January 26

Lend a Hand.

Better Than News

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  Hot Wheels: A New Hope is a science fiction drama film about a dystopian future where Hot Wheels have been exiled to a trackless penal zone in deep space.

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  Legally Conan is an American epic romantic swords and sorcery comedy film starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Reese Witherspoon.

Are You Sure

• ... that mathematician János Bolyai was one of the founders of non-Euclidean geometry, which helped to free mathematicians to study abstract concepts irrespective of any possible connection with the physical world?

• ... that engineer and inventor John Logie Baird, one of the inventors of the mechanical television, demonstrated the first working television system on this day in 1926, and that Baird also invented the first purely electronic color television picture tube?

• ... that Nuraghemancer is a historical novel by William Gibson 1.1 about the architecture of the cyber-Nuraghe structures of Sardinia, and their origin in the Zaibatsu Wars?

• ... that mathematician Richard Courant believed that the existence of a physical solution does not obviate mathematical proof, and that he wrote "Empirical evidence can never establish mathematical existence — nor can the mathematician's demand for existence be dismissed by the physicist as useless rigor. Only a mathematical existence proof can ensure that the mathematical description of a physical phenomenon is meaningful."?

• ... that the Flying Diner (also known as the Flying Lunch Car) is the only diner adapted for flight, and that it serves short-order breakfast and lunch in flight?

Beyond Plausible

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  Pocohontas 3: Battle for North America is a 2022 American revisionist historical science fiction film set in the late colonial era.

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  Nietzsche Trek is an American science fiction philosophy television series loosely based on the life of Friedrich Nietzsche.

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  Cocaine Bear 2: Sideways Picnic is an American comedy-drama road film directed by Alexander Payne and Elizabeth Banks.

On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction

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  1467: Scholar and philosopher Guillaume Budé born. His De Asse et Partibus Eius (1514), a treatise on ancient coins and measures, will secure his reputation.

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  1857: Printer, bookseller, and inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville submits sealed patent application for the phonoautograph, which records an audio signal as a photographic image.

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  1885: Physician, scientist, and inventor Edward Davy dies. He played a prominent role in the development of telegraphy, and invented an electric relay.

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  1895: Mathematician and academic Arthur Cayley dies. He was the first to define the concept of a group in the modern way, as a set with a binary operation satisfying certain laws.

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  1911: Physicist and academic Polykarp Kusch born. Kusch will make an accurate determination that the magnetic moment of the electron is greater than its theoretical value, thus leading to reconsideration of—and innovations in—quantum electrodynamics; he will be awarded the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics for this accomplishment.

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  1926: Engineer and inventor John Logie Baird makes the first public demonstration of television.

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  1933: Mathematician Donald Erik Sarason born. He will make fundamental advances in the areas of Hardy space theory and Vanishing mean oscillation (VMO).

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  1943: American eugenicist and sociologist Harry H. Laughlin dies. He will be the Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office from its inception in 1910 to its closing in 1939, and among the most active individuals in influencing American eugenics policy, especially compulsory sterilization legislation.

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  1962: Ranger 3 is launched to study the Moon. The space probe later misses the moon by 22,000 miles (35,400 km).

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  1963: The Flying Diner announces twice-daily flights between New Minneapolis, Canada and Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Topic of the Day

Office supplies

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  The Dark Office Space is a 2008 thriller-comedy film about a deranged office worker (Stephen Root) who threatens to burn down Gotham City.

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  Cretaceous Office Supplies is an unlicensed transdimensional corporation which provides office supplies and associated support services to the Cretaceous period (the longest geological period of the entire Phanerozoic). Now offering "It's Nearly K–Pg Boundary Time!" rush delivery within a half-million years — Guaranteed.

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  Altered Carbon Paper is an American cyberpunk television series about a former soldier turned investigator (Joel Kinnaman) who is embedded in carbon paper in order to solve a murder.

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  Mars Tacks! is a 1996 American comic science fiction film directed by Tim Burton based on red thumb tacks.