NewsTracker Answers for week of Sep. 27, 2021

Q: A volcano erupted last week, forcing thousands to flee lava flows, and ash clouds closed an airport on one of the Canary Islands near the west coast of Africa. Where is this archipelago?

Circle the area on this map


Q: A popular subtropical tourist destination, the Canary Islands are an autonomous community of which nation?

A. Algeria

B. Morocco

C. Portugal

D. Spain


D. Spain completed its conquest of the Canary Islands in 1496, and the Canaries were the main stopover for Spanish galleons on their way to the Americas during the era of the Spanish Empire.


Q: Those Spanish ships sailed to the Canaries to take advantage of the ...

A. Gulf stream

B. Slave trade

C. Trade winds

D. Tropical storms


C. The trade winds or easterlies are the permanent east-to-west prevailing winds that flow in the Earth's equatorial region. Trade winds have been used by captains of sailing ships to cross the world's oceans for centuries. They enabled Christopher Columbus to reach the Caribbean Sea and Europe’s colonial expansion into the Americas.


Q: The Canary Islands were formed by volcanic eruptions and may have been visited by the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and the Romans. The Romans named the islands “Canariae Insulae” after what kind of animal?

A. Birds

B. Cats

C. Dogs

D. Fish


C. Canariae Insulae is Latin for "Islands of the Dogs." According to a Roman historian, one of the islands contained "vast multitudes of dogs of very large size." The wild canary is a bird native to the Atlantic islands of the Canaries the Azores, and Madeira. The bird is named after the Canary Islands, not the other way around.


Q: Besides dealing with flowing lava and volcanic ash, Canary Islanders are coping with a growing wave of ...

A. African migrants

B. British trash shipments

C. Chinese fishing boats

D. Dutch tax dodgers


A. More than 9,300 migrants from West Africa have arrived in the Canary Islands by sea in the first eight months of 2021, a big increase from 2020 when 3,933 arrived. Migrant deaths along the most treacherous route to a European Union territory reached a record high last month, with 379 lives lost, the International Organization for Migration said last week. Migrants who survive the sea voyage have not been allowed to go on to the Spanish mainland.