Darjeeling is a town in India's Eastern Himalayas, situated close to
the borders with Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and China. In the mid-19th
century, when much of India was under East India Company rule,
Darjeeling was founded as a summer retreat. On the slopes below, tea
plantations were laid out where Darjeeling tea is grown. Thousands of
labourers from the surrounding regions built the town and worked in the
tea plantations. Their descendants constitute the majority of
Darjeeling's residents today and give the town a cosmopolitan ethnic
mix. The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, ascending 2,100 metres
(7,000 ft), is a World Heritage Site and a popular tourist experience.
The local economy is largely dependent on tourism and tea growing.
Population growth has made unregulated construction, traffic congestion
and water shortages common. Deforestation has damaged the environment,
including the springs that supply the town's water.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darjeeling>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1038:
Upon the death of his uncle Stephen I, Peter became the second
king of Hungary.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter,_King_of_Hungary>
1942:
World War II: The tanker SS Ohio reached Malta as part of an
operation to deliver much-needed supplies during the siege of Malta.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pedestal>
1947:
Jawaharlal Nehru took office as the first prime minister of
India, a post he held for 18 years.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawaharlal_Nehru>
1998:
The Troubles: A car bomb attack carried out by the Real Irish
Republican Army killed 29 people and injured approximately 220 others in
Omagh, Northern Ireland.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omagh_bombing>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
teapoy:
(originally India) Originally, a three-legged decorative stand or table;
now, especially, one with recesses for holding tea caddies and/or a tea
service.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/teapoy>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the
opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably
weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion. The Satanic
Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation
that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures,
ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears
the absolutism of the Pure. Melange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit
of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility
that mass migration gives the world... The Satanic Verses is for change-
by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel
selves.
--Salman Rushdie
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie>
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