Arsenic and old face.

Ready for the answers to yesterday's quiz?

First off, big props to Dale for getting all five correct on the first guess. Dawn beat him to the punch a bit by getting all five on her second guess. Bill and Scott got 4/5. Christian got...creative, but we'll get to his alternative answers in a minute.

The correct answers:

• This leopard-looking cat eats monkeys and lives as far north as Texas. Chances are, the monkey supply is pretty limited there. Good thing it also eats snakes, rodents and such.

Answer: Ocelot. Lots of guesses for Jaguar and even one guess for Margay, which is also called the "Tree Ocelot." I probably should have been more specific on this one.

Bonus trivia: The name "ocelot" comes from the Aztec "ocelotl," but that word generally translates to "jaguar." I'm guessing the Aztecs didn't spot the subtle species differences between the large cats eating their monkeys.

• This herb is eaten both as a seed and as leaves. Its name stems from the fact it smells like bugs. Mmmm.

Answer: Coriander, also known as cilantro. In Britain, they call cilantro "coriander" as well, which confused the hell out of me the first time I made a Naked Chef recipe that called for "two handfuls of coriander."

About the name, here's a note from Wikipedia:

The name coriander derives from Latin coriandrum, which was first noted by Pliny. The Latin word derives in turn from Greek corys, a bedbug, plus -ander, "resembling", and refers to the supposed similarity of the scent of the crushed leaves to the distinctive odour of bedbugs (largely forgotten in this age of insecticides).

I had one guess for sesame, but it sounds like very few humans eat the leaves.

• A centuries-old story about this man, who earned a "deserved death," may stem from a real person who tricked his jailor into shaving his face with arsenic. In his defense, that did take the hair off.

Answer: Faust. This one proved the toughest, although three people got it. Here's the story, again via Wikipedia:

The origin of the protagonist's name and persona remains unclear. It is widely assumed to be based on the figure of the German magician and alchemist Dr. Johann Georg Faust (approximately 1480–1540), a dubious magician and alchemist probably from Knittlingen, Württemberg, who obtained a degree in divinity from Heidelberg University in 1509. According to one account Faust's poor reputation became legendary while he was in prison, where in exchange for wine he "offered to show a chaplain how to remove hair from his face without a razor; the chaplain provided the wine and Faustus provided the chaplain with a salve of arsenic, which removed not only the hair but the flesh."

My other clue was his "deserved death," which stemmed from the early story "The Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserved Death of Doctor Iohn Faustus," the inspiration for Christopher Marlowe's "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus."

• This U.S. ship, torpedoed by an ally, was the only one ever attacked during peacetime without a subsequent Congressional investigation. Whether the strike was intentional or not is still debated today.

Answer: The USS Liberty. A spy ship, the Liberty was nearly sunk by Israeli fighter planes and torpedo boats during the Six-Day War of 1967. It's still a controversial topic, and it pops up in investigative news shows and conspiracy theories every once in a while.

In the outstanding book "Body of Secrets," James Bamford theorizes that the attack stemmed from Israeli war atrocities that might have been recorded by the NSA ship. Bamford does a great job describing the attack and ensuing cover-up, but I personally doubt his theory. I think Israel was just in a mood to shoot anything that moved, and they had been assured at the beginning of the war that there were no US ships in the region. Feel free to post your own thoughts on this one.

While several of you got this one, Christian floated a unique answer:

On August 21, 1943, the SS Cape Mohican was in a convoy in the Mediterranean when an escort vessel accidentally fired a torpedo during a nighttime alarm. The crippled Cape Mohican limped to Malta and was subsequently towed to England for refitting.

Not a bad answer, except for the whole "peacetime" requirement of the question. However, when I revisted this question, I realized "peacetime" might be misleading, since the Six-Day War was going on.

Oh well, moving on...

• Just this year, Western Union stopped offering telegraphs. But what major company still has "telegraph" as part of its name?

Answer: American Telephone and Telegraph, aka AT&T, Yeah, everyone got this one.

Thanks to everyone who took part. The rest of you, try to take part the next time I get bored enough to do this again.