April 3

Swamp Thing.

Better Than News

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  Swampfellas is a crime horror drama film written by Alan Moore and directed by Martin Scorsese.

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  Please Allow Me to Excavate Myself is a 1999 British-American archaeology film about an adventurer (Brendan Frasier) who travels to Hamunaptra, the City of the Dead, with a librarian and her older brother, where they accidentally awaken Imhotep (Mick Jagger), a rock star high priest with supernatural powers.

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  Only Mordor in the Building is a mystery fantasy-drama television series about three strangers played Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez) with a shared interest in true Lord of the Rings crime podcasts.

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  Escape from Discovery One is an American neon-noir science fiction action film directed by John Carpenter and Stanley Kubrick, starring Keir Dullea, Douglas Rain, and Kurt Russell.

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  FWEEETT! is a monthly magazine of loud sharp noises.

Beyond Plausible

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  The Birth of Alienation is a film prank in which the historic film The Birth of a Nation is temporarily replaced by a high-budget spoof version.

In Other Words

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  Boston Legal Rises is a 2012 superhero legal drama-action film starring William Shatner, James Spader, and Tom Hardy.

Are You Sure

• ... that chemist and physicist Sir William Crookes (17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) was a pioneer of vacuum tube technology, and that he invented the Crookes tube?

• ... mid-1960's astronaut dessert cubes "at high risk of Shape Theft due to their historical significance and the great desire by citizens of every nation to experience the last remaining astronaut dessert cubes with their own eyes, if not their own taste buds."?

• ... that self-educated carpenter and clockmaker John Harrison (3 April 1693 – 24 March 1776) invented a marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea?

• ... mathematician and academic Mary Cartwright (17 December 1900 – 3 April 1998) pioneered chaos theory?

• ... that mathematician Jacques Ozanam (16 June 1640 – 3 April 1718) said "It is the business of the Sorbonne to discuss, of the Pope to decide, and of a mathematician to go straight to heaven in a perpendicular line"?

Selected Anniversaries

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  1693: Carpenter and clockmaker John Harrison born. He will invent a marine chronometer, a long-sought-after device for solving the problem of calculating longitude while at sea.

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  1827: Physicist, musician, and academic Ernst Chladni dies. He has been called both the father of acoustics and the father of meteoritics.

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  1907: Cryptanalyst and mathematician Solomon Kullback born. Krullback will begin his career with the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) in the 1930s; when the National Security Agency (NSA) is formed in 1952, Rowlett will become chief of cryptanalysis, overseeing the research and development of computerized cryptanalysis.

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  1995: Mathematician and checkers player Marion Tinsley dies. Tinsley was "to checkers what Leonardo da Vinci was to science, what Michelangelo was to art and what Beethoven was to music."

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  1998: Mathematician and academic Mary Cartwright dies. She did pioneering work in chaos theory.

Topic of the Day

Non-Fungible Tokens

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  1969: Premiere of NFT Cowboy, an American buddy drama film about the unlikely friendship between two NFT hustlers: naïve sex worker Joe Buck (Voight), and ailing con man Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo (Hoffman).

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  N for NFT is a 1973 docudrama film by Orson Welles. about Elmyr de Hory, a professional NFT forger; de Hory's story serves as the backdrop for a meandering investigation of the natures of authorship and authenticity, as well as the basis of the value of art.

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  The NFTers is a 1990 American neo-noir NFT crime thriller film about three grifters desperate to sell their non-fungible tokens at a profit.