Random Facts

[Artemis]

Today in 1895 Royal Blue made its inaugural run from Washington DC to New York, the first electric passenger train in the US. And in other belated news, in 1982 the space shuttle Columbia launched on STS-4, the final R&D mission, after which the shuttle was declared fully operational, and in 2013 launched IRIS, a solar observation probe that has discovered things like 'solar heat bombs', previously thought to exist only in the arsenals of giant robots.

And today in now, Nintendo launched the Classic Mini SNES, including Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, and 20 other games that are probably good as well, but who cares, you had me at Yoshi's Island.

[Artemis]

I'm late! Work's been busy this week. But it's still today, so I have time to reveal that on this day in 1926 Mercedes-Benz was formed, in 1838 Queen Victoria had her coronation, World War I both started and ended, the Stonewall Riots kicked off the gay rights movement, Mike Tyson bit off Evander Holyfield's ear, and in 1880 at Glenrowan bushranger Ned Kelly put on his homemade Iron Man suit and dared the police to come get him (spoiler: they did).

[Artemis]

On this day in 1908, 2000 square km of forest in Tunguska got flattened by what was probably the 15 megaton blast of a largish meteorite airbursting kilometres above the ground. On the other hand, there have been so many paranormal explanations proposed that the 'Tunguska event' probably was caused by one of them (or several simultaneously), just because apparently so much weird stuff can happen in Tunguska that it'd have been miraculous if it didn't explode - among the options, spaceships (alien and ours), black holes, the TARDIS having a hiccup, vampires, Superman, and Tesla mucking about with his death ray.

[Artemis]

Today it's a happy birthday to David Prowse - despite apparently being a fan of UKIP (we can just replace that with whatever James Earl Jones might have to say on the subject, that's probably safe), Prowse was the guy in the Darth Vader suit throughout the original trilogy, and that's worth a toast. He was evidently under the impression that they'd use his voice as well, but I think we can all agree that the Dark Lord of the Sith and a West Country accent aren't a perfect match.

[Ariel]

I love learning new stuff every day - thanks, Chris - you're nailing it! Glad you celebrated him, David Prowse was a very imposing figure - but I'd listen to James Earl Jones read the phone book - love that deep, rich voice.

I'm going to throw in a random fact about me. I invented a superstition. I always got a kick out of random superstitions and somehow I just decided that if you see 11:11 it's good luck. Doesn't count if you're watching for it, but if you take a random look and see 11:11 then it's good luck. There's only two minutes in the whole day where all the numbers are the same so it has to be good luck, right? It's about as logical as most superstitions, I guess.

[Artemis]

Thanks And in perfect timing, just after being noted for presenting new facts every day, I missed a day Sunday was, in case your local news station didn't mention it, the anniversary of the start of the War of 1996, in which aliens blew up the White House. Seemed like a dick move at the time, but nowadays we'd only really be retaliating on the basis of "...but you blew up New York and LA as well, that's a problem." As well as a bunch of other cities around the world who we just had to take for granted got attacked. (I was quite amused about their choice of targets locally though - in the final montage of crashed saucers around the world, one of them's nosedived in Sydney either on Bondi beach or off the coast, judging from the shot, so they were coming in from the ocean, which kind of implies that they didn't bother at all with Australia at all in their first two rounds of city-blasts. Yay for being insignificant, I guess.)

And staying with momentous events in history, today saw the release in 1985 of Back to the Future (although as prominently noted, the actual events take place around November 5). I've got that listed as 1985 and 1955 on the sign in the store, just to mess with people. (I always liked part three best - first one I saw, and the whole train sequence is just amazing.)

[Artemis]

Today in 2057 Ares 3 will land on Mars, the first manned interplanetary mission, and the beginning of colonisation of the red planet. A couple of customers have noticed that and commented on it, I didn't have the heart to tell them it's from Babylon 5.

[Ariel]

I just spent a FORTUNE on premium Martian real-estate! You mean I was ripped off?!?

Here's my random fact, Helen Keller appreared on vaudeville doing her best to support herself, her teacher, and their assistant. The line that brought the house down was when she told the cheering crowd, "I can hear your applause through my feet." It was true, the vibration of the applause traveled through the floorboards and she could feel it. She could also differentiate the colors of rose petals by touch. The sensitivity of her touch was tested and the results said "normal" it was the practice and the focus and her own unique spirit that made her successful. (Not to mention a brilliant teacher and the support of good friends!)

[Artemis]

If it's the bit of Mars that has a Shadow Battlecrab buried in it, the Psi Corps will probably be interested in making an offer for it if you're willing to wait for them to be created. Although the offer might be 'Give us the land and we'll let you go after we erase your memories of all of this', so maybe send an agent in your place, just FYI.

Today in 1687 Sir Isaac Newton (the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space) published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, generally known just as the Principia, because nobody can be bothered looking up the ascii code for the æ character, which put mathematics and physics together in the second best pairing of all time. (On that note, I'm adding 'Willow is math and Tara is physics' to my list of potential fics.)

[Artemis]

Today in 1990 the Electronic Frontier Foundation was created to help defend online civil liberties (basically, that 'I fight for the users' stuff Tron was always going on about), in 1917 T.E. Lawrence and a whole bunch of Arabian troops captured Aqaba in a viral marketing effort to get Hollywood interested in producing their film, Richard the Lionheart and Richard III both became King of England (not at the same time, obviously - 1189 and 1483 respectively - although since they've been played by Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan, you can kind of view X-Men as what-if scenario for them having to fight it out over the throne), in 1919 R34 (great name guys) made the first crossing of the Atlantic by an airship, and also today happy birthday to Heather Nova, one third (and no offence to the others, the best third) of my holy trinity of music, along with Alisha's Attic and Roxette.

[Artemis]

It's a birthday today - Jon Pertwee, the third Doctor, who when asked by the show's story staff what he would like in terms of characterisation for his Doctor, asked only for "a moment or two of charm." He definitely got that - and also various fast cars, of which he was a fan, including the 'Whomobile' (not called that on screen), a kind of futuristic hovercraft thingy Pertwee commissioned himself, and Bessie, an Edwardian roaster upgraded with a forcefield, remote control, and inertial hyperdrive. In other news Elvis Presley made his radio debut in 1954, a 17-year-old Boris Becker won Wimbledon in 1985, in 1992 the New York Court of Appeals ruled that women have the same rights as men with regard to being topless in public, and in 1928 sliced bread was sold for the first time, which is apparently the best thing.

[Artemis]

Bit of a sad one today - on this day in 2011 NASA kicked off STS-135, the final mission of the space shuttle program, with the shuttle Atlantis delivering modules to the ISS before joining Endeavour and Discovery (and the original non-orbital prototype Enterprise) in retirement. In other news, in 1859 Carl Ludvig Eugen acceded to the throne of Sweden and Norway, thereby taking on the somewhat unweildly title King Charles XV & IV, in 1497 Vasco de Gama decided he'd quite like to visit India but couldn't be bothered with all that trekking across land, so he'd just sail there instead, in 1776 John Nixon delivered the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence (luckily he didn't have Twitter, or it might not have taken off the same way), and in 1948 the US Air Force accepted its first female recruits under the imaginatively named Women in the Air Force program, which would ultimately lead to Captain Marvel.

Also while I was browsing wikipedia just now, I found this brilliant sentence for 1898: "The death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, releases Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip."

[Artemis]

It's late, but not too late to pop in before bed with today's Fact - on this day in 1982, Disney released this weird little thing they'd come up with called Tron. It wasn't the mega hit they'd hoped for (and with The Black Hole likewise not performing as well as hoped, put on ice Disney's plans to be a big name in the summer blockbuster market, although not forever), it was rejected from the running for a Best Effect Oscar on the basis that using computers was cheating (yes, really), the eventual sequel didn't quite set the world on fire either (although it's really quite good), but there aren't many cult hits as beloved by their fans as Tron. (Also, if there were no Tron, there'd be no TARA either, so I owe it that one as well.)

[Artemis]

Another movie one - today in 1981, the world was introduced to a dystopian future in which New York City is a walled maximum security prison, breaking out is impossible, breaking in is insane, and we got introduced to Snake Plissken in Escape From New York. Fun fact (a fact within a fact): the simple wireframe 'graphics' of the city seen from Snake's glider were created by putting reflective tape on the edges of all the buildings on the miniature city they'd built to show future (1997) New York and filming it under black light, because they couldn't afford what it'd cost to do it on a computer.

[Artemis]

And yet another movie - today in 1997 we got Contact, starring Jodie Foster and the best space noise ever. I'll rustle up the image some time (it's on photobucket, but photobucket's gone mad), although it's not a good resemblance since I'm really bad at studying faces, but I based my Mass Effect Shepard on the space trip scene, where she had her hair pulled back tight and was looking all intense and sleek.

[Artemis]

Finally away from movies for a bit - on this day in 1971 the Australian Aboriginal Flag was flown for the first time in Victoria Square (which is in Adelaide, South Australia, not Victoria - you'd think with all the monarchs we've got to choose from we'd be able to not mix things up like this). There's a long-running suggestion, any time anyone brings up the Union Flag being on our flag, that it should be replaced with the Aboriginal one - if you want to see that in action, the future-Australian flag on Sam Neill's uniform in Event Horizon used that design. There is some opposition to that though, on the basis that it's felt the Aboriginal Flag should be equal to others, not a secondary addition to another one; also Sam Neill's character went mad and murdered a bunch of people, which isn't terrific PR.

[Artemis]

Happy birthday today to Sir Patrick Stewart OBE, probably best known as Captain Picard and Professor Xavier, so anyone thinking of irritating him had better consider that he has not one but two armies of nerds ready to follow his orders without question. And it's also Harrison Ford's birthday, Han Solo himself (it's weird that before long we're going to have to clarify the original Han Solo), checking in after a few days, the day R34 touched down in England after 184 hours in flight across the Atlantic, and waaaay before all that in 100 BC Julius Caesar was born, without whom Asterix comics (and a few other things) would have been quite different.

[Artemis]

Today just two years ago the New Horizons probe did its fly-by of Pluto, meaning we could finally be said to have at least had a reasonable look-see at our solar system's planets (I mean, it'd be just embarrassing if aliens showed up and asked us about a planet that's basically in our back yard from their point of view, and we just had to say "I dunno, it's round?") In other outer space news, it's the birthday of Harry Dean Stanton ("Right." -Alien), and squeaking in as 'outer space' on the basis that half the Republic of Haven's history is lifted directly from revolutionary France, just with 'muskets' upgraded to 'grasers', it's Bastille Day.

[Artemis]

Today in 1975 the USA launched an Apollo CSM spacecraft, and on the same day the USSR launched Soyuz 19, to meet and dock in orbit in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint US/Soviet space flight (and incidentally the last time a Saturn rocket would be used). Also launched today (in no particular order) was Twitter, the Mozilla Foundation, Laura Benanti (twin sisters Alura and Astra in Supergirl), and Rembrandt, whose full name was Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, just in case you weren't sure if he was Dutch or not. And in 1799 Captain Bouchard, having an idle poke around in the sand in Rosetta while waiting for Napoleon to finish breakfast and give some orders, found a largish stele which turned out to be rather important, since the Egyptians who carved one of Ptolemy V's decrees on it back in 196 BC did so in ancient Greek as well as the local lingo (hieroglyphic and Demotic), providing the key to deciphering all those pretty pictures they'd carved all over the place that had otherwise been eluding their distant descendants, and also marking the only time in history anyone has gotten excited about government transcripts.

[Artemis]

And speaking of Apollo, today in 1969 Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins strapped themselves into the CSM Columbia, sitting on top of the stored LM Eagle and a gigantic Saturn V rocket, and blasted off towards the moon, carrying with them a transmitter rigged up by the Doctor, and the Men In Black Arc Net, missing the accidentally time-displaced USS Enterprise by a day or so, and taking a good look at the crashed Autobot Ark when they arrived. Eventful trip.

[Ariel]

Wit, history and humor - talk about the power of three! Thanks, Chris.

My fact is about Antoinette Concello, she was considered the greatest woman trapeze artist to have ever lived and was the first woman to perform the triple somersalt on the flying trapeze. When damage to her shoulders became too great for surgery, she was asked to be the director of the entire aerial wing of the Ringling Brothers Circus. She was inducted into the circus hall of fame and her sister, Mickey King, was another famous female aerialist.

[Artemis]

Neat! I've only ever seen one circus, and the was ages ago, Circus Oz, sometime back in the late 80s or so; I remember being quite smitten by the cello player.

Today's fact is part man, part machine, all cop - today in 1987, the original RoboCop was released. If you haven't seen it, it's worth checking out, as there's a very clever and thoughtful movie lurking under the facade of an ultra-violent shoot-em-up. The sequel has its moments, the third film doesn't, and the 2014 remake is best forgotten. Also today, in 1762 Catherine the Great became tsar of Russia, in 1955 Disneyland was opened, in 1944 Catherine Schell was born (Maya from Space: 1999), and early morning today but yesterday for the rest of the world, Jodie Whittaker was announced as the 13th Doctor. Also it's apparently World Emoji Day, but let's ignore that (I mean, I'm not against emoji, I've even made one, but do they need a day?).

[Artemis]

Movies again - today in 1986 Aliens taught us many valuable lessons, like how to do the trick with the knife (everyone's tried it with a blunt pen or something, right?), not to trust Paul Reiser (I was never quite comfortable watching Mad About You...), and that taking off and nuking the site from orbit is the only way to be sure. And also (not the first example, but a notable landmark) that sequels don't have to suck. Apropos of nothing a long time ago I did a mental exercise of "how would you explain the story of Aliens to Xena?"; I forget the episode but I think somewhere in season one there was some king or other who had a crystal ball, which was handy to explain security cameras.

In other news today, in 1870 the first Vatican Council declared papal infallibility, which is why Alanis Morissette had to explode Ben Affleck's head, in less generally problematic religious business in 1334 the bishop of Florence blessed the first foundation stone of the new bell tower for Florence Cathedral, in 2013 the government of Detroit filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history (see RoboCop above; incidentally it's also Paul Verhoeven's birthday today), in 1992 a picture of a pop group composed of people who worked at CERN became the first photo to be posted on the world wide web (the second was presumably a Rule 34 crappy nude photoshop of them, because some things are inescapable), and in 1976 Nadia Comăneci (copy-pasted from wikipedia to get the little squiggle over the 'a') became the first person to score a perfect 10 in gymnastics at the Olympics. And I've finished changing links for my little rainbow divider graphic in recent fics to avoid broken image links (luckily I was too lazy to upload all the She-Ra images through photobucket's awful site to begin with, and put them on uberwillowtara from the start).

Edit: Oops, almost forgot - it's also the birthday of John Glenn, first American in space and great-great-whatever-grandfather of He-Man.

[Artemis]

Happy birthday today to Courtenay Taylor, the voice behind Jack in Mass Effect (and also Kalara, the asari you can help either straighten out her status with customs (who're insisting she may be a potential geth infiltrator, despite her being a 5'5" blue lady and geth being robots, and yes the conversation with the customs agent where you point that out can still occur even if you have Legion, a geth, standing beside you; customs just assumes he's a personal assistant mech and waves him through) or just give her a fake ID to solve the problem if you want to do things the amoral way; see what I mean about not getting me started with Mass Effect), also Sorcerer Supreme and occasional dragon Benedict Cumberbatch, and (quite a bit earlier) Max Fleischer, whose Fleischer Studios responsible for animation classics like Popeye and the Superman cartoons.

[Artemis]

Today in history... in 2069 colonisation of the moon began with Armstrong Outpost. Initially mined for helium-3 to fuel spacecraft engines, Luna's output switched over to raw materials for space habitat construction once the outer planets (particularly the vast supplies of helium-3 in the gas giants) became more easily accessible, and a little over a century later the moon's output had gone into two dozen major space stations at the L4 and L5 points around Earth, and Luna itself had a population of 4.1 million.

In more down to Earth news (literally and figuratively), in 1960 Sri Lanka (Ceylon at the time) elected the world's first female head of government (Sirimavo Bandaranaike, yes I did just copy and paste that, sorry), in 1997 the restored USS Constitution set sail for the first time in 116 years (ancestor of the starship USS Constitution, the first of the Constitution class which included the Enterprise, although back in the 60s the dedication plaque on the bridge just called it 'Starship Class'), on this day the lovely Diana Rigg was born (it would be rude to say when, but I think we can admit it was some time ago now), and in 1304 King Edward I of England was victorious at the Fall of Stirling Castle with the help of the War Wolf, which sadly was just a really big trebuchet, not an actual wolf.

[thespian_phryne]

Movies again - today in 1986 Aliens taught us many valuable lessons, like how to do the trick with the knife (everyone's tried it with a blunt pen or something, right?), not to trust Paul Reiser (I was never quite comfortable watching Mad About You...), and that taking off and nuking the site from orbit is the only way to be sure. And also (not the first example, but a notable landmark) that sequels don't have to suck. Apropos of nothing a long time ago I did a mental exercise of "how would you explain the story of Aliens to Xena?"; I forget the episode but I think somewhere in season one there was some king or other who had a crystal ball, which was handy to explain security cameras.
[....]

I busted out my very worn Aliens shirt for this day. Much fun was had by all.

Also I'm pretty sure Ripley made me gay. I mean . . . just look:

[Laragh]

The smell of M&Ms is basically the equivalent of someone chanting USA! USA! in my ear.

[Ariel]

To Laragh, that good hm? I extend my condolences to you - there's an awful lot of m&m's in the world.

To Thespian Pryne, I am looking - again and again, actually! I was driving a forklift when this movie came out and I felt just a little bit more cool because of it!

To Chris - indeed, a message of wisdom and thank you for it!

My random fact - I celebrated the U.S. bicentennial when I was a kid by sneaking out in the middle of the night and climbing up a six story electric transmission tower and taping an American flag to the top. And yes, that was crazy stupid - for a variety of reasons!

[Artemis]

For me I think Ripley was just the next logical step, after Teela (I saw Aliens when I was pretty young) - similarly kick-ass, but doesn't need He-Man because she's got a power loader. (I want a cartoon where Ripley can use her magic pulse rifle/flamer combo to summon a power loader, and Jones the cat turns into Battle Cat. Next time I watch Aliens I'll imagine the Queen with Skeletor's voice.)

Today (technically yesterday US time, but today in UTC) Neil Armstrong took his one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Also today in science (a bit earlier), Gus Grissom in Liberty Bell 7, the second manned Mercury mission, went to space and back, some time later the space shuttle Atlantis touched down after its final mission, bringing an end to the shuttle programme, and (not science) unfortunately someone back in 356 BC was careless where they were dropping their cigarette butts and burned down the Temple of Artemis. (On a personal note, I did spend a while some time ago building all seven of the ancient Wonders in my Minecraft world. The Great Pyramid took some time, but I did manage to finish it all, including the interior chambers and everything, although strictly speaking the real one doesn't have its northwest and northeast corners in a swamp and a forest respectively (I was in a desert when I started, I just wasn't paying attention to how big it'd end up being), and isn't hollow.

[Artemis]

Further to the above, I was a smartarse and put an image of a Silence on the sign at work instead of Armstrong. Nobody seems to have noticed; the one guy to mention it just asked whether yesterday wasn't the same one (Armstrong Outpost), but didn't seem interested in the seven foot tall alien. Then again, maybe he forgot it was there...