IN: Isabella I (Spanish: Isabel, 22 April 1451 - 26 November 1504) reigned as Queen of Castile from 1474 until her death. Her marriage to Ferdinand II of Aragon became the basis for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles I. After a struggle to claim her right to the throne, she reorganized the governmental system, brought the crime rate to the lowest it had been in years, and unburdened the kingdom of the enormous debt her brother had left behind.

At the end of the Reconquista, only Granada was left for Isabella and Ferdinand to conquer. The Emirate of Granada had been held by the Muslim Nasrid dynasty since the mid-13th century. Protected by natural barriers and fortified towns, it had withstood the long process of the reconquista. On 1 February 1482, the king and queen reached Medina del Campo and this is generally considered the beginning of the war for Granada. While Isabella's and Ferdinand's involvement in the war was apparent from the start, Granada's leadership was divided and never able to present a united front. It still took ten years to conquer Granada, however, culminating in 1492.  The Spanish monarchs recruited soldiers from many European countries and improved their artillery with the latest and best cannons. Systematically, they proceeded to take the kingdom piece by piece. In 1485 they laid siege to Ronda, which surrendered after only a fortnight due to extensive bombardment. The following year, Loja was taken, and again Muhammad XII was captured and released. One year later, with the fall of Malaga, the western part of the Muslim Nasrid kingdom had fallen into Spanish hands. The eastern province succumbed after the fall of Baza in 1489. The siege of Granada began in the spring of 1491 and at the end of the year, Muhammad XII surrendered. On 2 January 1492 Isabella and Ferdinand entered Granada to receive the keys of the city, and the principal mosque was reconsecrated as a church. The Treaty of Granada was signed later that year, and in it Ferdinand and Isabella gave their word to allow the Muslims and Jews of Granada to live in peace. An uprising by the Moors in 1500 caused the Catholic side to consider that the Moors had violated the Treaty: this gave them a justification for revoking its provisions. See Morisco Revolt.  During the war, Isabella noted the abilities and energy of Gonzalo Fernandez de Cordoba and made him one of the two commissioners for the negotiations. Under her patronage, De Cordoba went on to an extraordinary military career that revolutionised the organisation and tactics of the emerging Spanish military, changing the nature of warfare and altering the European balance of power.
QUESTION: which european countries?
IN: Mackinac Island ( MAK-in-aw) is an island and resort area, covering 3.8 square miles (9.8 km2) in land area, in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located in Lake Huron, at the eastern end of the Straits of Mackinac, between the state's Upper and Lower Peninsulas. The island was home to an Odawa settlement before European exploration began in the 17th century. It served a strategic position as a center on the commerce of the Great Lakes fur trade.

During the War of 1812, the British captured the fort in the Siege of Fort Mackinac, the first battle of the conflict, because the Americans had not yet heard that war had been declared. The victorious British attempted to protect their prize by building Fort George on the high ground behind Fort Mackinac. In 1814, the Americans and British fought a second battle on the north side of the island. The American second-in-command, Major Andrew Holmes, was killed and the Americans failed to recapture the island.  Despite this outcome, the Treaty of Ghent of 1815 forced the British to return the island and surrounding mainland to the U.S. The United States reoccupied Fort Mackinac, and renamed Fort George as Fort Holmes, after Major Holmes. Fort Mackinac remained under the control of the United States government until 1895 and provided volunteers to defend the Union during the American Civil War. The fort was used as a prison for three Confederate States of America sympathizers.  John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company was centered on Mackinac Island after the War of 1812 and exported beaver pelts for thirty years. By the middle of the 19th century, commercial fishing for common whitefish and lake trout began to replace the fur trade as the island's primary industry. As sport fishing became more popular in the 1880s, hotels and restaurants accommodated tourists coming by train or lake boat from Detroit.  Following the Civil War, the island became a popular tourist destination for residents of cities on the Great Lakes. Much of the federal land on Mackinac Island was designated as the second national park, Mackinac National Park, in 1875, just three years after Yellowstone National Park was named as the first national park. To accommodate an influx of tourists in the 1880s, the boat and railroad companies built hotels, including the Grand Hotel. Souvenir shops began to spring up as a way for island residents to profit from the tourists. Many wealthy business magnates built summer "cottages" along the island's bluffs for extended stays. When the federal government left the island in 1895, all of the federal land, including Fort Mackinac, was given to the state of Michigan and became Michigan's first state park. The Mackinac Island State Park Commission appointed to oversee the island has limited private development in the park and requires leaseholders to maintain the island's distinctive Victorian architecture.  Motor vehicles were restricted at the end of the 19th century because of concerns for the health and safety of the island's residents and horses after local carriage drivers complained that automobiles startled their horses. This ban continues to the present with exceptions only for emergency and construction vehicles.
QUESTION: Has the Island ever been a tourist destination?
IN: Jose Julian Marti Perez (January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895) was a Cuban National Hero and an important figure in Latin American literature. During his life, he worked as a poet, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher. He was very politically active, and is considered an important revolutionary philosopher and political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol of Cuba's bid for independence against Spain in the 19th century, and is referred to as the "Apostle of Cuban Independence."

Jose Marti is usually honored as a great poet, patriot and martyr of Cuban Independence, but he was also a translator of some note. Although he translated literary material for the sheer joy of it, much of the translating he did was imposed on him by economic necessity during his many years of exile in the United States. Marti learned English at an early age, and had begun to translate at thirteen. He continued translating for the rest of his life, including his time as a student in Spain, although the period of his greatest productivity was during his stay in New York from 1880 until he returned to Cuba in 1895.  In New York he was what we would call today a "freelancer" as well as an "in house" translator. He translated several books for the publishing house of D. Appleton, and did a series of translations for newspapers. As a revolutionary activist in Cuba's long struggle for independence he translated into English a number of articles and pamphlets supporting that movement. In addition to fluent English, Marti also spoke French, Italian, Latin and Classical Greek fluently, the latter learned so he could read the Greek classical works in the original.  There was clearly a dichotomy in Marti's feeling about the kind of work he was translating. Like many professionals, he undertook for money translation tasks which had little intellectual or emotional appeal for him. Although Marti never presented a systematic theory of translation nor did he write extensively about his approach to translation, he did jot down occasional thoughts on the subject, showcasing his awareness of the translator's dilemma of the faithful versus the beautiful and stating that "translation should be natural, so that it appears that the book were written in the language to which it has been translated".
QUESTION:
Did he learn different languages in school or was he self taught?