1 . The switch from water-powered to coal-powered factories in 19th-century Britain may be a result of droughts that made water power less reliable and coal more attractive.
Previously, it was thought that industrialists ran out of attractive places along rivers to build the waterwheels that powered many of their factories in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Past analyses of the water power available to early industrialists relied on 20th-century precipitation (降水) patterns, but these are unreliable for assessing historical water power, says Tara Jonell at the University of Glasgow in the UK.
Jonell used previous precipitation records combined with elevation (海拔) data to create a more accurate model of the flow in Britain’s rivers and streams at the time. She found that industrialists in England, Scotland and Wales had barely tapped potential water power when they made the change to coal. Concentrated development had completely filled a few places, such as regions along the River Spodden near Manchester, but overall “ there was still plenty of water power that existed”, says Jonell.
“This supports the argument that coal power was neither more plentiful nor more productive than water power at the time,” says Brett Christophers at Uppsala University in Sweden. “ It adds another nail to the coffin of the old belief. ”
One possibility is that a series of droughts may have made water power less reliable than coal, says Jonell. But Andreas Malm, who wasn’t involved with this work, says it is unclear whether actual droughts took place at the time. He says workers’ movements in the 1830s and 1840s may have prevented industrialists from relying on labour to make up production shortfalls that could have been driven by changing precipitation patterns. The mobility of coal was also a factor in this power change, he says. Relying on coal meant factories could be built near cheap labour or convenient transportation, instead of being limited to places along rivers.
1. What was the cause of the industrial revolution according to the previous belief?| A．The increased energy demand. |
| B．The insufficient water resources. |
| C．The lack of suitable areas for waterwheels. |
| D．The difficulty in building waterwheels. |
| A．By analyzing previous data. |
| B．By comparing water and coal power. |
| C．By referring to other studies. |
| D．By remodeling precipitation patterns. |
| A．It leads to a controversial conclusion. |
| B．It stresses the effect of droughts. |
| C．It agrees with the conventional thought. |
| D．It provides good evidence for the new finding. |
| A．Supportive. | B．Doubtful. | C．Cautious. | D．Objective. |
2 . In 1944, 730 representatives from 44 allied (同盟) nations met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, just as World War Ⅱ was ending. They were attending an important conference. This mostly forgotten event shaped our modern world because the Bretton Woods Conference agreed on the establishment of an international banking system.
To make sure that all nations would be successful, the United States and other allied nations set rules for a postwar international economy. The Bretton Woods system created the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF was founded as a kind of global central bank from which member countries could borrow money. The countries needed money to pay for their war costs. Today, the IMF promotes international trade by guaranteeing the stability of the international currency and financial system.
The Bretton Woods system also set up the World Bank. Although the World Bank shares similarities with IMF, the two institutes remain distinct. While the IMF keeps an orderly system of payments and receipts between nations, the World Bank is mainly a development institution. The World Bank initially gave loans to European countries ruined by World War Ⅱ, and today it lends money and technical assistance specifically to economic projects in developing countries. Its goal is to “bridge the economic divide between poor and rich countries.”
These two specific accomplishments of the Bretton Woods Conference were major. However, the Bretton Woods system particularly benefited the United States and it placed the U.S. dollar as the global currency. A global currency is one that countries worldwide accept for all trade, or international transactions (交易) of buying and selling. Because only the U.S. could print dollars, the United States became the primary power behind the IMF and the World Bank. Today, global currencies include the U.S. dollar, the euro (European Union countries), and yen (Japan).
The years after Bretton Woods have been considered the golden age of the U.S. dollar. More importantly, the conference deeply shaped foreign trade for decades to come.
1. For what purpose was the Bretton Woods Conference held?| A．To shape our modern world. | B．To set up IMF and the World Bank. |
| C．To help allied nations to pay for their war costs. | D．To guarantee the success of all allied nations. |
| A．Their accomplishments. | B．Their functions. |
| C．Their founders. | D．Their influence. |
| A．The foundation of IMF and the World Bank. | B．The international currency and financial system. |
| C．Currency cooperation and financial stability. | D．Developing countries and the entire word. |
| A．Bretton Woods increased U.S. economic influence around the world |
| B．the IMF and the World Bank work closely together to guarantee success |
| C．the conclusion of World War Ⅱ had little influence on events at Bretton Woods |
| D．the conference organizers recognized the need for markets to function in-dependently |
3 . Anxiety sweat. Horsehair Wet grass and soil after a rain. Gunpowder. Perfume （香水） containing rosemary and bitter orange. A touch of leather.
This might have been what Napoleon's withdrawal from the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 smelled like. At least, these are some of the elements that Caro Verbeek, an art historian and olfactory（嗅觉的）researcher, tried to combine when she was reconstructing the smell. “Wars are extremely smelly,” Dr. Verbeek said. “Soldiers don't write about their injuries as much as they write about the terrible sounds and smells. So we know more about them. We also know that it had rained the night before the battle, that anxiety sweat smells different from normal sweat, and that there were thousands of horses on the field.” These were some details Dr. Verbeek relied on during the reconstruction, which is part of a project called “In Search of Lost Scents（气味）.” The scent is offered in the Rijks museum as part of tours- -on pieces of paper or in a necklace with tiny pumps- alongside Jan Willem Pieneman's 1824 painting of the scene.
Dr. Verbeek approaches past smells by attempting to recreate versions of them, as she did with the Battle of Waterloo, making a perfume of sorts that might be associated with historical events, people and works of art. Bringing smell into a museum context can be one way to make art more accessible. Marie Clapot, associate museum educator, has worked over the last few years to bring smell into the museum “It's not just about ‘Oh, it's nice to smell something.’ It's one way you can make an art objet accessible” It is also a way, she said, to bring a number of people into the conversation about art who might not be moved by traditional art history.
1. What did Dr. Verbeek's reconstruction depend on?| A．Personal experience in the war. | B．Pure imagination for the past. |
| C．Great talent in descriptive writing. | D．Detailed facts about the history. |
| A．To inform visitors of the project of nice smells. |
| B．To promote the popularity of traditional art history. |
| C．To get visitors to know wars and battles in history. |
| D．To combine various elements from different fields. |
| A．What does history smell like? |
| B．How was a project carried out? |
| C．The Battle of Waterloo: a smelly war |
| D．The Rijks museum: a creative museum |
The Titanic was the largest and most advanced passenger ship of its day. It was considered unsinkable. But on 14th April 1912, on
So why did so many people die in the tragedy? Firstly, the Titanic’s owners fitted the ship
The wreck (残骸) of the Titanic
5 . Rosie the Riveter was a World War II nickname for women who worked in factories and shipyards all across the country. The two women talked about here were not like Rosie. They, and four others, were working on a machine at the University of Pennsylvania, called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It was designed to do difficult calculations related to ballistics (弹道), but the war ended before ENIAC was put into use.
Work on it continued, though. The room-sized computer was completely electronic, so it should have been far faster than the other big war-time calculator, the Mark I, developed by IBM. The Mark I, driven by electricity, had moving parts that slowed it down but its instructions could be stored on a paper tape, which gave it a big advantage. In ENIAC, however, every calculation involved putting cables (电缆) into a board.
To program ENIAC, the women had to first analyze hundreds of equations (公式) involved in a particular calculation. Then, they determined which cables should go where, so the machine would do the right steps in the right order. They understood both mathematics and the machine.
Programming was in its early stage in the 1940s; in fact, the term, “to program95 came from the ENIAC team. Women held many of these early jobs. The six ENIAC programmers had been selected from a group of women with degrees in mathematics who worked on other big war-time calculators. Today, computer jobs are controlled by men. Women hold only a quarter of the tech jobs in the United States, though they account for half the workforce. Only 18 percent of computer science graduates today are women. Often the explanation is that girls don't like math, or don't do well in it, but the experience of these earlier women proves otherwise.
1. What can we learn about ENIAC from the first two paragraphs?| A．It was much more advanced than the Mark I. |
| B．It could do calculations of ballistics all by itself. |
| C．It was invented by the University of Pennsylvania. |
| D．It never served its original purpose during the war. |
| A．They stored instructions on a paper tape. |
| B．They corrected errors of a particular board. |
| C．They learned hundreds of equations by heart. |
| D．They decided where to put cables in calculations. |
| A．Women were not so interested in computer science. |
| B．Women are good at computer programming like men. |
| C．Women are always in the minority of the workforce in US. |
| D．Women were not as well-accepted as men in programming jobs. |
SPACE:THE FINAL FRONTIER
“Are we alone? What's out there? ”
Before the mid-20th century, most people felt travelling into space was an
On 4 October, 1957, the Sputnik 1 satellite
An emotional reunion has been 75 years in the making. Two WWII
Since the cousins had no way of communicating with each other after they fled their home nation, both of
Decades later, Sana’s daughter began using the Internet
8 . In Europe many people died during the Second World War. As a result, at the end of the war there were many orphans (孤儿) there. A man called Hermann Gmeiner wanted to help these children. His idea was simple. He wanted orphans to have a home, and he wanted them to have the care and kindness of parents. Gmeiner asked people to give him some money. With this money he built the first SOS Children's Village at Imst, in Austria. It opened in1949. This is how the SOS stand for “Save Our Souls.” This means, “Please help us!” An SOS Children’ village gives help to orphans. Hermann Gmeiner’s idea for helping orphans soon spread all over the world. By 1983 there were 170 SOS Children's Villages in the world. People in many countries give money to help the villages.
Today the children from the first village have grown up. Now some of them work in other SOS Children’s Villages. In SOS Villages orphans live in family groups. There are several houses in each village. The biggest village has 40 or 50 houses! Between seven and ten children live in a house. A woman lives with each group of children and looks after them. She gives the children a lot of love and kindness. She cooks meals for them and makes comfortable, happy home for them.
Of course, the children don’t spend all their time in the village. They go to school; they go out with their friends. But the village gives them a home—sometimes for the first time in their lives.
1. The SOS Children’s Villages are built for________ first.| A．the children who are poor | B．the orphans in Europe |
| C．the kind women | D．people who died in the war. |
| A．governments | B．special organization |
| C．people in different countries | D．the orphans themselves |
| A．She lives with the children and looks after them. |
| B．She gives the children a lot of love and kindness. |
| C．She cooks meals for children. |
| D．She teaches the children how to use the computer. |
9 . In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, two plants were brought to England, for the first time, by Sir Walter Raleigh, both of which are now very much used—the tobacco-plant and the potato. Sir Walter had sailed across the seas to America, in search of new lands; and he brought back both these plants with him.
When he was in America, he had seen the Indians smoke, and before long he acquired the habit himself. He became extremely fond of smoking, and frequently indulged in the practice.
When he returned to England, he was sitting by the fire one day, and began to smoke. In the middle of his smoking, the door opened, and in came his man-servant. Now this man had never in his life seen any one smoke, and did not know that where was such a plant as tobacco. So, when he saw the smoke coming from his master’s mouth, he thought that he was on fire!
But very soon the old servant got used to seeing people with smoke coming out of their mouths; and all the young nobles of the court began to smoke because Sir Walter did so.
At first, people did not like the potato at all: nobody would eat it. Yet Sir Walter told them how useful it would be. The potato, he said, could be made to grow in England. He told them that, when the corn-harvest failed—which it often used to do—people need not starve if they had plenty of potatoes.
Queen Elizabeth, who was a very clever woman, listened to what Sir Walter said, and had potatoes served up at her own table. There the grand people who dined with her majesty were obliged to eat them. But they spread a report that the potato was poisonous, because it belongs to the same order as the deadly nightshade(龙葵属植物) and many other poisonous plants. So, in spite of all that the Queen could do, no one would eat potatoes, and they were left for the pigs.
The people did not find out their mistake till many years afterwards when the French king Louis XVI asked his people to eat them. And people began to find out how good and wholesome they were. The potato was more and more liked; and now there is hardly any vegetable that is more highly esteemed.
1. What do we know about Sir Walter?| A．He introduced the tobacco-plant and the potato to England. |
| B．He went to America in order to do research on plants and animals. |
| C．He was forced to smoke by the Indians in America during his stay there. |
| D．He taught Queen Elizabeth how to smoke in court with the young nobles. |
| A．the Queen refused to eat them herself |
| B．they were used as poison by the Indians |
| C．they were long used as food for the pigs |
| D．they belong to the poisonous nightshade |
| A．Both the tobacco plant and the potato were native to France. |
| B．Young nobles in England refused to smoke for the terrible smell. |
| C．It was not easy to grow corn back in the age of Queen Elizabeth. |
| D．The English people were the first to accept potatoes as tasty food. |
| A．Only those who are willing to take risks can succeed in the end. |
| B．They are lots of new plants on the earth that can be used as food. |
| C．All people are afraid to try things that are new and strange to them. |
| D．The upper class had huge influence on the way people lived in the past. |
10 . Every March, the country celebrates the achievements of women in American history. Even though these achievements go back a long way, most schools didn’t start focusing on women pioneers and their achievements until recently. Today, most schools teach kids about the many contributions women have made to our country. How did this change come about?
On March 19, 1911, a German woman named Clara Zetkin organized the very first International Women’s Day. Inspired by American working women, the event took on the causes of peace in an effort to end World War I as well as women’s rights. However, people’s interest in International Women’s Day still dwindled over the years. It gained momentum (势头) again in the 1960’s when the women’s movement caused women to wonder why they weren’t included in the history books.
By the 1970s, more female historians began to look back at women’s contributions in history. In 1978, a California school district started Women’s History Week to promote the teaching of women’s history. School officials picked the week of March 8 to include International Women’s Day. It was so popular that, in 1981, Congress passed a resolution, making the week a celebration for the entire country. The concept of studying women’s history continued to grow in popularity. In 1987, a group of women asked Congress to expand the celebration. That same year, Congress declared the entire month of March National Women’s History Month.
Today, schools and communities across the country celebrate the month with special lessons and activities designed to teach the ways women have helped shape the US. The women who have worked hard to make Women’s History Month a reality would like to see women’s history studied all year, not just every March. In 1996, the National Women’s History Museum was founded. It is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and celebrating the various historic contributions of women. The organization is working with Congress to open a permanent (永久的) museum site in Washington, D.C.
1. What was ignored in school education in the past according to the text?| A．Popularizing American history. |
| B．Introducing the history of WWI. |
| C．Sharing Americans’ global contributions. |
| D．Teaching about American women’s achievements. |
| A．Started. | B．Survived. | C．Decreased. | D．Completed. |
| A．How Women’s History Month became a reality. |
| B．How women were included in the history books. |
| C．Why women’s history should be taught at school. |
| D．Why women’s contributions should be honored in history. |
