May 7

Better Than News

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  Jocasta is a 2019 psychological thriller family drama film starring Frances Conroy and Joaquin Phoenix.

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  The Sound of Music 2: Money Never Sleeps is an American musical drama film directed by Oliver Stone and Robert Wise, starring Julie Andrews, Michael Douglas, and Shia LaBeouf.

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  Brother Dredd is a science fiction mystery thriller film.

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  Dr. Robber is a song by the British rock group The Burgles.

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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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  Mrs. Tarzan is a 1984 American romantic drama film starring Bo Derek who pursues an ideal primitive lover who will take her virginity.

Are You Sure

• ... that Gerard van Swieten (7 May 1700 – 18 June 1772) was a Dutch physician who from 1745 was the personal physician of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and transformed the Austrian health service and medical university education; and that in 1755, the Empress sent van Swieten to Moravia to investigate the situation relating to vampires; and that van Swieten intended to eradicate the vampire myth as a "barbarism of ignorance"; and that his report, Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster ("Discourse on the Existence of Ghosts") offered an entirely natural explanation for the belief in vampires; and that Empress Maria Theresa consequently issued a decree that banned all traditional justification for executing alleged vampires?

• ... that the 2019 psychological thriller family drama film Jocasta is loosely based on the tragic play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1700: Physician Gerard van Swieten born.

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  1794: French Revolution: Robespierre introduces the Cult of the Supreme Being in the National Convention as the new state religion of the French First Republic.

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  1860: Electrical engineer and inventor Oliver Blackburn Shallenberger born. He will invent the first successful alternating current electrical meter, which will be critical to the general acceptance of AC power.

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  1895: Russian physicist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning detector — a primitive radio receiver.

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  1895: First publication of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.

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  1960: Cold War: U-2 Crisis of 1960: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.

Topic of the Day

Dune

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  Willy Wonka and the Spice Melange Factory is an American musical science fantasy film directed by Mel Stuart and Denis Villeneuve and starring Gene Wilder and Timothée Chalamet.

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  Dune Another Day: James Bond must locate a mole in Atreides intelligence who betrayed him, and a Harkonnen billionaire who is later revealed to be connected to a Sardauker operative that Bond seemingly killed.

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  Enuc is a historical drama film by activist and documentary filmmaker Enoch Root about Baron Vladimir "Enuc" Harkonnen, emphasizing Harkonnen's acquisition and loss of the planet Caladan.

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  Arrakishead is a 1983 surrealist science fiction horror allegory film about a dispossessed aristocrat who is left to care for his melange-addicted child in a barren desert landscape.

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  Sardaukar Leader is a 1977 tactical level board war game which simulates infantry combat on Arrakis during the betrayal of the Atreides by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV.