Today’s Motto: ‘Facing death requires courage. But true courage is about facing life without flinching’

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

On this day, 07 Feb….
(Marked as Rose Day, initiating the start of Valentine’s Week in India. On Rose Day, people exchange roses as a symbol of love, friendship, and affection).

1856 – The British East India Company annexed the state of Awadh (Oudh), deposing Nawab Wajid Ali Shah. The Nawab was more keen on  finishing his Shatranj  ki Baazi, when the English army was capturing his capital Awadh (near Ayodhya (pic from Satyajit Ray’s  popular  film  Shatranj ke Khiladi  based on Munshi Premchand story) .

1896 – First British X-ray – was used  by a German  physician Dr.  Gilman Frost and brotherphysics professor Edwin Frost,  to discover the location of a bullet in a 12-yr-old boy’s wrist who shot himself the previous month (pic credit-rtcredits.com).  

1935 – Monopoly game was first marketed. It is primarily a game of barter, involving trading and bargaining.

1943 Shoe rationing begins in US. (To make up form serious war time shortage of footwear made of rubber or with rubber soles. was rationed or unavailable. The military had a high need for leather, not just for shoes and combat boots but for those popular leather flight jackets. As a result, civilians made do with less).

1960 – Old handwriting found in at Qumran, near the Dead Sea. The scrolls were in eleven caves in the immediate vicinity of the ancient settlement at Khirbet Qumran in the West Bank (Israel). The texts are of great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the third oldest known surviving manuscripts.

1981 – 61 die during a  Venus  Circus fire in Bangalore.

1983 – The Eastern News Agency was established in Kolkata.

1984 – The first untethered spacewalks were made by Challenger astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart (video  clip above courtsey-NASA).                                                                                                1984 – Bubble boy. 12-year-old boy publicly identified only as “David,” born without immunity to disease, touched his mother for the first time after he was removed from a  plastic “bubble”, where he had lived in a protective,  germ-free environment in a Houston hospital. (He died two weeks later (pic credit-spiegel.,com)

1992 – Shalki’, the first submarine designed in India, joined Indian Navy.

1999 – Indian leg-spinner Anil Kumble became the second only bowler in Test history after J.C. Laker (England) to take all ten wickets in an innings against Pakistan in the second Test in Delhi.

2000 – The first meeting of the joint anti-terrorism working group between India and the United States began in Washington.

2021 – Himalayan glacier crashes into the Dhauliganga river, destroying a dam and causing a huge flood in Uttarakhand province, India, killing 26, leaving 150 missing.

Born…. 1934 – Sujit Kumar, actor in Bhojpuri and Hindi films. Considered the first superstar of Bhojpuri films.He acted  in about 18  Bhojpuri and a total of more than 150  Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi  films like Aaraadhna, Charas, Jugnu,  Ittefaq,  Aan Milo  Sajna,  Haathi  Mere  Saathi, Kaam Chore, Hamrahi Amrit etc. (pic credit-india.com).

1993 – Kidambi Srikant, Indian  badminton hero.  One of the top Indian shuttlers,  former world No. 1 in 2018, the 2nd Indian after veteran Prakash Padukone. Kidambi won two Gold in 2016 South Asia Chamionship, a Silver in 2021 World Badminton Champ’ship and represented India  in 2016 Rio Olympics.

2018 – All citrus fruit can be traced to the southeast foothills of the Himalayas, according to DNA study published in “Nature” magazine.

2021 – Himalayan glacier crashes into the Dhauliganga river, destroying a dam and causing a huge flood in Uttarakhand province (India), killing 26, leaving 150 missing.

Born: …….  1906 – Puyi, the 11th and last emperor of Chinese Quing (Manchu) dynasty. He was ruled as  king from 1908-12, was also called a Puppet Emperor of the Japanese who controlled his  kingdom.  Quing dynasty ruled China from 1644 to 1912 AD (pic credit greek.love.com).

1908 – Manmathnath Gupt – Indian marxist  revolutionary,  popular historian who was jailed for 14 years in 1926 at the age of 18 only for his writings and  participating in Kakori Train Robbery during  Freedom Movement.

1962 – Eddie Izzard. British actor, stand-up comedian.  He acted in Ocean’s Thirteen,  Valkyrie, My Super Girlfriend, Dress to Kill, Unrepeatable, Circle etc. Won 2 Primetime Emmy awards and a Tony award.

RIP… 1942 – Sachindranath Sanyal, famous revolutionary who fought for India’s independence. He was organizer of the second freedom struggle efforts of the ‘Gadar Party’ and ‘Anushilan Sangathan’. He got the punishment of ‘Kala Pani’ twice in his life (pic credit-satyagrah.com).

You may have known…. The Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris) is the National Animal of India, symbolizing power, strength, and elegance. Adopted in April 1973, it replaced the lion to represent the country’s wildlife, with “Project Tiger” launched simultaneously to protect the species from extinction.

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