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"The sweetest of all sounds is praise."
[Xenophon]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/02/03)

Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz (3 February 1721 – 8 November 1773) was a Prussian officer, lieutenant general, and among the greatest of the Prussian cavalry generals. He commanded one of the first hussar squadrons of Frederick the Great's army and is credited with the development of the Prussian cavalry to its efficient level of performance in the Seven Years' War. His cavalryman father retired and then died while Seydlitz was still young. Subsequently, he was mentored by Frederick William, Margrave of Brandenburg-Schwedt. Seydlitz's superb horsemanship and his recklessness combined to make him a stand-out subaltern, and he emerged as a redoubtable Rittmeister (cavalry captain) in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748) during the First and Second Silesian Wars. Seydlitz became legendary throughout the Prussian Army both for his leadership and for his reckless courage. During the Seven Years' War, he gained renown for his ability to assess an entire battlefield quickly. (Full article...)

Painting of the Battle of San Lorenzo

1266 – Mudéjar revolt: King James I of Aragon entered the formerly Muslim-held city of Murcia following its surrender three days earlier.
1813 – Argentine War of Independence: José de San Martín and the Mounted Grenadiers Regiment defeated Spanish royalist forces in the Battle of San Lorenzo (depicted).
1941 – World War II: Free French and British forces began the Battle of Keren to capture the strategic town of Keren in Italian East Africa.
1986 – Steve Jobs purchased Pixar from Lucasfilm and launched it as an independent computer-animation studio.
2006 – Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen: 23 convicts, including several militants associated with al-Qaeda escaped from a prison administered by the political Security Organization in Sanaa, Yemen.

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