Daily Knowledge "A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty."
[Nadia Boulanger]
Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/01/23)
Article of the Day
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A self-immolation incident took place in Tiananmen Square (pictured) in central Beijing on the eve of Chinese New Year on 23 January 2001. The official Chinese press agency, Xinhua News Agency, stated that five members of Falun Gong, a banned spiritual movement, had set themselves on fire to protest the unfair treatment of Falun Gong by the Chinese government. The Falun Dafa Information Center stated that the incident was a hoax staged by the Chinese government to turn public opinion against the group and to justify the torture and imprisonment of its practitioners. The incident received international news coverage, and video footage was broadcast later in the People's Republic of China by China Central Television. The campaign of state propaganda that followed the event eroded public sympathy for Falun Gong, and the government began sanctioning the "systematic use of violence" against the group. (Full article...)
Current Events
BBC One-minute World News
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Image of the Day
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
On this day: January 23
- 1368 – The Hongwu Emperor (pictured) ascended the throne, initiating the Ming dynasty, which would rule China for three centuries.
- 1556 – One of the deadliest earthquakes in history struck Shaanxi, China, resulting in at least 100,000 direct deaths.
- 1793 – The Russian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia partitioned the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth for the second time.
- 1968 – USS Pueblo was seized by North Korean forces, who claimed that it had violated their territorial waters while spying.
- 1993 – The first version of Mosaic, created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, was released, becoming the first popular web browser.
- Mary Ward (b. 1585)
- William Pitt the Younger (d. 1806)
- Potter Stewart (b. 1915)
- Salvador Dalí (d. 1989)
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].