February 4

Are You Sure?

• ... that mathematician Karl Menger discovered the Menger sponge, a three-dimensional version of Sierpinski's carpet, and that both the Menger sponge and Sierpinski's carpet are related to the Cantor set?

• ... that the film Titanic Cabaret is based on actual historical events?

• ... that particle physicists Val Fitch and James Cronin discovered CP violation by demonstrating that certain subatomic reactions do not adhere to fundamental symmetry principles, thus showing that particles are not indifferent to time?

• ... that theoretical physicist Satyendra Nath Bose, best known for his pioneering work on Bose–Einstein condensates, was a self-taught scholar and polymath whose interests included biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature, and music?

• ... that Nostromo Nights is the first Knives Out film set in outer space?

On This Day in History and Fiction

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  1615: Polymath Giambattista della Porta dies. Della Porta's most famous work, Magiae Naturalis (1558), covers a variety of the subjects he had investigated, including occult philosophy, astrology, alchemy, mathematics, meteorology, and natural philosophy.

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  1774: Mathematician and geographer Charles Marie de La Condamine dies. He spent ten years in present-day Ecuador measuring the length of a degree latitude at the equator and preparing the first map of the Amazon region based on astronomical observations.

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  1902: Pilot and explorer Charles Lindbergh born. At age 25 in 1927 he will go from obscurity as a U.S. Air Mail pilot to instantaneous world fame by making his Orteig Prize–winning nonstop flight from Long Island, New York, to Paris.

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  1906: Astronomer and academic Clyde Tombaugh born. He will discover Pluto, along with many asteroids.

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  1928: Physicist and academic Hendrik Lorentz dies. He shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect.

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  1974: Physicist, mathematician, and academic Satyendra Nath Bose dies. His work on quantum mechanics provided the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate.

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  1983: Premiere of Two Men Who Fell to Earth, a 1983 British-American film about two men (Dan Aykroyd, Albert Brooks) who wake up feeling strangely relaxed. Are they living the good life, California style? Or are they puppets of an alien rock star? Directed by David Bowie.