CBSE Questions for Class 8 General Knowledge Famous Personalities Of India And World Quiz 16 - MCQExams.com

Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997) was from a farming family in Illinois and had an interest in astronomy from a young age, inspired by seeing Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons using his uncle’s telescope is a dwarf planet.It is the ninth largest and tenth-most-massive known object directly orbiting the Sun.

• St. Martin worked as a voyageur in Canada. He was inadvertently shot at close range with a musket at a fur trading post.
• The blast blew a hole through his side, and when it healed it formed an abnormal passageway in his stomach.
• He was taken to a nearby army base, and treated by Beaumont. Amazingly, despite the severity of the injuries, the surgeon was able to save him.

• Sir Ronald Ross, born in Almora, India, was famous for his work concerning malaria and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902.
• He discovered that the salivary gland in the mosquito was the storage site of malarial parasites and using infected birds, he demonstrated the full life cycle of the malarial parasitic organism.
• Ross was also a prolific writer of novels and in particular, poems.

• Chandra Shekhar Azad was an Indian freedom fighter who had a revolutionary bent of mind in his initial years.
• It was after the death of Lala Lajpat Rai in 1928, that Azad had a change of heart and advocated socialism.
• He reorganized Hindustan Republic Association into Hindustan Socialist Republic Association with the support of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, and Rajguru, and urged his fellow revolutionaries to undertake social work to reduce the hardships faced by Indians.

• Widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists, Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer and mathematician, who helped shape the scientific revolution during the Renaissance.
• Because of his mathematical approach to motion, Galileo was intrigued by the back and forth motion of a suspended weight. 
• Galileo discovered the "isochronism of the pendulum" aka the "law of the pendulum". Galileo demonstrated at the Tower of Pisa that falling bodies of different weights descend at the same rate.

• A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. 
• The play is one of Shakespeare's most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.
• In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Puck is a mischievous sprite and Oberon’s servant and jester. Puck is perhaps the play’s most adorable character and stands out from the other fairies that drift through the play.

• Margaret Mitchell's 'Gone with the Wind' was published in 1936, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 
• It is a story about civil war, starvation, rape, murder, heartbreak and slavery. The story is one of struggle, growth and survival in harsh physical and emotional circumstances.

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a French philosopher and writer. His Political Philosophy, particularly his formulation of social contract theory strongly influenced the French Revolution and the development of Liberal, Conservative and Socialist theory.
• A brilliant, undisciplined and unconventional thinker throughout his colorful life, his views on Philosophy of Education and on religion were equally controversial but nevertheless influential.

• The invention of the piano is credited to Bartolomeo Cristofori.
• Louis Lumiere along with his brother Auguste was credited for the invention of the cinema.

• John Glenn was the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth, completing three orbits in 1962. 
• By orbiting the Earth, John Glenn showed that the United States could compete with the Soviet Union in the Cold War space race.
• His mission of almost nine days on the space shuttle orbiter Discovery, launched Oct. 29, 1998, when he was 77, made him the oldest human to venture into space.

• Most people are familiar with Friar Tuck as one of Robin Hood's band of Merry Men.
• Friar is often described as a fat, jovial monk with a classic tonsure haircut.
• Besides being a "warrior monk," Tuck is known for his love of ale, and often is used in the Robin Hood stories as comic relief.

• Karel Capek is one of the the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. He wrote with intelligence and humour on a wide variety of subjects.
• His works are known for their interesting and precise descriptions of reality, and Capek is renowned for his excellent work with the Czech language.
• His play RUR, Rossum's Universal Robots (1921), introduced us to the word 'robot' and described the elimination of humanity by robots.

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a major poet of the English Romantic period, a literary movement characterized by imagination, passion, and the supernatural.
• He is also noted for his works on literature, religion, and the organization of society.

• Dr Varghese Kurien is the person who transformed rural India and made India the largest producer of milk. Also known as the Milkman of India, Dr Kurien’s endless efforts has alleviated millions of rural Indian out of poverty.
• He was honoured with many prestigious awards like Padma Vibhushan, the World Food Prize and the Magsaysay Award.

• Helen Keller was an American educator and advocated for the blind and deaf.
• Stricken by an illness at the age of 2, Keller was left blind and deaf. She overcame the disability to become an author, political activist and lecturer.
• During her lifetime, she received many honours in recognition of her accomplishments.

• Rosa Louise Parks was nationally recognized as the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement” in America.
• Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in the year 1955, triggered a wave of protest that pounded throughout the United States.
• Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history.

• The book 'The Bangle Sellers' was written by Sarojini Naidu. It is a poem exploring the life of Indian women, the Indian culture and traditions revolving around women.
• The poem uses the theme of bangles, an important ornament for Indian women to beautify themselves with.

• The Merchant of Venice written by Shakespeare is a play that revolves around love, money, prejudice and social injustice.
• The story is about Antonio, a merchant, who takes a loan from Shylock to help his friend to court Portia. Antonio can't repay the loan, and without mercy, Shylock demands a pound of his flesh.
• The heiress Portia, now the wife of Antonio's friend, dresses as a lawyer and saves Antonio.