Quatermass and the Pit is a British television science-fiction serial that was transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. It was the third and last of the BBC's Quatermass serials, all written by Nigel Kneale. In Knightsbridge, London, a strange skull and an alien spacecraft are discovered; Professor Bernard Quatermass and his newly appointed military superior at the British Experimental Rocket Group, Colonel Breen, join the investigation. The ship and its contents have a powerful and malign influence over many of those who come in contact with it, including Quatermass. He discovers that aliens, probably from Mars, had long ago engineered a human genetic legacy responsible for much of the war and strife in the world. The serial has been cited as an influence on Stephen King and the film director John Carpenter. It featured in the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes compiled by the British Film Institute in 2000, which described it as "completely gripping". The character reappeared in a 1979 ITV production called Quatermass.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatermass_and_the_Pit
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1816:
The Hudson's Bay Company and the North West Company, rival fur- trading companies, engaged in a violent confrontation in present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Seven_Oaks
1850:
Louise of the Netherlands married Crown Prince Karl of Sweden- Norway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louise_of_the_Netherlands
1939:
Former American baseball player Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, now commonly known in the United States as "Lou Gehrig's Disease". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Gehrig
1970:
The Patent Cooperation Treaty, an international law treaty, was signed, providing a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty
2006:
The ceremonial "first stone" of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a facility established to preserve a wide variety of plant seeds from locations worldwide in an underground cavern in Spitsbergen, Norway, was laid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
dad dancing: The making of embarrassing flamboyant dance moves to pop music by middle-aged men. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dad_dancing
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
The unhappy legacies of authoritarianism can be removed only if the concept of absolute power as the basis of government is replaced by the concept of confidence as the mainspring of political authority: the confidence of the people in their right and ability to decide the destiny of their nation, mutual confidence between the people and their leaders and, most important of all, confidence in the principles of justice, liberty and human rights. --Aung San Suu Kyi https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi