The most delectable hilsa, swore connoisseurs, were to be found in the rivers of Bangladesh. But silting and have changed that. They are moving towards the Ganga now. Read this special report byDown To Earth on hilsa's shifting homebase.
The Mayans penchant for building places of worship brought their downfall In 2001, when a hurricane ripped through the jungles of northern Guatemala, an uprooted tree at the base of the ruins of a pyramid exposed stones bearing one of the longest texts of hieroglyphs ever found. The inscriptions belong to the Mayan civilization. Part of a grand staircase leading up the side of a pyramid, the
When it was introduced in Europe, people associated the potato with disease In 1769, the wheat crop failed in France. Bread, the French staple, disappeared from boulangerie shelves. There was rioting in the streets of Paris and hordes of undernourished people looted bakeries. The French monarchy which had just scraped through the Seven Years
Overextended banks crashing, leading to recession. 1873 revisited In October, the American financial giant Lehman Brothers announced that it had gone bust. Within weeks global financial markets tumbled and economists predicted a financial meltdown. Comparisons with the Great Depression of the early 1930s began to be tossed around. To American historian Scott Reylonds Nelson this comparison
In the summer of 2007, Shell officials at the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago were in a spot of bother. Business was fine for the oil company and environmentalists and other usual gadflies
