Interesting facts about India

Friday, January 30, 2009

I wasn't really aware about some of this facts. Do you know that:
  • The 'Place Value System' and the 'Decimal System' were developed in India in 100 B.C.
  • The game of Snakes & Ladders was created by the 13th century poet saint Gyandev. It was originally called 'Mokshapat'. The ladders in the game represented virtues and the snakes indicated vices. The game was played with cowrie shells and dices. In time, the game underwent several modifications, but its meaning remained the same, i.e. good deeds take people to heaven and evil to a cycle of re-births.
  • India has the largest number of Post Offices in the world.
  • India was one of the richest countries till the time of British rule in the early 17th Century. Christopher Columbus, attracted by India's wealth, had come looking for a sea route to India when he discovered America by mistake.
  • Bhaskaracharya rightly calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the Sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart. According to his calculation, the time taken by the Earth to orbit the Sun was 365.258756484 days.
  • The value of "pi" was first calculated by the Indian Mathematician Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century, long before the European mathematicians.
  • Until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds in the world (Source : Gemological Institute of America).
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Google Talk: Translation bots

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Did you hear about this.? Really a very good feature to interact with people from other parts of the world. I love the instant translation.

Send a message in one language and have it instantly translated into another. Just add a translation bot to your contacts using the following format: [from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com. There are 24 bots available:

(ar = Arabic, de = German, el = Greek, en = English, es = Spanish, fr = French, it = Italian, ja = Japanese, ko = Korean, nl = Dutch, ru = Russian, zh = Chinese)

  • ar2en
  • de2en
  • de2fr
  • el2en
  • en2ar
  • en2de
  • en2el
  • en2es
  • en2fr
  • en2it
  • en2ja
  • en2ko
  • en2nl
  • en2ru
  • en2zh
  • es2en
  • fr2de
  • fr2en
  • it2en
  • ja2en
  • ko2en
  • nl2en
  • ru2en
  • zh2en

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