Invention of the thermometer

In about 1607, Galileo invented an instrument that could measure the rise of water in a glass tube with the rise in temperature. This instrument is called a thermoscope. Later, scientists modified it to add a scale to mark the rise of water. Subsequently, water was replaced with alcohol and mercury.

India – the birthplace of chess

The original word for chess is the Sanskrit chaturanga, meaning four members of an army, which were most likely elephants, horses, chariots and foot soldiers. According to a German Indologist researching on the origin of chess, in the 6th century, the Maukhari rulers of Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh, used to play chaturanga with 16 cabinet terracotta before venturing into military …

Rocketgrams were launched in India to deliver mail and parcels

Rocketgrams are mail delivered by firing crude rockets towards their destinations. Stephen Hector Taylor-Smith, an Indian aerospace engineer, launched the first rocketgram in the 1930s. In the ten-year span of his experiments he made around 270 launches. The first successful livestock dispatch was of a cock and a hen, Adam and Eve, across the Damodar River …