Daily Knowledge

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
[Mark Twain]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2025/11/26)

Terry Griffiths (1947–2024) was a Welsh professional snooker player, coach and pundit. After winning several amateur titles, he turned professional in June 1978 at the age of 30. In his second professional tournament, he qualified for the 1979 World Snooker Championship. He reached the final of the event where he defeated Dennis Taylor. In the 1988 World Snooker Championship, Griffiths again reached the final of the competition but lost to Steve Davis. Griffiths reached at least the quarter-finals of the World Championship for nine consecutive years, from 1984 to 1992. He also won the Masters in 1980 and the UK Championship in 1982, completing snooker's Triple Crown. He was runner-up at the Masters three times and reached the final of the 1989 European Open, where he lost the deciding frame to John Parrott. Griffiths retired from the professional tour in 1996 to become the World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association's director of coaching. (Full article...)

Explosion on HMS Bulwark

1835 – Texas Revolution: Texian forces attacked a Mexican pack train, capturing 40 saddlebags of grass.
1914 – A large internal explosion destroyed HMS Bulwark near Sheerness, killing 741 people on board.
1940 – The Iron Guard killed 64 political detainees at a penitentiary near Bucharest and followed up with several high-profile assassinations, including that of former Romanian prime minister Nicolae Iorga.
1942 – A riot involving infantrymen, military police, and local law enforcement officers killed three people in Phoenix, Arizona.
2008 – A coordinated group of shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai began, ultimately killing 175 people and wounding more than 300 others.

Age of Earth: ~ 4.568 billion years
World Population: 7.3 billion (July 2015)
Continents: 7 (Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia)
Mean Radius: 6371.0 km
Axial Tilt: 23,44°

Image Source: Wikipedia - License: Public Domain (thanks to NASA)

Our solar system consists of
1 star (Sun) and 8 planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).

1 AU (astronomical unit) is roughly the distance between Earth and the Sun (about 150 million kilometres).
The space probe Voyager 1 was launched by the NASA in 1977 and is meanwhile (autumn 2015) about 133 AU away from Earth.

Image Source: Wikipedia - License: CC BY-SA 3.0