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Ahoy, people. 

My avid and varied reading, coupled with an intense desire to share them, has led to the existence of this blog. Here, I share a tiny fraction of the thoughts I have, as a virtual medium of fact-sharing. 
Visit, read, and enjoy. And give me your valuable feedback.

 Until then,
SSV

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April Fools' Fooling Around

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April fools' day is one of the weirdest, vaguest and controversial celebration(?) days that is, by some, so ceremoniously celebrated. What does it even offer? Let us dig deep... HOW IT ALL STARTED... There are many popular, unverified and disputed claims. Some are: EARLIEST ENGLISH  A disputed association between April 1 and foolishness is in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales (1392). In the "Nun's Priest's Tale", a cock Chauntecleer is tricked by a fox on Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two . Readers apparently understood this line to mean "32 March", i.e. April 1.  However, it is not clear that Chaucer was referencing April 1, since the text of the "Nun's Priest's Tale" also states that the story takes place on the day when the sun is in the signe of Taurus had y-runne Twenty degrees and one , which cannot be April 1.  Modern scholars believe that there is a copying error in the extant manuscripts and that Ch...
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One more Chandra in the sky...

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The Chandra X-ray Observatory, previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility (AXAF), is a space telescope launched on STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999. Chandra is sensitive to X-ray sources 100 times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope, enabled by the high angular resolution of its mirrors. Since the Earth's atmosphere absorbs the vast majority of X-rays, they are not detectable from Earth-based telescopes; therefore space-based telescopes are required to make these observations. Chandra is an Earth satellite in a 64-hour orbit, and its mission is ongoing as of 2014. Chandra is one of the Great Observatories, along with the Hubble Space Telescope,Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991–2000), and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Chandra has been described as being as revolutionary to astronomy as Galileo's first telescope., NASA named the third of its four "Great Observatories" after Chandrasekhar. This followed a naming contest which attracted ...
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When a British Geologist became "The Father of Indian Prehistory"- Robert Foote

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In the year 1858, a 24-year-old Robert Bruce Foote was brought in as a replacement for Henry Geoghegan, an employee of Geological Survey of India (who died of a sunstroke while surveying Trichy), to dig up gemstones for their treasures. But seldom did he know about the legacy he would leave...   Robert was born on 22 September 1834 in England and worked in geological surveying and delivered geology lectures in College of Engineering Guindy, Madras. It was in Madras he met his mentor and friend, Rev. Peter Percival. Peter, a social reformer priest, missionary-turned-educator who worked with Arumuka Navalar for the translation of Bible then turned completely to linguistics and literature, initially creating friction with other Wesleyian missionaries. In 1862, Robert married Peter's daughter, Elizabeth Anne.  In 1863, the year after his archaeological survey began, Robert struck a goldmine (figuratively) - he discovered the "first conclusive Paleoloithic...
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