04 November - Bhai Parmanand birth anniversary

Bhai Parmanand ( 04 November 1876 – 08 December 1947) was an Hindu Nationalist and a prominent leader of the Hindu Mahasabha. In 1908-1909 ,He advocated for the partition of India along the religious lines. He declared that Hindus and Muslims India are two different nations

Parmanand was born into a prominent family of the Punjab, Mohyal Brahmins.His father, Tara Chand Mohyal, came from Kariala, Jhelum District and was an active religious missionary with the Arya Samaj movement.

While reading letters of Lala Lajpat Rai to him in 1909, he had jotted an idea that 'the territory beyond Sindh could be united with North-West Frontier Province into a great Musulman Kingdom. The Hindus of the region should come away, while at the same time the Musulmans in the rest of the country should go and settle in this territory'.

Parmanand died on 8 December 1947 of a heart attack. He was survived by his son Dr. Bhai Mahavir, a prominent member of the Jana Sangh and BJP

UNESCO was formed 04 November 1945

 

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, the sciences, and culture. It has 193 member states and 11 associate members, as well as partners in the nongovernmental, intergovernmental, and private sector.Headquartered in Paris, France, UNESCO has 53 regional field offices and 199 national commissions that facilitate its global mandate.

UNESCO was founded in 1945 as the successor to the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.Its constitution establishes the agency's goals, governing structure, and operating framework. UNESCO's founding mission, which was shaped by the Second World War, is to advance peace, sustainable development and human rights by facilitating collaboration and dialogue among nations. It pursues this objective through five major program areas: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and communication/information. UNESCO sponsors projects that improve literacy, provide technical training and education, advance science, protect independent media and press freedom, preserve regional and cultural history, and promote cultural diversity.

04 November - Jamnalal Bajaj birth date

Jamnalal Bajaj (04 November 1889 – 11 February 1942) was an Indian industrialist, a philanthropist, and Indian independence fighter.He founded the Bajaj Group of companies in the 1920s, and the group now has 24 companies, including six that are listed on the bourses. He was also a close and beloved associate of Mahatma Gandhi, who is known to have often declared that Jamnalal was his fifth son.
Nice Block of stamps.

The Times of India issued its first edition on 3 November 1838

 

The Times of India issued its first edition on 3 November 1838 as The Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce

The Times of India (TOI) is an Indian English-language daily newspaper and digital news media owned and managed by The Times Group. According to Audit Bureau of Circulations, it is ranked 9th in the world by circulation and 3rd in India.It is the oldest English-language newspaper in India, and the second-oldest Indian newspaper still in circulation since its first edition published in 1838

22 October -Swami Rama Tirtha

Swami Rama Tirtha (22 October 1873 – 17 October 1906), also known as Ram Soami, was an Indian teacher of the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta. He was among the first notable teachers of Hinduism to lecture in the United States, travelling there in 1902, preceded by Swami Vivekananda in 1893 and followed by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920. During his American tours Swami Rama Tirtha spoke frequently on the concept of 'practical Vedanta'and education of Indian youth.He proposed bringing young Indians to American universities and helped establish scholarships for Indian students.

22 October - Bhakra-Nangal Dam commemorative stamp released in 1963

Bhakra Dam is a concrete gravity dam on the Sutlej River in Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh in northern India. The dam forms the Gobind Sagar reservoir.

The dam, located at a gorge near the (now submerged) upstream Bhakra village in Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh of height 226 m.The length of the dam (measured from the road above it) is 518.25 m and the width is 9.1 m. Its reservoir known as "Gobind Sagar" stores up to 9.34 billion cubic metres of water. The 90 km long reservoir created by the Bhakra Dam is spread over an area of 168.35 km2. In terms of quantity of water, it is the third largest reservoir in India, the first being Indira Sagar dam in Madhya Pradesh with capacity of 12.22 billion cu m and second Nagarjunasagar Dam.

Described as "New Temple of Resurgent India" by Jawaharlal Nehru,the first prime minister of India, the dam attracts tourists from all over India. Bhakra dam is 15 km from Nangal city and 20 km from Naina Devi town.

Nangal Dam is another dam in Punjab downstream of Bhakra Dam. However, sometimes both the dams together are called Bhakra-Nangal Dam though they are two separate dams.

• India Post on 22 October 2013 released a commemorative postage stamp on the Golden Jubilee of Bhakra Dam
• India Post earlier issued a commemorative postage stamp on Bhakra Dam on 15th Dec 1988 on its silver jubilee.
• India Post has also issued a Definitive stamp on Bhakra Dam on 15 March 1967

Fired by passion and enthusiasm to build new India, all engineers and technicians put in un-tiring efforts day & night for almost a decade to build Bhakra Dam – The Nation’s Pride. Pt. Nehru dedicated the dam to the nation on 22nd October 1963.

Info from wiki and https://bbmb.gov.in/bhakra-project.htm website

20 October - International Sloth Day

 

International Sloth Day is an annual commemoration celebrated on October 20th of every year. Sounds weird as this Day is for the sloth? Don’t get panic, as this Day is not for the laziness or indolence. The sloth here refers to a mammal that is originally a leaf-eaters. Every living being needs recognization and sloth is one among those living creature. The animal is named so as it seems to be slow and lazy at first glance. They are not so, and we could see it with a smiling face. International Sloth Day celebrates the sloths, an extinct mammal. It is the also the Day that raises awareness about the natural habitat and life cycle of the Sloth.

19 October - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar born in 1910

 

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian-American astrophysicist who spent his professional life in the United States. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler for "...theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars and black holes.The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subrahmanyan_Chandrasekhar

18 October - United States takes possession of Alaska in 1867

The Alaska Purchase was the United States' acquisition of Alaska from the Russian Empire. Alaska was formally transferred to the United States on October 18, 1867, through a treaty ratified by the United States Senate and signed by President Andrew Johnson.

Russia had established a presence in North America during the first half of the eighteenth century, but few Russians ever settled in Alaska. In the aftermath of the Crimean War, Emperor Alexander II of Russia began exploring the possibility of selling Alaska, which would be difficult to defend in any future war from being conquered by its main arch-rival, the United Kingdom. Following the end of the American Civil War, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward entered into negotiations with Russian minister Eduard de Stoeckl for the purchase of Alaska. Seward and Stoeckl agreed to a treaty on March 30, 1867, and the treaty was ratified by the United States Senate by a wide margin despite clashes between President Andrew Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction.

The purchase added 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km2) of new territory to the United States for the cost of $7.2 million (2 cents per acre). In modern terms, the cost was equivalent to $132 million in 2019 dollars or $0.37 per acre.Reactions to the purchase in the United States were mostly positive, as many believed possession of Alaska would serve as a base to expand American trade in Asia. Some opponents labeled the purchase as "Seward's Folly", or "Seward's Icebox",as they contended that the United States had acquired useless land. Nearly all Russian settlers left Alaska in the aftermath of the purchase; Alaska would remain sparsely populated until the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1896. Originally organized as the Department of Alaska, the area was renamed the District of Alaska and the Alaska Territory before becoming the modern State of Alaska in 1959.

18 October - The United States takes possession of Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898

 

The history of Puerto Rico began with the settlement of the archipelago of Puerto Rico by the Ortoiroid people between 3,000 and 2,000 BC. Other tribes, such as the Saladoid and Arawak Native Puerto Ricans, populated the island between 430 BC and 1000 AD. At the time of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1493, the dominant indigenous culture was that of the Taínos. The Taíno people's numbers went dangerously low during the later half of the 16th century because of new infectious diseases carried by Europeans, exploitation by Spanish settlers, and warfare.

In 1898, during the Spanish–American War, Puerto Rico was invaded and subsequently became a possession of the United States. The first years of the 20th century were marked by the struggle to obtain greater democratic rights from the United States.

The Foraker Act of 1900 established a civil government, ending rule by American generals and the Department of War. A United States Supreme Court ruling Ortega v. Lara, 202 U.S. 339, 342 (1906),involving the Foraker Act and referring to the island as "the acquired country", soon affirmed that the Constitution of the United States applied within its territory and that any domestic Puerto Rican laws which did not conflict with the United State Constitution remained in force.

The Jones Act of 1917, which made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens, paved the way for the drafting of Puerto Rico's Constitution and its approval by Congress and Puerto Rican voters in 1952. However, the political status of Puerto Rico, a Commonwealth controlled by the United States, remains an anomaly.

The 45-star flag, used by the United States during the invasion of Puerto Rico, was also the official flag of Puerto Rico from 1899 to 1908.

US Flag was hosted over San Juan on October 18, 1898.