Signature Wit #4 - Facts and Bits of Wisdom

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Trivia's are a thing of joy!


 Following is the collection of few publish worthy facts and pieces of wisdom collected from various sources or discovered through rare encounters of serendipity

Don't burn the books

When the Nazi party held its first book burning one of the works destroyed was a 1821 play by Heinrich Heine containing the famous line: "Where they burn books, they will also in the end burn the people" -  “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen"

Captain Vyom

The terms astronauts and cosmonauts are pretty popular. The former is associated with space travelers of USA and the latter is associated with those of Soviet Union and the Russia.
But the lesser know variants are as follows:
The Chinese call their space explorers as Taikonauts or Yuhangyuns
The French call them Spationauts
The Indian equivalent chosen by ISRO is VYOMANAUT
VYOM is a sanskrit word for SPACE
Following names were considered and rejected:

  • Akashagami
  • Brahamandgami
  • Gaganaut
  • Antriksh Yaatri
  • Vishvnaut
  • Brahmanaut

ISRO is considering its first manned space mission by 2021
Though VYOM means SPACE I somehow choose to believe that VYOMANAUT is a tribute to India's first inter-galactic space captain => Capt. VYOM (Kapthan Vyom)

When the peace was disturbed

Whenever riots break out(which should never happen) lot of terminologies are throw around in the media, below is a compilation of few terms and etymology.

 Unlawful assembly: A legal term to describe a group of people with the mutual intent of deliberate disturbance of the peace

 Rout: If the group are about to start the act of disturbance, it is termed a rout

 Riot: If the disturbance has already commenced by the group

 The word "curfew" comes from the French phrase "couvre-feu", which means "fire cover". It was later adopted into Middle English as "curfeu", which later became the modern "curfew"
Its original meaning refers to a law made by William The Conqueror that all lights and fires should be covered at the ringing of an eight o'clock bell to prevent the spread of destructive fire within communities in timber buildings

Perfection

The word 'Perfect' cannot be accurately translated in Sanskrit, or any Indian language. The closest we come to is excellent (Uttam) and complete or comprehensive (Purnatav or Paripurna) The yearning for perfection stems from desire to control and organize the world. Unlike other belief systems, the vedic doesn't require a climax to the world, a happy ending - These are typical of finite narratives, where there is only one life to lead.
We can keep expanding our mind and make an attempt to take a journey from limited reality(mithya) to limitless infinite reality(satya)

 ~Excerpts from 
'My Gita' by Devdutt Pattnaik

Urdu Variants

In Urdu literature:

 Aristotle is referred to as Arastu (अरस्तु) 
Socrates is referred to as Sukrat (सुकरात) 

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Similarly in Urdu
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Buqraat = Hippocrates
Fiisaaghuras = Pythagoras
Iqliidis = Euclid
P.S: In Arabic Plato is referred to as Aflatoon (أفلاطون ‎)

Chinaman

There was a left-hand spinner, a Chinese who bowled the first time. Eddie Chong his name was. And suddenly it was so different that that since it was a Chinaman that somebody had bowled leg spin as a left-hander. Therefore, that particular delivery was called a Chinaman. And for that precise reason, China should start playing cricket.
~ Sunil Gavaskar

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