A Ton of Crap (83 page)

ANSWER KEY: c, c, d, a, b, a, d, c, b, d

HISTORY:
The
Panama Canal
About Panama, The Earliest Proposal for a Canal, The French Attempt to Build a Canal, Americans Take Over the Isthmus, Construction of the Panama Canal, The Panama Canal Today

LANGUAGE ARTS:
Fantasy
The Epic of
Gilgamesh
, The
Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, Inheritance
Cycle

MATH:
Statistics
Mean, Median, Mode, Basic Counting Principle, Standard Deviation, Combinations

SCIENCE:
Early Medicine
William Harvey, Giovanni Morgagni, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Alexander Fleming and Penicillin, Christiaan Barnard

FOREIGN LANGUAGE:
Yiddish
The Origins, The Writing System, The
Worms Mahzor
, World War II, Yiddish Today, Useful Yiddish Phrases

THE PANAMA CANAL

About Panama
Panama is the southeastern end of the isthmus that bridges North America and South America. It is also between the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean (when standing on the highest point, the summit of Volcán Barú, you can actually see both oceans). In its entirety, it is slightly smaller than the state of South Carolina. From 1538 to 1821, Panama was part of the Spanish Empire.

FANTASY

The Epic of
Gilgamesh
The Epic of
Gilgamesh
, which dates back to ancient Sumer, is not only the oldest fantasy story ever written, but it is the oldest story ever written.
Gilgamesh
was actually found inscribed on clay tablets. The story revolves around Gilgamesh, a king who embarks on a journey to slay a horrible beast, Humbaba, and searches for immortality. Gilgamesh was, in fact, based on a king of that time, the king of Uruk, who ruled during the twenty-sixth century b.c.

STATISTICS

Mean
In statistics, the mean is another way of saying the average. To find the average, you have to add up all of the numbers and then divide the sum by the amount of numbers that were just added together.

For example:

What is the mean of the following numbers?

9, 12, 14, 19, 20

First, you add all of the numbers together:

9 + 12 + 14 + 19 + 20 = 74

And then, since you added up 5 numbers, you will divide 74 by 5.

74 ÷ 5 = 14.8

EARLY MEDICINE

William Harvey
William Harvey discovered that blood flowed in one direction in the body, and that the flow of blood was continuous. He made the discovery in 1616; however, his findings were not published until 1628, in his book,
Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus
. Not only did Harvey discover that blood flowed in one direction, but he also explained that the transformation of venous blood into arterial blood actually took place in the lungs (at the time, it was believed that this occurred in the liver).

YIDDISH

The Origins
Yiddish stems from the Ashkenazi Jewish community’s borrowing of words from both German and Hebrew. Thus, it is a Germanic language, and the Sephardic Jewish community does not speak it. It is believed that Yiddish was first used around a.d. 900 to 1100, and it was the spoken language, never the written language, of the people. As centuries passed, Yiddish grew away from German, developing its own linguistic rules.

THE PANAMA CANAL