Home > Terms > English, UK (UE) > Black Hole of Calcutta
Black Hole of Calcutta
A dungeon located at Fort William in Calcutta. It is notable as many British prisoners of war were held in this dungeon when it was captured by the Nawab of Bengal in 1756. So many prisoners were held in there at one time that most of them died from heat exhaustion or stroke, with a final death tally estimated to be as high as 123.
In recent times the account of this event has had its veracity challenged for a number of reasons. There has never been independent confirmation of this event happening and it has never been possible to match the numbers claimed with the number of missing POWs in the conflict.
- Part of Speech: proper noun
- Synonym(s):
- Blossary:
- Industry/Domain: History
- Category: British history
- Company:
- Product:
- Acronym-Abbreviation:
Other Languages:
Member comments
Terms in the News
Featured Terms
Fire rainbows
They are technically known as iridescent clouds, a relatively rare phenomenon caused by clouds of water droplets of nearly uniform size. These clouds ...
Contributor
Featured blossaries
Marouane937
0
Terms
58
Blossaries
3
Followers
The Most Dangerous Dog Breeds
Browers Terms By Category
- Zoological terms(611)
- Animal verbs(25)
Zoology(636) Terms
- Printers(127)
- Fax machines(71)
- Copiers(48)
- Office supplies(22)
- Scanners(9)
- Projectors(3)
Office equipment(281) Terms
- Health insurance(1657)
- Medicare & Medicaid(969)
- Life insurance(359)
- General insurance(50)
- Commercial insurance(4)
- Travel insurance(1)
Insurance(3040) Terms
- Chocolate(453)
- Hard candy(22)
- Gum(14)
- Gummies(9)
- Lollies(8)
- Caramels(6)
Candy & confectionary(525) Terms
- Fiction(910)
- General literature(746)
- Poetry(598)
- Chilldren's literature(212)
- Bestsellers(135)
- Novels(127)