Daily Knowledge "It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference."
[Tom Brokaw]
Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2019/05/23)
Article of the Day
members of the Donner Party
The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who set out for California in a wagon train. Delayed by a series of mishaps, they were snowbound in the Sierra Nevada mountain range from November 1846 to February 1847. Some of the emigrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation and sickness. The journey west usually took between four and six months, but the Donner Party had been slowed by following a new route called the Hastings Cutoff across Utah's Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert. They lost many cattle and wagons in the rugged terrain, and divisions formed within the group. Their food supplies ran low after they became trapped by an early, heavy snowfall high in the mountains. In mid-December some of the group set out on foot and were able to obtain help. Of the 87 members of the party, 48 survived to reach California. Historians have described the episode as one of the most spectacular tragedies in California history. (Full article...)
Current Events
BBC One-minute World News
Fast briefed every day.
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Image of the Day
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
On this day: May 23
May 23: Lag BaOmer (Judaism, 2019)
- 1706 – War of the Spanish Succession: The Grand Alliance armies routed the Franco-Spanish-Bavarian army in Ramillies, present-day Belgium.
- 1895 – Backed by Samuel J. Tilden, the Astor and Lenox libraries agreed to merge and form the New York Public Library (pictured in 1908), now the second-largest in the U.S.
- 1951 – Delegates of the 14th Dalai Lama and the government of the newly established People's Republic of China signed the Seventeen Point Agreement, affirming Chinese sovereignty over Tibet.
- 1999 – Professional wrestler Owen Hart died immediately before a match after dropping 70 feet (21 m) onto the ring during a botched entrance.
William Bradford (d. 1752) · Franz Xaver von Baader (d. 1841) · Ruth Fernández (b. 1919)
Knowledge about Earth
Facts and Figures
- 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
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
Why you should extend your general knowledge:
There are many reasons why one should or wants to extend his knowledge.
First you should consider that "general knowledge" is knowledge which a group of humans - who belong together regional, temporal or otherwise - owns. Thus, it describes a basic understanding of specific categories of knowledge.
As the English philosopher Francis Bacon said before: "Wisdom is Power" [Bacon 1597].