JAQR - October 27, 2024
Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Robert Jordan, Midnight Oil, South Dakota cities, Detective authors, and more...
Thank you for reading another issue of the Jeopardy Answer & Question Recap, or JAQR [“jacker”] for short. This recap includes two clues from each Jeopardy! episode between Monday 10/21 and Friday 10/25. The recap includes Daily Doubles, Final Jeopardy clues, and a Triple Stumper. The first half of the recap includes just the clues so you can quiz yourself if you want. The second half gives you some (hopefully) interesting information about the clues and/or some related info.
DAILY DOUBLE #1
NONFICTION
The epigraph to this classic 1962 book quotes Keats: "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, and no birds sing"
DAILY DOUBLE #2
CHEMISTRY
Jöns Jacob Berzelius honored the gods of his Swedish ancestors naming this element, now a powerful nuclear reactor fuel
DAILY DOUBLE #3
RANDOM BOOKS IN FICTION SERIES
“The Dragon Reborn” is part 3 in this series by Robert Jordan that kept on turning
DAILY DOUBLE #4
ROCKTOBER
On Oct. 1, 2000 Midnight Oil played their hit "Beds Are Burning" at the Olympic closing ceremonies in this city
DAILY DOUBLE #5
QUICK
This 2-word South Dakota town is known as the "Gateway to Mount Rushmore"
FINAL JEOPARDY #1
ITALIAN WORDS & PHRASES
This theme tackled in art by Bellini & Michelangelo isn't explicitly mentioned in the Bible, but is part of the “Seven Sorrows of Mary”
FINAL JEOPARDY #2
DETECTIVE AUTHORS
For much of the 1920s, he lived on Eddy Street in San Francisco's Tenderloin District
FINAL JEOPARDY #3
THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
This day involving the Holy Spirit & the Apostles is sometimes described as the "birthday" of the Church
FINAL JEOPARDY #4
ON THE U.K. MUSIC CHARTS
"Candle In The Wind 1997" knocked this song that asked a title question from the top spot as the U.K.'s all-time bestselling song
TRIPLE STUMPER #1
LITERARY TITLES EN ESPAÑOL
"Mil soles espléndidos"
LAST WEEK REVIEW #1
What actress known for her peekaboo hairstyle starred in the 1941 comedy Sullivan's Travels with Joel McCrea and the 1946 film nor The Blue Dahlia with Alan Ludd?
LAST WEEK REVIEW #2
What man from Argentina composer the 1952 ballet Estancia and the 1964 opera Don Rodrigo?
BONUS CLUE #1
IRAN, SO FAR AWAY
Biblical personages traditionally said to be buried in Iran include this dream interpreter who had been exiled to Babylon
BONUS CLUE #2
ASSASSINS
Just days after stabbing Jean-Paul Marat through the heart, she lost her head on the guillotine
BONUS CLUE #3
THE CULTURAL 19th CENTURY
This "Deerslayer" author came up with the Bread and Cheese Club, a meeting of early 19th century minds
BONUS CLUE #4
It's "A" mixture or blend of mercury with another metal
CHEMISTRY
BONUS CLUE #5
THE TROJAN WAR
In the title of a Shakespeare work, he is a son of King Priam & she is the daughter of Calchas
DAILY DOUBLE #1
NONFICTION
The epigraph to this classic 1962 book quotes Keats: "The sedge is wither'd from the lake, and no birds sing"
***SILENT SPRING***
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was an American biologist. Before becoming a full-time writer, she earned a zoology degree from Johns Hopkins and worked for the Bureau of Fisheries. Her early works include 1941's Under the Sea-Wind, 1951's The Sea Around Us (details how centuries of nonstop rain created the oceans), and 1955's The Edge of the Sea. Those three books are sometimes published together as The Sea Trilogy.
Carson is best known for the 1962 environmental book Silent Spring. It focuses on the harmful effects of pesticides, especially DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane). That pesticide was eventually banned in the U.S. in 1972. The book’s final paragraph include the line “As crude a weapon as the cave man’s club, the chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life.” The title of Silent Spring was inspired by a line from the John Keats poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” that evokes a ruined environment. The book was dedicated to the polymath Albert Schweitzer, who established a hospital in present-day Gabon in 1913.
Carson was born near Pittsburgh, PA and is the namesake of the Ninth Street Bridge. It is one of the city’s 446 bridges and one of the three parallel suspension bridges (“The Three Sisters”) that cross the Allegheny River east of the MLB stadium PNC Park (home of the Pirates). The other two parallel bridges, the Seventh Street Bridge and the Sixth Street Bridge, are named for Andy Warhol and Roberto Clemente, respectively.
DAILY DOUBLE #2
CHEMISTRY
Jöns Jacob Berzelius honored the gods of his Swedish ancestors naming this element, now a powerful nuclear reactor fuel
***THORIUM***
Jöns Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) was a Swedish chemist. His contributions to the field include abbreviating the names of the elements with one or two letters instead of using hieroglyphics or pictographs. Berzelius was also the first to use the term halogen (meaning “salt former”) to describe the Group 17 elements (fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, astatine, and tennessine). He also coined the terms isomerism and catalysis.
The elements Berzelius discovered include:
Cerium (Ce) - named for the asteroid Ceres, which was discovered two years earlier, it is considered one of the rare earth elements, but is actually relatively abundant on our planet
Selenium (Se) - named for the Moon (because it appeared similar to tellurium, which is named for the Earth), it is present in the antioxidant enzyme glutathione peroxidase
Silicon (Si) - named for the Latin word for “flint” (in which large quantities of silicon dioxide are found), it is the namesake of a "valley" in Northern California with many high-tech businesses (Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of India and Tel Aviv is the center of Silicon Wadi)
Thorium (Th) - one of the two elements named after deities from Norse mythology (the other is vanadium, which is named for Vanadís, an alternate name for Freyja), it was present in a pre-WWII German brand of toothpaste called Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste, which is apparently an example of "radioactive quackery"
DAILY DOUBLE #3
RANDOM BOOKS IN FICTION SERIES
“The Dragon Reborn” is part 3 in this series by Robert Jordan that kept on turning
***THE WHEEL OF TIME***
American author James Oliver Rigney Jr. (1948-2007) used the pen name Robert Jordan. He is best known for a massive series of fantasy novels titled The Wheel of Time. There are fourteen books in the series (some of them nearly one thousand pages each), along with a prequel titled New Spring. The books were edited by Jordan’s wife Harriet McDougal. After Jordan’s death, the final three books in the series were co-written by Brandon Sanderson. The series was adapted into a show on Amazon Prime Video starring Rosamund Pike. Fans of the series and fantasy literature in general often attend JordanCon, which is typically hosted annually in Atlanta. Other works by Robert Jordan include several books centering on Conan the Barbarian, who was originally created by Robert E. Howard ("The Father of Sword and Sorcery"). Robert Jordan is also coincidentally the name of the protagonist of Ernest Hemingway's novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, which is set during the Spanish Civil War.
DAILY DOUBLE #4
ROCKTOBER
On Oct. 1, 2000 Midnight Oil played their hit "Beds Are Burning" at the Olympic closing ceremonies in this city