Daily Knowledge "Don't let making a living prevent you from making a life."
[John Wooden]
Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/09/12)
Article of the Day
United States v. Moore was a 1973 case heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Police officers found the defendant, Raymond Moore, in a hotel room with heroin capsules in his pocket and charged him with narcotics possession. Moore claimed at trial and on appeal that his addiction to heroin forced him to possess and use drugs. He argued that, because he lacked the free will to keep himself from possessing drugs, he should not be criminally liable. He was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. The D.C. Circuit upheld Moore's conviction in a 5–4 vote, refusing to create the addiction defense. The five judges, split across two separate opinions, doubted that addicts physically cannot keep themselves from taking drugs; they also worried that the defense could apply to crimes more serious than possession, or lead people to fake addiction. The dissent supported Moore's legal arguments and argued that the justice system accomplishes nothing by imprisoning an addict for possession. (Full article...)
Current Events
BBC One-minute World News
Fast briefed every day.
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- What to know about the Trump indictment on the eve of his court appearance (2023-04-06 00:50)
- READ: Trump indictment related to hush money payment (1970-01-01 01:00)
- Russian authorities detain suspect over St. Petersburg cafe blast (1970-01-01 01:00)
Image of the Day
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
On this day: September 12
September 12: First day of Rosh Hashanah (Judaism, 2026)
- 379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I (depicted) took the throne as the ruler (ajaw) of the Mayan city of Tikal.
- 1910 – Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire and popularly known as the "Symphony of a Thousand", was first performed in Munich.
- 1928 – The Okeechobee hurricane first struck the island of Guadeloupe; eventually it reached the United States and caused over 4,000 deaths overall.
- 1952 – Three boys in Flatwoods, West Virginia, U.S., reported seeing a ten-foot-tall (3 m) monster in the woods while investigating a UFO.
- 2015 – An explosion involving illegally stored mining detonators in Petlawad, India, killed 104 people and injured more than 150 others.
- Andronikos I Komnenos (d. 1185)
- Count Anton Alexander von Auersperg (d. 1876)
- Joe Schmidt (b. 1965)
- Joshua Cheptegei (b. 1996)
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].