December 14

Better Than News

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  Indiana Jones and the Miracle on 34th Street is an American Christmas comedy-drama action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg and Harold Eaton, starring Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, and Harrison Ford.

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  The Bourne Cryptocurrency is a monetary protocol thriller film starring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, a software developer who suffers from amnesia.

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  Dark Citrus is a 1998 neo-noir science fiction foodie film directed by Alex Proyas about an amnesiac man who, finding himself suspected of murder, attempts to discover his true identity and clear his name while on the run from the police and a mysterious fruit known as the "Citrus".

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  SSSKMF! is a quarterly journal published by and for professional escapologists.

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  "Take On G" is a song by Kenny G and a-ha.

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  Blood Orange is a 2006 American agricultural policy thriller film Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly, and Djimon Hounsou. The title refers to blood oranges, which have enjoyed enormous popularity in recent years.

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  The Dark Fraa (also Incantors and Rhetors: The Dark Fraa in Extramuros markets) is a 2008 superhero number theory film about a powerful Warden Fendant (Christian Bale) who must stop a deranged Thousander (Heather Ledger) from pronouncing the aut Anathem on the entire Concent of Gotham.

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  Mind Haunter is an American psychological crime thriller television series about the supernatural phenomenon affecting the FBI Behavioral Science Unit in the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the late 1970s.

Are You Sure

• ... that physicist and educator Nikolay Basov (14 December 1922 – 1 July 2001) conducted fundamental research in quantum electronics, leading to the development of laser and maser, for which Basov shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics with Alexander Prokhorov and Charles Hard Townes?

• ... that She's Gotta Habit is a 1986 American fashion-religion film about a young clothing designer who serves the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and the feelings this arrangement provokes?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1546: Astronomer Tycho Brahe born. He will make observations some five times more accurate than the best available observations at the time.

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  1782: The Montgolfier brothers' first balloon lifts off on its first test flight. Shown here: first public flight (June 4, 1783).

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  1922: Physicist and educator Nikolay Basov born. He will do fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics.

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  1940: Plutonium (specifically Pu-238) is first isolated at Berkeley, California.

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  1947: Thomas Goldsmith Jr. is granted a patent for a "Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device", the first ever electronic game.

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  1953: Anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer Wade Davis born.

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  1976: Viking program: The Viking 2 orbiter begins its extended mission.

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  2017: Dennis Paulson of Mars celebrates the forty-first anniversary of the Viking 2 orbiter beginning its extended mission.

Topic of the Day

Sylvester Stallone

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  Glyphhanger is a 1993 American action comedy buddy linguistics film about an Army mountain division translator (Stallone) and the last man in the world to speak the oldest known language on Earth (Lithgow) who search for the legendary Lost Glyphs of the Rockies.

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  Gravity's Expendables is a 1973 novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon about a team of elite mercenaries tasked with stealing a Nazi secret weapon. It was adapted for a 2010 film starring Sylvester Stallone.

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  Rambo: First Brood is a psychological body horror action film directed by David Cronenberg and Ted Kotcheff, starring Samantha Eggar and Sylvester Stallone.

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  Siege Blood 2: Soldier at Sea is a 1992 American action-romance buddy film about a soldier (Rambo) and a naval officer (Steven Seagal) who must stop a radical women's rights group from seizing a troop transport and populating the micronation of Amazonia.

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  Rocky vs. Cocaine Bear is a 1976 sports animal rights horror film starring Sylvester Stallone as a heavyweight contender who must confront a cocaine-crazed bear.

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  Demolition Manfred Mann were an English-American rock band, featuring keyboardist Manfred Mann and actors Wesley Snipes and Sylvester Stallone.