Who wrote the famous book "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde"?



Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a gothic novella by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886. The work is also known as The Strange Case of Jekyll Hyde, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or simply Jekyll & Hyde. It is about a London legal practitioner named Gabriel John Utterson who investigates strange occurrences between his old friend, Dr Henry Jekyll, and the evil Edward Hyde. The novella's impact is such that it has become a part of the language, with the phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" entering the vernacular to refer to people with an unpredictably dual nature: outwardly good, but sometimes shockingly evil.



The central idea of the book, that one man may have a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ personality, a separation of distinct social and moral traits, seemed to say something about the strain between private and public self, personal desire and social duty, that spoke not just to middle-class professional men of late Victorian English society, but to people around the world. The book is a rare instance of the invention of a modern myth – and the story is often known in outline even by those who have never read the book. Indeed ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ has entered the English language as an idiom, used to describe persons or things of a dual character, alternately good and evil. It has of course been staged and filmed many hundreds of times.



 



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What is the story of Charles Darwin?



DARWIN’S EARLY YEARS



Charles Darwin was born in England on February 12, 1809. His father Robert Darwin was a wealthy physician. During his student days, Darwin dabbled in chemistry, geometry and medicine. Bored of lectures, and turned away by dissections of human bodies, he switched to zoology, and also attended lectures lectures on geology and theology. Later, he enrolled for the Arts in Cambridge, but managed to keep his interest in geology and zoology alive. His favourite pastime was collecting different species of beetles and examining rocks. After his course in Cambridge, he was offered the position of Naturalist on the HMS Beagle, a British Royal Navy survey ship. That was the beginning of an amazing journey.



A VOYAGE THAT CHANGED HIS LIFE



The five years Darwin spent on the Beagle were fantastic. He travelled extensively collecting samples of flora, fauna and fossils. The turning point of his journey however, was the ecologically rich Galapagos Islands. Remember, I come from there. The Galapagos are a group of 19 islands and about a hundred islets off the coast of Ecuador in South America. Darwin’s observation of different species across the islands led to significant findings which helped him arrive at his Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection.



HOW WE CREATURES CONTRIBUTED TO DARWIN’S THEORY



You must be wondering how I’m connected to the whole Evolution Theory. Well, when Darwin went island-hopping in the Galapagos, he realised that our species, just like many others – such as the marine iguanas, finches and mocking-birds on the islands – was not fixed, but had changed with time and local conditions. For instance, my ancestors who had lived on well-watered lands with shorter vegetation had dome-shells, whereas the others who inhabited the dry parts of Galapagos with taller vegetation had longer necks and saddlebacks. Similarly, mocking-birds across different islands had variations in plumage and size and shape of the bill. The iguanas that had drifted to the Galapagos had with time beautifully adapted to life in water to become marine iguanas. When Darwin noted these differences, he realised that stability of species didn’t exist. Instead, they kept evolving using the process of stability of species didn’t exist. Instead, they kept evolving using the process of natural selection and contributing to diversity of life.



THE RUN-UP TO A LANDMARK



After the voyage, Darwin returned to England in 1836 and started putting together his findings. In 1842, he wrote a complete paper on evolution by natural selection, but did not circulate or publish it. In 1848, he wrote a paper on how different species of finches on the Galapagos actually descended from the same ancestor and evolved over time. He kept writing, but mostly kept his papers private. It was at this time that his admirer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace had set sail independently and hit upon the theory of natural selection. He wrote to Darwin about it and sought his advice on how to disclose his own works at this juncture, but was in a dilemma. He contacted Britain’ leading Natural History body, the Linnean Society, and asked for both his and Wallace’s work to be presented simultaneously. Unfortunately, he could not make it to the event because of tragedy on the home front. Darwin had lost his 18-month son to scarlet fever.



SCIENCE, SPECIES, MANY STEPS FORWARD



In 1859, his book “On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” was published. All the 1,250 copies were sold out. Six significantly updated editions followed. The book established the theory of evolution on the basis of biological sciences – that all species evolved from earlier species – and that included humans! He said all living things struggle to survive. They survive because they adapt to the environment and pass on their traits to their young ones. Sometimes, the change can be so drastic that they evolve into a completely different organism. It shocked the world community, since it was widely believed till then that animals were made differently by the same creator. He provided compelling evidence from his research and specimen collection over the years. The book became a major work in the field of evolutionary biology. It stirred debates and discussions in all spheres – science, religion and philosophy.



WHAT AFTER ORIGIN?



Darwin went on to write his next big book “The Descent of Man” in which he established that humans shared on humans shared an ancestor with the apes. The Victorian society of his time however was deeply divided on the subject. It was a huge challenge to orthodoxy, though many renowned thinkers seemed to secretly agree with it. More books such as “Selection in Relation to Sex” followed until health problems overtook his life. Darwin died at the age of 73 and was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, near Sir Isaac Newton’s tomb. Darwin had married his cousin Emma Wedgewood at the age of 29. The couple had 10 children out of which three did not make it past childhood. Three sons George, Francis and Horace became famous scientists and served as Fellows in the Royal Society.



 



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Who invented the escalator?



The escalator is a moving staircase that helps people to move between floors at public places like malls, train, stations, airports etc.



The first idea of “revolving stairs” was patented by Nathan Ames in 1859 in USA, but it never saw the light of day. In the 1890s, American engineer Jesse W. Reno installed an “inclined elevator” at Coney Island, an amusement park in New York City. The 7-feet long conveyor belt was inclined at a 25 degree angle. It was the first example of a working escalator. The term ‘escalator’ was coined by Charles Seeberger, an American inventor, from the Latin word scala for steps and the word ‘elevator’, which had already been invented. He joined hands with the pioneering elevator company, Otis, and produced the first commercial wooden escalator which won the first prize at the Paris 1900 Exposition Universelle in France. Soon, escalators were installed in Europe and USA. As the Otis Elevator Company held the trademark rights to the word ‘escalator’ until 1950, other manufacturers called them by different names like Moving Stairs and Motorstair. Today, Otis and Schindler are the largest makers of escalators in the world.



 



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Who became the first man to circumnavigate the globe, around the equator, without motorised transport?



Walking alone in the permanent darkness of the Arctic winter, or standing face-to-face with hungry polar bears on the barren North Pole, or staring down the barrel of a gun, deep in the jungles of Amazon, high-altitude climber  and Arctic explorer, Mike Horn feels alive at the most unlikely moments.



Impossible is the word, the adventurer has chased out of his vocabulary. Yet, his ‘impossible’ is exactly the reaction his actions elicit. “I don’t do what I do to die. I do what I do because that’s what makes me feel alive,” Horn sums up his adrenaline-filled adventures in the short biography on his website.



Horn, 53, caught adventure bug early on from his father, a professional rugby player. After his father’s death, he gave up the small fortune he had made to chase his dreams of becoming an explorer.



Jumping off bridges and river-boarding down rapids, he worked as a ski instructor and rafting guide in a small village in the Swiss Alps. Till he joined an adventure sports team and scripted some amazing feats of his own.



Latitude Zero



In 1995, he sledged down a 22m-tall waterfall on the Pacuare River in Costa Rica. In 1997, he swam the length of the Amazon river using a hydro-speed board. His first major expedition was Latitude Zero, which bordered on the impossible. Walking, rowing, sailing and cycling alone through the dense Amazon, he became the first man to circumnavigate the globe, around the equator with no motorised transport. A snake bite left him blind for four days. Worse still, he was mistaken for a spy while crossing the jungles of the Democratic Republic of Congo and faced a firing squad. Despite it all, he completed the journey in 17 months, earning him the 2001 Laureus World Alternative Sportsmen of the Year Award.



Walk to the Arctic



Between August 2002 and October 2004, Horn became the first person to travel alone around the circumference of the Arctic Circle, a 20,000 km long journey that he completed in 10 stages: four by sea and six on land. The conditions were brutal. He walked 20 hours a day, dragging a sledge-full of equipment weighing up to 182 kg. Once, a polar bear walked into his tent. Horn scared him away by barking like a dog. Another time, he stumbled upon 9-foot-tall formidable creatures towered over him, breathing down his neck. Horn tackled the situation with Zen-like calm and the animals left him unharmed.



Pole2Pole



On November 2016, he embarked on the 27,000-km “Pole2Pole” journey from Monaco – a three-year circumnavigation of the globe via the South and the North poles. He became the first person to cross the Antarctic continent at its largest via the South Pole. In the second chapter of this expedition, he crossed the Arctic Ocean via the North Pole along with another seasoned polar explorer Borge Ousland on skis and kayaks. In the 87-day-long expedition, 57 days were spent in relentless darkness in the middle of the punishing Arctic winter. With only a dim headlamp to guide them, the explorers trudged through the treacherous landscape manoeuvring their skis through thin ice, sudden crevasses and freezing waters. The duo ran out of rations over the final week and rescuers had to come an meet them with food.



Never say die



Though he courts danger on every expedition, Horn is not reckless. In 2012, after scaling 23,600 feet, he turned back from K2, the second highest mountain in the world, when the conditions turned dangerous. Had he chosen to advance, he would have been caught in an avalanche that claimed the lives of two mountaineers. Horn has stated time and again that he is not afraid of failure. Life is more precious, he believes.



His recent adventures have not been quite the same: the landscape has altered, the ice has grown a bit too thin, and the polar bears have disappeared. Now, he plans to create awareness about climate change through his expeditions.



 



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What is special about Himanjali Sankar?



Himanjali Sankar was only five when she wrote a poem called “Rain”. Her mother loved it so much that she insisted on reading it aloud to family and friends. “She might have lost a few friends over that but it was the start of a writing career for me,” laughs Himanjali, the author of my favourite young adult (YA) books – “Talking of Muskaan” and “The Lives We Tell”. The author was born in Kolkata, or rather Calcutta, which is what the city was called the she studied English Literature at JNU, New Delhi, and taught English at the University of Indianpolis in the U.S.



Himanjali is a master storyteller who traverses the world of homosexuality and mental health in her young adult books with as much ease as she does fantasy-scifi-humour for Middle readers.



Among her favourite authors for children are Roald Dahl, Peggy Parish, Roddy Doyle and Cornelia Funke – some of whom she read only as an adult. “I read a lot of Enid Blyton as a child and was sad that my children never liked her books!” she rues. Among Indian writers in English for children, she loves the work of her contemporaries, Anushka Ravishankar and Asha Nehemiah.



Books by the author




  • The Stupendous Timetelling Superdog (Middle readers)

  • Missing: A Magnificent Superdog (Middle readers)

  • Talking of Muskaan (YA)

  • The Lies We Tell (YA)

  • Mrs C Remembers (for adults)



The writer’s routine



Himanjali prefers not to follow a set for writing. She says, “I write when I can – at night, in the mornings, more on weekends when I don’t have to go to office. I don’t write every day at all. And sometimes I write only in my head when driving on taking a walk in the park!”



Writing like Himanjali Sankar



Himanjali is an editor as well as an author, so she multitasks writing looks, and editing and publishing them. Sometimes everyday writing takes a backseat. “While I no longer write every day, but I think when you are younger it is important if you maintain a schedule for writing if you wish to become an author some day,” she says. Here are her tips for budding writers.



Definitely maintain a daily schedule with daily targets for you to write towards.

Keeping a diary. It is always a good idea – write about your day, include unusual details, and definitely, observations about your friends and family.

Writing is supposed to be fun and pleasurable activity. It should help clarify your thoughts and understand the world a little better. So you must certainly not do it if you are not in the mood or even if you see it as a chore that has to be done.



Bet you didn’t know that she loves putting blue nail polish or her toes because she looks down she feels like she is getting a peek at a hidden ocean somewhere under her feet!



 



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Why Anita Vachharajani is famous?



Anita Vachharajani was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) and has lived here all her life. She considers herself a Bombay girl to the core. “I think I first started in Class III, trying to put together a story with illustrations. My writing was poor, which didn’t matter to me. But the fact that I had not been able to draw well upset me!” reminisces the writer. You see, she was surrounded by the most gorgeous Russian picture books her mother used to buy her from roadside stalls on her way to work. “My standards for visuals were clearly high. I think I wrote my first poems in Class VI, and luckily, I have very faint recollections of my work from those days,” she laughs.



In fact, she confesses she fought being a writer – due to a lack of confidence – for the longest time. At 29, when she was at home for health reasons, she began thinking of children’s books, and had her first book published at the age of 31.



Anita’s inspiration



Anita says she is inspired by a great deal of sources. “If I had to name two, it would be Russian picture books (published in the former Soviet Union, and translated into English and other languages) and ‘Target’, a wonderful children’s magazine that was edited by Rosalind Wilson, a British educationist in India. The magazine’s delightful illustrations and its humanistic values have stayed with me.” Naming some of the remarkable contributors to “Target”, she says, “One of my favourite writers was Sigrun Srivatsava, and Atanu Roy, Jayanto and Ajit Ninan were the most memorable illustrations for me.”



The writer’s routine



Anita loves researching and nose-diving into projects. She likes to do a lot thinking and research before the actual writing process begins. “That is fun but it tends to become an obsession. So, often, I have to pull myself out of the rabbit-holes of research,” she adds.



A writer’s life is not easy. Anita confesses that it takes her a long time to warm up to work, and she’s easily distracted as well. See, it’s not only students who get distracted! “It doesn’t help, though, because my process is slow to begin with – ideas have to rattle around in my head for really long, and then suddenly, something good, something small yet solid will pop up one day,” says Anita.



But Anita is happy to celebrate her ‘slowness’. “It’s hard to explain this to family and friends, and I’ve decided that after years of being ashamed of my slow pace, I am now going to celebrate it. Any creative work needs the luxury of time and space to grow. We need to be kind to ourselves and give ourselves time for creative growth.”



Writing like Anita Vachharajani



Write, simply write, is what Anita has to say to all you budding writers out there. “Writing is a muscle, like art, Maths or spelling. The more you use the muscle, the more it – and you – will grow. If you can, write in a journey every day,” she adds.



“Young writers often feel impatient writing for no audience, like if the story or paragraph you’re writing now is not meant to be submitted (to a school magazine or a creative writing class), then if there is any point in doing it.” But she insists that the idea behind writing regularly is to write for the sake of writing. To simply put pen to paper. “When you practise Maths or spellings, for example, there’s no point asking, “But who will see this?’ You practise because doing sums or spellings often will make you better at them. Writing regularly is the same, but it’s definitely challenging to find the discipline to do so,” she explains.



If you do write a journal, but are worried about siblings, parents or friends taking a peek, you can always blog, she suggests, adding, however, that writing long-hand – with pen and paper – is a great tool and has huge cognitive and mental-health benefits.



Anita says, “I believe that only aimless creativity can lead to productive creativity. You need to write to lots of fun stuff, lots of rubbish, all for yourself, till you reach a point where you feel that finally you’re saying what you want to say how you want to say it. That’s why writers have drafts and more drafts!”



But apart from building the writing muscle, writers need to have skills such as observation, empathy and a decent vocabulary. “So it makes sense to ride buses, to observe all sorts of people and wonder about them, to read lots of books and to be kind – to oneself and to the world!” she says.



Bet you did not know that Anita loves cities and forests. She loves walking around and exploring places, she loves trivia, she loves black coffee, and she feels that if she ever went back to school, she’d hope to pay more attention to her science education, instead of just chomping through literature and history.



Anita’s Vachharajani’s books




  • Amrita Sher-Gil Rebel with a Paintbrush

  • Amazing India – A State-by-State Guide

  • Tara Tambe, Forest Friend!

  • The Puffin Book of Spooky Ghost Stories



 



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Who is the first female amputee to climb Mount Everest?



Silent and unblinking, the mountains stand as reminders of courage and fortitude. When we gaze upon them, we can find our deepest strengths and fears reflected upon their formidable walls. As Sir Edmund Hilary put it, “It’s not the mountains we conquer, but ourselves.” And, 31-year-old Arunima Sinha did just that when she became the first female amputee to climb the tallest mountains in each of the seven continents in the world.



A national-level volleyball and football player, Sinha lost her left leg and severely damaged her right one in a horrific train accident in 2011. She was flung off the train in the middle of the night when she attempted to fight off thieves on the Padmavat Express. Before she could recover from her fall, a passing train crushed her left leg. In excruciating pain, she lay immobile on the tracks. Rodents gnawed away at her injured leg. Sinha left tricking out of her, but she was not ready to quit.



The gritty athlete lay on the tracks for over seven hours before she was found by the local villagers in the morning. They rushed her to the hospital but the doctors could not save her leg. She was fitted with a prosthetic left leg, and metal rods were inserted in her right leg.



The accident shattered her dreams of playing volleyball and football. But not her will. Lying in her hospital bed for four months, she refused to wallow in self pity. She met with the legendary Bachendri Pal as soon as she was discharged from the hospital. Pal inspired her. And with a renewed sense of purpose, she signed up at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute to become a mountaineer.



Mountaineering is a mammoth task even for the fittest of individual. But for Sinha with her prosthetic leg and implants, it was even more challenging. She trained for two years at the institute, before setting off on her own to conquer the mighty Everest.



Mount Everest



It looked impossible from the start. It took her three hours to reach the Everest base camp on account of her injuries – a distance that was a breeze for other mountaineers.



And things got only tougher from there. On beginning her ascent, her prosthetic leg kept slipping on Everest’s green-blue ice. Somehow, she managed to base camp 3. Ahead lay the real challenge – the Death Zone, notorious for its fatalities.



Her flashlight shone upon the bodies of dead mountaineers who had perished trying to conquer Everest. The spine-chilling sight helped cement her resolve. She vowed to scale the peak as a homage to the departed.



The moment of reckoning came at the rocky Hilary Steps, a 12-metre cliff, just before the Everest peak. Sinha was running out of oxygen. Her guide advised her to abandon the mission and head back. But she decided to brave the insurmountable odds. Slowly, but steadily, she continued to climb, and on the historic day of May 21, 2013, Sinha reached the top of the world.



But the journey was far from over. On her descent she finally ran out of oxygen and was about to collapse when a fellow mountaineer offered her a spare oxygen cylinder. Sinha returned to the base camp safely. The braveheart was conferred with the Padma Shri (the fourth highest civilian honour in India) in 2015. She received the Tenzing Norgay National Adventure Award in the same year.



Mountain Vision



And since she hasn’t looked back. She conquered Kilimanjaro in Africa. Elbrus in Europe, Kosciuszko in Australia, and Denali in North America among others. On January 1, 2019, she brought glory to India by climbing Mount Vision, the highest peak in Antarctica.



Sinha’s adventures are far from over. She now plans to open a sports academy for physically challenged athletes from economically weaker sections. More power to you Arunima!



On top of the world




  • Sinha was on a mission to complete the Seven Summits challenge, which involves climbing the tallest mountains on each of seven continents.

  • She covered Kilimanjaro in Africa, Elbrus in Europe, Kosciuszko in Australia, Denali in North America, Mount Aconcagua in South America, Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia, and Mount Vinson, the highest peak in Antarctica.



 



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