Daily Knowledge

"It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."
[Muhammad Ali]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/08/10)

Paul Reiche (left) and Fred Ford

Toys for Bob, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Novato, California, and founded in 1989. The founders, Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford (both pictured), met when Reiche sought a programmer to develop Star Control, and developed several games, including The Horde, Pandemonium!, and The Unholy War. In the early 2000s, the studio transitioned to working on licensed games before being laid off by Crystal Dynamics. It was incorporated in 2002 and Activision became their publisher before they acquired the studio in 2005. Credited with inventing the toys-to-life genre, the 2011 release of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure was considered a technological and commercial breakthrough. In 2018, Toys for Bob assisted with the remaster compilations Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Spyro Reignited Trilogy. The founders left the company in 2020. Microsoft acquired the holding in October 2023 and the studio spun off from Activision in May 2024. (Full article...)

The Hungarian Battle of Lechfeld 955 by Michael Echter

955 – Hungarian invasions of Europe: Forces under Otto the Great were victorious at the Battle of Lechfeld (depicted) near present-day Augsburg, Germany, holding off the incursions of the Magyars into Central Europe.
1270 – Yekuno Amlak deposed the last Zagwe king and seized the imperial throne of Ethiopia, beginning the reign of the Solomonic dynasty, which would last for more than 700 years.
1966 – The Heron Road Bridge in Ottawa, Canada, collapsed during its construction, killing nine workers.
2007 – Amid large protests against the impending demolition of the Queen's Pier, the Hong Kong High Court dismissed legal attempts to preserve the landmark.
2019 – Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender, was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York.

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