Anyone who's read English books growing up would have invariably come across Roald Dahl. So beloved is this British author that his tales were not just part of the popular reading culture but even made their way into the English Literature syllabus of the ICSE and CBSE boards. From Matilda to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Fantastic Mr Fox, Dahl's work is regarded as hilarious, observant and irreverent. And it was on November 23, 1990, that this acclaimed children's author breathed his last.
November 23 also happens to be the death anniversary of renowned Bengali plant physiologist and biophysicist radio Jagadish Chandra Bose, who passed away in 1937. Born in an undivided Bengal, Bose is widely regarded as the scientist who identified the parallelism between the tissues of plants and animals. It was through an instrument called crescograph, which could measure the growth in plants, that Bose was able to discover this. Bose also invented devices to detect radio waves and also various components of the microwave. He was knighted and is now widely recognised as one of the fathers of radio science by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
In 1963, William Hartnell became the first Doctor in the very popular British science-fiction show, Doctor Who. The first episode titled, An Unearthly Child, was broadcast on BBC starting on November 23. The four-part episode continued till December 14, with a new part dropping every week.
