Main Ideas

ลำดับตอนที่ #4 : Exercise 04

Directions: In the blanks that follow each paragraph, write out what you think is the main idea.

1. In the 1870s, the Welsh explorer Henry Morton Stanley navigated the Congo river under the sponsorship of King Leopold of Belgium. Wherever he stopped, he made treaties with the African chiefs he encountered. As a result, when Stanley returned to Europe, King Leopold was able to take possession of an area eighty times the size of Belgium. Leopold promptly called the area the Belgium Congo and turned it into his own private goldmine, almost destroying the Congo in the process. Under Leopold’s rule, the Congolese were faced with impossibly high taxes and forced into slave labor. Agents of the Belgian government would give each Congolese family a basket to fill with rubber. If members of the family did not return the basket with the required number of pounds of rubber, their home would be burned to the ground. Anyone who rebelled would be put in prison. Meanwhile, Leopold grew enormously rich, squandering his blood money on yachts, mansions, and mistresses. To keep the Belgian people quiet, he also expended enormous sums on public works. Nevertheless, public opinion against Leopold and his vicious ways grew stronger. Ultimately he was forced to give up his stranglehold on the Congo, but not before millions of people had been imprisoned and thousands had died.

Main Idea:

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2. Computerized axial tomography, also known as the CAT scan, was developed in 1971. In its importance, the development of the CAT scan ranks with Roentgen’s discovery of X-Rays. The word “tomography” comes from the Greek word “tomos” meaning section or slice. In effect, the CAT scan allowed doctors to see into the body almost as if layers of it had been sliced away for better viewing. For the first time, it was possible to view soft tissue inside the skull, chest and abdomen without resorting to surgery. Thanks to the CAT scan, radiologists could now distinguish normal from clotted blood. They could also examine the ventricles of the heart without inflicting pain. Prior to the creation of the CAT scan, it had been necessary to pump air into the ventricles of the heart, causing the person undergoing the procedure intense pain.

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Main Idea: Answer Key

1. King Leopold of Belgium exploited the Congo for personal gain and all but ruined the country.

2. The invention of the CAT scan was as important a discovery as the development of X-Rays.