The first one to have led to both the tips of the earth successfully!!

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (16 July 1872 – c. 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the Antarctic expedition (1910–12) to become the first men to reach the South Pole in December 1911. In 1926, he was the first expedition leader to be recognized without dispute as having reached the North Pole. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage (1903–06). He disappeared in June 1928 while taking part in a rescue mission. Amundsen,Douglas Mawson, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton were key expedition leaders during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.

Amundsen was born to a family of Norwegian shipowners and captains in Borge, between the towns Fredrikstad and Sarpsborg. His parents were Jens Amundsen and Hanna Sahlqvist. His mother wanted him to avoid the family maritime trade and encouraged him to become a doctor, a promise that Amundsen kept until his mother died when he was aged 21. He promptly quit university for a life at sea. Amundsen had hidden a lifelong desire inspired by Fridtjof Nansen's crossing of Greenland in 1888 and Franklin's lost expedition. He decided on a life of intense exploration of wilderness places.

Amundsen joined the Belgian Antarctic Expedition (1897–99) as first mate. This expedition, led by Adrien de Gerlache using the ship the Belgica, became the first expedition to winter in Antarctica. The Belgica, whether by mistake or design, became locked in the sea ice at 70°30′S off Alexander Island, west of the Antarctic Peninsula. In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully traverse Canada's Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. 

South Pole Achievement

On 14 December 1911, he, along with the team of four, with 16 dogs, arrived at the Pole (90° 0′ S). They arrived 33–34 days before Scott’s group. Amundsen named their South Pole camp Polheim, "Home on the Pole." Amundsen renamed the Antarctic Plateau as King Haakon VII’s Plateau. They left a small tent and letter stating their accomplishment, in case they did not return safely to Framheim.

North Pole Achievement 

In 1925, accompanied by Lincoln Ellsworth, pilot Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, and three other team members, Amundsen took two Dornier Do J flying boats, the N-24 and N-25, to 87° 44′ north. It was the northernmost latitude reached by plane up to that time. The aircraft landed a few miles apart without radio contact, yet the crews managed to reunite. Amundsen and his crew worked for over three weeks to clean up an airstrip to take off from ice. They shovelled 600 tons of ice while consuming only one pound (400 g) of daily food rations. In the end, six crew members were packed into the N-25. In a remarkable feat, Riiser-Larsen took off, and they barely became airborne over the cracking ice. They returned triumphant when everyone thought they had been lost forever.

Made a device pointing to the TRUE NORTH; developed process of recovering tin from scrap!!!

Elmer Ambrose Sperry, Sr. (October 12, 1860 – June 16, 1930) was an American inventor and entrepreneur, most famous as co-inventor, with Herman Anschütz-Kaempfe of the gyrocompass. His compasses and stabilizers were adopted by the United States Navy and used in both world wars. He also worked closely with Japanese companies and the Japanese government and was honored after his death with a biography in his honor.

Sperry was born at Cincinnatus, New York on October 12, 1860 to Stephen Decatur Sperry and Mary Burst. He was a descendant of Richard Sperry. His mother died the next day, from complications from his birth. He spent three years at the state normal school in Cortland, New York, then a year at Cornell University in 1878 and 1879, where he became interested indynamos. He moved to Chicago, Illinois, early in 1880 and soon after founded the Sperry Electric Company.

In 1900 Sperry established an electrochemical laboratory at Washington, D.C., where he and his associate, Clifton P. Townshend, developed a process for making pure caustic soda and discovered a process for recovering tin from scrap metal. Sperry experimented with diesel engines and gyroscopic compasses and gyroscopic stabilizers for ships and aircraft.

In 1910 he founded the Sperry Gyroscope Company in Brooklyn, New York; his first compass was tested that same year in USS Delaware (BB-28). In 1914 he won a prize from the Aero Club of France for his airplane stabilizer. He also was awarded a Franklin Institute Medal in the same year. In 1918 he produced a high-intensity arc lamp which was used as a searchlight by both the Army and Navy after setting up eight companies and taking out over 400 patents.

In 1925, his son, Lawrence Burst Sperry (1892-1925), died in the North Sea in the crash of an airplane of his own design. In January 1929 he sold his Sperry Gyroscope Company to North American Aviation. The following year his wife died on March 31, in Havana, Cuba. He died at St. John's Hospital in Brooklyn, New York on June 16, 1930 from complications following the removal of gallstones six weeks earlier. He was 69 years old.

A gyrocompass is a type of non-magnetic compass which is based on a fast-spinning disc and rotation of the Earth (or another planetary body if used elsewhere in the universe) to automatically find geographical direction. Although one important component of a gyrocompass is a gyroscope, these are not the same devices; a gyrocompass is built to use the effect of gyroscopic precession, which is a distinctive aspect of the general gyroscopic effect.

Gyrocompasses are widely used fornavigation on ships, because they have two significant advantages over magnetic compasses:

• they find true north as determined by Earth's rotation, which is different from, and navigationally more useful than, magnetic north, and
• they are unaffected by ferromagnetic materials, such as ship's steel hull, which change the magnetic field

FATHER OF COMPUTERS WHO RECEIVED DEGREE WITHOUT EXAMINATION !!!

Charles Babbage, (26 December 1791 – 18 October 1871) was an English polymath. He was a mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, who is best, remembered now for originating the concept of a programmable computer. He is considered as the father of Engineer and is credited with the invention of first mechanical computer. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,he was born at 44 Crosby Row, Walworth road, London, England. Babbage was one of four children of Benjamin Babbage and Betsy Plumleigh Teape.

Babbage arrived at Trinity college in Cambridge, in October 1810, however, he was disappointed by the standard mathematical instruction available at the university of Cambridge. As a student, Babbage was also a member of other societies such as The Ghost Club, concerned with investigating supernatural phenomena, and the Extractors Club, dedicated to liberating its members from the madhouse, should any be committed to one. He was a top mathematician in Cambridge, however didn’t completed his graduation in Honors as was awarded his degree without giving the Examination.

 Astronomical Society in 1820. Its initial aims were to reduce astronomical calculations to a more standard form, and to circulate data. These directions were closely connected with Babbage's ideas on computation, and in 1824 he won its Gold medal, cited "for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables". The Analytical Society had initially been no more than an undergraduate provocation. During this period it had some more substantial achievements. In 1816 Babbage, Herschel and Peacock published a translation from French of the lectures of Sylvestre Lacroix, which was then the state-of-the-art calculus textbook. Reference to Lagrange in calculus terms marks out the application of what are now called formal power series. British mathematicians had used them from about 1730 to 1760.

As re-introduced, they were not simply applied as notations in differential calculus. They opened up the fields of Functional Equations (including the differential equations fundamental to the difference engine) and operator (D-module) methods for differential Equations (division of labour). As Babbage himself noted, it had already appeared in the work of Melchiorre Gioia in 1815.  The term was introduced in 1974 by Harry Braverman. Related formulations are the "principle of multiples" of Philip Sargant Florence, and the "balance of processes". 

species , rather than continually interfering with ad hoc miracles each time a new species was required. In Vestiges the parallel with Babbage's computing machines is made explicit, as allowing plausibility to the theory that transmutation of species could be pre-programmed.

A project announced by Babbage was to tabulate all physical constants (referred to as "constants of nature", a phrase in itself a neologism), and then to compile an encyclopedic work of numerical information. He was a pioneer in the field of "absolute measurement”.

 Babbage's machines were among the first mechanical computers. That they were not actually completed was largely because of funding problems and personality issues. Babbage directed the building of some steam-powered machines that achieved some modest success, suggesting that calculations could be mechanized. For more than ten years he received government funding for his project, which amounted to £17,000, but eventually the Treasury lost confidence in him.

There is a green plaque commemorating the 40 years Babbage spent at 1 Dorset St, London.

A GENIUS, A POLYMATH ....'A BEAUTIFUL MIND' INDEED......so worthy a film was made after him!!!

John Forbes Nash, Jr. (born June 13, 1928) is an American mathematician whose works in game theory, differential geometry, and partial differential equations have provided insight into the factors that govern chance and events inside complex systems in daily life. His theories are used in market economics, computing, evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, accounting, politics and military theory. Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician atPrinceton University during the latter part of his life, he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten andJohn Harsanyi.

Nash is the subject of the 2001 Hollywood movie A Beautiful Mind. The film, loosely based on the biography of the same name, focuses on Nash's mathematical genius and also his schizophrenia.

He was  born in Bluefield, West Virginia. His parents and grandparents provided books and encyclopedias that he learned from. Nash's grandmother played piano at home, and Nash had positive memories of listening to her when he visited. Nash's parents pursued opportunities to supplement their son's education, and arranged for him to take advanced mathematics courses at a local community college during his final year of high school. Nash attended Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) with a full scholarship, the George Westinghouse Scholarship, and initially majored in Chemical Engineering. He switched to Chemistry, and eventually to Mathematics.

Nash's advisor and former Carnegie Tech professor R. J. Duffin wrote a letter of recommendation consisting of a single sentence: "This man is a genius." Nash was accepted by Harvard University, but the chairman of the mathematics department of Princeton, Solomon Lefschetz, offered him the John S. Kennedy fellowship, which was enough to convince Nash that Harvard valued him less. Nash also considered Princeton more favorably because of its geographic location much closer to his family in Bluefield. He went to Princeton where he worked on his equilibrium theory.

In 1951, Nash went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a C. L. E. Moore Instructor in the mathematics faculty. There, he met Alicia Lopez-Harrison de Lardé (born January 1, 1933), a naturalized U.S. citizen from El Salvador. De Lardé graduated from M.I.T., having majored in physics. They married in February 1957 at a Catholic ceremony, although Nash was an atheist. Nash experienced the first symptoms of mental illness in early 1959, when his wife was pregnant with their child. 

He resigned his position as member of the M.I.T. mathematics faculty in the spring of 1959. Nash's wife admitted Nash to the McLean Hospital for schizophrenia in 1959; their son, John Charles Martin Nash, was born soon afterward, but remained nameless for a year because his mother felt that her husband should have a say in the name. Nash and de Lardé divorced in 1963, though after his final hospital discharge in 1970, Nash lived in de Lardé's house. They remarried in 2001.

Nash began to show signs of extreme paranoia and his wife later described his behavior as erratic, as he began speaking of characters like Charles Herman and William Parcher who were putting him in danger. Nash seemed to believe that all men who wore red ties were part of a communist conspiracy against him. Nash mailed letters to embassies in Washington, D.C., declaring that they were establishing a government.

He was admitted to the McLean Hospital, April–May 1959, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The clinical picture is dominated by relatively stable, often paranoid, fixed beliefs that are either false, over-imaginative or unrealistic, usually accompanied by experiences of seemingly real perception of something not actually present — particularly auditory and perceptional disturbances, a lack of motivation for life, and mild clinical depression.

He has described a process of change "from scientific rationality of thinking into the delusional thinking characteristic of persons who are psychiatrically diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' or 'paranoid schizophrenic'"including seeing himself as a messenger or having a special function in some way, and with supporters and opponents and hidden schemers, and a feeling of being persecuted, and looking for signs representing divine revelation. 

Nash has suggested his delusional thinking was related to his unhappiness and his striving to feel important and be recognized, and to his characteristic way of thinking such that "I wouldn't have had good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally." He has said, "If I felt completely pressureless I don't think I would have gone in this pattern".

He does not see a categorical distinction between terms such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Nash reports that he did not hear voices until around 1964, later engaging in a process of rejecting them. He reports that he was always taken to hospitals against his will, and only temporarily renounced his "dream-like delusional hypotheses" after being in a hospital long enough to decide to superficially conform – to behave normally or to experience "enforced rationality". 

Only gradually on his own did he "intellectually reject" some of the "delusionally influenced" and "politically oriented" thinking as a waste of effort. However, by 1995, although he was "thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists," he says he also felt more limited.

Stop Child Labour....World Day against Child Labour!!!

The World Day Against Child Labour is an International Labour Organization (ILO) sanctioned holiday first launched in 2002 aiming to raise awareness and activism to prevent child labour. The World Day Against Child Labour, which is held every year on June 12, is intended to foster the worldwide movement against child labour in any of its forms. It was spurred by ratifications of ILO Convention No. 138 on the minimum age for employment and ILO Convention No. 182 on the worst forms of child labour. 

The International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations body which regulates the world of work, launched the World Day Against Child Labour in 2002 in order to bring attention and join efforts to fight against child labour. This day brings together governments, local authorities, civil society and international, workers and employers organizations to point out the child labour problem and define the guidelines to help child labourers.

According to ILO's data, hundreds of millions of girls and boys throughout the world are involved in work that deprives them from receiving adequate education, health, leisure and basic freedoms, violating this way their rights. Of these children, more than half are exposed to the worst forms of child labour. These worst forms of child labour include work in hazardous environments, slavery, or other forms of forced labour, illicit activities such as drug trafficking and prostitution, as well as involvement in armed conflict.

The World Day Against Child Labour provides an opportunity to gain further support of individual governments and local authorities, as well as that of the ILO social partners, civil society and others, in the campaign to tackle child labour.

World Day 2014 calls for:

• Action to introduce, improve and extend social protection, in line with the ILO Recommendation No. 202 on social protection floors.
• National social security systems that are sensitive to children’s needs and help fighting child labour.
• Social protection that reaches out to especially vulnerable groups of children.

Link:http://www.un.org/en/events/childlabourday

And C became C++!!!

Bjarne Stroustrup (Born 30 December 1950) is a Danish computer scientist, most notable for the creation and development of the widely used C++ programming language. He is currently Professor and holder of the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science at Texas A&M University.

According to Stroustrup,"the name signifies the evolutionary nature of the changes from C". During C++'s development period, the language had been referred to as "new C", then "C with Classes". The final name is credited to Rick Mascitti (mid-1983) and was first used in December 1983. When Mascitti was questioned informally in 1992 about the naming, he indicated that it was given in a tongue-in-cheek spirit. It stems from C's "++" operator (which increments the value of a variable) and a common naming convention of using "+" to indicate an enhanced computer program. A joke goes that the name itself has a bug: due to the use of post-increment, which increments the value of the variable but evaluates to the unincremented value, C++ is no better than C, and the pre-increment ++C form should have been used instead.  

 In 1985, the first edition of The C++ Programming Language was released, providing an important reference to the language, as there was not yet an official standard.The first commercial implementation of C++ was released in October of the same year. Release 2.0 of C++ came in 1989 and the updated second edition of The C++ Programming Language was released in 1991. New features included multiple inheritance, abstract classes, static member functions, const member functions, and protected members. In 1990, The Annotated C++ Reference Manual was published. This work became the basis for the future standard.

 Philosophy

Throughout C++'s life, its development and evolution has been informally governed by a set of rules that its evolution should follow:

• It must be driven by actual problems and its features should be useful immediately in real world programmes.
• Every feature should be implementable (with a reasonably obvious way to do so).
• Programmers should be free to pick their own programming style, and that style should be fully supported by C++.
• Allowing a useful feature is more important than preventing every possible misuse of C++.
• It should provide facilities for organising programmes into well defined separate parts, and provide facilities for combining separately developed parts.
• No implicit violations of the type system (but allow explicit violations that have been explicitly asked for by the programmer).
• Make user created types have equal support and performance to built in types.
• Any features that you do not use you do not pay for (e.g. in performance).
• There should be no language beneath C++ (except assembly language).
• C++ should work alongside other pre-existing programming languages, rather than being part of its own separate and incompatible programming environment.
• If what the programmer wants to do is unknown, allow the programmer to specify(provide manual control).

Stroustrup began developing C++ in 1978 (then called "C with Classes"), and, in his own words, "invented C++, wrote its early definitions, and produced its first implementation... chose and formulated the design criteria for C++, designed all its major facilities, and was responsible for the processing of extension proposals in the C++ standards committee." Stroustrup also wrote what many consider to be the standard textbook for the language, The C++ Programming Language.

Stroustrup was the head of AT&T Lab's Large-scale Programming Research department, from its creation until late 2002. Stroustrup was elected member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2004. He is a Fellow of the ACM (1994) and an IEEE Fellow.

Stroustrup has a master's degree in mathematics and computer science (1975) from Aarhus University, Denmark, and a Ph.D. in computer science (1979) from the University of Cambridge, England, where he was a student at Churchill College. His thesis advisor in Cambridge was David Wheeler.

Schooled unconventionally by his father, got a unit named after him!!!

André-Marie Ampère (20 January 1775 – 10 June 1836) was a French physicist and mathematician who is generally regarded as one of the main founders of the science of classical electromagnetism, which he referred to as "electrodynamics". The SI unit of measurement of electric current, the ampere, is named after him.

He was born Jean-Jacques Ampère, a prosperous businessman, and Jeanne Antoinette Desutières-Sarcey Ampère during the height of the French Enlightenment. He spent his childhood and adolescence at the family property at Poleymieux-au-Mont-d'Or near Lyon. Jean-Jacques Ampère, a successful merchant, was an admirer of the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose theories of education (as outlined in his treatise Émile) were the basis of Ampère’s education. Rousseau believed that young boys should avoid formal schooling and pursue instead an “education direct from nature.”

Ampère’s father actualized this ideal by allowing his son to educate himself within the walls of his well-stocked library. French Enlightenment masterpieces such as Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon’s Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière (begun in 1749) andDenis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert’s Encyclopédie (volumes added between 1751 and 1772) thus became Ampère’s schoolmasters. The young Ampère, however, soon resumed his Latin lessons, which enabled him to master the works of Leonhard Euler and Daniel Bernoulli.

In addition, Ampère used his access to the latest mathematical books to begin teaching himself advanced mathematics at age 12. In later life Ampère claimed that he knew as much about mathematics and science when he was eighteen as ever he knew; but, as a polymath, his reading embraced history, travels, poetry, philosophy, and the natural sciences.

In 1796 Ampère met Julie Carron, and in 1799 they were married. André-Marie Ampère took his first regular job in 1799 as a mathematics teacher, which gave him the financial security to marry Carron and father his first child, Jean-Jacques (named after his father), the next year. (Jean-Jacques Ampère eventually achieved his own fame as a scholar of languages).

 In 1802 Ampère was appointed a professor of physics and chemistry at the École Centrale in Bourg-en-Bresse, leaving his ailing wife and infant son in Lyon. He used his time in Bourg to research mathematics, producing Considérations sur la théorie mathématique de jeu (1802; “Considerations on the Mathematical Theory of Games”), a treatise on mathematical probability that he sent to the Paris Academy of Sciences in 1803.

Despite his lack of formal qualifications, Ampère was appointed a professor of mathematics at the school in 1809. As well as holding positions at this school until 1828, in 1819 and 1820 Ampère offered courses in philosophy and astronomy, respectively, at the University of Paris, and in 1824 he was elected to the prestigious chair in experimental physics at the Collège de France.

In September 1820, Ampère’s friend and eventual eulogist François Arago showed the members of the French Academy of Sciences the surprising discovery of Danish physicistHans Christian Ørsted that a magnetic needle is deflected by an adjacent electric current. Ampère began developing a mathematical and physical theory to understand the relationship between electricity and magnetism.

Furthering Ørsted’s experimental work, Ampère showed that two parallel wires carrying electric currents attract or repel each other, depending on whether the currents flow in the same or opposite directions, respectively - this laid the foundation of electrodynamics. He also applied mathematics in generalizing physical laws from these experimental results. The most important of these was the principle that came to be called Ampère’s law, which states that the mutual action of two lengths of current-carrying wire is proportional to their lengths and to the intensities of their currents.

Ampère also provided a physical understanding of the electromagnetic relationship, theorizing the existence of an “electrodynamic molecule” (the forerunner of the idea of theelectron) that served as the component element of both electricity and magnetism. Using this physical explanation of electromagnetic motion, Ampère developed a physical account of electromagnetic phenomena that was both empirically demonstrable and mathematically predictive.

In 1827 Ampère published his magnum opus, Mémoire sur la théorie mathématique des phénomènes électrodynamiques uniquement déduite de l’experience (Memoir on the Mathematical Theory of Electrodynamic Phenomena, Uniquely Deduced from Experience), the work that coined the name of his new science, electrodynamics, and became known ever after as its founding treatise.

In recognition of his contribution to the creation of modern electrical science, an international convention signed in 1881 established the ampere as a standard unit of electrical measurement, along with thecoulomb, volt, ohm, and watt, which are named, respectively, after Ampère’s contemporaries Charles-Augustin de Coulomb of France, Alessandro Volta of Italy, Georg Ohm ofGermany, and James Watt of Scotland. His name is one of the 72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

Its time to celebrate ocean,"Happy World Ocean Day"!!!

World Oceans Day has been celebrated every 8 June since its original proposal in 1992 by Canada at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was officially recognized by the United Nations in 2008. Since then it has been coordinated internationally by The Ocean Project and the World Ocean Network with greater success and global participation each year.

World Oceans Day is an annual observation to honour the world's oceans, celebrate the products the ocean provides such as seafood as well as marine life itself for aquariums, pets, and also a time to appreciate its own intrinsic value. The ocean also provides sea-lanes for international trade. Global pollution and over-consumption of fish have resulted in drastically dwindling population of the majority of species.

The Ocean Project, working in partnership with the World Ocean Network, has been promoting WOD since 2003 with its network of over 1,600 ocean conservation organizations and others throughout the world. Events performed for WOD and awareness includes beach cleanups, educational programs, art contests, film festivals, and sustainable seafood events.

The 2013/2014 two-year theme is “Together we have the power to protect the ocean!”

Sheer GENIUS in Military, Management and Rule; started rebel as a teenager, became CHATRAPATI !!!

Shivaji Bhosale  was an Indian warrior king. An aristocrat of the Bhosle Maratha clan, Shivaji, in 1674, carved out an enclave from the declining Adilshahi sultanate of Bijapur that formed the genesis of an independent Maratha kingdom with Raigad as its capital. Shivaji established a competent and progressive civil rule with the help of a disciplined military and well-structured administrative organisations. He innovated military tactics, pioneering the guerilla warfare methods (Shiva sutra or ganimi kava), which leveraged strategic factors like geography, speed, and surprise and focused pinpoint attacks to defeat his larger and more powerful enemies. 

From a small contingent of 2,000 soldiers inherited from his father, Shivaji created a force of 100,000 soldiers; he built and restored strategically located forts both inland and coastal to safeguard his territory. He revived ancient Hindu political traditions and court conventions, and promoted the usage of Marathi and Sanskrit, rather than Persian, in court and administration.

Shivaji's legacy was to vary by observer and time, but began to take on increased importance with the emergence of the Indian independence movement, as many elevated him as a proto-nationalist and hero of the Hindus. Particularly in Maharashtra, debates over his history and role have engendered great passion and sometimes even violence as disparate groups have sought to characterise him and his legacy.

Shivaji was born in the hill-fort of Shivneri, near the city of Junnar in Pune district around the year 1630. The Government of Maharashtra accepts 19 February 1630 as his birthdate; other suggested dates include 6 April 1627 or other dates near this day. His mother named him Shivaji in honour of the goddess Shivai, to whom she had prayed for a healthy child. Shivaji's father Shahaji Bhosale was Maratha general who served the Deccan Sultanates.His mother was Jijabai, the daughter of Lakhujirao Jadhav of Sindkhed. At the time of Shivaji's birth, the power in Deccan was shared by three Islamic sultanates: Bijapur, Ahmednagar, and Golconda.

Shivaji was extremely devoted to his mother Jijabai, who was deeply religious. Throughout his life he was deeply interested in religious teachings, and regularly sought the company of Hindu and Sufi saints. Shahaji entrusted the two to his friend Dadoji Kondadev Kulkarni, who provided them a mansion to live in, profitably administered the Pune jagir, and mentored the young Shivaji. The boy was a keen outdoorsman, but had little formal education. Shivaji drew his earliest trusted comrades and a large number of his soldiers from the Maval region, including Yesaji Kank, Suryaji Kakade, Baji Pasalkar, Baji Prabhu Deshpande and Tanaji Malusare. 

In the company of his Maval comrades, Shivaji wandered over the hills and forests of the Sahyadrirange, hardening himself and acquiring first-hand knowledge of the land, which was to later prove applicable to his military endeavours. At the age of 12, Shivaji was taken to Bangalore where he, his elder brother Sambhaji and his stepbrother Ekoji I were further formally trained. He married Saibai, a member of the prominent Nimbalkar family in 1640.Around 1645-6, the teenage Shivaji first expressed his concept for Hindavi swarajya, in a letter to Dadaji Naras Prabhu.

In 1645, the 16 year old Shivaji bribed or persuaded the Bijapuri commander of the Torna Fort, Inayat Khan, to hand over the possession of the fort to him. Firangoji Narsala, who held the Chakan fort professed his loyalty to Shivaji and the fort of Kondana was acquired by bribing the Adilshahi governor. On 25 July 1648, Shahaji was imprisoned by Baji Ghorpade under the orders of the current Adilshah, Mohammed Adil Shah, in a bid to contain Shivaji. Shahaji was conditionally released in 1649 after Shivaji and Sambhaji surrendered the forts of Kondhana, Bangalore and Kandarpi; during this period Shivaji maintained a low profile. Following his father's death, Shivaji resumed raiding, seizing the kingdom of Javali from a neighbouring Maratha chieftain in 1656.

Shivaji was an able administrator who established a government that included modern concepts such as cabinet (Ashtapradhan mandal composed of eight ministers), foreign affairs (Dabir) and internal intelligence. Shivaji was a devout Hindu, but respected all religions within the region. Shivaji had great respect for other contemporary saints, especially Samarth Ramdas, to whom he gave the fort of Parali, later renamed as 'Sajjangad'. 

Among the various poems written on Shivaji, Ramdas'Shivastuti ("Praise of King Shivaji") is the most famous. Shivaji allowed his subjects freedom of religion and opposed forced conversion. Shivaji also promulgated other enlightened values, andcondemned slavery. He applied a humane and liberal policy to the women of his state. Kafi Khan, the Mughal historian and Francois Bernier, a French traveller, spoke highly of his religious policy.

Though many of Shivaji's enemy states were Muslim, he treated Muslims under his rule with tolerance for their religion. Shivaji had several noteworthy Muslim soldiers, especially in his Navy. Ibrahim Khan and Daulat Khan (both were African descendants) were prominent in the navy; and Siddi Ibrahim was chief of artillery. Muslim soldiers were known for their superior skills in naval and artillery combat skills.

The French traveller Francois Bernier wrote in his Travels in Mughal India:

"I forgot to mention that during pillage of Sourate, Seva-ji, the Holy Seva-ji! Respected the habitation of the reverend father Ambrose, the Capuchin missionary. 'The Frankish Padres are good men', he said 'and shall not be attacked.' He spared also the house of a deceased Delale or Gentile broker, of the Dutch, because assured that he had been very charitable while alive."

He built a powerful navy. Maynak Bhandari was one of the first chiefs of the Maratha Navy under Shivaji, and helped in both building the Maratha Navy and safeguarding the coastline of the emerging Maratha Empire. He built new forts like Sindhudurg and strengthened old ones like Vijaydurg on the west coast. The Maratha navy held its own against the British, Portuguese and Dutch. He was one of the pioneers of commando actions, then known as ganimi kava (enemy trickery). Shivaji was responsible for many significant changes in military organisation:

• A standing army belonging to the state, called paga.
• All war horses belonged to the state; responsibility for their upkeep rested on the Sovereign.
• Creation of part-time soldiers from peasants who worked for eight months in their fields and supported four months in war for which they were paid.
• Highly mobile and light infantry and cavalry excelling in commando tactics.
• The introduction of a centralized intelligence department; Bahirjee Naik was the foremost spy who provided Shivaji with enemy information in all of Shivaji's campaigns.
• Introduction of field craft, such as guerrilla warfare, commando actions, and swift flanking attacks. Field-Marshal Montgomery, in his "History of Warfare", while generally dismissive of the quality of generalship in the military history of the Indian subcontinent, makes an exception for Shivaji and Baji Rao I. Summarizing Shivaji's mastery of guerilla tactics, Montgomery describes him as a military genius.
• Innovation of weapons and firepower, innovative use of traditional weapons like thetiger claw (vaghnakh) and vita.
• Militarisation of large swathes of society, across all classes, with the entire peasant population of settlements and villages near forts actively involved in their defence.

Shivaji captured strategically important forts at Murambdev (Rajgad), Torana, Kondana (Sinhagad) and Purandar and laid the foundation of swaraj or self-rule. Toward the end of his career, he had a control of 360 forts to secure his growing kingdom. Shivaji himself constructed about 15–20 totally new forts (including key sea forts like Sindhudurg), but he also rebuilt or repaired many strategically placed forts to create a chain of 300 or more, stretched over a thousand kilometres across the rugged crest of the Western Ghats. 

Each were placed under three officers of equal status lest a single traitor be bribed or tempted to deliver it to the enemy. The officers (sabnis, havaldar, sarnobat) acted jointly and provided mutual checks and balance.

Happy World environment day...Lets also learn something about it

World Environment Day ('WED') is celebrated every year on June 5 to raise global awareness to take positive environmental action to protect nature and the planet Earth. It is run by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1972 on the day that United Nations Conference on the Human Environment began. The first World Environment Day was celebrated in 1973. Since then it is hosted every year by a different city with a different theme. World Environment Day falls in spring in the Northern Hemisphere and fall (rainy season) in the Southern Hemisphere, and midsummer in the Tropical regions.

Barbados, a Caribbean island at the cutting edge of the fight against climate change, will host this year's World Environment Day (WED) global celebrations on 5 June 2014, according to a joint announcement made today by the government of Barbados and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The theme for this year's celebrations is "Small Island Developing States and Climate Change". Barbados, a 430-square kilometer nation with a population of 270,000, is considered to be highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change - from agricultural impacts to the destruction of its coastal ecosystems.

"Earth Anthem" by poet-diplomat Abhay K was launched in June 2013 on the occasion of the World Environment Day by Kapil Sibal and Shashi Tharoor, Union Ministers of India at a function organized by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations in New Delhi. It is in eight languages including all official languages of the United Nations viz. Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish. The other two languages are Hindi and Nepali.

Media and celebrities have encouraged World Environment Day Celebrations by endorsing and taking part in it. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) goodwill ambassadors including supermodel Gisele Bündchen are sending an SOS to the world to take action for World Environment Day 2014 by joining one of their teams to combat climate change. Their call to action, Message in the Bottle, asks individuals around the world to join one of the celebrities’ teams and make a difference by pledging to take action in support of World Environment Day, which culminates globally on 5 June 2014.

Community Radio Stations (CRS) in all over Nepal Republic launches the Campaign. All the National Tv & Radio Breakings are replaced by Environment Slogans and Informations. Nepal Government launches various programs in collabration with UNESCO. It also sends the Gurkha Army out of barracks on the road to clean the environment and for afforestation programmes where all the media personalles also gathers giving the live coverage.

Zee News launched 'My Earth, My Duty’ campaign. This campaign has entered the Limca Book of Records for a novel effort: for planting more than 73 lakh (7,300,000) trees in one single day across 34 cities and 2.5 lakh (250,000) villages on 25 August 2010. NDTV launched "Greenathon" Campaign. This campaign was launched in the year 2008 and served as India’s first ever-nationwide campaign to save the environment.

In Nepal Republic all the Students from Grade 1 to A level are compulsory to attend the afforestation programmes on their respective locality with the supervision of SOS Villages and Nepal Government. Many Arts and drawing competitions are held on environmental day and Nepal Government declares the Scholorship for 15 Students from every cities who have major contribution for the environment mainly selected from Madhesi, an backward Community in Nepal.

In 2012, Project Earth, an Online Eco Platform teamed up with Rio+20 and Launched ' World Environment Day Global School Contest 2012 ' to promote awareness among today's youth. Every country had a winner. Project GreenOman,The winner from Oman, was an Eco organization founded by Hridith Sudev and is a full fledged kid's Eco Organization now.

Link: http://www.unep.org/wed