This year marks the 92nd anniversary of the September 18 Incident.

On September 18, 1931, Japanese troops     1    (blow) up a section of the railway in Shenyang and accused the Chinese military of doing     2    . Using the explosion as a pretext (借口), Japanese forces attacked the Beidaying garrison (卫戍部队)and bombarded (轰炸) Shenyang on the same night,     3    (launch) a full-scale invasion (侵略) of northeast China. During the incident, Chinese troops at the Beidaying garrison were given a no-resistance order and withdrew     4     fighting.

The incident marked     5     beginning of the Chinese People’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and was a prelude to the world’s anti-fascist war. This Monday, a bell-tolling ceremony is being held at the 9.18 Historical Museum in Shenyang to pay tribute to the people       6     lost their life in the 14-year war.

The 14-year Japanese invasion resulted in over 35 million victims among Chinese troops and civilians. By commemorating the September 18 Incident, the Chinese people reaffirm (重申) their     7    (commit) to never forget this dark chapter in history and prevent it being repeated.

The commemorations serve as a reminder for the Chinese people     8    (keep) dark days in mind. History has    9     (repeat) shown that invasions and wars are rarely     10    (success), and although evidence might be covered up, justice eventually prevails (占上风).

2 . TOKYO-Japan marked the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing in its western city of Hiroshima (广岛) on August 6th amid growing calls for Tokyo to reflect on crimes the Japanese army committed during World War II. At a memorial ceremony held at the Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui delivered the Peace Declaration,urging world leaders to stop believing in the theory that nuclear weapons can prevent war.

“They must immediately take concrete steps to lead us from the dangerous present toward our ideal world,” said Matsui, who also urged policymakers to “move toward a security system based on trust through dialogue in pursuit of civil society ideals”. “Mistrust and division are on the rise,” warned United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his message readout at the ceremony.

A moment of silence was observed at 8:15 am local time, the exact moment when an atomic bomb dropped from a US bomber and exploded over the city on Aug.6, 1945, killing around 140,000 people by the end of that year.

At the event which about 50,000 people attended, Matsui placed in a monument a list of the names of 339,227 victims, including 5,320 deaths confirmed last year. “Japan must immediately sign the Treaty (条约) on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” Matsui noted in the Peace Declaration, further urging the government to heed the wishes of survivors from the bombing and the peace-loving Japanese people.

The number of survivors of the two atomic bombings including Nagasaki with an average age of over 85, has dropped by 5,346 from a year earlier to 113,649 as of March, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida spoke at the ceremony, saying an atomic bomb made more than 100,000 lose their lives without mentioning whether Japan would sign the treaty, let alone (更不用说) the historical background of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The prime minister was criticized for hosting the Group of Seven leaders' summit in Hiroshima in May.

While Japan inwardly looks at the tragedies it experienced at the end of WWII, historians and political minds of the international community have encouraged Japan to come to see itself not only as a victim of the atomic bombings but also as the criminal (罪犯) who was involved in these tragic incidents in the first place.

3 . A huge fire broke out on 2 September 1666 in London. The fire, known as the Great Fire of London, was the worst fire in the history of London. It burned down more than three quarters of the old city.

The fire started in the very early hours of Sunday morning in the house of the king’s baker. A strong wind blew the fire from the baker’s house into a small hotel next door. Then it spread quickly into Thames Street. That was the beginning.

At that time, most of the buildings in London were made of wood, so it was easy for the fire to spread quickly. By eight o’clock, three hundred houses were on fire. By Monday, nearly a kilometre of the city was burning along the Thames River. On Tuesday, which was considered the worst day, the fire destroyed many well-known buildings, including the old St Paul’s Cathedral.

The fire burned until finally hundreds of buildings in the path of the fire were destroyed to create a firebreak. The fire then died out eventually with nothing left to burn.

6 . Discoveries in Greenland indicate that Vikings ( 维 京 人) lived there for hundreds of years, trading with the European continent before they disappeared.     1     In 980 C.E., Erik the Red headed farther west when he was driven away from Iceland for some reason. He set sail for land that was visible west of Iceland. Three years later, he returned to Iceland and convinced hundreds of others to join him in settling in this new country. Some 25 boats set out for what Erik the Red had called Greenland.     2    

Settling in Greenland posed an enormous challenge. Shelter, food, and clothing were, of course, essential to survival. There were no trees large enough to produce wood for housing. These settlers had to build homes of driftwood, stone, and sod (草皮). The summer was too short to grow grain crops, so they farmed domesticated animals imported from Europe and mainly relied on secondary products, such as milk and cheese.     3     The settlers usually wore clothes made of the fur of wild animals.

At some point during the fourteenth century, Greenland’s climate grew colder. Glaciers (冰川) began moving slowly over the land, bringing with them a runoff of sand, mud, and stones. These things slowly robbed the settlers of valuable grassland.     4     Recent evidence shows that their diet shifted from land-based food to sea products. Like their relatives in Norway, the Vikings in Greenland tried to take advantage of the sea. Soon, the percentage of their food taken from the sea had risen to 80 percent.

    5     According to Danish archaeologist (考古学家) Jette Arneborg, they struggled to adapt to the increasingly difficult conditions. As the weather worsened, they may have abandoned their settlements and returned to Iceland.

The Oscars are held every March in the city of Los Angeles. Many of Hollywood’s biggest     1     (celebrity) attend this event,    2     (hope) to win an Oscar award. Since the first ceremony in 1929,    3     only fifteen awards were given out, the Oscars have grown in size and popularity. Now, more than fifty of the gold-plated statues are made every year in the city of Chicago. They then     4     (transport) to Los Angeles for the awards show.

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     5     (responsibility) for transporting the statues offered a $50,000 reward for them.

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     6     (pack) his things in. Searching through the can, he found some white boxes. He opened one of them and found an Oscar inside. He had the other boxes     7     (tear) open and got fifty-two Oscars, all     8     perfect condition. He immediately called the police.

Finally Willie Fulgear received     9     $50,000 reward and an invitation to the Oscar ceremony. He didn’t receive an award for his honesty     10     he did go from litter to glitter (闪光) in just one week.

Exceptional beauty, extraordinary grace and e    1     artistry are qualities     2     Tai Lihua to dance on the great stages of the world in more than 40 countries. If that were not exceptional enough,     3     is more is that Tai Lihua is     4     deaf.

The Battle of El Alamein,     5     in the deserts of North Africa, is seen     6     one of the decisive     7     of World War II. The Battle of El Alamein was primarily fought between two of the outstanding commanders Montgomery and Rommel. The Allied victory at El Alamein     8     to the     9     of the Afrika Korps and the German surrender in North Africa     10     May 1943.

10 . During World War II, a young nurse, Irena Sendler, risked her life to save over 2,500 children. Back in 2008, she was ________with some of the children whom she had saved. They wanted to ________her face to face for what she did.

Irena was only 29 when the war began, and at the time, she was ________at the Welfare Department of the Warsaw municipality in Poland. This gave her the perfect ________to help Jewish people being targeted by the Nazis.

In the 1940s, the Nazis ________the country’s Jewish population to the Warsaw ghetto. The ghetto was meant to ________Jews from the general population, and inside, Jews had to live in ________conditions. By 1942, nearly everyone in the ghetto had been deported (驱逐) to concentration camps and killed.

When Irena heard that, she decided to ________Jewish people. Using her credentials(证件) as a social worker, she was able to get ________to go into the ghetto. Then, she ________to take as many children out of the ghetto as she could secretly, ________over 2,500 of them between 1935 and 1943.

To get the kids out, Irena and her team would ________them in ambulances, lead them through underground sewer(下水道) networks and passageways, or wheel them out in suitcases or boxes. She eventually became one of the main ________behind Zegota, a secret organization that called itself the Council for Aid to Jews.

The Gestapo(盖世太保) ________what Irena was doing in 1943, and when she learned they were ________her, she wrote the names of the rescued children on cigarette papers, put them into two glass bottles and ________them in a friend’s garden. After the war, these bottles were dug up so that the children could be reunited with their families. ________, most of the families died in concentration camps, so many of the kids ________saw their loved ones again.

The Gestapo ________Irena and wanted to kill her, but finally she was saved by Zegota.

Irena received plenty of ________for her bravery, including the Gold Cross of Merit. Though she died later, we continue to honor her memory to this day.