Daily Knowledge "Don't wait. The time will never be just right."
[Napoleon Hill]
Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/08/15)
Article of the Day
Mesklin is a fictional planet created by Hal Clement and used in his hard science fiction stories, starting with Mission of Gravity (1954). Alongside the novel's original 1953 serialization in Astounding Science Fiction, Clement published an essay titled "Whirligig World" on how he designed the planet. The idea came from an object that was believed to exist in the 61 Cygni system, possibly an extrasolar planet. The planet is distinctive for the interaction of its strong gravity with the centrifugal force due to its fast rotation, giving it a gradient in the perceived force of gravity from 3 g on the equator to 665 g on the planet's poles (diagram pictured). It is inhabited by native lifeforms, including an intelligent centipede-like species, the Mesklinites. Mesklin is considered an example of hard science fiction worldbuilding, an exotic milieu that accords with known facts and laws of physics. While the planet is dissimilar to Earth, its inhabitants are commonly regarded as humanlike in behaviour. (Full article...)
Current Events
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Image of the Day
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
On this day: August 15
August 15: Independence Day in India (1947); National Liberation Day of Korea (1945); Liechtenstein National Day
- 718 – Forces of the Umayyad Caliphate abandoned a year-long siege of Constantinople, ending their goal of conquering the Byzantine Empire.
- 1261 – Michael VIII Palaiologoswas crowned Byzantine emperor in Constantinople.
- 1909 – A military coup against the government of Dimitrios Rallis began in the neighbourhood of Goudi in Athens, Greece.
- 1941 – Josef Jakobs, a German spy, became the last person executed at the Tower of London.
- 1977 – Big Ear, a radio telescope at Ohio State University, received a strong, apparently extraterrestrial radio signal that became known as the Wow! signal (printout pictured).
- Isabella of Portugal, Queen of Castile (d. 1496)
- Ludwig Prandtl (d. 1953)
- Brendan Morrison (b. 1975)
- Waleed Aly (b. 1978)
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].