Daily Knowledge "The most wasted of all days is one without laughter."
[e. e. cummings]
Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/08/17)
Article of the Day
Hurricane Camille was the third named storm of the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season. It formed as a tropical depression on August 14 south of Cuba; it strengthened and struck western Cuba the next day as a hurricane, killing at least five people. Camille strengthened into a Category 5 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico on August 16 and two days later moved ashore in Mississippi, attaining maximum sustained winds of 175 mph (282 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 900 mb (27 inHg). Camille killed at least 343 people in the US and caused $1.42 billion in damages, making it the country's most expensive hurricane at the time. In southern Mississippi, the hurricane produced the largest storm surge in American history at the time, with a peak water level of 24.6 ft (7.5 m). The highest rainfall total was 27 in (69 cm), recorded in Virginia, and was the highest rainfall recorded in the state related to a tropical cyclone. The name Camille was retired following the 1969 hurricane season. (Full article...)
Current Events
BBC One-minute World News
Fast briefed every day.
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Image of the Day
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
On this day: August 17
- 1676 – Scanian War: Swedish forces defeated Danish troops at the Battle of Halmstad.
- 1876 – The premiere of Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner (pictured) closed the first Bayreuth Festival.
- 1915 – A category 4 hurricane made landfall in Galveston, Texas, leaving at least 275 people dead and causing $50 million in damage.
- 1943 – Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in a highly secret military conference held in Quebec City.
- 1945 – The independence of Indonesia was proclaimed by Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, igniting a revolution against the Dutch Empire.
- Li Shouzhen (d. 949)
- Margaret Hamilton (b. 1936)
- Austin Butler (b. 1991)
- Kim Kum Yong (b. 2001)
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].