What is the main idea of the text?

1. What is the main idea of the text? It was 1492. Vasco da Gama and his crew had left Portugal months earlier. Now they were sailing down the coast of South America and around the southern tip. The ship was in fine shape. There was plenty of dried meat and biscuits to feed the crew, but the sailors had developed a strange sickness. Their gums bled. Their teeth fell out. Their muscles ached. Their bones broke easily, and their bodies were covered with bruises. Eventually, 100 of the 160 sailors died from this disease.

2. What is the main idea of the text? Why were so many sailors getting sick on long voyages? No one knew. People called the sickness scurvy. Some crews were lucky. They landed in countries where people already knew of a cure. Frenchman Jacques Cartier and his crew spent a winter in Canada. Many of the sailors had scurvy. Native Americans from a nearby village gave them medicine made from the bark of a spruce tree. All the sailors got well. Their symptoms disappeared. Cartier wrote in his diary that all the doctors and medicines of Europe couldn’t have done “as much in a year as that tree did in six days.”

3. What is the main idea of the text? Around 1750, a British ship doctor made a discovery. Scurvy was not caused by something the sailors ate or drank. It was caused by something they were not eating. Dr. James Lind realized that eating oranges and limes could prevent scurvy. Eventually, all British sailors on long voyages were given regular doses of lime juice. That’s how British sailors became known as “limeys”. Sailors who drank lime juice no longer got scurvy.

4. What is the main idea of the text? Now, we know that Vitamin C is the “secret medicine” found in lime juice and spruce bark. Vitamin C is found in many fresh fruits and vegetables. Citrus fruits are especially good sources of Vitamin C. The sailors who lived on biscuits and dried mean were not getting any Vitamin C in their diet. Without Vitamin C, people develop scurvy. So, peel yourself an orange or cut open a grapefruit. Make Vitamin C part of your daily diet, on land and on sea.

6. Read the text. • Identify the main idea of the text. Choose the best answer from the paper given to you. • Encircle the letter of the best answer.

7. 1)Before electricity lit up our lives, the streets of even the world’s greatest cities were pitch dark at night. Not only were the streets dark, they were dangerous! Pedestrians were courageous – or foolish enough to brave the night streets, carrying torches or lanterns to light up their way.

8. 2) Over time, bright minds came up with bright ideas to solve this problem. Back in the fifth century, oil lamps were hung on ropes across the streets of Antioch in Syria. In medieval China, natural gas was transported through bamboo pipes to light street lamps.

9. 3) It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that gas lighting was used in Europe. A Scottish engineer and inventor, William Murdoch, came up with the idea in 1792. The first gas streetlights appeared in London in 1807. By 1820, gas lamps illuminated streets in Paris, France, and Baltimore, Maryland. With gas lighting, a new profession was created – the lamplighter. In cities and towns, evening was heralded by the appearance of the lamplighter with his ladder and lantern.

10. 4) Electric streetlights came along in 1841. The first of these were installed in Paris. These electric arc lamps produced a strong light. However, they had to be replaced every few hours. The true birth of the age of electricity for street lighting came in 1879. The bright vision of Thomas Alva Edison had created longer lasting light bulbs. With the spread of electric streetlights, the need for lamplighters declined and they gradually disappeared from the evening streets.

11. 5) A7.2-magnitude earthquake struck the central Philippine island of Bohol on Tuesday, October 15. The quake struck at 8:12 a.m. and was centered about 33 kilometers below Carmen City, where many small buildings collapsed. Centuries-old stone churches crumbled and wide areas were without power.

12. 6) Many roads and bridges were reported damaged, which made it difficult for rescue operations to continue. Historic churches dating from the Spanish colonial period suffered the most. One of the country's oldest churches, the 16th-century Basilica of the Holy Child in Cebu, lost its bell tower. Nearly half of a 17th-century limestone church in Loboctown, was also reduced to rubble.

13. 7) The quake set off two stampedes. When it struck, people that were gathered in a gym in Cebu rushed outside in a panic. Five people were crushed, and eight others were injured. As fear set in on the people of Bohol, some ran up a mountain, afraid that a tsunami would follow. But the earthquake was centered inland, and did not cause a tsunami.

14. 8) The tremor caused power cuts in parts of Bohol, Cebu, and other neighbouring areas. As night fell, the entire province was in the dark. Bohol Governor Edgardo Chattosaid that authorities were setting up tents for those who got displaced by the quake. Meanwhile, others who lost their homes moved in with their relatives.

15. 9) Regional military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Deveraturda said that he called back soldiers from their holiday break in order to respond to the quake. He said that the quake damaged the pier in Bohol's provincial capital. It also caused some cracks at Cebu's international airport, but that navy ships and air force planes could still use alternative ports to help out.

16. 10) The Philippine archipelago is located in the Pacific "Ring of Fire," where earthquakes and volcanic activity are common. A magnitude-7.7 quake killed nearly 2,000 people on the northern island of Luzon in 1990. An official from the government agency which monitors earthquake activity was quoted as saying that last Tuesday’s quake was the strongest tremor felt in the area in the last 23 years.