Jeopardy First Edition -- Game #16

 Hi friends!

After a small break, it's time once again for Jeopardy!, First Edition. The post covers game #16 of the series. As in previous posts, my goal is to share what I've learned about the clues in this game.

Notes are in the order they appear in the original video, which you can find here.

Wikipedia is my primary source for much of this material (so take that with a grain of salt).

Jeopardy! Round

Categories: Europe, Baseball, Food, Rodents, Fathers, Fictional Fidos

• Baseball ($300): The St. Louis Football Cardinals existed from 1960 to 1987, right around the time this Jeopardy! First Edition was initially released. They would move to Arizona due to poor attendance figures in St. Louis.
• Baseball ($500): Due to baseball's segregation policies in the first half of the 20th century, major league baseball history missed out on one of the best pitchers of that era. Paige had his semi-professional debut in 1924, and his Negro Leagues debut in 1927. But it took 21 years to get Paige into an MLB uniform--1948 with the Cleveland Indians (now Guardians), He was 42 at that point. He was the first black pitcher to play in the American League and the seventh black player to play in Major League Baseball.
  
  The folks at Baseball Reference have done a heck of a job compiling Paige's statistics during the Negro Leagues. In his 17 years in the Negro Leagues, he had a 96-51 W-L record (.653), having played in 224 games overall. In his 6 years in the American League, playing for Cleveland and the St. Louis Browns (now the Baltimore Orioles), his record was 28-31 (.475), having played in 179 games. He was only a starter 26 times in the American League, but he finished 109 games (7 as part of complete games), suggesting that he was a reliever or a closer during his later years.
  
  He would go on to be the first Negro League player to pitch in a World Series--a reliever appearance in Game 5. He faced 2 batters, getting both out, but committing a balk. He would make a one-game appearance for the Kansas City Athletics in 1965 at age 59. He would be the first Negro League player to be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1971.
• Europe ($200): This checkpoint was likely the most famous because it was the single crossing point for foreigners and members of the Allied forces. Oddly, the side controlled by the U.S. and U.K. never had much in the way of permanent guard buildings on their side of the checkpoint, but the U.S.S.R. really built up their side with watchtowers and barriers.
• Europe ($500): I believe that this is the result of the Monaco Succession Crisis of 1918 and appears to still be in effect today.
• Food ($500): Everything you wanted to know about squab, thanks to Food and Wine.
• Fictional Fidos ($200): Yes, Blondie is still being produced today. Chic Young first published it in 1930, and his son Dean took over in 1973. Ninety-three years and counting. Fun fact: Blondie was made into a film series and a radio show from 1938-1950.

Double Jeopardy! Round

Categories: Political Pairs, Flowers, The Moon, San Francisco, The Kellys, X Marks the Spot

• X Marks the Spot ($200): The "X" rating for movies in the United States lasted from 1969 through 1990, when it was replaced with the "NC-17" rating. The reason for the change? The initial 1968 ratings were not trademarked, so any movie producer, if they wanted, could apply the rating on their films. This became especially prominent in the...more adult cinema that was released during the 1970s and 1980s. A film receiving two "X" ratings would be considered "soft-core", and you can probably infer what three "X" rating on a film would get you.
  
  
  
  
  
  The 1968 film Greetings, directed by Brian De Palma and starring Robert De Niro, was the first film to receive an X rating in the United States. Midnight Cowboy famously is the only X-rated movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. A Clockwork Orange and Last Tango in Paris each received X ratings and multiple Academy Award nominations. The last X-rated film is believed to be Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, a Spanish dark romantic comedy starring Antonio Banderas. In fact, Miramax, the film's distributor in the United States, sued to get the X-rating removed. The NC-17 rating would follow shortly thereafter. It's difficult to get an exact count, but as many as 500 films may have received the X raring between 1968 and 1990.
• X Marks the Spot ($600): If you want to hear the Liszt piano-based version of the Saint-Saens orchestral piece, check out this YouTube video.
• X Marks the Spot ($1000): Lots to unpack here...Xavier Cugat was married five times--Abbe Lane was the fourth wife, and Charo was the fifth. Abbe Lane was a singer and actress who married Cugat when she was 20 and he was 50. She is still with us today, at age 91. Charo's age is harder to track down. At various times, she claimed to be born in 1941, 1947, 1949, and 1951--making her 73 to 83 years old at the time of this writing. She, too, married Cugat at a younger age when he was older. Charo is still with us, acting, singing, and performing on the guitar. (But I miss her on Hollywood Squares, where she was a frequent panelist.
• The Kellys ($800): Gene Kelly indeed danced with Jerry the Mouse in the 1945 movie Anchors Aweigh.
• Political Pairs ($800): Here you go: Information about what seventh cousin once removed means.
• The Kellys ($400): Ironically, her last film was called High Society! Perhaps her two most famous films are Dial M for Murder and Rear Window.
• The Kellys ($600): Yes, Pogo was a comic strip from 1948 to 1975. "Selby Kelly said in a 1982 interview that she decided to discontinue the strip because newspapers had shrunk the size of strips to the point where people could not easily read it."

Final Jeopardy! Round

Category: Landmarks

• It's a very strange story, but the New London Bridge of 1831-1967 was sold to someone who shipped it and moved it to Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It cost $2.6 million to purchase. It still stands today.

What other facts and trivia did I miss? Let me know in the comments, and stay tuned for the next game!