Major Somnath Sharma and his 100 soldiers stopped 500 militia men commanded by Pakistan Army officers from capturing the Srinagar airport in November 1947. Despite his arm in a cast and being asked to rest, Major Sharma led from the front and saved Jammu and Kashmir from falling into Pakistan's hands. He laid down his life and became the first recipient of the Param Vir Chakra.
Months before Israel was established in May 1948, a Muslim Arab tribal chief pledged loyalty to the proposed Jewish state and offered his men to fight alongside Jewish forces. The Bedouin fighters, with deep knowledge of the mountainous terrain of Galilee in present-day northern Israel, helped Jewish forces beat back Arab forces in the first Arab-Iarael war.
Three decades before the Revolt of 1857, the forces of Rani Chennamma of present-day Karnataka's Kittur defeated the East India Company, killing its political agent and capturing two British officers. However, she would lose the kingdom and die in captivity.
Exactly 75 years ago, Pakistan's first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated by an Afghan gunman in Rawalpindi. While the exact motive behind the killing remains a mystery, the most plausible cause is said to be the killer's resentment over the ceasefire after India-Pakistan 1947-48 war over Kashmir.
India's Project Tiger has pulled the country's tiger population from the brink of collapse and revived it. But there was a time after Independence when hunting, often associated with the British Raj, was encouraged by the Indian government. Tiger-shooting holidays were advertised in American magazines, films on shikar were screened abroad, and tourists paid $620 for a 10-day hunting expedition in India.
Fifty years ago, Israeli commandos flew roughly 4,000 km to Uganda to rescue more than 100 hostages held after Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked an Air France flight. The daring Entebbe raid succeeded, but Benjamin Netanyahu's elder brother Yonatan, who led the assault, was killed.
Former CEC TN Seshan, who transformed the Election Commission into a powerful institution, also fought to establish the poll body chief's supremacy over two fellow commissioners. He took the battle all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld the multi-member Commission and ruled that the CEC could not have the final word just because he headed it.
Saudi Arabia highlighted its role as the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques while alleging that the Houthis had fired a drone at Mecca. It was just a century ago that the Sauds defeated the Hashemites, descendants of Prophet Muhammad, and took control of Mecca and Medina.
The 9/11 attacks, which mark 25 years today, involved four hijacked aircraft, but one plane, Flight 93, never reached the intended target of the al-Qaida terrorists. Alerted through phone calls, Tom Burnett and fellow passengers fought back, which stopped another attack on Washington.
When Raja Dahir, Sindh's last Hindu King, fell to the Arab forces of Muhammad bin Qasim in 712, some women chose the fire while others were taken captive. Amid actor Swara Bhasker's criticism of Jauhar, a look at a medieval chronicle that reveals what the women believed awaited them if they embraced fire and if they didn't.
China reportedly didn't provide early warning to Nepal about the flash floods in the Bhote Koshi-Trishuli river system, which has killed hundreds. In 1975, China hid the news of the collapse of the Banqiao Iron Dam and 61 other dams on a single night, that drowned 26,000 people and led to the deaths of 2.3 lakh more.
Centuries before critical minerals became the currency of power, Indian craftsmen mastered a steel coveted by kings and warriors thousands of kilometres away. Even Prophet Muhammad used a sword made in India. Such was the fame of blades made from Indian steel that the Prophet was praised using that as a metaphor.
Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy to India, fixed August 15 for the transfer of power to Indians, but seers objected to the date as inauspicious. Jawaharlal Nehru, the to-be first Indian Prime Minister, found a middle path. And that's why India got freedom at midnight.
K2's deadliest disaster unfolded on August 1, 2008, when a summit push by 30 climbers from across the world turned into a fight for survival. The recent Broad Peak avalanche that killed celebrated British-Nepali mountaineer Nirmal Purja, has renewed focus on the perilous Karakoram range. Here's how the ill-fated expedition unfolded 18 years ago.
Home-taught by a father who distrusted Western education, India's first education minister, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, laid the foundations of Independent India's modern education system. Azad's story is one of self-learning, nation-building, and institutions like IITs and AIIMS that he helped set up, that continue to shape generations of Indians.
Two decades after the Pokhran-I nuclear test in 1974, India was ready to test again in 1995. But American spy satellites spotted unusual activity at Pokhran before it could. This is why PM PV Narasimha Rao withheld the final clearance, and the move helped pave the way for the successful Pokhran-II tests three years later.
Five years after Independence, Gandhian leader and activist Potti Sriramulu began a fast until death demanding a separate state for Telugu-speaking people. His death after 58 days of fast forced PM Jawaharlal Nehru to act and declare the formation of the Andhra State, the first on linguistic lines.
Nearly eight decades before the PM Narendra Modi-led government suspended the 1960s Indus Waters Treaty, the government of East Punjab in 1948 stopped the headworks at the Upper Bari Doab Canal, part of the Indus system. The crisis forced the architect of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to negotiate with India.
It is commonly accepted that Akbar won the Battle of Haldighati. But did Maharana Pratap win the war? A fresh reading of the 450-year-old battle amid US President Donald Trump's repeated claims that the US won the war against Iran.
One of history's greatest ironies unfolded in 1948. Weapons originally designed for Hitler's Nazi Germany, which killed nearly 6 million Jews, ended up helping defend the newly formed Jewish state of Israel. Jews sourced Nazi-era weapons and planes from Czechoslovakia, and beat back the armies of five Arab states.
