General Studies & Current Affairs for Bank, SSC, CLAT, Civil Services and other Competitive Exams

KALYANI KAUL 1) Kalyani Kaul-Circuit Judge in the UK 2) Raghuram Rajan- Vice-chairman of the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) 3...

IMPORTANT NEW APPOINTMENTS (WORLD) -2015-16

KALYANI KAUL
1) Kalyani Kaul-Circuit Judge in the UK
2) Raghuram Rajan- Vice-chairman of the Bank of International Settlement (BIS)
3) Samia Hassan Suluhu- Tanzania's first female Vice President
4) Harjit Sajjan- Defence Minister of Canada
5) Subroto Som- Head of Mashreq retail banking group
6) Lawyer Patricia- Secretary General of the Commonwealth of Nations
7) Michael Keating -Special Representative for Somalia and Head of the UN Assistance Mission in Somalia
8) Jack Dorsey- Permanent CEO, Twitter Note: He succeeds Dick Costolo
9) Hoesung Lee of South Korea- Chairman of Inter-governmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).
10) AR Rahman- Cultural Ambassador of Seychelles
11) Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli -Prime Minister of Nepal
12) Onsari Gharti Magar- House speaker of Nepal.
13) Omid Kordestani -Executive Chairman of Twitter
14) Kundhavi Kadiresan -FAO Assistant Director-General.
15) Alexander Lukashenko- President of Belarus
16) Jioji Konrote- Fiji's President.
17) António Costa- PM of Portugal
18) Ashok-Alexander Sridharan-Mayor of Bonn in Germany
19) Justin Trudeau- 23rd Prime Minister of Canada.
20) Brett McGurk- Envoy to US-led coalition fighting ISIS.
21) Paul Ryan -54th speaker of the US House of Representatives
22) John Pombe Magufuli -Tanzania President
23) James Staley- Barclays, Chief Executive.
24) Jimmy Morales-Guatemala President
25) Bidhya Devi Bhandari- President of Nepal
26) Filippo Grandi -New UN refugee chief
27) Dacian Ciolos- Romania’s new prime minister
Marzieh Afkham
28) Marzieh Afkham- Iran’s 1st woman ambassador since 1979 Islamic revolution, to head embassy in Malaysia.
29) Alassane Ouattara- West African country Ivory Coast President
30) Bazmi Husain -The global chief technology officer of ABB
31) Jagdeep Grewal- Chosen as postmaster for Sacramento
32) Malcolm Turnbull -Australia’s New Prime Minister
33) Sherif Ismail- PM of Egypt
34) Arvind Panagariya -Appointed as the sherpa for G20 negotiations
35) Matthias Mueller -CEO,Volkswagen AG appoints
36) Swati Dandekar- Executive Director,Asian Development Bank (ADB)

1. Subir Vithal Gokarn - Executive Director on the board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2. Justice Ajit Prakash Shah - Ethics of...

IMPORTANT NEW APPOINTMENTS (INDIA) -2015-16

1. Subir Vithal Gokarn- Executive Director on the board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
2. Justice Ajit Prakash Shah - Ethics officer (ombudsman) at Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
3. Navtej Singh Sarna -Indian High Commissioner to United Kingdom (UK)
4. Justice T S Thakur 43rd Chief Justice of India
5. Deepak Singhal- Executive Director of Reserve Bank of India.
6. Harshavardhan Neotia - President of FICCI. Note: He will succeed Jyotsna Suri
7. Nitish Kumar- Chief Minister of Bihar (Fifth Time)
8. V Raja Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Philips India
9. Vijay Keshav Gokhale- India’s Ambassador to China. Note: He will replace Ashok Kantha
10. Zarin Daruwala- India’s Chief Executive Officer at Standard Chartered Bank
11. Syed Akbaruddin- Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations
12. Sunil Kanoria- President, ASSOCHAM. Note: He succeeded Rana Kapoor.
13. V Shanmuganthan- 17th Governor of Manipur
14. Dr Anup K Pujari- Chairman and Managing Director of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL)
15. Sriram Venkataraman- Chief Finance Officer (CFO), Flipkart
16. Ashish Bahuguna- Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of FSSAI
17. Sekhar Basu-Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
18. Alkesh Sharma- CEO and MD of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corp
19. Tapan Ray- Board of Securities and Exchange Board of India
20. Alok Rawat  First male person to be appointed as member of National Commission for Women (NCW)
21. Vijay Kumar Malhotra- President ,All India Council of Sports
22. Shaktikanta Das- Central Board of Directors of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)
23. Najib Shah- Chairman of Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC), apex body on Indirect Taxes
24. P K Gupta- Managing Director, State Bank of India
25. Tarvinder Singh Bhasin- Chairman of Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) of India.
26. Manpreet Vohra- India’s Ambassador to Afghanistan
27. Bhushan Kumar Bansal- Sixth member of the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC)
28. Sharad Kumar- Director General of National Investigation Agency (NIA)
29. Alok Shekhar- India’s representative in the council of Interantional Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO)
30. J Manjula Appointed the new Director General (DG - Electronics & Communications Systems or ECS)
31. Ramesh Chand-Appointed as new member of the Niti Aayog.
32. Hormusji N Cama-Chairman of Press Trust of India
33. Sourav Ganguly President of Cricket Association of Bengal
34. Hrushikesh Senapaty- Director of National Council of Educational Research Training (NCERT)
35. Christopher Thomas-Arbitrator for resolving the Rs. 10247 crore tax dispute and London-listed Cairn Energy

SOME IMPORTANT POINTS Palme d’Or The Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was intro...

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SOME IMPORTANT POINTS

Palme d’Or
The Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the organising committee. From 1939 to 1954, the highest prize was the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film. In 1964 it was replaced once again by the Grand Prix du Festival before being reintroduced in 1974. In 1955, the first Palme d’Or was awarded to Delbert Mann for Marty.

Ramsar Convention
The Ramsar Convention (formally, the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat) is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable utilization of wetlands. It is named after the city of Ramsar in Iran, where the Convention was signed in 1971.

National Film Awards
The National Film Awards is one of the most prominent film award ceremonies in India. Established in 1954, it has been administered, along with the International Film Festival of India and the Indian Panorama, by the Indian government’s Directorate of Film Festivals since 1973. The National Film Awards are presented in two main categories: Feature Films and Non-Feature Films.

Orange Prize
The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (previously Orange Prize for Fiction) is one of the United Kingdom’s most prestigious literary prizes, annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year. The prize was originally sponsored by Orange, a telecommunications company. In May 2012, it was announced Orange would be ending its sponsorship of the prize and the Baileys Irish Cream liquor brand then sponsored it.

Grameen Bank
The Grameen Bank is a microfinance organization and community development bank founded in Bangladesh. It makes small loans (known as microcredit or "grameencredit") to the impoverished without requiring collateral. The name Grameen is derived from the word gram which means "rural" or "village" in the Bengali language. The Bank originated in 1976, in the work of Professor Muhammad Yunus who launched a research project to study how to design a credit delivery system to provide banking services to the rural poor. In 2006, the bank and its founder, Muhammad Yunus, were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body under the auspices of the United Nations set up at the request of member governments. It was first established in 1988 by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Membership of the IPCC is open to all members of the WMO and UNEP. The IPCC is chaired by Rajendra K. Pachauri. The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize was shared, in two equal parts, between the IPCC and Al Gore

Sulabh International
Sulabh International is an Indian based social service organization which works to promote human rights, environmental sanitation, non-conventional sources of energy, waste management and social reforms through education. It is the largest non-profit organization in India. It was founded by Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak in 1970.

Anandwan
Anandwan is located and is an ashram and a community rehabilitation centre for leprosy patients and the disabled from downtrodden sections of society. It was founded in 1948 by noted social activist, Baba Amte. He developed Anandwan to be a self-contained ashram where residents are self-sufficient in terms of basic subsistence through agriculture. Land fertility in the region has been revived and is maintained by using organic farming techniques and micro-water management.

Revolutions in the field of Agriculture in India 
  • Grey Revolution- Fertilizer Revolution
  • Pink Revolution- Onion production/Pharmaceutical (India)/Prawn production
  • Red Revolution- Meat & Tomato Production 
  • Round Revolution- Potato Revolution
  • White Revolution- Milk/Dairy production (In India - Operation Flood)
  • Yellow Revolution- Oil Seeds production 
  • Evergreen Revolution- Overall development of Agriculture 
  • Black Revolution- Petroleum Production 
  • Blue Revolution- Fish Production


Verghese Kurien
Verghese Kurien was a renowned Indian social entrepreneur and is best known as the "Father of the White Revolution”, for his 'billion-litre idea' (Operation Flood) — the world's biggest agricultural development programme. The operation took India from being a milk-deficient nation, to the largest milk producer in the world, surpassing the United States of America in 1998, with about 17 percent of global output in 2010-11.
A key achievement of his brainchild, Amul was the invention of milk powder processed from buffalo milk, as opposed to that made from cow-milk. His achievements with the Amul dairy led Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri to appoint him as the founder-chairman of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) in 1965He also received the World Food Prize and the Magsaysay Award for community leadership. ‘The Man Who Made The Elephant Dance’ is the name of his autobiography.

Norman Borlaug
Norman Ernest Borlaug was an American biologist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate who has been called "the father of the Green Revolution”, "agriculture's greatest spokesperson” and "The Man Who Saved A Billion Lives”. He is one of seven people to have won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal and was also awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honour.
During the mid-20th century, Borlaug led the introduction of high-yielding varieties of seeds combined with modern agricultural production techniques to Mexico, Pakistan, and India. Between 1965 and 1970, wheat yields nearly doubled in Pakistan and India, greatly improving the food security in those nations. These collective increases in yield have been labelled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation.
The World Food Prize was created in 1986 by Norman Borlaug, as a way to recognize personal accomplishments, and as a means of education by using the Prize to establish role models for others. The first prize was given to Borlaug's former colleague, M. S. Swaminathan, in 1987, for his work in India. The next year, Swaminathan used the US$250,000 prize to start the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation for research on sustainable development.

-             Animal, Tallest Giraffe
-             Archipelago, Largest Indonesia
-             Bird, Fastest- Swift
-             Bird, Largest Ostrich
-             Bird, Smallest Humming Bird
-             Canal, Longest Suez Canal
-             Capital, Highest La Paz (Boliva)
-             City, Largest in Population Tokyo
-             City, Costliest Tokyo
-             Continent, Largest Asia
-             Continent, Smallest Australia
-             Country, Biggest (Area) Russia
-             Country, Largest (Population) China
-             Country, Largest (Electorate) India
-             Creature, Largest Blue Whale
-             Delta, Largest Sunderban (Bangladesh & India)
-             Desert, Largest (World) Sahara (Africa)
-             Desert, Largest (Asia) Gobi
-             Epic, Largest Mahabharat
-             Island, Largest Greenland
-             Sea, Largest Mediterranean sea
-             Lake, Deepest Baikal (Siberia)
-             Lake, Highest Titicaca (Bolivia)
-             Lake, Largest (Fresh water) Superior
-             Lake, Largest (Salt water) Caspian
-             Library, Largest United State Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
-             Mountain Peak, Highest Everest (Nepal)
-             Mountain Range, Longest Andes (S. America)
-             Ocean, Largest Pacific
-             Palace, Biggest Vatican (Italy)
-             Park, Largest Yellow Stone National Park (U.S.A.)
-             Place, Coldest (Habitated) Verkhoyank (Siberia)
-             Place, Dryest Iqique (In Atacama Desert, Chile)
-             Place, Hottest Azizia (Libya, Africa)
-             Place, Rainiest Mausinram (Meghalaya,India)
-             Planet, Biggest Jupiter
-             Planet, Brightest Venus 
               Plateau, Highest Pamir (Tibet)
-             Platform, Longest Gorakhpur (India) (Kharagpur is the 2nd longest)
-             Railway, Longest Trans-Siberian railway
-             Railway Station, Longest Grand Central Terminal, Chicago (U.S.A.)
-             River, Longest Nile (Africa)
-             River, Largest Amazon (S. America)
-             Star, Brightest Sirius
-             Waterfall, Highest Angel (Venezuela)
-             Water, Lowest body Dead Sea
-             Zoo, Largest Kruger National Park, South Africa


National Sports Awards
• Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna- India’s highest honour given for achievement in sports.
• Arjuna Award— Recognises outstanding achievement in National sports.
• Dronacharya award- an award presented by the government of India for excellence in sports coaching.
• Dhyan Chand Award- India's highest award for lifetime achievement in sports and games.

Patriotic Awards

i) Wartime Gallantry awards
Param Vir Chakra : Highest military award for valour.
Maha Vir Chakra- The Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) is the second highest military decoration
in India.
Vir Chakra-It is third in precedence in the war time gallantry. 

ii) Peacetime Gallantry awards
Ashok Chakra Award- an Indian military decoration awarded for valour, courageous
action or self-sacrifice away from the battlefield. It is the peace time equivalent of the Param
Vir Chakra.
Kirti Chakra-It is second in order of precedence of peacetime gallantry awards.
Shaurya Chakra-It is third in order of precedence of peacetime gallantry.


Civilian Awards
Bharat Ratna- Highest honour
Padma Vibhushan — Second highest honour.
Padma Bhushan — Third highest honour.
Padma Shri — Fourth highest honour.

Cropping Seasons in India

(a) Kharif:Sowing seasons-May to July Harvesting season-September to October
Important crops: Jowar, bajra, rice, maize, cotton, groundnut, jute, hemp, sugarcane, tobacco, ete.
(b)Rabi: Sowing season-October-December Harvesting season-February-April
Important crops: wheat, barley, gram, linseed, mus-tard, masoor, pea~ and potatoes.
(c) Zaid: Besides the kharif and rabi crops, there are certain crops which are being raised throughout the year due to artificial irrigation.
Zaid kharif crops are sown in August-September and harvested in December- January.
Important crops: rice, jowar, rapeseed, cotton, oilseeds.
Zaid rabi crops are sown in February-March. Harvesting is in April-May. Important crops: watermelon, toris, cucumber, leafy and other vegetables.


National Symbols of India

-Tricolour designed by Pingali Venkayya
-National Emblem of India: Lion Capital of Asoka
-National Calendar: Saka calendar
-National anthem: Jana Gana Mana by Rabindranath Tagore
-National song: Vande Mataram by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
-National flower: Indian lotus (Nelumbo nucifera)
-National fruit: Mango (Mangifera indica)
-National river: Ganga River
-National tree: Indian Banyan or Indian fig tree
-National animal: Royal Bengal Tiger
-National aquatic animal: Gangetic Dolphin or Ganges River Dolphin
-National Currency Symbol: Indian Rupee (The symbol, conceptualised and designed by D. Udaya Kumar


Features of the Indian Constitution borrowed from other countries

From U.K.
  • Nominal Head - President (like Queen)
  • Cabinet System of Ministers
  • Post of PM
  • Parliamentary Type of Govt.
  • Bicameral Parliament
  • Lower House more powerful
  • Council of Ministers responsible to Lowe House
  • Speaker in Lok Sabha

From U.S.
  • Written Constitution
  • Executive head of state known as President and his being the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces
  • Vice- President as the ex-officio Chairman of Rajya Sabha
  • Fundamental Rights
  • Supreme Court
  • Provision of States
  • Independence of Judiciary and judicial review
  • Preamble
  • Removal of Supreme court and High court Judges

From USSR
  • Fundamental Duties
  • Five year Plan

From AUSTRALIA
  • Concurrent list
  • Language of the preamble
  • Provision regarding trade, commerce and intercourse

From JAPAN
Law on which the Supreme Court function

From GERMANY
Suspension of Fundamental Rights during the emergency

From CANADA
  • Scheme of federation with a strong centre
  • Distribution of powers between centre and the states and placing. Residuary Powers with the centre

From IRELAND
  • Concept of Directive Principles of States Policy(Ireland borrowed it from SPAIN)
  • Method of election of President
  • Nomination of members in the Rajya Sabha by President

1. IMPORTANT AWARDS A] Dadasaheb Phalke Award The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India’s highest award in cinema given annually by the Gover...

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1. IMPORTANT AWARDS

A] Dadasaheb Phalke Award
The Dadasaheb Phalke Award is India’s highest award in cinema given annually by the Government of India for lifetime contribution to Indian cinema. The Award is given to a prominent personality from the Indian film industry, noted and respected for significant contributions to Indian cinema. Devika Rani Chaudhuri Roerich was the first awardee in 1969.

B] Dronacharya Award
Dronacharya Award is an award presented by the government of India for excellence in sports coaching. O.M. Nambiar for athletics , Om Prakash Bhardwaj for boxing and BB Bhagwat for wrestling were the first recipients in 1985.

C] Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian committees in recognition of cultural and/or scientific advances. The will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895.
The prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace were first awarded in 1901. The related Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was created in 1968.
The Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, Norway, while the other prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden.

D] List of first recipients of the Nobel Prize:
-Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen received the first Physics Prize for his discovery of X- rays.
-The first laureates for the Economics Prize were Jan Tinbergen and Ragnar Frisch “for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes”.
-The Swedish Academy chose the poet Sully Prudhomme for the first Nobel Prize in Literature.
-The first Physiology or Medicine Prize went to the German physiologist and microbiologist Emil von Behring who developed an antitoxin to treat diphtheria. -Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff of Netherlands won the first Chemistry Prize for “discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions”. 
-The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901 to Frederic Passy and Henry Dunant. Passy got it for being one of the main founders of the Inter¬Parliamentary Union and also the main organizer of the first Universal Peace Congress. Dunant received it for his role in founding the International Committee of the Red Cross.

E] Indians who have won the Nobel Prizes
-Rabindranath Tagore was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913 for his “Geetanjali”. He was also the first Asian to win the prize.
-Nobel Prize in Physics: C. V. Raman in 1930.
-Nobel Prize in Medicine: Har Gobind Khorana in 1968 (US citizen of Indian origin)
-Nobel Peace Prize: Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 1979 (Indian citizen of Albanian origin)
-Nobel Prize in Physics: Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar in 1983 (US citizen of Indian origin)
-Nobel Prize in Economics: Amartya Sen in 1998
-Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Venkatraman Ramakrishnan in 2009 (USA citizen of Indian origin)

F] Man Booker Prize
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel, written in the English language, by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations, the Republic of Ireland, or Zimbabwe. Beginning in 2014, it will consider authors from anywhere in the world, so long as their work is in English and published in the UK.
P. H. Newby won the first Prize for ‘Something to Answer For’.

G] Man Booker International Prize
The Man Booker International Prize is an international literary award given every two years to a living author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or generally available in English translation.
The introduction of the International Prize was announced in June 2004. The award, which is sponsored by the Man Group, complements the Man Booker Prize and rewards one author's "continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage." Therefore the award is a recognition of the writer's body of work, rather than any one title.
The inaugural winner was Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.

H] Templeton Prize
The Templeton Prize is an annual award presented by the Templeton Foundation. Established in 1972, it is awarded to a living person who, in the estimation of the judges, "has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works". The inaugural winner of the prize, in 1973, was Mother Teresa, six years before she received the Nobel Peace Prize. She was cited by the Templeton Foundation "for her extraordinary efforts to help the homeless and neglected children of Calcutta," work which "inspired millions of others around the world".

I] Ramon Magsaysay Award
The Ramon Magsaysay Award is an annual award established to perpetuate former Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay's example of integrity in
government, courageous service to the people, and pragmatic idealism within a democratic society. The Ramon Magsaysay Award is often considered to be Asia’s Nobel Prize.

J] Bharat Ratna
This is the Republic of India’s highest civilian award. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1987) and Nelson Mandela (1990) are the only two non-Indians to win it, with Mother Teresa becoming a naturalised Indian citizen. Sachin Tendulkar is the youngest person alive at the time of receiving the award (at the age of 40). Dhondo Keshav Karve is the eldest person alive at the time of receiving the award (age 100).
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, C. V. Raman, C. Rajagopalachari were the first awardees in 1954.

K] Param Vir Chakra
The Param Vir Chakra (PVC) is India’s highest military decoration awarded for the highest degree of valour or self-sacrifice in the presence of the enemy. It can be, and often has been, awarded posthumously. The medal was designed by Savitri Khanolkar. Major Somnath Sharma was the first recipient.

L] World Food Prize
The World Food Prize is an international award recognizing the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world. It is notably sponsored by agricultural biotechnology companies. Prof. M. S. Swaminathan was the first recipient of the Prize which was started by Norman Borlaug.

M] Fields Medal
The Fields Medal, officially known as International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics, is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians not over 40 years of age at each International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The Fields Medal is often viewed as the greatest honour a mathematician can receive. The Fields Medal and the Abel Prize have often been described as the "mathematician's Nobel Prize”. The medal was first awarded in 1936 to Finnish mathematician Lars Ahlfors and American mathematician Jesse Douglas, and it has been awarded every four years since 1950.

N] Abel Prize
The Abel Prize is an international prize presented by the King of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians. Named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829), the award was established in 2001 by the Government of Norway. Jean-Pierre Serre of France first received it in 2003.

O] Sahitya Akademi
Established in 1954, it is a literary honour in India which annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the major Indian languages recognised by the Sahitya Akademi.


2. Firsts’ among Indian's

  • President of Indian Republic: Dr Rajendra Prasad
  • Vice President of Indian Republic: Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
  • Defence Minister of India: Baldev Singh
  • Indian Commander-in-Chief of Free India: General Kodandera Madappa Cariappa
  • Chief of Air Staff: Air Marshal Sir Thomas Elmhirst 
  • Indian Chief of Staff: General Kodandera Madappa Cariappa 
  • Commander-in-Chief, IAF: Air Marshal Subroto Mukerjee 
  • Chief of Naval Staff: Vice Admiral R D Katari
  • Cosmonaut: Sqn Ldr Rakesh Sharma
  • Field Marshal: Sam Manekshaw
  • First female jawan in the Army: Shanti Tigga
  • First Param Vir Chakra Winner: Major Som Nath Sharma
  • Person to reach the South Pole: Col Jatinder Kumar Bajaj
  • Woman to scale Mount Everest: Bachendri Pal
  • Person to reach the North Pole: Jagannathan Srinivasaraghavan
  • Person to have walked across Gobi desert: Sucheta Kadethankar
  • Indian to swim across the English Channel: Mihir Sen, 1958.
  • Woman to swim across the English Channel: Arati Saha, 1959 
  • Formula One racer: Narain Karthikeyan 
  • Formula One team: Force India F1
  • Person to equal world record in Archery: Limba Ram, 1992 Shiva Keshavan, 
  • First Indian to win 2 Gold Medals for India in Winter sports Sushil Kumar (wrestler) is the first Indian to win back to back Olympic medals (Bronze and Silver in the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics respectively)
  • Chess Grandmaster: Male - Viswanathan Anand, 1988.
  • Female - Koneru Humpy - 2002 
  • Mr. Universe: Manohar Aich in 1952
  • Miss World: Reita Faria in 1966. (She was also the first Asian to win the title.)
  • Miss Universe: Sushmita Sen in 1994
  • Miss Earth: Nicole Faria in 2010
  • Man Booker Prize: Arundhati Roy for her novel "The God of Small Things” in the year 1997.
  • Bharat Ratna: Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, C. Rajagopalachari, and C. V. Raman in 1954
  • Magsaysay Award: Vinoba Bhave, 1958
  • Oscar for Lifetime Achievement - Satyajit Ray
  • Nishan-e-Pakistan: Morarji Desai, 1990
  • First Indian filmmaker to get Bharat Ratna: Satyajit Ray
  • Sound film: Alam Ara (1931) directed by Ardeshir Irani
  • Sound engineer to win an Oscar: Resul Pookutty for Slumdog Millionaire
  • Music director to win an Oscar and first double Oscar winner-Mr. A. R. Rahman
  • for Slumdog Millionaire
  • Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film: Mother India Oscar for Lifetime Achievement: Satyajit Ray
  • Sponsored TV serial: Hum Log, started on 7 July 1984, was also the first soap opera of India, ran for 156 episodes
  • 3-D film: My Dear Kuttichathan, a Malayalam film, produced in 1984, dubbed in Hindi as Chhota Chetan.
  • Hindi film screened at the United Nations: Lage Raho Munna Bhai, 10 November 2006,directed by Rajkumar Hirani
  • President of the Indian National Congress: Womesh Chandra Bannerjee, 1885 
  • President of the Indian National Congress of independent India: Acharya Kripalani, till November 1947 President: Rajendra Prasad (1950-1962)
  • First Woman President: Pratibha Patil (2007-2012)
  • The first Chief Election Commissioner : Sukumar Sen 
  • Vice-President: Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 
  • Prime Minister: Jawaharlal Nehru (1947-64 
  • Deputy Prime Minister: Vallabhbhai Patel (1947-1950)
  • Law Minister of India: B. R. Ambedkar
  • Leader of Opposition: A. K. Gopalan
  • Women Railway Minister of India: Mamata Banerjee
  • The first Viceroy of India: Lord Canning, 1858
  • Governor-General of India: Warren Hastings, 1773
  • Governor-General of Independent India: Lord Mountbatten, 1947
  • Indian Governor-General of Indian Union: C Rajagopalachari, 1948
  • Chief Justice of India: H. J. Kania (1947-1951)
  • Indian ICS Officer: Satyendranath Tagore, 1863
  • Speaker of Lok Sabha: G.V. Mavlankar (1952-1956)
  • Presentation of First Budget after India's Independence: R. K. Shanmukhan Chetty
  • First Home Minister of India: Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel
  • First Indian President to die in Office: Dr Zakir Hussain
  • First Chief Minister to die in Office: C.N.Annadurai, Tamil Nadu
  • First Indian Prime Minister to resign from office: Morarji Desai, 1979
  • First woman Cabinet Minister in India: Rajkumari Amrit Kaur
  • First woman Minister in India: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
  • First woman Chief Minister: Sucheta Kriplani, UP
  • First woman Governor of a State: Sarojini Naidu (Governor of Uttar Pradesh, 1947-49)
  • First female Home Minister: Sabitha Indra Reddy in Andhra Pradesh Govt.
  • First woman Speaker of the Lok Sabha: Meira Kumar
  • Woman in space: Kalpana Chawla
  • Test-tube baby: Durga Agarwal, born 1978
  • Nuclear Reactor: Apsara, Mumbai
  • Satellite: Aryabhata, launched on 19 April 1975
  • Woman to be the Chairperson of State Bank of India:Arundhati Bhattacharya
  • Woman Photojournalist: Homai Vyarawalla
  • Woman Supreme Court judge: Justice M. Fathima Beevi
  • Woman President of the United Nations General Assembly: Vijaya Lakshmi
  • Pandit, 1953
  • Wax statue of a living Indian: Mahatma Gandhi at Madame Tussaud’s in 1939.



3. First Indian's in Olympics

  • Olympic team medal: Gold in Field Hockey, Amsterdam, beating the Netherlands in the Finals.
  • Individual medal (in British India): Two Silver medals by Norman Pritchard in 200 metres and 200 metres hurdles at the 1900 Summer Olympics, Paris. (This is disputed however. The IOC claims he participated for India. The IAAF records him as participant for Great Britain.)
  • Individual medal: Bronze by K. D. Jadhav for Wrestling at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.
  • Medal in Tennis: Leander Paes at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. 
  • Individual medal by a woman: Bronze by Karnam Malleswari for weightlifting 54 kg class, at the 2000 Summer Olympics Sydney.
  • Individual Gold medal: Abhinav Bindra in the 10 m Air Rifle event at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
  • Individual Silver medal Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore in the Men's Double Trap event at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens.
  • Medal in boxing: Vijender Kumar in the Beijing Olympics 2008.
  • Medal in Badminton: Saina Nehwal, winning bronze in the London Olympics 2012
  • Medal in wrestling: Sushil Kumar, winning a Bronze in the Beijing Olympics 2008
  • Medal in ladies’ boxing: MC Mary Kom, winning bronze in the London Olympics 2012


MC Mary Kom

  • Grand Slam title: Mahesh Bhupathi (partnering with Japanese Rika Hiraki) in the Mixed Doubles category of the 1997 French Open.
  • Woman to win a Grand Slam title: Sania Mirza (partnering with Mahesh Bhupathi) in the Mixed Doubles category of the 2009 Australian Open 


4. First In Cricket

  • Captain in Tests: C. K. Nayudu for the 1932 tour of England.
  • ODI captain: Ajit Wadekar.
  • Cricketer to score a century in a Test match: Lala Amarnath 
  • Cricketer to score a double century in a Test match: Polly Umrigar, 223 
  • Cricketer to score a triple century in a Test match: Virender Sehwag 
  • Indian to score an ODI century: Kapil Dev, 175 
  • Indian to score an ODI double century is Sachin Tendulkar, 200*
  • Batsman to complete 10,000 runs in Tests: Sunil Gavaskar (he was the first in the World to achieve this feat)
  • Batsman to complete 10,000 runs in ODIs: Sachin Tendulkar (he was the first in the World to achieve this feat)
  • First Indian to score a T20 century: Suresh Raina


5. List of Sobriquets for Places

  • Battle field of Europe - Belgium 
  • City of Sky Scrapers - New York (USA)
  • City of Magnificent Distances - Washinton DC 
  • City of Golden Gate - San Francisco (USA)
  • City of Seven Hills - Rome (Italy)
  • Cockpit of Europe - Belgium 
  • Copper Country - Zambia 
  • Dark Continent - Africa 
  • Empire City - New York (USA)
  • Emerald Island - Ireland 
  • Eternal City - Rome (Italy)
  • Forbidden City - Lhasa (Tibet, China)
  • Garden of England - Kent 
  • George Cross Island - Malta 
  • Granite City - Aberdeen (Scotland)
  • Hill Queen - Shimla
  • Holy Land - Palestine
  • Island of Pearls - Bahrain
  • Island of Cloves - Madagascar
  • Land of Eagles - Albania
  • Land of Golden Fleece - Australia
  • Land of Lilies - Canada
  • Land of Golden Pagoda - Myanmar
  • Land of Maple - Canada
  • Land of Thousand Lakes - Finland
  • Land of Morning Calm - Korea
  • Land of Rising Sun - Japan
  • Land of Setting Sun - Britain
  • Land of Midnight Sun - Norway
  • Land of Lakes - Scotland
  • Land of the Tulips - Netherlands
  • Land of White Elephant - Thailand
  • Land of Thunder Bolt - Bhutan
  • Land of Thousand Elephants - Laos
  • Manchester of the Orient - Osaka
  • Never Never Land - Prairies, North Australia
  • Land of Thunder Dragon - China
  • Nation of Thousand Hills - Rwanda
  • Pearl of Arabia - Bahrain
  • Pearl of Antilles - Cuba
  • Pillars of Hercules - Strait of Gibralter
  • Quaker City of USA - Philadelphia (USA)
  • Queen of the Adriatic - Venice, Italy
  • Sick Man of Europe - Turkey
  • Sugar Bowl of World - Cuba
  • Venice of the North - Stockholm (Sweden)
  • White City - Belgrade Windy City - Chicago
  • World's Bread Basket - Priries of North America Land of Windmills - Holland


6. Nicknames of famous persons

  • Father of the Nation: Mahatma Gandhi Bapu: Mahatma Gandhi
  • Frontier Gandhi, Badshah Khan Khan: Abdul Ghaffar Khan
  • Grand Old man of India: Dadabhai Naoroji
  • Punjab Kesari: Lala Lajpat Rai
  • Bengal Kesari Ashutosh Mukherji
  • Bihar Kesari Dr. Srikrishna Singh
  • Andhra Kesari T. Prakasam
  • Bangabandhu Sheikh: Mujibur Rahman
  • Deshbandhu : Chitta Ranjan Das
  • Deenbandhu: C.F. Andrews
  • Lokmanya: Bal Gangadhar Tilak
  • Loknayak: Jayaprakash Narayan
  • Jana Nayak: Karpuri Thakur
  • Rajarshee: Purushottam Das Tandon
  • Gurudev: Rabindranath Tagore
  • Mahamana Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya
  • Netaji: Subhash Chandra Bose
  • Chacha : Jawaharlal Nehru
  • Rajaji/C.R. Chakravarti Rajagopalachari
  • Shahid-e-Azam: Bhagat Singh
  • Nightingale of India Sarojini Naidu
  • Lady with the lamp: Florence Nightinga
  • Lal, Bal, Pal: Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal
  • Anna: C.N. Annadurai 
  • Haryana Hurricane: Kapil Dev
  • Little Master: Sunil Gavaskar 
  • Little Corporal: Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Man of Destiny: Napoleon Bonaparte 
  • Fuehrer: Adolf Hitler 
  • Bard of Avon: William Shakespeare 
  • Maid of Orleans: Joan of Arc 
  • Quaid-i-Azam: Md. Ali Jinnah



7. World Geography

  • Largest Continent: Asia 
  • Smallest Continent: Australia
  • Highest Mountain: Mount Everest, 
  • Himalayan Mountains, Nepal-Tibet 
  • Lowest Point on Land: The Dead Sea, Israel-Jordan 
  • Deepest Underwater Trench: Mariana Trench 
  • Largest Sea: The Mediterranean Sea
  • Highest Lake: The highest navigable lake is Lake Titicaca in Peru 
  • Lowest Lake: The Dead Sea, Israel-Jordan 
  • Largest Lake: Caspian Sea Deepest Lake: Lake Baikal
  • Largest Freshwater Lake: Lake Superior, U.S.-Canada
  • Deepest Ocean: Pacific Ocean
  • Largest Ocean: Pacific Ocean
  • Smallest Ocean: Arctic Ocean
  • Largest Gulf: Gulf of Mexico
  • Largest Bay: The Bay of Bengal
  • Largest Island: Greenland
  • Largest Gorge: Grand Canyon
  • Longest Mountain Range: The Andes of South America 
  • Longest River: The Nile, Africa 
  • Largest River: The Amazon, South America 
  • Largest Waterfall: Angel Falls, Venezuela 
  • Wettest place on Earth: Mawsynram



8.Indian Geography

  • Longest River in India: The Ganges
  • Longest Tributary river of India : Yamuna
  • Largest Lake: Wular Lake, Kashmir
  • Largest Lake (Saline Water) : Chilka Lake, Orrisa
  • Largest Man-Made Lake: Govind Vallabh Pant Sagar (Rihand Dam)
  • Largest Fresh Water Lake: Kolleru Lake (Andhra Pradesh)
  • Highest Lake Devtal Lake
  • Highest Peak Karkoram-2 of K-2(8,611 meters)
  • Largest State(Area) Rajasthan
  • Largest State(Population) Uttar Pradesh
  • State wise largest area under forest : Madhya Pradesh
  • Largest Delta: Sunderbans Delta
  • Longest Cantilever Span bridge: Howrah Bridge
  • Longest Road: Grand Trunk Road
  • Biggest Mosque: Jama Masjid at Delhi
  • Highest Gateway: Buland Darwaza at Fatehpur Sikri (53.6 meters high) 
  • Longest Canal: Indira Gandhi Canal or Rajasthan Canal (Rajasthan)
  • Largest Dome: Gol Gumbaz at Bijapur
  • Largest Zoo: Zoological Garden at Alipur (Kolkata)
  • Largest Museum: India Museum at Kolkata 
  • Longest Dam: Hirakud Dam (Orrisa)
  • Highest Dam: Tehri Dam ( 260 meters , 850 ft )
  • Largest Desert: Thar (Rajasthan)
  • State with longest coastline: Gujarat
  • Longest Railway Route From Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari via Vivek Express
  • Densest Populated State West Bengal
  • Longest Beach:Marina Beach, Chennai
  • Highest Battle Field :Siachin Glacier
  • Highest Airport: Leh (Laddakh)
  • Largest River Island :Majuli (Brahmaputra River, Asom)
  • Largest Planetarium :Birla Planetarium (Kolkata) 
  • Largest inland salt lake: Sambhar Lake