Tag: books

Exploring the Intriguing History and Ecology of Kangaroos and Camels | April 17 2025, 22:47

Interesting. It turns out that before Russia imposed a temporary ban on kangaroo meat imports, it consumed 70% of all kangaroo meat produced in Australia.

It turns out that not only do camels roam in Australia, but there are more of them than in Central Asia and the Middle East, and Australia actively sells them to Saudi Arabia, for instance. Moreover, camels were introduced to Australia from the Middle East by Afghans, who left quite a significant (and positive) mark on the history of Australia.

For example, here’s a photo of the Ghan train — it features a camel on its logo. This is no coincidence; it is actually named after those Afghans who brought the camels.

Also interesting is that camels are originally from our regions. Yes, the USA is, in fact, the homeland of camels. According to some estimates, camels first appeared in North America between 40 and 50 million years ago, and 3 million years ago, they crossed into Asia via a land bridge in the Bering Strait area, and then made their way to Africa. In recent years, convincing evidence has been found that these animals inhabited almost all of North America. And of course, the climate was different back then.

Moreover, I read that there is such a thing as “kangatarianism” — a practice of following a diet that excludes the meat of all animals except kangaroo, for environmental and ethical reasons.

Also, it turns out that there are tree kangaroos (Tree-kangaroo). Also, in English, a group of kangaroos is called “a mob” – a gang 🙂 However, in Australian English, mob is not used in the same connotation as “mafia” or “gang”. Indeed, a group of crows with their “murder of crows” isn’t too far off either.

Oh, how could I not mention etymology! There is a legend that the word “kangaroo” means “I don’t understand”. I thought so too until I looked into it.

Actually, “kangaroo” originates from the Guugu Yimithirr language, an Indigenous language of northern Australia, where gangurru specifically refers to a type of kangaroo. But it’s not that simple 🙂

It all starts when James Cook asked the Guugu Yimithirr what the animal was called — they answered gangurru, which did indeed denote it. The English borrowed this word as kangaroo.

Latter, half a century later, the etymology starts to get tangled. In 1820, a certain Philip King sailed along a river near Cook’s landing place and recorded a list of words from the local Guugu Yimithirr dialect. Everything matched Cook’s records — except for one word. When asked “what is that animal called?”, they didn’t answer gangurru, but minha. It means that Cook clearly made a mistake. If minha is “kangaroo”, then what is gangurru?

This is where the myth begins. Some begin to think: maybe Cook misunderstood? Maybe he asked about the animal, and they didn’t understand him — and gangurru meant “I don’t know”? This version is a fabrication, and it didn’t go further than speculation, but it’s a funny story, historically plausible, and it began to be repeated. Thus, it turned into a persistent legend.

Then the confusion reversed. “Kangaroo” — then and now — became the stereotypical word from the “aboriginal language”. Every European settler coming to Australia knew exactly one word from Guugu Yimithirr — and only that one. The problem is that there were hundreds of languages in Australia, many of which were weakly or not at all related to Guugu Yimithirr. They simply did not have the word gangurru or its equivalent.

That’s where the problems arose. For example, settlers arrived in the area of modern Sydney and tried to “communicate” with the local people, i.e., they just yelled “kangaroo” at them. This would hardly have helped, but it is important to remember the geography: the Guugu Yimithirr lived on the Cape York Peninsula, in the far north of Australia, and the Sydney aborigines — the Iora people, speaking Dharuk language — lived almost at the other end of the continent. They didn’t know what the word “kangaroo” meant, so they assumed the Europeans were particularly interested in their domestic livestock. When cows began to be unloaded from the ship, the locals asked: “Is this your ‘kangaroo’?”

Such is the story.

Also, it turns out, kangaroos are good swimmers. In the second photo, a kangaroo tail sold in our town. For the dogs to gnaw on.

Subtitle Struggles in Opera Streaming | April 13 2025, 01:00

I am currently listening to the opera “Samson and Delilah” on the paid Royal Ballet And Opera platform. The opera is in French with English subtitles. My first question — where are the French subtitles? So, if I’m a Francophone, I’m left with no options but to catch the meaning by listening alone? And there’s “Boris Godunov” which I haven’t listened to yet. I think I wouldn’t mind having subtitles there either.

Once again, I catch myself thinking that apparently, no one who translates librettos into English ever considers those who have to read them with one eye (the other must watch the stage).

By God, how can one immediately understand what “auspices” in “Let us consult the auspices // and pour the sacrificial wine for Dagon” mean if an ordinary person doesn’t normally come across the word “auspices” in English and won’t grasp its meaning on the fly? The original goes, “Du grand Dagon consultons les auspices // Versons pour lui le vin des sacrifices!”, but the original can be forgiven (although I am sure that modern young French speakers could also use subtitles).

Or take “Grant that my wiles may lead to Samson’s capture tomorrow.” Wiles? The word “wiles” in English is literary, archaic, or high style. It denotes tricks, cunning, deceitful strategies, especially in the context of enticement or manipulation. In the original French it’s “Fais que, vaincu par mon adresse, Samson soit enchaîné demain!” — well, couldn’t it have been translated as “Make it so that, defeated by my cunning, Samson shall be chained tomorrow!”

I found a translation by Frederic Lister from 1893. Those two lines are poetically and not super accurately translated there, but, damn, they are a million times clearer: “And reign supreme within his heart, // Binding him fast in my control.”

And there’s a lot of that good stuff. Okay, archaic words, but the sentences are also composed in a poetic style, which, to some extent, is fine because the spirit of the original must be conveyed. However, this does not make it any more accessible for the audience because again.. how can you understand what this “prostrate” is, while “Lying prostrate in the dust // we lifted up our voices to him” in half a second? Yes, lying prostrate means lying face down, but who generally knows that?

Damn, it would have been better to have French subtitles, that would have been more understandable.

Plus-tard, le front dans la poussiere,

Vers lui nous élevions la voix.

(meaning, “Later, with our foreheads in the dust, We lifted our voices to him.”)

Again, in Lister’s translation, although not close to the text, it is at least clearer – but then again, this translation is at least 130 years old.

I’m not pleased with the Royal Ballet And Opera. To read their subtitles, you need to specifically prepare.

And then, another interesting thing arises. It’s quite difficult to find the libretto of this opera. I will leave a link to the scans in the comments — try to find a good version of the text somewhere in the libretto. That is, the subtitles are skewed, and you can’t even find the original. One might ask, what prevented them from making a video player that would have French subtitles, poetic English translations, and modern English translations? They are charging money for it, and the work on preparing the subtitles is essentially a week of work for an Internet-connected specialist. I don’t know about the rights, but if they are showing the opera, they could definitely have put the original subtitles, and translations.. Well, I am sure that getting a proper translation commissioned or licensing an existing one wouldn’t be a problem.

Exploring the Intriguing Origins of Words | April 09 2025, 03:51

Well, shall we continue with the fascinating etymology? I’ve been writing scripts for processing an etymological dictionary, and I’m finding all sorts of interesting stuff.

It turns out that the word “ciao” comes from the word “slave”. It derives from the Venetian expression s-ciào vostro or s-ciào su, which literally means “(I am) your slave”. The Venetian word for “slave” — s-ciào [ˈstʃao] or s-ciàvo — comes from the medieval Latin sclavus, which, in turn, was borrowed from medieval Greek Σκλάβος (“sklavos”), itself related to the ethnonym “Slavs”, as most of the slaves during that time came from the Balkans.

Also, it was a revelation to me that the words Kubernetes, governor, and cybernetics are etymologically related. They all derive from κυβερνήτης (kubernḗtēs) — “helmsman, one who steers a ship”. Consequently, governor came through Latin and Romance languages, cybernetics as a scientific loan through French, and Kubernetes as a direct calque from Ancient Greek, via Latin transliteration.

The words fuel and focus originate from the same Latin word focus (“hearth”). Focus was actually coined by Johannes Kepler, who used it as a geometric term for ellipses: “the point where rays converge”.

The words Madeira, mata, mater, matrix, matter, and mother are related and all trace back to the same Proto-Indo-European root *méh₂tēr — “mother”.

The words madam and madonna come from the Latin mea domina — “my lady”.

It’s hard to imagine, but the words merry (cheerful) and brief (short) originate from the same Proto-Indo-European root *mréǵʰus, which means “short”.

The words lobby and leaf also have a common origin — both stem from the ancient Germanic *laubą or its derivatives, related to foliage, leafy shelters, and coverings. In old buildings, laubia/lobby was a covered gallery or arbor, literally a shelter made of leaves. Thus, “lobby originally meant “leafy shelter” or “leafy arbor”.

Common origins or roots also link names like Yuri and George, Étienne and Stephen/Steven, William and Guillermo, Zeus and Jupiter, Zhenya and Yana, Joel and Elijah, Hansel and John, as well as Agnes, Nancy, and Inez, Diego and Jacob, Dorothy and Theodore, and Isabel, Elizabeth, and Lisa, Iskander and Alexander, Patroclus and Cleopatra. Many of these essentially denote the same thing, just modified differently across cultures.

Read more of such good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

Exploring Linguistic Connections with #RaufLikesEtymology | April 08 2025, 16:22

I continue with etymological curiosities. This is my third consecutive post, #RaufLikesEtymology. It all started when I stumbled upon an etymological dictionary and began processing it programmatically, extracting all sorts of things.

It turns out that the words “жёлтый” (“yellow”), “зелёный” (“green”), and “золото” (“gold”) share a common Indo-European root related to brightness and luster — *gьltъ, which in English, for instance, became the basis for both gold and yellow. In German, “gelb” (yellow) comes from there too. In Russia, “желтый” has been known since the 13th century as a nickname, and as an adjective in written sources only since the 14th century.

It turned out that “известь” (“lime”) and “асбест” (“asbestos”) come from the same word, the Greek ἄσβεστος.

It turns out that the words шифр (“cipher”), цифра (“digit”), and zero all come from the same word — the Arabic صِفْر (ṣifr, “nothing, zero”), which itself is a calque from Sanskrit शून्य (śūnya, “emptiness, nothing”).

Pushkin wrote in “Poltava”: “In the night’s darkness they, like thieves… // Craft the ciphers of universals…” “Universals” in the Ukrainian language of those days were called Hetman’s edicts, and “цифр” back then meant what we now call a cipher — “secret writing”.

Interestingly, the word “кантон” (Switzerland consists of 26 cantons) – originates from Chinese, from Guangdong.

It turned out that grotto and crypt — come from the same word, Latin grupta/crypta. Well, about Saturday and sabbath everyone knows (that they are one word by origin).

The Russian word “колесо (wheel) and the Indian “чакра (chakra) are linked by origin — both come from the same ancient root in Proto-Indo-European — *kʷékʷlos — “circle”, “wheel”, “rotating”. “Колесо came through the Slavic branch, while “чакра — through the Indian (Vedic-Sanskrit) branch.

The words cloak (“cloak”) and clock (“clock”) derive from medieval Latin clocca — “bell”, but entered English differently. Cloak arrived in the 13th century through French cloque, which meant both “cloak” and “bell” — due to the shape of the garment. Clock appeared later through Dutch clocke, denoting a church bell that marks the time; subsequently, it came to mean “clock”. The word bell (“bell”) already existed in English as a designation for a metallic ringing object, so there was no need to introduce another word for this.

The apricot has had a very interesting journey. Here, look at the attached picture. Borrowed in the early 18th century from Dutch, which itself had borrowed from Romance languages (for example, French abricot). It’s interesting to trace this word further: it turns out that in French, it came from Arabic, and in Arabic from Latin. Latin praecox meant “early-ripening”. Thus, praecox became abricot.

My little script churned out about 2 thousand examples from wiktionary. I pick the most interesting ones, but I think there’s enough material for about five more posts like this 🙂 Plus, I have more ideas on how to process to uncover even more interesting things.

Read more good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

Unveiling Surprising Connections in English Etymology | April 07 2025, 21:09

In the previous post, I wrote about the little program I developed that searches for words far apart but sharing common etymology. It keeps bringing me new discoveries. Sharing them!

The words chaos and gas are essentially the same. The chemist Jan Baptista van Helmont introduced ‘gas’ as he deciphered ‘chaos’ in his Dutch interpretation, from the Greek χάος. The letter g in Dutch conveys a sound remotely echoing the modern Greek ch. “In the absence of a name,” he wrote, “I called this vapor ‘gas’, as it stems closely from the ancient concept of chaos.” Meanwhile, the word gasoline has no relation to gas. It derives from Cazeline (possibly influenced by Gazeline—a name from an Irish imitation), a trademark for petroleum-based lamp oil, originating from the surname of the man who first started selling it in 1862—John Cassell—and the suffix -eline. The name Cassell itself comes from the Anglo-Norman castel (related to the English castle), which, in turn, traces back to the Old French castel.

Cattle, capital, and chattel are etymological twins of each other, also linked to capital—all through the root caput (“head”), reflecting the ancient practice of counting wealth in terms of cattle heads. By the way, caput also gives rise to chief and captain.

The same goes for the twins bank and bench. “Bank” originally meant “bench,” where a money changer sat, or the “counter” of a money exchanger. Compare typologically with the Russian word “лавка”—both “bench” and “store” (in old times—these were the same), “counter”—the place where trading happens, i.e., “by the bench.” The breaking of a bench—banca rotta—has also given us the word bankrupt (“bankrupt”), literally “broken bench.”

Separately interesting are Chicago/skunk. Chicago comes from the French Chécagou, a transcription of the word from the Miami people’s language šikaakwa—”wild onion” (or ramps, Allium tricoccum) and also “striped skunk.” Skunk means, in the same language, roughly “urinates badly” and indeed designates the skunk itself.

Hospital and hotel/hostel are also etymological twins. They trace back to hospes (“host, guest”).

Discussing that dress and director share a common root would take a lot, a supporting image is attached for help

Read more such good stuff by clicking here –> #RaufLikesEtymology

This translation preserves your style and maintains the HTML formatting as requested.

The Unsung Contributors of Early Microsoft: The Lives of Monte Davidoff and Bob O’Rear | April 05 2025, 16:22

It’s intriguing how different people’s destinies unfold. Gates’ blog has published the source code for the original Altair Basic. Besides the well-known Gates (worth >$100 billion) and Allen (he passed away, but was around $20 billion), there appears the name Monte Davidoff, about whom very little is known.

Monte wrote all the “mathematics” with floating point for Microsoft Basic. It only lasted until version 4.0, after which, about a decade later, the IEEE 754 standard came along, and things changed slightly.

Since 2000, he has owned his consulting company, and its website (built in PHP) seems not to have changed since 2000 (though he did update the year to 2025 in the footer).

There are no photos of him online, almost no information about what he does, but there are two interviews, one in text, and another on Floppy days as a podcast. Apparently, he just quietly “tends to his own stove”.

Among the employees of the first Microsoft team—remember, the iconic photo?—there is Bob O’Rear, who held the position of chief mathematician. He played a key role in developing MS-DOS for the IBM PC. O’Rear left the company in 1993 and returned to Texas, where he took up cattle ranching on his own farm.

Spoiled Ending, Enchanting Narration | April 05 2025, 15:13

Very good. It’s just a pity that now I will have to read the last book knowing the plot. Otherwise, I would never have learned about it.

But listening to Armen Zakaryan is like reading another book. Simply music to the ears in prose

https://youtu.be/WPrTAOLbz1M?si=rwmfjYZtjuA6pMBe

Global Names for the Same Melody | April 05 2025, 14:01

To my surprise, I discovered that our “Dog Waltz” is widely referred to here as “Shave and a haircut,” although in reality, Shave and a haircut is very well known as “knock! knockity-knock-knock… KNOCK-KNOCK!”.

I started digging. In Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway, it’s known as the “Flea Waltz” (Flohwalzer). In Bulgaria, it’s called “Cat March” (Bulg. Котешки марш), in Finland — “Cat Polka” (Fin. Kissanpolkka), in Korea — “Cat Dance” (Kor. 고양이 춤 Koyangi Chum), in Japan — “I Stepped on a Cat” (Jpn. 猫踏んじゃった Neko-funjatta), in Mexico — “Little Monkeys” (Spa. Los Changuitos), in Hungary — “Donkey March” (Hun. Szamárinduló), in Majorca — “Polka of Fools” (Spa. Polca de los Tontos), in China — “March of Thieves” (Chi. simpl. 小偷进行曲, pinyin. Xiǎotōu jìnxíngqǔ), in Spain — “The Chocolate Pot” (Spa. La Chocolatera), in France and Poland — “Cutlets (Chops)” (Fr. Côtelettes, Pol. Kotlety), in Switzerland — “Cutlet Waltz” (Ger. Kotelett-Walzer), in Denmark — “Meatballs Escape Over the Fence” (Dan. Frikadellens flugt over plankeværket), in Sweden — “Kalle Johansson” (Swe. Kalle Johansson), and so forth.

The piece is in 4/4 time, by the way. So it is something like a polka or galop. However, in the movie “Gentlemen of Fortune,” it is just the triple meter version found here and here.

Mysteries of Fungi: From House Invaders to Mind Controllers | March 30 2025, 13:45

A very meaningful, diverse, and captivatingly interesting episode—with Vishnevsky about mushrooms.

Three stories to whet your appetite. The first one is about the house fungus (Serpula lacrymans). It usually starts with a shed, a bathhouse, bridges, or a foundation, especially if it’s partially over water. The house fungus releases tough black mycelial cords (1-2 mm), which spread throughout the house within just a few days. Across the floors, walls, and floors—it’s like something out of sinister sci-fi movies. These cords reach any source of wood. The fungus begins to break down lignin and other components of the wood, and one of the by-products of this process is water. That is, the fungus only needs water at the beginning, and then, once it finds wood, it extracts water on its own, feeding and hydrating itself. Therefore, it is practically impossible to get rid of it. It is tenacious, fast-growing, and extremely destructive. It is capable of turning up to 50% of the wood volume it settles on to dust within a year. That’s why sleepers and footbridges at stations are made not from wood, but from concrete, even where wood is cheaper and despite the fact that wooden sleepers are superior in other properties to concrete ones.

The second story is about “witch’s circles.” Surely you’ve noticed that mushrooms often grow in rings on lawns or at the edges of forests, sometimes tens of meters in diameter. It turns out that the mycelium from the point where it originated transforms into a “donut,” which grows because the inner parts of this donut die off since it has already consumed everything there, while the outer parts continue to expand because there’s still something there. And thus, the mushrooms—the fruiting bodies—grow along this donut. Since the rate of spread is more or less the same, it appears as a perfect circle. Of course, unless it runs into something along the way.

The third is about cordyceps, which infects simple crawling organisms and controls them. Apart from being an interesting fungus on its own, the most expensive mushroom in the world is also a cordyceps (the Chinese variety). But now, about the one that parasitizes ants—you’ve probably heard of it.

It all starts with the fungus penetrating an ant’s body and gradually taking control over its nervous system. When the time comes, cordyceps “tells the ant that it is time to leave its native anthill. If it resists, the fungus employs chemistry: it not only biochemically influences the behavior, but literally “owns the ant. Moreover, it does so not bluntly, but very intricately—with precision to the details.

It entwines the muscles and nerve nodes, blocking any alternate movement. The ant begins to move along a specific trajectory—it climbs a plant, selects a suitable leaf, often one that hangs right above the anthill. It climbs to the underside of the leaf to prevent the sun from drying out its body and the future fungus. Then it moves strictly along the central vein of the leaf—as if along a highway.

When it reaches the middle of this vein, the fungus gives two last commands: 1) Clench the veins with its limbs as tightly as possible and 2) Bite through the vein with its jaws, securing itself definitively.

After this—rapid mycelial growth, the ant dies. From its head, now hanging downwards, begins to sprout the fruiting body of the fungus—a thin “needle, directed straight down over the anthill. When it matures, spores start to pour out of it, like from a shower, directly onto the ants passing below. Everything is calculated perfectly.

Scientists have spent decades trying to understand the “combat chemistry of Cordyceps. It seemed something incredibly complex must be at work. But as it turns out—on the contrary. Everything is simple: relatively primitive hydrocarbons are acting, structurally very similar to… gasoline.

If you take, for example, a bucket of gasoline, come to a forest anthill (especially a large one of red forest ants), stir it up a bit—you will see how the ants start to massively leave the dwelling, climb up the tree, cling to the bark, freezing in strange poses. Then they are released. But with Cordyceps, it’s the same, just with an additive: its hydrocarbons are slightly more complex, and “releasing” is no longer possible.

This is the bug in the ant’s firmware. It’s not some kind of remote control, not a command center. Just a chemical, and the ant “knows what to do. These aren’t random actions, but strictly defined, programmed within it reactions. Under certain substances, it behaves in a strictly defined way.

I recommend listening to it, Vishnevsky is very cool in this topic and it seems inexhaustible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulQyUHsBaa4

Soviet Space Satire: Rescue at Mars and Beyond | March 28 2025, 01:14

I finally got around to a Soviet movie from 1959 showing a rocket landing on a floating platform at the end. The film is quite amusing. It features valiant Soviet cosmonauts rescuing hapless and vile American astronauts who got lost on their way to Mars. By the way, the cosmonauts are dressed in jackets and ties.

The plot goes like this. A two-man crew, under the mandate of science and the communist party, is sent to Mars for strictly scientific purposes. In orbit, the “space shuttle” docks at the station (at the beginning, the chief developer says it hangs above the Earth at tens of thousands of kilometers), docking to prepare for the “final jump” to Mars. Suddenly, a request comes from the American colleagues to accept the “Typhoon” Shuttle at the station. Could our most humane and friendly cosmonauts deny their colleagues, even if they are damned capitalists? During a friendly banquet, the “dumb Yankee”, apparently having had one too many, blurts out about the goals of his project. Much to the surprise of the gracious hosts who did not expect such audacity from their guests, it turns out the goal is Mars, of course, but purely for commercial, acquisitive reasons, such as trading Martian plots, for example. The head of the Soviet expedition, obviously caught off-guard… also having taken one too many, responds admitting similar plans but exclusively in the name of science. The crafty Yankee, after taking some Alka-Seltzer, rats out to his leadership. The American leadership, driven by predatory bourgeois interests, orders an immediate start to Mars, despite the unfavorable astrophysical weather conditions, thereby endangering the most valuable thing – the lives of cosmonauts. Covertly, “under the cover of night”, while the hosts are knocked out, the treacherous Americans weigh anchor. Consequences soon follow; they run out of fuel and are blown towards the Sun, with the expected outcome. SOS! The foolish “Yankee” frantically signals, bathed in snot and tears. Calm and strong Soviet guys in their powerful rocket “Rodina” rush to the rescue and indeed tow the doomed spacecraft, but precious fuel is spent maneuvering, the Americans abandon their junk and transfer to “Rodina”. There’s Mars, its seas and canals already visible, but catastrophically short on fuel. Fortunately, an asteroid named Icarus is passing by, and our brave cosmonauts asteroid-hitch a ride on it. An emergency launch of a cargo spacecraft with fuel follows, but it crashes on approach. It is decided to send another piloted ship because what’s most valuable is human life and friendship. This time, all goes well, the rescued crew lands directly on the floating platform near Yalta, anticipating the pathetic plagiarism with “Falcon”. A crowd with flowers and red banners, pioneers in red scarves warmly welcome the international comical collective (I could not have written that, it’s all pasha_popolam).

Three years later, this propaganda flick caught attention in the USA and was re-edited under the name “Battle Beyond the Sun”. Directed by Roger Corman, assistant producer Jack Hill, and young student Francis Coppola – that’s the kind of films he grew up on! The budding director re-edited and redubbed the film, removing all “anti-American propaganda”, Cyrillic inscriptions, and filmed an additional scene of a battle between two Martian monsters – how could he not. The timeline in the film was shifted to the future, after Earth had suffered a nuclear conflict and was divided into two superpowers – “Northern Hemis” and “Southern Hemis”, located on their respective hemispheres. Coppola also shot several scenes of the battle between two space monsters, one symbolizing a phallus and the other a vagina, and inserted them into Soviet material. These scenes were filmed in a Hollywood studio. Coppola and Hill also filmed scenes from the Rose Parade in Pasadena.

The names of not only Soviet characters but also actors, as well as names in the credits were changed to American ones to mask the film’s origins. For example, Alexander Shvorin and Ivan Pereverzev became “Andy Stuart” and “Edd Perry”, and the directors Mikhail Karyukov and Alexander Kozyr became “Maurice Kaplan” and “Arthur Corwin” – and were demoted to assistant directors. The director of the film in promotional materials and the final version is listed as a certain Thomas Colchart; sources differ on who actually hides behind this name (Karyukov, Kozyr, Coppola, or an American dubbing director).

The entire episode from “The Heavens Call” about the flight from Earth to the orbital station with minimal changes was included in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Kubrick’s film also included a scene with a video phone call to Earth. The orbital station in Kubrick’s film was copied almost exactly from “The Heavens Call”.

Separately funny, the USSR named the American spacecraft Typhoon – Тайфун. In the USA the word Typhoon is called Hurricane, since typhoon names hurricanes happening around Japan, and understandably in 1959, maybe one out of a hundred Americans knew the word 😉

Links to the original and the pale American copy — in the comments