"Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but primarily by catchwords."
[Robert Louis Stevenson]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/01/31)

Article of the Day

Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice

The Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice is a 12-story office building in East Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. Completed in 1967, it was designed in the late modernist style by architect Kevin Roche and engineering partner John Dinkeloo of Roche-Dinkeloo. The building was commissioned as the headquarters of the Ford Foundation, the largest private foundation in the United States at the time. It is a glass-and-steel cube held up by piers made of concrete and clad with Dakota granite. Dan Kiley was the landscape architect for the large public atrium inside, the first such space in an office building in Manhattan. The building has received critical acclaim for its design following both completion and renovation, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission has designated the building and its atrium as city landmarks. (Full article...)

  • Article of the Day

Image of the Day


Source: Wikimedia Commons.

On this day: January 31

January 31: Independence Day in Nauru (1968)

Damage caused by the Pemex explosion
Damage caused by the Pemex explosion

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].