In 1513 the Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa first crossed the Isthmus of Panama. When the narrow nature of the Isthmus became generally known, European powers noticed the possibility to dig a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
A number of proposals for a ship canal across Central America were made between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chief rival to Panama was a canal through Nicaragua.
The Panama scandals (also known as the Panama Canal Scandal or Panama Affair) was a corruption affair that broke out in the French Third Republic in 1892, linked to a French company's failed attempt at constructing a Panama Canal. Close to half a billion francs were lost and members of the French government had taken bribes to keep quiet about the Panama Canal Company's financial troubles in what is regarded as the largest monetary corruption scandal of the 19th century.
The secession of Panama from Colombia was formalized on 3 November 1903, with the establishment of the Republic of Panama and the abolition of the Colombia-Costa Rica border. From the Independence of Panama from Spain in 1821, Panama had simultaneously declared independence from Spain and joined itself to the confederation of Gran Colombia through the Independence Act of Panama. Panama was always tenuously connected to the rest of the country to the south, owing to its remoteness from the government in Bogotá and lack of a practical overland connection to the rest of Gran Colombia. In 1840–41, a short-lived independent republic was established under Tomás de Herrera. After rejoining Colombia following a 13-month independence, it remained a province which saw frequent rebellious flare-ups, notably the Panama crisis of 1885, which saw the intervention of the United States Navy, and a reaction by the Chilean Navy.
During the construction of the Panama Canal, the initial attempts by France to construct a sea-level canal across the isthmus were secured through treaty with Colombia; however French cost overruns led to abandonment of the canal for a decade. During the intervening years, local separatists used the political instability of the Thousand Days' War to agitate for political secession from Colombia and establishment of an independent republic. When the United States sought to take over the canal project, the legislature of Colombia rejected the proposed treaty. With the collaboration of French lobbyist Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla and United States President Theodore Roosevelt, Panama declared independence from Colombia and negotiated a treaty granting the U.S. the right to construct the canal.
View the full Wikipedia page for Secession of Panama from ColombiaBuridan's ass is an illustration of a paradox in philosophy in the conception of free will. It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass (or donkey) that is equally hungry and thirsty is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass will always go to whichever is closer, it dies of both hunger and thirst since it cannot make any rational decision between the hay and water. A common variant of the paradox substitutes the hay and water for two identical piles of hay; the ass, unable to choose between the two, dies of hunger.
The paradox is named after the 14th-century French philosopher Jean Buridan, whose philosophy of moral determinism it satirizes. Although the illustration is named after Buridan, philosophers have discussed the concept before him, notably Aristotle, who put forward the example of a man equally hungry and thirsty, and Al-Ghazali, who used a man faced with the choice of equally good dates.
View the full Wikipedia page for Buridan's ass