Al Matthews, the real-life military man who portrayed the no-nonsense, cigar-chomping Sgt. Apone in the sci-fi horror classic Aliens, has died. He was 75.
His performance in James Cameron’s 1986 sci-fi horror film that endeared him to audiences. Near the movie’s beginning, the crew of the USS Sulaco awake from their deep sleep and Apone instantly reaches for his cigar and shouts instructions to the drowsy crew.
Posted in News, The Big Screen
Released on September 23, 2008, the world’s first Android phone had one mission: to challenge the iPhone. And in that goal, it succeeded. It was chunky (17mm), had a low-resolution display (320×480), and didn’t have a virtual keyboard, thus forcing users to bang away on the tiny pop-out keyboard. It also utilized a quirky trackball and physical buttons for navigation. Still, T-Mobile sold more than a million G1s in its first six months of availability.
Read all about it over on PCWorld.
Posted in Gadgets
On September 23, 1962, the Jetsons premiered on ABC.
The Jetsons is a prime-time animated American sitcom that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, originally airing from 1962–63 and again from 1985–87. It was Hanna-Barbera’s Space Age counterpart to The Flintstones, a half-hour family sitcom projecting contemporary American culture and lifestyle into another time period. While the Flintstones live in a world with machines powered by birds and dinosaurs, the Jetsons live in a futuristic utopia in the year 2062 of elaborate robotic contraptions, aliens, holograms, and whimsical inventions.
The original incarnation of the series aired Sunday nights on ABC from September 23, 1962, to March 3, 1963. It comprised 24 episodes, and was re-run on Saturday morning for decades. At the time of its debut, it was the first program ever to be broadcast in color on ABC-TV (as The Flintstones, while always produced in color, was broadcast in black-and-white for its first two seasons). Its continuing popularity led to further episodes being produced for syndication between 1985 and 1987.
Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Little Screen (Television)
The Hobbit is a novel written by J. R. R. Tolkien in the tradition of the fairy tale. It was first published on September 21, 1937. While it also stands in its own right, it is often seen as a prelude to Tolkien’s monumental fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings (published in 1954 and 1955).
The story, subtitled There and Back Again, follows the adventures of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins as he travels across the lands of Middle-earth with a band of dwarves and a wizard named Gandalf on a quest to restore a dwarven kingdom and a great treasure stolen by the dragon, Smaug.
Posted in Because I Can, Literary, On This Day
An unusual visitor has been hanging out in the St. Lawrence River for the past three years: A narwhal, more than 1,000 kilometres south of its usual range.
But the lone narwhal is not alone — it appears he has been adopted by a band of belugas.
Read more on CBC.
An emoticon is a facial expression pictorially represented by punctuation and letters, usually to express a writer’s mood. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau word of the English words emotion and icon. In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well. Certain complex character combinations can only be accomplished in a double-byte language, giving rise to especially complex forms, sometimes known by their romanized Japanese name of kaomoji.
The use of emoticons can be traced back to the 19th century, and they were commonly used in casual and/or humorous writing. Digital forms of emoticons on the Internet were included in a proposal by Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a message on September 19, 1982.
Posted in Because I Can, Humor, Literary, On This Day
I like this one MUCH more than the real one:
Posted in Because I Can, Critters, Humor, Patriotic, Sports
Coming December 19th:
Posted in Because I Can, Events, The Big Screen, The Little Screen (Television)
On Friday, Sept. 14, Team Vesco and the turbine-powered vehicle Turbinator II went 482 mph to set a new record at Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway and on Saturday they hit 483 mph. The team broke its own 470 mph record, set in August (video below). Vesco will attempt to reach 500 mph Saturday, Sept. 15.
Posted in Planes Trains and Automobiles
The series premiered on September 17, 1972, and ended February 28, 1983, with the finale becoming the most-watched television episode in U.S. television history.
Posted in Because I Can, On This Day, The Little Screen (Television)
