Motto for Today: ‘No use cursing your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.’

This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make a History!

On this day, May.11…….

868 – The first known dated printed book was the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture. It was made as a 16-ft scroll with six sheets of text printed from wood blocks and one sheet with a woodcut showing the Buddha with disciples and a pair of cats. The scroll was one of about 1,130 bundles of manuscripts found a thousand years later, walled up in one of the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas in Turkestan. It is now one of the great treasures in the British Library. (Pic credit-Smithsonian magazine)

1811 – The original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng, were born of Chinese parents in Siam (Thailand). Upon immigrating in to the U.S., they adopted Bunker as their surname. They were joined at the waist and only after their death was it found that this could have been easily separated. The twins became United States citizens. On 13 Apr 1843, they married two sisters with whom they raised 10 children.

1857 – Indian war of independence. Indian revolutionaries seize Delhi from the British.

1928 – America’s first regularly scheduled TV broadcasts began.

1947 – The B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announced the development of a tubeless tyre.

1949 – The first Polaroid camera was sold for $89.95 in New York City.

1995 – In central Kashmir, militants burnt the Charar-e-Sherif shrine (the tomb of Sufi saint Sheikh Noorudin Noorani) built in 1460 by Zain-ul- Abidin.

1997 – Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

1998 – Three momentous events took place on the day that did the nation proud. Firstly, three underground nuclear tests at Pokhran Range in Rajasthan, which included a hydrogen bomb, were tested (National Technology Day); secondly, the successful test firing of the ‘Trishul Missile’ and thirdly, the maiden Certification test flight of ‘Hansa-3’, the first-all Composite indigenous two-seater aircraft.

1999 – Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case: The Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence on four of the 26 accused, life imprisonment to three and acquitted the remaining 19 people.

2015 – Two art works set world records at a Christie’s auction in New York, with Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Women of Algiers Ver

sion O’ selling for $160 million and Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture ‘Pointing Man’ selling for $141.3 million.

Born….

1950 – Sadashiv Amrapurkar, film actor and singer. (Credit- IMDb)

1970 – Pooja Bedi, presenter (pic credit- IMDb)

RIP….

2009 – Admiral Sardarilal Mathradas Nanda, former Indian Navy Chief. (photo Credit-Sumant, Wikipedia)

You may have known….

276 tons of earth need to be mined to produce a single one-carat diamond.

 

 

{Compiled by Lt. Gen. (R) Raj Kadyan}