Will be irregular in posting stuff now. Real busy these days with end of term submissions coming up. You may send your contributions at rahulbhaskar1986@gmail.com to keep the blog alive. They will be acknowledged :)

5 Off the Last Ball!!

The infamous underarm delivery of 1981 in the Australia-New Zealand Match was technically a no-ball, because Australia had one too many fielders outside the field restriction line.

Me and PSR have started a quizzing blog. Do visit.

The Prophet

In 1937, Modern Review of Calcutta carried a letter, under the pen-name Chanakya, that warned members of the Congress Party against Nehru, then party president, declaring that he had "tendencies towards autocracy" and needed to be firmly checked before he "turns into Caesar". It emerged many years later that the letter was written by Nehru himself.

Quizzer's Block!!

Nothing worthwhile to post today.

Lucifer's Editor

Richard Stallman notably produced the Emacs editor; its popularity rivaled that of another editor vi, spawning the editor wars; Stallman's humorous take on this was to jokingly canonize himself as "St. Ignucius" / "St. IGNUcius" of the Church of Emacs.

The Church of Emacs formed by Richard Stallman is a joke, and it refers to vi vi vi (which is 666 in Roman numerals) as the "editor of the beast".

Outsourcing!!

Bangalore Torpedoes or Bangalores are anti-personnel mine clearing charges originally used during WWII. Bangalores were first used extensively by invading Allied troops during the Normandy D-Day Invasion during WWII, and quickly got a reputation both for their tremendous explosive power, and for their danger to the troops who had to handle them! The torpedoes were developed by the Indian Army engineers at Bangalore, hence the name.

In 'Saving Private Ryan' you do hear the soldiers yelling "Bangalores".

The Best a Man can Get !!

Gillete was a unit described by Theodore Maiman as an early measure of laser output power. The measure was simply the number of razor blades through which the laser could burn a hole. Due to the relative uniformity of razor blades manufactured by The Gillette Company, it had some usefulness as a rough comparison.

For more of these weird measurement units, go here.