Today’s Motto: ‘If you know where you are going, people will always make way for you’

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

On this day 05 Jul….

1658 – Aurangzeb arrested his elder brother Murad Bakhsh. He was earlier  appointed the Subedar of  Multan and Balkh  by his father  Shah Jahan, later of Gujarat. But in the  fight for succession Murad  was imprisoned by Aurangzeb and  executed  in  the  Gwalior Fort  on  Dec. 14, 1661.

1687 – Isaac Newton’s great work PRINCIPIA published by Royal Society in England. Outlines his laws of motion and universal gravitation. A falling Apple fruit had  led to the discovery of Gravity by Newton.

1865 – A lower speed limit – of 2 mph in town and 4 mph in the country – was imposed in Britain under the Locomotives and Highways Act. The “Red Flag” Act also required three drivers for each vehicle – two on the vehicle and one to walk ahead carrying a red flag.

1905 – Lord Curzon joined the northern  part of Bengal to Assam and divided Bengal. Local leaders opposee the division of Bengal but were  trampled by  English  soldiers, Bengal had earlier suffered a  devastating  Plague  from  1896  to  1900.

1946 – Louis Reard’s two-piece swimsuit design debuts at Paris fashion show. (Louis Réard was a French automobile engineer and clothes designer. He is best known for launching a two-piece swimsuit in 1946, which he called – the Bikini).

1947 – Indian Act, 1947 was presented in British Parliament, which was then accepted by the Emperor of England  George VI, on 18th July.

1952 – Thousands of onlookers watched the run of London’s last tram. (A Royal Commission in 1931 recommended that trolleybuses replace trams. Conversion had began in 1931, and by 1940 more than half of London’s trams had been scrapped. The tram system had a brief respite during WW II when it was necessary to sustain the current system as production turned to wartime manufacturing).

1954 – The BBC broadcasts its first television news bulletin.

1962 – Algeria gains independence after 132 years of French rule. With less than Five crore population, it’s the largest country of Africa, having Mediterranian Sea in the North and Petroleum being its major source of revenue.

1968 – Naval Submarine wing in Indian Naval Force came into existence with the arrival of the first submarine from the Soviet Union.

1977 – Pakistan’s army, led by Gen Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, seizes power. He threw away Pakistan  PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto govt. and became a dictator (President and Chief of Army). He executed Bhutto in  1979 after a brief trial,  ruled Pakistan for 12 years. He was also  responsible for Indo-Pak War in Siachen Galcier where India  recaptured its peak position over majority of 2,600 sqkm area.

Top Indian leaders  PM Manmohan Singh, Prez. APJ Abdul Kalam and PM Modi (celebrated  Diwali Day in 2014), have visited the Siachin Glacier to  cheer up Indan defence petsonnel posted in sub-zero temperature territory.

1981 – Rajan Mahadevan recites 31,811 digits of π (Pi) from memory. He figured in Guinness Book of World Records in 1984, featured in Reader’s Digest and  Larry King Live.  He’s now a Distinguished Lecturer in Tennesse University, USA.

1996 – Dolly, a cloned sheep, was born at th e Roslin Institute, Edinburgh, Scotland. (Dolly was the first mammal to be cloned). Wilmut born in on July 07, 1944 was  awarded with OBE, Fellowship of Royal Society of Medical Sciences and FRS (pic credit-nyt.com).

2000 – The Prime Minister  Atal Behari Vajpayee  rules out restoring pre-1953 status to Jammu and Kashmir. It was demanded by Kashmiri politicians  Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and supported by state Congress leaders.

2000 – Rachita Mistry breaks P.T. Usha’s long-standing record in 100m (11.39s) clocking 11.26s in the National circuit meet in Bangalore (pic credit-alchetron.com).

Born…. 1882 – Hazrat Inayat Khan, classical singer and Muslim mystic. He was instrumental in bringing Sufism to the music.

1946 – Asghar Wajahat, a Hindi scholar, fiction writer, novelist, playwright, independent documentary filmmaker, television scriptwriter, and professor. He has composed many works in the field of drama, fiction, novel, travelogue, and translation. His  famous novels are  ‘Saat Aasmaan’ ‘Mahabali on Varanasi Ghats,  Ateet Ka Darwaza’ and his acclaimed play, ‘Jis Lahore Nai Dekhya, O Jamyai Nai’, based on the story of an old Punjabi Hindu woman who gets left behind in Lahore, after. Partition of 1947.  His play -story  was adapted as  Gandhi-Godse – Ek Yudh (by Rajkumar Santoshi) and Batwara 1947 (release in August 2026). He has won Vyas Samman in 2021.

1995 – P. V.  Sindhu, a famous badminton player from India. She is the first woman player from India to win a silver medal in  Rio Olympic Games. Sindhu has won 2  medals at consecutive Olympic Games (Bronze in 2020) , and at the World Championships. She is the first and only Indian to become the badminton world champion and only the second individual from India to win two consecutive medals at the Olympic Games. She rose to a career-high world ranking of No. 2 in April 2017.

You may have known…. Siliguri  – Jalpaiguri Railway Station  in West Bengal has all the     three Gauges. It’s surrounded by a 42 km  narrow  corridor  amongst  India-Bangladesh  and Bhutan.  

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