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Digital Library of PM Shri KV Adoor

On This Day

20 March

🇮🇳 In India
1925 Lord Curzon, India's Viceroy between 1899 and 1905, died at London, United Kingdom. The partition of the undivided Bengal Presidency in 1905 was one of Curzon's most criticised moves, which triggered widespread opposition not only in Bengal but across India, and gave impetus to the freedom movement.
1931 Kaviyoor Murali, dalit activist, writer and Folklore Research Person from Kerala, was born. He was an Ambedkarite activist, familiar among all Dalit Activists and Folklore Groups.
2014 Khushwant Singh, author, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and politician, died at New Delhi. His experience in the 1947 Partition of India inspired him to write Train to Pakistan in 1956, which became his most well-known novel.
🌎 Elsewhere
1664 Scientist Robert Hooke, who was the first to visualize a micro-organism using a microscope, was appointed Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London.
1726 Sir Isaac Newton, English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author, died in London at age 84. He is widely recognised as one of the greatest mathematicians and physicists of all time and among the most influential scientists. He was a key figure in the philosophical revolution known as the Enlightenment.
1800 Alessandro Volta reports his discovery of the electric battery in a letter to Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society of London.
1828 Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian playwright and theatre director, was born. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time.
1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The anti-slavery story played an important role in setting the scene for the American Civil War.
1916 Albert Einstein presented his general theory of relativity, one of the most influential theories in Physics, which describes the interdependency of matter on the one hand and space and time on the other.
1939 7,000 Jews flee German occupied Memel, Lithuania.
1966 The football World Cup is stolen while on exhibition in London.
1990 Namibia becomes an independent nation.
1995 In Tokyo, Japan, 12 people died and thousands wounded after members of the religious cult, Aum Shinrikyo, placed containers of leaking poisonous gas sarin on 5 different subway trains.
1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first aviators to circumnavigate the globe nonstop by balloon; they landed the following day in Egypt.
2003 Operation Iraqi Freedom is launched by the US with air strikes on Baghdad, the beginning of the war with Iraq.
2013 James Herbert, English horror writer, died at Sussex, United Kingdom. A full-time writer, he also designed his own book covers and publicity. His books have sold 54 million copies worldwide, and have been translated into 34 languages.
2019 Finland is the world's happiest country, South Sudan is world's least happy, according to annual World Happiness Report brought out on International Day of Happiness.
⭐ Significance
International Day of Happiness is celebrated throughout the world on 20 March. It was established by the United Nations General Assembly on 28 June 2012. The International Day of Happiness aims to make people around the world realize the importance of happiness within their lives.
World Sparrow Day is a day designated to raise awareness of the house sparrow and then other common birds to urban environments, and of threats to their populations. It is observed on 20 March.


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