State Exams GK Questions 2026

The Presidential Medal of Freedom was established in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy, replacing an earlier Medal of Freedom of 1945, and it is awarded for especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural and other significant public…

Nishan-e-Pakistan, which means the order of Pakistan, is the highest civilian decoration conferred by that country and is usually given to heads of state and to those who have rendered outstanding service to Pakistan; the word nishan denotes the highest class in its system of awards, above hilal, sitara and…

The Legion of Honour was instituted by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802 to reward civil and military merit, and it remains the highest decoration of France, awarded in five classes of which the Grand Cross is the highest.

Both the Bharat Ratna and the Padma series were instituted on the second of January 1954, during the presidency of Dr Rajendra Prasad, and the first Bharat Ratna awards went that year to C. Rajagopalachari, C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan.

The Indian civilian honours run in a fixed order of precedence: the Bharat Ratna first, then Padma Vibhushan, then Padma Bhushan and then Padma Shri. Counting from the top, Padma Bhushan is therefore the third highest, and it is given for distinguished service of a high order in any field.

Charvaka, also called Lokayata and attributed to Brihaspati, rejects the authority of the Vedas, denies rebirth and a soul surviving death and holds that perception alone is a valid means of knowledge, so it is classed as nastika or heterodox along with Buddhism and Jainism.

The fourth Buddhist council met in Kashmir under the patronage of the Kushana ruler Kanishka, and it is remembered because the assembly divided into the Hinayana and Mahayana schools; the proceedings were in Sanskrit, and Vasumitra presided with Ashvaghosha associated with it.

Shankaracharya expounded Advaita or non dualism, in which Brahman alone is real, the world of appearance is maya and the individual soul is not different from Brahman; he wrote commentaries on the Brahma Sutra, the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and is credited with establishing monastic centres in the…

Mahavira was the twenty fourth and last of the Tirthankaras, born at Kundagrama near Vaishali, who renounced the world at thirty, attained kaivalya after twelve years of austerity and attained nirvana at Pavapuri in Bihar.

The Ahmadiyya movement was founded in 1889 at Qadian in the Punjab by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, and it is one of the religious movements of modern India that grew out of the reformist debates of the nineteenth century, drawing on both Islamic tradition and the liberal ideas of the age.

Kanada, also called Uluka, composed the Vaisheshika Sutra and taught that the material world is built of indivisible atoms called paramanu, which combine to form the objects of experience; the school also classifies reality into categories or padarthas and is treated as the companion of Nyaya in logic and physics.

Nyaya is the school of logic and holds that liberation follows from correct reasoning, so it pairs with logical thinking.

The eightfold path or ashtangika marga is the fourth of the noble truths preached by the Buddha in his first sermon at Sarnath, and it names the middle way between indulgence and mortification: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.

Purva Mimamsa is the school founded by Jaimini, which treats the karma kanda or ritual portion of the Vedas as authoritative and holds that liberation follows from the correct performance of Vedic duty.

Ramanuja taught Vishishtadvaita or qualified non dualism, in which souls and matter are real but exist as attributes of Brahman.

The English physician William Harvey showed by experiment and measurement that blood is not made afresh and used up in the tissues, as was then believed, but moves in a closed circuit, driven by the heart acting as a pump, and he published this in 1628 in his book on…

The opening between the left atrium and the left ventricle is guarded by a valve with two flaps or cusps, which is why it is called the bicuspid valve; it is also known as the mitral valve because its shape resembles a bishop's mitre.

Antidiuretic hormone, also called vasopressin, is released by the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland and makes the distal tubule and the collecting duct of the nephron pull water back into the blood.

Filtration at the glomerulus is blind: it pushes out useful glucose and amino acids along with the waste.

When the body breaks down more protein than it needs, the amino acids are stripped of their amino group and the ammonia so released is highly poisonous.