history.json

{
 "title": "The history of the diya",
 "tagline": "Seventeen thousand years from a hollow stone full of fat to 2.6 million clay lamps on one riverbank.",
 "intro": "A lamp needs only three things: a bowl, a fuel that can be drawn up, and a wick. People had all three in the Ice Age. India turned the small clay lamp into a row, a festival and a temple endowment, and scientists from Jurin to Faraday to NASA slowly worked out why the wick lifts oil and why the flame has its shape.",
 "eras": [
  {
   "id": "fat",
   "name": "Fat, stone and shell",
   "from": -20000,
   "to": -501,
   "color": "#ffb547",
   "summary": "Ice Age painters burn animal fat in hollowed stones. Later lamps are made of shell, and then of clay shaped like a shell. The wick is already doing the work."
  },
  {
   "id": "row",
   "name": "A row of lamps",
   "from": -500,
   "to": 1717,
   "color": "#ff7a59",
   "summary": "Clay lamps are made by the thousand around the Mediterranean. In India poems, plays, travellers and temple walls record lamps lit in rows, and kings fund lamps meant to burn for ever."
  },
  {
   "id": "draught",
   "name": "Air, glass and measurement",
   "from": 1718,
   "to": 1845,
   "color": "#c49bff",
   "summary": "Scientists measure how liquids climb narrow tubes and how bright a flame is. Aimé Argand feeds a flame air from the inside, and chemists make a harder, cleaner candle."
  },
  {
   "id": "kero",
   "name": "Kerosene and the wire",
   "from": 1846,
   "to": 1984,
   "color": "#7fe0a7",
   "summary": "A new fuel from coal and rock oil lights the world's homes. Faraday explains the candle to children, the electric lamp arrives, and physicists write the equation of a wick."
  },
  {
   "id": "today",
   "name": "Space flames and millions of diyas",
   "from": 1985,
   "to": 2026,
   "color": "#8ef0ff",
   "summary": "Candles burn as blue domes in orbit. LEDs and power lines replace the kerosene lamp, and the clay diya, no longer needed for light, is lit in greater numbers than ever."
  }
 ],
 "events": [
  {
   "year": -15000,
   "date": "c. 17,000 years ago",
   "era": "fat",
   "art": "night",
   "key": true,
   "title": "A lamp in the painted cave",
   "who": "The painters of Lascaux",
   "where": "Lascaux, Dordogne",
   "country": "France",
   "text": "More than a hundred lamps have been found in the cave of Lascaux. Most are plain slabs of limestone with a slight hollow for melted fat. One is special: a red sandstone lamp, carved, polished and engraved, with a handle. The priest and archaeologist André Glory dug it up in 1960, and soot in its bowl held traces of a juniper wick.",
   "why": "A hollow, a fuel that melts and a wick: every part of a diya was already there in the Ice Age.",
   "box": "anatomy",
   "sources": [
    1,
    2,
    3
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": -2600,
   "date": "c. 2600 BCE",
   "era": "fat",
   "art": "wave",
   "title": "Lamps made of shell, then shaped like shell",
   "who": "Sumerian craftspeople",
   "where": "Ur and other Sumerian cities",
   "country": "Iraq",
   "text": "Sea shells make ready-made lamps: a bowl for oil and a groove for the wick. At Sumerian sites, archaeologists found lamps carved from alabaster in the shape of a shell, dated to about 2600 BCE. Real conch shells cut into lamps were found in the graves of Ur.",
   "why": "The spout of a clay lamp, where the wick rests, copies the lip of a shell.",
   "box": "anatomy",
   "sources": [
    0,
    5
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": -2500,
   "date": "c. 2600–1900 BCE",
   "era": "fat",
   "art": "person",
   "title": "Lamps in the Indus cities? The evidence is thin",
   "who": "People of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro",
   "where": "Harappa, Punjab, and Mohenjo-daro, Sindh",
   "country": "Pakistan",
   "text": "It is often said that the diya goes back to the Indus civilisation. What archaeologists can show is less than that. Some clay figurines wear cup-shaped headdresses that may have held oil and a wick. Two clay lamps dug up at Harappa in the 1920s are now placed in later periods.",
   "why": "The people of the Indus cities surely lit their homes, but a clear Harappan diya has not been proved.",
   "box": "anatomy",
   "sources": [
    7,
    6
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": -527,
   "date": "527 BCE (traditional date)",
   "era": "fat",
   "art": "flame",
   "title": "Lamps for Mahavira",
   "who": "Jain tradition",
   "where": "Eastern India",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "Jain tradition holds that lamps were first lit in rows on the night Mahavira attained nirvana, a date traditionally given as 527 BCE. Jains keep that night as Dipalikaya. It falls on the same new moon as Diwali.",
   "why": "Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists each give the night of lamps a meaning of their own.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    8
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 100,
   "date": "1st–3rd centuries CE",
   "era": "row",
   "art": "hammer",
   "title": "Lamps from a mould, by the thousand",
   "who": "Roman lamp makers",
   "where": "Northern Italy and southern Gaul",
   "country": "Italy",
   "text": "Early Greek potters threw each lamp on a wheel. Later makers pressed clay into moulds, so one design could be copied again and again. Between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE, workshops in northern Italy and southern Gaul turned out plain \"factory lamps\", called Firmalampen by archaeologists, and sold them across the Roman world.",
   "why": "The small clay oil lamp was one of the first household goods made in bulk.",
   "box": "oils",
   "sources": [
    0
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 200,
   "date": "Sangam period, c. 200 BCE–300 CE",
   "era": "row",
   "art": "scroll",
   "key": true,
   "title": "Karthigai lamps in the oldest Tamil poems",
   "who": "Sangam poets",
   "where": "Tamil country",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "The Akananuru, an anthology of Tamil love poems from the Sangam period, mentions the festival of lamps in the month of Karthigai. Songs of the poet Avvaiyar refer to it too. It is still kept in Tamil homes, and a great ghee lamp is lit on top of the Arunachala hill at Tiruvannamalai.",
   "why": "It is among the oldest written records anywhere of a festival of oil lamps.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    10,
    9
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": 640,
   "date": "7th century",
   "era": "row",
   "art": "quill",
   "key": true,
   "title": "A king's play names the lamp festival",
   "who": "Harsha",
   "where": "Northern India",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "In his Sanskrit play Nagananda, King Harsha calls the festival Dipapratipadotsava. Lamps are lit, and newly engaged couples are given gifts. The Padma Purana and the Skanda Purana, composed between about the 7th and 10th centuries, describe the festival as well.",
   "why": "Deepavali joins two Sanskrit words, dipa (lamp) and avali (row): a row of lamps.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    8
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": 900,
   "date": "9th–10th centuries",
   "era": "row",
   "art": "building",
   "title": "Whitewashed houses and lamps in the market",
   "who": "Rajashekhara",
   "where": "Northern India and the Deccan",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "The poet Rajashekhara, in his Kavyamimamsa, calls the festival Dipamalika. He describes homes being whitewashed and oil lamps set out in houses, streets and markets at night. A copper plate of the Rashtrakuta king Krishna III (939–967) and a 10th-century Jain inscription at Saundatti both use the name Dipotsava, and the Jain record notes a gift of oil.",
   "why": "Cleaning the house and lighting rows of diyas was already the custom more than a thousand years ago.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    8
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1012,
   "date": "c. 1010–1014",
   "era": "row",
   "art": "plate",
   "key": true,
   "title": "Ninety-six ewes for one lamp",
   "who": "Rajaraja I and the shepherds of Thanjavur",
   "where": "Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "Inscriptions on the great temple at Thanjavur list the shepherds who had to keep its lamps burning. Each lamp was given 96 ewes, or 48 cows, or 16 she-buffaloes. In return the shepherd supplied a fixed measure of ghee every day, \"as long as the moon and the sun endure\". The animals had been given before the 29th year of King Rajaraja's reign. A Chola seal of the 10th century shows tall standing lamps, like the brass kuthuvilakku and nilavilakku still lit in the south.",
   "why": "A lamp meant to burn for ever needs a fuel supply that renews itself. The Cholas solved it with a flock.",
   "box": "oils",
   "sources": [
    11,
    12,
    0,
    13
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": 1030,
   "date": "c. 1030",
   "era": "row",
   "art": "earth",
   "title": "Al-Biruni writes down the date",
   "who": "Al-Biruni",
   "where": "Northern India",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "The Persian scholar Al-Biruni travelled in India and wrote a long account of its sciences and customs. He recorded that Hindus kept Deepavali on the new moon day of the month of Kartika.",
   "why": "It is an outsider's careful note that the festival falls on the darkest night of the month.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    8
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1420,
   "date": "early 15th century",
   "era": "row",
   "art": "eye",
   "title": "\"An innumerable number of oil lamps\"",
   "who": "Niccolò de' Conti, and later Domingo Paes",
   "where": "India, including Vijayanagara",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "The Venetian merchant Niccolò de' Conti described a festival when lamps beyond counting were lit in temples and on rooftops, and families put on new clothes, sang and feasted. In the 16th century the Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes saw homes and temples lit with lamps in October in the Vijayanagara empire.",
   "why": "Visitors from far away were struck by the same thing: the sheer number of small flames.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    8
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1718,
   "date": "1718",
   "era": "draught",
   "art": "waterdrop",
   "title": "A law for liquids that climb",
   "who": "James Jurin",
   "where": "London",
   "country": "United Kingdom",
   "text": "The English physician James Jurin published a rule for capillary rise: the narrower the tube, the higher a liquid climbs in it. Giovanni Borelli had noticed the same thing in 1670. Water rises about 70 mm in a glass tube of 0.2 mm radius, and less than a millimetre in one of 2 cm radius.",
   "why": "A cotton wick is a bundle of very fine channels, which is why oil can climb it against gravity.",
   "box": "wick",
   "sources": [
    14
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1780,
   "date": "1780, patented 1784",
   "era": "draught",
   "art": "burner",
   "key": true,
   "title": "Argand gives the flame air from inside",
   "who": "Aimé Argand",
   "where": "Geneva, Paris and London",
   "country": "Switzerland",
   "text": "The Geneva-born Aimé Argand rolled the wick into a hollow sleeve, so that air reached the flame from the inside as well as the outside. A glass chimney steadied the flame and pulled the air through. He patented the lamp in England in 1784. It gave about as much light as six to ten candles. Thick oil climbs a wick slowly, so the tank sat above the burner until 1800, when Carcel added a clockwork pump.",
   "why": "It was the first big improvement to the oil lamp in thousands of years, and it came from understanding that a flame is starved of air at its centre.",
   "box": "oils",
   "sources": [
    15,
    16,
    17
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": 1794,
   "date": "c. 1790s",
   "era": "draught",
   "art": "scales",
   "title": "Measuring light with a candle",
   "who": "Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford",
   "where": "Munich, Bavaria",
   "country": "Germany",
   "text": "During his years in Bavaria (1785 to 1796), Count Rumford compared the cost and brightness of wax candles, tallow candles and oil lamps. To do it he built a photometer and defined a standard candle, made to strict rules from sperm whale oil.",
   "why": "His standard candle is the ancestor of the candela, the unit of brightness used today.",
   "box": "light",
   "sources": [
    18
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1825,
   "date": "1823–1825",
   "era": "draught",
   "art": "candles",
   "title": "A harder candle and a wick that trims itself",
   "who": "Michel-Eugène Chevreul, Joseph Gay-Lussac and Cambacérès",
   "where": "Paris",
   "country": "France",
   "text": "Chevreul and Gay-Lussac separated stearin from animal fat and patented candles made of it in 1825. They burned harder and brighter than tallow. In the same year Cambacérès introduced the plaited wick, which curls into the edge of the flame and burns away. In 1834 Joseph Morgan patented a machine that moulded about 1,500 candles an hour.",
   "why": "A candle is an oil lamp whose fuel is its own container, and its wick works exactly like a diya's.",
   "box": "oils",
   "sources": [
    19
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1846,
   "date": "August 1846, patented 27 June 1854",
   "era": "kero",
   "art": "fuel",
   "title": "Kerosene gets its name",
   "who": "Abraham Gesner, and James Young",
   "where": "Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island",
   "country": "Canada",
   "text": "The Nova Scotian geologist Abraham Gesner is reported to have shown a new lamp fuel, distilled from coal, at a public lecture in August 1846. He named it kerosene and received three US patents for it on 27 June 1854. In Scotland, James Young patented his own process for oil and paraffin wax from coal on 17 October 1850.",
   "why": "Kerosene is thin and climbs a wick easily, so a simple lamp could burn it brightly.",
   "box": "oils",
   "sources": [
    20,
    21
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1853,
   "date": "31 July 1853",
   "era": "kero",
   "art": "thermometer",
   "key": true,
   "title": "Surgery by kerosene light",
   "who": "Ignacy Łukasiewicz",
   "where": "Lviv (then Lemberg)",
   "country": "Ukraine",
   "text": "The Polish pharmacist Ignacy Łukasiewicz, working with Jan Zeh, distilled kerosene from rock oil and designed a lamp to burn it. On the night of 31 July 1853 a surgeon at a Lviv hospital carried out an urgent operation by the light of the new lamps. Łukasiewicz went on to open an oil mine at Bóbrka and an oil distillery near Jasło.",
   "why": "The modern kerosene lamp, and the oil industry behind it, began in a pharmacy.",
   "box": "oils",
   "sources": [
    22,
    23,
    24
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": 1860,
   "date": "1848, and December 1860 to January 1861",
   "era": "kero",
   "art": "flame",
   "key": true,
   "title": "Faraday and the candle",
   "who": "Michael Faraday",
   "where": "Royal Institution, London",
   "country": "United Kingdom",
   "text": "Michael Faraday gave six Christmas lectures for young people on \"The Chemical History of a Candle\". He first gave the course in 1848 and repeated it in the winter of 1860 to 1861, to audiences of about 700. \"It is by what is called capillary attraction that the fuel is conveyed to the part where combustion goes on,\" he told them. The lectures were printed in 1861 and have stayed in print.",
   "why": "He showed that the flame burns vapour, not liquid, and that a candle is a door into all of chemistry.",
   "box": "flame",
   "sources": [
    25,
    26,
    27
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": 1868,
   "date": "7 January 1868",
   "era": "kero",
   "art": "wind",
   "title": "A lantern the wind cannot blow out",
   "who": "John H. Irwin",
   "where": "United States",
   "country": "United States",
   "text": "John Irwin patented the tubular lantern. Side tubes carry air down to the burner, so the flame keeps a steady supply even in a gust. His cold-blast design of 1874 fed the flame only fresh air and burned brighter. Lanterns of this kind are known as hurricane lanterns. In India the word lantern became laltain.",
   "why": "For about a century the kerosene lantern was the working light of villages, farms and railway stations.",
   "box": "oils",
   "sources": [
    28,
    24
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1879,
   "date": "1879",
   "era": "kero",
   "art": "bolt",
   "title": "Light without a flame",
   "who": "Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison",
   "where": "Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and Menlo Park, New Jersey",
   "country": "United Kingdom",
   "text": "On 3 February 1879 Joseph Swan showed a glowing carbon lamp to about 700 people in Newcastle. On 22 October 1879 a carbon-filament lamp in Thomas Edison's laboratory burned for 13.5 hours. A later tungsten bulb gives about 16 lumens for each watt of electricity.",
   "why": "For the first time in history, light at home did not need a wick, a fuel or a fire.",
   "box": "light",
   "sources": [
    29
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1899,
   "date": "c. 1898–1901",
   "era": "kero",
   "art": "lens",
   "title": "The first Stone Age lamp is recognised",
   "who": "Émile Rivière and Marcellin Berthelot, and later Sophie de Beaune",
   "where": "La Mouthe, Dordogne",
   "country": "France",
   "text": "In the cave of La Mouthe, Émile Rivière found a carved stone with an ibex engraved underneath and a scorched hollow on top. The chemist Marcellin Berthelot analysed the residue and reported in 1901 that it came from animal fat. It was the first object identified as a Palaeolithic lamp. Decades later the archaeologist Sophie de Beaune tested copies and found lichen, moss and juniper the easiest wicks to use.",
   "why": "It proved that Ice Age people carried their own light deep into caves.",
   "box": "anatomy",
   "sources": [
    2,
    1,
    4
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1921,
   "date": "1918 and 1921",
   "era": "kero",
   "art": "molecule",
   "key": true,
   "title": "The equation of a wick",
   "who": "Richard Lucas and Edward Washburn",
   "where": "Germany and the United States",
   "country": "United States",
   "text": "Richard Lucas in 1918 and Edward Washburn in 1921 worked out how fast a liquid creeps into a narrow tube or a porous solid. The distance grows with the square root of time: quick at first, then slower and slower. It depends on the liquid's surface tension and on how thick, or viscous, it is. Bell and Cameron had found the same form in 1906.",
   "why": "It explains why thin kerosene races up a wick while thick oil or ghee needs a short, well-soaked one.",
   "box": "wick",
   "sources": [
    30
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": 1991,
   "date": "1985 or 1991",
   "era": "today",
   "art": "wave",
   "title": "Dev Deepawali lights the ghats of Varanasi",
   "who": "The people of Varanasi",
   "where": "Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "On Kartik Purnima, the full moon fifteen days after Diwali, the steps down to the Ganga at Varanasi are lined with earthen lamps. Devotees believe the gods come down to bathe in the river that night. The custom of lighting the ghats in this way is recent. It is often said to have begun at Panchganga Ghat in 1985, while another account credits Pandit Kishori Raman Dubey at Dashashwamedh Ghat in 1991.",
   "why": "It shows a lamp festival still growing in living memory.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    37,
    38
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 1992,
   "date": "1992 and 1996",
   "era": "today",
   "art": "rocket",
   "key": true,
   "title": "A candle burns in orbit",
   "who": "Daniel Dietrich, Howard Ross, James T'ien and astronaut Shannon Lucid",
   "where": "Space Shuttle and the Mir space station",
   "country": "United States",
   "text": "NASA scientists lit candles in orbit to see what a flame does without gravity. With no hot air rising, the flame did not stretch into a teardrop. It sat on the wick as a dim blue dome, with almost no soot. On the Shuttle the flames lasted less than a minute inside a sealed box. On Mir in 1996, with a redesigned box and Shannon Lucid running the tests, they burned for as long as 45 minutes.",
   "why": "It proved that the familiar shape and yellow colour of a diya flame are made by gravity.",
   "box": "flame",
   "sources": [
    31,
    32
   ]
  },
  {
   "year": 2013,
   "date": "2009–2014",
   "era": "today",
   "art": "ice",
   "title": "Cool flames on the space station",
   "who": "Forman Williams and the FLEX team",
   "where": "International Space Station",
   "country": "United States",
   "text": "In the Flame Extinguishment Experiment, run on the space station since 2009, drops of heptane fuel burn as glowing balls. Sometimes the visible flame went out and the drop kept shrinking. It was still burning, in a \"cool flame\" of about 200 to 540 °C, far below the 1,200 to 1,700 °C of the first flame. The team published the finding in 2014.",
   "why": "After two hundred years of flame science, a simple burning drop still held a surprise.",
   "box": "flame",
   "sources": [
    33,
    34
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 2014,
   "date": "1993 and 2014",
   "era": "today",
   "art": "chip",
   "title": "The blue LED and a Nobel Prize",
   "who": "Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura",
   "where": "Nagoya and Tokushima",
   "country": "Japan",
   "text": "Red and green LEDs existed for decades, but white light needs blue. Shuji Nakamura's bright blue LED went into production in Japan in 1993. He shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics with Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano \"for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes\".",
   "why": "White LEDs give many times more light per watt than a filament bulb, and vastly more than any flame.",
   "box": "light",
   "sources": [
    35,
    36
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 2017,
   "date": "2017–2022",
   "era": "today",
   "art": "plug",
   "title": "The kerosene lamp is retired",
   "who": "Government of India",
   "where": "Across India",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "In the 2011 census, nearly 43% of India's rural households still used kerosene as their main light. The Saubhagya scheme, launched in 2017, set out to connect every willing household to electricity. The government told Parliament that 2.86 crore households, 28.6 million, were given connections. The scheme closed in March 2022.",
   "why": "Within a few years the wick lamp stopped being a need in most Indian homes and became a choice.",
   "box": "light",
   "sources": [
    41,
    39,
    40
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 2018,
   "date": "2018",
   "era": "today",
   "art": "hammer",
   "title": "Electric wheels for India's potters",
   "who": "Khadi and Village Industries Commission",
   "where": "India",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "Diyas are thrown on the wheel by potters of the Kumhar community. In 2018 the Khadi and Village Industries Commission launched the Kumhar Sashaktikaran Yojana, which gives potters training and electric wheels in place of hand-spun ones. In October 2020, for example, wheels went to 100 potter families in Maharashtra.",
   "why": "Every clay diya begins with a potter, and the busiest weeks of a potter's year are the ones before Diwali.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    42,
    43
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 2018,
   "date": "November 2018",
   "era": "today",
   "art": "trophy",
   "title": "Ayodhya's first record",
   "who": "Uttar Pradesh Department of Tourism and Dr. Rammanohar Lohia Avadh University",
   "where": "Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "Ayodhya began its Deepotsav, a festival of lamps on the eve of Diwali, in 2017. In 2018, on the banks of the Sarayu, students and volunteers set out and lit 301,152 oil lamps. Guinness World Records confirmed it as the largest display of oil lamps, more than double the record before it.",
   "why": "It started a yearly count that has grown almost ninefold.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    44
   ],
   "key": false
  },
  {
   "year": 2025,
   "date": "19 October 2025",
   "era": "today",
   "art": "spotlight",
   "key": true,
   "title": "2,617,215 diyas on one riverbank",
   "who": "Uttar Pradesh Department of Tourism and Dr. Rammanohar Lohia Avadh University",
   "where": "Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh",
   "country": "India",
   "text": "The record kept climbing. Ayodhya lit 941,551 lamps in 2021. Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh took the title with 1,171,078 on 1 March 2022, and Ayodhya answered with 1,576,955 that October. Then came 2,223,676 in 2023 and 2,512,585 in 2024. On 19 October 2025, the eve of Diwali, the ghats of the Sarayu held 2,617,215 lit lamps.",
   "why": "Each one is the same small machine: a clay bowl, a spoonful of oil and a cotton wick.",
   "box": "row",
   "sources": [
    48,
    45,
    46,
    47
   ]
  }
 ],
 "firsts": [
  {
   "label": "First object identified as a Stone Age lamp",
   "value": "found c. 1898",
   "who": "Émile Rivière, La Mouthe cave, France"
  },
  {
   "label": "Earliest Tamil poems to mention the Karthigai lamps",
   "value": "c. 200 BCE–300 CE",
   "who": "Akananuru, Sangam anthology"
  },
  {
   "label": "Early play that names the lamp festival",
   "value": "7th century",
   "who": "Harsha's Nagananda: Dipapratipadotsava"
  },
  {
   "label": "Oil lamp with a hollow wick and glass chimney",
   "value": "1780, patented 1784",
   "who": "Aimé Argand, Geneva"
  },
  {
   "label": "Hospital operation lit by kerosene lamps",
   "value": "31 July 1853",
   "who": "Lviv, with Ignacy Łukasiewicz's lamps"
  },
  {
   "label": "Candle flames studied in orbit",
   "value": "1992",
   "who": "NASA, Space Shuttle glovebox"
  },
  {
   "label": "Ayodhya Deepotsav's first Guinness World Record",
   "value": "2018",
   "who": "301,152 oil lamps on the Sarayu"
  }
 ],
 "people": [
  {
   "name": "Harsha",
   "life": "7th century",
   "role": "King and playwright",
   "from": "India",
   "note": "The north Indian king whose Sanskrit play Nagananda names the lamp festival as Dipapratipadotsava."
  },
  {
   "name": "Rajaraja I",
   "life": "reigned 985 – 1014",
   "role": "Chola king",
   "from": "India",
   "note": "His temple at Thanjavur records how each lamp was funded: 96 ewes, 48 cows or 16 she-buffaloes, with ghee owed daily."
  },
  {
   "name": "Al-Biruni",
   "life": "973 – c. 1050",
   "role": "Scholar and traveller",
   "from": "Khwarazm (Central Asia)",
   "note": "He studied India at first hand and noted that Deepavali was kept on the new moon of Kartika."
  },
  {
   "name": "Aimé Argand",
   "life": "1750 – 1803",
   "role": "Physicist and inventor",
   "from": "Geneva",
   "note": "He gave the oil lamp a hollow wick and a glass chimney, and made it five to ten times brighter than a candle."
  },
  {
   "name": "Abraham Gesner",
   "life": "1797 – 1864",
   "role": "Physician and geologist",
   "from": "Nova Scotia, Canada",
   "note": "He distilled a clean lamp fuel from coal, named it kerosene and patented it in 1854."
  },
  {
   "name": "Ignacy Łukasiewicz",
   "life": "1822 – 1882",
   "role": "Pharmacist and inventor",
   "from": "Poland",
   "note": "He distilled kerosene from rock oil, designed the modern kerosene lamp in 1853 and opened an early oil mine and refinery."
  },
  {
   "name": "Michael Faraday",
   "life": "1791 – 1867",
   "role": "Chemist and physicist",
   "from": "England",
   "note": "His Christmas lectures on the candle explained capillary action, vapour and flame to children, and are still in print."
  },
  {
   "name": "Sophie A. de Beaune",
   "life": "working since the 1980s",
   "role": "Archaeologist",
   "from": "France",
   "note": "She surveyed the stone lamps of Ice Age Europe, burned fat in copies of them and co-wrote \"Ice Age Lamps\" in 1993."
  },
  {
   "name": "Shannon Lucid",
   "life": "born 1943",
   "role": "Biochemist and astronaut",
   "from": "United States",
   "note": "She ran the candle flame experiments on the Mir space station in 1996, where flames burned for up to 45 minutes."
  }
 ],
 "series": [
  {
   "id": "deepotsav",
   "title": "Oil lamps lit at Ayodhya's Deepotsav",
   "unit": "million lamps",
   "log": false,
   "after": "today",
   "caption": "Record counts for the largest display of oil lamps at Ayodhya, as confirmed by Guinness World Records. Years without a count checked at source are left out.",
   "points": [
    {
     "year": 2018,
     "value": 0.301,
     "label": "2018: 301,152 lamps"
    },
    {
     "year": 2021,
     "value": 0.942,
     "label": "2021: 941,551 lamps"
    },
    {
     "year": 2022,
     "value": 1.577,
     "label": "2022: 1,576,955 lamps"
    },
    {
     "year": 2023,
     "value": 2.224,
     "label": "2023: 2,223,676 lamps"
    },
    {
     "year": 2024,
     "value": 2.513,
     "label": "2024: 2,512,585 lamps"
    },
    {
     "year": 2025,
     "value": 2.617,
     "label": "2025: 2,617,215 lamps"
    }
   ]
  }
 ],
 "facts": [
  "Deepavali is Sanskrit for a row of lamps: dipa, a lamp, and avali, a row.",
  "At Thanjavur about a thousand years ago, one temple lamp was worth 96 ewes, 48 cows or 16 she-buffaloes. The shepherd who kept them owed the lamp a measure of ghee every day.",
  "Water climbs about 70 mm up a glass tube of 0.2 mm radius, but less than 1 mm up a tube of 2 cm radius. A wick works because its channels are very fine.",
  "In orbit a candle flame is a dim blue dome. On the Space Shuttle such flames lasted under a minute in a sealed box. On Mir they burned for as long as 45 minutes.",
  "A kerosene wick lamp gives between about 8 and 100 lumens. One estimate put the world's use of fuel for lighting at 77 billion litres a year in 2005.",
  "The diya has its own emoji. It was approved as part of Unicode 12.0 in 2019."
 ],
 "sources": [
  {
   "title": "Oil lamp",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_lamp"
  },
  {
   "title": "Lascaux: Lighting",
   "publisher": "French Ministry of Culture, Archéologie",
   "url": "https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/lascaux/en/lighting"
  },
  {
   "title": "Stone Lamps of the Palaeolithic (with André Glory's 1961 report on the Lascaux lamp)",
   "publisher": "Don's Maps",
   "url": "https://donsmaps.com/lascauxlamp.html"
  },
  {
   "title": "Lascaux",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
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  },
  {
   "title": "Ice Age Lamps (S. A. de Beaune and R. White, March 1993)",
   "publisher": "Scientific American",
   "url": "https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ice-age-lamps/"
  },
  {
   "title": "Lamp of conch shell from Ur, object 35-1-63",
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  {
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  {
   "title": "Diwali",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali"
  },
  {
   "title": "Diya (lamp)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diya_(lamp)"
  },
  {
   "title": "Karthika Deepam",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karthika_Deepam"
  },
  {
   "title": "Brihadisvara temple inscriptions, No. 63: on the outside of the north enclosure",
   "publisher": "Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, Government of India",
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  {
   "title": "South Indian Inscriptions, Volume 2: Thanjavur temple, Nos. 63 to 65",
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  {
   "title": "Nilavilakku",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
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  {
   "title": "Jurin's law",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurin%27s_law"
  },
  {
   "title": "Argand lamp",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argand_lamp"
  },
  {
   "title": "Aimé Argand",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aim%C3%A9_Argand"
  },
  {
   "title": "The innovation that gave light to the world",
   "publisher": "Chemistry World, Royal Society of Chemistry",
   "url": "https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/argands-lamp/3009536.article"
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  {
   "title": "Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Thompson"
  },
  {
   "title": "Candle",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle"
  },
  {
   "title": "Abraham Pineo Gesner",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Pineo_Gesner"
  },
  {
   "title": "James Young (chemist)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Young_(chemist)"
  },
  {
   "title": "Ignacy Łukasiewicz",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacy_%C5%81ukasiewicz"
  },
  {
   "title": "Łukasiewicz: the Man Who \"Stopped\" the Sun",
   "publisher": "Kuryer Polski",
   "url": "https://kuryerpolski.us/en/Page/View/lukasiewicz-urodziny"
  },
  {
   "title": "Kerosene lamp",
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  {
   "title": "The Chemical History of a Candle",
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  {
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   "url": "https://edu.rsc.org/feature/the-chemistry-of-candles/3007566.article"
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   "publisher": "Project Gutenberg",
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  {
   "title": "Incandescent light bulb",
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  {
   "title": "Washburn's equation",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washburn%27s_equation"
  },
  {
   "title": "Candle Flames in Non-Buoyant Atmospheres (Dietrich, Ross, Shu and T'ien)",
   "publisher": "NASA Technical Reports Server",
   "url": "https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20000005087"
  },
  {
   "title": "Candle Flames in Microgravity (Dietrich, Ross, Frate, T'ien and Shu, 1997)",
   "publisher": "NASA Technical Reports Server",
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  },
  {
   "title": "Cool Flames (Flame Extinguishment Experiment)",
   "publisher": "NASA Scientific Visualization Studio",
   "url": "https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/11318"
  },
  {
   "title": "Researchers discover cool-burning flames in space (28 July 2014)",
   "publisher": "University of California San Diego",
   "url": "https://today.ucsd.edu/story/researchers_discover_cool_burning_flames_in_space_that_could_lead_to_better"
  },
  {
   "title": "Shuji Nakamura",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuji_Nakamura"
  },
  {
   "title": "The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014",
   "publisher": "NobelPrize.org",
   "url": "https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/summary/"
  },
  {
   "title": "Dev Deepavali (Varanasi)",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dev_Deepavali_(Varanasi)"
  },
  {
   "title": "Dev Deepawali in Varanasi marks Kartik Purnima with diyas and riverfront festivities (5 November 2025)",
   "publisher": "All India Radio News, Government of India",
   "url": "https://www.newsonair.gov.in/dev-deepawali-in-varanasi-marks-kartik-purnima-with-diyas-and-riverfront-festivities"
  },
  {
   "title": "Govt provides electricity to 2.86 crore households under Saubhagya scheme (1 August 2024)",
   "publisher": "All India Radio News, Government of India",
   "url": "https://www.newsonair.gov.in/govt-provides-electricity-to-2-86-crore-households-under-saubhagya-scheme-aims-for-universal-electrification"
  },
  {
   "title": "Saubhagya scheme",
   "publisher": "Wikipedia",
   "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saubhagya_scheme"
  },
  {
   "title": "Kerosene for home lighting: a key indicator to prioritize districts for clean energy initiatives in India (3 December 2015)",
   "publisher": "Lighting Global, World Bank Group",
   "url": "https://www.lightingglobal.org/blog-kerosene-for-home-lighting-a-key-indicator-to-prioritize-districts-for-clean-energy-initiatives-in-india/"
  },
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   "title": "Kumhar Sashaktikaran Yojana (29 October 2020)",
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  },
  {
   "title": "KVIC distributes electric potter wheels under Kumhar Sashaktikaran Yojana (release 1668125)",
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  },
  {
   "title": "Largest display of oil lamps spectacularly lights up Indian city (21 November 2018)",
   "publisher": "Guinness World Records",
   "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/commercial/2018/11/largest-display-of-oil-lamps-spectacularly-lights-up-indian-city-548998"
  },
  {
   "title": "Dazzling Diwali oil lamp display breaks record in India (October 2022)",
   "publisher": "Guinness World Records",
   "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/commercial/2022/10/dazzling-diwali-oil-lamp-display-breaks-record-in-india-723017"
  },
  {
   "title": "Largest display of oil lamps illuminate Indian city to celebrate Diwali (17 November 2023)",
   "publisher": "Guinness World Records",
   "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/commercial/2023/11/largest-display-of-oil-lamps-illuminate-indian-city-to-celebrate-diwali-761303"
  },
  {
   "title": "Ayodhya sets Guinness World Record with 25 lakh diyas lit (31 October 2024)",
   "publisher": "All India Radio News, Government of India",
   "url": "https://www.newsonair.gov.in/ayodhya-sets-guinness-world-record-with-25-lakh-diyas-lit-and-1121-vedacharyas-performing-aarti-together"
  },
  {
   "title": "Largest display of oil lamps (record page)",
   "publisher": "Guinness World Records",
   "url": "https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/96019-largest-display-of-oil-lamps"
  },
  {
   "title": "Diya Lamp emoji",
   "publisher": "Emojipedia",
   "url": "https://emojipedia.org/diya-lamp"
  }
 ]
}