July 11 was a busy day over the years. In 1804, in a duel (aka “an affair of honor”) held in Weehawken, New Jersey, Vice President Aaron Burr fatally shot his long-time political antagonist Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton, a leading Federalist and the chief architect of America’s political economy, died the following day. Burr, having endured murder charges, indictment for treason, and horrible public condemnation, would die in relative obscurity in 1836. Also on this date in 1914, George Herman “Babe” Ruth made his major league baseball debut. And in 1979, Skylab crashed to Earth, injuring no one. Preserve your honor, swing for the cheap seats, and maintain your high-altitude rating by taking today’s combination vocab/science/baseball quiz.
1. èpèe
(a) a summons to a duel to answer an affront
(b) a place where a duel is fought
(c) a fencing or dueling sword having a bowl-shaped guard and a rigid blade of triangular section with no cutting edge that tapers to a sharp point blunted for fencing
(d) the assistant of a duelist or boxer
2. preferment
(a) an honor or award gained for preeminence
(b) a position or office of honor or profit
(c) a tomb or a monument erected in honor of a person or group of persons whose remains are elsewhere
(d) a formal statement of the achievements of a person receiving an academic honor
3. timocracy
(a) government by the best individuals or by a small privileged class
(b) rule by the timid
(c) government by the wealthy
(d) government in which love of honor is the ruling principle
4. tout est perdu fors l'honneur
(a) all is lost save honor
(b) through difficulties to honors
(c) death before lost honor
(d) chicken farmers deserve great honor
5. chin music
(a) whiskers
(b) a usually high inside pitch in baseball intended to intimidate the batter
(c) a long mustache with ends that turn down to the chin
(d) having full or saggy flesh about the lower cheeks and jaw area
6. sabermetrics
(a) the statistical analysis of baseball data
(b) the statistical analysis of satellite data
(c) the statistical analysis of political data
(d) the statistical analysis of vocabulary data
7. apogee
(a) the point nearest a planet or a satellite (as the moon) reached by an object orbiting it
(b) an object carried into orbit in and subsequently released from a satellite or spacecraft
(c) the point farthest from a planet or a satellite (as the moon) reached by an object orbiting it
(d) one presented as an award of honor or distinction
8. the primary cause of Skylab’s early demise
(a) unexpectedly high sunspot activity
(b) sabotage
(c) defective batteries
(d) space junk
9. geostationary
(a) toward the earth
(b) being or having an equatorial orbit at an altitude of about 22,300 miles (35,900 kilometers) requiring an angular velocity the same as that of the earth so that the position of a satellite in such an orbit is fixed with respect to the earth
(c) suggestive of earth (as in texture, odor, or color)
(d) sustainably manufactured letter paper usually accompanied with matching biodegradable envelopes
10. gantry
(a) a fly ball hit barely beyond a baseball infield
(b) a place where a duel is fought
(c) the area between the bases of a baseball field used by a base runner
(d) a movable structure with platforms at different levels used for erecting and servicing rockets before launching
Correct answers:
1c; 2b; 3d; 4a; 5b; 6a; 7c; 8a; 9b; 10d
How’d you do?
| Score | Comment |
| All 10 | Youz da Babe |
| 7-9 | Nice shot but your opponent still lives |
| 4-6 | Wounded, but you’ll live to duel another day |
| 2-3 | Trading you will cause absolutely NO curse on anybody |
| 0-1 | Explosion on launchpad |
Intro text: history.com
Definitions: Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary
