sffd

Via Super Punch, we are directed to a joyful and pure interview a San Francisco Chronicler reporter conducted with a gentleman who bought a tiny, retired Japanese fire truck (see also) during the pandemic at auction and had it shipped to the city—where it has become a welcome sight on the streets, like an exchange student. Bringing the fully-functional vehicle called Kiri overseas seems like it would have presented several expensive logistical hurdles, but the adoptive owner assures that the intimidating factors dissolve once one actually embarks on such an acquisition and would encourage others to do the same.

your daily demon: paimon

The ninth spirit on the Calendar of Demonology is the infernal great king known for his loyalty and obedience to Lucifer and presents as a man mounted on a dromedary camel proceeded by a parade of spirits under his command, governing from today until 4 May. Formerly of the angelic rank of dominions, Paimon is countered by Haziel and has power over fish, can conjure up any number of useful armaments and compel thieves to return to the scene of a crime.

geomancy

Via Things Magazine, we learn that phantom islands and trap streets may be making a resurgence in an awful and insurmountable way with deepfake satellite imagery, with making a Potemkin neighbourhood be it for misrouting traffic, boosting property value, lowering tax liability or for disguising a nuclear refinement plant or concentration camp an easier task that creating a passably convincing human—not to mention undermining useful demographics and economic trends that can be gleaned by such monitoring as well as engendering distrust in what previously was accepted as irrefutable evidence. Artificial intelligence and generative adversarial networks are able to create virtual empires and dystopias to dupe us all.

colin’s bear revisited

Andy Baio at Waxy noticed a viral resurgence of an animated dance moves of a thirteen-year-old short clip, rediscovered and remixed though sadly without any deference to the creator—which Baio seeks to remedy the record by recontextualising and exploring the evolution of the meme that untethered certainly carries the sentiment idk—ive never seen the show its from. Whatever iteration you prefer, you can make your own joyful celebration of International Dance Day, held annually of this day, marking the birthday (1727) of Jean-Georges Noverre, creator of modern ballet.

midden-aarde

First spied by Super Punch, we are referred to a nice appreciation of the recently departed, prolific Dutch artist Cor Blok (*1934), particularly well known in the Netherlands for illustrating J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (In de ban van de Ring) in the early 1960s.

Later creating a tapestry out of Middle Earth’s characters to showcase his repetoire, Blok went on to become docent of the school of modern art at the University of Utrecht from 1977 to 1999, retiring as professor emeritus at the University of Leiden.

billiard balls & bowling green bowles, turnt correctly

We quite enjoyed perusing these antique furniture trade cards (see previously) from the shops and emporia of old London—reportedly discovered in a secret drawer of a hypothetical cabinet. There are carpenters and casket-makers, upholsters as well as looking-glass and chair manufacturies. 

cul-de-sac

Via Messy Nessy Chic, we learn of one committed flâneur (passante, flâneuse) and her mission to document a sizeable portion of the more than six-hundred impasses—blind-alleys, dead-ends of the pedestrian streets of Paris, offering a unique and probably often overlooked perspective on the city’s arrondissements. Find out more about Karin Borghouts’ personal projects at the link above.

the planet on the plate

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we are directed towards the announcement of one influential cooking website that going forward (the policy change has been essential in effect for over a year to overwhelmingly positive reception) won’t promote any new recipes with beef as an ingredient—the decision based on sustainability and “not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offender.” Rather than being anti-cow, Epicurious—whom hope others follow—acknowledges that giving up meat alone is not a panacea for our predicament and that in a broken food system, soy, seafood and most everything else is potentially problematic but it’s definitely a start and a signal to the industry at large.

origin story

Rather pleased with this new knowledge, we garnered a bit of insight into the etymology of company names and brand identities (see also) and learned that the first web mail, e-mail accessible via the internet from any computer with one’s log-on credentials, was called Hotmail for its inclusion of the initialism for Hypertext Mark-up Language and originally stylised as HoTMaiL. Acquired by Microsoft, those domain addresses are now supported by Outlook servers. The graphics card manufacturer NVIDIA comes from the Roman concept of invidia, envy in the sense of “looking upon” with the evil eye and feeling objectified and offending. There are aspirational, folk etymologies attached to legacy brands as well, like with MG Cars, from Morris Garages, now under new ownership that tout the label as “Modern Gentlemen.”

dr mabuse, der spieler

The first cinematic treatment of the character Dr Mabuse the Gambler, adapted from the novels of Norbert Jacques, had its opening on this day in 1922. 

The four-and-a-half hour spectacle by Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou was released in two parts a month a part with the sequels The Testament of Dr Mabuse following eleven years later and The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse coming nearly three decades after that. A criminal mastermind and mob boss oversees the counterfeiting and illicit betting in the underworld of Berlin, Dr Mabuse sets out to take on higher stakes than his organised crime racket and manipulates the stock market through short-selling and takes advantage of the panic to amass his fortunes.

nik of time

With a different sort of Sputnik with its attributed suffix being in the news again, we rather enjoyed this shared correction, letter to the editor that disputes the etymology that credits the pioneering Soviet satellite with enriching the English language with the terms peaceniks, beatniks and no-goodniks, whereas first usage of the formulation precedes the orbit by decades, with H. L. Mencken mentioning –nic or –nick as part of the lexiography as a suffix indicating free agency with examples including a boastful upstart in Allrightnick and a victim of tuberculosis in a consumptionick. Judging by the above and number of comments garnered, the claims and counter-claims (the truth is probably somewhere in between) are a good illustration of the phenomenon called Cunningham’s Law. The idiom‘s nick is an archery term and referring to the nock or notch of a bow that holds the bowstring.

native land

Via the morning news, we discover this interactive map of the world, which instead of the usual geopolitical boarders and boundaries rather presents us with overlays of the territories and ranges of indigenous peoples. One can toggle to see native endonyms and treaties between aboriginal populations and colonisers and settlers, encouraging one to think critically about place and displacement.

saint zita

Also known by her unofficial cult following in England as Sitha by domestics there, Zita of Lucca (†1227) whose feast is celebrated today was servant girl to a cruel household that beat and berated her incessantly despite working hard and without stint and her charity and even respect for the family she worked for.

Zita’s perseverance through faith in the face of challenges gradually turned the her family and others in the circle towards charity and piety and ultimately garnered a Cinderella-like reputation with angelic host helping her with the chores. In remembrance of Zita feeding the numerous poor people of the city with her meagre ratio of bread alone, the people of Lucca bake Zita Loaves on this day and she is venerated as the patron of maids, butlers and wait-staff and sought for intercession in recovering lost keys and like household objects.

there’s just a big cock on the cover

Though reportedly not due to a printing error but rather a noble gesture not to obscure a photographic talent nor besmirch the dignity of the subject—we learn from our faithful chronicler, the only issue of LIFE magazine without the signature corner red-and-white logo (as with sister publication TIME) was on newsstands on this day in 1937. To do so, editors reasoned, would have spoiled the framing and composition of Torkel Körling’s (*1903 – †1998, a prolific industrial and nature photographer who also invented the collapsing, portable tripod and the forerunner of the single-lens reflex camera) cover portrait of a splendid white leghorn rooster with a finely detailed cockscomb—the periodical being young still and not beyond the reproach of breeching a tradition.

7x7

and the oscar goes to: highlights and surprises from the 2021 Academy Awards  

zauberwald: Robert Mertl’s forest photographer captures the aesthetic I aim for during my woodland walks  

canzone russa italianizzata: the Russian Italo-Pop musical stylings of Alla Pugacheva  

cards against humanity: the brilliantly sullen poetry of John Giorno  

yahoo the destroyer: maligning the cannibalised early internet for contributing to the Digital Dark Ages via Waxy—plus a different approach to archiving going forward  

the trouble with tribbles: marketing Flatcat as one’s next robotic feline companion  

art of the title: film lettering over the decades

maughold

Venerated on this day in the Roman Catholic Church (31 July on the Anglican calendar), the late fifth century saint also known as Mawgan or Macc Cuill is the patron saint of the Isle of Man, was an Irish princeling of sorts and leader of a band of marauding freebooters who frequently derided Patrick and Brigid and their followers as fools and simpletons. According to one local legend, wanting to expose Patrick as a charlatan, Maughold presented a living man in a shroud and presented him to saint to revive and restore to life, only to find out that their decoy had in fact died in the interim. Patrick later resurrected him, and impressed and repentant, Maughold followed the advice to leave his career of piracy and to make amends for his past behaviour by committing himself to the mercy of the elements in a wicker boat set out to sea. The boat drifted to the Isle of Man, coming to rest in the pictured coastal headland, and a Christian community already established by Patrick’s disciples and was eventually acclaimed bishop.

mappi mundi

On this day in 1507, humanist and cartographer Martin Waldseemüller—whom also went by the Latinised form of his name Hylacomylus (forest-lake miller)—together with his collaborator Matthias Ringmann, published their map featuring the new world, significantly portraying South America as a continent separate from Asia and naming portions of the New World America after explorer Amerigo Vespucci. The academy that Waldseemüller and Ringmann founded in Saint-Dié with the patronage of the Duke of Lorraine came in possession of a booklet that gave a rather heroic and sensational account of the voyages of Vespucci in the western Atlantic and the two scholars carried forward that credit in a short treatise with atlases and a world map as a primer on cosmography (Cosmographiæ Introductio) that spanned from the familiar to the antipodes that were predicted in Antiquity. Ringmann actually, persuasively championed the toponym America, arguing: “I see no reason why anyone could disaaprove of a name derived of that Amerigo, the discoverer and a man of sagacity—with suitable forms being Amerige, meaning land of Amerigo, or America, especially since both Europe and Asia have women’s names.” Europa was raped by Zeus in the form of a bull and gave birth to the Minotaur. Hesione was a Trojan princess and distressed damsel for Hercules to save from a sea monster and blamed indirectly for the Trojan War—Hercules helping himself to the fine horses that Zeus sent in compensation for the abduction of Ganymede and causing strife among the gods. Classically referred to as Libya, Africa was considered to have a feminine ethnonym as well. The original world map was believed lost until a copy was found in Schloss Wolfegg in Austria in 1901 and purchased by the US Library of Congress (pictured)—though other uncut gores to be assembled into globes survive.

guerrilla greening

Via Colossal, a Honolulu-based design consortium imagines the transformation of some of the iconic urban corridors of world cities transformed through an aggressive and transfixing shift away from the concrete jungle to something living and sympathetically breathing with us. Learn more about their work and the study that’s gone into these visualisations at the link above.

robigalia

One of a number of Roman celebrated during this time of year to ensure a good growing season and bountiful harvest, the feast of the for the god Robigus was held on this day in the agricultural outskirts of the city.
The god, which was designated as the divine representation of fungal blight or rust needed to be propitiated in order to ensure that the crops wouldn’t spoil in the fields. Understood as a separate, corrupt manifestation of the same infestation that could be harnessed for fermentation, the games held at this time with their attendant feasts (see also) were also marked by rather dark sacrifices that expressed their anxieties over crop failure—especially for one this late in the growing seasons that wouldn’t be easy to recover from. Whereas animal sacrifice generally was reserved for livestock that was part of the Roman diet and was shared in a communal meal, Robigalia rather gruesomely demanded a dog with a red coat—that matched the rust disease—as form of homeopathic magic.
Other observations included a celebration of—for whatever reason—of male sex-workers, professional female prostitution having had their own honours in the previous days, specifically on Vinalia urbana, the grape harvest on 23 April. Though without the cruel bits, thankfully—or the fun bits either, I suppose, the holiday is preserved in Western Christianity with the same day of prayer and fasting known as Rogation (from the Latin to beseech—to ask God for protection from calamity) and was done to cleanse the body and mind in anticipation of the Ascension and farmers often had priests bless their crops, often holding mass and processionals in the fields.

pecunia non olet

Via the always engaging Everlasting Blört, we find ourselves educated in the rather fascinating and sensical history of the Roman taxation scheme on human urine. Left to mellow and oxide, the substance undergoes a chemical transformation into ammonia not only useful for nitrogen-fixing in fertilisers but also as a cleaning-agent and detergent for laundry, oral hygienic and the dyeing of textiles. Levied during the reigns of Nero and Vespasian, the collection garnered the titular phrase that money does not stink, though the onerous and unpopular Vectigal Urinæ soon garnered detractors and has the lasting legacy in the public pay-toilets in some Romance-language places—France, Italy and Romania—referring to urinals, pissoirs as vespasiennes. The emperor’s son Titus objected to funding the Empire by such means and presented him with a gold coin, asking does this offend—to which Titus replied in the negative, “Atqui ex lotio est”—Yet it comes from the cesspool.

your daily demon: barbatos

This infernal grand duke rules thirty legions of spirits with four subordinate companies of kings in his control—governing from today through 29 April, when the Sun is in Sagittary (☉♐︎, the constellation of the Centaur within Taurus). Formerly of the angelic rank of Virtues, this demon that presents as a wizened, bearded man as his name implies (Latin barbatus), retains insight of all things past, present and future and holds the office of interpreting the singing of birds and other animal calls and cries and seeing through the enchantment of other. Barbatos is countered with the angel Cahetel.

antimeridian

Courtesy of the New Shelton wet/dry, we are directed towards this helpful and thorough-going comparative resource of map projections (see previously here, here and here) from Jason Davies that covers the range of interrupted maps, two-dimensional flatten of the globe focused on choice areas of less interest that go far beyond the Spilhaus or transverse Mercator projection that’s a favourite television news studio wall-hanging to butterfly maps, the Berghaus Star, Foucaut’s Stereographoc equivalency globe, the loxodrome and the pictured geopolitical bounding box with animation and interactive features.

situationist international

Though better-known by the later stages of the collective’s existence for developing the principles of dérive and psycho-geography, the burgeoning group of avant-garde artists and social revolutionaries formed in the late 1950s garnered public attention and some herostratic fame on this day in 1964 by decapitating the landmark bronze located on a waterside promenade in Copenhagen, the Little Mermaid, the first act in a long line of vandalism towards this poort statue motivated by various reasons. Radically left-leaning and convinced that the capitalism that Karl Marx had sought to redress, the Situationists—especially during this formative political period, was becoming more pervasive and all-encompassing and that the estranging forces of commodity fetishism were fast encroaching on every aspect of life and culture, helping limn and inform the summer of unrest and insurrection of Paris in May of 1968.

the best laid plants

Featuring just like on my window ledge at my work-week apartment a Money Plant next to a Calathea Rattlesnake (Goeppertia), we were intrigued and quite enjoyed exploring this helpful guide, brilliantly illustrated for caring for our household botanical friends. Via ibīdem, How Many Plants features quite a voluminous identification and upkeep section and will even let one assemble a fantasy league of potted-plants should space have become an issue though one can never have too many.

mind the gap

The always engrossing Things Magazine refers us to the historic preservation work of photographer Matthew Chattle whose been scouring the pavement and floors for decals and stencils that caution people to practice safety in queuing and maintain a social distance, the sphere of our personal space having expanded significantly and perhaps begins to contract again now that we seem to have a better handle on the pandemic. Scuffed and worn, these ghost markers will hopefully completely disappear with this awful pestilence.

harder, better, faster, funkier

Via the Awesomer, we are treated to the musical repertoire of Scary Pockets with their rendition of the Daft Punk (previously) standard with a talkbox monologue and Hessische Rundfunk’s Frankfurt Radio Big Band for some brassy accents. Find out more about this collaboration and sample a whole range of performances at the link above.

you can’t stop us

Courtesy of Colossal, we were quite impressed with the precision, seamless editing behind this split-screen montage of athletes, which references the concatenated splicing work of Donato Sansone, whose juxtaposition speaks to the resilience and compelling camaraderie of sports. More at the links above.

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the harry lime theme

Also known as the above, the zither instrumental from the soundtrack to the 1949 Graham Greene film The Third Man (previously) by Anton Karas became the best-selling single in the US following its theatrical release there on this day in 1950, remaining at the top of the charts for eleven weeks. A guitar version by Guy Lombardo plus three other separate covers were also commercial successes that same year. Long in Karas’ repertoire, he described it as the sort of warm-up music played in a café that no one stops to listen to.

twenty skies

Usually when taking a picture of clouds or the sunset, the last things one wants to see is the fimbriation of power-lines breaking up one’s vista but after seeing this clever collage, like a stained-glass window, building on such disruptions from Alex Hyner, I feel inspired to go out and look for a utility mast with cables breaking up the frame and add in some composite firmament (see also) from other times and places. More to explore at the links above.

din 5009

The Institute for German Standardisation (Deutsches Institut für Normung) has been urging for the reform of the Sprachraum’s radio spelling alphabet (with the DIN assignment above, see previously) for some time. Though lobbying efforts yielded a major overhaul in the mid 1960s to make the official version less gendered and jingoistic, there are choice relics in it such as S wie (as in) Siegfried instead of Samuel as it originally was, Nordpol rather than Nathan, Otto for Oscar or Dora over David to eliminate names that could be construed as Jewish. Though the protocols are still being debated and the civil German use is a bit more improvised than its counterparts (p wie pseudonym), the consensus now to not let the Nazis have the last word is to use city names—W wie Wiesbaden statt Wilhelm, A wie Augsburg statt Anton.

sticky fingers

Released on this day in 1971, recorded two Decembers hence in Muscle Shoals Alabama, the eleventh studio album by the Rolling Stones (previously) with songs Wild Horses, Brown Sugar and Sister Morphine, was quite unsubtle in terms of innuendo with a cover showing a tightly denim clad crotch—that was the subject of censorship in many markets, like in Franco’s Spain where it was released as Can of Fingers or in the USSR where a Soviet military uniform was modelled by a female.
The LP version’s fly had a functional zipper—which was mid-way unzipped prior to distribution as customers were scratching the vinyl if zipped all the way up. Packaging designed by Andy Warhol—notably the liner-notes also featuring the first appearance of the iconic lips and tongue logo, postponed its premiere but the band was enthusiastic about the concept. Mistakenly I had assumed the image was of Mick Jagger when in reality it was a random, cast-off photograph Warhol had recently taken of one of his pet superstars, underground actor Joe Dallesandro (*1948)—who in addition to this cultural artefact, became a street hustling icon and sex symbol—serenaded in a verse of Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” about Warhol’s Factory workers in general, as Little Joe. The album topped the charts in the US a month later.

halfway between the gutter and the stars

Featuring Bootsy Collins, the accompanying music video for the Big Beats artist Fatboy Slim’s 2000 “Weapon of Choice,” reprised on the occasion as a stand-alone single, directed by Spike Jonze, was first aired on this day in 2001. Depicting Christopher Walken dancing around an empty lobby, the choral refrain of “You could blow with this or you could blow with that” references the Native Tongues’ “The Choice is Yours”—the titular album an homage to Oscar Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (“some of us are looking at the stars”) and the lyric advising to “walk without rhythm and it won’t attract the worm” quotes Frank Herbert’s establishing novel.

9x9

carbon footprint: mining is a dirty business

kiki.object: a feminist manifesta for block-chain  

bat stuck in hell: recently departed songwriter Jim Steinman’s unproduced Batman musical 

the gates of paradise: William Blake’s (previously) perpetual cycle of birth and re-birth   

the singing, ringing tree: not to be confused with this other etherial perennial, panoptica in the Pennine Hills of Lancashire

the hawking index: an unscientific survey of popular titles’ rate of abandonment by the clustering or spread of their highlighted text 

this is the type of errant pedantry up with which i will not put: a proposal that the past particle of choose should properly be corn  

project ceti: ground-breaking attempt to decode whale language—see also—via Slashdot  

fourth rock from the sun: Martian rover Perseverance extracts breathable oxygen from the planet’s surface soil

uncaptioned

The archivists at the US Library of Congress regularly put out campaigns to identify mysterious photographs, with happily an ever-dwindling cache to solve, but there are a few that still defy an engaged public and persons yet at-large. Among the malingerers is this assumptively familiar, famous and iconic image that has accrued a sizeable largess of misidentification and wrong guesses from Joan Jett to The Slits and all manner of duos in between. More puzzles to untangle at the link above and all guesses are welcome.

doppelhaushälften

Via Present /&/ Correct, we quite enjoyed meditating on this series of larger family properties converted into duplex units in the heavily industrialised region of the Ruhrgebiet (previously) as captured by photographer Wolfgang Fröhling as a consequence of the departure of the younger generation as mining and factories close and are repurposed. The defiantly contrasting exteriors of the cleaved homesteads draws one into the lives of the respective residents. More at the links above.

another one rides the bus

Hosted by news anchor and television personality Tom Snyder, the late night programme The Tomorrow Show, airing on NBC from 1973 to 1982, had several prominent guests including John Lennon, Ken Kesey, The Grateful Dead, Ayn Rand and Charles Manson—giving national exposure and their first televised performance to U2 and Weird Al Yankovic, who appeared on this day in 1981. The network often used the show to plug holes in late night scheduling, including conducting an impromptu ninety minute interview with Jerry Lewis in October of 1975 to cover over technical delays until Snyder could interrupt the conversation to introduce the “Not Ready for Primetime Players”—later to be recognised as the first cast of Saturday Night Live.

7x7

one man’s trash: a preview (plus whole film) of a documentary about spelunking in New York City’s garbage  

dare mighty things: Martian rover Perseverance (previously) conducts first test flight of its airfoil drone

distant drums: the ‘Wilhelm Scream’—the stock effect of a man being eaten by an alligator  

personnage: the almond and pebble that inspired Joan Miró’s sculpture  

palace of culture: a choreographed tour of Lithuania’s Socialist Modernist architecture  

moon unit: Space X awarded NASA contract for lunar lander for the upcoming Artemis mission  

pegged: artist Helga Stentzel (previously) creates a clothes-line polar bear to raise awareness for climate change

the long and the short of it

We enjoyed this grand tour of the continent through superlative toponymy—with of course the crowning achievement for the longest placename being a village in Wales (pro pronunciation help here), but we also get to visit Italy’s contender on the shores of Lake Maggiore and the pictured postcard from the Dutch village of Gasselternijveenschemond plus a few one-letter wonders through a variety of art and artefacts from the collections of a Europe-wide consortium of museums.

reeperbahn

We quite enjoyed this peek into the industries of rope-making and yarn-spinning that gave Cable Street of the East End and Whitechapel through the lens of the late eighteenth century company of the Frost Brothers when it was documented in illustrations and photographs in 1905. Like the above-titled way in Hamburg, the area began as a straight grounds where hemp fibres were twisted into ropes for the ships that would anchor on the Thames between London Bridge and the kilns at Limehouse.

your daily demon: amon

Ruling from today through 24 April, the first degrees into the House of Taurus, this seventh spirit is an infernal marquis presenting as a fire-breathing wolf with a serpent’s tail but will assume human form if compelled by his sigil and facilitates the reconciliation of feuds and smooths relationships between friends. His name is thought to be a conflation of the Punic (Carthage) deity Baal-hamon, he who induces to eagerness, though others source him as the Egyptian sun god Amun Ra, the deified pharaoh and his later fusion with hawk-headed Horus. Countered by the angel Achaiah, Amon commands forty legions.

1600 pennsylvania avenue

Via friends of the blog Everlasting Blört and Nag on the Lake we are treated to the changing interior touches that each new US presidential administration (see also) brings to the executive office, the Oval Office completed during renovations in 1909, and the choice of art, artefacts and personal effects have a symbolic resonance. The vignettes tied to each presidency as told in décor are pretty interesting—like how Dwight Eisenhower kept the furnishings of his predecessor Harry S. Truman without any significant changes other than managing to destroy the floor by neglecting to take off his golf spikes when returning from the putting green he had put on the back lawn. The tradition of keeping Swedish ivy on the mantle goes back to the Kennedy administration and the current runner was rooted from the original vine.  More at the links above.

shake shack

In the aftermath of the April 1906 earthquake and subsequent fires that ravaged San Francisco over five thousand refugee shelters were constructed to replace the tent cities that emerged in Golden Gate Park and other areas to prevent a follow-on public health crisis. Most of the sturdier habitations—cottages (it reminds us of this image) for which tenants paid a $2 per month rent—have been demolished over the ensuing century but at least a few dozen remain, conserved by a following of dedicated residents. More from JWZ and the San Francisco Chronicle at the link above.

timelapse

Via Kottke’s Quick Links, we discover the latest suite of features from Google Earth—which has been giving us a privileged perspective on our planet for fifteen years now—includes a chronological dial that allows one to peer into the past four decades of satellite telemetry with a cache of some twenty-four million archived images (see also here and here) to better visualise the toll that de-forestation, desertification, intensive mining and agriculture, urban-sprawl, pollution and global warming takes on the environment.

cinematic titanic

Starring Rex Reason, Faith Domergue and Jeff Morrow, the 1955 sci-fi vehicle This Island Earth, its concurrent critical acclaim was in part—not to detract from the pretty solid script—due to the novelty of Technicolor, was given a second lease on life with its MST3K treatment as the show’s first feature film, premiering on this day in 1996. With elements of The Last Starfighter, Earthling scientists are recruited, abducted by extra-terrestrials from the planet Metaluna to perform the alchemy necessary to defend themselves from an invader alien called the Zagons, learning too late that this effort only covers up and conspiracy to relocate a doomed population to Earth along with their irreconcilable differences.

dos-1

Also known by the technical designation in the acronym for long-duration orbital station, to the public and press the first launch of the Salyut (Салют, salute or a hail of fireworks) programme occurred on this day in 1971, becoming the first space station (see also) from the Soviet Union and was aloft, crews conducting experiments, astronomical observations and docking manuevers until October when deorbited and replaced by the new generation module, The final vessel of the programme (DOS-8), called Zvezda, became the core of the Russian section of the International Space Station.

guilty feet have got no rhythm

Just ahead of the duo’s ground-breaking pair of concerts in China, the first Western pop band to play to this venue, Wham! released its album Make It Big in Chinese markets—with the hit singles “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Freedom” and “Careless Whisper”—on this day in 1985. Having taken a break from the studio George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley embarked on an extensive world tour that included coveted stops (see previously) in Beijing and Guangzhou. Knowing what a publicity coup the concerts meant, the negotiations with authorities were not entirely above-board, as one of Wham!’s managers later owned up to, admitting that he presented his group as pleasant, clean-cut and conservative whereas with the competition, Queen, he emphasised the flamboyance of Freddie Mercury, also securing approval over the Rolling Stones.

point danger

Erected on the headland marking the boundary between New South Wales and Queensland near Coolangatta and Tweed Heads and inaugurated on this day in 1971 to commemorate the bicentenary of Captain Cook’s first voyage along this part of the Australian Gold Coast, the original source of the lighthouse’s signal being a laser-beam as part of an experimental approach to develop more efficient warning beacons. The technology however did not work according to plan and the lighthouse was retrofitted with a traditional light source in 1975.