The Kitten, the Witches and the Bad Wardrobe - Willow & Tara Forever

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sat Aug 19, 2017 6:27 am 
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Leading off with a birthday today, and it's a big one (from my predictable point of view, anyway) Eugene "Gene" Wesley (yes, that's why Wesley Crusher) Roddenberry, aka 'the Great Bird of the Galaxy' (from a line in 'The Man Trap'), who started out studying police science, got interested in flying and became a pilot (aptly enough it's also National Aviation Day in the US today), enlisted with the air corps and flew B-17s during WWII (when he befriended a Chinese pilot named Noonien), flew commercial airliners for a while after, then joined the LAPD only to eventually leave again to pursue his dream of writing, initially scripts for various tv shows, then his own (The Lieutenant), and eventually, Star Trek (in which, wrapping up that anecdote, he named Khan Noonien Singh after his friend, in the hope that he'd hear about it and get in touch; sadly it never happened, although he tried again in TNG with Data's creator Noonien Soong). He passed away aged 70 in 1991, and was among the first to have their ashes carried into orbit (not unlike George Lucas he sort of became more of a nuisance than a benefit to his franchise in later years, and TNG only really took off once they promoted him out of being involved, but we love him anyway). Speaking of Star Trek, it's a happy birthday also to Jonathan Frakes aka Commander William T. Riker (the T is for Thomas, which was the name adopted by his identical double who was created by a transporter accident), and Diana Muldaur, who appeared a couple of times in the original series and came back as Dr. Katherine Pulaski in TNG (who among other traits somewhat obviously copied from Dr. McCoy, didn't trust transporters, gee I wonder why).

Also today quite a bit earlier, in 295 BC the first temple to Venus (goddess of love and beauty and so on, Aphrodite to the Greeks, Tara around here) was dedicated, and in 1848 the New York Herald mentioned that apparently gold had been found in California, and quite a few people took the hint and went to have a look for themselves. And lastly, in 1960 the Soviet Union launched two dogs, Belka and Strelka, into space aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2, and thankfully got them down safely again; Strelka later had puppies with another of the Soviet space programme dogs, one of which (Pushinka) was presented to John F JFK, and promptly seduced by Charlie, one of JFK's dogs, because that's how the JFK family rolls. Korabl-Sputnik 2 also carried a rabbit, a couple of rats, and 42 mice (which seems excessive, but maybe they knew something we didn't that only Douglass Adams later cottoned on to), none of which went on to get involved with the Kennedys so far as I can tell, but you never know.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sun Aug 20, 2017 6:15 am 
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Another important birthday today - Sylvester McCoy, the seventh Doctor, my personal favourite. "There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do." (Of course the best thing about him was that he had Ace with him.)

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Mon Aug 21, 2017 12:32 am 
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Today marks what wikipedia's evidently decided to call the Great American Eclipse - is that what everyone's calling it over there, or is it just wikipedia being dramatic? Fair enough though, it's pretty cool. Also today a bunch of sci-fi birthdays, starting with Carrie-Anne Moss - Trinity of course, currently Jeri Hogarth in the Defenders (just started watching that last night, and enjoying it, although once I realised it was a show about four warriors guided by an old martial arts master fighting a nefarious ninja clan in New York the TMNT jokes just wouldn't stop), and my favourite, the voice of Aria T'Loak, the 'pirate queen' of Omega, in Mass Effect. And also Kim Cattrall, who before she was sexy in the city sported cute ears but a weird haircut as Lt Valeris in Star Trek VI, and Basil Poledouris, whose epic score basically is Conan the Barbarian.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Mon Aug 21, 2017 11:50 pm 
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On this day in 1485 Richard III forgot where he parked his horse at the worst possible moment, resulting in House Plantagenet going home empty-handed from the being-in-charge championship, Shakespeare getting some useful material, and (my favourite) the name of the British chieftain in Asterix, Mykingdomforanos. And speaking of English monarchs regretting their decisions, Charles I kicked off the English Civil War today in 1642, although in his case things took a little longer than the afternoon to go properly pear-shaped for him. And in sci-fi as always, it's the birthday of Ray Bradbury (author of a big pile of sci-fi books with Fahrenheit 451 sitting on the top, although it's probably feeling a bit nervous about being on top of a big pile of books), Colm Feore (who I mainly like from Chicago, where he was the DA who got tap-danced around by Richard Gere in the trial, but he was also in Chronicles of Riddick), and Honor Blackman, who was in an episode of Doctor Who, but that's mainly just an excuse to say happy birthday Pussy Galore.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 12:41 am 
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Middle of the working week... although according to wikipedia, the 23rd of August is slightly less likely to occur on a Wednesday (or Monday) than on other days. They've got that note (more or less likely as appropriate) for every single day in the calendar; there may be such a thing as too much information. Although only slightly, because it's still fun to note that on this day in 1923 the first mid-air refuelling was performed, allowing Captain Lowell Smith's De Havilland DH-4B to set an endurance record of 37 hours, in 1966 Lunar Orbiter 1 turned its camera around and took the first photo of Earth from the Moon, and in 1973 Janne Olsson screwed up robbing a bank in Stockholm and ended up taking hostages, which led to the term 'Stockholm syndrome' ("As in Helsinki, Sweden." "...Finland.") And speaking of one notable thing emerging from what was otherwise a mess, the man behind Darth Maul, Ray Park, celebrates his birthday today, probably by doing a spinning flip and decapitating his cake (I mean, you'd hope so). And speaking of the guy who memorably offs the male lead (although quite a few more cast members than one in this case), it's also the birthday of the late Bolaji Badejo, who Ridley Scott picked to fill the 6'10" costume of the Alien, and yet another tenuous link, on the other side of the being-eaten-by-the-monster equation, Bob Peck, who played Robert 'clever girl' Muldoon in Jurassic Park.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Fri Aug 25, 2017 12:05 am 
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On this day... back in 1609 Galileo showed off this newfangled 'telescope' thingy to the Venetians, which among other things would give a nice close-up (relatively) view of Saturn, but not as good as the one from Voyager 2 today in 1981 as it buzzed past on its way to deep space (coincidentally, on the same day eight years later it buzzed Neptune; I remember that one); I've got the Saturn one on the sign in the store today. Also in space news, today in 1835 the New York Sun reported the discovery of an alien civilisation living on the moon, in an effort to boost sales - I'd like to say we're a bit less gullible nowadays, but for a laugh I put an image of Voyager 6, aka V'ger, on the sign, and apparently the people who've looked at it are okay with the idea that JPL was launching space probes the size of planets. Speaking of the Voyager family, today in 2012 Voyager 1 entered interstellar space (beyond the physical influence of the Sun), the first human-made object to do so; in another 300 years or so it'll reach the Oort Cloud, and we'll finally find out what those Oorts have been doing out there.

And apparently in the US it's both National Banana Split Day and National Whiskey Sour Day, so take your pick.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sat Aug 26, 2017 7:21 am 
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Eek, running late - but still time for the rest of the world to celebrate a bevy of sci-fi and related genre birthdays, including but not limited to Chris Pine (the Kelvinverse Captain Kirk, and really good at it, also excellent in Wonder Woman), Mike Colter (the one and only Power Man, Luke Cage), Michael Jeter (who was a crazy guy, but who wasn't, in Waterworld, which I have a kind of schlock admiration for), Brett Cullen (who had a fling with Dax in DS9's 'Meridian', can't blame him even though I was always more smitten with Kira) and Melissa McCarthy (Ghostbusters, which I still haven't gotten around to, but I'd quite like to). And just to throw in something historical, on this day in 1498 Cardinal Jean de Bilhères went up to Michelangelo and said "Hey Mikey, put the pizza down - I want a statue that everyone's going to copy any time they want to tragically kill some character off in art," and one handshake later Michelangelo went off to find a block of marble that looked likely for the Pietà.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 7:09 am 
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It's late (and freezing) tonight, but there's just enough of August 27th left to note the anniversary of the first flight of the Heinken He 178, the world's first jet aircraft - and on a personal note, the direct precursor to a bunch of German experimental doodads that appeared in 1991's Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, a WWII air combat game with an emphasis on (as you'd expect) the advanced aircraft that were starting to pop up just then (and thankfully, on the Nazi side, got stopped from being terribly effective against the Allies thanks to Hitler being a galloping moron and deciding he knew what the best way to use them was, even though he really didn't, most notably resulting in what could've been an unholy terror of a fighter interceptor being used as an indifferent dive bomber instead). Great game for its time, with a lot of research behind it - accurate interiors on all the planes (you could even fly the B-17s, and crew any of the stations on it), a heap of historical information in the manual (as was often the case back then, when manuals were more than a bit of paper saying 'if the game doesn't work, look up what to do on our website'), and even the option of flying missions from in real time and having to use only 'check your map and look out the window at the ground for landmarks' to navigate. Must've sunk hundreds of hours into SWotL all up.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sun Aug 27, 2017 8:55 pm 
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Science today - on this day in 1789 William Herschel turned his new toy, a 1.2m telescope that at the time was the largest in the world, towards Saturn and found Enceladus, which looks like a ball of ice, but it later turned out was quite a busy ball of ice with a colossal subsurface salty ocean and its own internal energy source (several theories as to what, but something's blasting volcanic geysers of salt water into space), and all in all a good chance that there are at least the preconditions for life there. Cassini-Huygens recently took a good look, and there are plans for more probe missions (although at the moment it seems like Europa's getting the attention).

In other outer space news, it's a happy birthday to Amanda Tapping, scientist extraordinaire and, as they increasingly played up Jack's book-dumbness for comedy, Daniel started spouting faux-zen mumbo jumbo, and T'ealc's dialogue consisted entirely of deadpan quips, apparently the only working brain in SG-1 on Stargate, and later Stargate Atlantis (they needed the ratings). Also Sanctuary, where she was the head of a global organisation that seemed to consist of about four people and a greenscreen, which studied and protected 'abnormals', eccentric forms of life which like X-Men make you wonder how humanity ever thought the world wasn't just a playground for every superpower you could imagine, since there's evidently thousands of voracious monsters and ancient civilisations and sexy earthquake spiders (it makes sense in context) hiding under every rock. Fun show though.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Mon Aug 28, 2017 11:55 pm 
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The end of the month approaches, and the end of winter, so naturally it's become really freakin' cold in the last few days. But everyone's warmed by the thought of boobs (what, I can be lowbrow), and on that note plus sci-fi it's happy birthday to Carla Gugino, among other things the voice of Kelor the Kryptonian robot serving the House of El in the opening of Man of Steel, and the first Silk Spectre in Watchmen (unfortunately, just don't bother watching the film, it's determinedly joyless), who first came to my attention when I was sitting through Sin City trying not to tune out due to everyone being a crappy person then dead, and she showed up in just a tiny thong with a handgun looking all badass (sadly she later got shot) - and also happy birthday to Lucia Naff, who played Lt Sonya Gomez on Star Trek: The Next Generation (she accidentally spilled her drink all over Picard) and the three-breasted woman in Total Recall (sadly she later got shot; movies need to treat their fanservice characters better, seriously). And also today, in 1831, Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, and so far as I can tell boobs weren't involved, so I guess we're done being lowbrow for now.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Wed Aug 30, 2017 12:02 am 
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Since a new challenge just started here, it's a fitting day to wish happy birthday to the dear departed Mary Shelley, who once took part in a 'hey, let's write a horror story to pass the time' challenge with a bunch of friends, and turned out Frankenstein (...; or, the Modern Prometheus, to complete the title), often said to be the first work of science fiction. Speaking of sci-fi (as always) it's also the birthday of Jessica Henwick, who popped up as one of the Sand Snakes (I forget which, they're too boring) in Game of Thrones, an X-Wing pilot in The Force Awakens, and (finally getting something worthwhile to do in genre stuff) is currently Colleen Wing in the Netflix Marvel universe, even if they have so far refused to give her red hair like Colleen should have; at least she kicks ass properly. And moving to science fact, today in 1984 the space shuttle Discovery took off on its maiden voyage, and closer to Earth in 1909 the Burgess Shale fossils were discovered, in which so many species from around 508 million years ago were preserved so well that they're still finding new ones faster than they can study them.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Thu Aug 31, 2017 5:39 am 
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On this final day of winter (or summer, depending on where you are, but probably not autumn or spring, unless your calendar needs tuning), let's wish a happy birthday to Jonathan LaPaglia, the reason every once in a while when I'm watching something on tv with a handful of friends who know what it means, and somebody on tv answers the phone, one of us will randomly say "Conundrum" and we'll all crack up laughing (Seven Days, if you're curious.) Also on this day, in 1422 King Henry V died of dysentery (which I only mention to see if anyone else immediately thinks of Oregon Trail), and in the US it's National Trail Mix Day, which... did you guys just start assigning days to foods until you'd filled up the entire calendar or something? (I just looked up 'list of food days' on wikipedia, and yeah, looks like - apparently we all do it, but the US is the only country that needed sub-headings for each month. Australia evidently just has one, National Burger Day on May 28th, which obviously we don't put much effort into awareness of...)

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Fri Sep 01, 2017 12:22 am 
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Today in history and confusing my customers: on this day in 2024 the population of San Francisco's Sanctuary District A rioted against the administrators of the District, which was supposed to provide shelter and job opportunities to homeless people but in fact were walled prisons to keep them out of sight of the rest of society. In what became known as the Bell Riots, rioters seized control of the District A government building and took its staff hostage, using its facilities to broadcast their stories to the rest of the country. Along with the conduct of Gabriel Bell, a resident of the district who protected the hostages from any violence during the riots and was killed shielding them from government troops opening fire as they stormed the building, the riots convinced the public to shut down the Sanctuary District program and care for the less fortunate within the community, not shut away out of sight. ...Back when the writers of Star Trek DS9 came up with that, it seemed far-fetched that things would get so bad; now it's the notion that they'd get better afterwards that's on shaky ground.

But let's have some cheerful random facts to brighten up the first day of spring (or autumn, whichever way the weather's facing where you are), on which in 1804 Karl Ludwig Harding discovered Juno, one of the larger asteroids in the Asteroid Belt (well, that's where you'd expect to find one), in 1974 the eternally cool-looking SR-71 Blackbird (if you're not up with military aircraft, it's the X-Men's jet) set a speed record for flying from New York to London in just under two hours which still stands, and in 1979 Pioneer 11 became the first human space probe to get a good close look at Saturn and its magnificent rings, from a distance of 21,000km, which is basically scraping the paintwork in space terms. Pioneers 10 and 11 were the first human-built objects to reach escape velocity from the solar system, and thus (on the off-chance someone out there found one of them) carried the famous Pioneer Plaques, with the sun spectrum and naked people on it. No telling whether Pioneer 11 will one day be picked up by curious extraterrestrials who'll pop by to see what the guy was waving about and why the woman looks so unimpressed, but Pioneer 10 was eventually found by the Klingon Bird of Prey commanded by Captain Klaa, who promptly vaporised it because he was bored and wanted some target practice. That's Klingons for you.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 6:25 am 
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On this day in 1666 the Doctor really should've hung around to make sure the locals put out the fire that sprung up in a bakery on Pudding Lane after a Terileptil weapon overloaded, but he'd probably have claimed something about Fixed Point In Time anyway. Speaking of mucking about with established history, today in 2011 the film Apollo 18 was released, a low-budget, often cheesy, but actually kinda cool and fun movie detailing the fate of the (undocumented) final Apollo mission to the moon (spoiler: things don't go well); if you like the while Blair Witch 'found footage' style, it's probably worth a watch, as seeing everything via astronaut helmet-cams is a nice break from the usual 'teenager carrying a handycam around' explanation. It's got the werewolf guy from Sanctuary in it too. And speaking of travelling through time in a phone box, it's a happy birthday to Keanu Reeves. And also Salma Hayek, who was in Wild Wild West, which is kinda sorta sci-fi, maybe, there was a big mechanical spider? I'm willing to entertain some pretty flimsy justifications in order to include Salma Hayek.

And since this food day thing is still a fun novelty to me, today is National Blueberry Popsicle Day. If you happen to eat a blueberry popsicle today, remember to stand at attention while doing so.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sun Sep 03, 2017 6:10 am 
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Today on National Welsh Rarebit Day (though not in Wales) - and also apparently Flag Day in Australia? First I've heard of it, but as a rule we don't so much celebrate our flag as argue about it - in 301 AD Saint Marinus founded San Marino, on the basis that it's not how big your republic it, it's how long it lasts, and he seems to be onto a good thing; in 1189 Richard the Lionheart was crowned at Westminster; and in 1976 NASA landed Viking 2 at Utopia Planitia on Mars, above which a few centuries later the massive Utopia Planitia Fleet Yards would launch USS Enterprise (1701-D, Picard's one, speaking of Richard the Lionheart (see Robin Hood: Men In Tights)), USS Defiant, and USS Voyager.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sun Sep 03, 2017 11:08 pm 
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Workplace safety reminder: if you're looking after a radioactive waste dump, try not to let a spaceship crash into it. Yup, on this day in 1975 audiences got their first taste of a very physics-defying future, as a freak accident on the moon caused an explosion which hurled it, along with the crew of Moonbase Alpha, into space fast enough to visit an alien planet every other week, in Gerry Anderson's Space: 1999 (for a truly convoluted link to W/T, see UberSmut). In other sci-fi-related news, today in 1966 Gene Roddenberry took 'Where No Man Has Gone Before', the second pilot episode (the one with Kirk in it) of Star Trek to show the World Science Fiction Convention in Ohio, who by all accounts became the world's first Trekkies in the process, it's a happy birthday to Beyoncé, or Senator Knowles as they know her on The Flash's Earth-2, and Patricia Tallman, who played Lyta Alexander in Babylon 5 and was a recurring stuntwoman/background cast in TNG and DS9 (seriously, like any time a female character in either show gets phasered or whatever, it's her in a wig). And of course, happy Macadamia Nut Day. And lastly, because the half of all this stuff that isn't from wikipedia comes straight from here, happy birthday to Google, founded in 1998.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Mon Sep 04, 2017 11:07 pm 
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Today in sci-fi - happy birthday to Andrew Probert, who amid other influential work on Star Trek designed the Enterprise D by accident (while he was doing the movies he did this 'future Enterprise' concept just for fun, and David Gerrold happened to notice it in passing when they were thinking about what the new ship for TNG should look like, while Probert was working on designing interior sets, so he wound up doing the outside of the Galaxy class as well as the inside), William Devane, who played the US president on Stargate, 24, and The Dark Knight Rises (sadly they didn't all have the same name, that'd be a weird shared universe to come up with), Michael Keaton speaking of Batman, Freddie Mercury of Queen and the epic Flash Gordon soundtrack, and Bianca Roe, who was a very badass Peacekeeper Disruptor in Farscape's 'Look at the Princess' trilogy. And going back a bit further, on this day in 1698 Peter the Great imposed a tax on beards (excluding those adorning the chins of peasants and the clergy), which sounds kind of comedic, but was actually part of his general westernisation of Russia, which turned out to be a really big deal historically. And lastly, today is National Cheese Pizza Day, so you all have the option either of being traditionalist Cheese Pizza Day followers and only eating cheese pizza, or liberal Cheese Pizza Day followers and just calling it near enough so long as the pizza has some cheese on it among other things. That makes it pretty easy, really.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 11:35 pm 
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And a happy National Coffee Ice Cream Day to various sci-fi birthday boys and girls, including Asgard Bridgekeeper Heimdall (Idris Elba), Starfleet Nurse (later Doctor) Alyssa Ogawa (Patti Yasutake), Tycho Station administrator Fred Johnson (Chad Coleman), the miniseries version of Chani from Dune (Barbora Kodetová), and the only guy on the bridge of Spaceball One who wasn't an asshole one way or another, Michael Winslow. And it's a big day in floating around history, with Columbus setting out across the Atlantic in 1492, Magellan's circumnavigation expedition (although not Magellan himself) getting back in 1522, and the pilgrims setting out on the Mayflower in 1620, although that last one only applies if you pretend we're still using the Julian calendar (it was actually the 16th), but I'm on a theme here so let's count it anyway. And lastly, in 1991 Leningrad changed its name back to St Petersburg, to the eternal annoyance of Trekkies who now had to come up with elaborate theories to explain why it's being called Leningrad again in the 23rd Century in Star Trek IV (although that's not quite as problematic as the dedication plaque of the starship Tsiolokovsky saying it was launched from the USSR).

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 12:05 am 
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Today it's a happy birthday to Mira Furlan, who one of the customers today actually recognised even though I used a picture of her in season one Minbari makeup from Babylon 5 (with no hair and the big bone wrapped around her head). And since I was randomly browsing wikipedia pages for cities last night, I have a Random Fact not related to today's date (or sci-fi), which is that I found out Sydney is the sister city of Nagoya, Wellington, Sibu, Portsmouth, Guangzhou, and San Francisco (where they have Starfleet Academy and HQ... alright, a bit sci-fi related after all), and Florence, and also is a 'friendship city' of Paris, Athens, Dublin, Berlin, and Wuhan. Not sure what being a friendship city entails, maybe it just means those cities can crash on our couch if they need to for a couple of nights.

I want to keep up the hilarious food day thing though, and today's a crowded one, with National Acorn Squash Day, National Beer Lovers Day, and National Salami Day. It's also National Threatened Species Day in Australia, if you want to eat one of those instead.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 11:27 pm 
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This is a big day, folks - on this very day in 1966, NBC broadcast the very first episode of Star Trek (...two days after Canadian TV had already shown it, but never mind) - which was actually the third episode, fourth if you count the pilot episode they didn't use, anyway, it was 'The Man Trap'. The starship Enterprise visits planet M-113 to do medical checkups on Dr Robert Crater and Nancy Crater- wait there were supposed to be only twelve starships exploring the whole frontier of Federation space, and they're tooling around making sure everyone's had their flu shots? (This sort of thing happened a lot - TNG especially, once you notice it it's difficult to ignore that a lot of the time the Enterprise is basically an Uber.) Adding tension to the mission, Nancy Crater is the former lover of... Doctor McCoy actually, it wasn't always Kirk. Adding even more tension, she starts drawing the Redshirts away from the group and murdering them. McCoy's dating history is weird.

And as it happens, after TOS ran its three seasons and the poor Redshirts thought they were finally safe, on this day in 1973 NBC put them back in peril with the debut of Star Trek: The Animated Series, which they actually managed to start with episode one this time, 'Beyond the Farthest Star'.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Fri Sep 08, 2017 10:03 am 
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Artemis wrote:
This is a big day, folks


You're right, it is, because IT'S WAVERLY EARP'S BIRTHDAY YA'LL

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:00 am 
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Happy birthday Waverly :bigwave (Just googled her and found out she's in Age of Ultron as well, she's the one who gets separated from her brother when they're all boarding the evacuation boats and Hawkeye has to go get him.)

Today it's another show debut - after first appearing in cinemas back in March, today in 1985 was the tv debut of She-Ra: Princess of Power, with episode one of The Sword of She-Ra: Into Etheria. Prince Adam's bakery masterclass gets interrupted by the Sorceress, who gives him the Sword of Protection and shoves him through a magic interdimensional portal without answering any of his questions about where it goes or what he's supposed to do, despite later episodes making plain that she knew perfectly well. Gotta keep Adam on his toes though. He immediately gets into a fight with some Horde troopers (who are drinking in a bar, since they hadn't entirely nailed down the 'they're robots' bit of them yet), in the process making friends with Bow, whose hips he tenderly holds as they ride off together. Speaking of:

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sun Sep 10, 2017 6:03 am 
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Another sci-fi (ish in the case of She-Ra) premiere, today in 1993 we met Agents Mulder and Scully for the first time in The X Files, a bizarre and compelling glimpse into a world where governments were actually capable of conducting elaborate multi-decade conspiracies without screwing the whole thing up in the first couple of weeks. Fun fact for the less geeky, Mulder and Scully's spiritual successors have appeared in two separate sci-fi franchises: in the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade as two aliens (one with conspicuous red hair-tendrils) convinced that their government has been conspiring with extraterrestrials (i.e. us, or at least Gary Cole in that case), and in Star Trek DS9, where we met Agents Dulmer and Lucsly of the Department of Temporal Investigations, who have to conduct interviews and fill in all the paperwork every time Starfleet officers accidentally travel back in time and mess around with history.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sun Sep 10, 2017 11:45 pm 
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Well, here we are at September 11... but y'know what, let's have some fun stuff that happened today. In 1997 NASA's Mars Global Surveyor arrived in Martian orbit (as you'd expect from the name) and over the next five years carried out a massive global mapping mission, as well as (continuing for five more years after its own mission was done) being the local robot buddy of every other Mars orbiter and surface rover mission that needed someone to watch their back and/or telemetry. And on sci-fi/fantasy birthday watch we have Tyler Hoechlin, who occasionally pops in as Superman in the Supergirl TV series, Elizabeth Henstridge, one half of Fitzsimmons on Agents of SHIELD, Susan Gibney, who visited the Enterprise and got hit on by Geordi in an episode that came out a lot creepier than I think the writers intended, but had revenge (as a different character) later in DS9 when she helped stage a coup to take over Earth (she changed her mind, though), and Roxann Dawson, USS Voyager's B'Ellana Torres, who we love despite one episode having conclusively proven that the 'genius engineer' cannot identify shit (literally) even with a tricorder. Nobody got out of Voyager unscathed, it's not her fault.

And it's Hot Cross Bun Day. You'd think that'd be closer to Easter, really.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Mon Sep 11, 2017 11:07 pm 
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The daily sign in the store has been temporarily displaced by a 'vote yes' sign - if you weren't aware, we're going to be having a postal vote on gay marriage, no sorry, a postal survey, because obviously our elected leaders couldn't do anything so earth-shattering as let people get married if they want to without spending a couple of million dollars asking if people think that's a good idea or not, but not making it a plebiscite that would actually mean they'd have to do anything about the result... it's all very stupid (and on the topic of propaganda being spouted by certain segments of the 'no' campaign, disgusting), but this is what we're doing now.

Anyway I'm fairly certain Kittens don't need a reminder that equal rights for gay people is a good idea, so you all get to continue to be subject to random nerdery on a daily basis. Yay? On this day in 2015 the United Earth Oceans Organisation launched seaQuest DSV 4600, the largest submarine ever built, 700 metres long, top speed almost 300km/h, and a crew of over 200, including a talking dolphin. Her ongoing mission, to explore strange new ocean floors, to seek out new life (they did find it a few times) and new civilisations (not so much, but they stumbled across the sunken ruins of a couple of old ones), and to give Bob Ballard something to talk about on a weekly basis. Ignore season two and super-ignore season three, but seaQuest season one is a really fun slice of 90s sci-fi. And speaking of ingenious technology, today is also the birthday of the late and much missed Desmond Llewelyn, who played MI6's Major Boothroyd, better known as Q, James Bond's ever-reliable source of exploding pens, tricked-out cars, and withering sarcasm, and speaking of withering sarcasm, Gideon Emery, the voice of Fenris the extremely disgruntled elf from Dragon Age 2.

It's also the United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation, and what with the peculiar name I went to the UN's relevant page to find out the south of what, and so far as I can tell, it seems like just 'the south' generally. South of the planet, I guess. And of course it's National Chocolate Milkshake Day, but only in the US, and since that's north of the equator we can't help you get your milkshake today, you're on your own.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Tue Sep 12, 2017 11:26 pm 
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My mistake, it's not a couple of million dollars, it's a hundred million dollars. Honestly...

Anyway, speaking of dumb ways of putting off dealing with issues that should've been solved a long time ago, on this day in 1999 the nuclear waste dump on the moon exploded and hurled it out of orbit, as detailed a week ago when I was talking about the premiere of Space: 1999; I guess they couldn't quite line it up so the episode aired on the same day it was set, give or take a couple of decades. Aptly enough though, it's also Barbara Bain's birthday (she was one of the leads in the show, if you haven't seen it). And while not actually having been 'born' today (he'd already appeared in Donkey Kong and Mario Bros), today in 1985 saw the launch of Super Mario Bros, kicking off a gaming empire with what at the time was a genuinely revolutionary platformer, and on the subject of over-achieving Italians, today in 1501 Michelangelo put chisel to marble to start work on David.

And it's National Chocolate Day, if you've got any left after making milkshakes yesterday. For those of us outside the US, World Chocolate Day was July 7, which I shall now refer to as metric Chocolate Day.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Wed Sep 13, 2017 10:58 pm 
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We're a little bit over a day from Cassini taking its final flying dive into Saturn, so on the subject of space probes nosediving into extraterrestrial bodies, today in 1959 it happened for the first time ever, with the Soviet Union's Luna 2 adding one more crater to the moon (Luna 1 was meant to, but missed) - and on the subject of Russians (kind of) in space, happy birthday to Walter Koenig, best known as Pavel Chekov (and also ruthless Psi-Cop Alfred Bester on Babylon 5, if you're curious what he's like when he's not doing the accent). And also, by stringing references together, Sam Neill, who was a Russian in The Hunt for Red October (as much as anyone was, anyway, but when you're in a submarine with Sean Connery it's not difficult to seem like the more authentically Russian one), and went into space in Event Horizon (and given what happened, probably regretted it as much as Luna 2 did when it realised it wasn't slowing down).

And it's National Peanut Day, so if you're looking for a reason to rewatch It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, there you go.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Thu Sep 14, 2017 11:38 pm 
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In the midst of watching Cassini edge ever closer to Saturn (well, 'edge' at 50,000 km/h, but space is big, as the Hitch-Hiker's Guide explains), today in history saw another doomed space venture (not on purpose this time), as the crew of the Jupiter 2 found their spaceship sabotaged by the villainous Dr. Smith in the 1965 pilot episode of Lost in Space; one year later things weren't going so well for the crew of the SS Antares, who had their ship blown to bits by a petulant Charlie Evans after delivering him to the Enterprise (the Thasians, who'd given Charlie his reality-warping powers, undid all the damage he'd done while on board the Enterprise, but didn't bother bringing the Antares back; it sucks being a cargo ship in Star Trek). And closer to home both literally and figuratively, in 2000 the Olympic Games were opened here in Sydney, and somewhat miraculously weren't screwed over by September weather, which was a really big gamble, believe me. No way I'd have been able to afford tickets to the ceremony, but a bunch of us from uni did go see some of the rowing, which was fun. And speaking of daily life in Australia, happy birthday to the current Mad Max, Tom Hardy (who was also Unintelligible Sean Connery Impression Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, and Picard's young Romulan clone in Star Trek: Nemesis, which he doesn't like to talk about, and fair enough, although none of it was his fault).

And hopefully you've been working up an appetite, because it's simultaneously the National Days of Crème de Menthe, double cheeseburgers, linguine, and cheese toast.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
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Random fact for September 16 - it's my birthday! Also, as it happens, the day (some years earlier) the first photocopier was demonstrated by Xerox, which led among other things to me having my job now (it's a pretty good one, they leave me alone and don't care that I write stories while the printers are running). And it's National Guacamole Day, which is also appropriate, since one of my childhood toys was a stuffed mole named Guacamole.

And if you'll indulge me getting all self-referential in the random facts thread, today's as good a day as any to mention Daia, my Mass Effect roleplay character, who I spent a couple of years with (and since it's as good a date as any, I gave her my birthday too, although she was born in 1788 - asari live a long time). As well as providing an avenue to interact with the wonderful Mass Effect galaxy more substantially than is available to Commander Shepard in the games, Daia also let my tendency towards trivial background details flourish to ridiculous extremes (hence the whole wiki that's basically just background for her), so in a sense she's kind of my patron saint of random facts.

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 Post subject: Re: Random Facts
PostPosted: Sat Sep 16, 2017 2:01 pm 
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Happy Birthday Chris!

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