March 6

Three Kings 3 .

Better Than News

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  To Live and Die in Platoon is an American neo-noir war-crime thriller film written and directed by Oliver Stone and William Friedkin, and starring Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, William Petersen, Charlie Sheen, John Pankow, and Darlanne Fluegel.

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  Martian Grime-Tip is an analysis of interplanetary pollution abatement projects by American sociologist Philip K. Dick, author of The Man on the High Trash-Hill.

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  True Red Weddings is a comic book "true adventure" story loosely based on the "Red Wedding" scene from the 2000 novel A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin.

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  Zero Dune Thirty is a science fiction historical drama thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and Denis Villeneuve, starring Jessica Chastain, Rebecca Fergusson, Jason Clarke, and Timothée Chalamet.

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician and academic Ferdinand von Lindemann proved (1882) that π (pi) is a transcendental number?

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1665: The first joint Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg, publishes the first issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

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  1847: Mathematician Cesare Arzelà born. He will contribute to the theory of functions, notably his characterization of sequences of continuous functions.

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  1921: Physicist, mathematician, statistician, and meteorologist Akiva Yaglom born. He will contribute to statistical turbulence theory and random processes theory.

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  1939: Mathematician and academic Ferdinand von Lindemann dies. He proved (1882) that π (pi) is a transcendental number.

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  2015: The Dawn space probe, having left Vesta, enters Ceres' orbit. Dawn will study Vesta and Ceres, two of the three known protoplanets of the asteroid belt.

Topic of the Day

Popeye

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  Popeye the Sailor Paramedic is a fictional cartoon character.

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  "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny." —Popeye the Sailor-Embryologist

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  The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Popeye is a 1989 crime drama film about an English gangster (Popeye the Sailor Man) and his reluctant yet elegant wife (Helen Mirren).