0115-10 New York Times Crossword Answers 15 Jan 10

This is my solution to the crossword published in the New York Times today. If you are doing the New York Times crossword in any other publication, you are working on the syndicated puzzle.

Here is a link to my answers to today's SYNDICATED New York Times crossword.

Completion Time: 18m 20s
Theme: None
Answers I missed:  0

TODAY'S GOOGLIES (all links point to Amazon.com)
Across
16 URSA MINOR: Ursa Minor sits right beside the constellation Draco (Latin for "dragon"), and so once Ursa Minor was considered to be the wing of Draco, and hence "Dragon's Wing". Quite interesting ...
17 LANZA: Mario Lanza was perhaps America's great tenor.
18 ROCK OPERA: "Quadrophenia" was the second rock opera by the Who ("Tommy" being the first, and more famous).
19 GREEN ALAGAE: Protists, like green algae, are simple microorganisms, often with only one cell, or if multicellular, having no specialized tissues.
24 TORA: The pre-determined code word to be used by the Japanese if they managed to achieve surprise in their attack on Pearl Harbor was tiger, or tora in Japanese. This gave the name to the excellent 1970 movie "Tora! Tora! Tora!".
26 CANIO: Canio is the character in Leoncavallo's opera "Pagliacci", that is famously dressed as the clown.
30 LAOS: Laos was called the "Land of a Million Elephants" in reference to its centuries-old history as a powerful war machine.
36 PYE: Joe Pye was an Indian healer from New England who used the Eutrochium plants as herbal remedies, giving them the name "Joe Pye weeds".
41 REOS: REO was founded by Ransom E. Olds (hence the name REO) and one of its most famous models was the  REO Royale.

Down
1 COLGATE: The Patriot League was profiled in the John Feinstein book "The Last Amateurs".
5 DEANE: Silas Deane was a member of the Continental Congress and when dispatched to Paris became America's first foreign diplomat. His amazing story is told in Joel Richard Paul's book "Unlikely Allies".
7 OROGENY: Orogeny means "mountain generating" in Greek, and is the name given to all the natural processes that result in the formation of mountains.
8 OSCARS: Walt Disney won 26 Oscars, and also holds the record number of 4 in one year.
10 EMO: Emo originated in Washington D.C. in the 80s, and takes its name from "emotional hardcore". Not my cup of tea ...
31 BLACK TEA: The black tea was compressed into bricks for use as a form of currency, not only in Mongolia, but also Tibet and Siberia.
32 ICE SHOW: "Pairs" refers to the pairs competition in which couples compete. "Eights" refers to the figure eights, as in "figure skating".
37 YOU AND I: Glenn Miller had three number ones in 1941: "You and I", "Song of the Volga Boatmen" and "Elmer's Tune".
38 ESP TEST: Zener cards are those five cards with shapes on them that are used to test if one has ESP.
40 CALAIS: The Dover Strait is the narrowest part of the English Channel, on which one side sits Dover, and the other Calais.
43 BILBO: Bilbo Baggins is the main character in Tolkien's "The Hobbit", and makes an appearances in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.