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The Gnomon Chronicles is a work of fiction and nonfiction by Karl Jones (nonfiction). Fresh content daily.
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October 7

Better Than News

The Secret of BENH is an animated fantasy horror-adventure film directed by Phil Karlson and Don Bluth.
Satan's School for Invaders is a made-for-television science fiction horror film about a group of young women at Radcliffe who make contact with a malign alien intelligence.
Charley Third-Eye is an American science fiction revisionist Western film starring Richard Roundtree and Roy Thinnes.
Alien Heart is a 1987 American neo-noir science fiction horror film about Harry Angel (Sigourney Weaver), a New York City private investigator, who is hired by a mysterious UFO researcher (Robert De Niro) to investigate the disappearance of an alien organism known Johnny Nostromo. Her investigation takes her to low Earth orbit, where she becomes embroiled in a series of brutal face huggings.
I Am Legend is a 1954 post-apocalyptic biographical crime horror novel by American writer Richard Matheson about the Kray twins, identical twin zombie criminals who prey on the living.
The Lord of the Mood Rings is a 2001 epic comedy film about a jeweler (Sauron) who creates the One Mood Ring to judge the moods of Men, Dwarves, and Hippies.

Beyond Plausible

Jason and the Argonauts is a 1963 fantasy horror adventure film.

In Other Words

Belch, Burp and Grumble is a 1958 American fantasy indigestion comedy film about a witch (Kim Novak) who casts a spell on her gastroenterologist (James Stewart).

Are You Sure ...

Asteroid 2008 TC3: Estimated path and altitude of the meteor in red, with the possible location for the METEOSAT IR fireball (bolide) as orange crosshairs and the infrasound detection of the explosion in green.

• ... that 2008 TC3 was an asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere on October 7, 2008; that it exploded at an estimated 37 kilometers (23 mi) above the Nubian Desert in Sudan; that some 600 meteorites, weighing a total of 10.5 kilograms (23.1 lb), were recovered, some containing nanodiamonds; and that it was the first time that an asteroid impact had been predicted before its entry into the atmosphere as a meteor?

• ... that the Tunguska Event Preservation Society offered a tour of the 2008 TC3 meteor fall as a benefit to new members during its 2020 membership drive?

• ... that a derangement is a permutation of the elements of a set such that no element appears in its original position; and that the principle of derangement was first considered by mathematician Pierre Raymond de Montmort in 1708, and that he solved it in 1713, as did Nicholas Bernoulli at about the same time?

• ... that mathematician Olga Taussky-Todd (30 August 1906 — 7 October 1995) was hired by a group of German mathematicians to find and correct the many mathematical errors in the works of David Hilbert, so that they could be collected into a volume to be presented to Hilbert on his birthday, and that there was only one paper (on the continuum hypothesis) which Taussky-Todd was unable to repair?

Selected Anniversaries

1719: Mathematician Pierre Raymond de Montmort dies. He wrote Essay d'analyse sur les jeux de hazard, an influential book about probability and games of chance which introduced the combinatorial study of derangements.
1796: Mathematician and philosopher Thomas Reid dies. Reid believed that common sense (in a special philosophical sense of sensus communis) is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry, justifying our belief that there is an external world.
1885: Physicist and philosopher Niels Bohr born. He will make foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he will receive the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922.
1919: Computer scientist and academic Henriette Avram born. She will develope the MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) format, the international data standard for bibliographic and holdings information in libraries.
1995: Mathematician and academic Olga Taussky-Todd dies. She contributed to matrix theory (in particular the computational stability of complex matrices), algebraic number theory, group theory, and numerical analysis.
2008: Asteroid 2008 TC3 entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded at an estimated 37 kilometers (23 mi) above the Nubian Desert in Sudan. It was the first time that an asteroid impact had been predicted before its entry into the atmosphere as a meteor.
2017: The Worcester Lunch Car Company's Research Division demonstrates advanced Flying Diner technology, including a new dinner menu.

Topic of the Day

Dune

Stillsuit of the Night is a 1982 neo-noir psychological thriller film about a Suk doctor (Roy Scheider) who falls in love with a Fremen (Meryl Streep) who may be the psychopathic killer of one of his patients.
Helljabbar is a 2021 British medical horror film about a pain induction device which summons the Cenobites, a group of extra-dimensional, sadomasochistic Bene Gesserit who cannot differentiate between humans and animals.
Dune: the Heart Plug Years is a reality television series starring Baron Harkonnen.
Pulp Freman is a 1994 crime drama film about Spacer Guild navigator (Ving Rhames) who is kidnapped by Baron Harkonnen and held for ransom.
Scooby-Dune is an American animated science fiction television series about a group of teenagers and their talking Great Dane named Scooby-Dune, who solve mysteries involving sandworms and Bene Gesserit witchcraft through a series of antics and missteps.