One of the most engrossing travel books ever written is over seven hundred years old. The Travels of Marco Polo is a true account of a young Venetian's adventurous life. Although it was written so long ago, you can probably find a copy of it on the shelves of your neighborhood library.
Marco Polo was only seventeen when his adventures began. In the year 1271, he left his native Venice for the Chinese court of Kublai Khan, the absolute ruler of most of Asia. He accompanied members of his family who were employed in the service of Kublai Khan. They were now returning to China after a visit home. The journey took the Venetians four years.
The immense Mongol empire of Kublai Khan had been founded fifty years earlier by the emperor's grandfather, Genghis Khan. One of the most feared tyrants in history, Genghis Khan had vanquished most of his challengers in Asia. Kublai Khan, by contrast, was a wise and benevolent ruler. He soon determined that Marco Polo was an exceptionally intelligent young man. Marco Polo was discreet as well. He could be trusted with information that the emperor hesitated to share with others at the court. Furthermore, because Marco Polo planned to return to Venice later, he was unlikely to intrigue against the emperor. For these reasons, Kublai Khan trusted Marco Polo as his ambassador to travel extensively throughout Asia, carrying out important missions.
After seventeen years Marco Polo grew homesick; he yearned for his native Venice. However, he could not depart without the emperor's permission. Kublai Khan held his young advisor in high esteem and had rewarded him with significant positions in his court. Naturally, he was reluctant to relinquish the services of such a valued friend and adviser. But finally the emperor gave his consent. In 1295, after a journey that lasted three years, Marco Polo arrived back in Venice.
He soon became a celebrated figure because of the stories he related of his travels. Many of his Venetian listeners thought he must be exaggerating. The things he claimed seemed to be too fantastic to be believed. But, in fact, Marco Polo was telling the truth. He had observed creatures with huge jaws and sharp teeth that could swallow a person whole (crocodiles); he had seen black stones that, when ignited, burned with a great heat (coal); and he had witnessed many other marvels.
Three years after his return, Marco Polo was taken prisoner when hostilities broke out between Venice and Genoa, both Italian city-states. The year he spent in captivity gave him the opportunity to dictate his travel adventures to a fellow prisoner. The book that eventually resulted became one of the most popular and widely translated literary works ever written. For hundreds of years, it has been entertaining readers all over the world.
The sun has always occupied a unique place in the human imagination; indeed, in many societies throughout history it was worshiped as a god. The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, was a gargantuan statue of the sun god Helios. People once believed that the sun revolved around Earth, which was considered the center of the universe. They also believed that eclipses of the sun could cause hazardous conditions on Earth. This belief perhaps resulted from the coincidence of an earthquake or volcanic eruption occurring during an eclipse.
We know now that both of these beliefs are false. In fact, one of the most extraordinary things about the sun is that it is a perfectly ordinary star. It is no different from billions of other stars scattered throughout the universe. Of course, it is significant to us because without its energy, life on Earth could not exist. But the sole reason Earth receives more heat and light from the sun than from the other billions of similar stars is that the sun is so close to us. It is a mere ninety-three million miles away.
Light travels at a velocity of 186,000 miles per second. Light from the sun takes only eight minutes to reach Earth. Light from Proxima Centauri, the next closest star, takes over four years to reach us. If we imagine the sun diminished to the size of an orange, Earth on this same scale would be twenty-six feet from the sun. Earth would be only marginally bigger than the period that ends this sentence. Proxima Centauri would be over thirteen hundred miles away!
Human beings no longer worship the sun, but they do study it. Eclipses of the sun provide a superb opportunity for doing this. Solar eclipses occur when the moon passes directly in front of the sun and blocks out its direct light. Astronomers eagerly await solar eclipses, although they have a brief duration. In photographs taken at such times the sun appears as a black disk surrounded by tremendous flames leaping from its surface. These flames can be photographed only during an eclipse. They can attain a height of 120,000 miles. That is almost half the distance from Earth to the moon.
By analyzing the sun's light, scientists discovered the main elements that make up the sun. They found that the sun is composed almost entirely of hydrogen. It contains a much smaller amount of helium and minute traces of other elements as well. The sun's interior is about 150,000 times hotter than boiling water. It is hot enough that hydrogen atoms fuse and are transformed into helium atoms, giving off energy as they do so. This energy reaches Earth in many forms; the two most familiar to us are heat and light.
By comparing the sun to other stars, scientists can estimate the age of the sun, for stars are born, reach middle age, and eventually die. We know that our sun is approximately five billion years old, which is middle-aged for a star. When it eventually uses up its entire supply of hydrogen, it will start to die. With no more fuel to burn, it will start to cool, getting larger and larger as it does so. It will finally become so enormous that it will envelop the planets closest to it, including our own Earth. However, there is no reason for anyone to be apprehensive; it will be five billion years before the sun terminates our planet.
On the night of April 14, 1912, in the Atlantic Ocean about 360 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, the Titanic blazed with lights. It was headed for New York, four days out from England on its very first voyage. Almost nine hundred feet long, it was the biggest passenger ship afloat. Its steel hull, the main body of the ship, had been reinforced with a second hull fitted inside it. Because of this safety feature, the Titanic was believed to be unsinkable - a belief that lulled everyone on board into a false sense of security. Their trust was to have tragic consequences.
Although the sea looked placid that night, its appearance was deceptive. The Titanic, in fact, was in treacherous waters. In 1912 there was no radar to warn of an approaching object. So when a huge iceberg suddenly loomed out of the darkness, there was little time to act. The Titanic made a desperate attempt to avoid a collision, but it was too late. The ship's right side struck the iceberg. Both its inner and outer hull were ripped open below the waterline.
Water began pouring in, flooding the front of the ship. Because it was 11:40 p.m., many of the passengers were sleeping or getting ready for bed. The slight bump, which was all they felt, caused no alarm. When Captain Edward Smith received a report of the damage, he knew at once that a catastrophe had occurred. He realized that his "unsinkable" ship could stay afloat for little more than an hour or two. Even as he gave the order to abandon ship, he faced a terrible predicament: There were not enough lifeboats for everyone on board. Furthermore, there had been no practice drills. Crew members were confused because there were no clear orders from their superiors.
There would have been enough time to improvise rafts, but in the panic that followed as passengers and crew were alerted, no attempt was made to do so. Women and children were given priority as the crew hastily prepared the lifeboats. In the confusion, many of the boats were lowered into the water half empty. That night there were fifteen hundred fatalities, and only seven hundred survived. Among the dead was the captain, who chose to go down with his ship. Another was Ida Straus of New York, who is remembered for gallantly refusing a place in one of the lifeboats to stay with her husband.
Those fortunate enough to have escaped in the lifeboats were filled with awe as they witnessed the final moments of the Titanic. The ship's bow sank first, leaving the stern sticking out high above the water. Then its lights suddenly went out. At 2:20 a.m., less than three hours after striking the iceberg, the great ship slid silently beneath the waves.
Ever since that dreadful night in 1912 when the Titanic struck an iceberg in the north Atlantic, the great ship lay undisturbed. It had gone down in water too deep for the wreckage to be explored, or so people thought. A scientist named Robert Ballard believed otherwise. He had served aboard a miniature three-person submarine named Alvin while in the U.S. Navy. The Titanic lay in just over twelve thousand feet of water; Alvin could descend to thirteen thousand feet, deep enough to reach the Titanic with plenty of leeway. Ballard's quest for the Titanic began in 1985 after the U.S. Navy agreed to make Alvin available to him.
Ballard had only an approximate location for where the Titanic had gone down. He knew he would have to scour an area several miles across to have any hope of actually finding the wreckage. Before he could use Alvin, he needed to make a preliminary search using video cameras operated by remote control from a surface ship. These mobile cameras were mounted on a sled that was dragged along the bottom on a thirteen-thousand-foot cable.
Crew members aboard the surface ship studied the pictures from the deep on a television screen. For days the pictures showed nothing but the mud at the bottom of the ocean, and the crew grew increasingly bored. Then suddenly, pictures of scattered debris on the ocean floor appeared. But was it from the Titanic or from some other ship? When a large ship's boiler came into view, the crew members were elated. They recognized it from photographs and knew they had found the Titanic.
Because the onset of winter made further operations dangerous, Ballard waited until the following year to resume his search. This time he took Alvin. From inside the tiny submarine, Ballard explored the wreck up close. The ship's hull had broken into two parts that landed right-side up, almost half a mile apart. Both parts had settled in sixty feet of ooze and could never be pulled clear. No one would ever raise the Titanic.
Over a two-week period, Alvin made a total of eleven descents. Ballard's most anxious moments came during his second dive when he landed on the main deck. The wooden planks that had once covered it had all been eaten away, and there was a chance that the badly corroded metal plates would collapse as Alvin settled on them. Were they to do so, Alvin could become entangled between decks. A return to the surface would be impossible and there would be no way for the crew of the surface ship to attempt a rescue. Those aboard the tiny submarine held their breaths, then let out sighs of relief. The metal plates had held.
Ballard took many photographs, including one of a pair of empty shoes lying side by side, a pathetic reminder of those who had died. He made no attempt to salvage anything from the wreck. In a book that he later wrote about his exploit, he expressed the hope that other expeditions would show similar restraint. Sad to say, other explorers did not follow his example. Within a few years, gold coins and other valuable objects from the Titanic were being offered for sale to the public. The great ship itself, however, tomb to more than fifteen hundred people, will remain where it is. No one will ever raise the Titanic from its watery grave.
A war without battles! What kind of war is that? Answer: the Cold War. It was fought between the Soviet Union and the United States, and it lasted from 1945 to 1990. Each side had more than enough weapons to destroy the other if the Cold War turned hot. Fear was in the air. People built bomb shelters in their homes, and at school children were taught what to do if the country came under attack. Most people accepted that this was just the way it was. Not Samantha Smith, a fifth grader from Maine, who anguished over the possibility of nuclear war and decided to do something about it. In 1983, she wrote a letter to the leader of the Soviet Union containing an earnest plea for the two superpowers to settle their differences peacefully.
She waited several months before her letter elicited a reply, which came in the form of a mysterious phone call. A man speaking with a strong Russian accent thanked her for her letter and told her she would be receiving a written reply within a few days. Samantha was not sure that the phone call was genuine; she thought that it might be a hoax by one of her father's friends. Although her father denied it, Samantha remained skeptical. Her doubts were ended, however, when an envelope from the Soviet embassy in Washington was delivered to her home in Maine. Inside it was a cordial letter from Yuri Andropov, the Soviet leader, who thanked her for taking the trouble to write and expressed a concern similar to her own about the threat of nuclear war. The letter also included an invitation to Samantha and her parents to visit the Soviet Union.
Samantha found herself famous overnight. She appeared on national television, and she was written about in magazines. Not everyone agreed that her visit to the Soviet Union would be desirable, though. People nationwide were soon discussing the issue. Those who supported her commended her for what she was doing and praised her as an example to young people everywhere. Those who dissented from this view believed that she should decline the invitation and stay home; they thought that she was being manipulated by the Communists, who would use her visit for their own purposes. Samantha ignored the controversy swirling about her, and in July 1983, accompanied by her parents, she went to the Soviet Union.
She had never been abroad before, and she found the experience exhilarating. On her return she wrote a book called Journey to the Soviet Union, in which she recounts everything that happened during her visit. She was also invited to costar in a television series. Her life at that point must have seemed like a fairy tale, and all because of a letter she had written.
With the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of nuclear war was greatly reduced. Unfortunately, Samantha did not live to see this event. In 1985, shortly after she had commenced filming the new television series, she and her father died in a plane crash. During her short life, Samantha accomplished a great deal. She showed that if a young person, even one in elementary school, is willing to make her voice heard, the world will sometimes listen.
Castles seem like magical places to those who have only read about them in fairy tales. The reality, however, was much different. True, they were homes to queens and kings and to great ladies and lords. Yet, we can tell from the castles that have survived that they were not pleasant places in which to live.
Their outside walls were made of massive blocks of stone and were up to twenty feet thick. Living inside such thick stone walls must have felt like living in a cave. The rooms inside the castle were often clammy. In the winter, icy drafts blew through the narrow, glassless windows. In the heat of summer, the stench from the animals kept inside the castle, as well as from the unwashed bodies of the people, would have been overpowering. Fragrant herbs were used to mask the smells; one of the servants' jobs was to strew them on the castle floors.
The great age of castle building was the seven-hundred-year period from around 800 to 1500. Castles built at the beginning of this period were fairly simple wooden constructions. These have long since disappeared. The ones built later were made of stone and were much more elaborate. They had many private rooms and splendid furnishings. There was a great hall where banquets were held and visitors were greeted and entertained.
The main reason for building a castle was to provide a sanctuary in times of danger. The castle protected not only those who made their homes inside its walls but also those who lived in the vicinity. They could move inside the castle grounds if a hostile army approached. An attacking army had first to cross the moat, a wide, deep trench filled with water that surrounded the castle. Then the attackers had to scale the high, outside walls on ladders or platforms. Those defending the castle could retaliate by shooting arrows at them or by dropping rocks or pouring boiling liquids on them. If the attackers were repelled, they might begin a siege. The purpose of a siege was to starve the defenders into surrendering. It could last for many months before one side or the other gave up.
When gunpowder came into use around 1500, cannons could breach even the thickest walls. Castles were no longer the havens they had once been. Many were abandoned and fell into ruin, but a number of them are still standing. In some cases their modern owners have restored them and made them more comfortable for today's occupants by installing modern plumbing and electricity. Many castles are open to the public as museums or luxury hotels. Today you can enjoy some of the bygone magic of castles by visiting castles in Germany, particularly along the Rhine River, and in Great Britain.
There was no doubt that the people of Hamelin faced a very serious predicament. Their town was infested with rats, and the furry, beady-eyed rodents had grown so aggressive that they had invaded the townspeople's cellars, their kitchens, and even their bedrooms. There wasn't a dwelling in town that wasn't teeming with rats. The people threatened to run the mayor out of town unless he did something about the problem. The mayor promised to eliminate the rats; he vowed to exterminate every rat in town; he blustered that not a rat would survive his assault. But what could he do? Nothing except organize meetings with his council to discuss various ways of solving the problem. And the unpleasant truth was that neither he nor anyone else had the faintest idea what to do.
Suddenly a man dressed in a most peculiar fashion appeared at the meeting; his quaint garments drew hostile stares and rude comments from the townspeople. The stranger in the pied coat promised to rid the town of its rats by luring them away with the music from his pipe for a fee of one thousand guilders. The mayor was jubilant and replied instantly that this was too paltry a sum for performing such an assignment. He promised to compensate the piper no less than the amount of fifty thousand guilders!
Everyone followed as the Pied Piper stepped into the street. He raised his pipe to his lips and commenced playing. Over the sound of the music an unearthly noise could be heard. Rats swarmed from the houses and into the streets, following the Pied Piper as he led them out of town while playing his tune. When they came to the river Weser, the rats plunged in and perished.
The people of Hamelin were most grateful to the Pied Piper and rang every bell in town to celebrate the occasion. But the mayor was now having second thoughts about the payment he had promised. He convinced himself that he had been rash to offer fifty thousand guilders. He now thought a mere fifty guilders would be more than sufficient. When the Pied Piper insisted on being paid in full, the mayor taunted him. As his revenge, the Pied Piper led away all the village's children, who were never seen or heard from again.
The original poem also describes how the rats "ate the cheeses out of the vats" - the large containers where Hamelin's cheesemakers stored their product.