Daily Knowledge

"Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it."
[Lewis Carroll]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/03/04)

Model of a Montana-class battleship

The Montana class was a planned class of battleships for the United States Navy; five ships were approved for construction during World War II, but none were built. With increased anti-aircraft capability and thicker armor in all areas, the Montanas would have been the largest and most heavily armed US battleships ever, and rivaled Japan's Yamato-class battleships in terms of displacement. The first two vessels were approved by Congress in 1939 following the passage of the Naval Act of 1938. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor delayed the construction of the Montana class. The importance of carrier combat at the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway diminished the perceived value of the battleship, and the US Navy chose to cancel the Montana class before any keels were laid in favor of more urgently needed aircraft carriers as well as amphibious and anti-submarine vessels. Instead, the Navy continued production of Essex-class aircraft carriers and Iowa-class battleships. (Full article...)

Władysław II Jagiełło

1386 – Jogaila, Grand Duke of Lithuania, was crowned King of Poland as Władysław II Jagiełło (pictured), beginning the Jagiellonian dynasty.
1773 – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart departed Italy after the last of his three journeys there.
1899 – Cyclone Mahina struck Bathurst Bay, Queensland, killing more than 300 people in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Australian history.
1918 – A case of influenza was recorded at Camp Funston, Kansas, conventionally marking the beginning of the Spanish flu pandemic.
2017 – Construction began on a 69-metre (226 ft) statue of the Buddha at Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen in Bangkok.

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