What is a Tapa?

I had a couple of questions regarding Tapas so I thought I would address them here. As the story goes. . .

Many years ago, after a hard days work, the Spanish would stop at the local restaurant for a refreshing drink. A piece of bread was placed on top of the bottle to keep out the flies. Wanting to outdo the competing restaurants, one put a piece of cheese on top of the bread. Hearing of this change another restaurant added cheese and tomato and these were the first ‘tapas’. What developed was a meal consisting of many plates of small, appetizer sized portions of food. Today you can get almost any type of food (American, Chinese, etc) at different Tapas restaurants throughout the world but it was originally a Spanish idea.