Daily Knowledge

"Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered."
[John Updike]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/05/24)

Capital Indoor Stadium

The figure skating team event at the 2022 Winter Olympics was held between 4 and 7 February at the Capital Indoor Stadium (pictured) in Beijing, China. It consisted of competitions in men's singles, women's singles, pair skating, and ice dance. Skaters and teams earned points based on their placements in each event; medalists were determined based on their total points. The team representing the Russian Olympic Committee originally finished in first place, while the team from the United States finished second, and the Japanese team third. The medal ceremony was postponed when a positive test confirming the presence of a banned substance was received for Kamila Valieva of Russia. After nearly two years of litigation, Valieva's scores were stricken and the newly tabulated results placed the American team first, the Japanese team second, and the Russian team third. The American and Japanese teams received their medals at a ceremony held at the Jardins du Trocadéro in Paris during the 2024 Summer Olympics. (Full article...)

Bottle of 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay

1667 – Led by King Louis XIV, the French army invaded the Spanish Netherlands, beginning the War of Devolution.
1830 – The nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was first published as a poem by Sarah Josepha Hale.
1976 – In a wine competition in Paris (wine bottle pictured), French judges shocked the wine industry by rating California wines higher than French ones.
1986 – A stationary front began over the central Caribbean Sea, leading to severe floods that over two weeks killed dozens of people in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.
2022 – An 18-year old gunman shot and killed nineteen students and two teachers in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

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