Hello & welcome to this weekend’s GK nugget. First up
I’d like to wish you, your family, friends & colleagues a very Happy Diwali
& a prosperous New Year. Since Diwali is the time of a lot of bonuses &
superb sales where you get more bang for your buck, I thought of giving you
more information this weekend than normal. So this weekend’s GK nugget is about Diwali of course, but also about Bill Gates (his birthday was on 28th
Oct).
Let’s begin with Diwali. Now we all know why Diwali is
celebrated and how it is celebrated, but did you know that it is a national
holiday in India, Trinidad & Tobago, Myanmar, Nepal, Mauritius, Guyana,
Singapore, Surinam, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Fiji. And is an optional holiday in
Pakistan.
In Nepal, Diwali is referred to as ‘Tihar’ or ‘Swanti’
& the God of death, Yama is worshipped for a longer life of the people on
the fourth day. While in Orissa, Diwali
celebrations include calling upon the spirits of their dead ancestors. They
burn jute stems to shed light on the dark path of the spirits on their way to
heaven.
Jains also celebrate Diwali since it marks the day that Lord
Mahavira attained Moksha (On 15th October, 527 B.C). The Sikhs also celebrate
Diwali for it is believed that the foundation stone of the Golden Temple was laid in
1577 on Diwali. Also the 6th guru of the Sikhs, Guru Hargobind &
52 kings were released from Emperor Jehangir’s imprisonment in 1619.
Moving on to Bill Gates: The Microsoft founder,
billionaire & philanthropist was born in 1955 on Oct 28th, in Seattle,
Washington, USA. We all know the Microsoft story well but here are some lesser
known facts about him, like did you know his full name is William Henry Gates
III?
Once his school discovered Gates' coding abilities, they
let him write the school's computer program for scheduling students in classes.
Gates slyly altered the code so that he was placed in classes with a large
number of girls.
During his teenage years, Bill Gates read the entire
World Book encyclopedia set. He also scored a 1590 out of 1600 on his SATs.
Gates has been listed as the “world’s richest man” 16
times in the last 21 years by Forbes. During the dot-com boom, he was referred
to as a ‘Centibillionaire’ by some media, since his worth crossed US$ 101
billion. He is currently worth around US$ 81 billion.
Despite his immense wealth, Bill Gates says that his 3 kids
will inherit only US$10 million each. "Leaving kids massive amounts of money
is not a favour to them," he says.
Bill Gates has openly stated that he will donate the
majority of his fortune to charity. In line with that, he set up the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation in 2000. It is the world’s largest private foundation
estimated to have an endowment of US$ 45 billion.
Gates says that if Microsoft hadn't worked out, he
probably would've been a researcher for artificial intelligence. He reads
around 50 books a year & he counts NOT knowing any foreign languages as the
biggest regret of his life.
In 2009 while giving a talk about malaria education &
eradication at the TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) conference in
California, USA, Bill Gates released mosquitoes into the audience and said “Not
only poor people should experience this”. The mosquitoes were not carrying
malaria though.
Gates predicted (inaccurately) in 2004 that within two
years, email spam would be obliterated. - We all know how that turned out :)