Important Days & Dates Mixed Quiz: Set 4

The correct answer is A, P. C. Mahalanobis. Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis founded the Indian Statistical Institute, gave statistics the measure known as the Mahalanobis distance and shaped the model used in the Second Five Year Plan, and the Government of India keeps his birthday as Statistics Day.

Option B, C. R. Rao, was a statistician of the same institute and of great distinction, which makes him the strongest distractor in this question, but the day is not his. Option C, Srinivasa Ramanujan, is honoured on 22 December, which is observed as National Mathematics Day, a pairing examiners like to set against this one. Option D, Satyendra Nath Bose, was a physicist known for Bose-Einstein statistics, a name that sounds close enough to mislead. Learn the two Indian science days together: 29 June for statistics and 22 December for mathematics.

The correct answer is B, 2019. Mahatma Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 at Porbandar in Gujarat, so his 150th birth anniversary fell on 2 October 2019. The Government of India marked it with two years of celebrations from 2018 to 2020, and the Swachh Bharat Mission set its target of an open-defecation-free India for that date. The United Nations observes 2 October as the International Day of Non-Violence, adopted in 2007. Gandhi Jayanti is one of India's three national holidays, along with Republic Day on 26 January and Independence Day on 15 August. A is wrong because 2018 was the 149th anniversary and only the start of the celebrations. C is wrong because 2020 was the 151st anniversary. D is wrong because 2021 was the 152nd. Exam tip: Gandhi born 2 October 1869; 150th anniversary in 2019; 2 October = International Day of Non-Violence.

The correct answer is B, Chartered Accountants Day. The first of July is observed as Chartered Accountants Day because the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India was established on 1 July 1949 by an Act of Parliament. The same date is also observed as GST Day, since the goods and services tax came into force on 1 July 2017, and as National Doctors Day.

Option A, National Statistics Day, falls on 29 June, the birth anniversary of Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. Option C, National Technology Day, is observed on 11 May, marking the Pokhran nuclear tests of 1998 and the first flight of the Hansa aircraft. Option D, National Science Day, is observed on 28 February, the date on which C. V. Raman announced the discovery of the effect named after him.

The correct answer is C, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. National Unity Day, or Rashtriya Ekta Diwas, is observed on 31 October, the birth anniversary of Sardar Patel, who was born in 1875 at Nadiad, Gujarat. The day was started in 2014 to honour his role as the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister who brought more than 560 princely states into the Indian Union, earning him the title Iron Man of India. It is marked with a Run for Unity and a unity pledge, and on 31 October 2018 the 182-metre Statue of Unity was unveiled in his memory at Kevadia on the Narmada. A is wrong because Dr Ambedkar's birth anniversary, 14 April, is Ambedkar Jayanti. B is wrong because Indira Gandhi's birthday, 19 November, is observed as National Integration Day. D is wrong because Mother Teresa was born on 26 August, which is not a national day. Exam tip: 31 October means Sardar Patel, National Unity Day and the Statue of Unity.

The correct answer is B, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, born on 5 September 1888. He was a philosopher and a teacher who became the first Vice President and the second President of India, and when his students wished to celebrate his birthday he asked that the day be kept for teachers instead. It has been observed as Teachers' Day ever since.

Option A, Dr Rajendra Prasad, was the first President of India, born on 3 December, and no national day is tied to his birth. Option C, Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, was born on 15 October, which is observed as World Students' Day. Option D, Jawaharlal Nehru, was born on 14 November, which is observed in India as Children's Day. All three are Presidents or Prime Ministers, which is what makes the options look alike.

The correct answer is B, conducted nuclear tests at Pokhran. On 11 May 1998 India carried out nuclear tests at Pokhran in Rajasthan, and the same day brought the first test flight of the indigenous Hansa aircraft and a successful test of the Trishul missile. The day was declared soon afterwards to honour Indian scientists and engineers.

Option A is wrong because India's first satellite, Aryabhata, was launched in 1975 and has no connection with this date. Option C refers to work on indigenous supercomputing from the early 1990s, again unrelated to 11 May. Option D points to the start of nuclear power generation in the country in the late 1960s, which is a different milestone altogether. Keep the three Indian days of these two months apart by their reasons: 11 May for technology, 21 May for anti-terrorism and 29 June for statistics.

The correct answer is B, Jawaharlal Nehru. India's first Prime Minister was born on 14 November 1889, and because of his known fondness for children, who called him Chacha Nehru, his birthday was adopted as Children's Day after his death in 1964.

Option A, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, was born on 3 December, a date now marked as the International Day of Persons with Disabilities rather than as any anniversary of his. Option C, Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, was born on 5 September, which India observes as Teachers' Day, and swapping Teachers' Day with Children's Day is the commonest error in this pair. Option D, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, was born on 11 November, observed as National Education Day, so his date falls in the same month and only three days earlier, which makes him the sharpest distractor here. The United Nations separately observes World Children's Day on 20 November.

The correct answer is B, Operation Vijay. Kargil Vijay Diwas is observed on 26 July because the Indian armed forces completed the recapture of the heights in the Kargil sector under Operation Vijay on that date in 1999. The day honours the soldiers who fought at extreme altitude in that conflict.

Option A, Operation Meghdoot, was the 1984 operation by which India secured the Siachen glacier, a different place and a different year. Option C, Operation Parakram, was the mobilisation of forces along the border after the attack on Parliament in December 2001, and it did not involve the Kargil heights. Option D, Operation Cactus, was the 1988 Indian intervention in the Maldives to reverse an attempted coup, so it belongs to an entirely different theatre.

The correct answer is C, 8 June. The day draws attention to the part the oceans play in the climate, in the oxygen we breathe and in the livelihoods of coastal communities, and it sits three days after World Environment Day.

Option A, 3 June, is World Bicycle Day, which recognises the bicycle as simple, clean and affordable transport. Option B, 5 June, is World Environment Day, the best known of the month and therefore the answer candidates give by reflex. Option D, 12 June, is the World Day Against Child Labour. Because the first half of June carries four separate observances, the best protection is to recite them in order, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8 and 12 June, rather than trying to recall each on its own.

The correct answer is C, 21 February. The day was declared by UNESCO to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and to protect languages that are dying out, and the date recalls the language movement in Dhaka in 1952, in which students were killed while demanding recognition for Bengali.

Option A, 10 January, is World Hindi Day, which marks the first World Hindi Conference held in 1975, and it is the commonest wrong answer because both days are about language. Option B, 13 February, is World Radio Day, and in India the same date is National Women's Day for the birth anniversary of Sarojini Naidu. Option D, 26 January, is Republic Day. A related date worth carrying is 14 September, observed in India as Hindi Diwas, which is different again from World Hindi Day.

The correct answer is B, 14 August. Partition Horrors Remembrance Day is observed on 14 August, the day before Independence Day, in memory of the millions who were displaced and of those who lost their lives during the partition of 1947. The observance is meant to remind later generations of the human cost of that division.

Option A, 9 August, is August Kranti Diwas for the Quit India Movement, and is also Nagasaki Day. Option C, 15 August, is Independence Day itself, on which the Prime Minister addresses the nation from the Red Fort, so it marks the freedom rather than the suffering that accompanied it. Option D, 26 August, is Women's Equality Day, an observance of a completely different kind that belongs to the same month.

The correct answer is A, 3 March. The United Nations chose this date because the international convention on trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora was signed on 3 March, and the day is used to draw attention to wild animals and plants and to the trade that threatens them.

Option B, 20 March, carries two other observances, the International Day of Happiness and World Sparrow Day, the second of which is about a bird and therefore tempting here. Option C, 21 March, is the International Day of Forests and also World Poetry Day. Option D, 5 April, is National Maritime Day in India and has nothing to do with wildlife. March is crowded with environment related days, so learn them in sequence: wildlife on the third, sparrows on the twentieth, forests on the twenty-first and water on the twenty-second.

The correct answer is B. On 14 September 1949 the Constituent Assembly decided that Hindi written in the Devanagari script would be an official language of the Union, a decision that later became Article 343 of the Constitution, and that date is kept every year as Hindi Diwas.

Option A is the commonest mistake in the whole of general awareness. India has no national language; the Constitution speaks of official languages, and the Eighth Schedule lists the languages of the Union. Option C is wrong because the first Hindi newspaper, Udant Martand, appeared on 30 May 1826, a date observed as Hindi Journalism Day. Option D is wrong because Munshi Premchand was born on 31 July, which is marked as his own anniversary and not as Hindi Diwas.

The correct answer is A, Henry Dunant, the Swiss businessman whose account of the wounded left on a battlefield led to the founding of the Red Cross movement and to the first Geneva Convention. He shared the first Nobel Peace Prize, and the movement observes his birthday as its day.

Option B, Florence Nightingale, is honoured on 12 May as International Nurses Day, and the two observances lie four days apart, which is what the question is testing. Option C, Louis Pasteur, developed vaccines and the process of pasteurisation, but no day in this pair of months marks his birth. Option D, Alexander Fleming, discovered penicillin and again has no observance in May or June. Note that 8 May is also World Thalassaemia Day, so a paper may offer the same date for two different answers.

The correct answer is B, 11 November. The date is the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, born in 1888, who was independent India's first Minister of Education and the moving spirit behind the founding of the University Grants Commission and the Indian Institutes of Technology. The Ministry of Human Resource Development began observing the day in 2008.

Option A, 5 September, is Teachers' Day, the birth anniversary of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, and it belongs to a different month altogether. Option C, 14 November, is Children's Day, the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, and its nearness to 11 November is what makes it a trap. Option D, 26 November, is Constitution Day and also National Milk Day. Fixing the three November dates in order, 11 for education, 14 for children and 26 for the Constitution, keeps them apart in the hall.

The correct answer is C, Swadeshi Movement. National Handloom Day falls on 7 August because the Swadeshi Movement was formally launched on that date in 1905 at a meeting in Calcutta, in response to the partition of Bengal. The movement urged the boycott of foreign cloth and the use of Indian made goods, which makes the date a natural one for honouring handloom weavers.

Option A, the Quit India Movement, was launched on 8 August 1942 and its anniversary is observed on 9 August as August Kranti Diwas. Option B, the Non-Cooperation Movement, was begun by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920 and was withdrawn after the Chauri Chaura incident of 1922. Option D, the Civil Disobedience Movement, began with the Dandi March of March 1930, so none of these three matches the August date.

The correct answer is B, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the former Prime Minister who was killed on 21 May 1991. The day was declared soon afterwards, and on it offices and institutions take a pledge against violence and terrorism in all its forms.

Option A is wrong because Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948, a date kept as Martyrs' Day. Option C refers to the attack on Parliament in December 2001, which has no separate national observance of this kind. Option D refers to the end of the Kargil conflict, remembered on 26 July as Kargil Vijay Diwas. All four are anniversaries of national importance, so the question is really asking whether you can attach the right event to the right date rather than merely recognise the names.

The correct answer is A, Sir M. Visvesvaraya, born on 15 September 1861. He was the engineer behind the Krishna Raja Sagara dam and the flood protection works of Hyderabad, served as Diwan of Mysore and was given the Bharat Ratna in 1955. Engineers' Day is observed on his birth anniversary every year.

Option B, Homi J. Bhabha, was the physicist who founded India's atomic energy programme and is remembered as the father of the Indian nuclear programme. Option C, Vikram Sarabhai, was the physicist who founded the Indian space programme and after whom the space centre at Thiruvananthapuram is named. Option D, Satish Dhawan, headed ISRO after Sarabhai and gave his name to the launch centre at Sriharikota. All three are scientists rather than the engineer honoured on this day.

The correct answer is B, adopted the Constitution of India. The Constituent Assembly adopted, enacted and gave to itself the Constitution on 26 November 1949, and the Government of India has observed the date as Constitution Day, or Samvidhan Divas, since 2015.

Option A is wrong because the Assembly held its first sitting on 9 December 1946, three years earlier, under the temporary chairmanship of Dr. Sachchidananda Sinha. Option C names a different date and is the trap of this question: the Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950, two months after adoption, and that day is Republic Day. Option D is wrong because the Drafting Committee, with Dr. B. R. Ambedkar as its Chairman, was set up on 29 August 1947. The pair to carry into the exam is adoption on 26 November 1949 and commencement on 26 January 1950.

The correct answer is B, 16 September. The day, formally the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, marks the signing of the Montreal Protocol on 16 September 1987, the agreement under which countries agreed to stop using chlorofluorocarbons and other substances that thin the ozone layer.

Option A, 5 September, is Teachers' Day in India. Option C, 16 October, is World Food Day, which marks the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization in 1945, and the matching day of the month makes it the strongest distractor here. Option D, 5 June, is World Environment Day, which is about the environment as a whole and is set by the United Nations Environment Programme, not by the Montreal Protocol. Learning each of these four dates with the reason behind it is the only safe way to keep them apart in the examination hall.