Kolkata trivia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the 19th century, Kolkata was the British Empire's second biggest city after London.
In 1897-1898, Ronald Ross proved the link between Anopheles mosquitoes and Malarial parasite in Kolkata, after his initial breaktheough in Secunderabad.
The Hickey's Bengal Gazette or the Calcutta General Advertiser was the first English language newspaper, and indeed the first printed newspaper, to be published in the Indian sub-continent. ^[1]
India has 7 Nobel Prize winners, either by birth or citizenship to date, and 5 of them are directly connected to Kolkata.
Kolkata has an eminent place in the history of American diplomacy as one of the oldest American Consulates anywhere in the world, and the oldest in India .
Kolkata and Mumbai are the only two cities in India where the honorary designation of the Sheriff still exists.
Kolkata and Mumbai were two of the main export/import destinations for British beer, which would go stale and sour during the sea voyage. So the IPA (India Pale Ale) style of beer was created specifically to withstand the rigours of the sea between London and these Indian ports. ^[2]
In 1870, Wilhelm Siemens successfully demonstrated the exchange of telegrams from London to Calcutta that took only an hour.^[3]
Till March 2006, Kolkata's oldest resident was the Adwaita, the 255 year old giant Aldabra Seychelles tortoise, whose residence was the 131 year old Alipore Zoological Gardens. ^[4]
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vikram Seth, Bharati Mukherjee, Suketu Mehta, Sasthi Brata among others, were born in Calcutta.
The Indian Botanical Gardens at Shibpur, near the Bengal Engineering College, is home of the world's largest banyan tree(the banyan tree with the biggest girth), according to the Guinness Book of Records. It is reputed to be over 240 years old. ^[5]
Kolkata is sister city to Long Beach, California.
The Royal Calcutta Golf Club has the oldest golf course outside the British Isles.^[6]
Calcutta Medical College is the oldest institution of European Medicine in Asia.^[7]
Kolkata was the original headquarters of IBM Corporation in India before shifting to Bangalore on its return to operations in the country.
Kolkata based physician Subhash Mukhopadhyay was the second doctor to perform a successful in-vitro fertilization in the world leading to the birth of Kanupriya Agarwal, alias Durga.
Kolkata based accountant Amitava Banerjee is the first single man in India (and South Asia) to father an in-vitro fertilised baby.^[8]