Object: A Globe

Boys and girls, How many of you can find North America on this globe? Good. It's this large body of land right here, isn't it? How about South America? That's right. On the globe it's just below North America. Notice that North and South America are joined by this thin piece of land.

Does anybody know what the thin piece of land joining North and South America is called? It's the Isthmus of Panama. A hundred years ago if you wanted to sail from Boston up here and go to Hawaii over here, you had to sail all the way around the tip of South A…