Random Facts

[Artemis]

On this day in 1965, Alexey Leonov popped open the door of Voskhod 2 in orbit and went for a bit of a stroll outside in humanity's first spacewalk. And then discovered that his suit had swelled up due to pressure, and he didn't fit through the door to get back inside, which I can only assume led to humanity's first bout of swearing while spacewalking - luckily he was able to carefully let enough air out to squeeze through.

[Artemis]

Today in 1999, John Crichton got shot through a wormhole to the other side of the galaxy, where Australians rule with an iron fist and the Jim Henson company laughs at 'aliens' that are just humans with some bumps on their forehead, in the premiere of Farscape. Fun fact, last weekend while watching The Expanse, a minor character with an accent from round here popped up, and I found it jarring when he said 'minutes' instead of 'microts'.

[Laragh]

The Olsen twins aren't identical?

What?

I feel like my whole life is a lie.

[Artemis]

They're not? I thought the whole point of them on Full House or whatever (was that the thing they were on? I didn't actually watch it) was they were playing the same person, because of child actor time limits. So... did Whoever McCharacter they were playing just... did her face change between scenes? Wait... was Full House set in Dark City? That's awesome.

I'm glad that came up because my Fact for today is a bit on the weak side: in 1972 the 1972 version (obviously) of Solaris was released, ancestor to the George Clooney version we got a few years back, and (bizarrely) paralleled by Event Horizon, in that while the point of the original book (Solaris I mean) was the unknowability of alien thought, the films kind of made it seem more like "you should do some basic psychological screening of people you send off on deep space missions".

[Laragh]

They're not? I thought the whole point of them on Full House or whatever (was that the thing they were on? I didn't actually watch it) was they were playing the same person, because of child actor time limits. So... did Whoever McCharacter they were playing just... did her face change between scenes? Wait... was Full House set in Dark City? That's awesome.

This is them:










But they only look so alike by pure chance. They're fraternal twins.

Mind blown.

[Artemis]

Huh, weird.

Today I'm attempting to confuse my customers again, by marking the anniversary of the landing of the colony ship Jason on Manticore in 3519. So far nobody's noticed...

[thespian_phryne]

Huh, weird.

Today I'm attempting to confuse my customers again, by marking the anniversary of the landing of the colony ship Jason on Manticore in 3519. So far nobody's noticed...

<bright laughter>

Thenk yew, thenk yew!
No applause, just throw celery stix.

[thespian_phryne]

[....]
...They're fraternal twins.

[.....]

I did not know that.

[Artemis]

Moving from one beloved sci-fi saga to another, today, March 22, is a birthday shared by William Shatner, and James T. Kirk. Captain, explorer, diplomat, warrior, lover, time traveller, saviour of humanity. Denny Crane.

[Artemis]

And dropping the '-fi' part, a milestone from a 'sci' adventure, today in 1965 was the launch of Gemini 3, putting Gus Grissom, John Young, and a corned beef sandwich into orbit, much to the annoyance of NASA high-ups who hadn't known they were doing that (the sandwich that is, they did send the astronauts on purpose). The men in suits also got peeved at Grissom naming the ship 'Molly Brown' (as in, the unsinkable) since his Mercury capsule had in fact sunk; he got away with it (they asked him to change it, but his second suggestion was Titanic), but they decided after that astronauts wouldn't be allowed to name their Geminis anymore. Luckily they got the sticks out of their butts before Apollo.

Grissom sadly perished in the Apollo 1 fire. Young went on to go to the moon on Apollos 10 and 16, and is the only person to have flown and commanded four different spacecraft classes - Gemini, Apollo Command Module, Apollo Landing Module, and the Space Shuttle (which I believe beats even Kirk, if you just go by what we see on screen).

[Artemis]

Today in 1896, Alexander Stepanovich Popov made the world's first radio signal transmission, sending a message from the Physical and Chemical Society in St Petersburg to, well, also the Physical and Chemical Society in St Petersburg, but 250 metres away. Following this demonstration Popov's radio receiver was loaded into a car for storage, and when it was opened up again a fortnight later was discovered to contain a Best of Queen cassette tape. (I may have made that last bit up, but you should all read Good Omens.)

[Artemis]

Happy birthday to the late Patrick Troughton, aka the second Doctor - one of my personal favourites, the clownish bumbler who's actually already thinking five steps ahead, and is just keeping everybody off-balance so the bad guys never realise he's the most dangerous guy in the room until too late (except sometimes when he genuinely is freaking out and clowning around, and that's hilarious too). Troughton came into the show with an untested concept - regeneration - and really put a lot of personal effort into making it work, being faithful to what had come before while also making Two his own character, and it's hard not to argue that his effort is why regeneration (regardless of one's opinion of one actor or another) became basically universally accepted by fans, without which the show could never have become what it is and still be going. (Also Troughton's era saw the heyday of the Cybermen, my favourite monster, with Tomb of the Cybermen and The Invasion among the show's all-time masterpieces.)

[Artemis]

Another sci-fi birthday today, the late Leonard Nimoy. He sincerely did live long and prosper.

(I'm not going on at length as with Troughton just because I figure you all know this one.)

[Artemis]

And today in 1774 the US government decided they really ought to have one of these navy thingies everyone else is talking about - without which we wouldn't have the USS in USS Enterprise, so that was handy. (The Trek one stands for 'United Star Ship', if you're curious, or Space Ship depending on which episode it is and whether they'd started using the term 'starship' yet; they really just started out with 'USS' and didn't try to figure out what it means until later.)

[Artemis]

Happy birthday today to Chris Barrie, who you may know from Red Dwarf - and if you don't, go watch Red Dwarf, you won't regret it (it has its ups and downs, but basically the first six seasons are guaranteed gold). What a guy.

[Artemis]

Lucy Lawless's birthday, folks! (Although after seeing her in Ash vs Evil Dead, I'm wondering if she should be allowed to celebrate - do you still get annual birthdays if you've apparently decided at least a few times "Eh, I'm just not gonna bother getting older this year"?)

[Artemis]

Happy birthday Gabrielle Drake, who if you've got the same taste in TV shows as I do you'll remember as Lt. Gay Ellis in Gerry Anderson's UFO. It's a great little series, kind of early James Bond meets the conspiracy from X-Files if they'd decided black helicopters and SUVs were too boring and had bought the Thunderbirds fleet instead. Ellis specifically was commander of Moonbase, where despite the military of the future being a bit eccentric (all the Moonbase staff wore metallic purple wigs, and uniforms that could convert to miniskirts in under a minute for R&R) she was Earth's first line of defence against marauding aliens.

[Laragh]

If you take one Amber Benson and one Alyson Hannigan, film them together and release it to the general public for it to be spliced together in pleasing ways, approximately 100% of kittens will die.

[Artemis]

Just as well kittens have nine lives, we're good for a few more anniversaries get-togethers.

(I feel like all of a sudden there's going to be lots of fics where Tara has a characteristic little eyebrow raise now.)

In other news, in 1889, the Eiffel Tower was opened.

[Artemis]

Science today - I know it's April 1 (here) but for reals, today in 1960 the newly launched TIROS-1 weather satellite transmitted the first television signal ever from space back to Earth. And now, ever since broadcasts here switched from analogue to digital and it turns out our suburb sucks for digital reception, we've got a satellite dish bolted to the roof and all our tv comes direct from orbit. When I'm reflecting on the state of the world and how a lot of it is kind of screwed up, I do get a little cheered up by remembering that even though we haven't really got started on Starfleet yet, we have managed some genuine sci-fi in daily life.

[Artemis]

Happy birthday to the late Sir Alec Guinness, the original Obi-Wan Kenobi. Lots of chumps have been swinging lightsabers since, but he was the first and (even though he didn't think Star Wars was really all that good) the best.

[Artemis]

Today's one of the days I try to mess with my customers - in this case, noting the anniversary of the formation of the Earth Alliance in 2085, replacing the old United Nations with a true world government... which apparently was dedicated mainly to being evil, since Babylon 5 ended up having to launch a full-on civil war to free Earth from its own president, and if Crusade hadn't been cancelled they'd have ended up having to do the exact same thing not five years later. (And that one time we saw further into the future, Earth had, yep, an Orwellian government in full swing. Makes you wonder why the aliens keep bothering with us.)

[Artemis]

Today in 2012 Iron Sky was released, which... actually it's kinda haphazard, goofy fun but not really that well plotted (and weirdly, the political satire that seemed too over the top even for a ridiculous comedy back then now seems a bit restrained). But man, were the visual effects amazing, even moreso when you consider they were produced by essentially a couple of guys in a garage with second-hand computers. Also, I just have to love a movie that gave Australia its own spaceship (Dundee 01).

[Artemis]

Today's random fact: in 1710 the Statue of Anne was given royal assent, which pretty much kicked off copyright as we know it today. (I misread the entry in wikipedia initially and thought it meant the first copyright case which established the precedent involved a statue of Anne (Queen Anne, presumably, although I suppose any Anne would've done), so y'know, today I learned something.)

[Artemis]

Who's black and white and cool all over? Happy birthday to Sofia Boutella, aka Jaylah in Star Trek Beyond, which if you haven't seen it (and sadly a lot of people didn't) is a really good movie - I'd even say the best Star Trek film since 6. She's also going to be the Mummy (Amunet, which kind of makes her an alternate version of Eva Green, in a way?) in, well, The Mummy.

[Artemis]

Again with the made up stuff, today in 2156 humanity makes contact with the Centauri Republic, who try to con us into believing humans are actually Centauri and we're a lost colony of theirs. Didn't work; aside from the epic peacock hair, Centauri personal anatomy is very different to ours, as Babylon 5 actually demonstrated when they showed one of Londo's 'appendages' (Centauri males have six) on screen. Not only was that almost certainly the only time ever a PG-rated primetime TV show has shown a guy's junk, it's definitely the only time he's used it to cheat at cards by stealing from the deck when nobody's watching. It's loopy stuff like this that makes me love B5.

[thespian_phryne]

The Beaver is the national animal of Canada.
And the state animal of New York (the beaver trade built NYC)
April 7 is International Beaver Day.

Happy Beaver Day.







I am totes not tittering to myself as I write this post.

[DarkWiccan]

Happy Beaver Day.

Hurrhurrhurr

(I am twelve)

Cheers
DW

[dtburanek]

I share my birthday with International Beaver Day? I'm okay with that

[Artemis]

I did have a fact scheduled for today, but I strongly feel that International Beaver Day is the more worthy fact.

Of course, it's already the 8th here in Australia, so I hereby declare April 8 to be International Beaver Day Appreciation Day. So say we all.