Abhinav Saxena bio photo

Abhinav Saxena

a body of clay, a mind full of play, a moment's life - that is me

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  1. From the earth, the moon, and the sun appear to be of the same size. The sun is roughly 400 times larger than the moon, it also happens to be 400 times further away than the moon. (don’t know if this is a coincidence or there’s a reason behind it)

  2. In China, it is possible that people from 2 different provinces won’t be able to talk to each other because of language differences, but they can share the same newspaper and fully comprehend it.

  3. We build maps in a certain orientation with North on the top, this is just one of the ways of representing the earth. Australia on the top map is also another valid representation. (see how close Alaska and Russia are)

  4. Distance between Asia and North America is 55 miles or 88 KM. More interestingly, there are 2 islands in between named Big Diomede (owned by Russia) and Little Diomede (owned by the US). In winters, water freezes, and you can technically walk from Russia to the US.

  5. Yamuna, which doesn’t have a lot of water in Delhi has more water than Ganga when they meet at Sangam. Why - because most of the central India rivers including Chambal & Betwa join the Yamuna before it meets Ganga. (Yamuna is also cleaner than Ganga at that point because of Chambal - which has remained less polluted because of people’s belief in a mythological curse)

  6. In ancient Persia Ahura meant good diety and Daeva meant false gods. Hindus consider Asura to be demon and Deva to be gods. (Ancient Persians also didn’t have any ‘s’ sound and pronounced it as the sound of ‘h’)

  7. Early life on the earth was anaerobic (i.e. didn’t require Oxygen, in fact, it was harmful to these organisms). There was no free oxygen in the environment either. These anaerobic organisms are still around and can be found in low oxygen environments (ex. bottom of the ocean)

  8. We all know about states like North Korea, East Germany that took inspiration from USSR (~ today’s Russia) and South Korea, West Germany which aligned themselves with the US. However, we don’t know that when India and Pakistan were formed in 1947, Pakistan chose free-markets, capitalistic model, and India chose the socialist model. In terms of the state of the economy, Pakistan was in much better shape than India until radicalization started.

  9. Taiwan is not part of UN, it was till 1971. Reason - Taiwan & China we know, both proclaim to be the China and hence only one of them can be in the UN. Taiwan’s formal name is the Republic of China, and it hosts the ROC government in exile.

  10. Another interesting point - Taiwan is a very small country, and has a mighty enemy. However, it has not only survived but has also flourished - reason lies in the same Cold War policies of the US, they supported Taiwan against communist China.