UPSC GK Questions 2026

Anthropology, from the Greek 'anthropos' (human) and 'logos' (study), is the science of human beings: how societies and cultures began, how they changed and how people live today.

The Soo Locks, or Sault Ste. Marie canals, carry ships around the rapids of the St. Marys River, which drains Lake Superior into Lake Huron.

Jahandar Shah won the throne in 1712 with the help of Zulfiqar Khan, and the Sayyid brothers, Abdullah Khan and Husain Ali Khan, helped his nephew Farrukhsiyar defeat and kill him in 1713.

Mangaluru lies on the Karnataka coast, on the western, windward side of the Western Ghats. The south-west monsoon winds coming off the Arabian Sea strike the Ghats there, rise and shed heavy rain, so the coastal belt gets well over 3,000 mm a year.

The Alvars were twelve Tamil poet-saints, active roughly between the 6th and 9th centuries, whose name means 'those who are immersed' in devotion to Vishnu.

Naropa is a Buddhist festival held at Hemis Monastery in Ladakh in honour of Naropa, the 11th-century Indian scholar-yogi of Nalanda and Vikramashila whose teachings shaped the Drukpa Kagyu order that runs Hemis.

This is part of the very definition of a parliamentary committee: it is appointed or elected by the House or nominated by the presiding officer, works under the presiding officer's direction, reports to the House, and has a secretariat provided by the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha secretariat.

A blizzard is a severe snowstorm with strong winds, blowing snow and very low visibility, so it occurs only where there is heavy snowfall in winter.

The Voice of India was an English journal started in Bombay in 1883 by Dadabhai Naoroji, who later merged it with the Indian Spectator; Gokhale was not its editor.

Charvaka, also called Lokayata, is the materialist school of Indian philosophy linked with the sage Brihaspati. It accepts perception as the only valid source of knowledge, denies the soul, rebirth and the authority of the Vedas, and holds that the body is made of four elements.

The phrase 'Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam', meaning 'the whole world is one family', comes from a verse of the Maha Upanishad (chapter 6, verse 72).

The Gwalior Prashasti is a Sanskrit eulogy of the Gurjara-Pratihara king Mihira Bhoja (Bhoja I, about 836–885 CE), and its composer was the poet Baladitya.

Adding hydrogen across the double or triple bond of an alkene or alkyne turns it into a saturated alkane; this reaction is called hydrogenation and it needs a catalyst.

Thyroxine is an animal hormone, made by the thyroid gland in the neck, and it controls the rate of metabolism in the human body.

SAGY is run by the Ministry of Rural Development, not the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, so statement 1 is wrong.

In the Brønsted–Lowry theory an acid is any substance that gives away a proton, that is a hydrogen ion (H⁺), to another substance.

Setting out the groundwork India has laid, the Minister said the Alang-Sosiya yard has 115 ship recycling facilities that comply with the Hong Kong Convention within the framework of the International Maritime Organisation.

KOMEA, the Korea Marine Equipment Association, will open its first office in India in Mumbai on 30 October, a step the Indian and Korean governments welcomed in April under VOYAGES, their framework for cooperation in shipbuilding, shipping and maritime logistics.

He was on the roundtable platform with the Indian Minister, who called IMO conventions an operational lighthouse for shipping at a time of geopolitical instability, piracy and disruption in the Red Sea, protecting seafarers, trade and supply chains.

The Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways took part in the high-level government roundtable on World Maritime Day in Busan, South Korea, and used the same visit to meet the Korean marine equipment industry.