Saina Nehwal ( pronunciation (helpinfo); born 17 March 1990 in Dhindar, Hisar

district, Haryana) is an Indian badminton player who attained a career best ranking
of 2 in December 2010 by Badminton World Federation.
[2]
She is the first Indian to
win a medal in Badminton at the Olympics.
[3]
She achieved this feat by winning the
Bronze medal at the London Olympics 2012 on 4 August 2012.
[4]
She is the first
Indian to win the World Junior Badminton Championships and was also the first
Indian to win a Super Series tournament, by clinching the Indonesia Open on 21
June 2009. Saina is supported by the Olympic Gold Quest.
[5]

Previously coached by S. M. Arif, a Dronacharya Award winner, Saina is the reigning
Indian national junior champion and is currently coached by Indonesian badminton
legend Atik Jauhari since August 2008,
[6]
with the former All England champion and
national coachPullela Gopichand being her mentor. Saina Nehwal plays
for Hyderabad Hotshots in Indian Badminton League.
[7]

n 2006 Saina became the under-19 national champion and created history by
winning the prestigious Asian Satellite Badminton tournament (India Chapter) twice,
becoming the first player to do so. In 2006, Saina appeared on the global scene
when she became the first Indian woman to win a 4-star tournament, the Philippines
Open.
[8]
Entering the tournament as the 86th seed, Saina went on to stun several top
seeded players including the then world number four Xu Huaiwen before
defeating Julia Wong Pei Xian of Malaysia for the title. The same year Saina was
also the runner up at the 2006 BWF World Junior Championships, where she lost a
hard fought match against top seed Chinese Wang Yihan. She did one better in the
2008 by becoming the first Indian to win the World Junior Badminton
Championships by defeating ninth seeded Japanese Sayaka Sato 219, 2118.
She became the first Indian woman to reach the quarter finals at the Olympic
Games when she upset world number five and fourth seed Wang Chen of Hong
Kong in a three-game thriller. In the quarter-finals Saina lost a nail biting 3-gamer to
world number 16 Maria Kristin Yulianti. In September 2008, she won the
Yonex Chinese Taipei Open 2008 beating Lydia Cheah Li Ya of Malaysia 218 21
19.
[9]
Maria Yulianti had earlier lost her quarter-final match to Pia Bernadet, Saina's
semi-final opponent, thus denying Saina a rematch. Saina was named "The Most
Promising Player" in 2008.
[10]
She reached the world super series semifinals in the
month of December 2008.
[11]
On 21 June 2009, she became the first Indian
[12]
to win
a BWF Super Series title, the most prominent badminton series of the world by winning
the Indonesia Open. She beat Chinese Wang Lin in the final 1221, 2118, 219. Saina
on winning the tournament said, "I had been longing to win a super series tournament
since my quarter final appearance at the Olympics". Saina is on the par with the likes
Kalpana Chawla (March 17, 1962
[2][a]
February 1, 2003) was born in Karnal, India.
She was the first Indian-American astronaut
[3]
and first Indian woman in space.
[4]
She first
flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic
armoperator. In 2003, Chawla was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space
Shuttle Columbia disaster.
[5]
Kalpana Chawla was born in Karnal, India. She completed
her earlier schooling at Tagore Baal Niketan Senior Secondary School, Karnal and
completed her Bachelor of Engineering degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Punjab
Engineering College at Chandigarh in 1982. She moved to the United States in 1982
where she obtained a Master of Science degree in aerospace engineering from
theUniversity of Texas at Arlington in 1984. Determined to become an astronaut even in
the face of the Challenger disaster, Chawla went on to earn a second Masters in 1986
and a PhD in aerospace engineering in 1988 from the University of Colorado at
Boulder.
[6]

Career[edit]
In 1988 she began working at the NASA Ames Research Center as Vice President of
Overset Methods, Inc. where she didComputational fluid dynamics (CFD) research
on Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing concepts.
[7]
Chawla held a Certificated Flight
Instructor rating for airplanes, gliders and Commercial Pilot licenses for single and multi-
engine airplanes, seaplanes and gliders.
[8]

Becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in April, 1991, Chawla applied for
the NASA Astronaut Corps.
[2]
She joined the Corps in March 1995 and was selected for
her first flight in 1996. She spoke the following words while traveling in the
weightlessness of space, "You are just your intelligence". She had traveled 10.67 million
km, as many as 252 times around the Earth.
Her first space mission began on November 19, 1997 as part of the six-astronaut crew
that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia flight STS-87. Chawla was the first Indian-born
woman and the second Indian person to fly in space, following cosmonaut Rakesh
Sharma who flew in 1984 on the Soyuz T-11. On her first mission, Chawla traveled over
10.4 million miles in 252 orbits of the earth, logging more than 372 hours in
space.
[9]
During STS-87, she was responsible for deploying the Spartan Satellite which
malfunctioned, necessitating a spacewalk by Winston Scott and Takao Doi to capture
the satellite. A five-month NASA investigation fully exonerated Chawla by identifying
errors in software interfaces and the defined procedures of flight crew and ground
control.
After the completion of STS-87 post-flight activities, Chawla was assigned to technical
Lata Mangeshkar pronunciation (helpinfo) (Marathi: ) (born 28 September
1929) is an Indian singer, and occasional music-composer. She is one of the best-known
and most respected playback singers in India.
[1][2]
Mangeshkar's career started in 1942
and has spanned over seven decades. She has recorded songs for over a
thousand Hindi films and has sung songs in over thirty-six regional Indian languages and
foreign languages, though primarily in Marathi and Hindi. She is the elder sister of
singers Asha Bhosle,Hridaynath Mangeshkar, Usha Mangeshkar and Meena
Mangeshkar. She is the second vocalist to have ever been awarded the Bharat Ratna,
India's highest civilian honour.
[3]

Mangeshkar was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records from 1974 to 1991 for
having made the most recordings in the world. The claim was that she had recorded
approximately 25,000 solo, duet, and chorus-backed songs in 20 Indian languages
between 1948 to 1974. The category was removed in 1991 and re-introduced in
2011.
[4][5]
In 2011 Guinness officially acknowledged Mangeshkar's sister Asha Bhosle as
the most recorded artiste in music history.
[6]

Early career in the 1940s[edit]
In 1942, when Mangeshkar was 13, her father died of heart disease. Master
Vinayak (Vinayak Damodar Karnataki), the owner of Navyug Chitrapat movie company
and a close friend of the Mangeshkar family, took care of them. He helped Lata get
started in a career as a singer and actress.
Mangeshkar sang the song "Naachu Yaa Gade", Khelu Saari Mani Haus Bhaari" which
was composed by Sadashivrao Nevrekar for Vasant Joglekar's Marathi movie Kiti
Hasaal(1942), but the song was dropped from the final cut. Vinayak gave her a small
role in Navyug Chitrapat's Marathi movie Pahili Mangalaa-gaur (1942), in which she
sang "Natali Chaitraachi Navalaai" which was composed by Dada Chandekar.
[7]
Her first
Hindi song was "Mata Ek Sapoot Ki Duniya Badal De Tu" for
the Marathi film, Gajaabhaau (1943). Mangeshkar moved to Mumbai in 1945 when
Master Vinayak's company moved its headquarters there. She started taking lessons
in Hindustani classical music from Ustad Amanat Ali Khan . She sang Paa Lagoon Kar
Jori for Vasant Joglekar's Hindi-language movie Aap Ki Seva Mein (1946),
[7]
which was
composed by Datta Davjekar. The dance in the film was performed by Rohini Bhate who
later became a famous classical dancer. Mangeshkar and her sister Asha played minor
roles in Vinayak's first Hindi-language movie, Badi Maa(1945). In that movie, Lata also
sang a bhajan, Maata Tere Charnon Mein. She was introduced to music

Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi (Hindustani: ndr and i ( listen); ne Nehru; 19
November 1917 31 October 1984) was the fourthPrime Minister of India and a central
figure of the Indian National Congress party. Gandhi, who served from 1966 to 1977 and
then again from 1980 until her assassination in 1984, is the second-longest-serving
Prime Minister of India and the only woman to hold the office.
Indira Gandhi was the only child of Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. She served
as the Chief of Staff of her father's highly centralised administration between 1947 and
1964 and came to wield considerable unofficial influence in government.
ElectedCongress President in 1959, she was offered the premiership in succession to
her father. Gandhi refused and instead chose to become a cabinet minister in the
government. She finally consented to become Prime Minister in succession to Lal
Bahadur Shastri in 1966.
As Prime Minister, Gandhi became known for her political ruthlessness and
unprecedented centralisation of power. She went to warwith Pakistan in support of
the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted
in an Indian victory and the creation of Bangladesh, as well as increasing India's
influence to the point where it became the regional hegemon of South Asia. Gandhi also
presided over a state of emergency from 1975 to 1977 during which she ruled by
decree and made lasting changes to the constitution of India. She was assassinated in
the aftermath of Operation Blue Star.
In 2001, Gandhi was voted the greatest Indian Prime Minister in a poll organised
by India Today. She was also named "Woman of the Millennium" in a poll organised by
the BBC in 1999.
[1]

Indira Gandhi was born Indira Nehru in a Kashmiri Pandit family on 19 November 1917
in Allahabad.
[2]
Her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, led India's political struggle for
independence from British rule, and became the first Prime Minister of the Union (and
later Republic) of India.
[3]
She was an only child (a younger brother was born, but died
young),
[4]
and grew up with her mother, Kamala Nehru, at theAnand Bhavan; a large
family estate in Allahabad.
[5]
Indira had a lonely and unhappy childhood.
[6]
Her father was
often away, directing political activities or being incarcerated in prison, while her mother
was frequently bed-ridden with illness, and later suffered an early death from
tuberculosis.
[7]
She had limited contact with her father, mostly through letters.
[8]
Indira
was mostly taught at home by tutors, and intermittently attended school until
matriculation in 1934.
[nb 1]
She went on to study at the Viswa Bharati
University in Shantiniketan. It was during her interview that Gurudev Rabindranath
Tagore named her Priyadarshini, and she came to be known as Indira Priyadarshini
Nehru.
[12]
A year later, however, she had to leave university to attend to her ailing mother
in Europe.
[13]
While there, it was decided that Indira would continue her education at
the University of Oxford.
[14]
After her mother died, she briefly attended the in Latin.
[15]

Kiran Bedi is an Indian social activist and a retired Indian Police
Service (IPS) officer.
[1]
Bedi joined the police service in 1972 and became the first
woman officer in the IPS.
[2]
Bedi held the post of Director General at the Bureau of Police
Research and Developmentbefore she voluntarily retired from the IPS in December
2007.
[3]
Bedi was the host and judge of the popular TV series "Aap Ki Kachehri"
(English, "Your Court"), which is based on real-life disputes and provides a platform for
settling disputes between consenting parties.
[4]

She has also founded two NGOs in India: the Navjyoti Delhi Police Foundation for
welfare and preventative policing in 1988
[5]
which was later renamed as the Navjyoti
India Foundation in 2007, and the India Vision Foundation for prison reformation, drug
abuse prevention and child welfare in 1994.
[6]
Bedi was awarded Ramon Magsaysay
award in 1994 for Government service.
[7]

She began her career as a Lecturer in Political Science (197072) at Khalsa College for
Women, Amritsar. In July 1972, she joined theIndian Police Service, becoming the first
woman to do so.
[10]
Bedi joined the police service "because of her urge to be
outstanding".
[11]

She served in a number of tough assignments ranging from New Delhi traffic postings,
Deputy Inspector General of Police in Mizoram, Advisor to the Lieutenant Governor
of Chandigarh, Director General of Narcotics Control Bureau, to a United
Nations delegation, where she became the Civilian Police Advisor in United Nations
peacekeeping operations.
[12]
For her work in the UN, she was awarded a UN
medal.
[13]
She is popularly referred to asCrane Bedi for towing the Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi's car for a parking violation,
[10]
during the PM's tour of United States at that
time.
[8]

Kiran Bedi influenced several decisions of the Indian Police Service, particularly in the
areas of narcotics control, Traffic management, and VIP security. During her stint as the
Inspector General of Prisons, in Tihar Jail (Delhi) (19931995), she instituted a number
of reforms in the management of the prison, and initiated a number of measures such as
detoxification programs, Art of Living Foundation Prison Courses,
[14]
yoga, vipassana
meditation, Murat redressing of complaints by prisoners and literacy programs.
[15]
Her
initiatives for the practice of Vipassana meditation were documented in the film Doing
time, Doing Vipassana. For this she won the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award, and the
'Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship', to write about her work at Tihar Jail.
[9]

She was last appointed as Director General of India's Bureau of Police Research and
Development.