awakeThey may be small, but they're powerful. Mosquitoes have been manipulating the course of human history since it's very beginnings.
1,600,000 B.C Africa - Our ancestors take their first upright steps. Thanks to Mosquitoes, they are already infected with malaria.
500 B.C. India - Brahmin Priest Susruta deduces that mosquitoes are responsible for the spread of malaria. No one pays any attention for the next 2,400 years.
323 B.C. Babylon - Alexander the Great is felled by a mosquito dying from malaria at the age of 33. His dream of a united Greek empire collapses within a few years and widespread malarial infection contributes to the decline of a greek Civilization.
A.D. 410 Rome -- Marauding Visgoths finish off the Roman Empire, all ready undermined by a fifth column of malaria-spreading mosquitoes in the low-lying areas surrounding the capital. Shortly afterward, Alaric leader of the vanquishers, is vanquished in his turn by a treacherous mosquito.
1593 Africa-- Mosquitoes send yellow fever and malaria to their relatives in the New World via the slave trade, setting the stage for epidemics that would decimate both colonial and aboriginal populations.
1658 England - Bitten by a Royalist misquito, Oliver Cromwell dies of malaria, paving the way for the return of the British Monarchy.
1690 Barbados -- Mosquitoes spread yellow fever to halt a british expedition en route to attack the French in Canada.
1802 New Orleans - Napolean sends troops to reinforce Frances claim to Louisiana and put down a slave rebellion in Haiti. Of the 33,000 soldiers, 29,000 are killed by mosquito-borne yellow fever. Louisina beomes part of the U.S; Haiti becomes independent.
1902 Stockholm - British army surgeon Dr. Ronald Ross receives the Nobel Price for establishing the link between mosquito bites and malaria.
1905 Panama - Mosquitoes almost succeed in halting constrution of the panama canal, as panicked workers flee a yellow fever epidemic.
1939 Colorado - DDT is tested and found to control mosquitoes and other insects. Mosquitoes eventually develop resisance to the chemical; humans don't.
1942 Dutch East Indies - Japanese troops seize the islands that provide most of the world's quinine, then the only reliable malaria therapy known, hoping mosquitoes will become their best allies in fending off Allied Forces. Nearly half a million US. troops in the East are hospitalized with malaria between 1942 and 1945.
1965-1975 Vietnam - Mosquitoes infect as many as 53 US soldiers per thousand with maliaria every day.
1995 Geneva - The World Health Orginization declares mosquito born dengue fever a "world epidemic" while deaths from malaria rise of 2.5-3 million a year. --- Besides malaria and dengue and yellow fevers, mosquitoes have been in the news for carrying a whole host of new and deadly blood-borne diseases. Until 1999, West Nile virus, originating from the Nile River valley, had not previously been documented in the Western Hemisphere. The virus causes encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, and can be transmitted by mosquitoes. West Nile was found in "overwintering" mosquitoes in the New York City area in early 2000. 21 cases of the illness were reported, including two deaths in the New York City area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XURRzofbMc0&e
And a white teacher using the N word attempts to defend himself. Very, very poorly. *shudder* It makes my tummy turn. And when he demonstrates... I feel sooo uncomfortable. And he teaches HONORS English?! I'm not sure I ever fully appreciated my highschool like I should.