VII Things We Learnt Last Week

• 40 years before Hillary Clinton, America had a lady presidential hopeful in Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress

• The caste system began in India 1,575 years ago under the Guptas, a study by the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, Kalyani, W. Bengal, suggests

• 3,228 farmers committed suicide in Maharashtra last year; 1,541 in Vidarbha, from which CM Fadnavis hails

• The human brain is powerful enough to store the contents of 4.7 billion books (if you can memorise that many)

• 75,000 of India’s 3.72 lakh beggars have passed out of 12th class; 3,000 have diplomas or graduate degrees

• Donald Trump is a germophobe, he doesn’t shake hands with others and never touches the ground floor button of an elevator

• Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal, together, spent over Rs 5,000 crore in doling out discounts to customers

Compiled by Uttam Sengupta, Alka Gupta and Ashish Bagchi