Daily Knowledge "The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so."
[William Inge]
Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/05/02)
Article of the Day
The Fuji class was a two-ship class of pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the mid-1890s. They were the first battleships in the IJN, and were constructed in the United Kingdom as Japan lacked the industrial facilities needed to build them. The ships participated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, including the Battle of Port Arthur in February 1904 and two bombardments of Port Arthur the following month. Yashima struck a mine off Port Arthur in May and capsized while under tow several hours later. Fuji (pictured) fought in the Battle of the Yellow Sea and the Battle of Tsushima, and was lightly damaged in the latter action. She was reclassified as a coast defence ship in 1910 and served as a training ship for the rest of her active career. Fuji was hulked in 1922, converted into a barracks ship fitted with classrooms, and was finally broken up for scrap in 1948. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Japan.)
Current Events
BBC One-minute World News
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Image of the Day
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
On this day: May 2
- 1194 – King Richard I of England gave the city of Portsmouth its first royal charter.
- 1878 – A dust explosion (depicted) at the world's largest flour mill in Minneapolis resulted in 18 deaths.
- 1986 – Henri Toivonen was killed in an accident while leading the Tour de Corse rally, resulting in FISA banning the popular Group B rally cars for the following season.
- 2003 – Cyclone Manou formed in the Indian Ocean; over the next two weeks it struck Madagascar and left more than 100,000 people homeless.
- 2011 – Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six in his private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
- Yongle Emperor (b. 1360)
- Catherine Labouré (b. 1806)
- George Went Hensley (b. 1881)
- Princess Charlotte of Wales (b. 2015)
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].