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Panama Isthmus
The Isthmus of Panama ( es, Istmo de Panamá), also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien (), is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It contains the country of Panama and the Panama Canal. Like many isthmuses, it is a location of great geopolitical and strategic importance. The isthmus is thought to have been formed around 3 million years ago, separating the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and causing the creation of the Gulf Stream. This was first suggested in 1910 by North American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn. He based the proposal on the fossil record of mammals in Central America. This conclusion provided a foundation for Alfred Wegener when he proposed the theory of continental drift in 1912. History Vasco Núñez de Balboa heard of the South Sea from natives while sailing along the Caribbean coast. On 25 September 1513 his expedition became the first Europeans to see the Pa ...
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Welsh People
The Welsh ( cy, Cymry) are an ethnic group native to Wales. "Welsh people" applies to those who were born in Wales ( cy, Cymru) and to those who have Welsh ancestry, perceiving themselves or being perceived as sharing a cultural heritage and shared ancestral origins. Wales is the third-largest Countries of the United Kingdom, country of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In the Acts of Union 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland merged to become the Kingdom of Great Britain. The majority of people living in Wales are British nationality law, British citizens. In Wales, the Welsh language ( cy, Cymraeg) is protected by law. Welsh remains the predominant language in many parts of Wales, particularly in North Wales and parts of West Wales, though English is the predominant language in South Wales. The Welsh language is also taught in schools throughout Wales, and, even in regions of Wales in which Welsh people predominantly speak English ...
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Darien Scheme
The Darien scheme was an unsuccessful attempt, backed largely by investors of the Kingdom of Scotland, to gain wealth and influence by establishing ''New Caledonia'', a colony on the Isthmus of Panama, in the late 1690s. The plan was for the colony, located on the Gulf of Darién, to establish and manage an overland route to connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The backers knew that the first sighting of the Pacific Ocean by Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Balboa was after crossing the isthmus through Darién Province, Darién. The attempt at settling the area did not go well; more than 80% of participants died within a year, and the settlement was abandoned twice.Little, "The Caribbean colony ..." There are many explanations for the disaster. Rival claims have been made suggesting that the undertaking was beset by poor planning and provisioning; by divided leadership; by a lack of demand for traded goods, owing to an English trade blockade; by devastating epidemics of tropi ...
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Cuna Indians
The Guna, are an Indigenous people of Panama and Colombia. In the Guna language, they call themselves ''Dule'' or ''Tule'', meaning "people", and the name of the language is ''Dulegaya'', literally "people-mouth". The term was in the language itself spelled ''Kuna'' prior to a 2010 orthographic reform, but the Congreso General de la Nación Gunadule since 2010 has promoted the spelling ''Guna''. Location Guna people live in three politically autonomous ''comarcas'' or autonomous reservations in Panama, and in a few small villages in Colombia. There are also communities of Guna people in Panama City, Colón, and other cities. Most Gunas live on small islands off the coast of the comarca of Guna Yala known as the San Blas Islands. The other two Guna comarcas in Panama are Kuna de Madugandí and Kuna de Wargandí. They are Guna-speaking people who once occupied the central region of what is now Panama and the neighboring San Blas Islands and still survive in marginal areas. P ...
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Lionel Wafer
Lionel Wafer (1640–1705) was a Welsh explorer, buccaneer and privateer. A ship's surgeon, Wafer made several voyages to the South Seas and visited Maritime Southeast Asia in 1676. In 1679 he sailed again as a surgeon, soon after settling in Jamaica to practise his profession. In 1680, Wafer was recruited by buccaneer Edmund Cooke to join a privateering venture under the leadership of Captain Bartholomew Sharp, where he met William Dampier at Cartagena. After being injured during an overland journey, Wafer was left behind with four others in the Isthmus of Darien in Panama, where he stayed with the Cuna Indians. He gathered information about their culture, including their shamanism and a short vocabulary of their language. He studied the natural history of the isthmus. The following year, Wafer left the Indians promising to return and marry the chief's sister and bring back dogs from England. He fooled the buccaneers at first as he was dressed as an Indian, wearing bo ...
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Cádiz
Cádiz (, , ) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Province of Cádiz, one of eight that make up the autonomous community of Andalusia. Cádiz, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, was founded by the Phoenicians.Strabo, '' Geographica'' 3.5.5 In the 18th century, the Port in the Bay of Cádiz consolidated as the main harbor of mainland Spain, enjoying the virtual monopoly of trade with the Americas until 1778. It is also the site of the University of Cádiz. Situated on a narrow slice of land surrounded by the sea‚ Cádiz is, in most respects, a typically Andalusian city with well-preserved historical landmarks. The older part of Cádiz, within the remnants of the city walls, is commonly referred to as the Old Town (Spanish: ''Casco Antiguo''). It is characterized by the antiquity of its various quarters (''barrios''), among them ''El Pópulo'', ''La Viña'', and ''Santa María'', which present a marked contr ...
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Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula. Seville has a municipal population of about 685,000 , and a metropolitan population of about 1.5 million, making it the largest city in Andalusia, the fourth-largest city in Spain and the 26th most populous municipality in the European Union. Its old town, with an area of , contains three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Alcázar palace complex, the Cathedral and the General Archive of the Indies. The Seville harbour, located about from the Atlantic Ocean, is the only river port in Spain. The capital of Andalusia features hot temperatures in the summer, with daily maximums routinely above in July and August. Seville was founded as the Roman city of . Known as ''Ishbiliyah'' after the Islamic conquest in 711, Seville became ...
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Spanish Treasure Fleet
The Spanish treasure fleet, or West Indies Fleet ( es, Flota de Indias, also called silver fleet or plate fleet; from the es, label=Spanish, plata meaning "silver"), was a convoy system of sea routes organized by the Spanish Empire from 1566 to 1790, which linked Spain with its territories in the Americas across the Atlantic. The convoys were general purpose cargo fleets used for transporting a wide variety of items, including agricultural goods, lumber, various metal resources such as silver and gold, gems, pearls, spices, sugar, tobacco, silk, and other exotic goods from the overseas territories of the Spanish Empire to the Spanish mainland. Spanish goods such as oil, wine, textiles, books and tools were transported in the opposite direction. The West Indies fleet was the first permanent transatlantic trade route in history. Similarly, the related Manila galleon trade was the first permanent trade route across the Pacific. The Spanish West and East Indies fleets are considered ...
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Portobelo, Colón
Portobelo (Modern Spanish: "Puerto Bello" ("beautiful port"), historically in Portuguese: Porto Belo) is a historic port and corregimiento in Portobelo District, Colón Province, Panama, Central America, with a population of 4,559 . Located on the northern part of the Isthmus of Panama, it is northeast of the modern port of Colón now at the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal. It functions as the seat of Portobelo District. Established in 1597 during the time of the Spanish empire due to its deep natural harbor, it served as one of the two ports (together with Veracruz to the northwest) through which Spanish treasure was shipped from the mines of Peru (via Panama City on the Pacific side of the Isthmus and overland to Portobelo) back to Spain. The city was repeatedly captured by British privateers and pirates, culminating in a successful siege by the Royal Navy in 1739, during the War of Jenkin's Ear. Its economy received a major boost in the late-19th century during the c ...
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Spanish Silver Train
The Spanish Silver Train was an improvised trail used to transport silver from Potosí, Peru across the isthmus of Panama in order to ship it to Spain via the Spanish treasure fleet. The silver was usually unloaded in Panama City, then put in mule trains and taken first to Nombre de Dios, and then, following the demise of that city in the late sixteenth century, to Portobello. The Silver Train was a prime target for English, Dutch and French privateers in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Francis Drake and Guillaume Le Testu Guillaume Le Testu, sometimes referred to as Guillaume Le Têtu (c. 1509-12 – April 29, 1573), was a French privateer, explorer and navigator. He was one of the foremost cartographers of his time and an author of the Dieppe maps. His maps were ..., a French privateer, succeeded in capturing the train. References {{Reflist Spanish colonization of the Americas ...
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Viceroyalty Of Peru
The Viceroyalty of Peru ( es, Virreinato del Perú, links=no) was a Spanish imperial provincial administrative district, created in 1542, that originally contained modern-day Peru and most of the Spanish Empire in South America, governed from the capital of Lima. The Viceroyalty of Peru was officially called the Kingdom of Peru. Peru was one of the two Spanish Viceroyalties in the Americas from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The Spanish did not resist the Portuguese expansion of Brazil across the meridian established by the Treaty of Tordesillas. The treaty was rendered meaningless between 1580 and 1640 while Spain controlled Portugal. The creation during the 18th century of Viceroyalties of New Granada and Río de la Plata (at the expense of Peru's territory) reduced the importance of Lima and shifted the lucrative Andean trade to Buenos Aires, while the fall of the mining and textile production accelerated the progressive decay of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Even ...
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UNESCO World Heritage Site
A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, scientific or other form of significance. The sites are judged to contain " cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity". To be selected, a World Heritage Site must be a somehow unique landmark which is geographically and historically identifiable and has special cultural or physical significance. For example, World Heritage Sites might be ancient ruins or historical structures, buildings, cities, deserts, forests, islands, lakes, monuments, mountains, or wilderness areas. A World Heritage Site may signify a remarkable accomplishment of humanity, and serve as evidence of our intellectual history on the planet, or it might be a place of great natural beauty. A ...
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