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Alipore Zoo
The Zoological Garden, Alipore (also informally called the Alipore Zoo or Kolkata Zoo) is India's oldest formally stated zoological park (as opposed to royal and British menageries) and a big tourist attraction in Kolkata, West Bengal. It has been open as a zoo since 1876, and covers . It is probably best known as the home of the Aldabra giant tortoise Adwaita, who was reputed to have been over 250 years old when he died in 2006. It is also home to one of the few captive breeding projects involving the Manipur brow-antlered deer. One of the most popular tourist attractions in Kolkata, it draws huge crowds during the winter season, especially during December and January. The highest attendance till date was on January 1, 2018 with 110,000 visitors. History The zoo had its roots in a private menagerie established by Governor General of India, Richard Wellesley, established around 1800 in his summer home at Barrackpore near Kolkata, as part of the ''Indian Natural History Proj ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Captive White Tigers
Captive white tigers are of little known lineage. They are held captive around the world, usually for financial purposes. Mohan and the Rewa strain Mohan was the founding father of the white tigers of Rewa. He was captured as a cub in 1951 by Maharaja of Rewa, whose hunting party in Bandhavgarh found a tigress with four 9-month-old cubs, one of which was white. All of them were shot except for the white cub. After shooting a white tiger in 1948 the Maharaja of Rewa had resolved to capture one, as his father had done in 1915, at his next opportunity. Water was used to lure the thirsty cub into a cage, after he returned to a kill made by his mother. The white cub mauled a man during the capture process and was clubbed on the head and knocked unconscious. He was not necessarily expected to wake up, and this was his second brush with death. He recovered though, and was housed in the unused palace at Govindgarh in the erstwhile harem courtyard. The Maharaja named him Mohan, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Captive Breeding
Captive breeding, also known as captive propagation, is the process of plants or animals in controlled environments, such as wildlife reserves, zoos, botanic gardens, and other conservation facilities. It is sometimes employed to help species that are being threatened by the effects of human activities such as climate change, habitat loss, fragmentation, over hunting or fishing, pollution, predation, disease, and parasitism. For many species, relatively little is known about the conditions needed for successful breeding. Information about a species' reproductive biology may be critical to the success of a captive breeding program. In some cases a captive breeding program can save a species from extinction, but for success, breeders must consider many factors—including genetic, ecological, behavioral, and ethical issues. Most successful attempts involve the cooperation and coordination of many institutions. History Captive breeding techniques began with the first human do ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Stamford Raffles
Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (5 July 1781 – 5 July 1826) was a British statesman who served as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816, and Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen between 1818 and 1824. He is best known mainly for his founding of modern Singapore and the Straits Settlements also called Malaysia and Brunei. Raffles was heavily involved in the capture of the Indonesian island of Java from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars. The running of day-to-day operations on Singapore was mostly done by William Farquhar, but Raffles was the one who got all the credit. He also wrote ''The History of Java'' (1817). Early life Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles was born on on board the ship ''Ann'', off the coast of Port Morant, Jamaica, to Captain Benjamin Raffles (1739, London – 23 November 1811, Deptford) and Anne Raffles (née Lyde) (1755 – 8 February 1824, London). Benjamin served as a ship master for various ships engaged in the di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hindu
''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the second most circulated English-language newspaper in India, after '' The Times of India''. , ''The Hindu'' is published from 21 locations across 11 states of India. ''The Hindu'' has been a family-owned newspaper since 1905, when it was purchased by S. Kasturi Ranga Iyengar from the original founders. It is now jointly owned by Iyengar's descendants, referred to as the "Kasturi family", who serve as the directors of the holding company. The current chairperson of the group is Malini Parthasarathy, a great-granddaughter of Iyengar. Except for a period of about two years, when S. Varadarajan held the editorship of the newspaper, the editorial positions of the paper were always held by members of the family or held under their direction. Histo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Jacquemont
Venceslas Victor Jacquemont (8 August 1801 – 7 December 1832) was a French botanist and geologist known for his travels in India. Born in Paris on August 8, 1801, Victor Jacquemont was the youngest of four sons of Frédéric François Venceslas Jacquemont de Moreau (1757-1836) and Rose Laisné. He studied medicine and later took an interest in botany. His early travels took him around Europe. He was lightly built and capable of living on a very frugal diet. After being invited by the Jardin des Plantes to collect plant and animal specimens from a country of his choice for 240 pounds a year, Jacquemont traveled to India leaving Brest in August 1828. He arrived at Calcutta on 5 May 1829. He went to Delhi on 5 March 1830 and went onwards towards the western Himalayas. He visited Amber in Rajputana, met with the Sikh Emperor Ranjit Singh at his capital of Lahore, and visited the kingdom of Ladakh in the Himalaya. He also visited Bardhaman (Burdwan) in Bengal in November 1829. He di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botanist
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word (''botanē'') meaning "pasture", " herbs" "grass", or " fodder"; is in turn derived from (), "to feed" or "to graze". Traditionally, botany has also included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists respectively, with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress. Nowadays, botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants (including approximately 369,000 species of flowering plants), and approximately 20,000 are bryophytes. Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early humans to identify – and later cultivate – edible, med ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Watercolour
Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to the Stone Age when early ancestors combined earth and charcoal with water to create the first wet-on-dry picture on a cave wall." London, Vladimir. The Book on Watercolor (p. 19). in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. ''Watercolor'' refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork. Aquarelles painted with water-soluble colored ink instead of modern water colors are called ''aquarellum atramento'' (Latin for "aquarelle made with ink") by experts. However, this term has now tended to pass out of use. The conventional and most common ''support''—material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is watercolor paper. Other supports or substrates include stone, ivory, silk, reed, papyr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Buchanan-Hamilton
Francis Buchanan (15 February 1762 – 15 June 1829), later known as Francis Hamilton but often referred to as Francis Buchanan-Hamilton, was a Scottish physician who made significant contributions as a geographer, zoologist, and botanist while living in India. He did not assume the name of Hamilton until three years after his retirement from India. The standard botanical author abbreviation Buch.-Ham. is applied to plants and animals he described, though today the form "Hamilton, 1822" is more usually seen in ichthyology and is preferred by Fishbase. Early life Francis Buchanan was born at Bardowie, Callander, Perthshire where Elizabeth, his mother, lived on the estate of Branziet; his father Thomas, a physician, came in Spittal and claimed the chiefdom of the name of Buchanan and owned the Leny estate. Francis Buchanan matriculated in 1774 and received an MA in 1779. As he had three older brothers, he had to earn a living from a profession, so Buchanan studied medicine ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zoologist
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological classification, classification, Ethology, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinction, extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. The term is derived from Ancient Greek , ('animal'), and , ('knowledge', 'study'). Although humans have always been interested in the natural history of the animals they saw around them, and made use of this knowledge to domesticate certain species, the formal study of zoology can be said to have originated with Aristotle. He viewed animals as living organisms, studied their structure and development, and considered their adaptations to their surroundings and the function of their parts. The Greek physician Galen studied human anatomy and was one of the greatest surgeons of the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barrackpore
Barrackpore (also known as Barrackpur) is a city and a municipality of urban Kolkata of North 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is also a part of the area covered by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA). It is the headquarters of the Barrackpore subdivision. Etymology The name Barrackpore may have originated from the English word barracks, as it was the site of the first cantonment of the British East India Company. Alternatively, the '' Ain-i-Akbari'' suggests that the name comes from "Barbakpur". ''Manasa Vijay'', written by Bipradas Pipilai, refers to Talpukur (a place in Barrackpore) as "Charnak". History The earliest references to the Barrackpore region are found in the writings of the Greek navigators, geographers, chronicles and historians of the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD. These authors generally referred to the country of a people variously called the Gangaridai (also Gangaridae or Gandaritai). By the 15th and 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley
Richard Colley Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, (20 June 1760 – 26 September 1842) was an Anglo-Irish politician and colonial administrator. He was styled as Viscount Wellesley until 1781, when he succeeded his father as 2nd Earl of Mornington. In 1799, he was granted the Irish peerage title of Marquess Wellesley. He was also Lord Wellesley in the Peerage of Great Britain. He first made his name as fifth Governor-General of India between 1798 and 1805. He later served as Foreign Secretary in the British Cabinet and as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. In 1799, his forces invaded Mysore and defeated Tipu, the Sultan of Mysore, in a major battle. He also initiated the Second Anglo-Maratha War. He was the eldest son of The 1st Earl of Mornington, an Irish peer, and Anne, the eldest daughter of The 1st Viscount Dungannon. His younger brother, Arthur, was Field Marshal The 1st Duke of Wellington. Education and early career Wellesley was born in 1760 in Dangan Castle in Coun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Governor General
Governor-general (plural ''governors-general''), or governor general (plural ''governors general''), is the title of an office-holder. In the context of governors-general and former British colonies, governors-general are appointed as viceroy to represent the monarch of a personal union in any sovereign state over which the monarch does not normally reign in person. Governors-general have also previously been appointed in respect of major colonial states or other territories held by either a monarchy or republic, such as Japan in Korea and France in Indochina. Current uses In modern usage, in the context of governor-generals and former British colonies, the term ''governor-general'' originated in those British colonies that became self-governing within the British Empire. Before World War I, the title was used only in federated colonies in which its constituents had had ''governors'' prior to federating, namely Canada, Australia, and the Union of South Africa. In these cases ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
