QUES: Befitting a lush, tropical island stranded in the middle of the ocean, Madeira's origins are shrouded in mystery and fanciful legend. Some claim that the archipelago is what remains of Plato's lost Atlantis, or part of a landmass that once fused the continents of Europe and America. The Portuguese Step Ashore: Recorded history of the volcanic archipelago begins in relatively recent times: 1418, just as the golden age of Portuguese discovery was erupting. Under the leadership of Henry the Navigator, caravels set out from the westernmost point of the Algarve, in southern Portugal, in search of foreign lands, fame, and wealth. Joao Goncalves Zarco, sailing in the service of Prince Henry, made the first of many famous Portuguese discoveries, which would culminate a century later in Magellan's historic circumnavigation of the globe. Zarco happened upon a small volcanic archipelago 1,000 km from Lisbon. Perhaps Zarco knew precisely where he was heading, having learned of the existence of Madeira from a Castilian source. After all, the waters of the Canary Islands, only 445 km (275 miles) to the south, had occupied busy shipping lanes for very nearly a century, and Genovese maps from the mid-14th century depict both Madeira and Porto Santo. More likely, Zarco was heading for Guinea and storms forced him onto the beach of Porto Santo. If so, then he was extremely fortunate, for he managed to land on the only large, sandy beach for hundreds of miles around. Little wonder he subsequently named it Porto Santo (Holy Port). The following year Zarco returned to claim the larger island he had seen from Porto Santo, and with him went Tristao Vaz Teixeira and Bartolomeu Perestrelo. They officially became the first men to set foot on the heavily forested island, naming it Ilha da Madeira, "Island of Timber. " The Portuguese Crown, delighted with its first important discovery, immediately embarked on a program of colonization. Zarco and Teixeira were appointed co-governors of Madeira, while Perestrelo was awarded Porto Santo.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: In what year did the recorded history of Madeira begin?

QUES: Literary career During the war Camus joined the French Resistance cell Combat, which published an underground newspaper of the same name. This group worked against the Nazis, and in it Camus assumed the nom de guerre Beauchard. Camus became the paper's editor in 1943. He first met Sartre at the dress rehearsal of Sartre's play, The Flies, in June 1943. When the Ailies liberated Paris in August 1944, Camus witnessed and reported the last of the fighting. Soon after the event on 6 August 1945, he was one of the few French editors to publicly express opposition and disgust to the United States' dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. He resigned from Combat in 1947 when it became a commercial paper. After the war, Camus began frequenting the Cafe de Flore on the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris with Sartre and others. He also toured the United States to lecture about French thought. Although he leaned left, politically, his strong criticisms of Communist doctrine did not win him any friends in the Communist parties and eventually alienated Sartre. In 1949, his tuberculosis returned, whereupon he lived in seclusion for two years. In 1951, he published The Rebel, a philosophical analysis of rebellion and revolution which expressed his rejection of communism. Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries in France, the book brought about the final split with Sartre. The dour reception depressed Camus; he began to translate plays. Camus's first significant contribution to philosophy was his idea of the absurd. He saw it as the result of our desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither, which he expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus and incorporated into many of his other works, such as The Stranger and The Plague. Despite his split from his "study partner", Sartre, Camus was still categorized as an Existentialist. He specifically rejected that label in his essay "Enigma" and elsewhere.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What label does Camus reject?

QUES: Although Bin Laden, Atef, and KSM initially contemplated using established al Qaeda members to execute the planes operation, the late 1999 arrival in Kandahar of four aspiring jihadists from Germany suddenly presented a more attractive alternative. The Hamburg group shared the anti-U.S. fervor of the other candidates for the operation, but added the enormous advantages of fluency in English and familiarity with life in the West, based on years that each member of the group had spent living in Germany. Not surprisingly, Mohamed Atta, Ramzi Binalshibh, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah would all become key players in the 9/11 conspiracy. Mohamed Atta was born on September 1, 1968, in Kafr el Sheikh, Egypt, to a middle-class family headed by his father, an attorney. After graduating from Cairo University with a degree in architectural engineering in 1990, Atta worked as an urban planner in Cairo for a couple of years. In the fall of 1991, he asked a German family he had met in Cairo to help him continue his education in Germany. They suggested he come to Hamburg and invited him to live with them there, at least initially. After completing a course in German, Atta traveled to Germany for the first time in July 1992. He resided briefly in Stuttgart and then, in the fall of 1992, moved to Hamburg to live with his host family. After enrolling at the University of Hamburg, he promptly transferred into the city engineering and planning course at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg, where he would remain registered as a student until the fall of 1999. He appears to have applied himself fairly seriously to his studies (at least in comparison to his jihadist friends) and actually received his degree shortly before traveling to Afghanistan. In school, Atta came across as very intelligent and reasonably pleasant, with an excellent command of the German language. When Atta arrived in Germany, he appeared religious, but not fanatically so. This would change, especially as his tendency to assert leadership became increasingly pronounced. According to Binalshibh, as early as 1995 Atta sought to organize a Muslim student association in Hamburg. In the fall of 1997, he joined a working group at the Quds mosque in Hamburg, a group designed to bridge the gap between Muslims and Christians. Atta proved a poor bridge, however, because of his abrasive and increasingly dogmatic personality. But among those who shared his beliefs, Atta stood out as a decisionmaker.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: How old is Mohamed Atta when he graduates from Cairo university

QUES: It is not enough to describe some objects by their location. We may also need to know its direction. For example, a wind blows a storm over your school. Where is that storm coming from? Where is it going? How can we describe a direction? The most common way is by using a compass. A compass is a device with a floating needle (Figure 2.1). The needle is a small magnet. The needle aligns itself with the Earth's magnetic field. The compass needle always points to magnetic north. If you have a compass and you find north. You can then know any other direction. See the directions, such as east, south, west, etc., on a compass rose. The Earth has two poles. It has a magnetic north pole. It also has a geographic north pole. These two poles are close to each other but not the exact same place.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
What is the most common way to determine direction?