November 20
Better Than News
Dark Side of the Planet of the Apes is an American science fiction musical film about a psychedelic rock band (Pink Floyd) which crash-lands on a strange planet in the distant future.
Cape Atmosphere is a 1962 American space flight psychological thriller film about a NASA meteorologist whose family is stalked by an astronaut he grounded from a critical flight.
Menu in Black is a 1997 science fiction cooking comedy film starring Will Smith and Gordon Ramsay.
NiCaddyshack is a 1980 American sports comedy film about Nickel–cadmium battery technology.
The Cistern Kid is a fictional cowboy-hydrologist who champions water storage in Mexico and the Western United States.
Roller Boogie Nights is 1979 American period drama film which chronicles the Golden Age of Roller Killing in the 1970s through the excesses and destruction of the 1980s.
Are You Sure
• ... that in 1980, Lake Peigneur abruptly drained into an underlying salt deposit after a misplaced Texaco oil probe drilled into an underlying salt mine?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1820: An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America. Stranded thousands of miles from the coast of South America with little food and water, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in the ship's surviving whaleboats; eight men survived the ordeal.
1889: Astronomer and cosmologist Edwin Hubble born. He will discover the fact that the Andromeda "nebula" is actually another island galaxy far outside of our own Milky Way.
1908: Mathematician Georgy Voronoy (Voronoi) dies. He invented what are today called Voronoi diagrams or Voronoi tessellations, which partition a plane into regions close to each of a given set of objects.
1924: Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot born. He will be one of the first to use computer graphics to create and display fractal geometric images, leading to his discovery of the Mandelbrot set in 1980.
1934: Mathematician, physicist, and astronomer Willem de Sitter dies. He co-authored a paper with Albert Einstein in 1932 in which they discuss the implications of cosmological data for the curvature of the universe.
1980: Lake Peigneur drains into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe had been drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole.
1980: Voyager 1 flies by Saturn, completing its primary mission.
2019: Recent survey shows that Fantasy Voronoi diagram is more popular than Fantasy American Football.
Topic of the Day
Paul Newman
The notorious "Fifty Sarlacc eggs" scene from Cool Hand Skywalker.
Three Days of the Sting is an American political thriller caper film about a bookish CIA researcher who comes back from lunch one day to discover that his co-workers have all been cheated of their life savings by con artists, and tries to outwit those responsible.
Cool Hand Lube is a 1967 psychological crime thriller film about Luke Jackson, a decorated World War II veteran who wages a one-man war on corrupt parking meters.
Butch Cassidy and the President's Men is an American Western film which tells the story of Wild West Butch Cassidy (Dustin Hoffman), and his partner the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford), who are on the run from a crack US posse after a string of anti-war protests. Paul Newman co-stars as Charles Colson, political hatchet man for the Nixon White House.