The World Wide Web is pretty much known to us all as the internet. But did you know that they are both not one and the same thing? It was on this day, November 12, in 1990 that a man named Tim Berners-Lee actually had to submit an idea to make the "WWW"? The actual beginnings of it came when Berners-Lee was working as an independent contractor at CERN. He proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext that would facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. He submitted the proposal to his manager Mike Sendall, who later accepted it but not before terming it as "vague, but exciting". The WWW was also the name of the first web browser which was developed by Berners-Lee himself. And the world was never the same again.
November 12 is also renowned for being the birth anniversary of the Birdman of India, Salim Ali. His fascination with birds first took shape as an interest in sport-shooting. He was introduced to ornithology in formal by WS Millard, secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society. One day, he shot down a bird with his air gun, which Millard identified as a yellow-throated sparrow. That incident, according to Ali himself, was a turning point in his pursuit of knowledge regarding birds. In fact, his autobiography, The Fall of a Sparrow, is supposedly named after this particular incident. Several species of birds are named after him. He was instrumental in the creation of the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary and also preventing the destruction of what is now the Silent Valley National Park. He is a recipient of the Padma Bhushan as well as the Padma Vibhushan.
