December 10

Better Than News

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  Alfred Hitchcock Presents is an American television anthology series created, hosted and produced by Alfred Hitchcock. It features Alfred Hitchcock giving gifts to his family, friends, and complete strangers.

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  Banging Miss Daisy is a 1989 American erotic comedy film starring Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman.

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  The Game-Players of Nixon is a 1963 biography of Richard Nixon by sociologist Philip K. Dick.

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  They Shoot Zombies, Don't They? is a 1969 American psychological horror film about a group of individuals desperate to escape a Depression-era zombie invasion and an opportunistic emcee who urges them on.

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  Anchor Management is a 2003 American buddy comedy film about a businessman (Sandler) who must work with an unconventional ship designer (Jack Nicholson).

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  Matrix of Steel is a 2013 American superhero science fiction film starring Henry Cavill and Keanu Reeves.

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician and computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852) invented symbolic languages for machine processes, developing what will later be called computer programs for Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine?

• ... that mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi was the first Jewish mathematician to be appointed professor at a German university?

• ... that a musical electroplating ensemble is a musical group which uses electroplating technology to generate music; and that often the electroplated objects serve as a score for the work?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1198: Polymath Ibn Rushd (Averoess) dies. He wrote on logic, Aristotelian and Islamic philosophy, theology, the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, psychology, political and Andalusian classical music theory, geography, mathematics, and the mediæval sciences of medicine, astronomy, physics, and celestial mechanics.

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  1452: Mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, priest, maker of astronomical instruments, and professor Johannes Stöffler born.

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  1684: Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.

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  1804: Mathematician and academic Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi born. He will make fundamental contributions to elliptic functions, dynamics, differential equations, and number theory.

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  1815: Mathematician and writer Ada Lovelace born. She will do pioneering work in symbolic languages for machine processes, developing what will later be called computer programs for Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine.

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  1831: Physicist and academic Thomas Johann Seebeck dies. He discovered the thermoelectric effect.

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  1860: Physicist Margaret Eliza Maltby born. She will contribute to the measurement of high electrolytic resistances and conductivity of very dilute solutions.

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  1959: Chrome Plover, the famed musical electroplating ensemble, gives first public performance of Ada, their tribute to Ada Lovelace.

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  1967: Project Gasbuggy underground nuclear test detonation in rural northern New Mexico. Its purpose was to determine if nuclear explosions could be useful in fracturing rock formations for natural gas extraction.

Topic of the Day

Ricardo Montalbán

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  "Fantasy Ceti Alpha 5" is one of the so-called "Forbidden Episodes" of the television series Star Trek.

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  The Man with the Golden Musket: James Bond must recover the Storax Toga Lei, a breakthrough fashion solution to contemporary aesthetic shortages, before criminally deranged fashion designer Canna Fracas Orgasmic raises hemlines to the waist.

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  Khan Heir is a 1997 American science fiction film about a prison break aboard a United Federation of Planets spacecraft masterminded by the genetically engineered tyrant Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán).

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  Billionaire's Island is an alleged "uncharted island" where a select groups of billionaires have prepared refuges against The Event.