On This Day

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Important events of history that took place in India and elsewhere on today’s date.

11 July

🇮🇳 In India

1956 Amitav Ghosh, an Indian author was born. The Circle of Reason, The Shadow Lines and Sea of Poppies are some of his books.

1967 The author of The Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri, an American-Indian author was born.

2000 Noted Punjabi author Amrita Pritam was honoured with the highest award for Punjabi literature, the Shatabdi Samman.

2003 Bhisham Sahni, Indian writer and playwright died.

🌎 Elsewhere

1817 The first predecessor of the bicycle is demonstrated by German inventor Karl Drais who completed a 14 km test run in less than an hour on his revolutionary Laufmaschine, also known as Draisine, a two-wheeler without pedals.

1960 American author Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird was published and became a classic, noted for its sensitive treatment of a child's awakening to racism and prejudice.

1975 Archaeologists unearth an army of 8,000 life-size clay figures created more than 2,000 years ago for the Emperor Qin Shi Huang.

1979 America's first space station, Skylab, is destroyed as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere over the Indian Ocean.

1987 The world population crossed the five billion mark. The United Nations decides to celebrate July 11 as Population Day.

2023 Milan Kundera, Czech-born French writer, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, died in Paris at age 94.

⭐ Significance

World Population Day is an annual event, observed on July 11 every year, which seeks to raise awareness of global population issues. The event was established by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programme in 1989.

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