State Exams GK Questions 2026

The Himalayan Mountaineering Institute was founded at Darjeeling in West Bengal in 1954, the year after the first ascent of Everest, and Tenzing Norgay served as its first director of field training.

Annapurna I, 8,091 metres high and the lowest of the fourteen eight-thousanders, was climbed in 1950 by a French expedition led by Maurice Herzog, three years before Everest; it remains one of the most dangerous of the fourteen.

Nanda Devi, 7,816 metres high, stands in Uttarakhand and is the highest peak lying wholly inside India.

In the biathlon a competitor skis a cross-country course and stops at a range to shoot at targets, with a penalty of extra distance or time for each miss; the sport grew out of military patrol skiing in Scandinavia.

In skeleton the athlete lies face down and head first on a small sled and steers it down an ice track by shifting body weight.

She reached the summit of Everest on 23 May 1984 as a member of an Indian expedition and became the first Indian woman and the fifth woman in the world to do so.

They reached the summit on 29 May 1953 as part of a British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt; Hillary was a New Zealander and Tenzing Norgay a Sherpa who later became the first director of field training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling.

The first Winter Olympic Games were held at Chamonix in the French Alps in 1924, the same year as the Paris Summer Olympics, and were recognised retrospectively by the International Olympic Committee as the first Winter Games.

The Nine Degree Channel runs along the ninth parallel of north latitude and separates Minicoy, the southernmost island of Lakshadweep, from the Laccadive and Amindivi islands to its north.

Majuli lies in the Brahmaputra in Assam, is the largest river island of India, and is the historic centre of the Vaishnavite satras founded in the tradition of Srimanta Sankardeva; it has also been constituted as a district of Assam.

The Shompen live in the interior of Great Nicobar and, with the Nicobarese, are of Mongoloid stock; both belong to the Nicobar group.

The Duncan Passage is the stretch of sea that separates Little Andaman from South Andaman, that is from the southern end of Great Andaman.

In 2018 three islands of the Andaman group were given Indian names to mark the hoisting of the tricolour by Subhas Chandra Bose in these islands: Havelock Island became Swaraj Dweep.

Kavaratti is the administrative headquarters of Lakshadweep and the seat of its administrator.

Statement II is correct: the Lakshadweep Islands are atolls, each a ring of coral enclosing a lagoon, raised on a submarine ridge in the Arabian Sea, and they are the only coral island group of India.

Saddle Peak rises to about 732 metres in North Andaman and is the highest point of the whole union territory; a national park of the same name surrounds it.

Barren Island lies in the Andaman Sea to the east of Middle Andaman and carries the only active volcano in India and in South Asia; it has erupted several times in recent decades.

Indira Point stands at the southern end of Great Nicobar in the Nicobar group and is the southernmost point of the territory of India; it was known earlier as Pygmalion Point and as Parson Point.

The Ten Degree Channel runs along the tenth parallel of north latitude and is the dividing line between the Andaman group and the Nicobar group; Little Andaman is the southernmost island of the Andaman group and Car Nicobar the northernmost of the Nicobar group, so the channel lies between them.

Doping replaces a few host atoms with impurity atoms, and each impurity atom brings its own nucleus along with its electrons, so the total positive and negative charge in the crystal stays balanced.