Did you
realize that the lovely old church in Port Gamble, Washington (which you see on
your way to Port Townsend or Port Angeles), was built in 1870 by two homesick
Bostonians? They patterned their church after the 1836 church in Machias, Maine
(top). See the similarities?
The Straits
of Juan de Fuca. You’ve read about it, been on it and been by it many times, no
doubt. But ever wondered where such a Spanish-sounding name got tagged onto
this body of water? In 1592 (100 years
after the discovery of the New World by Columbus) the entrance to Puget Sound
was first seen by Juan de Fuca, a Greek mariner in the service of the Viceroy
of Mexico. De Fuca had been commissioned in that year to explore the west coast
of the New World and claimed that he sailed along the California coast until he
came to the latitude of 47 degrees and there, finding that the land tended
north and northeast with a broad inlet of sea, he entered and sailed for more
than twenty days. De Fuca was firmly convinced that he had discovered the
“fabled Straits of Anian,” the connecting link between the Pacific and Atlantic
oceans.
The
explorers who came after, the English especially, sought to discredit the
performance and claims of de Fuca. He was pronounced a myth…his discovery a
fable. Even Capt. Cook, while attempting to discover the illusive passage to
the Atlantic Ocean entered this notation in his log book: “It is in the very
latitude where we now are, that geographers have placed the pretended Strait of
Juan de Fuca. But we saw nothing of it nor is there the least possibility that
any such existed.”
The Green
mariner was vindicated after all; the strait now bears his name even if it is
not the “Strait of Anian.”
What is a “megacity” would you guess? The answer is: any city with a population
of over 10,000,000 people. And how many
are there? You’d be amazed. Asking
Goggle’s help for “world most populous cities,” I browsed through a list of
1000 cities from all around the world.
Most
populous city in the world? Tokyo, Japan. Followed by Delhi, Shanghai, Dhaka
(in Bangladesh), Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Cairo, Beijing, Mumbai and
Oskaka. It makes sense that the majority
of bigger cities are in China and India which are the two most populous
countries.
The U.S.
doesn’t make the list until #41: New York City. Next after that is Los Angeles,
Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia………. And that last is #323! Seattle is #750. Frankly, I’m glad that we
don’t have “megacities” in America.
China has
six megacities; India has five. The source found by Google stated that “of
nearly 8 billion people on Earth, 7% live in megacities (where population
exceeds ten million).”
Point of the
story: Be thankful for where you live.
