Today’s Motto: ‘Invariably, when questions are complicated, the answers are simple’

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

On this day,  May  09…….

1753 – Maharaja Surajmal attacks Delhi. He was a king of Bharatpur and some parts of today’s Haryana. (pic credit-iasgyan.in).

1825 – The first gas lighting of a theatre in New York city.

1865 – A U.S. patent was issued to Richard Jordan Gatling for the Gatling gun, invented in 1861. It was the first to successfully combine reliability, high firing rate, and ease of loading into a single device. The gun was hand-cranked to rotate a cylinder of ten barrels, each loaded from a gravity-feed magazine on top and fired on each revolution. (He was motivated to invent the weapon after he noticed the majority of dead returning from the American Civil War died of illness, rather than gunshots. He thought if a rapid-firing gun could enable one man to do what previously required many, then armies could be smaller, saving men from exposure to battle and disease).

1874 – The first horse-drawn bus makes its début in the city of Mumbai, travelling two routes.

1882 – A stethoscope of the now classic design, invented by William F. Ford was issued a U.S. patent.

1893 – The first motion picture exhibition was given by Thomas Alva Edison in New York to an audience of 400 people using Edison’s Kinetograph. An optical lantern projector showed moving images of a blacksmith and his two helpers passing a bottle and forging a piece of iron.

1899 – Lawn-mower patented. (It took ten more years and further innovations to create a machine that could be drawn by animals, and sixty years before a steam-powered lawn mower was built).

1926 – A rotor ship first replaced the sails.

1926 – The first flight over the North Pole was made by Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett (pic credit-pixels.com).

1936 – The Hindenburg Zeppelin arrived at Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA, from Germany marking the beginning of regular transatlantic passenger service. The flight, carrying 51 passengers and 56 crew, took 61-hr 38-min.

1949 – Britain’s first launderette opened in Queensway, London.

1962 – A laser beam was bounced off the moon from earth by MIT scientists. The area of the light beam on the surface was estimated at a diameter of 4 miles.

1995 – Militants set Charar township on fire in the vicinity of the Charar-e-Sherif shrine in Budgam district of Kashmir. More than 1,000 houses burnt (pic credit-Wikipedia).

2018 – India’s Supreme Court criticises the country’s archaeological conservation body for failing to protect the Taj Mahal from discoloration and green slime.

2019- Archaeologists hail Anglo-Saxon tomb found 2003 in Prittlewell, England, as Britain’s equivalent of Tutankhamun’s tomb as full report of its contents published.
2023 Former Pakistani PM Imran Khan dramatically arrested at the High Court in

Islamabad, prompting violent protests between his supporters and security forces.

Born….

1540 – Maharana Pratap, great revolutionary Rajput warrior of Mewad.

1866 – Gopal Krishan Gokhale. Political Guru of Mahatma Gandhi,  was one of the social and political leaders during the Indian Independence Movement. He also founded the Servants of India Society (pic credit-Pinterest).

1954 – Mallika Sarabhai, daughter of India’s famous space scientist Vikram Sarabhai, was a social activist, classical dancer, actor. Was given Padma Bhishan (pic credit-Wikipedia).

RIP….

1998 – Talat Mahmood, singer and film actor. (His lilting number जायें तो जायें कहाँ picturised on Dev Anand on a sea beach, in the black & white movie ‘Taxi Driver’ remains immortal). Also sang Ghalib’s ghazals and some bhajans. Was awarded Padma Bhushan in 1992 (audio clip credit-YouTube).

Titbits…. Mahatma Gandhi who had paid his only visit to Kashmir when he visited from 1 to 4 Aug 1947, admired the masses for maintaining exemplary Hindu-Muslim unity at a time when there were dark clouds of strife and observed that he saw “a ray of hope” in Kashmir despite communal frenzy elsewhere on the sub-continent (pic credit-TelegraphIndia.com).
Let us keep that hope alive!

You may have known….  1.  Marketing People and vendors  expected Fat Free Milk will become a hit with Indians as a “Healthy Alternative”.  But Indians trashed the Notion soon.

2. According to US National Human Genome Research Institute, identical twins are an example of cloning due to their identical DNA.

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