December 25

Better Than News

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  Once Upon a Time at Christmas is an epic spaghetti Christmas Western comedy film directed by Sergio Leone and Bob Clark, starring Peter Billingsley and Henry Fonda.

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  Freedom of Art, also known as The Thanksgaming Picture or I'll DM for Christmas, is the third of the Four Freedoms series of four oil paintings by American game designer and artist Norman Rockwell.

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  A Christmas Stingray is a 1983 American Christmas ichthyology film based on marine biologist Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional anecdotes in his 1966 book In God We Trawl: All Others Pay Out Lines.

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  Merry Christmas, Mr. Laurentian is a 1983 Japanese-British World World II geography film about British military surveyor Jack Celliers (David Bowie), whose Japanese captors are intrigued by his openly defiant opinions about North American drainage basins.

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  Willy Wonka and the Nostalgia Factory is an American drama buddy film about two eccentric billionaires (Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp) who cannot agree on a worthy heir to their chocolate factory.

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  People are not interchangeable. / They are not equivalent. / They are not fungible. / Each life is unique and irreplaceable.

Are You Sure

• ... that Italian physician Filippo Mazzei befriended Thomas Jefferson, and the two men started what became the first commercial vineyard in the Commonwealth of Virginia?

• ... that On Her Majesty's Secret Santa is a 1969 spy film about the grinch Blofeld (Telly Savalas), who threatens to destroy the world's entire stockpile of Christmas presents?

• ... that astronomer Vera Rubin's pioneering work on galaxy rotation rates was initially met with skepticism but was confirmed over subsequent decades?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1642: Isaac Newton born. He will be widely recognized as one of the most influential scientists of all time and a key figure in the scientific revolution.

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  1730: Physician and activist Filippo Mazzei born. Mazzei will act as an agent to purchase arms for Virginia during the American Revolutionary War.

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  1763: Inventor Claude Chappe born. Chappe will invent and develop a practical semaphore system that will span all of France -- the first practical telecommunications system of the industrial age.

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  2016: Astronomer and academic Vera Rubin dies. She discovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves.

Topic of the Day

Christmas

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  A Christmas Stingray is a 1983 American Christmas ichthyology film based on marine biologist Jean Shepherd's semi-fictional anecdotes in his 1966 book In God We Trawl: All Others Pay Out Lines.

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  Scroogebusters is a 1984 American supernatural Christmas film about a cynical and selfish parapsychologist who is haunted by a succession of ghosts on Christmas Eve intent on possessing Santa Claus.

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  The Hangman's Christmas Tree is a made-for-television film produced by the Hellmark Channel, a family feel-good horror show series.

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  "Pine Angel" is a teen tragedy Christmas song about a Pine tree than has been cut down in its prime, only to be thrown away after the holidays.

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  "I Saw Three Likes" is an American Christmas carol, listed as number [REDACTED] in the Roud Folk Song Index. The earliest printed version of "I Saw Three Ships" is from the 21st century, possibly Ely, Minnesota.