49 Fun Facts About APJ Abdul Kalam

Kalam placed ninth before a selection board with only eight openings, narrowly missing his dream of becoming what?

A fighter pilot was his 'dearest dream': he came ninth of 25 candidates before the Indian Air Force board at Dehradun, where eight were taken, and went into defence research instead.

Kalam's SLV-3 rocket orbited which satellite in July 1980, India's first successful satellite launch from its own soil?

Rohini's launch put India among the few nations able to orbit their own satellites; just a year earlier the same rocket had failed on its maiden flight.

With cardiologist Bhupathiraju Somaraju, Kalam lent his name in 1998 to a low-cost version of which medical device?

A coronary stent called the Kalam-Raju stent came out of the pairing, and in 2012 the same duo designed a Kalam-Raju tablet computer for rural health workers.

In the 2012 Greatest Indian poll run by Outlook and CNN-IBN, Kalam finished second behind which figure?

B. R. Ambedkar topped the poll, which deliberately left out the Mahatma because organisers felt nobody could come close to the Father of the Nation.

In 2017 scientists named a bacterium Solibacillus kalamii after Kalam, having found it on air filters from where?

International Space Station filters that had spent 40 months aloft yielded the bug, though its discoverer was sure it was no alien: he reckoned it had hitch-hiked up on cargo from Earth.

The entrance statue at Kalam's memorial in Rameswaram shows him playing which instrument, a lifelong hobby of his?

The veena was one of the surprises of the man: a devout Muslim rocket scientist who played a classical South Indian instrument, recited Tamil poetry and listened to Carnatic devotional music every day.

Kalam, the first scientist to become President of India, was also the first holder of the office never to have what?

Kalam had never been married, but the bachelor president kept his family close: dozens of relatives travelled from Rameswaram to Delhi to watch him sworn in.

Which title did Kalam give his 1999 autobiography, running from his Rameswaram boyhood to India's missile launches?

Wings of Fire echoes a line Kalam wrote in the book itself: 'We are all born with a divine fire in us. Our efforts should be to give wings to this fire.'

Kalam's birthday, 15 October, is observed in India under which name?

World Students' Day honours a president who gave his retirement to teaching and who died while addressing students.

What job did the schoolboy Kalam take on in Rameswaram to boost his family's meagre income?

Delivering newspapers began with the war, Kalam recalled: when trains stopped halting at Rameswaram, the bundles were thrown from the moving carriages and his cousin, the town's news agent, hired him to catch them.

Kalam's imam father Jainulabdeen ferried Hindu pilgrims by boat from Rameswaram to which town at the island's tip?

Dhanushkodi was drowned by the cyclone of December 1964 and has stood abandoned ever since; a cyclone, Kalam wrote, also carried away his father's pilgrim boat.

Kalam's family ferry business failed after which 1914 structure first linked his home island to mainland India?

Pamban Bridge, India's first sea bridge, finished off the boat trade, and by the 1920s the once-wealthy family kept only its ancestral home.

Kalam graduated in physics in 1954 from St. Joseph's College, located in which Tamil Nadu city?

Tiruchirappalli's St. Joseph's gave Kalam a physics degree, but he wanted engineering; to pay his way into the Madras Institute of Technology, he recalled, his sister Zohara mortgaged her gold bangles and chain.

At the Madras Institute of Technology, a professor gave Kalam three days to finish a stalled design or lose what?

His scholarship was his lifeline, Kalam wrote, so he skipped dinner and worked at the drawing board all weekend; the professor then admitted he had set the deadline to put him under stress.

At the Aeronautical Development Establishment in Bangalore, Kalam was asked to lead a team building which small craft?

A hovercraft named Nandi, after Shiva's bull, was the result. Kalam recalled taking the defence minister, Krishna Menon, for a ride in it, only for the project to be shelved.

Kalam moved into space work at the Indian National Committee for Space Research under which physicist?

Vikram Sarabhai interviewed the young engineer himself, and Kalam recalled that his questions 'did not probe my existing knowledge' but explored what he might become; the committee later grew into ISRO.

In 1963-64 Kalam trained at the Langley, Goddard and Wallops Island facilities of which organisation?

NASA's Wallops Island lobby held a surprise, Kalam wrote: a painting of Tipu Sultan's troops firing rockets at the British, a feat he found forgotten at home but honoured on the other side of the planet.

At Thumba, where Kalam began his rocket work, which kind of building became the space centre's first home?

A church: St. Mary Magdalene's, handed over by the local bishop. Kalam recalled that the prayer room was his first laboratory and the bishop's room his design and drawing office.

Kalam's SLV-3 failed on its maiden flight in August 1979 before succeeding a year later from which launch site?

Sriharikota watched the first SLV-3 veer out of control and splash into the sea 317 seconds after lift-off, Kalam recalled; eleven months later the same range launched the rocket into history.

After the 1980 satellite launch, Kalam worried he had only casual clothes and slippers for a meeting with which prime minister?

Indira Gandhi was waiting in Delhi to congratulate the team. When Kalam fretted about his dress, he recalled, ISRO chief Satish Dhawan told him: 'You are beautifully clothed in your success.'

Which defence minister of the early 1980s told Kalam to develop a whole 'quiver' of missiles at once?

R. Venkataraman, later President of India himself, overruled Kalam's plan to build the missiles one after another, then won cabinet approval for an unprecedented Rs 388 crore to do it.

Kalam studied aerospace engineering at the Madras Institute of Technology, today a constituent college of which body?

Anna University took Kalam back as a professor in December 2001, and it was from that campus post that he was called to the presidency seven months later.

At the Pokhran-II tests of May 1998, Kalam served as chief project coordinator alongside which atomic scientist?

Rajagopala Chidambaram, head of the Atomic Energy Commission, and Kalam were the two men the new prime minister called in within days of taking office in March 1998; the bombs went off seven weeks later.

In November 1999 Kalam became the first holder of which newly created government post, which he kept until 2001?

Principal Scientific Adviser carried the rank of a cabinet minister, yet Kalam gave it up after two years to go back to a university classroom as a professor.

Which veteran freedom fighter did the Left parties field against Kalam in the 2002 presidential election?

Lakshmi Sahgal, who had commanded the Indian National Army's Rani of Jhansi Regiment, took on the contest at the age of 87 and lost heavily: Kalam won almost nine-tenths of the electoral vote.

Which sitting president stepped aside in 2002 once Kalam's candidacy drew support across party lines?

K. R. Narayanan gave up thoughts of a second term once the Samajwadi Party and the Nationalist Congress Party lined up behind Kalam, which left only the Left parties to put up a rival.

In 2011 Kalam vouched for the safety of a nuclear power plant at which Tamil Nadu site, despite hostile local protest?

Koodankulam got Kalam's all-clear after he inspected the plant, tsunami risk included, but he said he had not come to mediate, and the protesters stayed unconvinced.

During his 2002-07 term in Rashtrapati Bhavan, Kalam was affectionately known by which nickname?

People's President stuck to a head of state who later declined a second term in 2007, saying he wanted to keep Rashtrapati Bhavan out of political processes.

Kalam became the first chancellor of the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, founded in 2007 in which city?

Trivandrum, or Thiruvananthapuram, was familiar ground: Kalam had led India's first satellite-launcher project at the space centre there, and came back in 2008 as chancellor of ISRO's new university.

After leaving office, Kalam twice visited China at its government's invitation to teach sessions at which university?

Peking University made the former missile chief a visiting professor, free to teach subjects of his choice; he reportedly used the classroom to urge Indian and Chinese scientists to work together in space.

Kalam's 'What Can I Give' movement, aimed at the young people of India, set out to defeat which social ill?

Corruption was the central theme, because, Kalam told a student rally, 'corruption and moral turpitude are evils that need to be defeated by the goodness of youth'.

Kalam collapsed and died on 27 July 2015, five minutes into a lecture at which institute in Meghalaya?

IIM Shillong had invited him to speak on 'Creating a Livable Planet Earth'; he was rushed to Bethany Hospital but was confirmed dead of cardiac arrest at 7:45 p.m.

Which of the missiles developed under Kalam was a long-range 're-entry' test vehicle, first launched in May 1989?

Agni lifted off on 22 May 1989. The night before, Kalam recalled, the defence minister asked how he would like to mark a success, and he asked for 100,000 saplings to plant around the laboratory.

Which defence minister laid the foundation stone of Kalam's memorial in July 2016, a year after his death?

Manohar Parrikar shared the honour with a cabinet colleague on the first anniversary of Kalam's death; the memorial was raised by the defence research organisation he once led, on the ground where he is buried.

Young Kalam saw his imam father take tea with a Christian priest and the head priest of which Rameswaram temple?

Ramanathaswamy's head priest, Pakshi Lakshmana Sastry, would sit with the imam and the Christian priest over tea to settle the island's problems, a sight Kalam said shaped his own thinking.

Kalam said that for great men religion is a way of making friends, while small people make religion into what?

A fighting tool was his phrase, and his boyhood had taught him the opposite: a very close friend of his devout Muslim father was the high priest of the town's great Hindu temple.

Kalam, a practising Muslim, was also known for reading which Hindu scripture?

Bhagavad Gita verses were what Kalam chose to recite at his first press conference as a presidential nominee in 2002, while still saying his own prayers every day.

Kalam's 1998 book with Y. S. Rajan, a plan to turn India into a developed nation, has what title?

India 2020 is dedicated to a ten-year-old girl who asked Kalam for his autograph and, asked her ambition, replied without hesitation: 'I want to live in a developed India.'

Which 2002 book did Kalam dedicate to a schoolchild whose answer to 'who is our enemy?' was 'poverty'?

Ignited Minds is dedicated to Snehal Thakkar, a class 12 pupil Kalam met in Anand, Gujarat, in April 2002, the day after he arrived to find the town under curfew following communal violence.

Which co-author of Kalam's 1999 autobiography went on to write the biography A.P.J. Abdul Kalam: A Life?

Arun Tiwari was a missile engineer who had worked under Kalam for more than a decade, which, he admitted in the autobiography's preface, 'might seem to disqualify me as his biographer'.

Kalam's 2015 book Transcendence records his spiritual experiences with which guru?

Pramukh Swami, head of the BAPS Swaminarayan organisation, first met Kalam in 2001; the book traces his openness to a Hindu guru back to a Rameswaram boyhood among friendly clerics of three faiths.

Which honour did Kalam receive in 1997, five years before his presidency, for modernising India's defence technology?

Bharat Ratna completed his set of three civilian honours. When the first, the Padma Bhushan, came, he recalled filling his room with Bismillah Khan's shehnai music and picturing himself back in Rameswaram with the parents he had lost.

Which American engineering prize, named for a US president, went to Kalam for 2008?

The Hoover Medal honours engineers for service beyond their careers; Kalam's citation praised him for turning defence know-how to medical ends, including a telemedicine network linking rural hospitals to specialists.

In 2007 Kalam received the King Charles II Medal from which British scientific institution, founded in 1660?

The Royal Society keeps this medal for foreign heads of state or government who have advanced science; before Kalam, only Japan's Emperor Akihito had received it.

In August 2015 New Delhi renamed a road after Kalam that had carried the name of which Mughal emperor?

Aurangzeb Road became Dr A P J Abdul Kalam Road within a month of a Delhi MP proposing the swap, in his words, 'to correct the mistakes made in our history'.

Which island off Odisha, home to India's missile test range, was renamed for Kalam in September 2015?

Wheeler Island was Kalam's own acquisition: needing a range for missile tests, he wrote to Odisha's chief minister, Biju Patnaik, and within ten days had a meeting at which the islands were handed over.

The 2011 film I Am Kalam follows Chhotu, a poor boy who renames himself after the president, in which Indian state?

Rajasthan's Bikaner was the shooting location, and Kalam watched a special screening at his Delhi home a week before the film's release.

Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, renamed in his honour in 2015, sits in which state capital?

Lucknow's university was plain Uttar Pradesh Technical University until the state's chief minister announced the new name within a week of Kalam's death.

A bacterium, a plant and a fish carry Kalam's name; which microscopic animal became Batillipes kalami in 2023?

A tardigrade, or 'water bear', famed for its resilience: this one was found at Mandapam, the Tamil Nadu coastal town that faces the island where Kalam was born.