50 Amazing Facts about India | Amazing Facts 4U
- The Somnath Temple located on the western coast of Gujarat, India, is one of the twelve sacred shrines of the God Shiva. Temple was destroyed amazing 16 times by Muslim invaders. It was rebuilt in November 1947.
- Akbar, the father of Shahjahan who built the Taj Mahal tried to start his own religion by combining the features of Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam. That religion amazingly had only 4 followers. His Christian wife converted to that religion but his Hindu and Muslim wife both refused to be converted.
- Unlike what is commonly believed, Shahjahan did not cut off the hands of the workers of Taj Mahal. They were simply put under oath to never participate in the construction of any similar project.
- The Taj Mahal’s walls were decorated with actual gemstones. They were plundered by the British. If you look closely, you can see the sockets where the gems were placed.
- War of 27 years fought between the Maratha Empire and the Mughal Empire from 1681 to 1707 was the longest recorded military engagement in the history of India.
- The amazing fact is India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th Century. Subsequent plundering by the British made it lose its eminence.
- The Dutch East India Company was in fact the first corporation in existence, created in 1602. They were the first company to issue stocks and is the grandfather of all corporations today. It was also the most valuable company ever in world history. With a value of 78 million Dutch Guilders, adjusted to today’s value it was worth about $8 trillion.
- The Last Supper painting by Da Vinci has an orange depicted in it, which was brought to Europe by Portuguese traders from India in the 15th century and were in fact unknown at the time in Europe.
- The British East India Company purchased the city of Mumbai from Charles II of England for an annual rent of £10 (the equivalent of £ 2000 at the Current Rate).
- Coffee remained Yemenese monopoly until the 17th century when Baba Budan, a Sufi, smuggled 7 seeds strapped to his chest to India.
- The Swedish East India Companies in fact imported more tea than the British East India Company and smuggled it to Britain.
- The Dowry system, a system where the bride’s family is required to pay the negotiated amount to the Bridegroom’s family was not part of Indian marriage until the Europeans introduced the concept. Today almost 10000 dowry-related death cases are reported per year.
- During the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Indian shipbuilders were one of the best in the world. British fought French and American navies using ships built by Indians (Wadia’s of Bombay).
- The amazing fact is that during the war of 1812, an American poet who was sailing on a ship built by Wadia’s in Bombay, India composed the American national anthem – “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
- Until the 18th century, India in fact produced almost all the world diamonds.
- The game of snooker (Billiards) was invented in Ooty India. The first official set of rules were drafted in 1882 Ooty, Tamil Nadu, India.
- Gin and Tonic were first served up by the British Army in the 19th Century in India. The drink was created to help treat and prevent malaria due to the quinine in the tonic.
- The amazing fact is that George Washington was half Indian as his mother Mary Ball Washington, was of Indian origin both her parents being Indians who met on a ship travelling to the USA. This was published in Newsweek, March 10th Issue in 1968.
- The Himalayas are the youngest mountain range in the history of the earth at about 50 million years old and are still rising.
- “Hindu Kush”, the 500 miles long mountain range between Afghanistan and Pakistan literally means ‘Kills the Hindu’, a reminder of the days when Indian slaves from the Indian subcontinent died in the harsh weather typical of the Afghan mountains while being transported to Central Asia.
- It has been proved in the world scientific community that the pioneer of radio wireless communication was Prof. Jagdish Bose from India and not Marconi. Unfortunately, Prof. Bose was denied credit for his invention.
- The mean value theorem was first described by a Kerala mathematician named Parameshvara 400 years before its modern form was stated by Augustin Louis Cauchy.
- When the British in the colonial city of Delhi introduced a bounty on cobras to eliminate them from the city due to their growing population, it resulted in a cobra population boom. The bounty was greater than the cost of breeding a cobra, and the citizens were breeding them to sell to the government. The term “Cobra Effect” was then coined for such schemes that exacerbate the problem.
- The Persian Gulf used to be known as the Pirate Coast. Until 1853, tribes would raid trade ships from India. Nowadays, the same families that ruled those tribes now rule the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, some of the richest countries in the world because of their petroleum.
- The first railroad in India was constructed by two Indians (Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and Jaganath Shunkerseth) and not the British.
- Helium was in fact discovered in India by French astronomer Jules Janssen in 1868.
- Dr. Anandi Gopal Joshi resisted all attempts to convert to Christianity for acquiring western medical education and became the first Indian woman to obtain a medical degree in 1886.
- The first-ever fingerprint bureau in the world was started in Calcutta in the year 1897.
- Female literacy in India in 1901 was in fact just 0.6 percent.
- “Letter to a Hindu” was a letter written by Leo Tolstoy in 1908 in which he argued that the only way for India to gain independence from Britain was through non-violent resistance. Gandhi read this letter that helped shape his philosophy of non-violence.
- About 1.3 million Indian soldiers served in World War I (1914–1918) for the Allies after the United Kingdom made vague promises of self-governance for its support. Britain broke its promises after the war. Around 74,000 Indian troops were killed in action during the war.
- The two most prolific man-eating animals in history a tiger and leopard responsible for 400+ deaths each were both hunted and killed by the founder of India’s oldest national park and tiger reserve, Jim Corbett.
- Indian hockey team toured New Zealand in 1934. They played 48 matches in New Zealand, Australia and Ceylon and they won all. They scored amazing 584 goals, with just 40 goals scored against them. Captain Dhyan Chand scored 201 of those 584 goals.
- In 1937, the University of Kerala, then a princely state in India, tried to bring in Albert Einstein as the Vice-Chancellor. They offered him 6,000 rupees per month (equivalent to $500,000 per month). Einstein declined the offer.
- The “Great Gama” from India in fact has been the only undefeated wrestler in the world during his career spanning 50 years. Bruce Lee was one of his fans.
- Amazingly on 18 January 1942, it was decided by the Axis powers to divide the Indian subcontinent after defeating the British in India. Germany was to take the part of British India roughly corresponding to northern and western parts of modern-day Pakistan, while the rest of British India was marked for Japan.
- In 1943, British PM Winston Churchill in the cruelest way let millions of Indians starve to death in a man-made famine by refusing to release food rations and instead of exporting food out of India.
- India had the largest all-volunteer force in history during WWII with over 2.5 Million soldiers fighting Rommel’s Afrika Corps as well as in the Middle East. They had 30 Victorian Cross’s awarded.
- India is one of the few countries in the World, which gained independence without violence.
- In one of the biggest political blunders in 1955, Jawaharlal Nehru the prime minister of India rejected an offer to India for a permanent UN Security Council seat to avoid being embroiled in the cold war politics.
- There was a war between India and Portugal in 1961, which India won and consequently, Goa State became part of India.
- Of the top 30 deadliest recorded cyclones in history, 22 were in fact located in the Bay of Bengal, resulting in roughly 2.3 million deaths in India and Bangladesh.
- Albert Einstein in fact said: “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”
- Mark Twain said: “India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition.”
- Hu Shih, former Ambassador of China to the USA said: “India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.”
- The United States Constitution is actually the world’s shortest written Constitution with only 7 articles and 27 amendments, compared to India’s 448 articles and 100 amendments.
- Indian army ranks at 4th most deadly army in the world after USA, Russia, and China.
- India has the second-largest pool of engineers, doctors, and scientists in the world.
- India is famous for medical tourism while Indian software engineers are a class apart in the world.
- With 500 million speakers, Hindi is the fourth most widely spoken language in the world. India ranks second in the list of English-speaking countries in order of total speakers.
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