Rubik’s Cube
In 1974, a young professor of architecture in Budapest, Hungary named Erno Rubik created an object that took Erno himself well over a month to work out the solution. The rotating cube puzzle would become the world’s best-selling toy ever. After presenting a prototype to his students and friends, Erno began to realize the potential of his invention. The first cubes were made and distributed in Hungary. These early models, marketed as “Buvos Kocka” (“Magic Cubes”), were twice the weight of later models. Enchanted mathematicians took the Cubes to international conferences, and one expat Hungarian entrepreneur took the cube to the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1979. It was at there that toy specialist Tom Kremer agreed to sell it to the rest of the world. Kremer’s unrelenting belief in the unique toy finally resulted in the Ideal Toy Company taking on distribution of the “Magic Cube.” Ideal Toy’s executives thought that the name had overtones of witchcraft, and after considering several possibilities, they settled on “Rubik’s Cube.” Since its international launch in 1980, an estimated 350 million Rubik’s Cubes have been sold.
Rucka, Greg
Born in San Francisco and raised on the Central Coast of California, the DC Comics contributing writer and author of the novel Batman: No Man’s Land began his writing career in earnest at the age of nine by winning a countywide short-story contest. He graduated from Vassar College with a Bachelor’s degree in English, and from the University of Southern California’s Master of Professional Writing program with an M.F.A. He is the author of nearly a dozen novels, six featuring bodyguard Atticus Kodiak, and two featuring Tara Chace, the protagonist of his Queen & Country series. Additionally, he has penned several short-stories, countless comics, and the occasional non-fiction essay. In comics, he has had the opportunity to write stories featuring some of the best-known DC Comics characters—Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, to name a few—as well as penning several creator-owned properties himself, such as Whiteout and Queen & Country (both published by Oni Press), a few stand-alone novels, and countless comic books. Whiteout: Melt won “Best Limited Series” at the Eisner Awards in 2000. He won another Eisner for Gotham Central: Half a Life in 2004.
Greg attended Vassar College undergraduate. He had a splendid time, and thanks the institution for the education which he is now, gleefully, squandering. After Vassar, he attended USC for his Master’s Degree. After USC, they moved to Oregon, and resided in Eugene for a time before settling in Portland, where he resides with his wife, author Jennifer Van Meter, and his two children.
Ruk
An android built by the Old Ones of the planet Exo III centuries before being discovered by Dr. Roger Korby. Having no one to service for those centuries, Ruk was satisfied to have work to do in assisting Dr. Korby as a bodyguard and assistant in his experiments, as the doctor created more androids. In 2266, when the powerful automaton turned on his “master,” Dr. Korby destroyed Ruk with a phaser blast. Ruk was portrayed by actor Ted Cassidy (known to TV fans as “Lurch” from The Addams Family) in the 1966 Star Trek episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”
Rumpelstiltskin
1. The central character in one of the tales collected by the Brothers Grimm in the original 1812 edition of Children’s and Household Tales. In the story, a miller brags to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. Arrangements are made for her to marry the King, but she must prove her talent within three days, or be killed. Unable to actually perform this feat, she employs a mysterious trickster to do the work for her, promising her firstborn child to him. When she has her baby, the stranger reappears to collect it, but the queen’s sorrow inspires him to give her a chance to keep the child if she can guess his name in three days. When the queen correctly guesses the man’s name on the third night, he becomes so angry that he stomps his foot into the ground and then pulls himself apart.
2. A central character in the ABC television drama Once Upon A Time, Rumpelstiltskin, as portrayed by Robert Carlyle, is the consummate dealmaker. In the modern-day scenes in Storybrooke, Maine, he is known as “Mr. Gold,” the proprietor of a pawn shop, where you can obtain practically anything you need, but usually at an uncomfortable “price.”
Ruth
A secondary character from the original Star Trek series episode “Shore Leave,” Ruth is an old flame of Captain James T. Kirk’s from his Starfleet Academy days. Due to the mechanics and purpose of the “amusement park” planet, a walking, talking copy of Ruth appears to Kirk when she simply crosses his mind. Ruth was portrayed by Shirley Bonne.
Rutherfordium
Discovered in 1964 when a team at the Russian Joint Institute for Nuclear Research led by Georgy Fleroy bombarded plutonium with neon, rutherfordium (symbol Rf, atomic number 104 on the Periodic Table of Elements) is classified as a transition metal. The boiling and melting points of the element are thus far unknown. It is named after physicist and chemist Lord Ernest Rutherford, who is known as the father of nuclear physics, but the element is also known as unnilquadium (named for the number “104”) and dubnium.
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