June 20
Better Than News
The Magnificent Amber Bugs is a 1942 American period drama about the declining fortunes of a wealthy Midwestern family and the social changes brought by insects trapped in amber.
Alabama in My Mind is a song by James Taylor.
Smilodon is a 2018 American nature thriller film about a paleontologist (Tom Cruise) who must stop saber-tooth tigers from evolving teeth so large that they cannot close their mouths.
The Holy Mountain 2 is a Mexican surreal Muppets film written and directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Jim Henson.
Mister Rogers' Op-Center is an American half-hour children's national security television series created and hosted by an anonymous Fred Rogers impersonator reporting from an undisclosed location.
Are You Sure
... that during the Second World War, five Navy planes become permanently trapped in the Bermuda Triangle Dead Letter Office after a junior Gnomon algorithm engineer in the United States Navy Advanced Philately Division misplaced a decimal point?
... that inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer designed and built several hand-powered submarines?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1840: Samuel Morse receives the patent for the telegraph.
1875: Inventor and engineer Wilhelm Bauer dies. He designed and built several hand-powered submarines.
1877: Alexander Graham Bell installs the world's first commercial telephone service in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
2024: Self portrait.
Topic of the Day
Airplanes
"Silvery Aeroplanes" is an anagram of "Elvis Aaron Presley".
Less Than Zero is a 1987 American war film about a college freshman and airplane restoration enthusiast who is also a drug addict.
Black Phaeton is a historical drama film based on the race films of the 1920s.
Guess Hughes Coming to Dinner is a 1967 American romantic aviation drama film, one of the few films of the time to depict Howard Hughes in a positive light, as Hughes had become an eccentric recluse.
The inverted Charles Lindbergh stamp misprint is a famous example of a stamp misprint apparently caused by the printers' emotional response to Charles Lindbergh's intimate association with Nazi Germany.
"Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy For Adult Airplane Disorders: A Meta-analysis Of Randomized Placebo-controlled Airshows" is a research paper published by Playskool's My First DSM.
"Mendelevium on a Jet Plane" is a song by John Denver and a team of researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
Four Honeymoons and a Snake on a Plane is a 2021 romantic herpetology thriller film starring Hugh Grant, Andie MacDowell, and Samuel L. Jackson.
