CBSE Questions for Class 8 General Knowledge Famous Personalities Of India And World Quiz 15 - MCQExams.com

• Irom Chanu Sharmila is a civil rights activist, political activist, and poet.
• She had started hunger-strike at the age of 28 following a massacre in Malom, Imphal in which innocent 10 persons were killed by the Assam Rifles in the year 2000. Her main demand was for repealing Armed AFSPA, 1958 from her state which provided immunity to armed forces with regard to their actions.
• She is the world’s longest hunger striker, as she had refused food and water for more than 500 weeks.

• Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
• He was best known for improving civil rights by using nonviolent civil disobedience, based on his Christian beliefs.
• He was an important personality in the Montgomery Bus Boycott event which was a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial discrimination on the public transit system of Montgomery.

• US businessman Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist on April 28, 2001, travelling to the orbiting space station on board a Russian Soyuz rocket.
• He was followed by South African Mark Shuttleworth, who was in space for eight days from April 25, 2002. Greg Olsen visited space in 2005.

• Charlie Hebdo is a weekly French satirical news magazine.
• The magazine is mainly known for its controversial provocative cartoons and caricatures that had targeted extreme right, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, politics, culture and others. Stephane Charbonnier is the editor of the magazine.

• Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known by his pen name Dr. Seuss, was an American writer and cartoonist who published over 60 books. 
• The Secret Garden is one of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s most popular novels.

• Swami and Friends was the first novel by R.K.Narayan. It is the first novel of the trilogy that is set in the fictional town of Malgudi. 
• The novel is full of humour and irony. It falls in pre-independence days in India.

• Robert Frost was an eminent American poet. He was highly appreciated and admired for his realistic portrayal of rural life and his great expertise on American colloquial speech. 
• Most of his astonishing works circle around the rural life settings in New England during early 20th century.

• The story 'Rip Van Winkle' was written by Washington Irving. Rip Van Winkle is the main character in the story. The story takes place in New York near the Catskill Mountains. The time frame is in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War, which took place from 1775-1783. 
• Rip Van Winkle escapes to the mountains to get away from his wife, who wants him to do work on their farm. He meets a group of men, accepts a drink from them, and then falls asleep for 20 years. When he goes back to his town, many things have changed.

• Margaret Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister. She was known for her tough uncompromising, conservative political views, and became dubbed as ‘The Iron Lady’. 
• She was a controversial figurehead of conservative ideology during her time in office.

• Navdanya is a network of seed keepers and organic producers spread across 22 states in India. 
• Prof. Dr Vandana Shiva is a Physicist. In 1991, she founded Navdanya. Time Magazine identified her as an environmental hero in 2003. She received the Right Livelihood Award in 1993 and the 2010 Sydney Peace Prize.

• Charles Darwin was a British naturalist who developed a theory of evolution based on natural selection. His most famous work, On the Origin of Species, explains the theory of evolution by natural selection, providing numerous supporting examples. 
• The theory proposes that the fittest individual organisms, those with the characteristics best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce.

• In physics, a newton (N) is the metric unit of force. It was named after Sir Isaac Newton. One newton is equal to 1 kilogram meter per second squared. 
• In plain English, 1 newton of force is the force required to accelerate an object with a mass of 1 kilogram 1 meter per second per second.

• Queen Victoria was queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 to 1901. She became Empress of India in 1877. 
• Victoria's reign saw great cultural expansion; advances in industry, science and communications; and the building of railways and the London Underground. 
• She is often called the Grandmother of Europe because many of Europe's monarchs were her relatives.

• Beijerinck, Martinus was a Dutch microbiologist who was the first person to use the term "virus". 
• He originated selective culture techniques, also known as enrichment culturing, and was the first to isolate a wide range of microorganisms.

• Chetan Bhagat, a rising star in the contemporary modern Indian literature, is a multitalented personality. He is a novelist, columnist, public speaker and a screenplay writer. 
• His notable works include Five Point Someone, The 3 Mistakes of My Life and 2 States. 
• Most of his literary works address the issues related to Indian youth and their aspirations which earned Bhagat status of the youth icon.

• Salman Rushdie is a novelist and essayist. Much of his early fiction is set at least partly on the Indian subcontinent. 
• His style is often classified as magical realism, while a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world. 
• The Jaguar Smile, Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses, Fury, East-West are some books by Salman Rushdie.

• Jane Austen was a Georgian era author, best known for her social commentary in novels including 'Sense and Sensibility,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' and 'Emma.' 
• Katie Scarlett O'Hara is the main character in 1936's Gone With the Wind novel by Margaret Mitchell.

• Anita Desai is one of the best-known contemporary women writers of Indian fiction in English. Anita Desai’s novels work out the mystery of the inner life of her characters. 
• Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award and Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, Desai has authored as many as sixteen works of fiction, some of the best ones being 'Fasting, Feasting', 'The Village By The Sea', 'In Custody', and 'Clear Light of Day'.

• An author, politician, and former international civil servant, Shashi Tharoor straddles several worlds of experience. In the book, An era of darkness: The British Empire in India, he aggregates all the arguments required to establish that British colonial rule was an awful experience for Indians and he does so with complete debater’s skill.

• Michelin Star Chef Vikas Khanna is an internationally acclaimed Indian chef, award-winning author, poet and filmmaker. 
• He has established himself as a top authority on Indian Cuisine, hosting successful cooking shows and has written more than 25 cookbooks.

• Mallika Sarabhai is one of India’s leading choreographers and dancers. She first made a name for herself in India as a film actress but soon was recognised as an exceptional young dancer in the classical forms of Bharata Natyam and Kuchipudi. 
• She first came to international notice when she played the role of Draupadi in Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata for 5 years, first in French and then English, performing in France, North America, Australia, Japan and Scotland.

• Louis Banks has been spearheading the Jazz Movement in India for the past three decades. He has been singularly instrumental in bringing a high standard of Jazz performance for jazz devotees in India and thus, often regarded as the Godfather of Indian Jazz.
• Apart from playing Jazz, he is the most sought after composer for advertising commercials, TV Serials, TV Themes, Curtain Raisers, Anthems Documentaries, Stage Musicals, Film Background scores, popular and Hindi Music.

• Pankaj Advani is Indian professional player of English billiards and a former professional snooker player. He is only player in the world to win world titles in all formats of both, Billiards and Snooker. 
• One of the youngest Indians to be honoured with the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, Pankaj has also been conferred the Arjuna, the Padma Shri and most recently, the Padma Bhushan awards.

• Salman Rushdie is a famous novelist and essayist. Fury, Grimus, Shalimar the clown are some books written by Salman Rushdie.
• Fury depicts the contemporary New York City as the epicentre of globalization and all of its tragic flaws.
• Grimus is a fantasy and science fiction novel whereas Shalimar the clown is an epic narrative about a mysterious killer.

• Train to Pakistan is a novel by khuswant singh, published in 1956. It recounts the Partition  in August 1947. Instead of depicting the Partition in terms of only the political events surrounding it, Singh digs into a deep local focus, providing a human dimension which brings to the event a sense of reality, horror, and believability.

• Martin Crowe, the former New Zealand captain, writer, broadcaster and mentor. 
• Widely considered the finest batsman in New Zealand cricket's history, Crowe debuted against Australia aged 19 in 1982, and quickly established a reputation as the most meticulous of batsmen, his technique widely admired.
• He retired from the game in 1995, aged only 33.

Willem Einthoven was a Dutch doctor and physiologist who invented a common medical tool which is in use today extensively known as ECG- The electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) is a diagnostic tool that is routinely used to assess the electrical and muscular functions of the heart. 

River of Smoke (2011) is a novel by Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh. It is the second volume of the Ibis trilogy. The novel has a rich tapestry of characters from various cultural and geographical backgrounds whose common interest is trade with China. The plot is set in Fanqui town, a small strip of land used by foreigners to trade with local Chinese traders, a year before the first opium war.