Here’s a review of this week’s questions:

  1. What is the name of the Downtown Cincinnati Museum, opened in 2004, that is part of the American trend of “Museums of Conscience”?
  2. What medication was invented in the 1940’s by UC researcher George Rieveschl?
  3. What was nickname given to the 1982 AFC championship game between the Cincinnati Bengals and the San Diego Chargers?

And here are the answers:

  1. Underground Railroad Freedom Center. The museum presents the history of the Underground Railroad and also pays tribute to all efforts to “abolish human enslavement and secure freedom for all people.” Along with the Museum of Tolerance, The United States Holocaust Museum and the National Museum of Civil Rights, it is considered part of the trend in American museums to present versions of history that are sometimes problematic.
  2. Benadryl. George Rieveschl was the inventor of the popular antihistamine diphenhydramine, more commonly known by the brand name Benadryl. Rieveschl had attended the University of Cincinnati for his undergraduate and graduate studies, and returned to UC to join the faculty as a chemical engineering professor in 1942. It was during this period that the two-part compound he was working on, originally tested to improve muscle-relaxing medications, dramatically blocked histamine, a chemical released in the body that narrows air passages in the lungs and causes inflammation. The breakthrough led to Benadryl becoming the first FDA-approved prescription antihistamine in 1946.
  3. Freezer Bowl. Played on January 10th, 1982, at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, the “Freezer Bowl” has gone down in sports history as the coldest NFL game ever, in terms of wind chill. The air temperature that day was minus 9 degrees, but the 27 mile-per-hour winds made it feel like minus 59 degrees on the field. Cincinnati head coach Forrest Gregg had experience with this sort of thing, having played for Vince Lombardi in Green Bay years earlier. It had been bitterly cold in Cincinnati all week and the weather forecast for the Bengals’ first-ever title game appearance was ominous. Players encouraged their families to stay home and watch the game on TV, rather than be subjected to temperatures that made everyone’s facial hair freeze. The Bengals won the game 27-7 and went on to the Super Bowl, which they lost to the San Francisco 49ers.