Facts of the Day (4/28/26)

1. American desi composer Siddhartha Khosla (1977- ), founder of the band Goldspot (named after an Indian soft drink), is now best known for scoring the TV series This Is Us (2016-22) and Only Murders in the Building (2021- ).  He won a 2024 Emmy for the latter.

2. The Sirte Declaration, adopted at a 1999 meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in Sirte, Libya, agreed to dissolve the OAU and replace it with the African Union (AU).  This happened in 2002.

The AU is headquartered in the AUCC in Addis Ababa

3. #BrieLarsonTime!

What 2010s stop-motion animated fantasy feature film from the Portland-based studio LAIKA, nominated for the Best Animated Film Oscar, has its main character voiced by an actor who played one of the Stark siblings in Game of Thrones?

Isaac Hempstead Wright (1999- ), voice of Eggs in The Boxtrolls (2014), portrayed Bran Stark.  Art Parkinson, voice of Kubo in Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), portrayed Rickon Stark.

Our old friend LAIKA's subsequent Missing Link (2019) included a role for Nepal-born Amrita Acharia (1987- ), also a Thrones alum.

Facts of the Day (4/27/26)

1. Molly Yeh (1989- ), daughter of Chinese American Chicago Symphony Orchestra clarinetist John Bruce Yeh, graduated from Juilliard with a BM — that's what the degree is called — in percussion.  After moving to her husband's family farm near the Minnesota/North Dakota border, she started a food blog and soon won an IACP Cookbook Award for Molly on the Range: Recipes and Stories from an Unlikely Life on a Farm (2016).  The Food Network rewarded her with Girl Meets Farm (2018- ).

2.

As He died to make men holy
Let us die to make men free
[And by "us," I mean you, not me]

-Julia Ward Howe, "Battle Hymn of the Republic" (1861)

The White Feather Campaign was the brainchild of Admiral Charles Cooper Penrose-Fitzgerald (1841-1921), who organized women in the UK during WW1 to seek out men in civilian clothing and hand them white feathers, thus accusing them of cowardice and unmanliness for not serving in a pointless exercise in imperialistic masturbation the war.

Our old friends the suffragette movement (see here, here, and here) eagerly allowed themselves to be co-opted in the name of nationalistic fervor.

The British government, keen to secure the support of these influential militants, released all WSPU suffragettes from prison in August 1914, effectively striking a bargain: the WSPU would suspend its suffrage agitation and devote its energies to recruiting men and mobilising women for war work.

The psychological effects of being white-feathered on men unable to serve were heavy.  Looking back on the era, one (female) essayist notes,

With the White Feather movement gaining greater traction, any young Englishman that the women would deem an eligible proposition for the army would be handed the white feather with the aim of humiliating and defaming the individuals, compelling them to enlist.

In many cases these intimidation tactics worked and led men to enroll in the army and engage in warfare often with disastrous consequences, leading bereaved families to blame the women for the loss of a loved one.

More often than not, many of the women also misjudged their targets, with many men who were on leave from service being handed a white feather. One such anecdote came from a man called Private Ernest Atkins who had returned on leave from the Western Front only to be handed a feather on a tram. Disgusted by this public insult he slapped the woman and said that the boys in Passchendaele would like to see such a feather.

His was a story that was replicated for many serving officers who had to experience such an insult to their service, none more so than Seaman George Samson who received a feather when he was on his way to a reception held in his honour to receive the Victoria Cross as a reward for his bravery at Gallipoli.

In some mortifying cases, they targeted men who had been injured in war, such as army veteran Reuben W. Farrow who was missing his hand after being blown up on the Front. After a woman aggressively asked why he would not do his duty for his country he merely turned around and showed his missing limb causing her to apologise before fleeing from the tram in humiliation.

The Silver War Badge was initiated in 1916 to keep honorably discharged service personnel from being harassed in their own country

"Women of Britain Say 'Go!'" poster

3. A 1954 episode of I Love Lucy guest-starring Jimmy Demaret as himself was my introduction to old-fashioned terms for golf clubs like "mashie" and "niblick" (not to be confused with the "mashie-niblick," which is different).  In our current enlightened age, we use "irons" and "woods," the latter so-called because their heads are made from ... metal.

One longs for the simplicity of 1900, when the answer to "What is a wood's shaft made from?" was "hickory" and the answer to "What is a wood's head made from?" was "persimmon."  Y'know, woods.  Nowadays shafts are typically "graphite" (actually a CFRP) and heads frequently contain titanium.

Higher-numbered woods, such as the 3-wood and 5-wood, are dubbed fairway woods and are designed for moderately-long-distance shots off the turf.  If you're hitting off the tee and want to send the ball really, really far, you opt for a 1-wood, aka driver.  Thanks to the influence of Callaway's Big Bertha (introduced in 1991), modern drivers tend to have "oversized" heads.

Facts of the Day (4/26/26)

1. Did you think that the Fast & Furious Cinematic Universe stopped at Turbo Charged Prelude (2003) and Los Bandoleros (2009)?  (Inside joke.)  No, there's a lot more to it than that — including 52 episodes of the Netflix animated spin-off Fast & Furious Spy Racers (2019-21), which saw Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf) voice Dom's younger cousin Tony Toretto.

2. Mysteries Decoded (2019-22) was a sensationalist, rooted-in-pseudoscience docu-series on the CW hosted by US Navy veteran-turned-private investigator Jennifer Marshall (1981- ).  You may also recognize Marshall from playing Max's mom on Stranger Things.

3. Ralph McQuarrie (1929-2012) was tapped by George Lucas to bring Lucas' vision for Star Wars to life.  20th Century Fox would likely never have greenlit the project without his concept art.

He basically created Darth Vader's entire look

He did the cover of Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker (1976), ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster, which was my first exposure to the Star Wars franchise

McQuarrie shared a Visual Effects Oscar for Cocoon (1985).

Facts of the Day (4/25/26)

1. The Shavian alphabet is an attempt at spelling reform funded by a bequest left by George Bernard "ghoti" Shaw.  After a contest overseen by Sir James Pittman (grandson of Sir Isaac Pitman), Ronald Kingsley Read (1887-1975) earned the right to create what became the Shavian alphabet; he later revised it into Quikscript.

2. Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (1800-91) commanded Prussian troops in the Second Schleswig War (against Denmark), the Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian War as Chief of the Great General Staff from 1857-88.  His 1835-39 correspondence from the Ottoman Empire was published as Letters from Turkey.

Moltke's nephew Helmuth von Moltke the Younger (1848-1916) served as Chief of the Great General Staff from 1906-14, succeeding Alfred von Schlieffen.  His ineffectual execution of the Schlieffen Plan and defeat at the September 1914 First Battle of the Marne led to him being replaced by Erich von Falkenhayn, who engaged in the Race to the Sea.

3. The crabeater seal is one of four Antarctic seal species (alongside the leopard seal, the Weddell seal, and the Ross seal) comprising the Lobodontini.  Its teeth have evolved into a network of lobes and cusps specially designed for filter-feeding of Antarctic krill (below).

Yes, this means that crabeater seals do not eat crabs

Facts of the Day (4/24/26)

1. Torso (1998-99) by Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko (with art and lettering by Bendis) is a graphic novel limited series about the so-called Cleveland Torso Murderer, an still-unidentified serial killer in 1930s Cleveland unsuccessfully tracked by Director for Public Safety Eliot Ness (yes, the Untouchables guy).

Ness' prime suspect, Dr. Frank Sweeney, may have been shielded due to being the first cousin of Democratic US Representative Martin L. Sweeney.

2. The Chelyabinsk meteor is a superbolide that exploded in a meteor air burst over Chelyabinsk Oblast in Russia on my 29th birthday in 2013.  This was Earth's largest such incident since the 1908 Tunguska event.

Weighing in at 1,190 lbs, the largest known fragment of the Chelyabinsk meteorite was recovered from the bottom of Lake Chebarkul on October 16, 2023

At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, gold medals won on the first anniversary of the burst had meteorite fragments embedded in them.

3. I will know I've reached the end of my alphabetical Directors Sets when I get to Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev (1964- ), whose debut feature The Return (2003) earned the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.  His The Banishment (2007) garnered Best Actor at Cannes for Konstantin Lavronenko.  Other acclaimed works by him include Elena (2011) and Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominees Leviathan (2014) and Loveless (2017).

Following an intense 11-month hospitalization in 2021-22 for issues that at various times rendered him both paraplegic and mute, Zvyagintsev will make a comeback with Minotaur (2026) at the upcoming 2026 Cannes Film Festival in May.

Facts of the Day (4/23/26)

1. The 1978 American Women's Himalayan Expedition consisted of 13 women, led by Arlene Blum (1945- ), who journeyed to Nepal with the intention of scaling Annapurna (which, at the time, had only been summited by eight souls).  Vera Komarkova (1942-2005) and Irene Miller (aka Irene Beardsley; 1935- ) reached the top on October 15 alongside two male Sherpas.  Eager for a female-only achievement, Alison Chadwick-Onyszkiewicz (1942-78) and Vera Watson (1932-78) pushed to follow this up by reaching the peak all by themselves.  They didn't make it and perished on the mountain.

I couldn't find a pic of them together, but Watson (above) was married to computer scientist John McCarthy (1927-2011), the creator of LISP, co-developer of ALGOL, and co-organizer (alongside Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and our old friend Claude Shannon) of the 1956 Dartmouth workshop that birthed the field of AI

2. Der Kongreß tanzt (1931) is a German musical comedy film set at the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna.  UK-born star Lilian Harvey (1906-68) additionally played the lead role in the English-language version, Congress Dances (1932), and a French-language version.  All three were shot and released more or less simultaneously by UFA.  Conrad Veidt depicted Prince Metternich in the German and English versions; the other male lead, Alexander I of Russia, was portrayed by Willy Fritsch in German and Henri Garat in English and French.  A 1955 Austrian remake was made in Cinemascope.

Harvey and Fritsch had previously toplined UFA's Hocuspocus (1930).  Its Anglophone parallel production, The Temporary Widow (1930), kept Harvey but replaced Fritsch with a debuting Laurence Olivier.

3. Summer House (2017- ) is a Bravo reality show about the idle rich summering in the Hamptons.  Its rotating cast has spawned the careers of Paige DeSorbo (1992- ) and "comedian" Hannah Berner (1991- ); their Giggly Squad (2020- ) won Podcast of the Year at the 2026 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards, for whatever that's worth.

Summer spin-offs include Winter House (2021-23) and Summer House: Martha's Vineyard (2023-24), the latter featuring an all-Black cast.

Facts of the Day (4/22/26)

1. Zaghrouta is a ululation performed in the Arab world to celebrate or honor someone.  Sabrina Carpenter knows that, now.

2. Walter A. Gordon (1894-1976) attended UC Berkeley and was a standout athlete in boxing, wrestling, and football, the latter under the guidance of Andy Smith; alongside Paul Robeson, he became in 1918 one of the first two Black players named to the All-America college football team.

Gordon joined the Berkeley police force, led by August Vollmer (1876-1955), in 1919 and in 1922 he became the first Black man to earn a JD from Berkeley's law school.  Simultaneously a football assistant coach, a cop, and a lawyer during much of the '20s — imagine that TV series! — he later served as president of Berkeley's local NAACP branch and then headed California's parole board.  1955 saw President Eisenhower appoint him governor of the US Virgin Islands and he left that post in 1958 to be a judge at the District Court of the Virgin Islands.

3. "Don't Press Play" (2021) is a Season 6 episode of Teen Titans Go! (2013- ) featuring De La Soul (Kelvin "Posdnuos" Mercer, David "Trugoy the Dove" Jolicoeur, and Vincent "Maseo" Mason) guest-appearing as themselves.  The plot is an allegory for the group's struggle against Tommy Boy Records to retain control of their back catalog.

Facts of the Day (4/21/26)

1. After I sat in the green room at 2025 J! Masters watching other contestants let a clue about Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971) go dead, I mentioned to one of those contestants, Adriana Harmeyer, that I have a fondness for titles that are complete sentences (e.g. I Am in the World as Free and Slender as a Deer on a Plain or An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It).  She then brought up names that are complete sentences, like "Britney Spears" or "Anne Hathaway."

Anyway, as our friends at Red Letter Media pointed out, Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026) is not a complete sentence, because the "'s" is not a contraction for "is" but rather a possessive, à la Disney's The Kid or Lee Daniels' The Butler.

So who is Lee Cronin (1982- ), and why does he deserve ownership of at least the fifth separate iteration of the Mummy franchise?  Um, I don't know.  The Irish director's two previous features are The Hole in the Ground (2019) and Evil Dead Rise (2023).  Neither puts him in the realm of Kurosawa (or even Tyler Perry).

On another note, it's interesting that unlike, say, Dracula or Frankenstein, Mummy does not have literary origins.  It began life as Cagliostro, a screen treatment about Alessandro Cagliostro authored by Nina Wilcox Putnam (1888-1962) and Richard Schayer (1880-1956).  Putnam is described twice in her Wiki article as having drafted the first Form 1040.  Schayer's mother was writer Julia Schayer and his half-sister Leonora Speyer, Lady Speyer (1872-1956) won a Pulitzer for the poetry collection Fiddler's Farewell (1926).

Lady Speyer (1907) by our very prolific — too prolific to link to all the examples — old friend John Singer Sargent

Putnam and Schayer's Cagliostro was turned into the screenplay for The Mummy (1932) by John L. Balderston, who also had a hand in shaping the scripts of Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931).

2. Wendy Beckett (1930-2018), better known by the moniker Sister Wendy, was born in British-controlled South Africa and returned there in the '50s as a Catholic educator.  Always in fragile health, she maintained a mostly solitary existence devoted to academic study and religious contemplation.  In 1970 she returned to England, became a consecrated virgin, and lived as a hermit on the grounds of a Carmelite monastery in Quidenham.

Not until 1980 did she take an interest in the history of art; this resulted in several books, beginning with Contemporary Women Artists (1988).  While visiting an exhibition she was overheard by a film crew and she subsequently became internationally famous due to a series of BBC documentaries she hosted between 1992 and 2002.  Marcus Reeves created a musical about her, Postcards from God, that debuted on the West End in 2007 and was revised and revived in 2008.

3. I've decided to introduce the hashtag #BrieLarsonTime.  (See here for the origin and here, here, and here for the most recent examples.)

Which popular 21st century stage musical, with book, lyrics, and music all by the same woman (who was born and brought up in Vermont), won a Tony for Best Original Score and contains a song titled "How Long"?

ANSWER #1

ANSWER #2

Facts of the Day (4/20/26)

1. Irish-born Steve Barron (1956- ), son of British filmmaker Zelda Barron, came to fame helming music videos including Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing," Toto's "Africa," and perhaps most memorably A-ha's "Take on Me."  Later he directed features like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), Coneheads (1993), and The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996).

2. Steve Golin (1955-2019) co-founded Propaganda Films, which was at one point responsible for almost a third of all music videos produced in the US and additionally turned out many splashy TV commercials.  It played a key role in launching the careers of, among others, Michael Bay, David Fincher, Antoine Fuqua, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Mark Romanek, Dominic Sena, Zack Snyder, and Gore Verbinski.

Golin was also the original CEO of Anonymous Content and shared a Best Picture Oscar for Spotlight (2014).

3. Quay (2015) is a documentary short about the Brothers Quay made by Christopher Nolan.  Syncopy Inc., operated by Nolan and his wife Emma Thomas, partnered with Zeitgeist Films to distribute many works by the Quays and commissioned from them The Doll's Breath (2019), which they based on a short story by Uruguayan "father of magic realism" Felisberto Hernández.

Facts of the Day (4/19/26)

1. Sophie Rain (2004?- ) is an, um, online content creator who joined OnlyFans in May 2023 and announced in late 2024 that she had, um, earned $43 million in her first year on that platform.  December 2024 saw her and Aishah Sofey establish Bop House, a content collective that gathered eight female OnlyFans creators under one roof.  (Rain departed the collective in July 2025.)

2. George E. Davis (1850-1907), considered the father of chemical engineering, was present at the 1881 founding of the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI; a learned society dedicated to industrial applications of chemistry).

3. Another early member of the SCI (as well as the Lit. & Phil.) was paleobotanist Marie Stopes (1880-1958), who assisted her mentor Francis Wall Oliver in classifying pteridosperms.  She decamped to Germany and in 1904 received a PhD at the University of Munich before returning to England and becoming the first female academic to join the faculty of the Victoria University of Manchester (predecessor to the University of Manchester).

And yet Stopes came to be remembered not as a scientist or researcher but for authoring Married Love (1918) and opening an early birth control clinic with her husband Humphrey Verdon Roe (1878-1949).

Stopes sued Halliday Sutherland over a 1922 book criticizing her clinic; the conflict was dramatized in the BBC telefilm Marie Stopes: Sexual Revolutionary (1970), starring Alethea Charlton.  Over time, it has become clear that Sutherland's allegations tying Stopes' work to the eugenics movement were basically on the money.  The family planning organization that descends from her clinic (taken over by Tim Black in the '70s and folded into Black and Phil Harvey's Population Services International) was called Marie Stopes International until 2020, when concerns about Stopes' history of supporting eugenics led it to be rechristened MSI Reproductive Choices.

Stopes was so bizarrely fixated on good genes that she disinherited her son, philosopher and BHA chair Harry Stopes-Roe (1924-2014), for marrying Mary Eyre Wallis (above with a bust of her father, "bouncing bomb" inventor Barnes Wallis) despite her being — gasp! — nearsighted