SSC GD Constable GK Questions 2026

The Scottish physician and writer introduced Holmes in A Study in Scarlet in 1887 and went on to write four novels and more than fifty short stories about him, narrated by Dr John Watson, with the address 221B Baker Street in London.

Oliver Twist, published in instalments from 1837, is his second novel and follows an orphan boy from a workhouse into a gang of young thieves in London, giving English the figures of Fagin, the Artful Dodger and Bill Sikes.

Nagabhata I founded the Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty in the eighth century in the region of Malwa and Rajasthan and is remembered for checking the Arab advance from Sindh, a success the inscriptions describe in heroic terms.

Pulakeshin I founded the Chalukya dynasty of Badami in the middle of the sixth century, made Vatapi, the modern Badami in Karnataka, his capital, and performed the Ashvamedha sacrifice.

The Satavahanas, who rose in the Deccan after the Mauryas, were founded by Simuka and ruled from Pratishthana, the modern Paithan on the Godavari in Maharashtra; their greatest king, Gautamiputra Satakarni, is praised in the Nashik inscription of his mother Gautami Balashri.

Gopala was elected ruler by the chiefs of Bengal in about 750 CE, ending a long period of disorder known in the sources as matsyanyaya, and founded the Pala dynasty, which became one of the three contenders in the tripartite struggle for Kannauj.

Pushyamitra Shunga, the commander of the Mauryan army, killed the last Mauryan ruler Brihadratha in about 185 BCE and founded the Shunga dynasty, which ruled from Pataliputra and Vidisha and under which the Sanchi and Bharhut stupas were enlarged.

Sri Gupta, who bore the modest title Maharaja, is named in the inscriptions as the founder of the Gupta family, and he was followed by his son Ghatotkacha.

Mahapadma Nanda founded the Nanda dynasty in about the middle of the fourth century BCE after displacing the Shishunagas, and the Puranas call him Ekarat, the sole sovereign, and Sarva-kshatrantaka, the destroyer of all Kshatriyas, because he is described as a ruler of low birth who uprooted the older ruling…

The Buddhist text Mahaparinibbana Sutta and the Jaina tradition credit Ajatashatru of the Haryanka dynasty with two engines used in his long war against the Lichchhavis of Vaishali: the Mahashilakantaka, which hurled great stones, and the Rathamusala, a chariot fitted with a mace that swept down ranks of soldiers.

Kanchipuram in northern Tamil Nadu was the Pallava capital from about the fourth century until the dynasty fell to the Cholas in the ninth, and it was there that Hiuen Tsang was received by Narasimhavarman I and that the Kailasanatha temple was raised by Narasimhavarman II Rajasimha.

Mahendravarman I ruled the Pallava kingdom from Kanchipuram in the early seventh century, fought Pulakeshin II of Badami, began the rock-cut mandapas of the Tamil country and bore the titles Vichitrachitta and Mattavilasa, the second being the name of the Sanskrit farce attributed to him.

Vijayalaya, who founded the line of the imperial Cholas in the middle of the ninth century, captured the Kaveri delta from the Muttaraiyar chiefs and built Thanjavur, which became the Chola capital and later the site of Rajaraja I's Brihadeeswara temple.

Dantidurga founded the Rashtrakuta dynasty in the middle of the eighth century, threw off the overlordship of the Chalukyas of Badami by defeating Kirtivarman II, and took imperial titles; his successors ruled from Manyakheta, the modern Malkhed.

When the surface on which condensation occurs is below the freezing point and the dew point is also below it, the vapour changes directly into tiny ice crystals instead of water droplets, and that white deposit is frost; it is common on clear, calm winter nights when the ground loses…

A temperate or extra-tropical cyclone is a frontal system: it forms between about thirty-five and sixty-five degrees latitude where a cold polar air mass meets a warm subtropical one, and the warm air is forced to rise along the front, giving slow and widespread rain over a large area.

The India Meteorological Department grades a system of the north Indian Ocean by its sustained wind speed, and the highest grade, the super cyclonic storm, begins at two hundred and twenty-two kilometres per hour.

The Coriolis force, which arises from the rotation of the earth, is zero at the equator and very weak for a few degrees on either side, so converging air cannot be deflected into the spiral that makes a cyclone; the belt within about five degrees of the equator is therefore…

In the equatorial belt the ground is strongly heated through the morning, the warm moist air rises in powerful convection currents, cools as it rises, condenses into towering cumulonimbus and falls as a short, very heavy shower in the afternoon, which is why it is nicknamed four o'clock rain.

The cumulonimbus is a cloud of great vertical extent that can rise from near the ground almost to the top of the troposphere, and the strong updraughts inside it produce thunder, lightning, heavy showers and hail; it is the cloud of the thunderstorm and the eye wall of a cyclone…