1 . How do we know the time? A clock, a watch or a mobile phone can help us. However, many years ago there were no clocks and knowing the time was not so easy. Over the centuries people have developed different ways of telling the time.

About 5,500 years ago, the Egyptians invented the sun clock. This was a tall stone building. Its shadow (影子) showed the movement of the sun. So people were able to know midday. The Egyptians made a sundial about 3,500 years ago. It was smaller than the sun clock and could let people know the time for half a day. On cloudy days or at night it was impossible to tell the time with a sun clock or a sundial. Water clocks were the first clocks not to use the sun. The idea is simple. Water flows (流动) from one bottle to another. When the water reaches a certain level, it shows the hours. The Egyptians used water clocks about 3,400 years ago. These clocks were popular in the Middle East and China. But they failed to make people know the exact time.

In the 13th century, the mechanical clock was invented. This was more exact, but it was expensive to make one. Over the next few centuries it was developed. For example, springs (发条) were added around 1500. This enabled people to get the correct time and allowed clocks to be smaller. In 1927, the first quartz (石英) clock was developed. Clocks became cheaper to build. It’s also cheaper for ordinary people to own a clock. People began depending on them more and more to run business, markets and so on. More recently, in 1956, came the digital clock. And nowadays satellites send our mobile phones the time to the exact second.

There has been a lot of progress in timekeeping. Clocks are always changing but some things never change. Many of us still have trouble getting out of bed on time and not being late for school or work.

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3 . Everyone fails from time to time. We try to learn from our mistakes and move on. But one museum is doing quite the opposite. It’s a show-case for failures, both famous and forgotten.

West, a psychologist (心理学家) from Sweden, founded the Museum of Failure in 2017. The museum once held a traveling exhibition in Shanghai, which displayed over 100 failed products from big-name companies such as Nokia, Apple and Coca-Cola.

“I really hope you see that these famous brands that everybody respects make a mess of something too,” West said. “I hope that makes you feel less anxious (焦虑的) about learning something new.”

West’s opinion isn’t new. The well-known German-American physicist Albert Einstein once said, “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” This idea has even been accepted by big companies in the US. Silicon Valley (硅谷), for example, is the home of some of the world’s most creative tech companies. A common slogan is, “Fail fast, fail often.”

However, there are reasons for this. “The best companies are those that encourage failure and allow employees to make mistakes and see what happens,” wrote Simon Casuto of Forbes.

But some people doubt about this so-called “culture of failure”. They are worried that if failure becomes “a badge of honor”, it may even be seen as “uncool” when someone tries to reduce the risk of failure .This may lead to carelessness and lack of effort.

“Sometimes people hide failure when they could have prevented it,” wrote Anna of the Telegraph.

So it’s important for you to set apart the two kinds of failure-the kind that shows laziness or incompetence (不胜任), and the kind that takes you forward. The key is whether you’ve learned Something from your mistakes.

6 . You stick a stamp on an envelope. And then it travels to find another person. People have a special day for ______. Oct 9 is World Post Day.

Before stamps, people didn’t pay for the letters they sent, but instead, they paid for the letters they ______. Do you know how the back of a stamp is sticky? The ______ stamps didn’t have sticky backs. In the past, people used paste (浆糊) sometimes.

Years ago, sending letters used to be the most important way to ______ with other people. It seemed that everyone had stamps on hand. ______ fewer people send letters now, stamp collecting is still one of the world’s most popular hobbies.

8 . Experts believe that there are more than 8 million restaurants in the world today. So it might surprise you to learn that restaurants, as we know them, have only been around for a few centuries. Before 1765, there were no restaurants. That it is to say, there were no places that provided the restaurant experience. There was nowhere in which a waiter brought you food and drinks that you picked from a menu. In fact, there were no menus anywhere.

A man called Boulanger changed that. In 1765, he opened a place in Paris that sold soup. On his sign, he used the word “restaurant” to describe what he was selling. At that time, it was believed that soup could help restore(恢复) your health—in French the word “restore” is “restaurer”—so he called the soup “restaurant”. Soon, people started buying his soup even when they were not ill. And later, people begin to use the word “restaurant” to mean a place selling soup rather than(而不是) the soup itself. People could see more “restaurant” in France, and they began to buy soup more often.

Later, restaurant in Paris began to serve other food besides soup. In the 1790s, menus started to appear. By the mid-1800s. there were many kinds of restaurants around the world. The United States offered coffee shops. Tea houses become popular in China. Paris created beautiful restaurants for the rich. The British began to copy the French, and the restaurant idea spread in Britain.

Today, cities are filled with all kinds of restaurants. Diners have millions of choices for what to eat. They like going to eat at those restaurants and always have a good time.