JUNE 2020 TEACHER REFERENCE PRESENTATION CLASS 7 onwards
TABLE OF CONTENTS JUNE 2020 CLASS 7 onwards Pick of the Month Gap Profiles Global Updates ❖ Point Nemo ❖ Rajkumari Amrit ❖ Tokyo’s Face Kaur Showing Festival ❖ Vishy’s New Role Discover India Around the World ❖ GI Tags to new ❖ Click Art Museum ❖ Alexandria products ❖ Snippet: Salazar’s Pit Viper Born This Month Gappenings ❖ Snippet: Israel’s ‘Rehov Tagore’
Pick of the Month Point Nemo Point Nemo, located in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, is the most distant place on Earth. Surrounded by more than 1,600 miles (around 2,250 km) of ocean in every direction, Point Nemo is farthest from land or island in any direction. There are no human inhabitants anywhere near Point Nemo. Its significance Due to its remote location, Point Nemo has become an ideal spot to crash defunct rockets and satellites. The area, chosen as a ‘spaceship graveyard’ or ‘spacecraft cemetery’, lies four kilometres below the ocean’s surface and is home to defunct and old satellites, space stations, empty fuel tanks, etc. The remains spread across the ocean floor in bits. To prevent the build-up of dangerous orbital space junk that could collide with future satellites and rocket launches, numerous space agencies use the area as a dumping ground because the area has zero human inhabitants and no shipping lanes.
Pick of the Month Its Significance Space agencies all over the world have dumped over 200 spacecrafts into the region since 1971. Defunct satellites and spacecrafts usually burn up while entering the Earth’s atmosphere, however, large satellites or space stations do not completely burn before reaching the Earth’s surface. For such objects, operators try to crash land them in this remote area. By far the largest object to have descended at Point Nemo, was Russia's MIR space lab, in 2001. The name Point Nemo is officially known as ‘the oceanic pole of inaccessibility’. In Latin, Point Nemo means ‘no one’. It is nicknamed Point Nemo in honour of Jules Verne's fictional submarine captain named Captain Nemo, who appears in two of Verne’s novels, ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ (1870) and ‘The Mysterious Island’ (1874).
Pick of the Month Point Nemo Did You Know ❖ Point Nemo’s remoteness makes it an expensive and challenging destination for research. ❖ As Point Nemo is so distant from the nearest landmass, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) are often the nearest humans to Point Nemo. The ISS orbits the Earth at a maximum of 258 miles (416 kilometres). ❖ Meanwhile, the nearest inhabited landmass to Point Nemo is over 1,670 miles (2,700 kilometres). ❖ To land in Point Nemo, space agencies must precisely time the descent of their vehicles to hit the water. ❖ Point Nemo sits within a current called the South Pacific Gyre, which steers away nutrient-rich waters, making it unsuitable for any sort of marine life to survive. It is referred to as the least biologically active region of the world ocean. ❖ Despite its secluded location, Point Nemo is plagued with plastic pollution.
Pick of the Month Point Nemo What was dubbed ‘The Bloop ’ at Point Nemo? In the 1990s, a mysterious underwater sound was picked up near Point Nemo. The sound, dubbed ‘The Bloop ’ was louder than a blue whale. This lead to speculation that it was made by some unknown sea monster and left oceanographers surprised, as the area was unsuitable for marine life. Later, it was learnt that it was the sound of a giant iceberg cracking and breaking away from an Antarctic glacier.
Profiles Rajkumari Amrit Kaur Rajkumari Amrit Kaur was an extraordinary woman who fought for India’s freedom and welfare of the society. She also represented India on a global stage. Early Life Amrit Kaur was born in Lucknow in 1889 into the royal family of Kapurthala, a part of undivided India. Being the only girl among the siblings, Kaur was schooled at one of the foremost institutions of England, the Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset. She later completed her graduation from Oxford University. She was influenced by people like Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a close friend of her father, and an influential member of the Indian National Congress, who visited her father regularly. She wanted to play an active role in the Indian Independence movement. She returned to India in 1918, after the death of her parents. She embarked on her journey of becoming a freedom fighter and a devoted social worker.
As a freedom fighter Profiles Amrit Kaur was greatly fascinated by Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings. The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre and her meeting with Mahatma Gandhi motivated her to join the Indian freedom struggle. She gave up her royal life and went to live in Gandhiji's ashram. Image: Press Information Bureau of India She was part of the Quit India Movement and the Dandi March for which the British arrested her. She joined the Indian National Congress. She focused on a range of political and social issues, such as the purdah abolition, child marriage, right for women’s education, etc. Post Independence Post- independence, she became a part of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru’s government. She was the first woman to hold a cabinet rank. She was appointed as the Minister of Health. In that position, she founded the Indian Council for Child Welfare, to concentrate on the development and the upliftment of women, children and the poor. She was also President of the Indian Leprosy Association and the Tuberculosis Association, Vice President of the International Red Cross Society and Chief Commissioner of the St. John's Ambulance Brigade of India. Later Life She was elected as a member of the Rajya Sabha and served till her death in 1964. She was aged 75.
Profiles What is the significance of Shimla’s Manorville Mansion? Shimla’s Manorville Mansion is a significant historical mansion as it once served as the residence of Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. It witnessed several important meetings between the then British officers and eminent Indian leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Maulana Azad, Sardar Patel and Pandit Nehru in 1945. Kaur donated this house to AIIMS as a holiday retreat and a rest home for its nurses! The main attraction of the mansion is the area where Mahatma Gandhi stayed.
Profiles Rajkumari Amrit Kaur Did You Know ❖ She was an avid sports enthusiast and enjoyed playing tennis, hockey and cricket. ❖ She loved music and could play the piano and the violin. ❖ She played an important role in the establishment of the Kids would be familiar with the ‘All India Institute of Medical Sciences’ (AIIMS), India’s premier medical institution, in New Delhi. ‘All India Institute of Medical Sciences’ (AIIMS) based in ❖ One of her campaigns as Minister of Health was against New Delhi. Introduce them to malaria. one of its key founders, ❖ She was the first Asian woman to be elected as the Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. President of World Health Assembly, the governing body of WHO. ❖ She was recently named by the TIME magazine among world's 100 powerful women.
Global Update Tokyo’s ‘Face - Showing Festival’ Tokyo’s Sumida Aquarium, housed in a complex at the foot of the Tokyo Skytree tower, had organised a Face-Showing Festival for hundreds of spotted garden eels residing in its aquarium, in May 2020. Called ‘chin anago ’ in Japanese, the spotted garden eels are extremely popular in Japan. Why was it organised? The aquarium staff observed a very odd behaviour among the hundreds of tiny spotted garden eels living in the tank ever since the aquarium was closed due to the coronavirus outbreak. They noticed that the eels were becoming used to a largely human-free environment and had started to forget the existence of humans. The eels were also seen avoiding human caretakers since its closure. They were seen burrowing in the sand when staff members approached them to feed. Before the shutdown, the eels were accustomed to streams of people looking into their tanks and rarely hid when approached by visitors.
Global Update Why is it organised? This behaviour of the eels was posing a great task for the caretakers as they were unable to feed the eels and monitor them. Aquarium officials were concerned the eels were reverting to their wild behaviour of burying themselves in the sand of the ocean floor at the sign of any threat. What was the solution? To keep the eels socially engaged, the aquarium launched an event named ‘Face - Showing Festival’, which encouraged people from around the world to video call the eels in an attempt to re-familiarise them with people. They felt the eels needed training to learn that humans are not a threat to them. During the event which happened for several days in May 2020, virtual visitors were asked to wave, show their faces, and speak quietly, as any loud noises could scare and upset the creatures. In this way, the eels could also see the callers. The staff felt this temporary solution would help both the eels and animal lovers to stay connected amid the lockdown time.
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