April 4

Combustion Bird.

Better Than News

• 

  One Million Years Before Gilda is an adventure fantasy film about a paleolithic warrior (Rachel Welch) who finds a magic mirror which transforms her into Gilda (Rita Hayworth), a modern socialite.

• 

  When Apostrophes Ruled the Earth is a 1970 British science grammar film. This was the third in Hammer's "Sign Girl" series, preceded by One Million Signifiers B.C. (1966) and Prehistoric Writing (1967); it was followed by Cuneiform the World Forgot (1971).

• 

  Xena: X-Files Princess is an American science fiction television series about Xena (Lucy Lawless), an infamous warrior on a quest to seek redemption for her past sins against the innocent by using her formidable fighting skills to now help those who encounter paranormal phenomena.

• 

  Terminator: Blowout is a science fiction lawn and garden do-it-yourself thriller film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• 

  Ducks: How to Make Them Pay is an ornithological handbook comprising tales of greed and vengeance among the Anatidae.

• 

  Ghost Species: The Way of the Shape-Changer is a 1999 horror science fiction crime film about a hitman in the employ of the Mafia (Forest Whitaker) who follows the ancient code of a shape-changing alien (Natasha Henstridge).

Beyond Plausible

• 

  Dormammu & Doctor Strange is an animated children's supernatural food television series sponsored by Hostess Fruit Pies.

• 

  Tentacle Date is a cephalopod-themed dating board game for young adults.

• 

  Quest for Firestarter is a 1981 prehistoric horror-adventure film about the struggle for control of destructive psychic powers by early humans.

• 

  The Six Million Dollar Cop is an American science fiction and action television series about a murdered police officer who is rebuilt with superhuman strength, speed and vision due to bionic implants.

• 

  Moby-Vamp is a novel by Herman Melville about the maniacal quest of Ahab, captain of the whaling ship Pequod, for vengeance against Moby Dick, a giant vampire whale.

In Other Words

• 

  Maltese-Dick is a 1941 whaling crime drama film directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. It is loosely based on the 1851 novel of the same name by Herman Melville.

• 

  Ovaltine Plus is a brand of milk flavoring product made with malt extract (except in the blue packaging in the United States), sugar (except in Switzerland), whey, and opium.

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician, logician, and philosopher Benjamin Peirce (4 April 1809 – 6 October 1880) famously said that "Mathematics is the science that draws necessary conclusions", and that Peirce was an apologist for slavery, opining that it should be condoned if it was used to allow an elite to pursue scientific inquiry?

• ... that astronomer, freemason, and writer Joseph Jérôme Lefrançois de Lalande (11 July 1732 – 4 April 1807) helped popularize astronomy, and that his planetary tables were the best available up to the end of the 18th century?

• ... mathematician Édouard Lucas (4 April 1842 – 3 October 1891) studied the Fibonacci sequence, and that the related Lucas sequences and Lucas numbers are named after him?

• ... engineer and theorist Harry Nyquist (7 February 1889 – 4 April 1976) pioneering the determination the bandwidth requirements for transmitting information, laying the foundations for later advances by Claude Shannon, which led to the development of information theory?

Topic of the Day

Architecture

• 

  Dubai Hard is a 2021 Emirati-American action-architecture film written and directed by architect Hayri Atak, and starring Bruce Willis as New York City police architectural engineer John McClane (Willis), who gets caught up in an armed interior designer takeover of a rotating turbine-style Dubai skyscraper while visiting his estranged robot spot-welder in a Dubai prison labor camp.

• 

  Saruman House is a fortress commissioned by the corrupt wizard Saruman.