Daily Knowledge

"Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them."
[Washington Irving]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/02/23)

Relief depicting spoils from the Jerusalem Temple carried in a triumphal procession

The First Jewish–Roman War (66–73/74 CE) was the first of three major Jewish rebellions against the Roman Empire. Fought in the province of Judaea, it was bloodily supressed and resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. After the client kingdom of Judaea was annexed as a Roman province in 6 CE, tensions grew due to harsh governance and social, ethnic, and religious divisions. Open revolt erupted after the Roman governor Gessius Florus looted the temple in Jerusalem and killed many civilians. Early rebel successes included the defeat of Cestius Gallus at Bethoron, but Roman forces under Vespasian and later his son Titus reconquered the province. Jerusalem fell in 70 CE after a devastating siege, and the last resistance ended with the fall of Masada. The war profoundly reshaped Jewish history and religion, accelerated the separation between early Christianity and Judaism, strengthened the Flavian dynasty, and set the stage for the later catastrophic Bar Kokhba revolt. (Full article...)

Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels

1725 – Johann Sebastian Bach premiered his Shepherd Cantata for the birthday of Christian, Duke of Saxe-Weissenfels (pictured).
1854 – The Orange River Convention was signed in Bloemfontein, with the United Kingdom agreeing to recognise the independence of the Orange Free State in present-day South Africa.
1886 – American inventor Charles Martin Hall discovered an inexpensive method of producing aluminium.
1987 – SN 1987A, the first supernova that modern astronomers were able to study in great detail, was observed from Earth occurring in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
2021 – Riots in four Ecuadorian prisons, caused by gang rivalries, resulted in the deaths of 79 inmates.

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