Throwback Today: What happened on January 21? Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura were born

Today marks 50 years since the formation of Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura as states of the Indian Union. All three states share a common state foundation day — January 21, 1972 — when they were given state status based on the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act of 1971.

Manipur and Tripura were previously Union Territories while Meghalaya was an autonomous part of Assam. The date also marks the allocation of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha seats for the newly created states along with the allocation of seats to the Legislative Assemblies as well. It also denotes the day when the creation of separate high courts for the three states was observed. 

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Remember the awesome times when people could actually fly supersonic? And not just supersonic but over twice the speed of sound. Yes, that was exactly what the Concorde was all about. The British-French airliner project was introduced on this day way back in 1976. The initial flights were on the London-Bahrain and Paris-Rio de Janeiro routes. The aircraft was supposed to attract the wealthy who could afford to pay for the speed and luxurious service on the airliner. In fact, the round-trip ticket price from New York to London was a whopping $7,995 which was about 30 times the cost of the cheapest economic fare on the same journey. But the customers could cross the Atlantic in less than three hours compared to close to seven hours that the fastest airlines take even today. 

But the flight's fate was sealed in 2003, three years after the infamous Air France 4590 crash which killed all passengers and crew on board. It was retired from service after 27 years in operation and just one ill-fated incident to speak of its bad repute.