Kerala is a state on the southwestern tropical Malabar Coast of India. To its east and northeast, Kerala borders Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; to its west and south lie the Indian Ocean islands of Lakshadweep and the Maldives, respectively. Kerala also envelops Mahé, a coastal exclave of the Union Territory of Pondicherry. In prehistory, Kerala's rainforests and wetlands — then thick with malaria-bearing mosquitoes and man-eating tigers — were largely avoided by Neolithic humans. More than a millennium of overseas contact and trade culminated in four centuries of struggle between and among multiple colonial powers and native Keralite states. Kerala was granted statehood on November 1, 1956. Radical social reforms begun in the 19th century by the kingdoms of Kochi and Travancore — and spurred by such leaders as Narayana Guru and Chattampi Swamikal — were continued by post-Independence governments, making Kerala among the Third World's longest-lived, healthiest, and most literate regions. Kerala's 31.8 million people now live under a stable democratic socialist political system and exhibit unusually equitable gender relations.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1841: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that captive Africans who seized control of La Amistad, the trans-Atlantic slave-trading ship carrying them, had been taken into slavery illegally. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amistad_%28ship%29)

1862: Ironclad warships USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Monitor)

1932: Eamon de Valera of Fianna Fáil became President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, succeeding W.T. Cosgrave of Cumann na nGaedhael. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamon_de_Valera)

1945: A bomb raid on Tokyo started a firestorm, killing 100,000. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_in_World_War_II)

1959: Barbie, the world's best-selling doll, debuted at the American International Toy Fair in New York City. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbie)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"Some choices will choose you. How you face these choices, these turns in the road, with what kind of attitude, more than the choices themselves, is what will define the context of your life." -- Dana Reeve (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dana_Reeve)