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Unique Facts About South & Central America: : Panama Canal |
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Panama Canal |
The Panama Canal is a large canal, 82 kilometres (51 miles) long, that cuts through the isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Because of the S shape of Panama, the Atlantic lies to the west of the canal and the Pacific to the east, reversing the normal orientation. It opened on August 15, 1914. |
The canal has two sets of canal locks on the Pacific side and one on the Atlantic. At the Atlantic end, the massive steel gates of the triple locks at Gatún are 70 feet (21 m) high and weigh 745 tons each, but are so well-counterbalanced that a 30 kW (40 horsepower) engine suffices to open and close them. Lake Gatún, w... |
Several islands are located within the Lake Gatún portion of the Panama Canal, including Barro Colorado Island, a world-famous wildlife sanctuary. |
The dream of a canal across the isthmus of Central America goes back centuries, and there was serious discussion of its possible construction from the 1820s onwards. The two most favorable routes were those across Panama and across Nicaragua, with a route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico as a third option. T... |
The Panama Railway was built across the isthmus from 1850 to 1855. The infrastructure of this functioning railroad was a key consideration in the plan to build the canal in Panama. |
Prior to the Panama Canal's construction, the fastest way to travel by ship from New York to California would have been by "rounding the Horn", the long and dangerous route via Cape Horn (at the southernmost tip of South America). |
After the success of the Suez Canal in Egypt, the French were confident that they could connect another two seas with little difficulty. In May of 1879, the International Canal Congress was held in Paris. Delegates from 22 nations considered the Nicaraguan route, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but the majority settled on ... |
Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was in charge of the construction of the Suez Canal, was initially called upon to build the new canal at Panama and construction began on January 1, 1880. |
The dream of a canal across the isthmus of Central America goes back centuries, and there was serious discussion of its possible construction from the 1820s onwards. The two most favorable routes were those across Panama and across Nicaragua, with a route across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico as a third option. T... |
The Panama Railway was built across the isthmus from 1850 to 1855. The infrastructure of this functioning railroad was a key consideration in the plan to build the canal in Panama. |
Prior to the Panama Canal's construction, the fastest way to travel by ship from New York to California would have been by "rounding the Horn", the long and dangerous route via Cape Horn (at the southernmost tip of South America). |
After the success of the Suez Canal in Egypt, the French were confident that they could connect another two seas with little difficulty. In May of 1879, the International Canal Congress was held in Paris. Delegates from 22 nations considered the Nicaraguan route, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, but the majority settled on ... |
Ferdinand de Lesseps, who was in charge of the construction of the Suez Canal, was initially called upon to build the new canal at Panama and construction began on January 1, 1880. |
However, there was a vast difference between digging quantities of sand in a dry flat area and removing enormous quantities of rock from the middle of a jungle. Floods, mudslides, and high mortality rates from malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases eventually forced the French to abandon the project. |
President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States was confident that the United States could complete the project, and recognized that US control of the passage from the Atlantic to Pacific oceans would be militarily and economically important. Panama was then part of Colombia so Roosevelt proceeded to negotiate with t... |
When fighting began Roosevelt ordered US battleships stationed off of Panama's coast for "training exercises". Many argue that fear of a war with the United States caused the Colombians to avoid any serious opposition to the revolution. The victorious Panamanians returned the favor to Roosevelt by allowing the United S... |
Control of the zone was exercised by the Isthmian Canal Commission during canal construction. The commission was staffed by military officers and initially chaired by Admiral John C. White. The first success of the North Americans was to eliminate the noxious yellow fever that had killed so many construction workers. B... |
The first chief engineer of the project was John Findlay Wallace. Hampered by disease and poor organization, his work did not go well and he resigned after one year. The second chief engineer, John Stevens, set up much of the infrastructure necessary for construction of the canal, including building housing for constru... |
De Lesseps had insisted on a sea-level canal, but the French engineers never found a solution for dealing with Chagres River, which crossed the line of the canal many times. The Chagres was prone to tremendous floods in the rainy season and a sea-level canal would have had to carry its entire drainage. The lock canal p... |
US President Woodrow Wilson triggered the blowing up of the Gamboa Dike on October 10, 1913 thus completing the construction of the canal. Numerous West Indian laborers had worked on the Canal, and official mortality figures were 5,609 lives. |
When the canal opened on August 15, 1914 it was a technological marvel. A complex series of locks allowed even the largest ships to pass. The canal was an important strategic and economic asset to the US, and revolutionized world shipping patterns. |
The United States used the canal during World War II to help revitalize their devastated Pacific Fleet. Some of the largest ships the United States had to send through the canal were aircraft carriers, in particular the Essex class. These were so large that, although the locks could hold them, the lampposts that lined ... |
The canal and the Canal Zone surrounding it were administered by the United States until 1999 when control was relinquished to Panama. This was the result of the September 7, 1977 signing of the Torrijos - Carter Treaty in which US president Jimmy Carter conceded to Panamanian demands for control. The treaty called for... |
Panama's Law No. 5 was passed on January 16, 1997 to confirm 25-to-50-year leases for the U.S.-built ports of Cristobal on the Atlantic end of the canal and Balboa on the Pacific end and "operation of the canal" to a Chinese Hong Kong corporation named Hutchison Whampoa operating under the name Hutchison Port Holdings ... |
Arnold Schwarzenegger - Bodybuilder - Movie Star - Governor – IllPumpYouUp.com |
6/27/2006 |
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American actor, Republican elected official, bodybuilder, and entrepreneur, at present serving as the 38th Governor of California. Called the Austrian Oak in his bodybuilding years, and lately The Governator and Conan the Republican, or just Ahhnold, Schwarzenegger as a young ... |
There cannot be a better illustration of the self-made man than Arnold Schwarzenegger in all of Hollywood history. Born on July 30, 1947 to Gustav and Aurelia Schwarzenegger in the remote Austrian community of Thal, down by the Italian border, he was exposed to severe discipline from an early age. It worked. |
Arnold became disenchanted with soccer at age 15, and describes a sense of "power" when looking at bodybuilders, a mental picture that moved him to start weight training. In 1965 he won the Mr. Europe Jr. title. |
As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the Oath of Citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long. |
Schwarzenegger went to university in Munich from 1966, studying marketing. In 1968, after winning the Pro Mr. Universe title at age 20, he decamped to America at the invitation of bodybuilding champion Joe Weilder, and sustained a career unmatched in its success, adding Mr. World to his list of titles. |
He won the Mr. Universe title five times and Mr. Olympia seven times, at the same time making the sport of bodybuilding more popular. And, as if this weren't enough, this socially liberal Republican wedded a Democrat from the Kennedy family, Maria Shriver, a past news anchor and now mother of their four children. Arnol... |
After some small parts in the movies, he appeared in the documentary Pumping Iron (1977) and played a bodybuilder in the film Stay Hungry (1976), and his innate charm led to more movies and recognition. He starred in the hit movie Conan the Barbarian in 1982 and became a movie star. He had another big hit in 1984, star... |
The movie-star-turned California Governor disclosed in a TV interview that as a young bodybuilder he used experimental steroids on doctors' advice, and he called for a youth ban. Asked on the ABC News program if he had regrets about using steroids, he responded: "No, I have no regrets about it, because at that time, it... |
And now, of course this is another thing I didn't count on, that now as the Governor of the State of California, I am selling California worldwide. You see that? Selling. |
On August 6, 2003, the audience attending the Tonight Show received a direct view of a remarkable, jaw-dropping event: the declaration of candidacy for the California governorship by ex- bodybuilder and film idol Arnold Schwarzenegger. |
Judging from Schwarzenegger's ideological resume, he and Ronald Reagan, another actor who ran for governor of California with very little electoral experience, have little in common. When Schwarzenegger ran for governor in 2003, the State of California was running a $38 billion deficit. Despite being a political novice... |
A year and a half later, Schwarzenegger has proven that the various legislators and pundits who, not capable of moving away from a cliché-ridden dismissal of a bodybuilder-movie-star-turned-governor, had underrated his raw intelligence and sharp mind. Those who know Schwarzenegger can bear out his complexity. The gover... |
Schwarzenegger has shown himself to be a skilful politician, to the surprise of a lot of Californians. The fact that he has exploited this talent to a moderate agenda, and embraced bipartisanship in a way that sets him, as a Republican, far apart from the Bush Administration, as well as from the more extreme elements i... |
On the downside, in early January, Schwarzenegger proposed to radically curtail spending on education and social services in place of taxing the wealthy in his boldly immoderate State of the State Speech, blindsiding freethinking Californians with his openly Republican program. According to Peter Byrne of the Village N... |
Schwarzenegger for president in 2008? California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher recently made a proposal to permit anybody who's been a US citizen for more than 20 years to run for the nation's highest office. Schwarzenegger, who became a citizen in 1983, has said he supports amending the Constitution so foreign-born citizens c... |
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Kosovo |
Kosovo |
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Orientation: places, names and peoples |
A journalistic cliche of the nineteenth century described the Kosovo region as the lost heart of the Balkans. Like many cliches, this one was both slightly foolish and, at the same time, suggestive of a significant truth. Although Kosovo has played a central role in Balkan history, it has remained, during much of that ... |
The present borders of Kosovo -- that is, of the `Autonomous Province' of the post-1945 Yugoslav constitutions -- are of course the products of political history. At the same time, they correspond more or less to a physical fact. Kosovo forms a geographical unit because it is ringed by ranges of mountains and hills... |
Within this ring of peaks and hills, the interior of Kosovo is raised up, its plains qualifying as plateaux, 1,200 feet or more above sea level. Some idea of the elevation, and the near-central position of Kosovo in this Balkan region, can be gained from the curious fact that rivers run out of Kosovo into each of t... |
Running from north to south through the middle of Kosovo is a lesser range of hills which divides the whole territory into two roughly equal halves: streams running off the eastern side of these hills will flow into the Ibar and the Danube, while the western side sends its waters to the White Drin and the Adriatic.... |
Where Kosovo's eastern half is concerned, confusion arises because this sub-division of Kosovo is itself known simply as `Kosovo'. (Historically, the confusion happened the other way around: it is this area which gave its name to the entire territory, rather in the way that Holland, one of the component territories... |
In order to hold some of these confusions at bay, a simple rule will be adopted in this book. The term `Kosovo' will refer to the entire geographical region in accordance with its post-1945 borders (the so-called Kosovo and Metohija). The western half of Kosovo will be called Western Kosovo; the eastern half will b... |
Geography, or rather geology, supplies one essential reason for the enduring historical importance of Kosovo -- particularly of its eastern half. It contains the greatest concentration of mineral wealth in the whole of south-eastern Europe. The Trepca mine (Srb.: Trepca; near Mitrovica, 30 miles north of Prishtina)... |
But of all the mineral assets of Kosovo, the most important for much of its earlier history was its wealth of silver. There was mining in this area in pre-Roman times, and both silver and lead (and, probably, some gold) were mined extensively during the Roman period. The medieval Serbian kingdom drew much of its we... |
Geography also explains why the possession of this territory has always been important for strategic reasons. Despite its ring of mountains, Kosovo has always been a crossing-place for both merchant caravans and armies. It is true, admittedly, that the most important routes in the western and central Balkans lay el... |
But Kosovo did possess two routes of real importance. The first linked it with the city of Shkodra, a major trading centre in north-western Albania (connected by a short stretch of navigable river to the Adriatic coast). From Shkodra an old caravan track, based partly on a Roman military road, wound through the mou... |
The second important long-distance route, also connecting Kosovo to the Adriatic coast, began in Ragusa (modern Dubrovnik). This extraordinary commercial city-state, at the southern end of modern Croatia, was in some periods the main rival of Venice in the trade of the Eastern Mediterranean, and gained a privileged... |
Trading-routes can play a great role in history; but the strategic importance of Kosovo is not a question of roads alone. A glance at the map of the Balkans will show why Kosovo mattered so crucially to the Ottoman sultans. Whoever held Kosovo would control their strategic access to Bosnia and northern Albania, and... |
Some of the links between Kosovo and its surrounding territories have now been briefly sketched; it may be helpful to add a few more details here about those neighbouring areas, which have been connected with Kosovo not only by trade and war but also by overlapping populations. Just to the north and north-west of K... |
Moving clockwise round Kosovo again, one comes to the upper Morava valley, the area of Serbia south of Nis. This region too had a large Muslim Albanian minority in the later Ottoman period, until the wars of the 1870s and the territorial changes of 1878 enabled the Serbian authorities to expel the Albanians en mass... |
Passing westwards along the Kosovo-Macedonian border, one finds at first, in the hills of the Skopska Crna Gora, a fairly clear ethnic frontier between Albanians and Macedonians. The Macedonians are Slavs whose language is quite distinct from Serbian and closely related to Bulgarian. In the past, populations have s... |
To the north-west of Debar lie the great mountain massifs of northern Albania. Inhabited by powerful clans (many of them Catholic) who jealously guarded their territory and lived by their own customary law, this area enjoyed a kind of semi-autonomy for much of the Ottoman period. As one English traveller in the lat... |
Finally, north of the Malesi, there are the mountains of Montenegro. The Montenegrins are generally regarded, in ethnic terms, as a type of Serb, and their adherence to the Orthodox Church has indeed aligned them closely to the Serbian cultural world, rather than to the Croatian or Bosnian. But Montenegro has led a... |
As these details may already have suggested, the two main ethnic groups whose history will dominate this book -- Serbs and Albanians -- are far from being homogeneous blocs of humankind. There are many variations within each of them, different ethnic roots, regional varieties and different cultural and religious al... |
Generalizations about `the Serbs' or `the Albanians' are always slightly suspect, and statements about `national character' are of no explanatory value to the historian. But some characteristics -- social practices, inherited traditions -- can be broadly described, and a few words about them may be of some use to r... |
The Serbs of modern Kosovo come, as we shall see, from many different stocks, some of which migrated to Kosovo from Dalmatia or Bosnia or northern Serbia. Within Kosovo, however, their differences of origin were largely discarded, and they shared a common way of life, touched to some extent (in matters of clothing,... |
The same factors help to explain the famous zadruga or family commune, which involves several generations of the same family living together (usually in a group of houses protected by an outer wall) and functioning as a single economic unit. The zadruga died out in most parts of Serbia in the late nineteenth centur... |
There are many other aspects of the traditional way of life of the Serb peasant which can be found mirrored in his Albanian counterpart. Some may be historical products of shared centuries of Ottoman rule; others may reflect a common heritage at a far deeper level. Codes of honour, respect for military prowess, a s... |
Of the things that differentiate Serbs and Albanians, the most obvious is language. But although the Serbian language clearly separates Serbs from Albanians, it does not so clearly constitute Serbs as Serbs: the type of dialect and pronunciation used in Serbia shades off -- in Bosnia, for example, and in Montenegro... |
However, although Serbian Orthodoxy may in this way have a national-political dimension to it, Western readers should be reminded that the type of Christianity found in the Orthodox Church is in some ways much further removed from social and political matters than is the case with Protestantism or Roman Catholicism... |
These issues are relevant to any study of the Kosovo question, not only because of the quasi-religious fervour of some Serbian writers and politicians on this subject, but also because the Patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church is located at the Western Kosovo town of Pec. Let the last word on the general ques... |
The religious sentiment of the Servians [i.e. Serbians] is neither deep nor warm. Their churches are generally empty, except on very great Church festivals, and on political festivals. The Servians of our day consider the Church as a political institution, in some mysterious manner connected with the existence of the n... |
No religion, on the other hand, unites the Albanians. There is an autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church, but it gained its autonomy from the Greek Church only as recently as 1923; its members are all in the southern half of Albania (or in the emigre community), and it has played no part in the history of Kosovo. O... |
The other division in the overall Albanian population is between the Gegs, who live in northern Albania and Kosovo, and the Tosks, who live in southern Albania. (There are also two smaller southern groups who are considered distinct from the Tosks, the Cams and the Labs, but these can be ignored here.) The differen... |
The linguistic differences between Gegs and Tosks are striking, but not large enough to get in the way of mutual intelligibility; in most respects the gulf is no greater than that between Scotland and the south of England. To the outsider, the most obvious differences are in the pronunciation of certain vowels (nas... |
The basis of the traditional Geg social system, as mentioned already, is the clan. The Albanian word for this, fis, is also sometimes translated `tribe' (like the Serbian word pleme, which refers to the Montenegrin equivalent). Northern Albanian society was strictly patrilinear, which means that descent was calcula... |
A smaller collective sub-group within an Albanian clan -- or, at least, within most of them -- was the vellazeri, or brotherhood (Srb.: bratstvo), which did indeed consist of a group of blood-related families (again, only through the male line). The vellazeri was like a looser version of a zadruga: the family struc... |
In between those two collective identities, large and small, some other groupings also existed. Some of the larger clans were divided into (or had been composed of) several smaller clans. With their belief in patrilinear descent, the malesors regarded any relative on the paternal side as the same blood, and marriag... |
The other important grouping was the bajrak, a word derived from the Turkish for a banner or military standard. This institution, which became a more or less organic part of the clan system, was originally an alien administrative device, imposed on the area by the Ottomans from the seventeenth century onwards. Its ... |
One sign of the alien origin of the office of bajraktar was that it was a hereditary rifle. Most of the Albanian clans, despite their obsession with male genealogy, had not regarded the authority to rule as an inheritable good. (The main exception was the Mirdita, the largest and most untypical of the Catholic clan... |
No such system of local self-government could subsist without a strong framework of customary law. Large-scale assemblies were infrequent, and were usually aimed at getting agreement on action or policy, not at legislation. All the essential rules of human life -- relating to marriage, inheritance, pasture rights, ... |
The importance of the Kanun to the ordinary life of the Albanians of Kosovo and the Malesi can hardly be exaggerated. `Whenever in the mountains I asked why anything was done,' wrote Edith Durham in the 1920s, `I was told, "Because Lek ordered it." ... "Lek said so" obtained more obedience than the Ten Commandments... |
One leading scholar has summed up the basic principles of the Kanun as follows. The foundation of it all is the principle of personal honour. Next comes the equality of persons. From these flows a third principle, the freedom of each to act in accordance with his own honour, within the limits of the law, without be... |
As several details will already have suggested, this was very much a man's world. The reference to `equality of persons' above needs some qualification. Women had their honour, but it existed through, and was defended by, men. Of all the proverbial sayings in the Kanun, few will offend modern sensibilities as sharp... |
A woman in the mountains, in spite of the severe work she is forced to do, is in many ways freer than the women of Scutari. She speaks freely to the men; is often very bright and intelligent, and her opinion may be asked and taken. I have seen a man bring his wife to give evidence in some case under dispute. I have als... |
Which brings us back, finally, to the blood-feud. This is one of the most archaic features of northern Albanian society, resembling the codes that govern other isolated societies in the Mediterranean region (such as Corsica) or the northern Caucasus. What lies at the heart of the blood-feud is a concept alien to th... |
Since honour is of the essence, there are strict rules for every step of the feud: one who `takes blood' to satisfy his (or his family's) honour must announce that he has done so; a formal truce or bese for a set period must be agreed to, if requested for a proper reason (this is a special use of `bese', the genera... |
Only if we bear in mind the whole system of the feud and the Kanun can we make sense, finally, of the very conflicting reports which have come down to us on the Kosovar and Northern Albanian character. In the writings of some past visitors to the Balkans, Kosovo was a place of anarchy and terror, where even childre... |
Our own Army Act draws a distinction between stealing the property of a comrade, and stealing from one of the public, but the Albanian would hardly recognize any similarity between the two. Where the limits of social obligation are so sharply defined as in tribal society, the same man may be loyal, generous, and hospit... |
The traveller, brought `within the bond' by the sacred duties of hospitality, could more easily experience the best of the Albanian character. As one Austrian who visited Kosovo in the bloodiest period of its final revolt against Ottoman rule declared: `If you observe the customs of the land, you can travel more sa... |
(C) 1998 Noel Malcolm All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-8147-5598-4 |
Kosovo |
Kosovo |
Read the Review |
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