Daily Knowledge "Life is a lot like jazz... it's best when you improvise."
[George Gershwin]
Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/08/27)
Article of the Day
On 27 August 1979 Lord Mountbatten was assassinated off the coast of Mullaghmore, Ireland. A bomb was planted on Mountbatten's boat by Thomas McMahon during Mountbatten's annual summer trip to Classiebawn Castle. McMahon was an Irish republican and volunteered for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), which planned the attack for several months. A bomb team built a device that contained fifty pounds (23 kg) of gelignite. The bomb killed Mountbatten less than two hours after its detonation, along with his grandson Nicholas, Nicholas's grandmother Doreen, and crew member Paul Maxwell. Three other passengers were severely injured. McMahon was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the assassination. The event caused Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, to change the United Kingdom's strategy towards Northern Ireland, including implementing a more active role for intelligence agencies. (Full article...)
Current Events
BBC One-minute World News
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Image of the Day
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
On this day: August 27
August 27: Ghost Festival in China (2026); Independence Day in Moldova
- 1656 – The Netherlands and the Ahanta people sign the Treaty of Butre, creating a Dutch protectorate over the country of Upper Ahanta in modern-day Ghana.
- 1859 – Edwin Drake successfully drilled for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, resulting in the Pennsylvania oil rush, the first oil boom in the United States.
- 1896 – In the shortest recorded war in history, the Sultanate of Zanzibar surrendered to the United Kingdom after less than an hour of conflict.
- 2006 – Comair Flight 5191 crashed (wreckage pictured) while inadvertently attempting to take off from the wrong runway at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49 of the 50 people on board, and causing the Federal Aviation Administration to modify air traffic control rules.
- 2013 – Religious violence between Hindus and Muslims erupted in Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, India, leaving 62 people dead.
- Josquin des Prez (d. 1521)
- Giorgio Mitrovich (b. 1795)
- Rebecca Clarke (b. 1886)
- Zhang Zifeng (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].