Three of a Kind, Part 19 Trivia Quiz

Answer: tin

The reason that tin is represented by the symbol Sn is that its Latin name was stannum. Tin is the 49th most abundant element on earth. Alloyed with copper, it produces bronze; another alloy of tin produces pewter. Tin is an especially important element today in the making of solder.

The first recording of "One Tin Soldier" was by The Original Caste in 1969. It was written by Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter. The 1971 recording by Coven was used in "Billy Jack." Yet another cover by Skeeter Davis climbed the charts in Canada.

The front wall of a standard squash court has three horizontal lines: the top line, the service line and the tin line. The tin line sets apart that area below which a ball is out. A way to think of the tin is as an analogue to the net in tennis.

Answer: pioneer

Most youth organizations in communist nations are called pioneers or some variant thereof. Such movements began with the Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioneer Organization in Russia in 1922.

The United States launched a series of exploration spacecraft intended to orbit the moon, orbit the Sun, and fly-by Jupiter on their way into interstellar space. The series was called Pioneer. Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972 and lost radio communication in 2003. Pioneer 11 was launched in 1973, visited Saturn and Jupiter, and continues to travel outbound toward the constellation Scutum.

The Pioneer Mother Memorial is a statue of a pioneer woman and her three children, standing in Esther Short Park in Vancouver, Washington. It was commissioned in 1928 and cast by Avard Fairbanks.

Answer: copper

The Latin word for the metal copper is cuprum. The metal occurs naturally in its pure form. While one would not set out to eat a copper sandwich, tiny amounts of copper are essential to human life, especially to liver, muscle and bone.

The copperhead snake is found throughout the Eastern U.S. It is a venomous pit viper with a beautiful copper-coloured head. It is known by many names including the northern copperhead, copper adder, copper-bell, copperhead moccasin, copperhead viper, copper snake, and copper viper.

The Copper River, also known as the Ahtna River in the Athabascan language, begins with the melting of the Copper Glacier on Mount Wrangell. It is world famous for the quality of the salmon caught in its waters. The Copper River commercial fishing season is very short and the fish taken very expensive.

Answer: barber

"The Barber of Seville" ("Il barbiere di Siviglia") by Gioachino Rossini is an opera buffa, which means it is funnier than most other operas. It was written in Italian but has been performed in many other languages. In 1825, it was the first opera performed in New York in Italian. According to one count, it is the ninth most performed opera on the planet.

James Barber was born in England on 23 March 1923 and died peacefully in his farmhouse on Vancouver Island (with a pot of chicken soup on the stove) in 2007. In between, he wrote numerous cookbooks and hosted the CBC Television cooking series "The Urban Peasant."

Miller Barber (1931-2013) never won a major PGA championship during his professional career; his closest was in 1969 when he lost by three shots at the U.S. Open in Houston. However, he won five senior majors including three U.S. Senior Opens (1982, 1984, 1985).

Answer: skunk

There are a number of different plants in the United States and Canada known as skunk cabbage. They are quite different species but all tend to grow in soggy areas and all emit a foul odor, especially when disturbed. Toxic when raw, the dried and cooked leaves have been used medicinally.

Since 1945, the amourous French skunk Pepé Le Pew has appeared in "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies". Pepé thinks he smells great but the objects of his affection are repulsed by his skunky odor. The cartoons were normally set in Paris.

Super secret designs for such aircraft as the the U-2 and the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird emerged from the Skunk Works -- Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs (formerly Lockheed Advanced Development Projects). The name was borrowed from the moonshine distillery in the "Li'l Abner" comic strips.

Answer: smoke

Smoke is a product of combustion, the mix of solid, liquid and gaseous stuff emitted into the air when something burns (pyrolysis). It can be a good thing (e.g. flavouring meat and other food), incense, ritual, smoking tobacco, pest control, calming bees, covering military maneuvers. It can also kill: most of the deaths caused by house fires are caused by inhaling smoke rather than from burning.

The Jerome Kern-Otto Harbach song "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was written in 1933 for the musical "Roberta." It has since been recorded by innumerable artists. Perhaps the best-known cover is the Platters' (1958) recording in which they answered "I of course replied 'Something here inside cannot be denied. Smoke gets in your eyes.'"

"Smoke Signals" is a road-trip story of two very different young Native American men who seek to find their identity. It was based on the short story "This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona" which appears in Alexie's 1993 book "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven". The cast and crew were entirely Native American.

Answer: gorilla

Crichton's sci-fi novel "Congo" was turned into a movie in 1995. Both included two sorts of gorillas: a friendly captive who uses sign language (based, in part, on real-life Koko who was taught to use American Sign Language by real-life Dr. Penny Patterson) and a tribe of aggressive grey-haired gorillas who were evolved toward being human.

Of all the possible school mascots, Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kansas, appears to be the only one with a gorilla as their mascot. PSU students are issued a "Gorilla Card" which serves both as identification and as a pre-paid credit card to which "Banana Bucks" may be deposited.

Grape Ape was a forty-foot-tall purple gorilla, paired with his sidekick Beegle Beagle, who aired in a Hanna-Barbera Saturday-morning cartoon on ABC. The series ran from 1975 through 1978. Whenever another character would meet him for the first time, they would yell "It's a gorill--ill-ill-ill-la!".

Answer: morning

"Good Morning America" (affectionately known as GMA) was first broadcast in 1975 and has been programmed continuously ever since. GMA competes with NBC's "Today Show" for dominance of the weekday morning market. CBS appears to "compete" on Sunday mornings, only.

Many people thought that Cat Stevens wrote (as well as recorded) "Morning Has Broken" in 1971 when it appeared on his album "Teaser and the Firecat." The hymn was actually written in 1931 by Anglican author and poet Eleanor Farjeon as a song to be sung by children thanking God for the beginning of every day.

For some Protestant churches, a sunrise service on Easter Morning parallels the Great Vigil of Easter observed by Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. In the biblical account, it was on Easter Morning that the disciples discovered the empty tomb. Many American churches hold a service so timed as to culminate at sunrise on this day; the best of these include a subsequent sumptuous breakfast!

Answer: roll

Jelly Roll Morton (1890 or 1885 -1941) was probably named Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (or possibly Mouton). His contribution to ragtime and jazz music was immense; he claimed to have invented jazz but he was also prone to overstatement. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 2005.

A regular bread recipe may be formed and baked so as to produce individual servings called "bread rolls" or "dinner rolls" or "rolls" or "buns." The use of the term probably derives from the dough being "rolled out" before cutting and making the smaller portions.

In television production, the primary footage (film or tape) is called the A-Roll and the material which will be used for cut-aways is called the B-Roll. B-Roll footage often includes shots of an area, person or thing being described by the speaker on the A-Roll or, in fiction, flash-backs to previous events.

Answer: captain

The character "Captain America" was created in 1940 by Joe Simon as a pro-American anti-Nazi superhero. Both his uniform and his shield (an alloy of steel and vibranium) bear an American-flag motif. Captain America survived WWII and went on to appear in a considerable series of contemporary movies.

In "Captain January" (1936), Shirley Temple plays Helen "Star" Mason, who was rescued from the ocean as a wee child by Captain January, a lighthouse keeper. A mean and nasty truant officer tries to take her away from the captain. Knowledge of the outcome requires seeing the movie. Temple's dance number with a young Buddy Ebsen is worth viewing the entire film.

Whitman's 1865 poem, "O Captain, My Captain" is, on the surface, an elegy for a sea captain who has safely brought a ship through a storm to port. The occasion of its writing and the clear intent of the poet were to lament the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who had piloted America through the Civil War. Though Lincoln has died, "the ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done."