She came up short.
A librarian from suburban Baltimore is getting skewered for failing to correctly identify William H. Seward as the author of an 1867 letter in Monday’s final “Jeopardy!” round.
The clue was: “In 1867 he wrote to General Rousseau, ‘On arriving at Sitka…you will receive from the Russian commissioner the formal transfer.’”
Leann Craumer, a librarian from Catonsville, answered “who is Napoleon?”
“I’m afraid not, Leann,” responded host Ken Jennings, 49.
History buffs noted that Napoleon Bonaparte, the French military commander and emperor, died in 1821 — meaning Craumer’s timeline was off by nearly half a century.
The other two contestants, Jerry Powers and Daniel Moore, answered the final clue correctly, with Moore becoming a two-day champion.
“As soon as I saw the year and the city, it had to refer to the Alaska purchase,” one trivia buff commented on Twitter. “Very easy final.”
“That one gal with Napoleon? Seriously?!” exclaimed another Twitter user.
“Government official Napoleon?” a third snickered.
Another user humbly wrote: “I blew it. I knew what it referred to but I would have written down, ‘Who is Stewart?’”
When Secretary of State Seward engineered the acquisition of Alaska from Russia, the purchase was famously known as “Seward’s Folly,” because no one thought the hunk of ice was worth the price — a whopping $7.2 million.
Craumer seemed to shake her folly off in an interview with the Capital Gazette.
“It was an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I would do it again in a heartbeat if I was given the opportunity,” Craumer said Friday. “I am so excited to be a tiny part of the legacy of this show that I have been watching for most of my life, and that so many people enjoy in their own living rooms every night.”
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