Daily Knowledge

"Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be."
[Daniel J. Boorstin]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2025/07/04)

George Washington was a Founding Father and the first president of the United States. Born in Virginia, he opposed the perceived oppression of the American colonists by the British Crown and was commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. After being forced to retreat from New York City, he crossed the Delaware River and won the battles of Trenton and Princeton. Washington led a decisive victory at Yorktown, then served as president of the Constitutional Convention that drafted the US Constitution. As president, he set precedents for the office of president, such as republicanism, a peaceful transition, and the two-term tradition. Washington owned many slaves but opposed the practice near the end of his life. His image is an icon of American culture and he has been extensively memorialized. In both popular and scholarly polls, he is consistently considered one of the greatest presidents in American history. (Full article...)

BBC One-minute World News
Fast briefed every day.

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July 4: Independence Day in the United States (1776); Republic Day in the Philippines (1946); Liberation Day in Rwanda (1994)

The Brazilian cruiser Bahia

1837 – The Grand Junction Railway, the world's first long-distance railway with steam traction, opened between Birmingham and Newton Junction.
1918 – World War I: Allied forces led by the Australian general John Monash won the Battle of Hamel, demonstrating the effectiveness of combined-arms techniques in trench warfare.
1941 – German AB-Aktion in Poland: After capturing Lwów, the Nazis executed professors of the University of Lwów along with their families.
1945 – The Brazilian cruiser Bahia (pictured) was accidentally sunk by one of its own crewmen, killing more than 300 people.
1998 – The monster movie Pulgasari, the most-widely-seen North Korean film ever made, premiered in Tokyo, Japan.

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