From kiwthir's desk

 This pastry gets its name from the French
word for “lightning”, although that has
absolutely no significance. Funnily enough,
most of us in India think of something
completely different when someone names
it. Identify.

 “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing
you’ll probably want to know is where I was
born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and
how my parents were occupied and all before
they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind
of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you
want to know the truth. In the first place, that
stuff bores me, and in the second place, my
parents would have about two hemorrhages
apiece if I told anything pretty personal about
them.” Which celebrated and controversial
novel starts thus?

 It was proposed by the Calabrian doctor
Aloysius Lilius and was named after a Pope
who decreed it by papal bull Inter gravissimas
on 24 February, 1582. What am I talking
about ?

 9.Anna Maria Grosholtz was born in Strasbourg,
France. At the age of 17, she became art tutor to
King Louis XVI’s sister at the Palace Of Versailles
and then, during the French Revolution, was
hastily forced to prove her allegiance to the
feudalistic nobles by making the death masks of
executed aristocrats. For this, she searched
through corpses to find the decapitated heads of
executed citizens.
 How do we better know her ?

He was a Suryavanshi king who wished to ascend to
heaven in his mortal body. When Vishwamithra
tried to send him to heaven as a mortal the Gods
were alarmed by this and under the leadership
of Indra decided to not let the king enter through
the gates of heaven in this mortal self. Indra using
his powers caused the king to fall back to earth.
Vishwamithra could not accept defeat and used his
powers to arrest the fall. Thus the king was
suspended mid-air in a state of unstable
equilibrium.
What is the name of the king ?

 Trishanku
 :- Commonly referred to through the phrase
"Trishanku's heaven"

A conical mountain which is
well-known for the Sri
Pada "sacred footprint", a
1.8 m rock formation near
the summit,
in Buddhist tradition held
to be the footprint of
the Buddha,
in Hindu tradition that
of Shiva and in Muslim
tradition that of X.
What is its name ?

Adam’s Peak
In
Sri Lanka

One Hindu legend says that once Lord Shiva
became so compassionate after seeing the
sufferings of mankind that He could not
help but shed a tear from his eye. This
single tear from Shiva’s eye grew into this
evergreen tree.

Which tree ?

 Sir Walter Raleigh described what was possibly a
tepuy (table top mountain), and he is sometimes
said to have discovered it, but these claims are
considered "far-fetched" . They were spotted in
1912 by the explorer Ernesto Sanchez La Cruz,
but he did not publicize his discovery. They were
not known to the outside world until American
aviator …….. …………flew over them on 16
November 1933 on a flight while he was
searching for a valuable ore bed.
 What did he discover ?

 Angel Falls,world’s highest waterfall,in
Venezuela,named after Jimmie Angel.

 9 .Auguste Antoine Piccard (28
January 1884 – 24 March 1962) was
a Swiss physicist, inventor and expl
orer. Born in Basel, Switzerland. He
became a professor
of physics in Brussels at the Free
University of Brussels in 1922. He
had interest in ballooning.
 Once X said about him:
 “Y is a reduced scale Piccard, as the
real chap was very tall. He had an
interminable neck that sprouted from
a collar that was much too large... I
made Y a mini-Piccard“.
 Solve for X and Y

 X- Herge
 Y- Prof.Calculus

 Auguste Piccard was the inspiration
for Professor Cuthbert Calculus

 She was born on 1st January 1914 in Moscow,
Russia. She was the great great great
granddaughter of Tipu Sultan and has written
a book – Twenty Jataka Tales. Later during
World War II she became a British Special
Agent and was assigned to spy in France.
Who ?

 The first citation of this phrase can be dated
back to Sir William Hope’s “The Compleat
Fencing-Master” in 1692, where he says “What
he doth, he doth by ___ __ ____”. Interesting
origins associate this phrase to wood workers
using ____ to measure lengths, while a more
interesting origin is linked to Sir Francis Buller,
who (in)famously stated “A man is permitted to
beat his wife if he used a stick not wider than a
___. “ The phrase has found its way to scientific
circles since then.
 Which phrase?

 . It is claimed to be the world’s oldest republic,
having been founded in 301 A.D. It was
technically at war with Switzerland for almost
350 years, from 1648 to 1996 when a peace
agreement was formally signed. An interesting
aspect of its economy is the sale of its postage
stamps to collectors, which forms a significant
part of its annual income. A famous annual
sporting event was named after this country,
though it was conducted elsewhere, the country
being too small to accommodate the event.
 WHICH COUNTRY /EVENT ?

 San Marino / San Marino Grand Prix

 The closest land is Fais Island (one of the
outer islands of Yap), 289 km (180 mi)
southwest, and Guam, 306 km (190 mi) to the
northeast. The point is named after the
British Royal Navy survey ship HMS ...............
of 1872–76. Only three descents have ever
been achieved; Trieste in 1960, Kaikō in 1995
and Nereus in 2009.
 What geographical feature ?

 The Victim:Samuel Edward Ratchett.
 The Suspects:Hector Willard MacQueen, Edward
Henry Masterman, Pierre Michel, Mary Hermione
Debenham, Colonel Arbuthnot, Princess Natalia
Dragomiroff, Hildegarde Schmidt, Count Rudolph
Andrenyi, Countess Elena Andrenyi, Greta Ohlsson,
Mrs. Caroline Martha Hubbard, Antonio Foscarelli,
Cyrus Bethman Hardman,
 The Investigators:
 The Detective -
 The Director - Monsieur Bouc
 The Doctor - Dr. Stavros Constantine.
 The case, please.

 This Indian practice is ancient, going back to
around 400 to 750 BC. The actual mention
appears in the Ayodhya Kanda, (the second
book of the Ramayana), in Sarga (section)
103. Bharata has gone to ask the exiled Rama
to come back and rule the kingdom. Bharata
tries many arguments, none of which work,
at which point he decides to do a -----.
 What practice ?

 When the Tsar gave X the lowest court title, the
poet became enraged: he felt this occurred not
only so that his wife, who had many admirers—
including the Tsar himself—could properly
attend court balls, but also to humiliate him. In
1837, falling into greater and greater debt
amidst rumors that his wife had started
conducting a scandalous affair, X challenged her
alleged lover, his brother in-law Georges
d'Anthès, to a duel which left both men injured,
X mortally. He died two days later. Name X ?

 Derived from the French word for “juniper”,
this global city is a worldwide centre for
diplomacy and the most important
international co-operation centre along with
New York . The city is referred to as the
world's most compact metropolis and the
"Peace Capital“ of the world.
 Which city?

In the early 1900’s, a ten year-old boy, Wilbur
Chapman, impressed by a traveling missionary’s
sermon about lepers, decided to raise money to
help a boy suffering from the disease. Raising a
pig named Pete, Wilbur sold the pig, donating
the $25.00 from the sale to the boy with leprosy.
His compassion caught the imagination of the
public and started a movement to help lepers .

What did this give rise to?

 The name of which Raga in Indian classical
music is derived by the combination of two
words , which means he who wears serpents
like garlands—the god Shiva. The raga is
believed to have been created by goddess
Parvati to calm Shiva, when the lord Shiva
was outraged and was not calming down
after Tandav in rage of Sati's sacrifice.

 Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, systemic
inflammatory disorder that may affect many
tissues and organs, but principally attacks
synovial joints. The process produces an
inflammatory response of the synovium
(synovitis) secondary to hyperplasia of synovial
cells, excess synovial fluid, and the development
of pannus in the synovium.
 Who is the most famous sufferer of this from the
world of sports ?

 When ten year old ---------- Tennyson, his cousin Gwen,
and their grandfather Max are on their summer camping
trip, ----------- finds an alien pod on the ground. When he
examines it, he finds a mysterious, watch-like device
called the Omnitrix. The device attaches itself
permanently to his wrist and gives him the ability to
transform into a variety of alien life-forms, each with its
own unique powers. Although ------------- soon realizes
that he has a responsibility to help others with these new
abilities at his disposal, he is not above a little super-
powered mischief every now and then. Along with Gwen
and Grandpa Max, ---------------- embarks on a summer-
long adventure to fight evil, both extraterrestrial and
earthly. Whose legend ?

 In one version of the Ramayana he asks
Manthara to convince Kaikeyi to ask Dasharatha
to exile Rama, because only when Rama is exiled
will he face Ravana and kill him. Although
Manthara agrees to do his bidding, she curses
him that, for the wrong he made to Rama, he
would never be prayed to by any Hindu family.
This is claimed to be the reason why he is never
worshipped in any temple or family.
 Who is he ?

 Louis Réard was an engineer, he was running his
mother's shoe shop Les Folies Bergères in Paris
by 1946.Reard and Jacques Heim, his rival
designer, were competing to produce the world's
smallest …………….. He ended up hiring
Micheline Bernardini, a dancer from the Casino
de Paris as his model . His business soared, and
in advertisements he kept the -----------
mystique alive by declaring that a -----------
wasn't a genuine ------------"unless it could be
pulled through a wedding ring.
 What did he invent ?

 X was born to Parsi parents in Zanzibar in 1946 and
got educated at St. Peter’s School, in Panchgani (near
Bombay), and St. Mary’s in Mazagon. His family left
for Britain in 1964 after the Zanzibar Revolution . After
graduating, X joined a series of bands, all of which
failed, before he formed one named Ibex, which had a
certain degree of stability.
 Identify X, who was blacklisted by the UN for
breaking the cultural boycott of South Africa during
the Apartheid, and was often criticised for keeping his
ethnicity a secret from the public for many years.

 He is credited with creating and building the world's first
liquid-fueled rocket,which he successfully launched on
March 16, 1926. He and his team launched 34 rockets. As
both theorist and engineer, Goddard's work anticipated
many of the developments that made spaceflight
possible.Two of his 214 patents — one for a multi-stage
rocket design , and another for a liquid-fuel rocket
design— are regarded as important milestones toward
spaceflight. His 1919 monograph, A Method of Reaching
Extreme Altitudes, is considered one of the classic texts of
20th century rocket science. He successfully applied three-
axis control, gyroscopes and steerable thrust to rockets,
all of which allow rockets to be controlled effectively in
flight.
 Who is this rocket man ?

 The stone tablet containing the ______ __
____________was discovered in 1901 by the Egyptologist
Gustav Jéquier, a member of the expedition headed by
Jacques de Morgan.
 The stele was discovered in what is now Khuzestan, Iran
where it had been taken as plunder by the Elamite king
Shutruk-Nahhunte in the 12th century BC.It is currently on
display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Analysis shows it
was created around 1760 BC At the top of the stele is a
bas-relief image of a Babylonian god while the bottom is
covered with text in Akkadian language . The text has
been broken down by translators into 282 laws governing
all aspects of life. Fill in the blanks

28.
The common Basilisk
is a lizard found in
Central &South
American rain forests.
It is also known as ____
____
lizard for the fact that
for its ability that it
can run on surface of
water. Fill in the blanks

 One theory is this word is derived from an
alcoholic drink used as a stimulant in
ceremonial dances in 18th century Southern
Africa. The 2nd theory is that it comes from
the Dutch word for plant Datura stramonium
whose seeds were mixed with tobacco and
used by robbers to stupefy victims.
 WHICH WORD?

 The worm originated in the Philippines on 4 May
2000 and spread across the world in one day,
moving on to Hong Kong and then to Europe
and the US,causing an estimated $5.5 billion in
damage.By 13 May 2000, 50 million infections
had been reported.Most of the damage cited
was the time and effort spent getting rid of the
worm. In order to free themselves, The
Pentagon, CIA, and the British Parliament had to
shut down their mail systems; as did most large
corporations.
 What is this virus called ?

This disorder is
characterized by multiple,
symmetric,
circumferential skin
creases, or bands, on the
forearms, lower legs, and
often the neck that are
present at birth. The
creases disappear later in
life. What are these type
of babies known as?

He is the author of ‘Birds of the West Indies’,
which is a book containing exhaustive
coverage of the 400+ species of birds found in
the Caribbean Sea. However, we remember
him more for something else. Who is he?

 His name is James Bond after whom Ian
Fleming named the most popular character in
the world .

 She is the daughter of Mrs Savita Chibber and
Colonel Chibber, and has a degree in History
from Lady Sriram College, Delhi University.
She used to host a weekly Hindi music
countdown show, Oye, for a music channel in
the 1990s. She met her future husband in
1984, during her graduation days, who was
also doing his BA in Economics from D.U.,
and married him in 1991. Who is her famous
husband?

 Gauri Khan & hence the King Khan would be
her husband.

 In 2004 he was the recipient of the Paul
Harrison award for a lifetime of service to the
rural poor. This award is given annually by the
Christian Medical College in Vellore, India, to
its alumni. In 2007 he was awarded the R.R.
Keithan Gold Medal by The Indian Academy
of Social Sciences (ISSA) on 31 December
2007. The citation describes him as "one of
the most eminent scientists" of India.WHO ?
 (bit current affairs)

Dr. Binayak Sen
 Who was found guilty of helping the Naxalites

 Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman
Professor of Government in the Departments of
Anthropology and Political Science at Columbia
University. He is also the Director of Columbia's
Institute of African Studies and the current
President of the Council for Development of
Social Research in Africa.
 However, in India, it is his wife who is better
known due to her prominence in the film world.
 Who?

 It's a PR firm headed by Niira Radia .

 Born on the same day as Rabindranath Tagore,
he was brought up by his lawyer elder brother as
his father died a couple of months before his
birth. He changed his stream in college after 1st
year as he was not sure to pass in the exam. He
however stood first in his new discipline and
excelled in his profession so much so that he
used to be counted among the richest
professionals in the country. His first three
children did not survive, but the fourth reached
the pinnacle in his career. Who am I talking
about ?

 It is a 1988 Indian adventure comedy B movie
produced by Ashok Amritraj and Sunanda
Murali Manohar, directed by Dwight Little
and written by Nico Mastorakis; starring Brett
Stimely, Anna Nicholas and X. It was filmed in
southern India, the story revolving around a
mythical ruby called the ------------------.
 Which movie ? Who is X ?

 “ Alexander Sawchuk estimates that it was in June or July of 1973 when
he, then an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University
of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute (SIPI), along
with a graduate student and the SIPI lab manager, was hurriedly
searching the lab for a good image to scan for a colleague's conference
paper. They got tired of their stock of usual test images, dull stuff dating
back to television standards work in the early 1960s. They wanted
something glossy to ensure good output dynamic range, and they
wanted a human face. Just then, somebody happened to walk in with a
recent issue of Playboy. The engineers tore away the top third of the
centerfold so they could wrap it around the drum of their Muirhead
wirephoto scanner, which they had outfitted with analog-to-digital
converters (one each for the red, green, and blue channels) and a Hewlett
Packard 2100 minicomputer. The Muirhead had a fixed resolution of 100
lines per inch and the engineers wanted a 512 × 512 image, so they
limited the scan to the top 5.12 inches of the picture, effectively cropping
it at the subject's shoulders.”

 To raise money he began writing gags for the
agent David O. Alber, who sold them to
newspaper columnists. According to him, his first
published joke read: “-------------- says he ate at a
restaurant that had O.P.S. prices – over people’s
salaries.
 He began to call himself -----------. He was an
extremely talented young comedian and would
later joke that when he was young he was often
sent to inter-faith summer camps, where he “was
savagely beaten by children of all races and
creeds.
 Who is this who went on do much laughy things ?

 The earliest known references to X are in the sports pages of
various West Coast newspapers covering the Pacific Coast League,
a baseball minor league. The earliest example, found by New York
University librarian George A. Thompson, Jr. in 2003, is from the
Los Angeles Times on April 2, 1912, referring to Portland Beavers
pitcher Ben Henderson: BEN'S X CURVE. "I got a new curve this
year," softly murmured Henderson yesterday, "and I'm goin' to
pitch one or two of them tomorrow. I call it the X ball because it
wobbles and you simply can't do anything with it." As prize
fighters who invent new punches are always the first to get their's
Ben will probably be lucky if some guy don't hit that new X ball a
mile today. It is to be hoped that some unintelligent compositor
does not spell that the Jag ball. That's what it must be at that if it
wobbles.

 There is an old tradition in the German or
Scandinavian countries to use "patience" as a guide to
what the near future has to offer, a kind of "luck"
meter. This belief assumes that a person’s "luck" will
vary from time to time and important matters should
not be initiated or conducted when the cards are not
favourable. If there are no winnings in the game for a
number of tries it spells caution in what you do. If you
win at the first try times are good and “luck” smiles at
you, thus the immediate future can be used for
important decisions. Timing the game is a further
indicator of the strength of the outcome.
 How do we better know this ?

 Mohan Meakin is a large group of companies started
with Asia's first brewery incorporated in 1855 (but
established much earlier) by Edward X at Kasauli in
the Himalayan Mountains in India under the name X
Breweries. he Kasauli brewery launched India's and
indeed Asia's first beer, Lion, which was in great
demand by the thirsty British administrators and
troops stationed in the sweltering heat of India. Lion
was much appreciated as a beer, and one famous
poster featured a satisfied British Tommy declaring,
"as good as back home!“Even though Edward did
quiet good for alcoholics  , his son was rather much
infamous . Who ?

 Edward Dyer , good man  and his son is
none other than Reginald Dyer of the
infamous Jallian Walabagh Massacre

 In the early 1980s, he became editor of a game
and puzzle journal called ...És játék ("...and
games"), then became self-employed in 1983,
founding the X Stúdió, where he designed
furniture and games. In 1987 he became
professor with full tenure; in 1990 he became the
president of the Hungarian Engineering
Academy (Magyar Mérnöki Akadémia). At the
Academy, he created the International X
Foundation to support especially talented young
engineers and industrial designers.
 What ‘s his name ?

 Ernő Rubik : Creator of the world’s most
selling toy .

 She was also involved in relationships with
Alok Nath and Sharang Dev.On 15 July 2008,
she married New Delhi-based Vivek Mehra, a
chartered accountant and Partner with PwC
India in a secret marriage in the United
States.Who was her most famous partner
(their union resulted a daughter) ?

 Neena Gupta & Vivian Richards

 The first of its kind was formed when attorney Paul P.
Harris called together a meeting of three business
acquaintances in downtown Chicago, at Harris' friend
Sylvester Schiele's office in the Unity Building on
Dearborn Street on February 23, 1905. In August 1912,
the ------------- of London received its charter from the
Association, marking the first acknowledged -----------
outside North America. During World War I , -----------
in Britain increased from 9 to 22 ,and they were
introduced in Cuba in 1916 and India in 1920 .
 What am I talking about ?

 He was born in 1954. He learned to draw near the age of
two, beginning when zoologist Desmond Morris offered
him a pencil.Morris said, "He took the pencil and I placed a
piece of card in front of him. This is how I recorded it at the
time, 'Something strange was coming out of the end of
the pencil. He soon began painting; the patterns he made
were never distinguished, pictorial images, but usually of a
vague "radiating fan pattern" in the abstract
impressionism style.Between the ages of two and four, he
produced about 400 drawings and paintings. American
collector Howard Hong purchased three of his works for
over US$26,000.
 WHO ?

 Francisco Tárrega played in the Opera
Theatre in Lyon and then the Paris Odeon,
in the bicentenary of the death of Pedro
Calderón de la Barca. He also played in
London, but he liked neither the language
nor the weather.
 But tell me why he is claimed to be the
world’s most heard composer .

 He composed the NOKIA TUNE

 He was born in January 2008 in Wermouth,
England. He also goes by the surname der
Krake. Various explanations have been
offered, saying that brightness as well as an
object's size, shape, and orientation create a
potential bias in his controversial ability.
 Who ?

 A frequently circulated story claims that
Fleischer's choice of Y to give X strength was
based on faulty calculations of its iron content.
In the story, German scientist Dr. E. von Wolf
misplaced a decimal point in an 1870
measurement of Y's iron content, leading to an
iron value ten times higher than it should have
been. The popularity of X helped boost sales of Y.
Y consumption increased a whopping 33 percent
in the United States between 1931 and 1936 as X
gained popularity, saving the Y industry in the
1930s. Identify X and Y.

 Early devices for X include an 1885 invention of
Cesare Lombroso used to measure changes in
blood pressure, a 1904 device by Vittorio Benussi
used to measure breathing, and an abandoned
project by American William Marston which used
blood pressure and galvanic skin response.
Further a device recording both blood pressure
and galvanic skin response was invented in 1921
by Dr. John A. Larson of the University of
California .
 What did this device became in later years ?

 This feat was first achieved in 1875 and was
not repeated till 48 years later. It is often
described as a battle of brain and brawn
against tide and temperature. Statistics
released by the CSA, the governing body,
reveal that only about 7% of those who
attempt this feat are able to complete it.
What feat are we talking of ?

 Swimming the English Channel

 This $423 million colossus is the world's largest
steel structure. The design was awarded to a
submission from the Swiss architecture firm
Herzog & de Meuron in April 2003, after a
bidding process that included 13 final
submissions. The design, which originated from
the study of Chinese ceramics, implemented
steel beams in order to hide supports for the
retractable roof; giving the structure the
appearance of a ________.
 Which one ?

 While recovering from World War I wounds,
army sergeant DeWitt Wallace read scores of
magazines and articles to while away the
time. It was then that he realized that some
articles had far more enduring appeal and
interest than others, and that even these
could be improved by vigorously condensing
them and focusing on the essentials. Keeping
this In mind, What did he create?

 Wireless energy transfer or wireless power
transmission (also known as the _____ Effect) is
the process that takes place in any system where
electrical energy is transmitted from a power
source to an electrical load, without
interconnecting wires in an electrical grid.
Wireless transmission is ideal in cases where
instantaneous or continuous energy transfer is
needed, but interconnecting wires are
inconvenient, hazardous, or impossible.
 Fill in the Blank.

There are two forms of the disease: wet,
which affects the heart and is sometimes
fatal, and dry, which causes partial paralysis
resulting from damage to the peripheral
nerves. Its generic symptoms may include
weight loss, emotional disturbances,
impaired sensory perception, weakness and
pain in the limbs, and periods of irregular
heartbeat. It’s name translates to “I cannot, I
cannot”.
Which disease ?

 The Prince of Wallachia was a three-time
voivode of Wallachia, ruling mainly from 1456
to 1462. He is best known for his resistance
against the Ottoman Empire and its
expansion and for the cruel punishments he
imposed on his enemies. Of his cruelty it was
said, “Satan himself will deny him entry into
hell”. By what name do we better know him?

 Otto Rohwedder. Though you’ve never heard of him, his
1928 invention is still hailed as a milestone in human
progress. Rohwedder, an itinerant Iowa jeweler, devised a
10-foot machine that combined a revolutionary cutting
process with automatic wrapping of the resultant product
in wax paper, and the world has been unable to contain
itself since. FTP, Rohwedder thus made economically
feasible the selling of this product, to which virtually every
subsequent advancement has been compared. The phrase
"the greatest thing since _______" (and variations thereof)
is a commonly used hyperbolic means of praising an
invention or development.
 Which product?

 Konrad Block and Feodor Lynen shared the
1964 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine
for their work on this compound, formula
C27H46O, which was discovered in 1812. It is
found in gallstones, and therefore was named
from the Greek for "bile-solid". A component
of all cell membranes, it is converted from
acetic acid in a process involving 36 distinct
chemical transformations. What is it?

 Harry Graham, John Hampshire, _______,
Andrew Strauss, Matthew Prior. Who is
missing? What is the connection?

 Sourav Ganguly.. Only 5 to have scored
centuries on test debut at Lord’s

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