Static GK GK Questions with Answers – Page 14

Gol Gumbaz at Bijapur, now also called Vijayapura, is the tomb of Muhammad Adil Shah of the Adil Shahi dynasty and carries one of the largest masonry domes in the world, raised over a square hall without any pillar inside.

Humayun's Tomb was raised in Delhi by his widow Bega Begum, also known as Haji Begum, with Mirak Mirza Ghiyas as the architect, and it is the first garden tomb of the subcontinent, placed at the centre of a walled char bagh crossed by water channels.

Aurangzeb died in 1707 in the Deccan and was buried at Khuldabad, a small town near Aurangabad, beside the shrine of his spiritual guide Sheikh Zainuddin.

Sadaiv Atal is the memorial of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who was Prime Minister of India three times and died in August 2018; it stands near Raj Ghat and its name plays on his own name, meaning forever unmoved.

Chaitya Bhoomi, on the sea front at Dadar in Mumbai, is the place where Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the chairman of the drafting committee of the Constitution, was cremated in December 1956, and lakhs of followers gather there on 6 December each year.

Kisan Ghat on the Yamuna bank in Delhi is the samadhi of Chaudhary Charan Singh, who was Prime Minister of India and is remembered above all as a leader of the farmers, which is why his memorial is named after the kisan.

Vijay Ghat in Delhi is the samadhi of Lal Bahadur Shastri, the second Prime Minister of India, who died at Tashkent in January 1966, and the name recalls the victory of India in the war of 1965 fought during his term.

Shakti Sthal, the place of strength, is the samadhi of Indira Gandhi, who was Prime Minister of India and was cremated there in 1984, and a large uncut rock from Haryana marks the spot.

Shanti Van, which means the garden of peace, stands on the bank of the Yamuna in Delhi a little to the north of Raj Ghat and is the samadhi of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, who was cremated there in 1964.

Membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) eases access to advanced nuclear technology and trade, but it does not make a country a party to the NPT.

Three islands were renamed in 2018: Ross Island became Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Dweep, Neil Island became Shaheed Dweep and Havelock Island became Swaraj Dweep, the words Shaheed and Swaraj being the names Netaji himself had used for the islands during the Second World War.

The city at the meeting of the Ganga and the Yamuna, where the Kumbh is held, was renamed Prayagraj in 2018, and in the same year the Faizabad district of the state was renamed Ayodhya and Mughalsarai Junction became Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction.

Parliament passed the law that changed the English spelling of the state's name to Odisha, together with a constitutional amendment that changed the name of its language from Oriya to Odia, so that both matched the local pronunciation.

Saigon was the capital of South Vietnam, and after the north and the south were united the city was renamed in 1976 after Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Vietnamese independence movement.

Founded as Byzantium, the city became Constantinople as the capital of the eastern Roman empire and was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930; it straddles the Bosphorus and so lies partly in Europe and partly in Asia.

The small southern African monarchy announced the change in 2018 on the fiftieth anniversary of its independence, the new name meaning the land of the Swazi in the Swati language, and it is now listed at the United Nations as the Kingdom of Eswatini.

Northern Rhodesia became Zambia on independence in 1964 and Southern Rhodesia became Zimbabwe in 1980, the new name being taken from the stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe.

The correct answer is B, Burkina Faso, which was called Upper Volta after the branches of the river Volta that cross it and took its present name in 1984; the new name is drawn from two of its own languages and is read as the land of upright people.

The British colony of the Gold Coast, named for the gold traded from its shore, became independent in 1957 under the name Ghana, which was taken from a medieval West African empire, and it was the first colony of sub-Saharan Africa to win its freedom.

The correct answer is C, 1972, the year the island became a republic and took the name Sri Lanka in place of Ceylon.