History

Rajiv Gandhi's cabinet was also known as the Doon Cabinet due to the presence of many of his fellow Doon School alumni (Doscoes).

(Robert) Clive of Plassey was an opium addict who committed suicide at the age of forty nine in 1774.

Robert Clive was gifted an Aldabra giant tortoise in the mid-1700s which he named Adwaita. It passed away about 250 years later in 2006.

The first cases of HIV infection in India occurred among prostitutes in Madras (Chennai) in 1986.

The word for key in many Indian languages is a variant of chavi (चाबी in Hindi, চাবি in Bengali, चावी in Marathi, சாவி in Tamil, etc.) which comes from the Portuguese word for key, chave.

After solid, liquid, gas, and plasma, the fifth state of matter is known as Bose-Einstein Condensate. BEC is named after the Bengali physicist, Satyendranath Bose and Albert Einstein.

The countryside of Sonargaon, located a few miles out of Dhaka, features the Taj Mahal Bangladesh, a replica of Shah Jahan's Agra original. It was commissioned by a Bangladesh film-maker.

Chandragupta hailed from a family or tribe of peacock (mayura/मयूर in Sanskrit) tamers whence came his practical surname of Maurya.

Humayun's advisor and Akbar's guardian (and regent), Bairam Khan's second wife was Babar's granddaughter, Salima Begum. After Bairam Khan was murdered in 1561, she became her cousin, Akbar's, second wife and Mughal Empress. Akbar's first wife, Ruqaiya, was his cousin as well.