Monday 22 March 2010

Pointless Trivia

During my preparation for these interviews, I came across a lot of facts which I wasn't aware of. Not that they are of any great use, but they make interesting reading. So here goes:

- Jamshedpur is the only city in India without a municipality. The responsibility for its conservation and maintenance is entirely assumed by Tata Steel.

- IBM initially manufactured coffee machines.

- The original design for the Indian national flag that Gandhi was presented with included two colours. Red for Hindus and green for the Muslims. In the center was a traditional spinning wheel, symbolising Gandhi's goal of making Indians self reliant by fabricating their own cloth. The design was then modified to include a white stripe in the center for other religious communities and as a background for the wheel. Later, to avoid sectarian associations with the colour scheme, saffron, white and green was chosen to represent sacrifice and courage, peace and truth and faith and chivalry, respectively.

- Zimbabwe is the only country in the world with six official currencies: Botswana pula, British pound, Euro, South African rand, United States dollar and Zimbabwean dollar.

- The capital of Sri Lanka is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte and not Colombo.

- Nokia started off as a company manufacturing toilet paper.

- Monopsony is the peculiar market condition in which you have a single buyer and multiple sellers. An example could be where the government is the only buyer of various health care schemes.

- The Times of India headquarters are at Delhi and not Mumbai.

- Chennai is known as the 'Detroit of India' as it manufactures 60% of India's automobiles.

- Aurangabad is the beer capital of India.

- Canada is thrice the size of India with twice the population of Mumbai.

- Blog is actually a contraction for the term 'web log'.

- The Mumbai airport is the third busiest in Asia after Singapore and Bangkok.

- Thailand is the only Asian country to never be colonized.

- It is impossible to scratch the sole of your foot whilst holding your breath.

Quote for the day: "When faced with two choices, simply toss a coin. It works not because it settles the question for you, but because, in that brief moment when the coin is in the air, you know what your heart secretly hopes for."

Post Script: I made the last trivia bit up. Hope you fell for it ;)

2 comments:

Two Paise said...

I did. Hook, line and sinker! :D

Shawn Francis said...

you are not the only one :)