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Bill Cosby and Malaria

American comedian Bill Cosby, now more famous for his cases of sexual assault, used to sedate his victims using a drug called quaalude. Quaalude is a brand name for Methaqualone, a hypnotic sedative first synthesised in India in 1951 by Indra Kishore Kacker and Syed Husain Zaheer, who were conducting research on finding new antimalarial medications. It became popular as a recreational drug in the late 60s and 70s, known variously as "ludes", "sopers" ("soaps") "mandrakes", "mandies", "disco biscuits", etc. It is now banned.

Power of Love

In 2022, the village of Ganeshpur in Bihar, found itself facing frequent 2-3 hour power cuts after sunset. It turned out that the cause of this was an electrician who turned off the electricity supply because he wanted to visit his girlfriend under the cover of darkness.

Earth's best ever villain

According to Steven Spielberg, Bollywood actor, Amrish Puri, was his favourite villain and "the best the world has produced and ever will".

The terrible beast of Punjab

Hugh Falconer, a 19th century Scottish palaeontologist, named a species of extinct elephant-like creatures Dinotherium pentapotamiae which, translated from Greek means "terrible beast [of the] five rivers". The pentapotamiae (penta = five, potamiae = rivers) is a translation of Punjab (panj/panch = five, ab = river/water) which is where the fossils were found.

More perfect than Greek

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have spring from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the

Akbar never denied his mother anything but this …

Ecbar Shaugh [Emperor Akbar] … never denyed [his mother] any thing but this, that shee demanded of him, that our Bible might be hanged about an asses necke and beaten about the towne of Agra, for that the Portugals … tyed [the Quran] about the necke of a dogge and beat the same dogge about the towne of Ormuz. But hee denyed her request, saying that, if it were ill in the Portugals to doe so to the Alcoran, being it became not a King to requite ill with ill, for that the contempt of any religion was the contempt of God.

Belur and brilliant beryls

The name of the gemstone, beryl, probably originates from the Prakrit veruliya and Sanskrit vaidurya- which might be of Dravidian provenance. One theory points its source to the city of Velur (modern Belur, Karnataka). Derivatives such as brilliant and beryllium share these origins.

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