Jonathan W. Ong, age 10, of Berkeley, California, for his question:

Where exactly is Gibraltar?

For centuries the towering Rock of Gibraltar has stood guard as a bastion at the western end of the Mediterranean Sea. It is on a narrow peninsula at the southern tip of Spain, facing the northern coast of Africa across the narrow Strait of Gibraltar. In ancient days, the land formations on either side of the Strait were called the Pillars of Hercules. For ages, Mediterranean sailors were afraid to venture through from their sheltered, land locked sea to the stormy Atlantic Ocean on the western side of the Strait. Many thought of the pillars as a natural gateway to an endless ocean that dropped down into a bottomless pit.

In later centuries, European powers saw the Strait as a natural gateway into the Mediterranean and the Rock of Gibraltar as a natural fortress to control the passage of ships. Since the 1700s, the Rock has been a British Crown Colony armed with bristling guns to control sea going traffic through the Strait on the way to the Suez Canal and India. The mighty flock glowers 1,400 feet above the Mediterranean and across 15 miles of water to the coast of Africa.