October 19
Better Than News
Friends X is an American science fiction television sitcom which revolves around six friends in their 20s and 30s who live with crippling superpowers.
"Strangers in the Night of the Living Dead" is a song by singer and necromancer Frank Sinatra.
Metaphysical Vice is a police procedural religious poetry television series starring John Donne and Don Johnson.
Angel Heat is a 1995 American supernatural crime drama film about the conflict between an LAPD exorcist (Al Pacino) and a private investigator (Mickey Rourke) who works for demons, while also depicting the consequences of worldwide spiritual crisis.
Once Upon a Time in the Year 2525 is a science fiction spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone and written by Zager and Evans.
The Bourne Legacy Hotel is an action comedy-drama film directed by Tony Gilroy and Wes Anderson, starring Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Jeremy Renner, and Rachel Weisz.
The Wrath of Mondrian is a science fiction historical biography art adventure film, loosely based on the life of Piet Mondrian.
A man cannot stab his enemy twice. The second stab, he is not the same man, and his enemy is not the same enemy.
Ocean's 1 is a 1960 American heist film about World War II veteran Danny Ocean (Frank Sinatra), who simultaneously robs five Las Vegas casinos: the Sahara, the Riviera, the Desert Inn, the Sands, and the Flamingo.
Beyond Plausible
Butch Cassidy and the President's Men is an American Western film which tells the story of Wild West Butch Cassidy (Dustin Hoffman), and his partner the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford), who are on the run from a crack US posse after a string of anti-war protests. Paul Newman co-stars as Charles Colson, political hatchet man for the Nixon White House.
When Apostrophes Ruled the Earth is a 1970 British science grammar film. This was the third in Hammer's "Sign Girl" series, preceded by One Million Signifiers B.C. (1966) and Prehistoric Writing (1967); it was followed by Cuneiform the World Forgot (1971).
One Million Years Before Gilda is an adventure fantasy film about a paleolithic warrior (Rachel Welch) who finds a magic mirror which transforms her into Gilda (Rita Hayworth), a modern socialite.
In Other Words
Mark Trail in Space is a 2022 science fiction animal adventure film.
Are You Sure
• ... that physicist and chemist Marguerite Catherine Perey (19 October 1909 – 13 May 1975) discovered the element francium by purifying samples of lanthanum that contained actinium; and that Perey was the first woman to be elected to the French Académie des Sciences (1962), an honor denied to her mentor, Marie Curie?
Selected Anniversaries
1433: Priest, humanist philosopher, and astrologer Marsilio Ficino born. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, will influence the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy.
1900: Max Planck discovers the law of black-body radiation (Planck's law).
1909: Criminologist and physician Cesare Lombroso dies. Lombroso's theory of anthropological criminology essentially stated that criminality was inherited, and that someone "born criminal" could be identified by physical (congenital) defects, which confirmed a criminal as savage or atavistic.
1909: Physicist and chemist Marguerite Perey born. Perey will discover the element francium while purifying samples of lanthanum.
1910: Astrophysicist, astronomer, and mathematician Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar born. He will share the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars".
1973: Watergate scandal: President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court decision that he turn over the Watergate tapes.
Topic of the Day
Books
True Red Weddings is a comic book "true adventure" story loosely based on the "Red Wedding" scene from the 2000 novel A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin.
Autobiography of a Wogdon & Barton Flintlock Smoothbore Dueling Pistol is an autobiography of the dueling pistol which killed Alexander Hamilton.