Daily Knowledge

"Either move or be moved."
[Ezra Pound]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2018/05/25)

Princess Helena of the United Kingdom (25 May 1846 – 9 June 1923) was the fifth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. She was educated by private tutors chosen by her father and his close friend and adviser, Baron Stockmar. Her childhood was spent with her parents, travelling between royal residences in Britain. In 1866 she married the impoverished German Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. She was the most active member of the royal family, carrying out an extensive programme of royal engagements at a time when royalty was not expected to appear often in public. An active patron of charities, she was one of the founding members of the British Red Cross. She was founding president of the Royal School of Needlework, and president of the Workhouse Infirmary Nursing Association. As president of the Royal British Nurses' Association, she was a strong supporter of nurse registration against the advice of Florence Nightingale. (Full article...)

The Great Wall of China

1644 – Ming general Wu Sangui let the invading Manchus pass through the Great Wall of China (pictured), allowing them to capture Beijing, leading to the foundation of the Qing dynasty.
1738 – King George II of Great Britain negotiated a cease-fire between the British colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania, ending Cresap's War.
1816 – The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge published one of his most famous poems, "Kubla Khan".
1979 – Six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared on his way to school in New York City, and later became one of the first missing children to have his picture featured on milk cartons.
2013 – Naxalite insurgents of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) attacked a convoy of Indian National Congress leaders in the state of Chhattisgarh, causing at least 27 deaths.

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