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799 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 3 of 14.

121. Six young men in Madras started The Hindu with a weekly in 1878In 1878 four law students and two teachers in Madras launched a weekly paper. Their circulation later sank to just 800 copies, and the paper was sold to its own legal adviser. His…
122. Test cricket's first match was only declared a Test years laterA Test match can last five days and still end in a draw. The format is so long that only some multi-stage cycling races outlast it. Oddly, the famous first Test in Melbourne in 18…
123. London's giant flood gates were inspired by the taps on a gas cookerThe steel gates that guard London from North Sea surges rotate up from the riverbed like enormous taps. That is no coincidence: engineer Charles Draper modelled them on the taps o…
124. Cricket's most famous trophy began as a joke and was never officialEngland lost a Test at home to Australia in 1882 by just seven runs, and a newspaper printed a mock obituary saying English cricket's body would be cremated. That quip created the…
125. The Blitz tested a bold theory that bombing alone could win warsBetween the wars, strategists promised that bombers would always get through and that attacks on cities would shatter civilian morale. From September 1940 to May 1941, Germany put…
126. Tate Britain stands on a prison site and has had three namesLondon's Tate Britain was built on the site of Millbank Prison and opened in 1897 as the National Gallery of British Art. Almost everyone called it the Tate Gallery anyway, after …
127. A closed power station opposite St Paul's became Britain's busiest art galleryBankside Power Station shut in 1981 and spent years under threat of demolition; even a bid to list it failed. Today, as Tate Modern, it draws more visitors than any other art gall…
128. Taverns were once wine shops for the rich and dens for roguesThe Latin taberna meant a shed or a market stall, and the English word tavern appears from the 13th century. In its heyday a tavern sold wine rather than beer, which was left to c…
129. Taylor & Francis grew from an 18th-century printer into an academic giantRichard Taylor started a printing and publishing business in 1798, and William Francis joined him in 1852. Their firm put out the Philosophical Magazine. Today Taylor & Francis, o…
130. India's Telangana became a state in 2014 after a very long historyTelangana only became an Indian state on 2 June 2014, carved out of Andhra Pradesh after a movement that dated back to the early 1950s. The land itself is ancient: its Deccan king…
131. Terence Rattigan wrote polished plays about the feelings people hideTerence Rattigan was among England's most popular dramatists of the mid-20th century, author of The Winslow Boy, The Browning Version, The Deep Blue Sea and Separate Tables. A gay…
132. Baked earth has shaped sculpture and buildings across five millenniaTerracotta means cooked earth: ordinary clay fired at fairly low heat, typically around 1,000 °C. Iron oxides in the clay react with oxygen in the kiln and turn it the familiar re…
133. Sussex's motto means we will not be pushed around, and it showsSussex has been a kingdom, a county and, since 1974, not officially a ceremonial county at all, yet it still flies six gold swallows on blue and sings Sussex by the Sea at footbal…
134. Tamil Nadu built its own T20 league when Chennai's IPL team was bannedWhen the Chennai Super Kings were suspended from the Indian Premier League in 2015 over their owners' links to illegal betting, Tamil Nadu suddenly had no big Twenty20 cricket. Th…
135. One man's four dreams shaped India's largest conglomerate, the Tata GroupJamsetji Tata set himself four goals: a steel company, a landmark hotel, a world-class institute and hydroelectric power. He lived to see only the hotel, Mumbai's Taj Mahal, the f…
136. Surrey, right beside London, is England's most wooded countyJust south-west of London's sprawl, Surrey has trees over 22.4 percent of its land, nearly double England's 11.8 percent average, and its Surrey Heath district reached 41 percent …
137. Suryakumar Yadav smashed his first ball in international cricket for sixSuryakumar Yadav, known as SKY, waited more than a decade after his Mumbai debut for an India cap, then hit the very first delivery he faced in international cricket for six, a fi…
138. The London district holding Lord's and Abbey Road owes its name to medieval knightsSt John's Wood, home to Lord's Cricket Ground and the Abbey Road crossing pictured on a Beatles album cover, takes its name from the Knights of St John. They received the manor in…
139. The London church copied across America was designed by a discreet CatholicSt Martin-in-the-Fields on Trafalgar Square gave the world a template: a long rectangular hall, a pitched roof, a columned portico and a tall steeple rising from the front. Archit…
140. St Pancras station's basement was measured out in beer barrelsBeneath the platforms of London's St Pancras lies a vast undercroft laid out like a brewery warehouse, its columns spaced to fit barrels of beer shipped in from Burton. Above it, …
141. An Indian media empire grew from a Tamil news magazine sold on videotapeIn 1990 Kalanithi Maran launched Poomaalai, a monthly Tamil news magazine distributed on VHS cassettes. Three years later he started Sun TV in Chennai. Today his Sun Group spans d…
142. World Superbike races machines you could buy, and Ducati long dominated itMotoGP builds prototypes; World Superbike races tuned versions of motorcycles sold in showrooms, making it motorcycling's answer to sports car racing. Since 1988 that formula has …
143. India's Supreme Court building was drawn as a giant pair of scalesSeen from above, the Supreme Court of India forms a balance: a central wing with two side wings as the arms, each ending in a semicircle representing a pan. At the centre stands a…
144. Suresh Raina was India's first centurion in all three international formatsSuresh Raina, a hard-hitting left-hander, became the first Indian to make hundreds in Tests, one-day internationals and Twenty20 internationals, and the first to reach 5,000 runs …
145. Sri Lanka's women won their only Test and waited decades for a trophySri Lanka's women have played exactly one Test match, in April 1998, and they won it. The same side spent years as outsiders at World Cups, then stunned top-ranked England in 2013…
146. Why Newcastle's St James' Park looks lopsided from the outsideSt James' Park towers over one side of Newcastle and stays low on the other. The strange silhouette comes from more than a century of fights over land, with a listed Georgian terr…
147. Henry VIII's hunting lodge still anchors Britain's royal courtEvery foreign ambassador sent to Britain is formally accredited to the Court of St James's, named after a palace no monarch has lived in since the 1830s. It started as Henry VIII'…
148. Chelsea exists because Fulham turned down Stamford BridgeIn 1904 the Mears brothers acquired an athletics ground in west London and offered it to Fulham, who said no. Rather than sell to a railway company, they invented a football club …
149. Star Sports changed owners repeatedly while cricket stayed its crown jewelFew television brands have passed through as many hands as Star Sports. It began in 1991 borrowing an American channel name, merged with its fiercest rival, was bought out by Rupe…
150. Australia has six states but ten federal territories, most of them islandsAsk how Australia is divided and most people name six states and two territories. The full list is stranger: ten federal territories in all, including uninhabited sub-Antarctic vo…
151. Sreesanth held the catch that won India the first T20 World CupS. Sreesanth began as a leg-spinner copying Anil Kumble, switched to pace because he loved bowling yorkers, and ended up holding the catch that sealed India's 2007 T20 World Cup t…
152. One bridge explains why South London grew so differentlyFor centuries, getting south of the Thames meant crossing a single bridge. That bottleneck shaped South London, from a Saxon fort named after the men of Surrey to a sprawl that sw…
153. From 1975 whipping boys to 1996 world champions: Sri Lanka's cricket climbSri Lanka's first taste of top-level cricket was a nine-wicket thrashing by the West Indies at the 1975 World Cup. Twenty-one years later, captained by Arjuna Ranatunga, the Lions…
154. Smithfield has traded meat on the same London ground for about a thousand yearsIn the Middle Ages it was a grassy stretch outside the city wall called Smooth Field, handy for grazing and near the River Fleet for water. Livestock dealers moved in, and Smithfi…
155. South Africa's cricketers needed 17 years to win a Test, then found the googlySouth Africa's first eleven Tests produced ten defeats and a single draw, the worst start of any current Test nation. What turned things around was a quartet of spin bowlers who m…
156. South East England gave the world its first text message and much moreOn 3 December 1992 an engineer from Reading sent a message from his computer to a Vodafone director's handset, the first text message ever. It is one of a remarkable string of fir…
157. South India sits on lava laid down as the dinosaurs died outMuch of South India's high plateau rests on volcanic basalt from the Deccan Traps, eruptions between 67 and 66 million years ago at the close of the Cretaceous. Layer upon layer o…
158. A camera negative in 1898 made the Shroud of Turin's faint figure leap outWhen Secondo Pia photographed a long linen cloth in Turin in May 1898, his negative plate showed a man's face and body far more clearly than the faint sepia marks on the fabric it…
159. Simon & Schuster started because an aunt wanted a crossword bookIn 1924 Richard Simon's aunt, a crossword fan, asked where she could buy a collection of the New York World's puzzles. There was none. Simon, then selling pianos, and Max Schuster…
160. Knockout tournaments crown a fair winner, but their runner-up may be a fictionLose once and you are out. The single-elimination format powers Wimbledon, the FA Cup and the NCAA basketball bracket, and it reliably finds a champion. What it cannot reliably fi…
161. MI6's riverside headquarters is Britain's least secret secret buildingBritain's foreign intelligence service works from a stepped, glass-clad fortress on the Thames at Vauxhall that nobody could miss. Its previous home was hardly better hidden; one …
162. Sky Sports helped create the Premier League and reshaped British sportIn 1992 a satellite broadcaster bid 304 million pounds for exclusive live rights to a brand-new football competition, beating ITV and taking top-flight English league football off…
163. A right-handed wicketkeeper taught himself to bat left-handed and made historyShikhar Dhawan writes with his right hand and arrived at his Delhi club as a wicketkeeper. He learned to bat left-handed instead, and in March 2013 he hit the fastest century ever…
164. Shilpa Shetty's first film was shelved, so audiences met her being murdered in BaazigarThe first film Shilpa Shetty signed, in 1992, never came out. Her debut release instead was the 1993 thriller Baazigar, in which Shah Rukh Khan's character kills hers. It was a hu…
165. Shinty lets players swing at the ball in mid-air with either face of the stickAt first glance shinty looks like field hockey played in the Scottish Highlands. Then someone strikes a ball out of the air, using either side of a wedge-headed wooden stick, and …
166. London's rebuilt Globe got the only thatched roof allowed since the Great FireAfter the Great Fire of 1666, London stopped letting anyone put thatch on a roof. Shakespeare's Globe, rebuilt beside the Thames and opened in 1997, is said to be the one exceptio…
167. Shane Warne began his Test career with one wicket for 150 runsShane Warne ended up with 708 Test wickets, a world record at the time. His debut against India in January 1992 brought one wicket for 150, and after two Tests he had been dropped…
168. Shane Watson survived injuries, a haunted castle and three nineties before his first Test hundredOn a 2005 tour of England, the Australian squad spent a night at Lumley Castle, reputedly haunted. Shane Watson was so spooked by his room that he fled to sleep on Brett Lee's flo…
169. Shashi Tharoor came second in the 2006 race to lead the United NationsHad one Security Council veto gone the other way, Shashi Tharoor might have become the second-youngest UN Secretary-General, aged 50. India nominated him in 2006, and he finished …
170. Shaun Pollock bowled more maiden overs than anyone in one-day international historyIn a format built for big hitting, Shaun Pollock made a career of giving batsmen nothing. He sent down 313 maidens in one-day internationals, a record, and no bowler with 300 ODI …
171. Sheffield United exist because a cricket ground lost its football tenantSheffield United were born out of a row over gate money. When The Wednesday left Bramall Lane in 1888, the cricket ground's owners needed a new team to pay the bills, and on 22 Ma…
172. Ricky Ponting won more internationals as captain than anyoneFour centuries in a single week of junior cricket earned an eighth-grader from Launceston a bat sponsorship. That boy, Ricky Ponting, grew into Australia's leading run-scorer in T…
173. Rishabh Pant's Gabba innings ended Australia's unbeaten run there since 1988India arrived at Brisbane's Gabba short of first-choice players, facing a ground where Australia had not lost since 1988. On the final day of January 2021's decisive Test, wicketk…
174. Rohit Sharma began as a number eight off-spinner before becoming an openerA school coach spotted that his young off-spinner could bat, promoted him from number eight to open, and arranged a scholarship so he could attend a better school free for four ye…
175. Ruturaj Gaikwad hit seven sixes in one overIn a November 2022 quarter-final for Maharashtra against Uttar Pradesh, Ruturaj Gaikwad did something no batter had managed in any form of cricket: seven sixes in a single over, t…
176. Selhurst Park rose on a former brickfield bought for £2,750Crystal Palace paid a railway company £2,750 in 1922 for an old brickfield in Croydon. Two years later Archibald Leitch's new stadium opened with just one unfinished stand, delaye…
177. Sevenoaks keeps replanting the oaks that gave the town its nameAround 1100 the Kent settlement appeared in records as Seouenaca, the place of the seven oaks. The original trees in Knole Park have been replaced many times. Seven planted beside…
178. Shah Rukh Khan made his name playing villains before becoming Bollywood's romantic kingA shoulder injury ended a Delhi schoolboy's sporting dreams, so he turned to stage plays and impressions of film stars. Grief after his mother's death in 1991 finally pushed him t…
179. Shahid Afridi hit a 37-ball ODI hundred in his first international inningsSent in at number three as a pinch-hitter against Sri Lanka in October 1996, a teenage leg spinner who had not batted on debut struck eleven sixes and reached a hundred from 37 ba…
180. Regent's Park was financed by a builder after the Crown backed outThe Prince Regent dreamed up a pleasure garden in the 1810s, and John Nash got the credit. Yet when the Crown Estate withdrew its funding, property developer James Burton paid for…

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