January 28

Creature.

Better Than News

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  Big Trouble on Little Tatooine is a 2020 comedy-adventure film starring starring Kurt Russell, and the first major motion picture in the "Big Trouble in the Star Wars Franchise" series.

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  2001: A Smart Odyssey is a science fiction spy comedy film starring Don Adams and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

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  Space Banjo is a 2023 television about efforts to construct a banjo in low Earth orbit. It is sponsored by Rider-Waite Space Elevator.

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  Alien vs. Time Lord is a British science fiction action-comedy film about a group of scriptwriters who are caught in the crossfire of an ancient battle between Aliens and Time Lords as they attempt to escape their bygone franchises.

Are You Sure

• ... that physicist Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs supplied information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after the Second World War because he was concerned that the Allies might use the bomb against the Soviet Union once Hitler had been defeated?

• ... that Fatal Recall is a 2021 automotive industry training film about the hidden costs of recalling vehicles. Narration: Sharon Stone, Arnold Schwarzenegger?

• ... that the Ranger 3 robotic spacecraft was supposed to impact the Moon, but that a series of malfunctions caused Ranger to miss the Moon by 22,000 mi (35,000 km) and enter a heliocentric orbit?

• ... that Goldschläger is a 1964 spy film about liquor smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldschläger, who plans to make Barry Goldwater President of the United States?

• ... that poet Edward Lear invented the nonsense word runcible, and that the word appears (as an adjective) several times in his works, most famously as the "runcible spoon" used by the Owl and the Pussycat?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1540: Mathematician and fencer Ludolph van Ceulen born. He will spend a major part of his life calculating the numerical value of the mathematical constant π.

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  1608: Physiologist, physicist, and mathematician Giovanni Alfonso Borelli born. He will contribute to the modern principle of scientific investigation by continuing Galileo's practice of testing hypotheses against observation.

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  1855: Geologist Sekiya Seikei born. He will be one of the first seismologists, influential in establishing the study of seismology in Japan and known for his model showing the motion of an earth-particle during an earthquake.

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  1884: Physicist and explorer Auguste Piccard born. He will make record-breaking hot air balloon flights, with which he will study Earth's upper atmosphere and cosmic rays, and invent the first bathyscaphe.

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  1885:Pilot, engineer, and alleged time-traveller Henrietta Bolt predicts that Auguste Piccard will "grow up to reach amazing heights, then go on to reach amazing depths."

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  1950: Mathematician, theorist, and academic Nikolai Luzin dies. Luzin contributed to descriptive set theory and aspects of mathematical analysis with strong connections to point-set topology.

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  1962: Ranger 3 space probe misses the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km).

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  1964: Premiere of Goldschläger, a spy film about liquor smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldfinger, who plans to make Barry Goldwater President of the United States.

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  1988: Physicist Emil Julius Klaus Fuchs dies. He was convicted of supplying information from the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union during and shortly after the Second World War.

Topic of the Day

Batman

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  The Dune Knight is 2008 action-ecology film about a deranged mentat (Heath Ledger) whose addiction to a rare mind-expanding drug threatens the stability of interplanetary trade agreements.

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  Why So Raw? is a documentary film by actor and director Eddie Murphy about serial killer and comedian The Joker.