【推荐1】Hand gestures are a very useful communication tool because they are easy to learn and simple to perform     1     . Many hand gestures have been around for a very long time, though their meanings may have changed over the years. Here are the histories of three of our most commonly used hand signs.

Thumbs-up

Is there a more well-known sign of approval than the thumbs-up?     2    . When one gladiator (角斗士) beat another, he would look to the crowd for their opinion: Should the loser be allowed to live? The crowd would respond by turning their thumbs up if they wanted the man to be saved or down if they wanted him to be killed —at least, that’s what people used to think.     3     What would an ancient Roman think if he saw the number of thumbs-up we give each other today?

V Sign

    4    . Captured English archers (弓箭手) would have their first two fingers cut off so they could no longer fight. Uncaptured archers would therefore raise these two fingers to the enemy to show them that they could— and would— still draw their bows. Centuries later, the sign was employed by those who were fighting against the Nazis to represent “V for Victory,” and later to mean “peace” by American activists in the 1960s. During this time, people in Japan also started using the V sign in photos.

High Five

On October 2, 1977, after Dusty Baker hit a home run, L.A Dodgers baseball player Glenn Burke raised his hand to greet his teammate.     5     From then on, they would often give high fives during their games, and the gesture caught on.

【推荐2】Forks trace their origins back to the ancient Greeks. Forks at that time were fairly large with two tines that aided in the carving of meat in the kitchen. The tines prevented meat from twisting or moving during carving and allowed food to slide off more easily than it would with a knife.

By the 7th century A.D., royal courts of the Middle East began to use forks at the table for dining. From the 10th through the 13th centuries, forks were fairly common among the wealthy in Byzantium. In the 11th century, a Byzantine wife brought forks to Italy; however, they were not widely adopted there until the 16th century. Then in 1533, forks were brought from Italy to France. The French were also slow to accept forks, for using them was thought to be awkward.

In 1608, forks were brought to England by Thomas Coryate, who saw them during his travels in Italy. The English first ridiculed forks as being unnecessary. “Why should a person need a fork when God had given him hands?” they asked. Slowly, however, forks came to be adopted by the wealthy as a symbol of their social status. They were prized possessions made of expensive materials intended to impress guests. By the mid-1600s, eating with forks was considered fashionable among the wealthy British.

Early table forks were modeled after kitchen forks, but small pieces of food often fell through the two tines or slipped off easily. In late 17th century France, larger forks with four curved tines were developed. The additional tines made diners less likely to drop food, and the curved tines served as a scoop so people did not have to constantly switch to a spoon while eating. By the early 19th century, four-tined forks had also been developed in Germany and England and slowly began to spread to America.

【推荐2】A new Dutch car company, Lightyear, announced its new car, Lightyear One concept earlier this week, which can constantly refill its power using the sun and travel a range of up to 800 km when fully powered. That’s just the start: The company claims that in sunny environments (say, Hawaii), the One could potentially drive for months at a time between charges.

The Lightyear team claims the car can fuel up with more than just sunshine. It is equipped to charge from a socket (插座), even a regular household power socket. Lightyear claims that just charging its car from a standard (3.7 kw) socket for an hour would give you 40 km worth of power.

The solar power collected by the car’s panels could be used to power more than just the One itself, allowing owners to connect the energy to their homes, devices, and even other electric cars. This is indeed a new idea.

It’s not exactly clear how the company plans to produce its breakthrough cars. The company’s website includes some unclear language about a “completely newly-designed car” which will require a “revolutionary production process”. It mentions that industry partners have signed up to support the process, but doesn’t offer any specific names.

Lightyear’s founders aren’t new to the solar car, which makes the One slightly more believable than other new concepts with little real-world data to support them. The company was started by five former members of Solar Team Eindhoven, the group that created the four-seat, solar-powered car Stella which hit the US streets back in 2014.

You can order the One in advance now in the EU and US, but, unsurprisingly, it won’t come cheap. Reserving a One will allow you to get a discount if you pay by the month and the final cost is expected to be €119,000.

The company won’t produce the One on a large scale (规模). Therefore, it won’t cause industry giants like Tesla to lose any sleep just yet, and Lightyear still has to prove it can change its experimental technology into a fully realized consumer experience. If the company succeeds, however, we could be looking at a new future of cars, directly powered by the sun.

【推荐2】Recently, the harrowing farewell message appeared on the Internet, just three short sentences. “We are sure the army is capturing us now. We will see each other another day dear world. Bye.” It was signed “Fatemah”, the mother of Bana, a 7-year-old Syrian girl who got more than 200,000 Twitter followers as she and her family have documented their struggle to survive in war-ravaged Aleppo. And then, Bana’s Twitter account was abruptly deleted.

More than seventy years after a Dutch teenager penned the diary recording her family’s life hiding from the Nazis, Bana has become the Anne Frank of the Syrian civil war.

So when Bana’s online presence disappeared, her followers tweeted anxiously under the hashtag WherelsBana. Was this the end of her story? There was a sense of urgency and helplessness. Then, next afternoon, the account suddenly reappeared. Fatemah tweeted a bad message, “Under attack. Nowhere to go, every minute feels like death. Pray for us.” They were alive; their story continued.

It wasn’t the first time that the family had tweeted from the edge of death.

Several days later, another message arrived from Aleppo, more hopeful this time. Bana tweeted, “I am getting better without medicine with too much bombing. I miss you.” Then hours passed, and Bana’s account was silent as her followers tweeted prayers. The world watched on screens, waiting for her name to reappear.

【推荐3】Since wars begin in the minds of men and women, it is in the minds of men and women that the protection of peace must be built. UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. It seeks to build peace through international co-work in education, sciences and culture.

As early as 1942, in wartime, the governments of the European countries, which were facing Nazi Germany and its partners, met in the United Kingdom for the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME). World War Ⅱ was far from over, yet those countries were looking for ways and means to rebuild their education systems once peace was restored. The project quickly gained support and soon reached a common agreement. New governments, including that of the United States, decided to join in. Upon the suggestion of CAME, a United Nations Meeting for the creation of an educational and cultural organization (ECO) was started in London from 1 to 16 November 1945. Hardly had the war ended when the meeting opened. It gathered together representatives of forty-four countries who decided to create an organization that would accept a sincere culture of peace. In their eyes, the new organization was to create the “agreement of mankind” and thereby prevent the possibility of another world war.

Political and economic agreements of governments are not enough to secure the lasting and sincere support of the peoples. Peace must be founded upon communication and understanding.

Peace must be built upon the agreement of humanity. In this spirit, UNESCO develops educational tools to help people live as global citizens free of hate and impatience. UNESCO works to ensure that every child and every citizen can get quality education. By protecting cultural richness and the equality of all cultures, UNESCO strengthens the connections between nations. UNESCO develops scientific programs and measures as chances for development and improvement. UNESCO stands up for freedom of expression. As a workshop of ideas, UNESCO helps countries to take international rules and manages programs that encourage the free flow of ideas and the exchange of knowledge.