People

When the first edition of the American poet, Walt Whitman’s, Leaves of Grass was published in 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson commented that it read like “a mixture of the Bhagavat Ghita [sic] and the New York Herald”.

Reginald Dyer, the Butcher of Amritsar, of Jallianwala Bagh infamy, was the youngest son of one Edward Dyer, the man often credited with establishing India's first successful brewery at Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh. It would eventually become Mohan Meakin Breweries.

Akbar, the greatest of the Mughals, could not read or write and was possibly also dyslexic.

After his first glimpse of Nanda Devi in 1948, the American mountaineering pioneer, Willi Unsoeld, dreamt of having a daughter named after the peak. 28 years later, his daughter, Nanda Devi Unsoeld, perished while climbing her namesake.

The person credited with discovering legendary jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald was a Bardu Ali, his name a corruption of Bahad(o)ur Ali. He was the son of a peddler from Bengal who had settled in New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century.

The Panchen in Panchen Lama is a portmanteau of the Sanskrit pandit and the Tibetan chenpo (meaning great).