Ennio Morricone died on July 6, 2020 at the age of 91. He was born in Rome in 1928 and also died there. He was one of the greatest and most prolific film composers of all time, with over 500 credits. Morricone was taught to play the trumpet by his…

Sir Ian Holm passed away on June 19, 2020, at the age of 88. He was born Ian Holm Cuthbert, In Essex, England, in 1931. In 1949, he entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He graduated in 1953. He became a respected member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, in…

Kirk Douglas was born with the name Issur Danielovitch, in New York, in December of 1916. He was a ragman’s son. He began on Broadway in…

The Apollo 11 command module entered the atmosphere at 16:35:05 GMT (11:35:05 Houston time) on July 24, 1969. A spacecraft re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere is a wonderful demonstration of the integration of science and engineering. …

For millennia our species has looked up at the moon and imagined walking on its surface. Almost 2000 years ago, a writer named Lucian wrote a book called A True Storyin which the narrator visits the Moon and meets the inhabitants (called Selenitans). In 1610, Kepler giddily wrote Galileo about…

This week is the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing. That has gotten people excited about this adventure that mankind accomplished half a century ago. That made me think it was a good time to share some of my favorite books on the subject. The first three books I…

The 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 is this week. The Saturn V rocket carrying Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin lifted off from Cape Canaveral on July 16, 1969. Neil and Buzz landed on the surface of the Moon on July 20 and the three men landed in the…

It is the golden age of superhero movies. Stan Lee says that: “A superhero is a person who does heroic deeds and has the ability to do them in a way that a normal person couldn’t. So in order to be a superhero, you need a power that is more…

Jonathan Demme passed away today, at the age of 73. He was born in 1944 in New York and raised in Florida. He began his film career working for Roger Corman’s New World Pictures making the exploitation films that Corman mastered. …