Edmund Hillary and the Three Poles Challenge

We all know of Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand as one of the first two to climb the world’s highest summit, Mt Everest. He also had another feather on his cap: He was the first person to have reached the three extremes – Mt Everest, the North Pole and the South Pole. Thus, the Three Poles Challenge was born.

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The Indian dairy diaries

Tales of Indian dairy production will be incomplete without the story of Amul and Operation Flood. Operation Flood was launched in 1970 by the National Dairy Development Board. It was the biggest dairy development program of the world. The project revolutionized dairy farming in India, propelling the country from being dairy-deficient to the world’s largest milk producer, in 1998.

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The Washington connection

It was on this day, in the year 1877, that the American daily, The Washington Post, was first published. It is the oldest existing newspaper in the area, and is the most widely circulated newspaper published in Washington, D.C. Needless to say, The Washington Post is one of the leading dailies in the United States of America.

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This footballer was murdered for scoring an own goal

Andrés Escobar was a Colombian footballer. He was a defender. In the 1994 FIFA World Cup match against the USA, he inadvertently scored an own goal. Columbia lost to the USA 1-2. After ten days he was killed by 12 bullets fired at him by three gunmen in Medellín, Columbia. It is believed that he was killed for his own goal in the ill-fated match against the USA.

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Once Gandhiji asked, ‘What is hockey?’

In 1932 Los Angeles Olympics there were three teams, India, Japan and the USA, in men’s hockey. India won the gold by defeating Japan and USA respectively by 11–1 and 24–1. When it came to raising funds for sending the team to Los Angeles, a journalist representing the Indian Hockey Federation approached Mahatma Gandhi to issue an appeal to the masses. Gandhiji’s only reply was, ‘What is hockey?’

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