Bombay history quick fun facts

When I first came to Mumbai, the city with its old buildings and modern sky scrapers intrigued me. The city has so many stories to tell, yet no one has the time to stop and listen, including me. So I found a few interesting facts / pointers about Old Bombay that are better enjoyed when shared, so take it and go. 

• Intially Bombay was seven lush green islands dotted with 22 hills They consisted of Bombay, which was only 24 km long and 4 km wide and was the main harbour and nucleus of British fort. 

• Reclamation facts:

1. Phase I included a Hornby Vellard Project and a Colaba Causeway project:
2. Hornby Vellard ( Portuguese word ‘vallado’ meaning fence or embankment) to block the Worli creek sealing the Great Breach (Breach Candy) between Dongri, Malabar hill and Worli completed in 1784.  It, thus, facilitated the reclamation of 400 acres of land on which the city spread.
3. Eventually many causeways were built to connect various land masses developed. It included a causeway from Salsette to Sion in 1803 and Mahim to Bandra in 1845.
4. The Colaba causeway was completed in 1838 joining Colaba, Old Woman’s Island and nearby small islands to Bombay. In 1870, the hills of Chinchpokli and Byculla area were quarried and thrown into the sea, to fill up the gaps around railway lines and land masses so as to leave no room for stagnant water.
5. Phase II Backbay Reclamation project built the Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade over the garbage of the city illegally dumped into the Arabian sea!

• The first Parsi to arrive in Bombay was Dorabji Nanabhoy Patel in 1640. The Parsis, originally from Iran, migrated to India about 900 years ago. This they did to save their religion, Zoroastrianism, from invading Arabs who proselytized Islam.

• In May 1662, King Charles II of England married Catherine of Braganza, whose family offered a large dowry (a gift made by the father of the bride to the groom). Part of this gift was the Portuguese territory of Bombay. However, Charles II did not want the trouble of ruling these islands and in 1668 persuaded the East India Company to rent them for just 10 pounds of gold a year.

• Bombay got its name from the Portuguese who called the place Bom Bahia, meaning 'the good bay', which the English pronounced Bombay.

• In 1853, the first Indian railway opened, which stretched from Bombay to Thana.

• The city changed its name in 1995 to Mumbai, after Mumbadevi, the stone goddess of the deep-sea fishermen who originally lived on the islands before they were driven out by the East India Company.

• Once the third largest tunnel in Asia, the Parsik Tunnel is the first railway tunnel to be built in India and is 1.3 Km in length.

• Between 1822 and 1838, cattle from the congested fort area used to graze freely at the Camp Maidan (now called Azad Maidan). In 1838, the British rulers introduced a 'grazing fee' which several cattle-owners could not afford. Therefore, Sir Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy spent Rs. 20,000 from his own purse for purchasing some grasslands near the seafront at Thakurdwar and saw that the starving cattle grazed without a fee in that area. In time the area became to be known as "Charni" meaning grazing. When a railway station on the BB&CI railway was constructed there it was called Charni Road.

• Lord Sandhurst governed Bombay between 1895 and 1900 and it was during his tenure that the Act was passed which constituted the City Improvement Trust which, among other things, built the Sandhurst Road in 1910 and handed it over to the municipality. The Sandhurst Road railway station (upper level) was built in 1921.

• Bombay's Nariman Point is named after Khurshed Framji Nariman, also known as Veer Nariman, was one of the second generation of Parsi stalwarts in the Indian National Congress. He remained Mayor of Mumbai, 1935–1936. He lived at Readymoney Mansion near Horniman Circle (then Elphinstone Circle) in Mumbai, the road is now called Veer Nariman Road, after him.

• The Fort (downtown) area in Bombay derives its name from the fact that the area fell within the former walled city, of which only a small fragment survives as part of the eastern boundary wall of the St. George's Hospital. In 1813 there were 10,801 persons living in the fort, 5,464, or nearly 50%, of them Parsis.

• The Stock Exchange at Bombay was established in 1875 as "The Native Share and Stockbrokers Association" which has evolved over the decades in to its present status as the premier Stock Exchange in India. It is one of the oldest in Asia having preceded even the Tokyo Stock Exchange which was founded in 1878. The exchange was established with 318 members with a fee of Re. 1/-. This fee has gradually increased over the years and today it is a over a crore.

• On 15 October 1932 industrialist and aviator J.R.D. Tata pioneered civil aviation in Bombay by flying a plane from Karachi to Bombay.

• The last British troops to leave India, post receiving independence on 15 August 1947, the First Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry, passed through the arcade of the Gateway of India in Bombay on 28 February 1948.

For more gorgeous pictures: http://housing.co.in/blog/2013/04/11/from-bombay-to-mumbai-in-pictures/

Sources: wikepedia.com, http://housing.co.in/blog/2012/12/11/the-seven-islands-of-bombay/, http://www.mumbainet.com/template1.php?CID=15&SCID=5