history on S Anand

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 04:36:05 +0000

I didn’t know that Nehru rescued Mountbatten’s daughter from the crowd when hoisting the flag on Independence Day (1947).

Something I learnt when prompting Nano Banana Pro to “Create a sketch note about the night of the Indian Independence on 15 Aug 1947 - keep it funny yet grounded in history.”

Once again, I can’t find any spelling mistakes.

Videos you can learn from

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Berkeley webcasts of their courses.
Google TechTalks.
Authors@Google.
LongNow seminars about long term thinking.
UCTV Video on Demand.
Nova.
Computer History Museum.

Comments

Michelle 5 Dec 2006 12:39 pm: Do you have books I can learn From? Top 10 non-fiction books?

Summer of 69

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Summer of ‘69: a line-by-line history of the song, by its writer Jim Vallance.

10 most puzzling artefacts

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:00:00 +0000

10 most puzzling artefacts.

Blogger at Google

Sun, 09 Feb 2003 12:00:00 +0000

A blogger’s first week at Google. Ovidiu Predescu. via GoogleBlog

Top 10 books of the millenium

Fri, 27 Dec 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Top 10 books of the millenium. Notables: Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Uniforms of airline stewardesses

Sat, 14 Dec 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Interesting site on uniforms of airline stewardesses. via boing boing

India in 1000 AD

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 12:00:00 +0000

India in the eyes of Al Beruni, an Arabic historian around 1000AD. It is interesting to note the reversal of several customs among Hindus and Muslims. Particularly that “In all consultations and emergencies they [Hindus] take advice of the women.” via Narayana Murthy’s comment

Why history unfolded differently across continents

Mon, 30 Sep 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Broad and insightful talk by Diamond on why history unfolded differently across continents. Note that he’s talking about why and not how. Based on his book: Guns, Germs and Steel.

Parallels between the Roman and the American empires

Thu, 26 Sep 2002 12:00:00 +0000

The Guardian on the parallels between the Roman and the American empires.

Annual reports online

Mon, 22 Apr 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Free annual reports online.

Surrealism

Tue, 08 Jan 2002 12:00:00 +0000

Surrealism.

What does your name mean

Mon, 15 Oct 2001 12:00:00 +0000

What does your name mean? More info about asian names.

100 worst ideas

Tue, 18 Sep 2001 12:00:00 +0000

The 100 worst ideas of the century. Prohibition tops the list, followed by the decision that led to Y2K, and telemarketing :-)

Archimedes foresight

Thu, 26 Jul 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Archimedes may have anticipated a bit of Cantor’s work on infinity. In mathematical history terms, that’s about as big as the ancient Greeks invented aeroplanes.

Ancient History Sourcebook

Sun, 01 Jul 2001 12:00:00 +0000

The Ancient History Sourcebook contains many ancient books in full-text (English), such as The Odyssey, The Code of Hammurabi, etc. Also included are the Manusmriti and Chanakya’s Arthashastra. Chanakya has also written a lesser known Niti Shastra.

History of Economic Thought

Sun, 01 Jul 2001 12:00:00 +0000

New School’s History of Economic Thought website is an excellent collection of contrasting viewpoints on business and economics.

Inverness

Sun, 05 Nov 2000 12:00:00 +0000

The next stop was Inverness. I didn’t know Inverness had any history to it. It wasn’t till we got there that I learnt that the Inverness castle was where Macbeth (of Shakespearean fame) ruled from. In fact, it turns out that Macbeth was a really nice king. There was this barbarian who fought him, lost, and turned to the English for help – who of course were delighted, and they killed Macbeth. This barbarian stupidly signed a document saying that Scotland would pay tributes to England, and that’s been the source of all the trouble.

The other thing to see, of course, was the famous Loch Ness monstor, or Nessie as the locals like to call it. We made one mistake, though. We landed there on a Sunday. As we got off the bus, we learnt that no tours operate on Sundays. The tourist information center was closed. I wanted to buy batteries for my camera, and the shops were largely closed. The only practical thing that was open was MacDonald’s, so we picked up a meal.

Fortunately, a guy called Tony Harmsworth came along on his van. He conducts guided tours to the Loch Ness, so we hopped on with about 8 others. Tony was apparantly involved with the Loch Ness centre since its founding, and had in fact headed it. So he was very knowledgeable about the history of the monstor.

Loch Ness in itself is beautiful. It’s a huge lake, very calm, and apparantly very deep. On one end is the sea. On the other end is the Urquhart castle. It’s a stone castle that was destroyed by the Jacobites (who had the habit of destroying everything they saw, actually). I have a sneaking suspicion Tolkien borrowed quite a bit of inspiration from the Loch Ness and the Urquhart castle. It could well be the remnants of Isengard – or the fort of the Uruk-Hai orcs.

The monster itself, of course, is just a myth. The local folks always thought there was a large fish in the waters. In 1933, Mrs. McRoy saw something large – about 6 to 9 feet – that she thought was a whale. Journalists caught on, and blew it up to a monstor. A Mrs. and Mr. Spicer claimed to have seen a snake-like monstor walking past the road. (We drove past this spot.) A vet student told his mother that he broke his bike because he fell off in surprise when he saw a dinosaur-like creature. Since he was a vet student, journalists believed him. A famous reporter found hippo pugmarks. In the end, it turned out to be a hoax using his hippo foot-shaped ash tray. Then this reporter rigs a photograph that looks like a dinosaur peeping out of the lake. That’s a hoax too, using a toy submarine and a piece of cardboard. Many of the other ‘monstor’ photographs turned out to be fakes – in one case, a labrador fetching a piece of stick (see if you can spot the face of the dog). In the 1987, operation Deep Scan searched the whole lake, and found 3 suspiciously large living objects, but they were no where near large enough to be a monstor. Sure, there’s probably some big fish down there, though.

The rest of the evening was at a local pub with some loud music on. Then we hopped on to the bus, reaching London at 7AM on Monday.

In time to get back to class.

Edinburgh

Sat, 04 Nov 2000 12:00:00 +0000

Scotland’s wonderful. We left on Friday night at 10:30PM on a ‘coach’, as they call it. A bus, really. We would’ve gone by rail, except that because of the recent flooding, trains weren’t available to Scotland. The coach was far too uncomfortable to sleep, until exhaustion overcame me at around 2AM. We reached Edinburgh at 7AM. (Incidentally, it’s pronounced Edinburough, though if you heard a Scot say it, you would be forgiven for thinking it’s ‘Edinbarra’)

The cold there is to be felt to be believed. The forecast said 3 degrees, but it could well have been sub-zero. We stood shivering at the bus stop, waiting for the next bus that would take us to the hostel where we’d booked dorms. The place was called “The Edinburgh House Hostel”. So we knocked at 1, Craiglockhart Terrace, and a lady opens it.

“Excuse me, is this the Edinburgh House Hostel?”

Stares a while. “No, this isn’t exactly a hostel. Wait a minute.”

So we wait a minute. A man in underwear appears. “Come in, come in.”

“Excuse me, is this the Edinburgh House Hostel?”

“Uh, well, um, yeah, kindof. Would you like a room?” He had just been woken up, and wasn’t at his brightest.

“We already have a reservation. We would be staying one night.”

“Ah, very fine. That would be 15 pounds, then.”

“But we already booked this place for 12 pounds!”

After that, the conversation degenerated to chaos, and we finally sorted it out. A guy called John, who lives in Canada, and probably owns the place, had confirmed the booking for us over e-mail. The guy in underwear (Tom) didn’t know about it. Anyway, he said “Here’s your room. Here’s the bathroom. Here’s the kitchen. Good night!” and went back to sleep. There might come a time that you’ll be fazed with plumbing concerns whichever place you’re in. If that happens, you can visit Sarkinen Plumbing web site or similar ones.

An Australian girl called Kim, who stays in the same house, said it was just their house, which they had let out during a festival season, and were now using it as a boarding house of sorts. You could tell. It looked like a normal house, except with bunkers.

Scottish bus drivers are crazy. They insist on having us give the EXACT change, failing which you cannot get on a bus. No cards, nothing. After having struggled with that a bit, we managed to get to Princes Street, the main street in Edinburgh. Edinburgh has these hop-on hop-off tour buses that go around the city giving commentary. You can get on and off at any point. Our first stop was at Edinburgh Castle, where we met William.

William (not his real name, I’m sure) had painted half his face blue, had long hair, and was dressed in armour. He even had a sword. If none of this sounds familiar, you haven’t seen Braveheart. (Incidentally, our tour guide tells us that William Wallace is supposed to have been 6'7". ) He was collecting donations for children with leukemia, and we donated liberally in exchange for a snap with him. We gave the inside of the castle a skip. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. We went, instead, to a weaving exhibition, which showed the history of the Scottish kilt. The Scottish dress is basically a skirt of sort (the kilt), and a cloth you tie to the shoulder. It started as a blanket that you wore when you moved around, but became a fashion item later. These things cost over 500 pounds today. We also got snaps of ourselves in these kilts at the exhibition.

Our next stop was Arthur’s Seat, which is a hill that has a great view of Edinburgh. Being the great athlete that I am, I could climb up about 30m before I was panting. We did manage to get close to the top, though. The lovely thing about the UK (perhaps all of Europe) is that the colours are so bright that, even when people dress in greys and browns, the scenery is splendid.

It was dark by 4:30PM. The evening was spent window shopping, and in my case, eating anything that I could find. Good, as it turned out that I had to skip dinner. The neighbourhood pub told us at 7:05PM that they served dinner only up to 7PM. Strange country!