Important Days, Firsts and Superlatives

Days are the easiest marks in General Knowledge, because every day answers just three questions: which date, which event or person, and who declared it. Most national days in India are the birthday or death anniversary of a leader, or the anniversary of a big event. Once you know the story behind the date, you will not need to cram it. In this topic we go month by month through the national days of India; international days come in the next topic.

International days are proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly or by its agencies such as UNESCO, WHO, FAO and UNEP, and each carries a theme that changes every year. The date is almost always tied to a treaty, a founding or a birth, for example Ozone Day recalls the Montreal Protocol and Red Cross Day recalls Henry Dunant. When you know the reason, the date is easy to rebuild.

Why two Teachers' Days? India marks 5 September (Radhakrishnan's birthday), while the world marks 5 October (UNESCO). Why two Children's Days? India marks 14 November (Nehru's birthday), the UN marks 20 November (the Convention of 1989). Why two Non-Violence days? Gandhi Jayanti is India's national holiday on 2 October, and the UN declared the same date International Day of Non-Violence in 2007.

'First woman to...' is a favourite frame of the examiner, and it always has one clear answer. The easy way to learn these is to attach every name to one field: Indira Gandhi to the Prime Minister's chair, Pratibha Patil to Rashtrapati Bhavan, Kiran Bedi to the IPS, Bachendri Pal to Everest, Karnam Malleswari to the Olympic podium. Read the tables below field by field, and read the 'first' carefully: it is sometimes 'first Indian woman' and sometimes 'first woman in India'.

This topic covers the 'firsts' that are not about women: first holders of constitutional posts, first Indians to win global honours, and first events and institutions in India. The best way to remember them is to sort them into three drawers: people in power, people on the world stage, and 'the first time India did it' (railway, satellite, nuclear test, election).

The question word 'largest', 'longest' or 'highest' always has exactly one correct answer, which is why examiners love it. To learn superlatives without cramming, ask 'why'. Rajasthan is the largest state because it holds the vast Thar desert; Uttar Pradesh is the most populous because the fertile Ganga plain feeds many people; the Ganga is the longest river of India because it flows through the plain for more than two thousand kilometres. Below are the standard answers, grouped by theme, with the nuances that cause wrong answers.

World superlatives are a small, fixed list: the largest ocean, the longest river, the highest peak, the biggest country and so on. They are asked directly, and they also appear inside news items, for example 'the world's largest optical telescope' or 'the world's first intercontinental translocation of a large carnivore'. Learn the list by theme (Earth, living world, human-made records), and notice which records have a link to India.