May 26

Better Than News

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  Only Star Wars in the Building is an American science fiction mystery comedy-drama television series created by Steve Martin, John Hoffman, and George Lucas.

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  Plan 9 from Dark City is a science fiction horror film written and directed by Ed Wood and Alex Proyas.

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  The Toroid is a 2023 science fiction adventure film about a baker aboard a deep space station who encounters a mysterious alien force.

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  Ghost Harley and the Way of the Marlboro Man is a 1999 crime film about "Ghost Harley" (Forest Whitaker), a hitman whose faith is shaken by visions of a smoking dog after accepting a contract on Harley Davidson (Mickey Rourke) and the Marlboro Man (Don Johnson).

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  Unicorn Dundee is a 1986 fantasy action zoology film starring Paul Hogan and Linda Kozlowski.

Beyond Plausible

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  Apex Thespian 2021 American science fiction drama film about an aging actor (Bruce Willis) who stages a secret game of "Hollywood Squares" for nine jaded billionaires.

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  Devil's Advocate 2: Pleading Cases is an American supernatural legal comedy-horror film starring Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, and Al Pacino, and directed by Taylor Hackford and John Landis.

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  The Dart Board Galaxy (Messier 101) is a face-on dartboard-type galaxy 21 million light-years (6.4 megaparsecs) away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Pseudo.

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  Sandfall is a science fiction spy film starring Daniel Craig as a British MI6 agent who must discover the source of Melange, a drug which facilitates interstellar travel.

In Other Words

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  The Lord of the Ringos is an epic music-fantasy film about a drummer (Ringo Starr) whose riffs will decide the fate of Beatle Earth.

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  "Canvas City" is a rhythm and blues song written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in 1952. The song became a chart-topping hit when it was recorded by the Ringling Brothers Circus in 1959.

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  The Spy Who Slugged Me is a 1977 spy film about reclusive prize-fighter who plans to destroy the world and create a new civilization inside a boxing ring.

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician Abraham de Moivre (1667–1754) was sent to Prieuré Saint-Martin-des-Champs, a school that the authorities sent Protestant children to for indoctrination into Catholicism during a time of severe religious persecution in France during which Protestant worship was forbidden; yet de Moivre remained a steadfast Christian throughout his life; and that among his fellow Huguenot exiles in England, he was a colleague of editor and translator Pierre des Maizeaux?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1497: Mathematician and architect Antonio Manetti dies. He investigated the site, shape and size of Dante's Inferno, and wrote a biography of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi.

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  1667: Mathematician and theorist Abraham de Moivre born. His book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, will be prized by gamblers.

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  1814: Glassblower, physicist, and inventor Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geißler born. He will invent the Geissler tube, made of glass and used as a low pressure gas-discharge luminescence tube.

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  1895: Documentary photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange born. Lange will be remembered for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Her photographs will influence the development of documentary photography and humanize the consequences of the Great Depression.

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  1938: In the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session.

Topic of the Day

Philip K. Dick

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  Replicant Vice is a reality television series starring Harrison Ford and Roy Batty.

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  The Game-Players of Nixon is a 1963 biography of Richard Nixon by sociologist Philip K. Dick 1.1.