UPSC GK Questions 2026

Jhamarkotra is the largest rock phosphate deposit worked in India and supplies the raw material for phosphatic fertiliser, which is why the country's dependence on imported phosphate is reduced by it; the mine is run by Rajasthan State Mines and Minerals Limited.

Rawatbhata stands on the Chambal, near the Rana Pratap Sagar dam, within Chittorgarh district, though the station is often described as being near Kota because that is the larger city close by, and that is exactly the trap in this question.

The Mangala field, found in 2004 in the Barmer basin, with Bhagyam and Aishwariya nearby, made Rajasthan an oil producing state, and the crude is carried by a heated pipeline to the Gujarat coast; a refinery is being built at Pachpadra in the same district.

Makrana supplies the fine white marble used in the Taj Mahal and in the Victoria Memorial, and its quarries were recognised as a global heritage stone resource; marble is also cut at Kishangarh in Ajmer district, the largest marble market of the country.

The Khetri belt, with the nearby Kolihan mine, is the chief source of copper in Rajasthan and one of the main copper areas of India, worked by Hindustan Copper Limited; the ore is smelted and refined in the same region.

Rampura Agucha is the state's best known lead and zinc deposit and one of the largest zinc producing mines in the world; Rajasthan is the only state in India that supplies lead and zinc concentrates, the other mines being Zawar near Udaipur, the oldest of them, and Rajpura Dariba.

Mustard is the leading rabi oilseed of the state, grown with light irrigation in Bharatpur, Alwar, Sawai Madhopur, Sri Ganganagar and Hanumangarh, and Rajasthan has long been the largest producer in the country; the oilseed trade of Bharatpur and the many oil mills of the eastern districts rest on it.

Pearl millet needs little water and stands high temperature, which suits the sandy soils of western Rajasthan, and the state leads the country in its production; it is grown as a kharif crop in Barmer, Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Nagaur and Jodhpur and eaten as the staple bread of the region.

In October 1962 American aerial photographs revealed Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba; President John F. Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine of the island and, after thirteen days, Nikita Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles, the United States undertaking not to invade Cuba.

The wall was opened and began to be broken up on 9 November 1989, the single most memorable image of the end of the Cold War.

The Gold Coast became independent as Ghana on 6 March 1957 under Kwame Nkrumah, the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to do so, and Nkrumah became a leading voice of pan-Africanism and a founder of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Krishna Menon, India's best known diplomat of the period and later Defence Minister, is credited with coining the expression non-alignment in a United Nations speech in 1953; he is also remembered for the longest speech ever made at the Security Council, on Kashmir.

The five principles were written into the preamble of the agreement on trade and intercourse between India and the Tibet region of China, signed on 29 April 1954 by Jawaharlal Nehru and Zhou Enlai.

The first summit of non-aligned countries met at Belgrade, then the capital of Yugoslavia, in September 1961, with twenty-five participating countries, and Jawaharlal Nehru, Josip Broz Tito, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sukarno and Kwame Nkrumah are regarded as the movement's founders.

The Asian-African Conference met at Bandung in Indonesia in April 1955 with twenty-nine newly independent countries, condemned colonialism and racialism, and endorsed the principles of peaceful coexistence; it is often called the forerunner of the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance was signed in the Polish capital on 14 May 1955, which is why the alliance carries that city's name, although its forces were commanded from Moscow.

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed at Washington on 4 April 1949 by twelve countries, during the Berlin blockade, and bound its members to treat an attack on one as an attack on all.

Churchill, by then out of office, spoke at Westminster College in Fulton on 5 March 1946 and said that an iron curtain had descended across the continent from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic.

Bolivia, fighting alongside Peru, was defeated by Chile and lost the nitrate-rich Atacama coast, so that it has had no access to the Pacific since; the dispute still colours relations between the two countries, and Bolivia observes a Day of the Sea every year and keeps a naval force on…

The Vatican, about 0.44 square kilometres inside Rome, is both the smallest country in the world and the smallest landlocked country; it is the seat of the Pope and the smallest member of the family of sovereign states.