Sailing to Philadelphia—Answers

The answers to my questions from earlier are posted below.

A boat load of stray cargo to amuse you today.

Blue whale mother and young.
Image Whale Expeditions.

One

What is the young of a whale called?

Answer: Calf

The term ’calf’, when referring to a young whale, is derived from the same root as the word for a young cow, which comes from Old English cealf and Proto-Germanic kalbam. This usage has been extended to marine mammals, where the adults are called bulls and cows, and the young are referred to as calves/calves.

Two

What were the first names of Mason and Dixon, after whom the Mason-Dixon Line is named?

Answer: Charles and Jeremiah.

The Mason-Dixon Line, surveyed by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon from 1763 to 1767, initially served to resolve a land dispute between the Penn and Calvert families by marking the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania. It later became a symbolic boundary between slave and free states in the United States before the Civil War.

Three

What eight letter word means ‘the study of Chinese language, history, customs, and politics’, and from what does the first three letters of the word ultimately derive?

Answers: Sinology; Qin.

The terms sinology and sinologist were coined around 1838, Sinae, in turn from the Greek Sinae, from the Arabic Sin—which ultimately derive from Qin, i.e. the Qin dynasty.
— Wikipedia ultimately the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 3rd edition 1992): 1686.

The astronomical seasons are based on the position of the Earth in relation to the sun. The equivalent meteorological seasons are also shown. This image is for the northern hemisphere.
Image Wikimedia Commons

Four

In the northern hemisphere, what astronomical season ends at the vernal equinox and what three months form the equivalent meteorological season?

Answers: Astronomical winter; December, January and February.

Astronomical winter starts with the Winter Solstice about December 21st in the northern hemisphere and ends with the Vernal Equinox about March 20th. Meteorological winter covers the months of December, January and February.

Five

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.

The opening words of which English novel, first published in Florence Italy in 1928, are quoted above. What is the novel’s title and who is the author?

Answer: Lady Chatterley’s Lover; D.H. Lawrence.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence’s final novel, explores the relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman. The novel, influenced by Lawrence’s life and the story of Lady Ottoline Morrell, faced obscenity trials in the UK and US before becoming a bestseller. It was not published fully and openly in the UK until 1960.

Sailing to Philadelphia – The Post Title

The title refers to Mark Knopfler’s album from 2000, and its title track which was inspired by Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon, a novel about Mason and Dixon. The track features American singer-songwriter James Taylor.