3/9/25 - Extra! Extra! 📰

🏁 Solve –> Extra! Extra! by Michael Schlossberg

1A | First lady McKinley

IDA

Ida (Saxton) McKinley was born in Canton, Ohio, and served as First Lady of the United States from March 4, 1897 until September 14, 1901 – the day her husband, 25th President William McKinley, passed away after having been shot twice in the stomach eight days prior by an anarchist named Leon Czolgosz.

Earlier that year, Ida became the first sitting First Lady to visit a foreign country, hopping just over the Texas border to Juarez, Mexico, where she ate lunch.

[Because Ida's husband did not accompany her, it wouldn't be until 1906, when Teddy Roosevelt traveled to Panama, that a U.S. President set foot outside the country while in office.]

20A | ___ Nostra

COSA

Cosa Nostra ("Our Thing" in Italian) is the name employed internally by members of the Sicilian Mafia to refer to their organized crime operation.

Structurally, Cosa Nostra is not one unified entity, but rather a network of affiliated gangs who each control a specific territory in which they engage in a variety of extralegal activities.

Each of these groups is known as a "family" and headed by a "boss," an elected leader who is aided by an "underboss" as well as a "consigliere" (another elected official who serves as a both a supervisor and an adviser to the boss).

Further down the chain are "capos" who oversee the "soldiers" that comprise the lowest level of the org chart.

Though they are perhaps the most well-known of the bunch, the Sicilian Mafia is actually the smallest of the three major crime syndicates in Italy, the others being the Camorra and the Ndrangheta.

29A | "Scarface"

AL CAPONE

Speaking of mobsters...

Before he was labeled "Public Enemy #1," 18-year-old Al Capone was a fledgling gangster working at the Harvard Inn (a bar on New York City's Coney Island boardwalk) when he became enamored by a female customer while on duty one night. After she repeatedly rebuffed his advances, Capone loudly insulted her.

This action drew the ire of her brother, Frank Galluccio, who was quite intoxicated and proceeded to attack Capone with a sharp object that produced three large gashes across his adversary's left cheek and neck – wounds that required 80 stitches to patch up.

⚠️ FYI: Capone disliked his scars and would sometimes claim, despite never having served in the military, that he received the wounds during WWI.

50A | Driest country in sub-Saharan Africa

NAMIBIA

Namibia's mean rainfall is just 11 inches (278 mm) a year, making it the most arid country in Africa's sub-Saharan (southern) region, but a veritable swamp when compared to Egypt – in the northern part of the continent – which receives an average of only 0.7 inches (18 mm) annually.

[Contrast both with Columbia, the world's wettest country, which averages 128 inches (3,240 mm) of precipitation each year.]

👉 BONUS BIT: Namibia is home to our planet's tallest sand dune (Dune 7) and second largest canyon (after the Grand Canyon).

79A | Seer cursed by Apollo so that her prophecies would not be believed

CASSANDRA

In an attempt to woo Cassandra, a princess from Troy, the Greek god Apollo bestowed on her the ability to see the future with perfect accuracy. However, after Cassandra spurned his romantic entreaties, Apollo turned his gift into a curse – making it so that her warnings were never heeded.

This had disastrous consequences, most notably the dismissal of her prognostication that her brother Paris's kidnapping of Helen would lead to the Trojan War and, ultimately, the fall of her native city.

95A | "The rubber people," in Nahuatl

OLMEC

Using a word borrowed from the Aztec language, Olmec is the name scholars have retroactively applied to Mesoamerica's first civilization, one that existed from roughly 1600 to 400 BCE in territory that is now the southern Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. (The moniker is a reference to the peoples' practice of extracting latex from a native tree to produce natural rubber.)

Like the inhabitants of Rapa Nui (Easter Island), the Olmec left behind a series of massive stone heads, each of which was carved out of volcanic basalt boulders and depicts a unique male face (possibly former rulers). To date, 17 sculptures ranging in size from five to ten feet and weighing as much as 20 tons have been located, which the most recent one coming to light in 1994.

121A | Degree held by only one U.S. president (George W. Bush)

MBA

George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001-2009, earned his Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975, a degree he put to use when founding Arbusto Energy (later re-named Bush Exploration) – an endeavor that aimed to locate underground oil and natural gas deposits in Texas.

3D | Baby name whose popularity plummeted after 2015

ALEXA

Although the number of babies given the name Alexa initially increased following Amazon's introduction of its voice assistant in November 2014, the trend quickly reversed itself – plummeting from a peak as the 32nd most popular girl's name in 2015 (6,053 children) to #603 (490 children) in 2023 according to data from the Social Security Administration.

[Siri, on the other hand, has not cracked the top 1000 most popular names in any year of the 2000s.]

67D | ___ soda

SAL

Known alternately as "soda ash" or "washing soda," sal soda is a common name for sodium carbonate, an inorganic chemical compound.

Although similar in appearance to baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), sal soda is not recommended for consumption. Its large granules are abrasive and incredibly alkaline (possessing a value of 11.5 out of a possible 14 on the pH scale), making them best suited for use in detergents as well as a variety of industrial applications, including glass manufacturing and taxidermy.

93D | 48-oz. beer glass

YARD

"Yard glass" refers, quite literally, to a 3-foot-long beverage receptacle often brought out for speed-drinking challenges and/or special occasions.

In a tradition dating back to the 1600s, participants attempt to finish off their ale in one gulp without spilling – a task made especially difficult by the vessel's unwieldy design and bulb-shaped bottom.

110D | "The Seduction of Joe ___" (1979 Alan Alda film)

TYNAN

The Seduction of Joe Tynan is a political drama centered around a U.S. senator (Alan Alda, who also wrote the original screenplay) involved in an extramarital affair with a lawyer (Meryl Streep).

It was the least acclaimed of the three movies starring Meryl Streep released in 1979, the other two being:

• Manhattan (written and directed by Woody Allen)
• Kramer vs. Kramer (for which she won her first Oscar)