Quick quiz – Birthplaces

A trivia quiz on non-obvious birthplaces:

The real challenge is getting the answer without referring to the net.

Answer in Facebook’s comments page. I will post the correct answers after about 24 hours-say 2200 IST on 1 Sep.

• In which city was Shashi Tharoor born?
• Which recent US Presidential candidate was born in the Panama Canal Zone?
• Which prominent tennis player from the US was born in Germany in 1959?
• Which town in Austria was Adolf Hitler born in?
• Which country was the Australian cricketer and coach Dav Whatmore born in?
• Which state of the US was Barack Obama born in?
• Which prominent politician from Tamil Nadu was born in Kandy in Sri Lanka?
• In which city was Rajiv Gandhi born?
• Which Nobel-prize winning physicist was nominally a Tamilian but was born in Lahore?
• On which Greek island was Prince Philip, (the present Duke of Edinburgh) born?
• In which city was General Pervez Musharraf born?
• In which city was Field-Marshal Manekshaw born?

Answers:

• London, UK
• John Mc Cain (Obama’s opponent in 2008)
• John McEnroe
• Brunau (or Brenner)
• Sri Lanka
• Hawaii
• MG Ramachandran, CM for several years.
• Mumbai
• Chandrashekhar (Nobel Physics winner in 1983)
• Corfu
• Delhi
• Amritsar

References: these birthplaces can be checked from Wikipedia or other standard references in the articles on the concerned persons.

The world’s shortest international rail journeys

Elsewhere on this blog you can read about the world’s shortest international flights, 8 minutes between small cities in Germany and Switzerland here .

For scheduled rail services, the record would be held by the frequent metre gauge shuttles between Johor Bahru (JB) in Malaysia and Woodlands in Singapore. This is about 3 km.

Trains no longer run to the main terminus in Singapore. From JB there are connections to all parts of Malaysia and the Thai border.

At 1.08 you can see a metre gauge brake van of the same type used in IR.

The timetable can be seen here.

Until recently, Indian railfans could see ex-IR YDM-4s on the express trains between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.

Now we come to another short international rail journey of about 50 metres on standard gauge – more of a joke, really:

http://www.andrewgrantham.co.uk/the-worlds-shortest-international-railway/

As mentioned in the text, only children are carried as passengers on this short run between the Czech Republic and Germany. As they are Schengen countries, there are no border checks.

You may notice that the background music shifts from the Czech national anthem to the German one as the border is crossed.

Pentas and Hexas

You have heard of quadruplets, quintuplets and hextuplets. Or quadrilaterals, pentagons and hexagons.

The Penta has various connotations. Like the Pentagon. Or Brazil winning the soccer World Cup for the 5th time in 2002. Or even the dreaded Khalistani terrorist named Surjit Singh Penta, and the long-gone Hotel Leela Penta.

And there are penta locomotive combinations on the line through the Braganza ghats to Goa:

Note the “station” of Dudhsagar Water Falls, with is nothing but a viewing platform with signs.

This impressive array of power is needed for trains going downhill, particularly as they need additional braking power.

However, these are not the most locos on a train on the Indian Railways. Admittedly the six-pack you see below is quite rare.

Most of you have heard the one about “How do you get 4 elephants into a Volkswagen Beetle? Two in the front and two in the back”.

And the desi version involving the venerable Ambassador, where the 6 elephants are accommodated three in the front and three in the back.

Remember that now:

Video by Mr Rajendraprakash Saxena.

This was taken above Palasdhari at the start of the Bhor Ghat incline to Lonavla. Goods trains are normally hauled by electric locos, though here we have three WDG-3As in front and a triplet of WCG-2 howlers at the back. Not unlike howler monkeys. Sadly, you cannot hear them today.

Batting on all 5 days of a Test

RJ Burns took his appointed place on the short list of those who have batted on all 5 days of a Test:

In some cases there would have been curtailment of play, but some play was possible on each of the 5 days. This does not include Tests which finished in 4 or less days. While there have been Tests played over 6 or more days, there is no such instance there.

Oddly enough, this did not occur until 1960 and Jaisimha had the record to himself until 1977. Several others followed Boycott in quick succession, although there was a 15-year gap between 1984 and 1999.

The lowest totals are by Pujara (74) followed by Jaisimha with 94.

In at least one case, the player (Boycott) can be said to have played a major role in his team’s win. There are some where his team lost (Lamb, Griffith, Burns).

 

A quick refresher course in civics

For those who need a quick revision of civics:

Also note these changes:

https://scroll.in/latest/942469/centre-releases-new-map-of-india-showing-union-territories-of-j-k-and-ladakh?fbclid=IwAR2N-ylGa6abjquhBL9wIDjRoPgZzVzOrIygoo7FhEGaHpMU_9ajoPXXcQE

Also: Recruitment to the J & K cadre of the IAS, IPS and other services is stopped. Future postings would be from the Union Territory (AGMUT) cadre. This also means that AGMUT officers who fall foul of their seniors can be posted to more exotic places such as Ladakh.

Airline PJs

Airlines, like many other organizations, are often known by their initials. In some cases the original form may not be well known, as in QANTAS = Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.

Here is a large collection of PJs based on the names and initials of airlines. Beware that many of these are quite bad, and also that many  refer to unknown and defunct airlines. I have added a few more below the link:

http://cargotracking.utopiax.org/jokes3.html

PIA (Please Inform Allah) is usually followed by AI (Allah Informed).

BOAC: Bend Over Again Christine (Google for Christine Keeler or Profumo scandal).

Pan Am, officially Pan American Airways: Pandemonium Scareways.

GARUDA (Indonesia): Good Airline Run Under Dutch Administration

And TWA has associated jokes like “Do you want TWA coffee or TWA tea?”, although not all their passengers would have been familiar with the American word here.

There are a few similar ones like these for railway companies.

 

Peter Siddle and the PJs

Peter Siddle has been in and out of the Australian team.

In 64 Tests before the start of the current Ashes series, he has scored 1080 runs and has taken 214 wickets. In the current Test, he was the second top-scorer and made 44 batting at number 10.

He has taken 8 fivers and a hat-trick, and also holds one batting record as he is the only  batsman to have scored two fifties in a Test while batting at No 9.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/player/7898.html

Older cricket fans would remember Raju Bharatan and his horrible puns. He would have a field day with Peter Siddle, as his surname rhymes with many other words (not all of them polite): diddle, fiddle, middle, piddle, riddle, griddle etc.

The British media had this to say after one of his good performances: “Peter goes from second fiddle to fecund Siddle”.

Not quite up to the standard of Shashi Tharoor, but a good try.

The lonely line through Balochistan

Many of us in India have vaguely heard of the line from Quetta to Zahidan in Iran, which was completed about a century ago. The location can be seen here in the north-west corner:

This map is from 1930 and only shows the line up to Nushki. This is a better map from the 1960s:

A good summary of its history up to 2007 by Owais Mughal can be seen here:

https://pakistaniat.com/2007/07/13/the-trans-baluchistan-railway/

Also see the timetables from the 1930 NWR TT:

Note the distances: 68 miles (109 km) from Yakmach to Nok Kundi, a further 86 miles (138 km) to Mirjawa across the border and a further 52/84 to the terminus then called Duzdap.

And from the 1944 Bradshaw:

At that point the line was closed beyond Nok Kundi, though it was revived as part of the war effort.

Now we have something more up to date, in the form of 2 videos making a travelogue by a Pakistani blogger. These are fully in Urdu, though anyone who can understand Hindi should not have a problem.

The narrator’s style may be a little irritating, but you do see a good view of life on the Pakistan-Iran border including the last PR station at Koh-e-Taftan and the nearby road crossing along other bits like the last mosque and the last ATM in Pakistan. (This station seems to have come up after 1947).

Note the single train between Quetta and Zahidan which is a mixed train with very limited passenger space. It is interesting to see the large volume of Iranian consumer goods being imported here.

The latter video is not about the railways but concentrates on the manual transfer of goods across the border.

 

Footnote: we hear a lot of Gwadar and its port nowadays. Did you know that it was NOT part of British India but was an exclave of Oman until Pakistan took over in 1957, long after Independence.

Update in 2021:

Biking along this route from Taftan to Quetta in 2020.