TfN: 27 Things I Didn't Know About Mysore

Mysore has always been next door to Bangalore and like all things next door, I've always put it off thinking it was next door after-all. I did visit it often though either as a stop on the way to the Nilgiris or to visit Dad who would be working there for part of the year.

Lately as I've been reading to prep for Tour of Nilgiris, Mysore surprised me. There was a wealth of information on the city and I knew so little of it. So here's some interesting info I came across. Mysore is the first stop on the tour!

• The name Mysore is an anglicised version of Mahishūru, which means the abode of Mahisha in the Kannada language. Mahisha stands for Mahishasura, a mythological demon that could assume the form of both human and buffalo. According to Hindu mythology, the area was ruled by the demon Mahishasura. The demon was killed by the Goddess Chamundeshwari, whose temple is situated atop the Chamundi Hills.

• Until 1947, Mysore served as the capital of the Kingdom of Mysore.

• Mysore Airport is also known as Mandakalli Airport.

• The city was the location of the first private radio station in India.

• 1897 an outbreak of bubonic plague killed nearly half of the population of the city.

• With the establishment of the City Improvement Trust Board (CITB) in 1903, Mysore became one of the first cities in Asia to undertake planned development of the city.

• A fire at a television studio in 1989 claimed 62 lives.

• The highest temperature recorded in Mysore was 38.5 °C (101 °F) on 4 May 2006, and the lowest was 7.7 °C (46 °F) on 16 January 2012.

• Among 63 cities covered under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, Mysore City Corporation was adjudged the second best city municipal corporation and was given the "Nagara Ratna" award in 2011.

• The city got its first piped water supply when the Belagola project was commissioned in 1896.

• The city has had an underground drainage system since 1904.

• Mysore was rated the second cleanest city in India in 2010 and the cleanest in Karnataka.

• The first college to be set up for higher education was the Maharajas College, founded in 1864.

• A high school exclusively for girls was established in 1881 and later it was converted into Maharanis Women's College.

• The  University of Mysore was the sixth university to be established in India and the first in Karnataka.

• The Mysore Medical College, founded in 1924, was the first medical college to be started in Karnataka and the seventh in India.

• The Dasara festivities, which are celebrated over a ten-day period, were first introduced by King Raja Wodeyar I in 1610.

• The main palace of Mysore, Amba Vilas was burned down in 1897, and the present-day structure was built on the same site.

• The Mysore Pak  traces its history to the kitchen of the Mysore palace.

• Mysore is the location of the International Ganjifa Research Centre, which researches the ancient card game Ganjifa and the art associated with it.

• Kannada writers Kuvempu, Gopalakrishna Adiga and U. R. Ananthamurthy were educated in Mysore and served as professors at the Mysore University.

• R. K. Narayan, a popular English-language novelist and creator of the fictional town of Malgudi, and his cartoonist brother R. K. Laxman spent much of their life in Mysore.

• Sudharma, the only Indian daily newspaper in Sanskrit, is published in Mysore.

• Mysore was the location of the first private radio broadcasting station in India when Akashavani (voice from the sky) was established in the city on 10 September 1935 by M.V. Gopalaswamy, a professor of psychology, at his house in the Vontikoppal area of Mysore, using a 50-watt transmitter.

• In 1957, Akashvani was chosen as the official name of All India Radio (AIR), the radio broadcaster of the Government of India.

• Javagal Srinath, who represented India for several years as its frontline fast bowler, comes from Mysore.

• India's first youth hostel was formed in the Maharaja's College Hostel in 1949.

All Facts Credited to Wikipedia.

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