Shanti Devi was born in a happy Delhi family in 1930s. However, she didn’t stay happy for long. When she was four years old, she started insisting that her mother and father were not her true parents. She claimed that her name was actually Ludgi and her true family lived in a completely different city. She claimed she had died giving birth to a child and gave very specific information on her husband and family life.Shanti’s worried parents set...
The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, are acknowledged to have invented and built the world’s first successful airplane and made the first controlled, powered and sustained flight in 1903.However, in 1895, an Indian, Shivkar Talpade, a drawing teacher from JJ School of Art in Mumbai, is said to have flown an aircraft, Marutsakha, on Girgaon Chowpatty.Talpade is said to have relied on an ancient text to build his model aircraft. Now, throwing...
The Delhi iron pillar is testimony to the high level of skill achieved by ancient Indian iron smiths in the extraction and processing of iron. The iron pillar at Delhi has attracted the attention of archaeologists and corrosion technologists as it has withstood corrosion for the last 1600 years. The several theories which have been proposed to explain its superior corrosion resistance can be broadly classified into two categories: the environmental...
by Calvin FrazerON DECEMBER 28, 1929, the British steamship Talma was off the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal, en route from Calcutta to the Far East. The weather was calm and clear. Toward seven in the evening an extraordinary display of luminosity was seen in the surrounding sea.“At first,” says the captain’s report, “what appeared like small globules of phosphorescence rising from below and breaking at the surface were observed. Later these...
This temple is located in Deshnoke, 30 kms from Bikaner, Rajasthan. This is famous as Rat Temple. The rats are very sacred in this temple. There are many 1000s of rats here. These rats are considered as holy and not as pests. It is believed that there are around 20,000 rats here. They are seen everywhere. Neither the rats nor the devotees are scared of each other. Devotees and rats share a special bond.This place is free of Plague or any...
The people of the town claim that ever since the deity’s idol was set up in the village around 150 years ago, no one has experienced theft or any such grievances.However, there is some discrepancy about the exact nature and number of crime instances.Many point out that there has not been a theft in their time, while others note that thieves are always attempting to rob them but that their deity always sends the items back to them.On the other...
When ice melts in the glacial tarn of Roopkund, located 5,000 metres above sea level in Chamoli district, Uttaranchal, hundreds of corpses can be seen floating. Thus gets exposed a mystery that dates back to more than 60 years and has begun to be understood only recently.In 1942, a forest guard chanced upon hundreds of skeletons at this tarn. The remains have intrigued anthropologists, scientists, historians and the local people ever since....
Shivapur is a small place in Pune in Maharashtra about 180 kilometres east of Mumbai. which is famous for its levitating stone. The interesting fact about the stone is , if 11 people touch their finger to the stone and shout the name “Qamar Ali Darvesh”, the stone flies up in the air. This is a huge stone weighting around 200kg. This claim is yet to be scientifically proved.According to popular belief Qamar Ali was a famous Sufi Saint and...
The retreat of the Aryan invasion theory has been accompanied by the rediscovery of the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame, though many scholars are still unaware of the connection of the river with the Vedas. Recent excavation has shown that the great majority of Harappan settlements were east, not west of Indus. The largest concentration of sites appears in an area of Punjab and Rajasthan along the dry banks of the Sarasvati (now called the Ghaggar)...
This tradition goes back to the time of Emperor Asoka, who reigned in India from 273 B.C. He was the grandson of Chandragupta who was the first to unify India. Ambitious like his ancestor whose achievements he was anxious to complete, he conquered the region of Kalinga which lay between what is now Calcutta and Madras. The Kalingans resisted and lost 100,000 men in the battle. At the sight of this massacre Asoka was overcome. For ever after...
JODHPUR: A deafening sound heard at 11.25 am in Jodhpur on Monday sent panic waves among the residents. The incident prompted people to enquire from the control room about any explosion. Initially, rumours spread about a "sonic boom" or an ammunition accident in army area but defence personnel denied it. On being contacted, defence spokesperson Col SD Goswami, refused any such explosion in army area. As far as Air Force is concerned, they...
The distant village of Kodinhi, Kerala has a secret. Not a particularly hidden secret, mind you—it’s actually pretty hard to miss. The village’s claim to fame is the abnormal amount of twins born there. Kodinhi only has around 2,000 families, yet there are 250 sets of twins officially registered there. In fact, there could be many more—experts estimate there could be as many as 350 sets of twins in the area. It gets stranger. It is estimated...