Wacky Facts

Feathers probably evolved first for warmth and display; flight came later in some lineages.

A layer called the SOFAR channel traps sound waves, letting whale calls and other low sounds travel huge distances.

When it is morning in Kaliningrad in the west, it is already evening in Kamchatka in the far east.

These half-millimetre “water bears” can dry out into a dormant state. In 2007 some were carried into orbit on the outside of a spacecraft and exposed to vacuum and radiation; a number of them revived and even reproduced after returning to Earth.

An American doctor promoted tomato ketchup as a cure for indigestion and other ailments, and it was sold as pills before the claims were discredited.

In 1943 the US briefly banned sliced bread to save resources during World War II.

The brand name comes from the cooperative that started it in Anand, Gujarat in 1946. “Amulya” also means priceless in Sanskrit.

Elephants can detect low-frequency rumbles and ground vibrations through sensitive cells in their feet and trunk, which may help them sense distant herds or storms.

The 1987 Doordarshan series drew enormous audiences; its 2020 rerun set viewership records again.

Only a few are played; the rest are sympathetic strings that vibrate on their own, creating its shimmering sound.

India’s first automated teller machine (ATM) was installed in 1987 by HSBC (Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) in Andheri East, Mumbai. In the decades since, India’s retail banking landscape rapidly modernized, expanding to over 250,000 physical ATMs alongside digital innovations like UPI (Unified Payments Interface), which now processes billions of instant inter-bank transactions every month.

Levi Hutchins of New Hampshire built a personal alarm clock in 1787 that rang only at 4 a.m. — the time he wanted to wake up. He never patented it.

Research on cattle vocalisations shows individual cows have distinct voices that herd mates recognise. Calves and mothers can identify each other by call.

From 1914 to 1925 black was used because it dried fastest on the assembly line.

Thin gold leaf, called varak in India, decorates sweets. It passes through the body unchanged.

High-resolution scans suggest Leonardo may have painted eyebrows and lashes that later faded or were removed during cleaning.

Shyam Sunder Goenka and his son Bharat Goenka began building the software in the 1980s for his businesses.

Honey is very low in water and naturally acidic, and bees add an enzyme that produces hydrogen peroxide. Together these make it extremely hostile to bacteria — sealed honey can last for thousands of years.

Since 2011, ODI innings use two new white balls, one from each end.

He created about 2,100 artworks but is known to have sold very few; his fame came after his death in 1890.

Hindi is also among the top four most spoken languages when second-language speakers are counted.

Smashes have been recorded at over 400 km/h in controlled tests, although the feathers slow it quickly.

DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 made a leap in predicting how proteins fold, and its database grew to over 200 million predicted structures. Its creators shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Their civil calendar had 12 months of 30 days plus 5 extra days.

Botanically, a berry develops from a single flower with one ovary and has seeds inside. Bananas qualify; strawberries carry their seeds on the outside and come from a flower with many ovaries.

Fine dust in the Martian atmosphere scatters blue light forward, so sunsets on Mars appear bluish, the opposite of Earth.

The name was created by a branding company in 1999 as a catchy alternative to “IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence”. “Wireless fidelity” was a tagline added later.

A US court ruled in 2015 that the copyright claim was invalid, and it entered the public domain in 2016.

GPT means Generative Pre-trained Transformer. The transformer architecture was introduced by eight Google researchers in the 2017 paper “Attention Is All You Need”, now one of the most cited papers in computing.

Short answer: Sirimavo Bandaranaike became prime minister of Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, on 21 July 1960. Sri Lanka’s Parliament records her appointment as the world’s first woman head of government.

What happened in 1960?

S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the serving prime minister and leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, was assassinated in 1959. His widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, entered party leadership during the political crisis that followed. The party won the July 1960 parliamentary election, and she was appointed prime minister on 21 July.

A constitutional detail that is easy to miss

At the moment of her appointment, Bandaranaike was not a member of the elected House of Representatives. Parliament’s official list explains that she was appointed to the Senate on 2 August 1960 so that she could continue as prime minister. The country was then called Ceylon; it adopted the name Sri Lanka when it became a republic in 1972.

Why the milestone mattered

Women had already served as legislators and ministers in several countries, but no woman had previously led a national government as prime minister. Bandaranaike’s appointment changed what voters and political parties could imagine. It also preceded later women heads of government in countries including India, Israel and the United Kingdom.

Her later terms

Bandaranaike led the government in three periods: from 1960 to 1965, from 1970 to 1977, and again from 1994 to 2000. During her second period in office, Ceylon became the Republic of Sri Lanka. Decades later, her daughter Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga became president, while Sirimavo served again as prime minister under the executive-presidential system.

Evidence and wording

The accurate formulation is “the world’s first woman prime minister” or “first woman head of government.” It does not mean she was the first woman to hold every kind of national leadership position. The date and distinction are confirmed by the Parliament of Sri Lanka, whose historical records list the beginning and end of each term.

A quick timeline

• 1959: Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike is assassinated.
• 21 July 1960: Sirimavo Bandaranaike becomes prime minister.
• 2 August 1960: she enters the Senate, allowing her to continue in office under the contemporary system.
• 1970–1977: she returns for a second period and leads the country through its transition to a republic.
• 1994–2000: she serves a third and final period as prime minister.

Her story therefore belongs to both political history and constitutional history: the office itself changed substantially across the four decades of her public career.

Sources

• Parliament of Sri Lanka: history of women in Parliament
• Parliament of Sri Lanka: official list of prime ministers