My Science School

1. Celebrating the millennium

The London Eye is also known as the Millennium Wheel. It was designed and built by London-based architects Julia Barfield and David Marks of Marks Barfield Architects. The duo came up with the design in response to a competition organised in 1993 by The Sunday Times and Great Britain's Architecture Foundation to build a new monument in London to commemorate the new millennium. Construction of the London Eye began in 1998 and the monument was formally inaugurated by then British Prime Minister Tony Blair on December 31, 1999. However, it did not open to the public until March 9, 2000 due to a technical snag.

2. Europe's tallest wheel

When it opened to the public in 2000, the London Eye was the tallest ferris wheel in the world with a height of 443 feet and a diameter of 394 feet. Today, it is Europe's tallest cantilevered observation wheel (a cantilevered wheel is supported only on one side).

The Eye is also one of the most popular tourist attractions in the United Kingdom, drawing over three million visitors annually.

3. A slow ride

The Wheel rotates at a speed of 0.9 kmph, completing one full rotation in about 30 minutes. It does not usually stop to pick up passengers. The rotation is so slow that passengers can easily embark and disembark from the capsules. The Wheel does stop for differently abled and elderly passengers so that they can get on and off comfortably.

4. The story behind the 32 pods

The London Eye has a total of 32 air-conditioned pods, with each pod weighing about 10 tonnes and holding up to 25 people. Each of the pods represents one of London's 32 Boroughs and are numbered 1 to 33. Number 13 is excluded for superstitious reasons. On a clear day, passengers in the capsule can see up to 40 km in all directions from the London Eye.

5. A temporary attraction?

When it was constructed, the London Eye was intended to be a temporary attraction with a five-year lease. However, in December 2001, the operators submitted an application to the Lambeth Council (the local authority of the London Borough of Lambeth) to give the Eye a permanent status. The application was granted in 2002 and the London Eye lives on.

 

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Humayun's Tomb, situated in Delhi, is the grand mausoleum of the Mughal emperor Humayun. Built in 1570, Humayun's Tomb is situated in a complex spanning 27 hectares that also houses other monuments such as Nila Gumbad, Isa Khan's tomb, Bu Halima, Afsanwala tomb complex, Barber's Tomb, and the Arab Serai, the complex where the craftsmen employed in the construction of Humayun's Tomb stayed.

1. Commissioned by a queen

Humayun's Tomb was commissioned by his wife. Haji Begum post the Mughal emperor's demise. It is said she called for architects from Persia and asked them to build something spectacular that the world would remember. The tomb was designed by Mirak Mirza Ghiyas and his son, Sayyid Muhammad. Emperor Akbar, the son of Humayun, oversaw the entire project

2. The first garden tomb

The monument is the first garden tomb to be built in the Indian subcontinent. It is an example of the charbagh style, a four quadrant garden with the four rivers of Quranic paradise represented by waterways. The main tomb is located in the centre of the charbagh. The four quadrants are further divided into smaller squares by pathways, leaving us with 36 squares in all. This 36-square design is typical of later Mughal gardens.

3. An unique combination

Humayun's Tomb is the first monument to use the unique combination of red sandstone and white marble. While the tomb is made of rubble masonry and red sandstone, white marble has been used as cladding material to provide a degree of thermal insulation and weather resistance. It has also been used for the flooring, door frames, lattice screens/jaalis (a screen made of perforated stone usually in an ornamental pattern), eaves and the main dome.

4. Dormitory of the Mughals

It might be called Humayun's Tomb, but the monument is often referred to as the 'dormitory of the Mughals', as over 150 graves of Mughal family members can be found buried in the cells of the garden-tomb. Since the graves are not scripted, it is difficult to know the names of the people buried there.

5. Inspiration for the Taj

 Humayun's Tomb was the first of the many dynastic mausoleums which became synonymous with Mughal architecture. It inspired several major architectural innovations by the Mughals and culminated with the construction of the Taj Mahal in Agra by Shah Jahan, who drew inspiration from the architecture and design of Humayun's Tomb.

 

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With approximately 3 million people affected, this earthquake was the most devastating natural disaster ever experienced in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Roughly 250,000 lives were lost and 300,000 people were injured. About 1.5 million individuals were forced to live in makeshift internally displaced person camps. As a result, the country faced the greatest humanitarian need in its history.

The earthquake registered a magnitude 7.0; that’s a high level of energy at the point of impact. Because it occurred at 6.2 miles below the surface, a shallow depth, its powerful energy had a devastating effect at ground level.

The epicenter of the quake was near to Port-au-Prince, the capital city, with more than 2 million people in the metropolitan area. Many of Port-au-Prince’s multi-story concrete buildings collapsed in a deadly heap because they were poorly constructed. There were no building codes enforced.

 

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The word “Holocaust,” from the Greek words “holos” (whole) and “kaustos” (burned), was historically used to describe a sacrificial offering burned on an altar. Since 1945, the word has taken on a new and horrible meaning: the ideological and systematic state-sponsored persecution and mass murder of millions of European Jews (as well as millions of others, including Romani people, the intellectually disabled, dissidents and homosexuals) by the German Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945. 

To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community. After years of Nazi rule in Germany, during which Jews were consistently persecuted, Hitler’s “final solution”—now known as the Holocaust—came to fruition under the cover of World War II, with mass killing centers constructed in the concentration camps of occupied Poland. Approximately six million Jews and some 5 million others, targeted for racial, political, ideological and behavioral reasons, died in the Holocaust. More than one million of those who perished were children.

 

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Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, tsunami that hit the coasts of several countries of South and Southeast Asia in December 2004. The tsunami and its aftermath were responsible for immense destruction and loss on the rim of the Indian Ocean.

The quake caused the ocean floor to suddenly rise by as much as 40 meters, triggering a massive tsunami. Within 20 minutes of the earthquake, the first of several 100-foot waves hit the shoreline of Banda Aceh, killing more than 100,000 people and pounding the city into rubble. Then, in succession, tsunami waves rolled over coastlines in Thailand, India, and Sri Lanka, killing tens of thousands more. Eight hours later and 5,000 miles from its Asian epicenter, the tsunami claimed its final casualties on the coast of South Africa. In all, nearly 230,000 people were killed, making it one of the deadliest disasters in modern history.

Since the 2004 tsunami, governments and aid groups have prioritized disaster risk reduction and preparedness. Only three weeks after the tsunami, representatives of 168 nations agreed to the Hyogo Framework for Action, which paved the way for global cooperation for disaster risk reduction. Since then, ocean floor earthquake sensors have been installed to trigger early warnings, and many local communities have been trained in evacuation and disaster response.

 

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The 1994 plague in India was an outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague in south-central and western India from 26 August to 18 October 1994. 693 suspected cases and 56 deaths were reported from the five affected Indian states as well as the Union Territory of Delhi. These cases were from Maharashtra (488 cases), Gujarat (77 cases), Karnataka (46 cases), Uttar Pradesh (10 cases), Madhya Pradesh (4 cases) and New Delhi (68 cases). There are no reports of cases being exported to other countries.

In the first week of August 1994, health officials reported unusually large numbers of deaths of domestic rats in Surat city of Gujarat state. On 21 September 1994, the Deputy Municipal Commissioner of Health (DMCH) for Surat city received a report that a patient had died seemingly due to pneumonic plague. The DMCH of Surat alerted medical officers in the area where the patient had died. Later that day, a worried caller informed DMCH about 10 deaths in Ved Road residential area and around 50 seriously ill patients admitted to the hospital.

News of the plague spread through Surat city through the night of 21 September 1994. Ill-prepared, medical shops quickly exhausted stocks of tetracycline. This led to panic with people fleeing hospitals fearing infection from other sick patients.

This triggered the biggest post-independence migration of people in India with around 300,000 people leaving Surat city in 2 days, for fear of illness or of being quarantined.

 

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The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel.

The resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment, with the deposition of radioactive materials in many parts of Europe.

The accident destroyed the Chernobyl 4 reactor, killing 30 operators and firemen within three months and several further deaths later. One person was killed immediately and a second died in hospital soon after as a result of injuries received. Another person is reported to have died at the time from a coronary thrombosisc. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was originally diagnosed in 237 people onsite and involved with the clean-up and it was later confirmed in 134 cases. Of these, 28 people died as a result of ARS within a few weeks of the accident. Nineteen more workers subsequently died between 1987 and 2004, but their deaths cannot necessarily be attributed to radiation exposured. Nobody offsite suffered from acute radiation effects although a significant, but uncertain, fraction of the thyroid cancers diagnosed since the accident in patients who were children at the time are likely to be due to intake of radioactive iodine falloutm,9. Furthermore, large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and beyond were contaminated in varying degrees.

 

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On August 18, 1931, the Yangtze River in China peaks during a horrible flood that kills 3.7 million people directly and indirectly over the next several months. This was perhaps the worst natural disaster of the 20th century.

The Yangtze River runs through southern China, one of the most populated areas on Earth. The region’s people, most of whom lived at subsistence level, depended on the river for water for their personal and farming needs. In April, the river-basin area received far-above-average rainfall. When torrential rains came again in July, the stage was set for disaster. The Yangtze flooded over a 500-square-mile area. The rising waters drove 500,000 people from their homes by the beginning of August.

Much of the disaster may have been averted if flood-control measures had been followed closely. The Yangtze carries large amounts of sediment, which accumulates in certain areas of the river and must be cleared regularly. However, with much of the area’s resources devoted to civil war at the time, the river was neglected.

 

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1. In memory of the martyrs

The India Gate was formerly called the All India War Memorial. This war memorial stands for nearly 70.000 soldiers of the British Indian Army who died between 1914 and 1921 during the First World War and the Thing Afghan War. When the foundation stone of the memorial was laid in 1921 by Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught units of the Army from cross India had arrived to attend the event. Even though the foundation stone was laid in 1921, it took over a decade for the monument to be constructed

2. Lutyens' design

The war memorial was designed by Sir Elwin Landseer Lutyens, an English architect known for designing several war memorials in Europe. Lutyens was also the chief architect of present-day New Delhi. Lutyens designed the India Gate as a secular memorial, free of religious and culture specific iconography. The 42 metre-tall structure is often compared to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France. The monument built using red Bharatpur stone, spans 30 feet and has India written on both sides at the top of the arch. One can find a shallow domed bowl at the top of the monument. This bowl was intended to be filled with burning oil on special occasions. However, it has rarely been used.

3. Inscriptions on the walls

The names of nearly 13,000 soldiers who perished during the wars are found inscribed on the walls of the India Gate. The list of names, along with the regiment they served and their date of death, can be found on the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the international organisation which maintains the martyrs list of World Wars, their monuments, and graves.

4. The eternal flame

At the base of the India Gate, one can find another memorial called the Amar Jawan Jyoti (Flame of the immortal soldier). This memorial was constructed after the Indo-Pak war of 1971 to commemorate the soldiers who lost their lives during the war. It was inaugurated on January 26, 1972 by then Prime Minister of India. Indira Gandhi. The monument, which stands on a marble pedestal has 'Amar Jawan inscribed on all four sides of the cenotaph atop which stands a rifle on its barrel with the helmet of an unknown soldier on top. Four urns can be found around the pedestal of which one holds a continuously bunting flame. DIA

5. Republic Day parade

Until 2020, each year on Republic Day, the Prime Minister and the President of India would visit the India Gate to pay tributes at the Amar Jawan Jyoti. After this, the parade would start from the Rashtrapati Bhavan and pass through the India Gate.

 

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