Taj Mahal Trivia - 15 things I didn't know about Taj Mahal until last week

Been to Taj Mahal yesterday, to be very honest  I was more surprised by the vision of Shah Jahan than the building it self.

 Eleven mini tombs on front and 11 on back  represents the number of years it took to build Taj Mahal – 22

Another nice view, If you step forward and see Taj from the main gate you feel like Taj is going back when you step backward you feel Taj is closer to you

 moon represents Islam and the trishul represents Hinduism

 The most popular point in Taj complex to take photos is know as Diana Point because Princess Diana spent 2 hours there and gave poses to Media

22 steps in main entrance block again to represent the number of years it took to build taj

 

All chapters of Islam on Taj walls

 Artisitic expression to Mumtaz - The crown (Taz) and the yellow flowers (mum)

 Om symbols inside Taj and if you actually read it in other way it mean Allah in arabic

 Shah Jahan planned to build the second monument here. He spent 4 or 6 crore rupees in those days to build Taj Mahal

8 blocks of gardens on each side of Taj and 53 fountains represent the year of finishing Taj - 1653

View from Agra fort where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb. He was worried of the financial implications of building one more monument and decided to arrest his dad. How did he did it? Simple, he cut down water supply to agra fort and shajahan surrendered in matter of days. Shah Jahan used to see Taj from his prison via Kohinoor Diamond !!

FIFA World Cup Trivia

Ball controversies have a long history, In the first world cup finals between Argentina and Uruguay there was a heated argument about which ball was to be used – the Uruguayan ball or the Argentinian ball. Finally the teams agreed to use the Argentinian ball in the first half and the Uruguayan ball in the second half. And ironically Argentina led 2-1 at half time and Uruguay won the game 4-2!

Uruguay was selected to host first world cup following their gold medals at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics and because the competition coincided with the South American country's centenary celebrations.

In every Italian title, their squad had a player who wasn´t born in Italy.
31% of all Portugal's world cup finals goals have been scored against North Korea.
Australia scored the most goals in any World Cup qualifier after beating American Samoa 31-0 in 2001.

Diego Maradona wears two Hublot watches one on his left hand for local time and the one on right hand for Argentina time

Cholima is the nickname of North Korean national football team. Its name roughly means "thousand-mile horse"

Gandhiji started two football clubs, in South Africa, both named "The Passive Resisters" after the writings of Thoreau n Leo Tolstoy

India qualified by default to the 1950 football world cup without playing the qualifiers

England did not participate in the first three tournaments. Infact when FIFA decided to start a world cup the English said, No, thanks as they thought such a tournament was beneath their dignity.

For more questions, join BizGyan facebook fan page

Brand Equity Quiz - 2010 Mumbai Regional Finals

BEQ saw one more close finish, this time between HUL and ParAmerica. ParAmerica cracked some really tough ones, but took a huge risk going for the final question. ParAmerica got a negative and HUL cracked an absolutely easy tiebreaker question.
70 odd teams participated in the prelims and following teams reached the regional finals:
Savoir Faire Media (Harshvardhan Bhatkuly & Rajiv D'Silva)
Sun (Mitesh & Amit)
Crisil (Sameer & Dhananjay)
IMRB (Sudhanshu & Amol)
PraAmerica 9puneet and Meghashyam)
HUL (Pradeep & Mohit)

First Round:

1. What should be served at exactly 6 degrees and poured in 120 seconds – Draught Guinness
2. The founder of dexter shoe company used for the first time the concept of – Factory Outlets
3. If you are shopping at Maniharon ka rasta, what are you buying- Jewelry
4. Who wrote the book- principles of Management – David Ogilvy
5. Young girls want Barbie to be - Anchorwomen
6. In 1896, what was cultivated for the first time by Raghu Bhosle – Nagpur Orange

Second Round:

7. In conouge, specialists say half of the product is lost because of the manufacturing process known as Deb Baktha. Which product am I referring to – Athar, Perfume
8. What does Budtender to – They study Marwana
9. Rose Friedman collaborated with her husband and wrote the book ‘ Free to chose’. Who is her famous husband – Milton Friedman
10. What is common to United Robotonic, Meid Advertising..etc etc – All Fictional companies in Television Shows.
11. Sanka was a brand which defined its category de café. How did it got that name – From Sans Café
12. What was replaced in the Nepalis currency note – King of Nepal was replaces
13. Which industry is the largest customer of Robotics industry – Automobile industry

Third Round:

14. Print ad of coke
15. Film poster of Das numberi
16. ILO logo
17. Identify the typeface – Baskerville
18. George Eastman Kodak picture
19. Time cover of Nizam of Hyderabad
20. Bigboss, Casio reals..are all types of Fenni
21. Opening lines of which book – “On a sticky August evening two days before her due date….” – The Namesake
22. The year is 1975, the client is Xerox, the publisher is esquare, the topic is traveling through America. What did Xerox did and backed off after a controversy – Advertorials
23. Why did steve jobs sold all his Apple stocks except one after disagreement with Jhon Sculley – to receive annual reports
24. What is dutch auction – action in which prices go down

Fourth Round:

25. A video clip from the movie maandi
26. Audio clip of Warrren Buffet speech
27. National Stock Exchange anthem
28. Up in the Air TVC

Fifth Round:

29. Which two Indians travel in business boeing jets- President and PM
30. USA Today has listed which advertising icon on top of a list of imaginary luminaries and most influential people who never lived – Marlboro man
31. Which country reduced its time zone to give a boost to its economy from 11 timezones to 9 timezones – Russia
32. Most expensive city after London, HongKong and Tokyo – Mumbai
33. How many languages appear on Indian currency note – 15

Tie Breaker

34. Which company would you associate with Unbutton campaign - Levis

The early days of facebook

Business Insider posted a series of articles on early days of facebook, to summarize

Three students(Winklevoss brothers and their friend Divya Narenda) at Harvard approached Mark Zuckerberg to develop a Harward University specific social networking site, Harvardconnection.com.

Mark agreed to develop it and after a couple of days he intentionally mislead the trio and started developing a website on similar lines, thefacebook.com

Thefacebook.com went live in 2004 and instantly became a super hit. The trio filled a law suit againt Mark and settled it out of court for cash and stocks reportedly worth about $65m in 2008 and launched their project, renamed ConnectU, in May 2004.

Check it Out

1. The company started by Toyoda's grandfather did indeed have his name -- Tokyo Toyoda Motor Sales -- until 1936, when a stroke of the brush changed it to Toyota.

Writing "Toyoda" in Japanese requires 10 brush strokes

While "8" is considered an auspicious number, "10" is not. "Ten" consists of two strokes crossed against each other and resembles the "plus" symbol, or even a crossroads or an uncertain path. Not a good omen for a company.The name Toyoda consists of two characters, one meaning fertile and the other, rice paddy.

Source story


2. Puckman was the name coined by young Toru Iwatani, a designer with Japanese video game developer Namcoc, for the central character of an offbeat game he came up with in 1980. Iwatani game involved a yellow blob racing through a maze.

After lackluster adoption in Japan, the game headed out to the USA in 1981 through licensore Midway Games. Pac man scores became the de facto "currency of competitiveness during the 80;s in schools

3. Tony Fernandes had no experience in airlines industry till 9 years ago. He used to run a music business when he was introduced to the wily Malaysian Prime minister Mahatir Muhammad in 2001. Muhammad persuaded Fernandes to buy out governments stake in the struggling Air Asia for just one ringgit. Today Air Asia is Asia's leading low cost operator

Origin of Day Light Savings practice

Banjamin Franklin who coined the proverb ""Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise", published a letter (An Economical Project, a discourse on the thrift of natural versus artificial lighting.) to Paris citizens on how to save candles by raising earlier and use morning sunlight. This concept was later used as a way to save energy and thus came in the practice of "day Light savings". More

Origin Of Red Ribbon Logo

In 1991, Patrick O'Connell, founding director of Visual Aids and his friends observed a significant raise of AIDS among artists in East Village and decided to launch a campaign to increase awareness about AIDS.

They Observed Americans in small towns were willing to visibly express their support for soldiers by putting up yellow ribbon and after a little brainstorming they designed Red Ribbon logo. Red was chosen for its, "connection to blood and the idea of passion -- not only anger, but love, like a valentine."

source: BBC