Static GK Mixed Quiz: Set 15

The correct answer is B, Shillong. The Assam Rifles traces its origin to the Cachar Levy raised in 1835, which makes it the oldest of the central armed police forces, and its Directorate General works from Shillong in Meghalaya. It guards the border with Myanmar and assists the states of the North East in internal security, and is administered by the Ministry of Home Affairs while being officered from the Army.

Option A, Guwahati, is the largest city of the region and holds the Northeast Frontier Railway headquarters, not the force. Option C, Itanagar, is the capital of Arunachal Pradesh. Option D, Kohima, is the capital of Nagaland, where the force has units but no headquarters. The National Security Guard, by contrast, is at Manesar in Gurugram.

The correct answer is B, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The Statue of Unity stands on Sadhu Bet, an island in the Narmada near the Sardar Sarovar Dam in the Narmada district of Gujarat, and it shows Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, independent India's first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, who brought the princely states into the Union. The statue is 182 metres tall, a height chosen to match the number of seats in the Gujarat Assembly, and it was unveiled on 31 October 2018, Patel's birth anniversary. Ram V. Sutar designed it, and iron collected from farmers across the country went into the work. A is wrong because M. K. Gandhi has no statue of this scale. C is wrong because Vinoba Bhave, who led the Bhoodan movement, is not its subject. D is wrong because Dr B. R. Ambedkar is honoured by other memorials, not by this statue. Exam tip: Statue of Unity — 182 m, Sardar Patel, on the Narmada in Gujarat, unveiled 31 October 2018.

The correct answer is A, Milkha Singh. Milkha Singh was a sprinter who won the four hundred metres gold at the Commonwealth Games of 1958 and at the Asian Games, and who finished fourth in the four hundred metres final at the Rome Olympics of 1960. The name Flying Sikh is said to have been given to him in Pakistan after he won a race there, and it has stayed with him.

Option B, Gurbachan Singh Randhawa, was a decathlete and hurdler who also reached an Olympic final for India. Option C, Balbir Singh Senior, was the hockey centre forward of three Olympic gold medal teams. Option D, Ajit Pal Singh, captained the Indian hockey team that won the World Cup in 1975. Three of the four are hockey players, so the clue is that the Flying Sikh was an athlete on the track.

The correct answer is B, Monthly channel. India Post moves its mail through six named channels, and there is no 'Monthly channel' among them. Under the Mail Network Optimisation Project the department separated its traffic so that each kind of article travels on a route with its own time norms. The six are the Metro channel, for mail between the big metro cities; the Rajdhani channel, linking the state capitals; the Green channel, for local mail inside a city; the Business channel, for corporate and bulk business mail; the Periodical channel, for newspapers and magazines; and the Bulk mail channel, for very large mailings. Because of this split, a letter addressed to a metro city does not travel with local city mail. A is wrong because the Metro channel is one of the six. C is wrong because the Rajdhani channel, which joins the capitals, is also one of them. D is wrong because the Business channel handles corporate and bulk mail and is on the list. Exam tip: the six mail channels are Metro, Rajdhani, Green, Business, Periodical and Bulk.

The correct answer is D, Vitamin D - Paul Muller, because this is the pair that does not match. Paul Hermann Muller is remembered for showing that DDT kills insects, work for which he received a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine; vitamin D is associated with Edward Mellanby, who linked its absence to rickets, and with Adolf Windaus, who worked out its chemistry. Option A is correctly matched because Elmer McCollum identified the fat soluble factor that came to be called vitamin A. Option B is correctly matched because McCollum also identified the water soluble factor named vitamin B. Option C is correctly matched because Albert Szent-Gyorgyi isolated the substance later named vitamin C and won a Nobel Prize for that work. Read the word NOT in the stem carefully, since three of the four pairs here are deliberately correct.

The correct answer is C, X-Rays. Roentgen, a German physicist, noticed in 1895 that a screen in his darkened laboratory glowed while a covered discharge tube was running, and he named the unknown radiation X-rays. For this he received the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. Option A is wrong because the conservation of electric charge is a principle established through the work of Benjamin Franklin and others, not a discovery of Roentgen. Option B is wrong because a practical incandescent electric bulb was made by Thomas Alva Edison in 1879, sixteen years before the X-ray. Option D is wrong because thermodynamics grew out of the work of Carnot, Joule, Clausius and Kelvin and is a body of laws rather than a single discovery. Remember the pairing of Roentgen, X-rays, 1895 and the first physics Nobel of 1901 together.

The correct answer is B, Operation Trident. On the night of 4 December 1971 Indian missile boats attacked Karachi harbour in Operation Trident, sinking Pakistani vessels without loss, and the Navy marks the date as Navy Day. Option A is wrong because Operation Vijay is the name used both for the liberation of Goa in 1961 and for the Kargil operation of 1999, neither of which is a naval action of 4 December. Option C is wrong because Operation Cactus was the Indian intervention in the Maldives in 1988, in which the armed forces put down a coup attempt. Option D is wrong because Operation Meghdoot was the occupation of the Siachen glacier by the Army in 1984. Naval operations of 1971 are asked in pairs, so also note Operation Python, the follow up strike on Karachi.

The correct answer is A, Brazil. Brazil is called the Coffee Bowl of the World because it grows and sends out more coffee than any other country and has done so for more than a century. Its coffee belt lies in the south-east, in the states of Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo and Parana, where the deep red soil called terra rossa, the warm climate and the rolling plateau suit the plant. The large estates there are known as fazendas, and the port of Santos handles much of the export. Coffee needs a hot, wet climate with well drained slopes, which is why it is a plantation crop of the tropics. B is wrong because Mexico is a smaller coffee grower and is better known for maize and silver. C is wrong because India grows coffee mainly in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu but is far behind Brazil. D is wrong because Serbia has a cool climate that cannot support coffee at all. Exam tip: Brazil Coffee Bowl of the World, Sri Lanka Pearl of the Indian Ocean, Cuba Sugar Bowl of the World.

The correct answer is A, Goa. The National Institute of Oceanography, a laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, works from Dona Paula near Panaji in Goa and studies the physics, chemistry, biology and geology of the Indian Ocean. Goa also holds the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research, which runs the Indian stations in Antarctica and the Arctic.

Option B, Kerala, has the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute at Kochi. Option C, Tamil Nadu, has the National Institute of Ocean Technology at Chennai, which builds the instruments and the deep ocean systems, and is the closest trap here. Option D, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, has research stations and a zonal office but not the headquarters of the institute.

The institute was founded on 1 January 1966 out of the Indian part of the International Indian Ocean Expedition, and it runs research ships for survey work at sea.

The correct answer is D, India, Australia, Japan and the US. Malabar 2020 was held in two phases in November 2020, the first in the Bay of Bengal off Visakhapatnam and the second in the Arabian Sea, and Australia joined India, Japan and the United States in it. Malabar began in 1992 as a bilateral naval exercise between the Indian Navy and the US Navy. Japan became a permanent participant in 2015. Australia had taken part once in 2007 and then returned in 2020, which brought the navies of all four Quad countries together in the same exercise. The drills cover anti-submarine warfare, air defence, cross-deck flying and live firing. Option A is wrong because that was the three-nation line-up from 2015 to 2019, before Australia rejoined. Option B is wrong because Israel has never been part of Malabar. Option C is wrong for the same reason, and it also leaves out Japan, a permanent member. Exam tip: Malabar started 1992 as India-US, Japan permanent from 2015, Australia from 2020 — the four Quad navies.

The correct answer is B, Chittaranjan Das. C. R. Das was the Calcutta barrister who defended Aurobindo Ghosh in the Alipore bomb case, gave up a large practice for the non-cooperation movement, and founded the Swaraj Party with Motilal Nehru to contest the legislative councils. Bengal called him Deshbandhu, the friend of the nation, and Kolkata's Deshbandhu Park and college keep the name.

Option A, Rajendra Prasad, the first President of India, is Deshratna, the jewel of the nation, which is the neatest trap in this set. Option C, Jayaprakash Narayan, is Loknayak, the leader of the people. Option D, Madan Mohan Malaviya, the founder of Banaras Hindu University, is Mahamana. All four titles are genuine, so this question is decided by the exact pairing.

The correct answer is C, Kanpur. The Indian Institute of Pulses Research works at Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh and is one of the institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. It began in 1984 as the Project Directorate on Pulses and was raised to an institute in 1993. Its work is on chickpea, pigeonpea, lentil, mungbean, urdbean and field pea: breeding better varieties, protecting the crop from disease and pests, and advising farmers, which matters because India is the largest producer and consumer of pulses in the world. Option A is wrong because Bhopal has the Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering. Option B is wrong because Patna has the ICAR Research Complex for the Eastern Region. Option D is wrong because Hyderabad has the Indian Institute of Rice Research and the Institute of Millets Research. Exam tip: Kanpur pulses, Hyderabad rice and millets, Shimla potato, Lucknow sugarcane.

The correct answer is B, Alexander Graham Bell. Bell received the patent for the telephone in 1876 and made the first call over a wire, carrying the human voice itself rather than a code. Option A is wrong because Samuel Morse built the electric telegraph in 1837 and gave the dot and dash code that bears his name, which sent messages but not speech. Option C is wrong because Guglielmo Marconi developed practical wireless telegraphy in the 1890s and sent signals across the Atlantic in 1901, again as code and without wires. Option D is wrong because Thomas Alva Edison, though he improved the telephone transmitter, is remembered for the practical electric bulb and the phonograph. The examiner keeps Morse and Marconi in the options precisely because all three men worked on sending messages over a distance.

The correct answer is C, Honours Your Trust. UCO Bank uses this line in its logo and advertising.

UCO Bank was founded in Kolkata in 1943 as the United Commercial Bank, and the industrialist G. D. Birla was behind its creation. It was one of the fourteen banks nationalised in July 1969, took its present name in 1985, and still has its head office in Kolkata. Taglines are a favourite one-mark question because each public sector bank keeps the same line for years.

Option A, 'Good People to bank with', belongs to Union Bank of India. Option B, 'Where every individual is committed', is the line of Bank of India. Option D, 'Faithful And Friendly', is used by Bank of Maharashtra.

Exam tip: UCO Bank - Kolkata, 1943, 'Honours Your Trust'; Union Bank - 'Good People to bank with'.

The correct answer is B, Khadakwasla near Pune. The National Defence Academy is the only academy in which cadets of the Army, Navy and Air Force undergo joint training before moving to their own service academies for pre commission training. Option A is wrong because Dehradun is the seat of the Indian Military Academy, where Army cadets complete their training, and of the Rashtriya Indian Military College. Option C is wrong because Ezhimala in Kannur district of Kerala is the Indian Naval Academy. Option D is wrong because Wellington in the Nilgiris houses the Defence Services Staff College, a mid career institution for officers of all three services, not a cadet academy. The Air Force Academy at Dundigal near Hyderabad completes the list that examiners use for matching.

The correct answer is B, Insat-1B. It was the first working satellite of the Indian National Satellite (INSAT) system, carried to orbit by the US Space Shuttle Challenger in August 1983. INSAT-1B was a multipurpose satellite: its transponders gave national television coverage, telephone links and weather pictures from one spot in geostationary orbit, about 36,000 km above the equator. It made nationwide Doordarshan broadcasts possible and began the INSAT series that still serves communication and meteorology. Its predecessor INSAT-1A, launched in 1982, failed early, which is why 1B is remembered as the real start. A is wrong because Bhaskara-I, launched in 1979 on a Soviet rocket, was an experimental earth-observation satellite, not a geostationary broadcaster. C is wrong because GSAT-7, launched in 2013, is the Indian Navy's dedicated communication satellite, often called Rukmini. D is wrong because RISAT-1, launched in 2012 on a PSLV, is a radar imaging satellite for earth observation. Exam tip: INSAT = communication and weather in geostationary orbit; Bhaskara and RISAT = observing the earth.

The correct answer is A, Alfred Nobel. The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patented dynamite in 1867, a safe way of handling nitroglycerine, and the fortune he made from explosives endowed the Nobel Prizes, first awarded in 1901. Option B is wrong because Rudolf Diesel invented the compression ignition engine that carries his name, not an explosive. Option C is wrong because Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction and built the first dynamo, a machine that generates electricity; the similarity between the words dynamite and dynamo is exactly the trap the paper setter is laying. Option D is wrong because James Watt improved the steam engine, and the unit of power is named after him. Keep the chain in mind: Nobel, dynamite, 1867, and the prizes that began in 1901 on the anniversary of his death, 10 December.

The correct answer is C, Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme was approved in 1983 and run under his leadership at the Defence Research and Development Laboratory, which is why he is called the Missile Man of India; it produced Prithvi, Agni, Trishul, Akash and Nag. Option A is wrong because Homi Bhabha was the architect of the Indian atomic energy programme and the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. Option B is wrong because Vikram Sarabhai founded the Indian space programme and is remembered as the father of ISRO. Option D is wrong because Raja Ramanna led the team that carried out the first nuclear test at Pokhran in 1974. Papers mix these four names in one option set, so tie the missile programme to Kalam alone.

The correct answer is B, Alexander Fleming. Fleming noticed in 1928 that a mould of the genus Penicillium had killed the bacteria growing around it on a culture plate, and the substance he named penicillin became the first antibiotic; Florey and Chain later turned it into a usable drug and shared the Nobel Prize with him. Option A is wrong because Joseph Lister introduced antiseptic surgery using carbolic acid, which prevents infection during an operation rather than curing one. Option C is wrong because Jonas Salk developed the injectable polio vaccine in the 1950s, a vaccine and not an antibiotic. Option D is wrong because Robert Koch identified disease causing bacteria but did not find a drug against them. A vaccine prevents a disease and an antibiotic kills bacteria already in the body, and papers test that distinction.

The correct answer is A, the Brahmaputra and the Moskva. BrahMos is built by a joint venture of India and Russia, and its name joins the Brahmaputra of India with the Moskva of Russia; it is a supersonic cruise missile that flies at nearly three times the speed of sound and can be launched from land, ships, submarines and aircraft. Option B is wrong because the Mosel is a river of France and Germany and has no part in the name. Option C is wrong because the Brahmani flows in Odisha and is not the Indian half of the name, even though it sounds close. Option D is wrong because the Mahanadi is an Indian river, so it could not supply the Russian half of a joint name. Also remember that BrahMos was not one of the five IGMDP missiles.