Daily Knowledge

"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."
[Bruce Lee]

Quote of the Day, from brainyquote.com (2026/05/04)

Maurice Suckling (4 May 1726 – 14 July 1778) was a Royal Navy officer and politician. He saw service in the English Channel and Mediterranean Sea during the War of the Austrian Succession. At the start of the Seven Years' War, he was promoted to captain and given a command on the Jamaica Station. There he played a major part in the Battle of Cap-Français, and fought against the French ship Palmier. Suckling was employed in the aftermath of the capture of Belle Île to destroy French fortifications on the Île-d'Aix and went on half-pay at the end of the war. He was given his next command during the Falklands Crisis in 1770, and took his nephew Horatio Nelson with him. In 1775, Suckling was appointed Comptroller of the Navy by John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, the first lord of the Admiralty. Suckling oversaw the Royal Navy's mobilisation when the American Revolutionary War began. In 1776, he was also elected member of Parliament for Portsmouth. He died unexpectedly in 1778. (Full article...)

Jamie Chadwick

1626 – Having been appointed the director-general of New Netherland, Peter Minuit arrived in Manhattan.
1776 – American Revolution: The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations became the first of the Thirteen Colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown.
1886 – During a labor rally in Chicago, a bomb explosion and gunfire led to the deaths of eight police officers and four members of the public.
1919 – The May Fourth Movement began in China with large-scale student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Peking.
2019 – The inaugural race of the W Series took place at Hockenheimring, Germany, and was won by Jamie Chadwick (pictured), who later became the season's champion.

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