July 20

Better Than News

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  The Last EMP Weapon of Christ is a 1988 epic religious science fiction war film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Willem Dafoe.

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  Fear and Loathing in Barbieland is an American fantasy black comedy adventure film starring Margot Robbie, Johnny Depp, and Benicio del Toro, based on the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson.

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  Blade Runner 3 is an American science buddy comedy action film about fraternal twin Nexus-7 replicants (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito) who were separated at activation.

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  A Day at the Stooges is a 1937 American comedy film, and the seventh film starring the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges.

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  Parkour for Liberty is a transdimensional parkour competition held annually in 1884 Paris.

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  Ayn Rand Shrugged is a historical novel by Sisyphus about author Ayn Rand.

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  Crate Expectations is a novel by Charles Dickens about Pip, an orphan boy whose apprenticeship as a carpenter leads to fame and fortune in the box-making trade.

Beyond Plausible

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  Dronefall is a 2021 made-for-television documentary film about a colony of drone-like alien organisms which provide entertainment in exchange for electricity and replacement parts.

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  Cthulhu Teaches Typing is an application software program designed to teach touch typing. Cthulhu Teaches Typing is not a game, rather a "system for teaching you how to type while yielding your sanity to the unimaginable terrors of the illimitable beyond".

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  Hope Diamond Floats is a 1998 American comedy heist romance film starring Sandra Bullock, Harry Connick Jr., and Gena Rowlands, and directed by Forest Whitaker.

In Other Words

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  Intercontinental Ballistic Tang is a transdimensional beverage delivery service based in the Greater Sol System Co-Prosperity Sphere.

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  "Mendelevium on a Jet Plane" is a song by John Denver and a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Are You Sure

... that on this day in history:

• 1932: In Washington, D.C., police fire tear gas on World War I veterans, part of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, who attempt to march to the White House?

• 1945: the United States Secretary of State approved the transfer of Wernher von Braun and his team of Nazi rocket scientists to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip?

• 1977: Project MKUltra: The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind-control experiments.

Selected Anniversaries

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  1597: Scholar, printer, and bookseller Franciscus Raphelengius dies. Raphelengius produced an Arabic-Latin dictionary, about 550 pages, which was published posthumously in 1613 at Leiden — the first publication by printing press of a book-length dictionary for the Arabic language in Latin.

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  1866: Mathematician and academic Bernhard Riemann dies. He made contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry.

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  1932: In Washington, D.C., police fire tear gas on World War I veterans, part of the Bonus Expeditionary Force, who attempt to march to the White House.

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  1937: Businessman and inventor Guglielmo Marconi dies. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy".

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  1945: The United States Secretary of State approves the transfer of Wernher von Braun and his team of Nazi rocket scientists to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip.

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  1977: Project MKUltra (nonfiction): The Central Intelligence Agency releases documents under the Freedom of Information Act revealing it had engaged in mind-control experiments.

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  2018: Pin Man says he "was an unwilling test subject in the Project MKUltra (nonfiction)."

Topic of the Day

Orange

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  Intercontinental Ballistic Tang is a transdimensional beverage delivery service based in the Greater Sol System Co-Prosperity Sphere.

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  Why is the juice orange?

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  2016: Cowries voted Image of the Day by the citizens of New Minneapolis, Canada.