Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2016 i Faces People, Places, and World Culture for Kids and Children

When Christopher Columbus landed on the shores of Hispaniola 500 years ago, he was in awe of its beauty. He saw sandy beaches, impressive mountains, and fertile plains. Columbus also encountered friendly people. Today, the Dominican Republic makes up two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola. The people are still friendly and outgoing, but much has changed on the island since Columbus arrived. Here are five fun facts about the Dominican Republic to get you started on your journey. 1. Before Christopher Columbus arrived, Hispaniola had been home to the Taino people for thousands of years. Within 50 years of Columbus’s arrival, the Taino had been nearly wiped out. Today, some Taino communities remain in the hills of a few Caribbean islands. 2. Baseball may be America’s pastime, but it is…

When Christopher Columbus first set eyes on Quisqueya (the Taino Indian name for the eastern part of the island of Hispaniola) on his historic first voyage in 1492, he fell in love with the delightful Caribbean isle. He renamed it La Isla Española, or “Spanish Island,” and wrote in his logbook that, “in all Castile there is no land to be compared to this in beauty and fertility.” The great explorer built a fort on the island using wood from one of his ships, the Santa Marìa, which had wrecked on the Atlantic shore. He left 39 men behind, and then sailed back to Spain with glowing reports of riches and friendly natives. However, when Columbus returned the following year with 1,200 to 1,500 men and supplies, he discovered that…

Youth academies in the Dominican play an important role in developing and grooming baseball athletes. The country is such a fertile area for talent that there are now academies run by buscones (buh-scones), private groups, former professional players, and Major League Baseball (MLB) teams. The pathway to professional baseball often starts with a buscon (from the word buscar, “to search”). A buscon is a self-styled agent or talent scout. He identifies players with potential sometimes when they are as young as 12 or 13, and keeps his eye on others as young as eight. With more than 1,000 buscones looking for talent, it is highly competitive and the buscon may hire handlers to be the first to spot young talent. The buscon may help the families financially and provide baseball…

Did you eat any rocks today? If you put salt on your eggs or ate salty potato chips for lunch, you did. Salt or sodium chloride is a mineral we eat. What you sprinkled out of the shaker on your table may have come from the Dominican Republic. In Monte Cristi, a small town near the border of Haiti, workers extract salt from the Caribbean waters. How do they do it? In this low-lying village, as the tide comes in, seawater flows into manmade shallow pools. The trapped water is heated by the tropical sun. As the water begins to evaporate, the pools turn a reddish hue. When the water recedes even more, the top layer is bleached white. The concentrated portion is then scraped off manually with wooden slat…

Name: Republica Dominicana Area: About 18,704 square miles Population: 10,478,756 (July 2015 estimate) Capital: Santo Domingo Location: The Dominican Republic makes up the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola located in the West Indies. Haiti is to the west. The Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea surround the island. Climate: The average annual temperature is about 77 degrees. Tropical depressions and storms, cyclones, and hurricanes often hit the island, especially the southern area. Official Language: Spanish, though English is also widely spoken Religion: 90 percent Roman Catholic Chief Crops: Sugar cane, coffee, cocoa, and tobacco…

Santo Domingo is recognized as a city of firsts. It was the first permanent European settlement in the Americas and quickly grew in importance. It became the seat of government for all of Spain’s possessions in the Americas and its principal New World outpost. Santo Domingo was also the starting point for most of Spain’s expeditions of exploration and conquest. Many of the buildings that were constructed in the city were firsts of their kind in the New World. In 1502, construction began on Fortaleza Ozama, the New World’s first military fort. The city faced the constant threat of pirate attacks, and the fort’s hilltop location and 60-foot (18 m) tower provided excellent vantage points of the Ozama River and the Caribbean Sea. Its six-foot-thick (2m) walls are still in…

People around the world love the flavor of chocolate in everything from candy bars to breakfast cereals to drinks — and each American eats almost 10 pounds of chocolate confections every year, according to research group Euromonitor International. But few people understand what goes into making that candy bar sitting in the corner store. Chocolate starts its life as the seeds of the fruit of the cacao plant. The fruits, called pods, can be reddish brown, green, or purple, and can grow to the size of a football. Each pod holds 20 to 50 large bean-like seeds, covered in a milky white pulp. The plant is native to South America, but today is also grown in Africa and the Caribbean. Cacao (ckah-KOW), sometimes called cocoa, is not as big a…

Above beautiful Kite Beach in Cabarete, on the northeast coast of the Dominican Republic, huge colorful kites dart and dip in the breeze. Kites aren’t an unusual sight on any beach, but these aren’t ordinary kites. Instead of being flown by people standing in the sand, these kites, which are inflatable instead of being flat like regular kites, are actually pulling men and women through the water on what look like short surfboards. Some even leap high above the waves, twisting and jumping, as their kites pull them up into the air. Welcome to the sport of kiteboarding, one of the world’s hottest new watersports! Cabarete, a small village, is one of the best kiteboarding sites in the world. It has even hosted the Kiteboarding World Cup. But just what…

Fact or fiction? There are hairy, big-bodied, eight-eyed spiders that will paralyze and suck out the insides of their prey. You guessed it . . . fact. Thankfully, tarantula venom is not known to be deadly to humans, as the bite of many species is about as painful as a bee sting. There are more than 850 species of tarantulas in the world, most being calm and harmless to people. A species called the Dominican Giant Tarantula (called “cacata” by the locals) is native to the Dominican Republic. Cacatas are hunters. They hide under rocks and debris by day, and come out at night to hunt. With fangs almost an inch long, cacatas are intimidating predators with some heavy-duty adaptations. Though they don’t spin webs, some spin a trip wire…

ROBINSON JOSE CANO Team: Seattle Mariners Jersey: #22 Position: 2nd Base Age: 33 Born: San Pedro de Macoris High School: San Pedro Apostol, San Pedro de Macoris Debut: May 3, 2005 2011 Home Run Derby Winner 2009 World Series Championship Six-time American League (AL) All-Star Five-time AL Silver Slugger Two-time Rawlings AL Gold Glove Two-time Wilson Team Defensive Player of the Year 2005 AL Rookie of the Year (GIBBY’s – Greatness in Baseball Yearly) JOSE ALBERTO (ALBERT) PUJOLS Team: Los Angeles Angels Position: 1st Base Age: 36 Nickname: The Machine Born: Santo Domingo College: Maple Woods CC, MO Debut: April 2, 2001 2015 AL All-Star Three-time National League (NL) MVP 2006 & 2011 World Series Championship Nine-time NL All-Star Six-time NL Silver Slugger Two-time Rawlings NL Gold Glove Two-time NL…

The Taino people, who were native to the Dominican Republic, called them “hurukans,” which supposedly came from the Incan word for the God of Evil. These fierce tropical storms, with their high winds and high tides, were familiar events to the Taino. When the Spanish arrived in the 15th century, they didn’t have a word for such powerful storms, so they borrowed the Taino word, which eventually became “hurricane.” The Dominican Republic is no stranger to hurricanes, which usually form during the months of June through November. The island of Hispaniola, which the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti, usually receives a serious hurricane every 23 years, and less powerful storms every five years, although this frequency is changing. Hurricanes are classified using the Saffir-Simpson Scale, based on average wind speed…

The Merengue is the national dance of the Dominican Republic, and throughout much of the Caribbean and South America. Given its African roots, the upper class and European descendants initially rejected the dance. Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961) helped to advance its popularity and acceptance by using it as a campaigning tool to gain the support of the economically disadvantaged population. The Story There are several versions of the Merengue’s origins. Some say the Merengue steps mimic those of slaves chained together and dragging one foot as they moved. Others say a war hero returned injured to a celebration. In sympathy, the crowds moved to music with a limp and gave life to the Merengue. The Merengue may even have been named for its likeness to the dessert meringue made…