Quidnunc has its roots in the Latin word quid nunc, which means ‘what now’. It refers to a person who indulges in gossiping or someone who attempts to know all. Other words that mean the same as quidnunc are gossipmonger, newsmonger, tattletale, yenta, etc.
The year was 1938. World War II was about to begin. A wonderful invention, which only became ubiquitous with time, happened: The ballpoint pen. The biro, or the first ballpoint pen, was named after its inventor Ladislao José Biro (1899–1985). Biro was a Hungarian journalist and painter. On his visit to a newspaper printing press, he could not help …
A person’s DNA, short for deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule that functions as a storehouse of genetic information. The discovery of DNA was a major breakthrough in medical science. While Watson and Crick gave the actual structure of the molecule, the credit of its discovery and identification goes to Friedrich Miescher. In 1869, Swiss-born Friedrich Miescher …
The Mumbai the world knows today is the result of a series of tremendous changes. Whether geographically, politically, or even name-wise, the city has travelled quite a lot! The Portuguese ruled the city, which they referred to as bombaim – Portuguese for ‘good bay’ – from the year 1534 till 1661. However, things changed in the year 1662, …
The Uparkot fort in Junagadh, Gujarat, is one of the most unique forts in India. And it has its reasons. The Uparkot fort was built by Chandragupta Maurya in the year 319 BCE. The Mauryan Empire declined in 184 BCE, and the fort changed hands. It remained under possession till 6th century CE, and was lost into oblivion for the next …
The people of the Sindh province of current-day Pakistan were the ones who coined the name ‘Mohenjo-daro’. The name, in Sindhi, means ‘the mound of the dead’. Mohenjo-daro, the 5000-year-old ‘modern’ city, of the Indus Valley Civilization, was discovered by Indian archaeologist Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay, better known as R.D. Banerji. While working in the Sindh province, …
