May 7
Better Than News
Jocasta is a 2019 psychological thriller family drama film starring Frances Conroy and Joaquin Phoenix.
The Sound of Music 2: Money Never Sleeps is an American musical drama film directed by Oliver Stone and Robert Wise, starring Julie Andrews, Michael Douglas, and Shia LaBeouf.
Brother Dredd is a science fiction mystery thriller film.
Dr. Robber is a song by the British rock group The Burgles.
Siege Blood 2: Soldier at Sea is a 1992 American action-romance buddy film about a soldier (Rambo) and a naval officer (Steven Seagal) who must stop a radical women's rights group from seizing a troop transport and populating the micronation of Amazonia.
Mrs. Tarzan is a 1984 American romantic drama film starring Bo Derek who pursues an ideal primitive lover who will take her virginity.
Are You Sure
• ... that Gerard van Swieten (7 May 1700 – 18 June 1772) was a Dutch physician who from 1745 was the personal physician of the Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and transformed the Austrian health service and medical university education; and that in 1755, the Empress sent van Swieten to Moravia to investigate the situation relating to vampires; and that van Swieten intended to eradicate the vampire myth as a "barbarism of ignorance"; and that his report, Abhandlung des Daseyns der Gespenster ("Discourse on the Existence of Ghosts") offered an entirely natural explanation for the belief in vampires; and that Empress Maria Theresa consequently issued a decree that banned all traditional justification for executing alleged vampires?
• ... that the 2019 psychological thriller family drama film Jocasta is loosely based on the tragic play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1700: Physician Gerard van Swieten born.
1794: French Revolution: Robespierre introduces the Cult of the Supreme Being in the National Convention as the new state religion of the French First Republic.
1860: Electrical engineer and inventor Oliver Blackburn Shallenberger born. He will invent the first successful alternating current electrical meter, which will be critical to the general acceptance of AC power.
1895: Russian physicist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning detector — a primitive radio receiver.
1895: First publication of The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
1960: Cold War: U-2 Crisis of 1960: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.
Topic of the Day
Dune
Willy Wonka and the Spice Melange Factory is an American musical science fantasy film directed by Mel Stuart and Denis Villeneuve and starring Gene Wilder and Timothée Chalamet.
Dune Another Day: James Bond must locate a mole in Atreides intelligence who betrayed him, and a Harkonnen billionaire who is later revealed to be connected to a Sardauker operative that Bond seemingly killed.
Enuc is a historical drama film by activist and documentary filmmaker Enoch Root about Baron Vladimir "Enuc" Harkonnen, emphasizing Harkonnen's acquisition and loss of the planet Caladan.
Arrakishead is a 1983 surrealist science fiction horror allegory film about a dispossessed aristocrat who is left to care for his melange-addicted child in a barren desert landscape.
Sardaukar Leader is a 1977 tactical level board war game which simulates infantry combat on Arrakis during the betrayal of the Atreides by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV.