Daily Knowledge

"The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away."
[Wilson Mizner]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/03/30)

Alysa Liu at the 2025 World Championships

The 2025 World Figure Skating Championships were held from March 26 to 30, 2025, at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Sanctioned by the International Skating Union, the World Figure Skating Championships are considered the most prestigious event in figure skating. Medals were awarded in men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, and ice dance. The competition determined the entry quotas for each skating federation to the 2026 Winter Olympics. Ilia Malinin of the United States won the men's event for the second time, while Alysa Liu (pictured), also of the United States, won the women's event while accomplishing a personal-best score in the short program and free skating routines. Riku Miura and Ryuichi Kihara of Japan won the pairs event, earning their second title, and Madison Chock and Evan Bates of the United States won the ice dance event for the third consecutive year. (Full article...)

George I of Greece

1730 – The Author's Farce, by Henry Fielding, premiered at the Little Theatre in London.
1861 – British chemist William Crookes published his discovery of thallium using flame spectroscopy.
1863 – George I (pictured) became King of the Hellenes.
1921 – The Australian Air Corps was disbanded, to be replaced the following day by the Australian Air Force.
1950 – Usmar Ismail began shooting Darah dan Doa, widely recognised as the first Indonesian film.
2009 – The Manawan Police Academy in Lahore, Pakistan, was attacked and held for several hours by 12 gunmen, resulting in 16 deaths and 95 injuries.

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