On this Day in History

Zohra Sehgal, a respected Indian film and theatre actress, choreographer and dancer, was born on 27 April 1912 in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, to Mumtazullah Khan and Natiqua Begum. She had six siblings.   She studied at Lahore’s Queen Mary College. After finishing college, she went to Europe and, unusual for her time, enrolled at Germany’s Mary Wigman’s ballet school. In... Read More →

Shankar Singh Raghuvanshi was born on 15 October 1922. Together with Jaikishan Dayabhai Panchal, he was one half of the duo Shankar-Jaikishan, a leading music director pair of the Hindi film industry in the 1950s and 1960s. Even after Jaikishan’s death at a rather young age in 1971, Shankar continued to use the name of Shankar-Jaikishan in films. He died... Read More →

In a country obsessed with cricket, talented sportspersons from other fields often find it hard to get the recognition that even very ordinary cricketers get. Some exceptions to this unfortunate trend include Viswanathan Anand in chess, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi in tennis, P.T. Usha and Milkha Singh in athletics, Dhanraj Pillay and Dhyan Chand in hockey, and Baichung Bhutia... Read More →

One of the greatest batsmen of the modern era and India’s most adored sportsperson, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar was born on 24 April 1973 in Mumbai. His father, Ramesh Tendulkar, was a college professor, and his mother, Rajni, was employed in an insurance firm. Sachin Tendulkar was introduced to cricket by his older brother, Ajit, who was also responsible for the... Read More →

“Not to have seen the cinema of Ray means existing in a world without seeing the sun or the moon.” — Akira Kurosawa It was a tribute from one artiste to another, both giants of cinema. Their styles of filmmaking were quite different, but just like the Japanese genius is regarded by many critics as the greatest film director from... Read More →

Kanan Devi, a popular singer and actress and the earliest female star of Bengali cinema, was born on 22 April 1916 in Bengal.  Since her family’s finances were not good, Kanan had to enter the world of cinema—then still called bioscope in some quarters—when she was just 10, at a time when it was highly unusual for females to be... Read More →

“From the year . . . [1504], when Kabul was conquered, until this date [1526] I had craved Hindustan. Sometimes because my begs (high-ranking officers) had poor opinions, and sometimes because my brothers lacked cooperation, the Hindustan campaign had not been possible and the realm had not been conquered.” — Emperor Babur, on conquering India, in his memoirs  In the... Read More →

At least eight people were feared dead in Finland when the plane they were in crashed into the ground, officials said (20 April). The passengers in the small Comp Air 8 kit aircraft, which caught fire on hitting the ground, were reportedly parachutists. Three people who parachuted from the plane are believed to have survived the mishap. They were treated... Read More →

Nara Chandrababu Naidu, president of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and chief minister of Andhra Pradesh between 1995 and 2004, was born on 20 April 1950 in the Chittoor district of the state. He was the eldest child of Karjoora Naidu, a farmer, and Ammannama. He had two younger sisters. Not educated himself, Karjoora Naidu ensured that his children got a... Read More →

Edward James Corbett, better known as Jim Corbett, a British hunter who became a famous conservationist and writer, was born in Nainital, now a town in the state of Uttarakhand’s Kumaon region. He died on 19 April 1955 in Kenya. His parents, Willam Christopher and Mary Jane Corbett, had come to Nainital in 1862, where Christopher had the job of... Read More →