Sticky notes

This invention, commonly used in offices and households throughout the world, came about as a result of a series of accidents. In 1968, Spencer Silver, who was working for a company then called 3M, was     1     to produce a super-strong adhesive (黏合剂), something that makes things stick together, to be used in the building of planes. This, however, wasn’t successful and instead he succeeded in creating an extremely weak adhesive that was     2     to pressure. The new adhesive had two advantages: it could be removed from surfaces easily and reused. Despite these two     3     properties, nobody could see any practical use for it. In the end, the invention was     4    .

A few years later, Art Fry, a product development engineer working for 3M, decided to use this adhesive for     5     use. He stuck strips of paper in a book as bookmarks and a whole new concept was born. However, the idea still wasn’t without     6    . The challenge was to make the glue stay on the sticky note itself, rather than peeling off and staying on the surface it was     7     to. Two more 3M employees were then brought in for the task of     8     a coating for the note’s paper so that the adhesive wouldn’t come off, and they managed that eventually. However, 3M bosses still believed that this invention wasn’t going to be     9     successful and people would continue to use scrap paper (散的便条纸) for their notes. That is why sticky notes were only tested within the company, where they became extremely popular. It wasn’t until many years later that 3M bosses finally decided to give out a vast number of free samples to other companies to see if anyone would be interested. To their surprise, 90% of the companies went on to order more. This went beyond anybody’s     10    . Nowadays, sticky notes come in a variety of shapes and colours and are sold in more than 100 countries.

2 . Vasco da Gama, born around 1469 in Sines, Portugal, is best remembered as the first European to sail from Europe to India. The sea ________ he found helped Portugal build a rich empire overseas.

As a young man, studying navigation and astronomy, he served as an officer in the Portuguese ________. In 1497, he ________ the king of Portugal he could find a sea route to India by sailing around Africa, which would allow Portugal to ________ the rich Indian spice trade.

Earlier Portuguese expeditions had ________ the southern tip of Africa. But these trips were long, difficult, and ________. Was it possible to travel from Europe to India in a single ________?

In July, Gama ________ from Lisbon with four ships. By January 1498, the expedition ________ Mozambique on Africa’s southeaster coast. But Arab traders in Mozambique ________ disliked Portuguese. They ________ Gama away.

Farther north, on the coast of Kenya, Gama hired an Arab to ________ his ships across the Indian Ocean. In May 1498, they arrived at Calicut in India, where pearls, jewels, and wonderful spices were ________ for sale. But the king and local merchants refused to ________ with Portuguese.

In ________, Gama made a second voyage to Calicut with warships and soldiers. After many ________ battles, Gama ________ merchant ships and killed many locals ________ the king of Calicut surrendered. Gama sailed home ________ with a rich cargo of spice. In 1524, Portugal built a valuable trading empire in India. ________, the Portuguese king named Gama the governor of Portugal’s possessions there.

3 . Société Cartier designs, manufactures, distributes and sells jewellery and watches. Founded in Paris, France in 1847 by Louis-François Cartier, the company remained under family control until 1964. The company maintains its headquarters in Paris and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Compagnie Financière Richemont SA.

Cartier is well known for its jewellery and wrist watches, including the “Bestiary” (best illustrated by the Panthère brooch of the 1940s created for Wallis Simpson), the diamond necklace created for Bhupinder Singh the Maharaja of Patiala and the first practical wristwatch, the “Santos,” of 1904.

Cartier has a long history of sales to royalty and celebrities. King Edward VII of England referred to Cartier as “the jeweler of kings and the king of jewelers.” For his coronation in 1902, Edward VII ordered 27 tiaras and issued a royal warrant to Cartier in 1904. Similar warrants soon followed from the courts of Spain, Portugal, Russia, Siam, Greece, Serbia, Belgium, Romania, Egypt, Albania, Monaco, and the House of Orleans.

In 1986, the French Ministry for Culture appointed Perrin head of the “Mission sur le mecenatd’ entreprise” (a commission to study business patronage of the arts). Two years later, Cartier acquired a majority holding in Piaget and Baume & Mercier. In 1990 the Musee du Petit Palais staged the first major exhibition of the Cartier collection, “l’Art de Cartier”.

Perrin founded an international committee in 1991, Comite International de la Haute Horlogerie, to organise its first salon, held on 15 April 1991. This has become an annual meeting place in Geneva for professionals. The next year, the second great exhibition of “l’Art de Cartier” was held at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. In 1993, the “Vendome Luxury Group” was formed as an umbrella company to combine Cartier, Alfred Dunhill, Montblanc, Piaget, Baume & Mercier, Karl Lagerfeld, Chloé, Sulka, Hackett, Seeger.

In 1995, a major exhibition of the Cartier Antique Collection was held in Asia. The next year, the Lausanne Hermitage Foundation in Switzerland hosted the exhibition “Splendours of the Jewellery”, presenting a hundred and fifty years of products by Cartier. As of 2012, Cartier is owned, through Richemont, by the South African Rupert family and 24-year-old who is the granddaughter of Pierre Cartier, Elle Pagels.

For centuries, two of the most intriguing question about Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” were “Who?” and “When?” A discovery made at Heidelberg University in 2005 pretty much answered both. A note written in a manuscript in the library confirmed the     1     of da Vinci’s first biographer, Giorgio Vasari: that the sitter was a merchant’s wife, Lisa Gherardini. The note also helped     2     the masterpiece to between 1503 and 1506.

A third mystery—“Where?”—is still in dispute, But on June 3rd a French engineer, Pascal Cotte, declared that he and a collaborator had identified the landscape in the background of the painting. Arguments had once been made for     3     of countryside in the Marche region and between Milan and Genoa. During a presentation in Vinci, near Florence, Mr. Cotte argued that the artist was more     4     depicting a part of his native Tuscany-one that much interested him at the time. According to this theory, da Vinci     5     the area not as it was, but as, in an unrealized scheme, he intended it to be.

Mr. Cotte, who was asked by the Louvre (where the “Mona Lisa” hangs) to create a digital image of the painting, is the inventor of the multispectral (多光谱的) camera: a device that can detect not only the drawing below the surface of an oil painting, but also, where they exist, intermediate layers of work. It was among these, under what appears to be a     6     rock, that he found a preparatory sketch showing that da Vinci intended it to represent a castellated(城堡形的) tower.

The landscape of the “Mona Lisa” also includes a huge steep cliff. That is similar to one that da Vinci included in a sketch of a fortress(堡垒)     7     by Pisa and Florence in the war that broke out between them in 1503 (around the time he was painting Gherardini). The fortress with the nearby cliff—and a tower, known as the Caprona tower—all overlook the river Arno as it snakes from Florence to Pisa. All three also     8     in drawings made by da Vinci to illustrate a plan about which, says Mr. Cotte, he became “obsessive”.

Mr. Cotte argues that a channel that     9     through desolate countryside at the right of the “Mona Lisa” is too wide to be a road, as some have speculated, and is instead the dried-up bed of the Armo as da Vinci pictured it once his plan had been adopted.

It never was. But if Mr. Cotte’s theory is right, it might just explain why Gherardini, a Florentine, wears such a     10    , if mysterious, smile.

“This belongs to Iraq.” reads the poster held by Iraqi student Zeidoun Alkinani at the Babylonian Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum of Berlin.

Excavated and acquired by German archaeologists in     1     is today’s Iraq, the Ishtar Gate is one of the many artifacts shipped back to Western countries prior to World War I as part of a larger trend by European colonists across the Middle East. In 2002 Iraqi officials urged Germany to return the gate.

There are still no plans made for its return. The viral image does, however, bring to light the long-argued debate between museums in the US. and Europe     2     the ownership of ancient artifacts and the objects countries of origin.

Another example of the stolen artifacts displayed in Germany is the famous bust of Nefertiti a statue     3     (represent) the pharaoh of Egypt Akhenaten’s royal wife. Around 1340 BC the bust was constructed of limestone, gypsum, and wax in Egypt.     4     ancient items usually show their age with time passing by, it seems     5     (have) relatively little effect for the bust of Nefertiti. Its shape remains largely undamaged its colors are intact and the face of the queen appears unsullied by age.

It is rare to find so pristine an ancient figure in the modern era. The bust     6     (unearth) by German archaeologists in 1912. The following year, it found its way to Germany and     7     (stay) there ever since. In 2011, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities sent a request to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation for the artifact’s return. It is in the museum run by the foundation     8     the bust is now displayed. However, the foundation replied that the bust was obtained legally and Egypt has no grounds to reclaim it.

The Supreme Council of Antiquities explained “This request is a natural consequence of Egypt’s long-standing policy of seeking the restitution of all archaeological and historical artifacts     9     have been taken illegally out of the country.

The foundation’s president disagreed:“The bust of Nefertiti is and remains the ambassador of Egypt in Berlin. Besides, the long trip home     10     cause permanent damage to the delicate statue.”