SOLDIERS' VILLAGE

Gahmar

    Located along the banks of the river Ganga in the Ghazipur district of Uttar Pradesh is Gahmar, famously known as ‘Soldiers’ Village’. Gahmar has a unique tradition of producing hundreds of soldiers who have served in the Indian Armed Forces with distinction right from the First World War to the Kargil War. 

     Every household in this village with a population of over a lakh, boasts at least three or more soldiers! The inhabitants of Gahmar include more than 12,000 military personnel serving in all the three branches of the Armed Forces. There are about 15,000 military veterans in the village. 

     Youngsters in the village take up training in earnest from a young age. Young boys and men can be seen getting up before sunrise and running barefoot along the riverfront and working out to increase their stamina. Tips from the veterans certainly come in handy. Now even the daughters of the village aspire to join the army. 

    Military service has also brought prosperity to Gahmar. This is evident by the number of ‘pucca’ houses in the village. This has been possible because of the armymen who send home money. 

DEVICE USED TO MEASURE BLOOD PRESSURE

Sphygmomanometer 

     A sphygmomanometer is a device used to measure blood pressure. One of the most important men in the development of the sphygmomanometer was the Australian physician Karl Samuel Ritter Von Basch. The first clinically applicable sphygmomanometer was invented by him in 1881. Von Basch introduced the aneroid manometer, which uses a round dial that provides a pressure reading. 

     An improved version was introduced by Scipione Riva-Rocci's device in the USA, modernized it and popularised it within the medical community. In 1905, Russian physician Nikolai Korotkov discovered 'Korotkov Sounds' and included diastolic blood pressure measurement.

MORAL STORY

The Potato, the Egg, and the Coffee Beans 

A boy named John was upset. His father found him crying. 

When his father asked John why he was crying, he said that he had a lot of problems in his life. 

His father simply smiled and asked him to a potato, an egg, and some coffee beans. He placed them in three bowls.

He then asked John to feel their texture and then fill each bowl with water. 

John did as he had been told. His father then boiled all three bowls. 

Once the bowls had cooled down, John’s father asked him to feel the texture of the different food items again. 

John noticed that the potato had become soft and its skin was peeling off easily; the egg had become harder; the coffee beans had completely changed and filled the bowl of water with aroma and flavour. 

Moral of the story:

Life will always have problems and pressures, like the boiling water in the story. 

It's how you respond and react to these problems that counts the most.

SPICE THAT RESEMBLES NAIL

Clove

     Cloves are the unopened buds of the clove tree (Syzygium aromaticum) that are handpicked and dried until they are hard and dark brown in colour. They are about half an inch long and with their tapering stems, resemble nails in appearance. In fact, the word 'clove' is believed to have been derived from the Latin clavus meaning 'nail'.

     Cloves have a rich history of use as spice and medicine in Asia, dating back more than 2,000 years. Writings from the Han dynasty in China (207 BC) mention that courtiers were required to keep cloves in their mouths while talking to the emperor, to ensure that their breath did not smell offensive. 

     In India, the clove - known as laung in Hindi, lavang or lavanga in several other Indian languages, and grambu in Tamil and Malayalam - has been used since ancient times by Ayurvedic physicians to treat various respiratory and digestive ailments. 

     The clove is rich in traditionally recognised nutrients, being an excellent source of manganese, a very good source of vitamin K and dietary fibre, and a good source of iron, calcium and magnesium. In addition, clove oil contains a compound named eugenol, which has been proved to provide relief from pain. When the oil is applied topically, it relieves pain from rheumatism, arthritis and other inflammation based pain. 

     Clove oil is an active ingredient in several dental products such as mouthwashes, toothpastes and over-the-counter medicines for toothache relief. Traditional Chinese medicine makes use of cloves in remedies for nausea, diarrhoea, hiccups, fever, toothache and bad breath. 

     The clove, in whole and ground form, is a popular ingredient in Asian, African, Middle Eastern and European cuisines. The clove finds extensive use in Indian cuisine, and is used in the preparation of several spice mixtures, including garam masala, curry powders, and pickling spices. In the West, cloves have a traditional association with apple tarts, sauces, pies and puddings. 

LAUGHING GAS

Nitrous oxide 

     Nitrous oxide, (N₂O), laughing gas is used in surgery and dentistry for its anesthetic (pain-numbing) and analgesic (pain-relieving) properties. The gas gets its common name from the dreamy effect it creates and the giddy laughter it evokes, on inhalation. 

     A colourless, non-toxic and non-flammable gas at room temperature, nitrous oxide smells slightly sweet. It is emitted by bacteria, making it a natural part of the Earth’s atmosphere. Nitrogen fertilisers and animal waste cause bacteria to produce more nitrous oxide than usual. In terms of the concentration in the atmosphere, nitrous oxide comes fourth after water vapour, carbon dioxide and methane. It is a greenhouse gas, which means that it traps heat in the atmosphere, making the Earth warmer. 

     The gas was first synthesised by Joseph Priestly in 1772. However, the first medical experiments using the gas were conducted in 1794 by Thomas Beddoes and James Watt. Watt invented a device to produce the gas and another to inhale it while Beddoes suggested that inhaling the gas could help treat tuberculosis and other lung diseases. Humphry Davy was put in charge of monitoring experiments using the gas. It was Davy who first noted the gas' analgesic effects and published his findings in 1800. However, the world paid no heed. The gas was just popularly used to host 'laughing gas parties'. It was only in 1884, more than 40 years later, that Davy's findings were finally put to use and nitrous oxide was used as an anaesthetic. 

HISTORY OF THE INDIAN CURRENCY

 Rupee (₹)

     Sher Shah Suri was the person responsible for the Rupee. His version of Re 1 in 1540 AD weighed 11.5 grams of silver and was divided into 40 copper pieces or paisa. By the time the British East India Company entered the market in the 1600s, Sher Shah's silver rupee had already become the standard currency atleast in name. Despite many attempts to bring the Sterling Pound to India, the Rupee grew in popularity and was even exported as a currency to other British colonies. 

     And when the British government took over the company territories after the 1857 revolt, the Rupee became the official currency of colonial India, with the head of King George VI featuring prominently on banknotes and coins. In 1947, India became an independent nation. The currency kept its name but changed visually to account of the birth of this new nation. 

How is the Rupee made?

* There are 4 mints that produce legal tender in India. They are in Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Noida. 

* Indian banknotes are made of a balsam wood pulp. Cotton fibres are added to pulp to make it more durable than regular paper. 

* The whole note is then infused with gelatin to give it extra strength. Using watermark technology, an image of Mahatma Gandhi is imprinted onto the sheet during making process. 

* Before the paper dries, a silver thread with holographic imagery is woven into it. The watermark and silver thread make the notes very difficult to replicate.

The Rupee symbol ₹

* The Rupee symbol is a recent development in the history of Indian currency. Until 2009, the word rupee on a banknote was shortened to 'Rs.' to represent Indian currency. The Indian government, Ministry of Finance held a competition for graphic designers to develop a symbol to represent the currency. 

* The winning graphic was a symbol that looks like the Devanagari 'Ra' as well as the English 'R'. The symbol was an instant success and soon became the standard representation of the rupee. 

The symbol was conceptualised and designed by D. Udaya Kumar, a post graduate in Design from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. 

* MRPs and advertisements quickly took to using it and in January 2012 the government issued coinage and banknotes that featured the symbol. 

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

The Ghost Car

Japan’s first Grand Prix since the Second World War was held at the Suzuka circuit. Most people felt that Masao Asano would win. His racing car was a white Austin Healy and its number was 42. The choice of the car number shocked the Japanese as it is considered inauspicious. The Arabic numerals for 42 translate as shi ni, closely related to the Japanese word shingu (‘to die’). But Asano did not care for these superstitions.

Unfortunately, in that race, Asano had an accident and died. The Japan Auto Federation (JAF), which controls the country’s motor sports, reviewed the accident and a few weeks later, banned the use of the number 42 on vehicles used for racing.

The second Grand Prix was held a year later and the JAF developed a new system for determining the running order of the racing drivers. Two teams of spotters took their places in the control tower and recorded the number of each car as it completed a circuit. During the race, the spotters would call out the numbers on the cars as they flashed by, without concentrating on any car number because there were too many cars and they were very speedy.

After the 25-lap race, when the two teams compared notes, they discovered that a car with the number 42 had completed 8 laps. Nobody could tell what kind of car it was or who the driver was.

The Unlucky Number: The Japanese are very superstitious about certain numbers. Four is considered an unlucky number in Japan because it sounds like shi meaning 'death'. This is why there are two readings for the number four — shi and yon. Whenever possible, people try to avoid using the deathly one. License plates  having the digits 42 which sounds like shini ('to die') are strictly avoided. Many housing complexes, hotels and hospitals skip the fourth floor. Forty-two is also said to be themost unlucky age for Japanese men.