NewsTracker Answers for week of Jan. 14, 2013

Q: A dozen killer whales trapped under sea ice with only a single breathing hole have reached safety in Canada's Hudson Bay after shifting winds cleared away floating ice, local villagers reported. Where is Hudson Bay?

Circle the area on this map


Q: Before the ice shifted, local villagers planned to use chain saws to cut air holes for the whales. The recent movie "Big Miracle" depicted a similar 1988 rescue effort near the northernmost point of the United States . . .

A. Cape Horn

B. Point Barrow

C. Cape Fear

D. Grosse Pointe


B. Operation Breakthrough was a $1 million international effort to free three gray whales trapped in the pack ice of the Beaufort Sea near Point Barrow, Alaska. The area was first occupied about 1,000 years ago by ancestors of the Inupiat people who still hunt and fish the off the point, which is only 1,291 miles from the North Pole.


Q: Hudson Bay is named after English explorer Henry Hudson who found it in 1610 while searching for . . .

A. Gold

B. Fountain of Youth

C. Whales

D. Northwest Passage


D. Hudson was trying to find a northerly sea route from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast of China. After being trapped by ice and spending a winter on shore, he wanted to continue his quest. However, much of his crew wanted to return home and mutinied. Hudson, his teen-aged son and nine crewmen were cast adrift in a small boat in the bay, and they were never seen again.


Q: Europeans made repeated attempts to find an Arctic Ocean shortcut to the Pacific Ocean. Before the 20th century, the shortest sea route from Europe to the Pacific was by way of . . .

A. Cape Horn

B. Cape Hope

C. Cape Fear

D. Cape Fligely


A. The stormy seas at southern end of South America were the quickest way to the Pacific until the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914. Ships going by way of Cape Hope in southern Africa had to cross the Indian Ocean to get to the Pacific. Cape Fear is on the cost of North Carolina, and Cape Fligely is the northernmost point of Europe, about 566 miles from the North Pole.


Q: The Hudson's Bay Company is the oldest commercial corporation in North America. It was incorporated in 1670 to trade in . . .

A. Tea

B. Furs

C. Gold

D. Slaves


B. From its headquarters on Hudson Bay, the company controlled the fur trade of most of British North America for several centuries. Today, it runs retails stores throughout Canada and the United States.