What happened in history in India

On 7 October 1737, a natural disaster struck the city of Calcutta (modern-day Kolkata) in India. For a long time this was believed in Europe to have been the result of an earthquake, but it is now believed to have been a tropical cyclone. Thomas Joshua Moore, the duties collector for the British East India Company in Calcutta, wrote in his official report that a storm and flood had destroyed nearly all the thatched buildings and killed 3,000 of the city's inhabitants. Other reports from merchant ships indicated an earthquake and tidal surge were to blame, destroying 20,000 ships in the harbor and killing 300,000 people. The population of Calcutta at the time was around 3,000–20,000.

On 25 November 1839, an enormous cyclone caused a 40-foot storm surge (unconfirmed) that hit Coringa, Andhra Pradesh, wiped out the harbor city, destroyed vessels in its bay, and killed 300,000 people. Survivors never entirely rebuilt the city.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born on 2 October 1869 into a Gujarati Hindu Modh Baniya family in Porbandar (also known as Sudamapuri), a coastal town on the Kathiawar Peninsula and then part of the small princely state of Porbandar in the Kathiawar Agency of the Indian Empire.

On 2 December 1898, Churchill embarked for India to settle his military business and complete his resignation from the 4th Hussars. He spent a lot of his time there playing polo, the only ball sport in which he was ever interested.

Having left the Hussars, Churchill sailed from Bombay on 20 March 1899, determined to launch a career in politics.

Indira Gandhi was born as Indira Priyadarshini Nehru in a Kashmiri Pandit family on 19 November 1917 in Allahabad.

Gandhi expanded his nonviolent non-co-operation platform to include the swadeshi policy – the boycott of foreign-made goods, especially British goods. The appeal of "Non-cooperation" grew, its social popularity drew participation from all strata of Indian society. Gandhi was arrested on 10 March 1922, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment.

Gandhi began his sentence on 18 March 1922. With Gandhi isolated in prison, the Indian National Congress split into two factions, , opposing this move. Furthermore, co-operation among Hindus and Muslims ended as Khilafat movement collapsed with the rise of Ataturk in Turkey. Muslim leaders left the Congress and began forming Muslim organizations. The political base behind Gandhi had broken into factions.

Gandhi was released in February 1924 for an appendicitis operation, having served only two years.

Gandhi joined the Indian National Congress and was introduced to Indian issues, politics and the Indian people primarily by Gokhale (the key leader of the Congress Party). Gandhi took leadership of the Congress in 1920 and began escalating demands until on 26 January 1930 the Indian National Congress declared the independence of India. The British did not recognize the declaration but negotiations ensued, with the Congress taking a role in provincial government in the late 1930s.

Gandhi sent an ultimatum in the form of a polite letter to the viceroy of India, Lord Irwin, on 2 March. A young left wing British Quaker by the name of Reg Reynolds delivered the letter. Gandhi condemned British rule in the letter, describing it as "a curse" that "has impoverished the dumb millions by a system of progressive exploitation and by a ruinously expensive military and civil administration... It has reduced us politically to serfdom." Gandhi also mentioned in the letter that the viceroy received a salary "over five thousand times India's average income. British violence, Gandhi promised, was going to be defeated by Indian non-violence.

This (Gandhi's letter to the viceroy of India) was highlighted by the famous Salt March to Dandi from 12 March to 6 April, where, together with 78 volunteers, he marched 388 kilometres (241 mi) from Ahmedabad to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt himself, with the declared intention of breaking the salt laws. Thousands of Indians joined him on this march to the sea. The march took 25 days to cover 240 miles with Gandhi speaking to often huge crowds along the way.

She arrived in India in 1929 and began her novitiate in Darjeeling, in the lower Himalayas, where she learned Bengali and taught at St. Teresa's School near her convent. Teresa took her first religious vows on 24 May 1931. She chose to be named after Thérèse de Lisieux, the patron saint of missionaries; because a nun in the convent had already chosen that name, Agnes opted for its Spanish spelling (Teresa).

In 1932, Gandhi began a new campaign to improve the lives of the untouchables, whom he started referring to as Harijans or "the children of god". On 8 May 1933, Gandhi began a 21-day fast of self-purification and launched a one-year campaign to help the Harijan movement. This new campaign was not universally embraced within the Dalit community. Ambedkar and his allies felt Gandhi was being paternalistic and was undermining Dalit political rights.

During her stay in Great Britain, Indira frequently met her future husband Feroze Gandhi (no relation to Mahatma Gandhi), whom she knew from Allahabad, and who was studying at the London School of Economics. The marriage took place in Allahabad according to Adi Dharm rituals though Feroze belonged to a Zoroastrian Parsi family of Gujarat.

Gandhi was released before the end of the war on 6 May 1944 because of his failing health and necessary surgery; the Raj did not want him to die in prison and enrage the nation. He came out of detention to an altered political scene – the Muslim League for example, which a few years earlier had appeared marginal, "now occupied the centre of the political stage".

The Battle of Kohima was the turning point of the Japanese U-Go offensive into India in 1944 during the Second World War. The battle was fought in three stages from 4 April to 22 June 1944 around the town of Kohima, the capital of Nagaland in northeast India. From 3 to 16 April, the Japanese attempted to capture Kohima ridge, a feature which dominated the road by which the besieged British and Indian troops. From 18 April to 13 May, British and Indian reinforcements counter-attacked to drive the Japanese from the positions they had captured. The Japanese abandoned the ridge at this point but continued to block the Kohima–Imphal road. From 16 May to 22 June, the British and Indian troops pursued the retreating Japanese and reopened the road. The battle ended on 22 June when British and Indian troops from Kohima and Imphal met at Milestone 109, ending the Siege of Imphal.

The Battle of Imphal took place in the region around the city of Imphal, the capital of the state of Manipur in northeast India from 8 March until 3 July 1944. Japanese armies attempted to destroy the Allied forces at Imphal and invade India, but were driven back into Burma with heavy losses.

In August 1947 the British partitioned the land with India and Pakistan each achieving independence on terms that Gandhi disapproved.

Narendra Modi was born on 17 September 1950 to a family of grocers in Vadnagar, Mehsana district, Bombay State (present-day Gujarat).

On 7 October 1950, Teresa received Vatican permission for the diocesan congregation, which would become the Missionaries of Charity. In her words, it would care for "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone".

Tito visited India from 22 December 1954 through 8 January 1955.

Her marriage lasted 18 years, until Feroze died of a heart attack in 1960.

After her father's death in 1964 she was appointed as a member of the Rajya Sabha (upper house) and served in Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet as Minister of Information and Broadcasting.

In January 1966, after Shastri's death, the Congress legislative party elected Indira Gandhi over Morarji Desai as their leader. Congress party veteran K. Kamaraj was instrumental in achieving Indira's victory. Because she was a woman, other political leaders in India saw Gandhi as weak and hoped to use her as a puppet once elected.

The first electoral test for Indira was the 1967 general elections for the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. The Congress Party won a reduced majority for the Lok Sabha in these elections owing to widespread disenchantment over rising prices of commodities, unemployment, economic stagnation and a food crisis. Gandhi herself was elected to Lok Sabha from the Raebareli constituency.

On 22 August 1967, she became the Minister of External Affairs of India until 14 March 1969.

On 17 July 1969, She became the Minister of Finance of India until 27 June 1970.

On 27 June 1970, she became the Minister of Home Affairs of India until 4 February 1973.

Garibi Hatao (Eradicate Poverty) was the theme for Gandhi's 1971 political bid. The Garibi Hatao slogan and the proposed anti-poverty programs that came with it were designed to give Gandhi independent national support, based on rural and urban poor. This would allow her to bypass the dominant rural castes both in and of state and local governments; likewise the urban commercial class. And, for their part, the previously voiceless poor would at last gain both political worth and political weight. The programs created through Garibi Hatao, though carried out locally, were funded and developed by the Central Government in New Delhi. The program was supervised and staffed by the Indian National Congress party. "These programs also provided the central political leadership with new and vast patronage resources to be disbursed... throughout the country."

Indira Gandhi won the 1971 Indian general election.

India has conducted nuclear weapons tests in a pair of series namely Pokhran I and Pokhran II. India has signed neither the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty nor the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, considering both to be flawed and discriminatory.

On 12 June 1975, the Allahabad High Court declared Indira Gandhi's election to the Lok Sabha in 1971 void on grounds of electoral malpractice. The court ordered her stripped of her parliamentary seat and banned from running for any office for six years. As the constitution holds that the Prime Minister must be a member of either the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha, the two houses of the Parliament of India, this would have effectively removed her from office. However, Gandhi rejected calls to resign and announced plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. Gandhi insisted that the conviction did not undermine her position, despite having been unseated from Lok Sabha.

Gandhi moved to restore order by ordering the arrest of most of the opposition participating in the unrest. Her Cabinet and government then recommended that President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed declare a state of emergency because of the disorder and lawlessness following the Allahabad High Court decision. Accordingly, Ahmed declared a State of Emergency caused by internal disorder, based on the provisions of Article 352 of the Constitution, on 25 June 1975.

On 30 November 1975, she became Minister of Defence of India for a month.

In 1977, after extending the state of emergency twice, Indira Gandhi called elections to give the electorate a chance to vindicate her rule. Gandhi may have grossly misjudged her popularity by reading what the heavily censored press wrote about her. Gandhi's Congress party was crushed soundly in the elections. The public realized the statement and motto of the Janata Party alliance. Indira and Sanjay Gandhi both lost their seats, and Congress was cut down to 153 seats (compared with 350 in the previous Lok Sabha), 92 of which were in the South.

The 1977 Andhra Pradesh cyclone was a devastating tropical cyclone that hit Andhra Pradesh on November 14, 1977, killing at least 10,000 people.

Before the 1980 elections Gandhi approached the then Shahi Imam of Jama Masjid, Syed Abdullah Bukhari and entered into an agreement with him on the basis of 10-point programme to secure the support of the Muslim votes. In the elections held in January, Congress returned to power with a landslide majority.

On 23 June, Gandhi's son Sanjay was killed in an air crash while performing an aerobatic manoeuvre in New Delhi.

On 23 April 1983, the Punjab Police Deputy Inspector General A. S. Atwal was shot dead as he left the Temple compound. The following day, after the murder, Harchand Singh Longowal confirmed the involvement of Bhindranwale in the murder.

After several futile negotiations, Indira Gandhi ordered the Indian army in June 1984 to enter the Golden Temple in order to remove Bhindranwale and his supporters from the complex. The army used heavy artillery, including tanks, in the action code-named Operation Blue Star. The operation badly damaged or destroyed parts of the Temple complex, including the Akal Takht shrine and the Sikh library. It also led to the deaths of a large number of Sikh fighters and innocent pilgrims. The number of casualties remains disputed with estimates ranging from many hundreds to many thousands.

On 30 October 1984, Gandhi visited Orissa where she gave her last speech at the then Parade Ground in front of the Secretariat of Orissa. In that speech, she strikingly associated her blood with the health of the nation: "I am alive today, I may not be there tomorrow...I shall continue to serve until my last breath and when I die, I can say, that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it...Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic."

Following her cremation, millions of Sikhs were displaced and nearly three thousand were killed in anti-Sikh riots. Rajiv Gandhi on a live TV show said of the carnage, "When a big tree falls, the earth shakes."

On 31 October 1984, two of Gandhi's bodyguards, Satwant Singh and Beant Singh, shot her with their service weapons in the garden of the Prime Minister's residence at 1 Safdarjung Road, New Delhi. The shooting occurred as she was walking past a wicket gate guarded by Satwant and Beant. She was to be interviewed by the British actor Peter Ustinov, who was filming a documentary for Irish television. Beant Singh shot her three times using his side-arm and Satwant Singh fired 30 rounds. Beant Singh and Satwant Singh dropped their weapons and surrendered. Afterwards, they were taken away by other guards into a closed room where Beant Singh was shot dead. Kehar Singh was later arrested for conspiracy in the attack. Both Satwant and Kehar were sentenced to death and hanged in Delhi's Tihar Jail.

Virat Kohli was born on 5 November 1988 in Delhi into a Punjabi Hindu family. His father, Prem Kohli, worked as a criminal lawyer and his mother, Saroj Kohli, is a housewife. He has an older brother, Vikas, and an older sister, Bhavna. According to his family, when he was three-years old, Kohli would pick up a cricket bat, start swinging it and ask his father to bowl at him.

The Charkhi Dadri mid-air collision took place between Saudia Flight 763 and Kazakhstan Airlines Flight 1907 over Charkhi Dadri, India on November 12, 1996. The collision was mainly the result of the Kazakh pilot flying lower than the assigned clearance altitude. All 349 passengers and crew on board of both the aircraft died. It remains the world's deadliest mid-air collision.

The 1996 Andhra Pradesh cyclone (also known as Cyclone 07B) was a small but powerful storm that left heavy damage in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. It formed on 4 November in the eastern Bay of Bengal. Ahead of the storm, about 225,000 families evacuated, although many towns lacked proper storm shelters. When the cyclone made landfall, it produced strong winds up to 100 km (60 mi) inland, dropped 210 mm (8.3 in) of rainfall across a 40 km (25 mi) region, and flooded over 250 villages along a 60 km (37 mi) portion of the coast. There were 1,077 confirmed deaths with many others missing, although many of the dead were washed into the sea and were unlikely to be found.

On 13 March 1997 Teresa resigned as head of the Missionaries of Charity.

She died on 5 September.

The 2001 Gujarat earthquake, also known as the Bhuj earthquake, occurred on 26 January, India's 52nd Republic Day and lasted for over 2 minutes. The epicentre was about 9 km south-southwest of the village of Chobari in Bhachau Taluka of Kutch District of Gujarat, India. The intraplate earthquake reached 7.7 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum felt intensity of X (Extreme) on the Mercalli intensity scale. The earthquake killed between 13,805 and 20,023 people (including 18 in southeastern Pakistan), injured another 167,000 and destroyed nearly 400,000 homes.

On 27 February 2002, a train with several hundred passengers burned near Godhra, killing approximately 60 people.