For Boys Only

by Marc Aronson

  CHANNEL TUNNEL, STRAIT OF DOVER, ENGLAND, 1994

  This 31-mile-long tunnel connects England to France underneath the seabed of the English Channel. It took six and a half years to build, but visionaries dreamed about it for more than a century. You don’t walk or drive through it; instead, the widest trains ever built rush through the tunnel at nearly 100 mph. Special ducts are used to release the air that builds up in front of these powerful trains.

  CN TOWER, TORONTO (ONTARIO) CANADA, 1976 (Fig. E)

  The world’s tallest freestanding structure, the CN Tower is 1,815 feet tall. Made of concrete and built in just three years, it weighs as much as 23,214 elephants. Canadian broadcasters use it as a signal tower.

  EMPIRE STATE BUILDING, NEW YORK, NEW YORK, 1931 (Fig. F)

  It took only one year to build, but when it was finished, the Empire State Building was the world’s tallest building. It held that title for 40 years. Plumbers installed 51 miles of pipe and electricians laid 17 million feet of phone wire. But many businesses were reluctant to rent space in such a high building—until the movie King Kong made it famous all over the world.

  Fig. E

  Fig. F

  GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE, GOLDEN GATE STRAIT, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, 1937 (Fig. G)

  The bridge was designed to connect the city of San Francisco with Marin County. The strait beneath it is notoriously rough, which made construction extremely difficult. It took four years to build, requiring 80,000 miles of cable to make it strong enough to withstand San Francisco’s frequent earthquakes. It’s been reported that the Golden Gate Bridge, because of its striking color and beautiful setting, is the most photographed bridge in the world.

  ITAIPU DAM, PARANA RIVER, SOUTH AMERICA, 1984

  This dam crosses the seventh-biggest river in the world, the Paraná River, which serves as the boundary between Brazil and Paraguay. The dam is five miles wide, and its construction required changing the course of the river and enough steel and iron to build 380 Eiffel Towers. It took 14 years to complete.

  DELTA WORKS, NETHERLANDS, EUROPE, 1997

  Because it sits below sea level, the Netherlands has throughout its history been regularly damaged by massive floods. (Have you ever heard the story of the boy who put his finger in the dike? It was based on these floods.) To prevent these disasters, 10,000 miles of dams and dikes were built over 44 years, making the Delta Works the biggest flood control system in the world. It may also be one of the most important, as the Netherlands actually sinks into the surrounding water at the rate of about one centimeter each year.

  PANAMA CANAL, ISTHMUS OF PANAMA, CENTRAL AMERICA, 1914

  This Central American canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and allows ships to pass through without going around South America. Forty-two thousand workers spent 34 years working on it, removing enough dirt and rubble to fill a 16-foot-wide tunnel to the center of the earth. More than 5,000 people died during the canal’s construction, many of them from malaria carried by mosquitoes.

  Fig. G

  THE TWO MOST HORRIFYING, AND DISGUSTING CREATURES IN THE WORLD

  THERE ARE LOTS OF SCARY ANIMALS OUT THERE. Bears, tigers, sharks, and cobras all can kill you. But the scariest creatures on Earth are not monstrous animals with lots of teeth or venom. Instead, they are tiny little things so hideous that just reading about them can give you the chills. For those of you who want to know just how gross nature can be, welcome to the toothpick fish and the guinea worm.

  THE TOOTHPICK FISH

  The scientific name for this tiny fish is the candiru, and it lives in the Amazon River. It is only a few inches long, needle thin, and has see-through skin so that it is almost invisible in water. The fish is attracted to swimmers and looks for an opening in the body. We’re talking about any opening in the body: your mouth, your ear, and even your … Well, you can guess where the other prime places might be.

  The fish wriggles into the opening and as soon as it gets comfortable, it shoots a sharp spine into the unwilling victim. This spine locks the candiru into the opening so that there is no way it can be pulled out. Then the fish starts sucking blood out of the victim to use as food. The only way to remove the candiru once it finds its new “home” is through surgery. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of medical centers deep in the Amazon rain forest, so getting rid of the embedded fish can take a very, very long time.

  THE GUINEA WORM

  The guinea worm lives in small bodies of water in central Africa. The worm lays its eggs in ponds, where tiny fleas eat them. The fleas are so small that they make it unseen into drinking water. When they get inside your stomach, the fleas dissolve but the worm eggs that they’ve eaten do not. Instead, the eggs root in your intestines. While there, the worms gradually grow until they are about three feet long. The female worms at this size are filled with new eggs. They need to lay their eggs in water, so they start burrowing through your intestines and organs to get out through your skin.

  Once they get just below the skin, and occasionally an eyeball, the worms release an acid that causes your skin to blister and bubble while creating an opening. These blisters are extremely painful, and when you try to wash them with water, the guinea worm bursts out of your body in a long, spaghetti-like strand. You must then grab it and hold on to it. Then, over the course of weeks, you must slowly pull the entire worm out of your flesh, inch by inch, making sure it doesn’t break. If it does, the remaining part of the worm could kill you. Since removing it takes so long, the part of the worm already out of the body is wrapped around a stick that you must carry with you until the entire worm wriggles the rest of the way out.

  THE GREAT GAME OF

  FIRST THING ABOUT PLAYING 21 on a basketball court—be clear on the rules. Depending on where you are in the country, they could be completely different. But the basics are simple:

  Rule one: Whoever has the ball is against everyone else—no teams, no passing, no refs, one against all. Call your own fouls, be fair, but the standard is “no harm, no foul.”

  Rule two: Breaking the Ice—players shoot from the free throw line (or three point line). If you make it, you can try to score; if you miss, the rebounder gets a chance at the line. Unless he has already broken the ice, then he can score at will. (In some places, they skip this stage and go right into the game.)

  Rule three: If you make a shot, you get free throws—up to three if you keep making them. If you make all three, you have the ball again and can try to score.

  Rule four: If you make a shot, you get two points; a free throw, one point.

  Rule five: You must make exactly 21. If you go over, your count goes back to 15 (or 13 or 11).

  Rule six: If you get a rebound, you have to “take it back” behind the foul line (or the three point line) before shooting.

  Rule seven: Air balls or steals you can shoot right away. You don’t have to go behind the line first.

  Rule eight: If you get to 21, you have to hit a three-pointer from the top of the key, or you go back to 15 (or 13, or 11—except in the parts of the country where you don’t have to).

  Rule nine: Today, some kids play “tips” or “taps”—tapping a miss right back in (that is, you don’t land and shoot, you push the ball back up as it is coming down). The shooter goes back to zero, or 11, or … In some versions, a one-handed tap takes the shooter to zero, two-handed only to five—there are many variations on this.

  Rule ten: MAKE SURE YOU AGREE ON THE RULES.

  FANTASY WARS

  VIKINGS

  WARRIORS IN SCANDINAVIA began to go a-viking in the late 700s—sailing off in boats whose prows were meant to look like dragons’ heads, and raiding other parts of Europe. These relentless fighters were only stopped by their own success—by A.D. 1000, many settled in as conquerors. Between the 1500s and the 1700s, the most advanced war weapons in the world were ships that moved quickly in the wind, and fired batteries of cannons. That is why pirates flourished—they controlled the superweapon of the day. So, if
raging Vikings met howling pirates, who would win?

  WHO WOULD WIN?

  PIRATES

  We called up Dr. John Hale, an expert on Viking longboats. He didn’t pause for a second: “Pirates,” he said, “no contest.” One reason is obvious—better weapons. Pirates had guns and cannons. Vikings had swords and battle-axes. But the other reason takes a moment of thought. Viking boats were low and open—they were for carrying men to battle, not for fighting at sea. Pirate ships were built high and cannons shot from within the boat. Pirates would have shot down at the exposed Vikings and destroyed them with ease.

  CRUSHING CONQUERORS

  ALEXANDER THE GREAT: They called him Great for a reason—he became king of Macedon (a state north of Greece) in 336 B.C. at the age of 20 when his father, Philip II, was killed, and began fighting at once. Within ten years, he conquered the fractious Greeks, defeated the mighty Persians, took control of Egypt, and swept across what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan. That gave him the largest empire in the entire world at the time. Alexander died at 33—perhaps from illness, though he might have been poisoned—without ever having lost a single battle. He was a brilliant strategist who could size up an enemy, determine where he was weak, and risk everything to exploit that advantage.

  GENGHIS KHAN: If you want to know who the greatest conqueror in world history was, look no further. When Genghis died in 1227, he and his fellow Mongols controlled the largest continuous empire the world has ever seen—stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Pacific Ocean. The Mongols began training on horseback from childhood, which made them excellent riders, and the composite bow they developed [see page 40] was the ideal weapon to shoot while charging around on a horse. The Mongol Empire no longer exists, but Genghis left a lasting legacy: Genetic tests suggest he is the ancestor of some 16 million people living in Asia today.

  HPN:If Genghis was so great, what happened to his empire and his people? Don’t tell me that they hit a wall … like the Great Wall of China.

  MA: A bit like the Vikings (p. 88), the problem with these raider types is that they win. Once a raider conquers a city, he settles in, likes living in a palace, and wants his kids to go to school there. Soon enough, he gets soft, doesn’t want to live on horseback and practice archery all day, or try to get past the Great Wall of China. Then the next raider sweeps down and conquers him. That’s basically what happened to the Mongol Empire, though Mongolia, the nation, exists to this day.

  JULIUS CAESAR: Now here’s a real conqueror. Starting in 58 B.C., Caesar spent eight years fighting in Western Europe. He defeated some 300 tribes, and brought Roman rule north to England and east across Germany—laying the foundations of modern Europe. Caesar had several advantages over the wild Europeans: He could read, and carefully studied to learn how to fight; his men were highly trained and disciplined; and he could befriend anyone while coolly calculating his next move. When pirates captured him, he was relaxed, played dice with them, but told them he would later kill them all, which is just what he did.

  After Caesar conquered Europe, he returned to Rome, where by 44 B.C., he was declared dictator, or ruler, having personally changed Rome from a republic to an empire. Not all of the Romans were thrilled with the change; in fact, a group of them got together and stabbed Caesar to death on the floor of the Senate.

  FRANCISCO PIZARRO: Winning wars when you have huge armies is fine, but what about when you are outnum- bered—totally outnumbered? In 1532, Pizarro and just 164 men took on and defeated the Inca, who had an 80,000-man army. How come? Just before Pizarro arrived, a smallpox epidemic ravaged the Inca, plunging them into civil war. Still, how would you like to face an army 500 times larger than your own?

  PACHAKUTI: Starting in 1438, “Worldshaker,” as he called himself, and his sons carved out the largest empire in the world. The Inca Empire ran along the Andes Mountains, stretching from present-day Colombia and Ecuador to Argentina and Chile. The Inca were fearless conquerors with an army of some 250,000 disciplined men, armed with slings, spears, and darts who were known for executing defeated soldiers. An attacking general would make clear to his enemy that to resist was to invite total destruction, so he would encourage his foe to submit without fighting. The Inca’s reputation was so powerful that more and more smaller kingdoms accepted their offer. The vast Inca Empire was still growing in 1532 when the Spanish arrived with their horses, guns, and diseases.

  EDWARD VII: In 1909, Queen Victoria’s son ruled the largest empire in world history. In fact, because of the connections made possible by steamships, railroads, and the telegraph, the British really were the first and only rulers to plant their flag on every continent, from Canada to British Guiana, from India to Australia, from Egypt to South Africa. During Edward’s reign, some 20 percent of all people in the world lived in the Empire. But that rule began to unravel five years later, with the beginning of World War I.

  NAPOLEON: Alexander conquered enemies who had spears, Genghis ruled a lot of grass, and Pizarro got lucky. If you want a real conqueror, think of Napoleon. Starting in 1796, and facing trained armies with guns, cannons, and horses, he led the French to defeat or control all of Europe from the Atlantic to the eastern edges of Germany. Like Alexander and Caesar, he was brilliant at sizing up his enemy’s strengths and weaknesses (see page 95 for innovative tactics he developed to defeat a larger army). In fact, his most devastating defeat came at the hands of General “Winter”—the cold of Russia, when he tried one invasion too many.

  HPN: You give Napoleon way too much credit. His big claims to fame were some of history’s biggest defeats. He marched across Europe to attack Moscow only to find it largely deserted. He lost more than half a million soldiers in the process, mostly to bad weather. And I seem to recall he lost the Battle of Waterloo after saying it would be as easy as eating breakfast. I’ll take Genghis any day.

  MA: Napoleon was one smart guy who made bold and innovative decisions in the heat of battle. I do think that is what makes for a great general. I wonder how he would have done leading the Mongols. How would Genghis have fared if he’d suddenly been put in charge of French soldiers? Hmm … reader, what do you think?

  FANTASY WARS

  AZTEC

  A SOPHISTICATED CIVILIZATION and proud warriors, the Aztec Empire arose in the 1320s in what is now Mexico, and was still growing when Columbus arrived in the Americas. The Inca—masters of the Andes, fabled for their stores of gold—established their first city-state in what is now Peru around 1200; their empire was expanding in 1532. Had the Europeans not arrived, the two great empires of the Americas might have eventually clashed. If the two powers had met in battle, who would have won?

  We asked Dr. Ross Hassig, the world’s leading expert on Aztec armies. He was clever, and kicked the question back to us: Where, he wondered, would the armies have met? The Aztec didn’t use boats to transport armies, and marching to South America from the highlands of Mexico would have taken them through disease-filled jungles. But the Aztec had more men in arms and better weapons. On the other hand, the Inca used rafts with sails, so they could have avoided the jungles and sent an army by sea. Who would have won? Whichever side had planned for the war, knew the other side’s strengths, and could bring enough men to fight.

  WHO WOULD WIN?

  INCA

  HOW THREE THOUSAND MEN BEAT FIFTY THOUSAND, AND OTHER GREAT BATTLE STORIES

  OKINAWA ISLAND, 1945

  Toward the end of World War II, the United States and its allies brought 548,000 men and 1,300 ships to take an island defended by 100,000 Japanese troops who had spent a year fortifying their positions. The fighting was gruesome in what would become the largest air-sealand battle of all time. It took a terrible toll on both sides. Some 12,000 Americans were killed, which pales beside the deaths of 107,000 Japanese and an estimated 100,000 natives of Okinawa (the largest island in a chain that makes up the southernmost part of Japan). The grim nature of the battle can be seen in another number: Nearly 38,000 American soldiers sustai
ned physical injuries, and 26,000 suffered from mental stress—they could not face the horror of what was going on around them. In the end, America and its allies won. The bloody fighting is one reason why President Truman agreed to use nuclear weapons on Japan—he did not want more battles that were as devastating as Okinawa.

  COSTA RICA, 1856

  The shortest battle in history may have taken place in the Central American nation of Costa Rica. William Walker, an American with a wild plan to turn much of Central America into slave states, had made himself president of Nicaragua. On March 20, 1856, 250 men fighting for Walker faced a 2,000-man Costa Rican army determined to stop him. In 15 minutes of fighting, Walker’s crew realized they were defeated and ran.