December 22
Better Than News
Bald Santa is a 2003 Christmas crime drama film about a New York police detective (Telly Savalas) who goes undercover as a department store Santa Claus in order to flush out a ruthless shoplifter (Billy Bob Thornton).
101 Fuji Dalmations is a 1961 animated adventure drama film produced by Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai.
The Good, the Bad, and the Friendly is a spaghetti Western television series created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, and directed by Sergio Leone.
"The Other, Paler Shade of White Meat" is a song by the English rock band and meat processor Procul Harum.
Radio Shack is a board game marketed to girls 6 to 14 years who are interested in crystal radio sets, Crookes radiometers, Jr. Ms. Ranger™ Walkie-Talkies, and the like.
Are You Sure
• ... that Cesare Cremonini is now remembered as an infamous side actor in the Galileo affair, despite being one of the greatest philosophers of his time?
• ... that mathematician Johann Friedrich Pfaff's work on partial differential equations became part of the theory of differential forms?
• ... that a lecture in 1920 by William Blake's monster ended in a riot, with over fifty thousand fleas released from the Human Flea Circus?
On This Day in Fiction and Nonfiction
1550: Philosopher and academic Cesare Cremonini born. His work will promote rationalism (against revelation) and Aristotelian materialism (against the dualist immortality of the soul) inside scholasticism.
1693: Astronomer Elisabeth Hevelius dies. One of the first female astronomers, Hevelius is known as "the mother of moon charts".
1732: Inventor, engineer, and businessman Richard Arkwright born. Later in his life Arkwright will be known as the "father of the modern industrial factory system."
1765: Mathematician Johann Friedrich Pfaff born. He will work on partial differential equations of the first order Pfaffian systems, as they are now called, which will become part of the theory of differential forms.
1858: Composer Giacomo Puccini born. He will be called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi".
1887: Mathematician and theorist Srinivasa Ramanujan born. He will make substantial contributions to mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series, and continued fractions, including solutions to mathematical problems considered to be unsolvable.
1894: The Dreyfus affair begins in France, when Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of treason.
1972: Inventor Norman Lorimer Dean dies. Dean designed the Dean drive, which he promoted as a reactionless drive.
Topic of the Day
Food and Beverages
Arby's Double Beef and Choco-Mint Cheddar is an intermittently available sandwich from Arby's.
A Gouda gun is a type of hand tool for applying Gouda cheese in a precise and often decorative manner.
"I'm Only Reuben" is a song by the rock band and catering firm The Beatles.
The Pomegranate cosmos model of the observable how the universe expanded from an initial state of extremely high density and high temperature, and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale Pomegranate-Like Structures (PLS).