1 . It was December 25, 1914, only 5 months into World War Ⅰ. German, British, and French soldiers already sick and tired of the senseless killing, disobeyed their superiors and fraternized (打得火热) with “the enemy” along two-thirds of the Western Front. German troops held Christmas trees up out of the trenches (战壕) with signs, “Merry Christmas.”
“You no shoot, we no shoot.” Thousands of troops streamed across a no-man’s land filled with dead bodies. They sang Christmas carols, exchanged photographs of loved ones back home, shared rations, played football, and even roasted some pigs. Soldiers embraced (拥抱) men they had been trying to kill a few short hours before. They agreed to warn each other if the Generals (将军) forced them to fire their weapons, and to aim high.
It shocked the high command on either side. Here was disaster in the making: soldiers declaring their brotherhood with each other and refusing to fight. Generals on both sides declared this peacemaking to be wrong. Fifteen million would be killed.
Not many people have heard the story of the Christmas Truce. On Christmas Day, 1988, a story in the Boston Globe mentioned that a local FM radio host played “Christmas in the Trenches” several times and was surprised by the effect. The song became the most requested recording during the holidays in Boston on several FM stations. “Some callers even telephone the host deeply moved, sometimes in tears, asking, ‘What the hell did I just hear?’”
You can probably guess why the callers were in tears. The Christmas Truce story goes against most of what we have been taught about people. It gives us a glimpse of the world as we wish it could be and says, “This really happened once.” It reminds us of those thoughts we keep hidden away, ou of range of the TV and newspaper stories that tell us how trivial (微不足道的) and mean human life is. It is like hearing that our deepest wishes really are true: the world really could be different.
1. What is the main idea of the second paragraph?| A．Troops celebrated their victories. | B．Generals forced their army to fight back. |
| C．Soldiers made peace with their enemies. | D．Soldiers decided to give in to their enemies. |
| A．A fierce war. | B．Many deaths. | C．A peaceful world. | D．Many heroes. |
| A．They experienced the war. | B．They lost loved ones in the war. |
| C．They valued the life in peace. | D．They desired to protect their motherland. |
| A．Being against wars. | B．Cherishing today’s happiness. |
| C．Remembering heroes. | D．Showing no respect for life. |
The Oscars are held every March in the city of Los Angeles. Many of Hollywood’s biggest
However, on March 8, 2000, someone stole the fifty-five Oscar statues that were made for that year’s ceremony. Soon after, the trucking company
A few days later, Willie Fulgear was looking for some boxes in a garbage can near his home in the Koreatown district of Los Angeles. Willie was moving out of his apartment and he needed boxes
Finally Willie Fulgear received
Ever since Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon back on 21st July, 1969,
4 . A ship that sank off the coast of California decades ago was recently reconstructed in detail. The 3D digital model even included hundreds of sponges (海绵动物) that have gathered on the ship’s surface since it sank.
Named American Heritage, the supply ship sank in Santa Monica Bay on May 4, 1995, and for decades its exact location was unknown. Researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) spotted a strange shape in that area in 2008. But it wasn’t until May 2018 that MBARI scientists identified its exact location and mapped the site in detail, showing what appeared to be a shipwreck (失事船只).
Even then, the identity of the shipwreck was uncertain. Yet another MBARI team revisited the location to do further exploration. They sent remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) and took photos of the damaged ship. Though it was covered with deep-sea sponges and other animals, the scientists were able to spot letters spelling out its name, confirming that the shipwreck was American Heritage.
As one of the MBARI scientists who found American Heritage, chief ROV pilot Knute Brekke had worked on the ship before. And he was on duty with the diving company American Pacific Marine — the owner of American Heritage — the night the ship began taking in water and eventually sank.
MBARI spokesperson Kim Fulton -Bennett said to Live Science about the discovery, “The model is not complete, as floating ropes and poor visibility kept the pilots from getting too close to the wreck. But the 3D reconstruction is detailed enough to show that American Heritage is now home to thousands of sponges. Shipwrecks often turn into the shelter for diverse communities of ocean life.”
1. What is the main idea of the text?| A．A valuable treasure was discovered. |
| B．Special sponges were found under sea. |
| C．3D model reconstructed a sunken ship. |
| D．A sunken ship was gotten out of water. |
① Something strange was found in the area.
② ROVs were sent under sea to take photos.
③ A ship sank in Santa Monica Bay.
④ The identity of the ship was confirmed.
⑤ Scientists tried to locate the shipwreck.
| A．②③⑤④① | B．③①⑤②④ |
| C．⑤③①④② | D．④③①②⑤ |
| A．He was familiar with the sunken ship. |
| B．He was in charge of a diving company. |
| C．He was responsible for the rescue work. |
| D．He was the first one to witness the accident. |
| A．Critical. | B．Doubtful. | C．Amazed. | D．Objective. |
5 . Mr.Selfridge, the Wisconsin-born retailer (零售商) who left school at 14, rose to become a partner in Marshall Field’s, Chicago. Founded in 1852, it was one of the first and most ambitious US department stores. Mr.Selfridge had done well with Marshall Field’s. He liked to say, “The customer is always right,” which made the Chicago store popular. And he is believed to have invented the phrase “Only (so many) Shopping Days until Christmas”.
When he visited London on holiday in 1906 he was surprised to find most of the city’s department stores were no match of their American and Parisian competitors. This led Selfridge to leave the US and establish Selfridges, a department store named after him, at the west end of London’s Oxford Street. In Oxford Street, Selfridge’s design team shaped an ambitious classical palace building with a wall of plate glass windows.
Opened in 1909, Selfridges offered customers a hundred departments along with restaurants, a roof garden,reading and writing rooms, reception areas for foreign visitors, a first aid room and most importantly, a small army of knowledgeable floor-walking assistants who served as guides as well as being thoroughly instructed in the art of making a sale.
Mr.Selfridge did much to make the department store a destination rather than just a big and comprehensively stocked city shop. It became a place to meet and for ladies to lunch. Mr.Selfridge later introduced the department store as a key element of the 20th Century culture, and Chaplin acknowledged the growing trend for shopping in the department store in his film The Floorwalker.
1. What can be learned about Mr.Selfridge from Paragraph 1?| A．He was well-educated. | B．He was a modest man. |
| C．He was a gifted businessman. | D．He was dishonest. |
| A．The broad choice of goods. | B．The large number of departments. |
| C．The small group of guards. | D．The well-trained sales guides. |
| A．To encourage shoppers to spend more. | B．To introduce the history of Selfridges. |
| C．To compare different department stores. | D．To explain how to start a department store. |
6 . Exploring the sands on the beach, Tonya III man came across a lidless boule. She picked it up, looked inside and noticed something. She turned it upside down. Out came a damp, neatly rolled piece of paper. Tonya took it home, dried and unrolled it.
What caught her eye was the year field, 18 . Though at first sceptical of finding something this old so easily, she continued reading. It began with some coordinates (坐标). Below was a request in German asking the bolded finder to put down the date and location of where it was found and return it to the nearer German embassy.
The Illmans took the note Rosa Anderson, a curator (馆长) at the Western Australian Museum. Soon Anderson called, saying he had been able to locate a 19th - century ship named Paula. Even more exciting was that experts in Germany were able to track down Paula’s logbooks and find a record by a “Captain O. Diekmann,” confirming that a bottle had been thrown overboard on June 12. 1886 - the date on the message. The sailor had also listed the coordinates of the ship’s location, which matched the ones on the note. Another evidence of the note’s truth was the logbook’s neat script (手稿), which paired perfectly with that of the handwritten message. The records also indicated that the bottle was one of the thousands thrown by the seamen back then as part of an experiment to track the water currents.
Anderson believes the note remained undamaged because it was put in a strong bottle with a narrow opening which allowed little water in, even after the lid came off. The expert guessed it had been probably washed ashore and remained buried in the thick sand.
The 131 - year - old note, now lying in the Western Australia Museum, was confirmed as the oldest message in a bottle ever discovered.
1. What’s the purpose of writing this text?| A．To advertise for the Western Australia Museum. |
| B．To praise the Illmans for their important discovery. |
| C．To explain how the note came to light and its value. |
| D．To describe the habits of the seamen in the 19th century. |
| A．Astonished. | B．Doubtful. |
| C．Optimistic. | D．Overjoyed. |
| A．The records in Paula’s logbooks. |
| B．The date and words written on it. |
| C．The location where it was found. |
| D．The sailor’s experiment to follow the water currents. |
| A．the note was handwritten |
| B．the lid of its container came off |
| C．the bottle had been floating in the sea |
| D．its container had stayed buried in the sand |
7 . In 1858, two men wanted to be elected United States Senator from Illinois. One was Stephen Douglas. The other was Abraham Lincoln. Douglas was already the Senator, but his term in office was up. Lincoln had once been a U.S. Representative but was then a lawyer in Illinois.
The men agreed to have seven public meetings, or debates, in seven different cities in Illinois. That way, voters all over the state would have a chance to hear what each man stood for.
The first debate was in Ottawa on August 21, 1858. The main thing the men disagreed on was slavery. Douglas believed that as new states joined the union, they should decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to be a slave state or a free state. Lincoln believed that slavery should not spread beyond the states that already had slaves. He said the United States could not survive as half-slave and half-free states.
The debates drew large crowds in all seven cities. People in the entire country were paying attention. Lincoln lost the Senate race. The debates did, however, make him well known everywhere.
In 1860, it was time to elect a new President. Lincoln won the Republican party’s nomination(提名). Douglas won the Democratic party’s nomination. The two men again faced each other to get the people’s votes. This time Lincoln won. He became the nation’s 16th President.
The slavery issue was still causing bad feelings between slave and non-slave states. By the time Lincoln took over as President on March 4, 1861, seven states had left the union. A month later, the Civil War began.
1. Why did the two men have debates in seven cities?| A．To protect themselves. |
| B．To persuade each other. |
| C．To make their views known better. |
| D．To give the voters some advice. |
| A．The new states should unite with other states. |
| B．The new states should separate from the Union. |
| C．The new states were free to keep slavery or not. |
| D．The new states should not keep slavery any more. |
| A．The debates made Lincoln famous. |
| B．Voters strongly disagreed on slavery. |
| C．Lincoln failed in the president election |
| D．Douglas drew more attention in the country. |
| A．The Northern states rose up. |
| B．Lincoln was defeated in the election. |
| C．The Southern states still kept slaves. |
| D．There was conflict between slave and non-slave states. |
