely by one man—Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) of Padua, who had been appointed in 1688 to the Florentine court of Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici to care for its harpsichords and eventually for its entire collection of musical instruments.

Read more & watch the Video...: Gyaat:And this guy gave people to make melody!!!

Sunday 3 May 2015

"Let Journalism Thrive! Towards better reporting, gender equality and media safety in the digital age" - 2015 theme for World press freedom day

The United Nations General Assembly declared May 3 to be World Press Freedom Day or just World Press Day to raise awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression enshrined under Article 19 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Prize is named in honour of Guillermo Cano Isaza, a Colombian journalist who was assassinated in front of the offices of his newspaper, El Espectador, in Bogotá, on 17 December 1986. Cano's writings had offended Colombia's powerful drug barons.

The winner of 2015 for UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize is Syrian journalist and human rights activist, Mazen Darwish, who is currently imprisoned.

Friday 1 May 2015

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAHARASHTRA & GUJARAT!!!!

The state of Maharashtra and Gujarat were formed as a result of this movement according to the Bombay Reorganisation Act, 1960 enacted by the Parliament of India on 25 April 1960. The act came into effect on 1 May 1960.

After Indian independence, Samyukta Maharashtra Samiti demanded unification of all Marathi-speaking regions under one state. At that time, Babasaheb Ambedkar was of the opinion that linguistic reorganisation of states should be done on a "One state – One language" principle and not on a "One language – One state" principle. He submitted a memorandum to the re-organisation commission stating that a "single government can not administer such a huge state as United Maharashtra". The first state re-organisation committee created the current Maharashtra state on 1 May 1960 (known as Maharashtra Day).

Gujarat is a state in the North-West coast of India. It is known locally asJewel of the West. It has an area of 196,204 km2 (75,755 sq mi) with a coastline of 1,600 km (990 mi), most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula, and a population in excess of 60 million. The state is bordered by Rajasthan to the north, Maharashtra to the south, Madhya Pradesh to the east, and the Arabian Sea as well as the Pakistani province of Sindh on the west. Its capital city is Gandhinagar, whilst its largest city is Ahmedabad.

Thursday 30 April 2015

This prince of mathematics found his own date of birth!!!

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855)

He was born to poor working-class parents. His mother was illiterate and never recorded the date of his birth, remembering only that he had been born on a Wednesday, eight days before the Feast of the Ascension, which itself occurs 40 days after Easter. Gauss would later solve this puzzle about his birthdate in the context of finding the date of Easter, deriving methods to compute the date in both past and future years.

Read more & Watch the Video...: Gyaat:This prince of mathematics found his own date of birth!!!

Wednesday 29 April 2015

This school dropout not only put his card in the world's pocket but was a versatile and unconventional one!!!

Roland Moreno (June 11, 1945 – April 29, 2012) was a French inventor, engineer, humorist and author who was the universally accepted inventor of the smart card. Created in 1974, his invention has "Touched almost everyone on the planet" in the words of The Guardian and is now used in identity cards, drivers licenses, passports, oyster cards and SIM cards. Moreno's smart card, or la carte à puce in French, was little known internationally.

A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC) is any pocket-sized card with embedded integrated circuits. Smart cards are made of plastic, generally polyvinyl chloride, but sometimes polyethylene terephthalate based polyesters, acrylonitrile butadiene styrene or polycarbonate. Since April 2009, a Japanese company has manufactured reusable financial smart cards made from paper.

Tuesday 28 April 2015

This Shrewd Businessman is known for spending all he had to save his worker's lives during world war II

Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was an ethnic German industrialist, spy, and member of the Nazi Party. He is credited to have saved lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories located in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He is the subject of the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark, and the subsequent 1993 film Schindler's List, which reflected his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, and dedication in order to save the lives of his Jewish employees.

Monday 27 April 2015

This Amazing Painter invented a code because of late news of wife's demise; which was used throughout the globe as TELEGRAPH !!!

Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American painter who turned inventor. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of the Morse code, and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.

Morse code is a method of transmitting text information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment. The International Morse Code encodes the ISO basic Latin alphabet, some extra Latin letters, the Arabic numerals and a small set of punctuation and procedural signals as standardized sequences of short and long signals called "dots" and "dashes", or "dits" and "dahs". Because many non-English natural languages use more than the 26 Roman letters, extensions to the Morse alphabet exist for those languages.

Thursday 16 April 2015

This outdoorsy meteorologist pioneered the CHAOS theory & the BUTTERFLY EFFECT!!!!

Edward Norton Lorenz (23 May 1917 – 16 April 2008) was an American mathematician, meteorologist, and a pioneer of chaos theory. He introduced the strange attractor notion and coined the term butterfly effect.

The butterfly effect is exhibited by very simple systems. For example, the randomness of the outcomes of throwing dice depends on this characteristic to amplify small differences in initial conditions—the precise direction, thrust, and orientation of the throw—into significantly different dice paths and outcomes, which makes it virtually impossible to throw dice exactly the same way twice.

Wednesday 15 April 2015

Started working at the age of thirteen in a cloth mill; created CAT'S EYE, ENHANCED SAFETY and received OBE !!!

Percy Shaw (15 April 1890 – 1 September 1976) was an English inventor and businessman. He patented the reflective road stud or "cat's eye" in 1934, and set up a company to manufacture his invention in 1935. Shaw was educated at Boothtown Board School, and started work as a labourer in a cloth mill at the age of 13. He became apprenticed to a wire drawer, but the low wages on offer were not attractive and he soon took a series of unskilled jobs in local engineering works.

The cat's eye is a retroreflective safety device used in road marking and was the first of a range of raised pavement markers. It consists (in its original form) of two pairs of glass cylinders with faces at the rear cut, moulded or ground to have three faces at (in three dimensions) 60 degrees to each other. Cat's eyes are particularly valuable in fog and are largely resistant to damage from snow ploughs. Apart from the evident requirement for toughness, the glass has no other special qualities.

Monday 13 April 2015

This Bilnd Irish guided the sea way by inventing Screwpile Lighthouse!!!

Alexander Mitchell, (13 April 1780 – 25 June 1868) was an Irish engineer who from 1802 was blind. He is known as the inventor of the screw-pile lighthouse. Mitchell became a brickmaker in Belfast who invented machines used in that trade, and the screw-pile for which he gained some fame. The screw-pile was used for the erection of lighthouses and other structures on mudbanks and shifting sands, and employed with great success all over the world from Portland breakwater to Bombay bridges.
A screw-pile lighthouse is a lighthouse which stands on piles that are screwed into sandy or muddy sea or river bottoms. The first screw-pile lighthouse to begin construction was built by blind Irish engineer Alexander Mitchell. Construction began in 1838 at the mouth of the Thames and was known as the Maplin Sands lighthouse, and first lit in 1841. However, though its construction began later, the Wyre Light in Fleetwood, Lancashire, was the first to be lit (in 1840).

Thursday 9 April 2015

This school prodigy he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC)

John Adam Presper "Pres" Eckert, Jr. (April 9, 1919 – June 3, 1995) was an American electrical engineer and computer pioneer. With John Mauchly he invented the first general-purpose electronic digital computer (ENIAC), presented the first course in computing topics (the Moore School Lectures), founded the first commercial computer company (the Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation), and designed the first commercial computer in the U.S., the UNIVAC, which incorporated Eckert's invention of the mercury delay line memory.

ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer) was the first electronic general-purpose computer. It was Turing-complete, digital, and capable of being reprogrammed to solve "a large class of numerical problems". Though ENIAC was designed and primarily used to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, its first programs included a study of the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb.

Monday 6 April 2015

This crazy englishman who went picking bugs, coined the word aquarium & invented seawater aquarium!!!!

Philip Henry Gosse (6 April 1810 – 23 August 1888), known to his friends as Henry, was an English naturalist and popularizer of natural science, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology. The aquarium craze was launched in early Victorian

At fifteen he began work as a clerk in the counting house of George Garland and Sons in Poole, and in 1827 he sailed to Newfoundland to serve as a clerk in the Carbonear premises of Slade, Elson and Co., where he became a dedicated, self-taught student of Newfoundland entomology, "the first person systematically to investigate and to record the entomology" of the island. England by Gosse who created and stocked the first public aquarium at the London Zoo in 1853, and coined the term "aquarium" when he published the first manual, The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea, in 1854.

In 1835 he left Newfoundland for Compton, Lower Canada where he farmed unsuccessfully for three years, originally in an attempt to establish a commune with two of his religious friends. Nevertheless, the experience deepened his love for natural history, and locals referred to him as "that crazy Englishman who goes about picking up bugs." During this time he became a member of the Natural History Society of Montreal and submitted specimens to its museum.

In October 1844 Gosse sailed to Jamaica, where he served as a professional collector for the churlish dealer Hugh Cuming. Although Gosse worked hard during his eighteen months on the island, he later called this period his "holiday in Jamaica." Gosse's study specialized in birds, and Gosse has been called "the father of Jamaican ornithology." With no racial prejudice, he easily hired black youths as his assistants, and his Jamaican books are full of praise for one of them, Samuel Campbell.