September 21

Better Than News
The Silence of the Rose is a 1986 action-thriller film about a Franciscan friar-assassin (Sean Connery) who is called upon to solve a deadly mystery in a medieval abbey.
2006: Premiere of An Alien Home Companion, an American science fiction comedy film about the behind-the-scenes activities at a long-running public radio show which encounters an aggressive alien guest star. Director: Robert Altman.
Do Nazgûl Dream of Electric Rings? is a fantasy science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick and J. R. R. Tolkien.
American Bond is a 1978 American road spy thriller film directed by Sam Peckinpah and starring Kris Kristofferson and Ali MacGraw. The film was made when the white trucker domestic terrorist craze was at its peak in the United States, and followed the similarly themed films White Line Felony (1975) and Smokey and the Bomb Threat (1977).
Highwayman Dick Turpin of Mars makes another daring escape.
Beyond Plausible
Kickalong: Rise of the Planet People is a British science fiction thriller film directed by Piers Haggard, starring Ralph Arliss as Kickalong, mysterious leader of the unearthly Planet People.
In Other Words
Are You Sure

• ... that physicist and chemist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was awarded the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium"?
• ... that in 1660, Vincenzo Viviani and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli conducted an experiment to determine the speed of sound. Timing the difference between the seeing the flash and hearing the sound of a cannon shot at a distance, they calculated a value of 350 meters per second (m/s), considerably better than the previous value of 478 m/s obtained by Pierre Gassendi?
Selected Anniversaries
1576: Gerolamo Cardano dies. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the Renaissance.
1781: Joseph-Louis Lagrange writes to d'Alembert: "It appears to me also that the mine [of mathematics] is already very deep and that unless one discovers new veins it will be necessary sooner or later to abandon it." This view is prevalent at the end of the eighteenth century.
1792: French Revolution: The National Convention declares France a republic and abolishes the absolute monarchy.
1853: Physicist and academic Heike Kamerlingh Onnes born. He will receive widespread recognition for his work, including the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his investigations on the properties of matter at low temperatures which led, inter alia, to the production of liquid helium".
2018: Signed first edition of Spiral used in high-energy literature experiments unexpectedly develops spontaneous artificial intelligence.
Topic of the Day
Invasions
One Day at a Time is a made-for-television documentary film about the 1976 invasion of Indianapolis by as-yet [30 August 2021] unidentified transdimensional actors camouflaged as Bonnie Franklin, Mackenzie Phillips, and Valerie Bertinelli.
Charley Third-Eye is an American science fiction revisionist Western film starring Richard Roundtree and Roy Thinnes.
Satan's School for Invaders is a made-for-television science fiction horror film about a group of young women at Radcliffe who make contact with a malign alien intelligence.
Edge of Blade is an American science fiction horror film about an immortal vampire (Wesley Snipes) is trapped in a time-loop war between humans and aliens.
Casino of the Damned is a 1995 crime horror thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese and John Carpenter, starring Robert De Niro, Don Rickles, Christopher Reeve, Lindsey Haun, and Sharon Stone.
They Live, We Tweet is a science fiction social media dystopia film directed by John Carpenter.