Famous Personalities - Section 3

A team of scientists unveiled an extinct, sea-dwelling crocodile from the Jurassic period on Wednesday, which they named in honour of Motorhead lead singer Ian “Lemmy” Kilmister who died in 2015.

Lemmysuchus was about 5.8 metres long and had a skull longer than a metre - similar to a modern-day saltwater crocodile to which it is only distantly related.

It would have been one of the largest coastal predators of its time. The teeth were large and blunt, perfect for crushing prey such as turtles.

Lemmy’s croc was dug up at Peterborough in England in the early 20th century.

But it was recently re-examined and found to have been incorrectly lumped with other sea crocodiles from the area.

Lemmysuchus obtusidens lived around 164 million years ago and was a member of an extinct group of marine crocodile relatives called teleosaurs.

Given that it belonged to a unique group, the creature “needed a new scientific name,” said the statement.

Lemmy died in December 2015 at the age of 70 in Los Angeles.

He formed Motorhead, a metal band, in 1975.

Scientists at NASA have named a new organism discovered by them after the much-loved Indian scientist and former President, APJ Abdul Kalam.

Till date, the new organism, a bacteria, has been found only on the International Space Station (ISS) and has not been found on earth.

Researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the foremost lab of NASA for work on inter-planetary travel, discovered the new bacteria on the filters of the International Space Station (ISS) and named it Solibacillus kalamii to honour the late president, who was a renowned aerospace scientist.

Kalam had his early training at NASA in 1963 before he set up India’s first rocket-launching facility in the fishing village of Thumba in Kerala.

The name of the bacterium is Solibacillus kalamii, the species name is after Dr Abdul Kalam and genus name is Solibacillus which is a spore forming bacteria. The filter on which the new bug was found remained on board the ISS for 40 months.

Called a high-efficiency particulate arrestance filter or HEPA filter, this part is the routine housekeeping and cleaning system on board the international space station.

This filter was later analysed at JPL and results recently published. Even as it orbits the earth some 400 kilometres above, the ISS is home to many types of bacteria and fungi which co-inhabit the station with the astronauts who live and work on the station.

Even though Solibacillus kalamii has never been found on earth till date, it is really not an extra-terrestrial life form or ET.

Anshu Jamsenpa, a native of Bomdila in Arunachal Pradesh has scripted history by becoming the first Indian woman to scale Mount Everest for the fourth time.

Anshu Jamsenpa who is a mother of two children had already had ascaled Mount Everest twice in a season that too taking only a gap of 10 days between the two climbs.

She scaled the highest peak twice in May 2011.

She again conquered the peak on May 18, 2013. Anshu began her summit expedition after 38 days of acclimatization and scaling several nearby peaks and passes.

Anshu Jamsenpa also plans to scale Mount Everest again in this season to create a new record for becoming the first woman to do a “double” twice.

She had sought the blessings of the Dalai Lama on 2nd April from Guwahati before embarking upon the journey to Nepal.

Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal were the first climbers to conquer Mount Everest.

They achieved this feat on May 29, 1953.

Reinhold Messner, an Italian explorer became the first person to scale Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1978.

He is also first climber to ascend all fourteen peaks over 8,000 metres (26,000 ft) above sea level, including the Mount Everest.

Time magazine on Dec 7, 2016 named President - elect Donald Trump its Person of the Year. Time editor Nancy Gibbs indicated Democrat Hillary Clinton was the No. 2 finalist.

Gibbs said the choice of Trump this year was “straightforward”.

The Time cover reads, “Donald Trump - President of the Divided States of America” and the cover image features a photograph of the President-elect sitting in his private residence at Trump Tower.

Gibbs said Time gives the title to the person who has had the greatest influence on events “for better or worse”.

The No.3 finalist for the Person of the Year was “The Hackers,” which Gibbs said referred to “a new cyber security threat we saw this year of state-sponsored hackers looking to delegitimise an American election”.

This isn't the first time TIME has chosen a polarising figure for its world-famous annual profile. Stalin, Hitler and Khomeini were previous choices.

This year, Trump beat out five other contenders, including his election rival Hillary Clinton, musician Beyonce, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to be named "the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year.”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi won the readers' poll for the second time this year.

For the fifth consecutive year, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has been named the most powerful woman in technology on the Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women list, placing at No. 7 on the list overall.

• With a personal fortune of $1.4 billion, Sandberg is powerful not only as a billionaire and top executive at the world’s fifth most valuable brand, but also as a voice for female empowerment in the workplace and shared responsibilities at home.
• After Sandberg, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki (No. 8 overall) took the No. 2 spot in tech followed in quick succession by HP CEO Meg Whitman (No. 9), IBM CEO Virginia “Ginni” Rometty (No. 11), Apple Senior VP Angela Ahrendts (No. 15), Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz (No. 20), Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat (No. 27) and Ursula Burns (No. 34), the CEO of Xerox since 2009.
• Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (No. 55), down the list 33 spots, is currently overseeing a sale of the embattled tech pioneer’s core business amid falling traffic and ad revenue.

Pune’s Michelle Kakade has secured a place in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first person to complete the Indian Golden Quadrilateral on foot.

• She is a 47 year old resident of the city and took 193 days, one hour and 9 minutes to complete the journey between 21 October 2015 and 1 May, 2016.
• She is also in the Guinness World Records for covering 5968.4 km of Golden Quadrilateral connecting 4 major metros of the country.

Munshi Premchand inspired countless people with his famous novels like Godaan, Gaban and Vardaan.

- The UP writer was considered one of the greatest literary figures in Hindi writing during the 1920s-1930s.

-  He was called Upanyas Samrat or emperor among novelists.

-  Born Dhanpat Rai in a small north Indian village, he penned more than 250 short stories and numerous essays.

Mallya conveyed the decision not to seek re-election as director at the Annual General Meeting of the company. He had first joined in December 1973 as the director of Sanofi India Limited once known as Hoescht Pharma Ltd. He functioned as the board chairman since 1983.

On what is his 148th birthday, Google honoured Nobel Laureate Karl Landsteiner which id the discoverer of blood groups which are the key to efficient blood transfusion with a doodle.

• Landsteiner made blood transfusion safe and helped millions of people lead longer and healthier lives
• First fundamental discovery in the history of serology did not come till 1901 when Karl Landsteiner’s identification of blood groups sparked additional research and discovery and led to the receipt of the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
• During the 17th century, dangerous practice of blood transfusion used in the Middle Ages was banned in EU before this

Squadron Leader Deepika Misra was commissioned in the helicopter stream of IAF and was part of the famous helicopter-formation team that is performed at the Aero India 2015 being held at Bengaluru.