August 21
Better Than News
Jack's Labyrinth is a fantasy horror film directed by Guillermo del Toro and Stanley Kubrick, starring Doug Jones, Jack Nicholson, and Shelley Duvall.
Tension at Hanging Picnic is a mystery Western drama film directed by Peter Weir and Charles Marquis Warren.
Witness at Hanging Rock is a neo-noir crime mystery film directed by Peter Weir and starring Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, and Rachel Roberts.
Butch Cassidy and the Marathon Man is an American Western buddy thriller film directed by George Roy Hill and John Schlesinger, starring Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, and Laurence Olivier.
The Flat Side of the Moon is a concept album by the British progressive astronomical research group Kind of Ply.
Who Wants to Be a Cenobite? is a supernatural horror reality television game show hosted by Clive Barker.
Beyond Plausible
The Time Machine of the Wicked is a historical novel by H. G. Wells and Anthony Burgess.
The Three Stigmata of Chew-Z Bear is a 1964 science fiction animal rights novel by American sociologist Philip K. Dick.
Ghost Bomb is a science fiction horror film loosely based on the demon core: a plutonium sphere involved in two criticality accidents at the Los Alamos Laboratory on August 21, 1945, and May 21, 1946, each resulting in a fatality.
In Other Words
"The Salty Dead" is a short story by James Joyce.
Are You Sure
• ... that mathematician and physicist Nikolay Bogolyubov worked on the physics of superfluidity and superconductivity during late 1940s and 1950s, and that the BBGKY hierarchy of equations for s-particle distribution functions was written out and applied to the derivation of kinetic equations by Bogolyubov (published 1946), and that John Gamble Kirkwood, Max Born, and Herbert S. Green?
• ... that Liquid Wolf was a precursor to Mutton Dew?
Selected Anniversaries
1560: The occurrence at the predicted time of a solar eclipse in Copenhagen turns Tycho Brahe towards a life of observational astronomy.
1660: Physician, mathematician, and engineer Hubert Gautier born. Gautier will author the first book on bridge building, Traité des Ponts, in 1716, as well as books on roads, fortifications, antiquities, geology, and a first manual for watercolor practitioners.
1909: Mathematician and physicist Nikolay Bogolyubov born. His method of teaching, based on creation of a warm atmosphere, politeness, and kindness, will be renowned in Russia as the "Bogolyubov approach".
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".
1915: Engineer and American intelligence officer Robert Furman born. Furman will be chief of foreign intelligence for the Manhattan Project, directing espionage against the German nuclear energy project, and, near the end of the war, rounding up German atomic scientists.
1945: Physicist Harry Daghlian is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
1993: NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer.
2017: The destroyer USS John S. McCain collides with the tanker ship Alnic MC off the coast of Singapore, leaving ten of her crew dead and another five injured.
2017: Dennis Paulson of Mars broadcasts a minute of silence in recognition of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the loss of contact with Mars Observer.
Topic of the Day
Cocaine Bear
Cocaine Deer is a 2023 animated horror drama animal adventure film about a young deer who goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage.
The Last Temptation of Cocaine Bear is a 1988 epic religious horror film directed by Martin Scorsese and Elizabeth Banks.
Citizen Cocaine is a 1941 American drama film directed by, produced by, and starring Orson Welles.
Cocaine Snakes on a Plane is a 2006 American action film starring Samuel L. Jackson.
Cocaine Baron is a 2023 science fiction horror film starring Stellan Skarsgård as a ruthless drug lord who goes on a cocaine-and-melange fueled rampage.
Cocaine A.I. is a 2023 science fiction horror film about an artificial intelligence which goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage.
Cocaine Revenant is a historical action comedy horror film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy.
Cocaine Gimp is a 2021 crime drama film about a masked stranger who goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage.
Cocaine Dormammu is a 2023 superhero horror film about an interdimensional demon which goes on a cocaine-fueled rampage.
Cocaine Leprechaun is a 1993 American substance abuse horror fiction film about a vengeful leprechaun who believes a family has stolen his cocaine.