Template:Are You Sure/February 12

"As urban thrillers became grittier affairs during the late 1960s and early 1970s, so did their soundtracks: hit films like Bullitt and The French Connection threw aside classical-styled orchestral soundtracks in favor of jazz-inspired music that used non-orchestral electric instruments. One of the best soundtracks in this vein is David Shire's ambitious jazz score for The Taking of Pelham 123, a fast-paced thriller about a group of criminals who hijack a subway car in New York City. With this score, Shire downplays melodic content and lush orchestral arrangements in favor of a rhythm-based sound that is mostly brought to life by a jazz band. The end result is an exciting, propulsive score that is every bit as tough as the city in which the film is set." - Donald A. Guarisco

• ... that polymath Roger Joseph Boscovich's contributions to astronomy included the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature, techniques for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position, and the discovery of the absence of atmosphere on the Moon?

• ... that although the spacecraft Venera 1 ultimately failed to fulfill its primary mission, the spacecraft gathered the first data suggesting that solar wind is present throughout deep space?

• ... that logician and philosopher Jan Łukasiewicz was a pioneer of post-Aristotelian logic, and that his innovative thinking about the principle of non-contradiction and the law of excluded middle helped establish modern logic?

• ... that musician, band leader, and alleged math criminal Skip Digits bears a "not coincidental" resemblance to Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter Don Browne?

• ... that mathematician and physicist Nikolay Bogolyubov worked on the physics of superfluidity and superconductivity during late 1940s and 1950s, and that the BBGKY hierarchy of equations for s-particle distribution functions was written out and applied to the derivation of kinetic equations by Bogolyubov (published 1946), and that John Gamble Kirkwood, Max Born, and Herbert S. Green?

• ... that the mathematical constant π is a transcendental number — that is, it is not the root of any polynomial having rational coefficients — and that this transcendence of π implies that it is impossible to solve the ancient challenge of squaring the circle with a compass and straightedge?

• ... that high-energy literature uses techniques from high-energy physics to enhance both the syntax and the semantics of film scripts, and that Cherenkov radiation is commonly used to advance the plot in techno-thrillers such as The Taking of Pelham 3.1415?