1. There’s a bridge in Chennai called Barber’s Bridge. It has an interesting story behind its name. It was originally called Hamilton Bridge, named after Lord Hamilton, but soon got corrupted to Amberton bridge. Then a second conversion/corruption happened, when Amberton became ambattan. It didn’t stop at that, someone thought it wise to anglicize this name. Barber is English for ‘ambattan’. Hence, Barber’s Bridge.
2. Two Indians had an outside role to play in the creation of the Star Spangled banner.
Most of the words in the first paragraph were inspired by the rockets flying all over Fort McHenry. The British themselves had no real experience with rocket artillery and relied heavily on TIPU SULTAN’s doctrine Fate-ul-Mujahiddin to develop the rockets. And, the ship where the song was written, HMS Minden, was built by Indian company JAMSHEDJI BOMANJI WADIA in 1810.
So, the Indian connection goes beyond just the Boston tea Party.
3. 
The caduceus (pic above left) is wrongly used as a symbol for medicine or doctors even though the symbol has no connection with medicine and any association with healing arts is something of a stretch as caduceus is the symbol of God Hermes who is the god of messengers. The actual symbol used to be the rod of Asclepius (pic above right), until 1902 when the U.S army Medical Corps goofed up and used the caduceus on their uniforms and the wrong trend caught on..
4. In ancient Rome there was a form of military discipline used by officers in the Roman Army to punish mutinous or cowardly soldiers. A cohort selected for punishment was divided into groups of ten; each group drew lots (Sortition), and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning or clubbing. The remaining soldiers were given rations of barley instead of wheat and forced to sleep outside of the Roman encampment.
This practise of killing one in ten gave rise to the word ‘decimation’.
5. May the 4th is celebrated as Star Wars day. It is called so because of a pun or play on words based on the similarity between “May the 4th be with you” and “May the Force be with you”, a phrase often spoken in the Star Wars movies.
6. The Beatles are sometimes given credit for the invention of the CT scan machine. The record label EMI could afford an expensive R&D centre, where this machine was invented, only beacuse of the profit it made by selling Beatles records.
More in the future.. 
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