The name of what casino, famous in its own right, took on another use in work by mathematicians John von Neumann and Stanislaw Ulam at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the 1940s?
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The Casino de Monte-Carlo in Monaco lent its name to Monte Carlo methods, a type of computational algorithm that enables mathematicians to counter-intuitively use randomness to solve problems that do not involve any randomness. Ulam and von Neumann's work on these algorithms was classified at the time and required a codename, so they used the Monte Carlo, where Ulam's uncle was an avid gambler.
X is regarded as an immortal in the Hindu mythology & one of the eleven Rudras. He was among one of the four survivors on the Kaurava side in the Kurukshetra war. Identify X
-a particular cut of meat, usually veal, used in Italian and French cooking, usually cooked in wine or other sauces, or
-a type of bivalve mollusc that is prized both for its meat that is sold as seafood and for its symmetric, fluted, fan-shaped shells?
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Scallop.
The cut of meat is known as scallopine in Italy and escalopes or médaillons in France.
Scallop meat is highly sought after by seafood aficionados, and some are farmed in aquaculture. The shells with their radiating, fluted ornamentation have been used since ancient times as motifs in art, architecture, and design.
What five word phrase (and its variants) have the companies BCCL and ARG Outliers separately applied for a trademark? They did so in November 2016 and January 2017 respectively, resulting the companies going at each other’s throats, legally speaking.
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"The Nation Wants To Know" - BCCL (Times Group) owns the TV channel 'Times Now' and ARG owns 'Republic TV' (managed by Arnab Goswami) which launched in May 2017. Here's the Latest on the matter.
St. Burchardi Church is a nearly thousand-year old church in Halberstadt, Germany, just a short walk away from the famed Halberstadt Cathedral.
On February 5, 2024, fans flocked to the church to bear witness to a moment they’d been waiting for for two years. Another such moment is expected to occur in 2026, and there will be quite a few more after that.
What’s going on behind that unassuming stone face?
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A specially built organ in the church is currently playing a performance of the musical piece As Slow As Possible by composer John Cage (best known for his experimental piece 4'33" - 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence and ambient noise.) The performance is expected to last 639 years, having begun in 2001 and set to end on September 4, 2640.
February 5th this year marked the first time in exactly two years that a new note was played, and the next note change is expected on August 5, 2026.
The origin of term X dates back to 16th century England, when spirits were taxed at different rates depending on their alcohol content. Spirits were tested by soaking a pellet of gunpowder in them and then setting the pellet on fire. Id X, a term commonly seen on alcohol bottles.
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Proof - as a measurement of alcohol strength. Higher alcoholic beverages would catch fire, which would serve as "proof" & invite higher tax from the authorities. Read More.
In the 1860s, Corsican chemist Angelo Mariani formulated Vin Tonique Mariani, a wine containing a little special ingredient that was said to give it medicinal properties. Mariani claimed it would “restore health, strength, energy and vitality” to those that drank it – and to be fair, it did receive glowing endorsements from many notables of the time, including Thomas Edison, Ulysses Grant, and even Popes Leo XIII and Pius X (Pope Leo actually awarded Mariani a Vatican gold medal for inventing it.)
Naturally, this being the late 19th century, Mariani’s recipe was swiftly duplicated and recreated by others to sell copycat products – including enterprising American pharmacist X, who added yet another special something to the formula. He named the resulting concoction after himself and marketed it as a panacea, accompanied with fantastic claims of it being “a most wonderful invigorator of the sexual organs”, among other things.
Late 19th-century prohibition laws forced X to come up with a non-alcoholic version of the drink, though, and eventually Mariani’s special addition was also removed, resulting in an early version of something that is still popular today.
Who is X, and what did he invent?
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X is John Pemberton, inventor of Coca-Cola, originally known as "Pemberton's French Wine Coca" - which was identical to Vin Mariani (made from Bordeaux wine and coca leaves, and therefore containing cocaine) save for the addition of kola nuts as a source of caffeine.
This publication is known for its unique & sharp writing style. Over the period of years, it has coin or popularized many terms like “pundit”, “socialite”, “tycoon”. It is even credited with streamlining the terms “World War I” & “World War II”. Identify the publication.
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Time Magazine. The magazine has had a very specific style of writing sometimes called "Timestyle". Read More about the contribution of the magazine over the years.
In 1943, noted philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre released what is commonly considered his most influential existential philosophical work, a monolithic 722-page tome bearing the equally weighty title of Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology.
One might expect that, with that name and that subject matter, the book would be nigh unknown to the general public, likely only finding an avid audience in tweed-wearing, high-thinking, pipe-smoking professorial types frequenting smoky salons, quaint libraries, and lecture halls — and yet, Being and Nothingness was (relatively) a runaway success upon publication, gaining purchase even among grocers and shopkeepers, and most notably, women*.
What peculiar reason caused the unforeseen popularity and amazing sales of this book?
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The book weighed almost exactly one kilogram, and was therefore sought out to serve as a measure of weight at home and in shops -- the Nazis had confiscated and melted down the regular brass and copper weights to use in munitions.
*Bear in mind that this was in 1943, a time when women's intellectual prowess was not exactly respected in higher academic circles.
According to a myth, Bheema (of Pandava fame) was in exile & working in the kitchen of the king Virata. Since he didn’t know how to cook, he simply chopped all the vegetables in the kitchen, boiled them & added grated coconut. The dish turned out to be delicicous & is eaten till date. Name the dish.
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Avial. The dish is comprising of 13 vegetables & grated coconut. Avial is considered an essential part of the main meal in Kerala (Oonu in Malayalam) and is also served as a delicacy in South India. Read About the history of the dish.
In the early to mid 19th century, multiple advances in the field of agricultural machinery were made more or less in parallel by inventors in Scotland, the US, and Australia, all working (mostly) independently of each other. These developments coalesced into a single large, complex, and massively convenient piece of farming equipment that went through several stages of evolution, first horse-drawn, then steam-powered, then tractor-drawn, and eventually fully self-propelled and self-contained, complete with cameras and sophisticated yield monitoring and field mapping systems.
At its core, this machine merges the farming tasks of reaping, threshing, gathering, and winnowing grain into a single activity, and is commonly known by a deceptively simple name.
This biscuit was created by the London bakery Peek Freans in 1874 to commemorate the marriage of the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia to the Duke of Edinburgh. It is popular today world over as a tea biscuit.
Can you identify it?
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Marie biscuit, named after Duchess Maria herself. Read About all the different ways people use the biscuit world over.
In Hawaiian, the word X means “to bake in the ground” – it can also be used to refer to the Hawaiian food (usually containing pork or turkey) cooked in this manner that is often served at feasts and has since become a major tourist attraction.
X is not to be confused with the very similar-sounding but completely unrelated Y, which is a coffee liqueur made from rum, Arabica coffee, and sugar. Y serves as a key ingredient in several cocktails, some more prominent than others.
What are X and Y?
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X: Kālua, in which the food is cooked in an underground oven called an imu
Y: Kahlúa, which means "House of the Acolhua People" in Nahuatl, spoken in Veracruz, Mexico, where the drink originated
This athlete’s signature move was born when his younger brother dared him to perform a Tony Yayo/50 Cent dance move on stage infront of spectators. The athlete added a line along with the move and both because hugely popular. Name the athlete & the move.
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The athlete is John Cena & the move is 'You can't see me'. Here's a Video of John Cena talking about the origin. Here's the Video with Tony Yayo performing the original move, at 0:30 mark.
During Marco Polo’s visit to India, he came across a plant that looked like dates, also known as ‘tamar‘ in Arabic. It was also referred to as ‘Tamar-ul-Hind’, or Date from India. What do we call it today?
Decode the clues and connect them to a common theme: Sesame + Jaggery Capricorn Festival A dish whose name means ‘to boil over’
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Winter Harvest festivals in India Lohri - is the amalgamation of two Punjabi words - 'Til' meaning sesame and 'Rorahi' meaning jaggery - 'Tilohri' over the years became Lohri. Makar Sakranti - “Makar” refers to Capricorn, and “Sankranti” denotes the movement of the sun into a new celestial orbit. Pongal - Pongal is also the name of the dish made and eaten during this festival. It is a mixture of boiled sweet rice. It is derived from the Tamil word pongu, which means “to boil over”.
All three were produced by British Indian producer and composer Biddu Appaiah, who also engineered Nazia Hassan's meteoric rise to fame with Aap Jaisa Koi.
Fun fact: Biddu's production style inspired two of his session musicians to found the new wave band The Buggles, whose greatest hit was Video Killed The Radio Star -- which in turn "inspired" Bappi Lahiri to knock out Koi Yahaan Naache Naache from 1982's Disco Dancer.
