Motto for Today: ‘Together is always better.’
As each day is a new beginning in one's life, it brings new opportunities, opens new avenues, to perform and make a mark, to write a Page in History Books
This is Your Day-TODAY: Take a Determined Step Forward and Make History!
On this day, Dec.13………
1600 – East India Company chartered. (Originally chartered as the “Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies”, the company rose to account for half of the world’s trade, particularly in basic commodities including cotton, silk, indigo dye, salt, salt-petre, tea and opium. The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India).
1861 – 22,990 mm of rain falls in Cherrapunji Assam, a world record.
1938 – The “drunkometer,” the first breath test for car drivers, was officially introduced in Indianapolis. It was the first successful machine for testing human blood alcohol content by breath analysis.
1964 – Donald Campbell broke the world water speed record with an average speed of (441.71 km/h. Earlier the same year, in Jul 1964, he had broken the land speed record at 648.72 km/h. Together, they made him the only person to break both land and water speed records in the same year. (That land speed record only stood for three months before Art Arfon, on 27 Oct 1964, achieved a land average speed of 863.75 km/h in a jet car. Campbell continued attempting yet higher speeds, but died 4 Jan 1967 when his jet-powered boat crashed).
1984 – Rajiv Gandhi takes office as India’s 6th Prime Minister succeeds his mother, Indira Gandhi, who was assassinated by her bodyguards early in the morning.
1993 – The last research samples of the smallpox virus were scheduled to be destroyed. Smallpox was the world’s most dreaded plagues until 1977, when it was declared eradicated. However, some scientists who wanted to continue research on the virus stopped the destruction plan. The remaining frozen samples are in Moscow, Russia, and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, U.S.
1996 – Gold import policy liberalised in India.
2008 – One leap second is added to the end of the year.
2017- Movie star Rajinikanth announces he is entering politics
Born….
1943 – Ben Kingsley, English actor (Film Gandhi).
1956 – Prabhu Ganesan, film producer (Chennai).
1965 – Sivaramakrishnan Laxman, right-hand batsman and leg break bowler.
RIP….
1706 – Francois Martin, founder of Pondicherry.
You may have known….
Before colonial rule Africa comprised up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs.
{Complied by Lt. Gen. (R) Raj Kadyan}
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