July 26

Better Than News

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  The Prismer is a 1967 British television series about an unnamed intelligence agent who is abducted and imprisoned in a gigantic prism, where his captors designate him as Number Six and try to find out why he abruptly ceased to split white light into its component colors.

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  The Blair Shark Project is a 1999 American supernatural marine horror film about three student oceanographers who disappear while shooting a documentary film near Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

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  "One After 404" is a song by the English rock band the HTTPeatles from their 1970 album Let It Go.

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  Bread Zeppelin is a British-American rock band comprising Led Zeppelin and Bread.

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  The Shape of Water Bagels is a 2017 American romantic fantasy cooking film about a mute chef at a high-security government bakery who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature.

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  "Amanita" is a song by Elton Shaman about the fly agaric mushroom.

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  Talking Condoms is a brand of novelty condoms. When the foil packet is opened, it plays a pre-recorded message.

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician Emmy Noether introduced what became known as Noether's theorem; and that the theorem has been called "one of the most important mathematical theorems ever proved in guiding the development of modern physics, possibly on a par with the Pythagorean theorem"?

• ... that Bow Geste is a 1939 American Christmas drama film about the adventures of three English brothers who enlist separately in the French Foreign Legion following the theft of a valuable Christmas present from the country house of a relative?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1502: Christian Egenolff born. He will be the first important printer and publisher operating from Frankfurt-am-Main.

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  1684: Mathematician and philosopher Elena Cornaro Piscopia dies. She was one of the first women to receive an academic degree from a university, and the first to receive a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

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  1894: Writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley born. He will be widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time.

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  1918: Emmy Noether introduced what became known as Noether's theorem, from which conservation laws are deduced for symmetries of angular momentum, linear momentum, and energy.

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  1925: Mathematician, logician, and philosopher Gottlob Frege dies. Though largely ignored during his lifetime, his work influenced later generations of logicians and philosophers.

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  1941: Mathematician and academic Henri Lebesgue dies. He developed a theory of integration which generalizes the 17th century concept of integration (summing the area between an axis and the curve of a function defined for that axis).

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  1997: Mathematician and academic Kunihiko Kodaira dies. He did distinguished work in algebraic geometry and the theory of complex manifolds, winning the Fields medal in 1954.

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  2000: Mathematician and academic John Tukey dies. He made important contributions to statistical analysis, including the box plot.

Topic of the Day

Automobiles

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  "Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Gremlins" is a country music song about the perils of raising children to be AMC Gremlin automobiles.

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  Do Elons Dream of Electric Jeep? is a novel by mechanical engineer Chip "Pink Riddle" Kid about a post-petroleum economy where Earth's billionaires have been replaced by androids, leaving most millionaires endangered or extinct. The main plot follows [REDACTED], a Dot-Com Boom millionaire who is tasked with "retiring" (i.e. stealing and reverse-engineering) six escaped Nexus-6 model Jeep Electric Autonomous Vehicles, while a secondary plot follows [REDACTED], a man of sub-par wealth who aids the fugitive Jeep.

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  Lux Fiat is a Vatican-Italian automobile manufacturer.

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  Taxi Joker is an historical American drama film about taxi drivers coping with clown violence on the job.

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  Liquid Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (LCCBB) is a downloadable, user-reprogrammable cologne. The bottle's distinctive automobile design has an unusual feature — two decorative spare tires which conceal a Fleming valve. When activated, the valve emits "putt-putts" of ionized cologne.