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"Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin."
[Dwight D. Eisenhower]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/03/21)

Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) was an English composer best known for his operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert. Among his early works were a ballet, a symphony, a cello concerto and a one-act comic opera, Cox and Box, which is still widely performed. He wrote his first opera with Gilbert, Thespis, in 1871. The impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte in 1875 engaged Sullivan to write the music for a one-act piece, Trial by Jury, with a libretto by Gilbert. Its box-office success led the partners to create 12 full-length comic operas, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. Sullivan's only grand opera, Ivanhoe, though initially successful in 1891, has rarely been revived. His works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, 10 choral works and oratorios, 2 ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs, and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord". (Full article...)

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March 21: Harmony Day in Australia; Oltenia Day in Romania

Alcatraz Island

1556 – Thomas Cranmer, a former archbishop of Canterbury and one of the founders of Anglicanism, was burned at the stake for heresy in Oxford, England.
1844 – The Baháʼí calendar, used in the Baháʼí Faith, began.
1963 – The Federal Bureau of Prisons closed Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary on Alcatraz Island (pictured) in San Francisco Bay, California.
1983 – In the West Bank, a number of Palestinian girls complained of breathing difficulties due to strange odors, leading to accusations of poison gas.
2006 – Jack Dorsey sent the first message on the social-media network Twitter.

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