Author: DavidL

Marco Polo will go down in history as one of the greatest explorers and a very fun game. But, what got him that reputation, and how did he become such a great explorer? What made him think that there were greater and more advanced civilizations in the unknown world?

Marco was born into a trading company, in which his father and uncle would travel the world export the resources there for profit. They would tell tales of mystical beasts and animals in foreign countries, which sparked Marco’s curiosity. He grew up with an honorable education, learning how to read, write, and speak, as well as understand many foreign languages.

Soon, the Polos were on a family journey around the explored world. They went to many countries, where they traded for different valuables, along with resources to support them between stops. Once they reached China, Marco was already very sick, and was near death. But, legends of magical healing mountains surprisingly healed him once he lived on them for a while.

His family has an exceptional friendship with the Mongols, even privately with the Khan himself. That’s how they got golden passports for international travel, and quite a reputation in that whoever attacks the Polo’s caravans will be dealt with by the Mongol Army. Marco, being a great writer, translator, and overall genius, was promoted to a royal official, who eventually helped with international trade, since he is fluent in many languages.

I think that Marco is a very good explorer because he is just really smart. He became a royal official to the Mongol Empire, eventually making it to a wealthy, powerful man. He made very detailed, as well as neutral observations of the inventions he found in his life in Mongolia.

According to Google, people, and many other ‘sources’, people need, on average, 8 hours of sleep. Maybe some sleepless students and adults need to finish their work and get less than the rest of us. But is that the case? Do we only need 8 hours of sleep? If not, do we need more, or even less?

Sleep is a crucial part of everyone’s day, it’s a part where you can rest you mind and body, and be at peace. Sleep deprivation will make your mind go blank, go slow, go “dull”, to put it mildly, and possibly give you dangerous diseases like Alzheimer’s and heart disease. And some advertisements, “You can only live seven days without sleep.”

8 hours seems like a long time, which it is, but not necessarily long enough for you mind to recover. The amount of sleep for people ranges due to their personal needs or problems. For babies and infants, they need 11-18 hours, 7-11 hours for teens, and 5-9 hours for seniors above the age of 65.

So, statistically, the average of all those hours is 12 hours, which is a very healthy amount of sleep, if I do say so myself. I try my best to get at least 10 hours of sleep on a school day, and 12 hours on weekends, so I partially fit in the “criteria”. But this just goes to prove that 8 is mainly in the range, but it’s still on the lower half of the spectrum for teens and children.

On a beautiful day, the residents of a small, remote village gather at the town square for the town lottery. In other towns, the lottery takes up most of the day, but there are only 300 people in this village, so the lottery only takes two hours. The children, who have just finished school, run around to collect stones. They put the stones in their pockets and make a collective heap on the floor of the square. The men gather next, followed by the women. Parents call their children over and stand together as the lottery starts.

Mr. Summers runs the lottery because he puts in a lot of effort into helping the village out. He arrives in the square with the black box, followed by Mr. Graves, the postmaster. Mr. Summers is always bringing up the need to make a new box because the current one is worn, but no one wants to disobey tradition. Mr. Summers did, however, influence the villagers to replace the original wood chips with paper slips.

Mr. Summers shuffles the paper slips in the box. He and Mr. Graves made the papers the night before and hid and locked the box at his coal company warehouse. Before the lottery began, they make a list of all the families and households in the village.

Tessie Hutchinson franticly rushes into the square, because she forgot that today was lottery day. She joins her husband and children in the midst of the crowd, while people mock her procrastination. Mr. Summer takes atendance, and prepares to begin the drawing process.

Mr. Summers reminds everyone about the rules: he will read the surnames, and the men of the family come up and draw a slip. No one is to look at their slips until everyone has drawn. Once Mr. Summers finishes calling names, and everyone opens his or her papers. Word quickly spreads around the crowd that Bill Hutchinson ‘got it’. Tessie objects that it wasn’t fair. Mr. Summers asks Bill whether there are any other households in the Hutchinson family, which he says no to.

Mr. Graves dumps the remaining slips out of the box onto the ground and puts five back in for the Hutchinsons. As Mr. Summers calls their names, each member of the family comes up and draws a slip. When they open their slips, they find that Tessie has drawn the paper with the black dot on it.

Mr. Summers instructs everyone to hurry up, as they do. The villagers grab stones from the children’s collection and start to pelt Tessie, who stands in a clearing in the middle of the crowd. Tessie says it’s not fair as she is knocked out by a stone to the head.

The Ransom of the Red Chief is a very complex but short story, filled with many useless lessons to common folk, but might apply to kidnapees. The kidnappers, Sam and Bill, are two con men who travel the lower parts of America looking for small jobs and scores to get a bit of money, which caused their demise. They get it a job to kidnap the son of the town’s official. The actual capturing goes swimmingly, but these guys have little experience with handling kidnapees, let alone a child. The victim, Johnny, pretends to be a Native American chief, and his aggressive act soon has his abductors frightened and concerned for their own safety. Johnny makes up tales of the Native Americans’ objections nearest white men they see. Unfortunately for Bill, Sam leaves him alone with the now menacing Johnny. After a few cruel hours with Johnny, Bill is worn and torn. He composes a ransom letter demanding fifteen hundred dollars in straight cash, instead of the two thousand dollars they originally wanted. With the kid becoming more and more irritating, and Bill’s mental health plummeting, he figures it’s worth it to lose five hundred dollars to rid of that hell-born. When the ransom demands reach the town, a counteroffer is made. Sam and Bill can pay him five hundred dollars total, or else they keep the kid. Considering that their mental health and safety will fall if they choose to keep their money, they agree to the town’s terms and drop the kid off at night and bolt as fast as their middle-aged bodies can in order to get out of Johnny’s reach.