April 11
Better Than News
Jurassic Snack is an American science fiction foodie film directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Gordon Ramsay, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough.
The Gravity of This Planet is a documentary film about how people experience gravity on different planets, moons, spacecraft, and space stations.
Fried Green Magnolias is an American comedy-drama film directed by Herbert Ross and Jon Avnet, starring Sally Field, Shirley MacLaine, Olympia Dukakis, Dolly Parton, Daryl Hannah, Julia Roberts, Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker, and Cicely Tyson.
"I Want to Turku Higher" is a song by Sly and the Family Stone sung entirely in Finnish.
Dirty HAL 9000 is a 1971 American neo-noir science fiction action thriller film about San Francisco Police Department Homicide Division Computer "Dirty" HAL 9000, who is notorious for his unorthodox, violent and ruthless methods against the criminals and killers he is assigned to detect and report.
Hamlet is a 1979 science fiction horror film written and directed by Ridley Scott and based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare.
Are You Sure
• ... that clockmaker Jean-André Lepaute (23 November 1720 – 11 April 1789) introduced numerous improvements in clockmaking, notably his pin-wheel escapement, and his clockworks in which the gears are all in the horizontal plane?
• ... that physicist and academic Macedonio Melloni (11 April 1798 – 11 August 1854) demonstrated that radiant heat has physical properties similar to those of light?
• ... that physicist and academic Ukichiro Nakaya (4 July 1900 – 11 April 1962) contributed to glaciology and low-temperature sciences, and that Nakaya created the first artificial snowflakes?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1789: Clockmaker Jean-André Lepaute dies. He was an innovator, introducing numerous improvements in clockmaking, especially his pin-wheel escapement, and his clockworks in which the gears are all in the horizontal plane.
1798: Physicist and academic Macedonio Melloni born. Melloni will demonstrate that radiant heat has physical properties similar to those of light.
1914: Mathematician Dorothy Lewis Bernstein born. She will be the first woman to be elected president of the Mathematics Association of America.
1962: Physicist and academic Ukichiro Nakaya dies. He created the first artificial snowflakes.
1980: Viking program: After operating on the surface of Mars for 1316 days (1281 sols), the Viking 2 lander is turned off when its batteries fail.
2017: Dennis Paulson calls for a moment of silence in recognition of the thirty-seventh anniversary of NASA switching off the Viking 2 spacecraft.
Topic of the Day
Pink
January 16, 2018: Chromatographic analysis of Pink City reveals "at least two, possibly three" previously unknown dues of pink.
October 16, 2017: Spectrographic analysis of Taffy Bomb reveals "at least two, possibly three" previously unknown hues of the color pink.
Spokesperson for Pink Trombone and Taffy Bomb holds press conference, announces new "Pink Trombone and Taffy Bomb Lite" for the reduced-satire aftermarket.
Pink Trombone spokesperson denies knowledge of so-called "taffy bomb", call it a "coarse lampoon, insensitive to labial fricatives and palatal sighs."
Spokesperson for the color pink declares that pink is "the best possible color in all possible universes."
