【2012 Archives】

If India had to summarize the outgoing year in a single phrase012 Archives it would be this: a mixed bag.

What else explains the distinction of being the country with the most selfie deaths in the world and also the one with the world's largest solar power plant?

All that and more happened in 2016. Here are some 'records' India scaled this year.

1. Largest solar power plant

Kamuthi, a small town in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, became the home to the world's largest solar power plant at a single location. It was built in a record time of eight months, faster than California's Topaz Solar Farm, the former largest solar plant.

2. Most trees planted in a day

Quite an irony that the country which houses some of the most polluted cities in the world plants most trees in a day to help fight climate change. More than 800,000 volunteers came to together to plant nearly 50 million saplings in a day in the northern Indian city of Allahabad. The erstwhile record of 847,275 trees was set by Pakistan in 2013.

3. Longest non-stop flight

State-run airline, Air India, overtook UAE's Emirates to record the longest non-stop flight ever when it flew 15,300 km (9,506 miles) from New Delhi to San Francisco through the trans-Pacific route instead of the usual Atlantic route. It also managed to cover the distance in the shortest time.

Watch what the flight captain had to say about the feat.

4. Largest beach clean-up

UN officials, Indian celebrities and residents of Mumbai's Versova area got together to clean up more than 4 million pounds of trash along a 2.5 km beach (1.5 miles) stretch. This was the world's biggest such clean-up drive that witnessed participation from Eric Solheim, chief of United Nation Environment Programme (UNEP) and Lewis Pugh, the UN Patron of the Oceans.

5. Most selfie deaths

India accounted for the highest number of selfie deaths in the world for the second year in a row. Most of these have been reported to be water-related casualties, revealed a study by the Carnegie Mellon University. The country's financial capital Mumbai, situated along the Arabian Sea, has now declared 16 no-selfie zones across the city.