Earth Day, April 22, was founded in 1970     1    a day of education about environmental issues.

The holiday is now a global celebration     2    is sometimes extended into Earth Week, a full seven days of events focused on green living.

By the early 1960s, Americans were becoming aware of the effects of pollution on the environments. Rachel Carson’s 1962 bestseller Silent Spring pointed out the dangerous effects of pesticides(杀虫剂) on     3    American countryside. Later in the decade, a 1969 fire on Cleveland’s Guyahoga River threw light on the problem of chemical waste disposal. Until that time,     4     (protect) the planet’s natural resources was not part of the     5     (nation) political plan. Only a small portion of the American population was familiar with environmental issues.

Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962, Senator (参议员) Gaylord Nelson was determined     6     (convince) the federal government that the planet was at risk. In the fall of 1969, Nelson,     7     (consider) one of the leaders of the modern environmental movements, announced the Earth Day concept at a conference in Seattle and     8     (invite) the entire nation to get involved. He later recalled: “Telegrams, letters, and telephone     9     (inquire) poured in from across the country.” The American people     10     (final) had an opportunity to express their concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes and air.

The Titanic was the largest and most advanced passenger ship of its day. It was considered unsinkable. But on 14th April 1912, on    1    (it) maiden voyage ( 首 航 ) from England to New York, the ship    2    (strike) an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank     3     (short) after midnight. Of the 2,223 people on board, 1,517 drowned.

So why did so many people die in the tragedy? Firstly, the Titanic’s owners fitted the ship     4     only 20 lifeboats. They believed any more would spoil the     5     (appear) of the ship. But this meant there were only enough lifeboats for 1,178 passengers. Secondly, while     6     (load) the lifeboats, the crew observed the “women and children first” rule. This was     7     old custom that said women and children should be saved before men. Because at first men weren’t allowed in the lifeboats, many boats were lowered only half full.     8    the lifeboats had been full, another 500 people might have been saved. In the end, 74% of women passengers survived, but only 20% of men. And many of the men     9     survived were branded as cowards (懦夫) when they got home.

The wreck (残骸) of the Titanic     10     (find) in 1985. It lies about four kilometres below the surface of the water at the bottom of the ocean.

In an afternoon of 1929, a farmer and his son in a village of China’s Sichuan Province accidentally discovered a true wonder of civilization when     1    (dig) a well. The farmer’s discovery of     2     (treasure) including bronze, gold and jade from the ancient Kingdom of Shu,     3    (provide) evidence for an ancient Chinese civilization that extended beyond China’s central plains 3,000-5,000 years ago. Sanxingdui demonstrated a civilization that had     4     (it) own customs and rituals (仪式), as well as remarkable innovation.

Sichuan Province and its capital Chengdu are a focal point for     5     discovery and research of ancient Chinese civilizations. So far some of China’s oldest historical relics, providing evidence of ancient Chinese crafts, customs and practices,     6    (find) here. Modern Chengdu and surrounding areas are a melting pot of culture and customs inherited from ancient times: taxi drivers recite Du Fu’s poems; performers show bianlian (face-changing) performance     7     they change masks faster than audiences can follow. Each has its roots in ancient Chinese civilization and demonstrates the strong effect ancient civilization has     8     contemporary Sichuanese culture.

Treasures     9    (discover) in Sichuan province play an important role in tracing the emergence of Chinese civilization. Being     10    (natural) fertile (富饶的), the area attracted early settlers, and from sites such as Sanxingdui, archeologists and historians can discover much about Chinese civilization.

5 . Did Tea and Beer Bring About Industrialization?

Professor Macfarlane has spent decades trying to understand the mystery of the Industrial Revolution. Why did it happen in Britain at the end of the 18th century?

Macfarlane compares the question as a puzzle. He ________ that there were about 20 different factors and all of them needed to be present before the revolution could happen. The chief ________ can be found in history textbooks. For industry to ________, there needed to be the technology and power to drive factories, large urban populations to provide cheap labor, a ________ economy, and a political system that allowed this to happen. All these factors must have been necessary but not sufficient to cause the revolution. Most historians, however, are ________ that one or two missing factors are needed to solve the puzzle. The missing factors, Macfarlane supposes, are tea and beer.

Historians had noticed one interesting factor around the mid-18th century that required the ________. Between 1650 and 1740, the population in Britain didn’t increase, but then it grew rapidly. The population burst seemed to happen at the right time to provide labor for the Industrial Revolution. But why? When it started, it was ________ efficient to have people living close together. People got diseases, particularly from human waste. Some historical records ________ that there was a change in the incidence (发病率）of waterborne disease at that time. Macfarlane thought whatever the British were drinking must have been important in ________ disease. The English drank beer for a long time, and they were protected by the strong antibacterial agent in hops (啤酒花), which were added to make beer. But in the late 17th century a tax was ________ on malt, a basic ingredient of beer. The poor turned to water and gin, and in the 1720s the death rate began to rise again. Then it suddenly dropped. What caused this?

Macfarlane looked to Japan, which was also developing large cities at the same time. Waterborne diseases were far fewer in Japan than in Britain. Could it be the ________ of tea in their culture? Macfarlane then noticed the history of tea in Britain provided an extraordinary ________ of dates. Tea was relatively expensive until Britain started direct trade with China in the early 18th century. By the 1740s, about the time the infant death rate was falling, and the drink was common. Macfarlane ________ the fact that water had to be boiled, together with the stomach-purifying properties of tea so clearly ________ in books, meant the breast milk provided by mothers was healthier than it had ever been. No other European nation drank tea so often as the British, which, by Macfarlane’s ________, pushed other nations out of the race for the Industrial Revolution.

6 . The native Americans, the people we call the “Indians”, had been in America for many thousands of years before Columbus arrived in 1492. Columbus thought he had arrived in India, so he called the native people “Indians”.

The Indians were kind to the early settlers. They were not afraid of them and they wanted to help them. They showed the settlers the new world around them. They taught them about the local crops like sweet potatoes, corn and peanuts. They introduced the Europeans to chocolate and to the turkey and the Europeans did business with the Indians.

But soon the settlers wanted bigger farms and more land for themselves and their families. More and more immigrants were coming from Europe and all these people needed land. So the Europeans started to take the land from the Indians. Naturally, when the whites started taking all the Indians’ land, the Indians started fighting back.

But the whites were stronger and cleverer. Slowly they pushed the Indians into those parts of the continent that the whites didn’t want- the parts where it was too cold or too dry or too mountainous to live comfortably. By 1875 the Indians were living in special places called “reservations”. But even here the whites took land from them- perhaps the whites wanted the wood, or perhaps the land had important minerals in it, or they even wanted to make national parks there. So even on their reservations the Indians were not safe from the whites.

There are many Hollywood films about the fight between the Indians and the whites. Usually in these films the Indians are bad and the whites are good and brave. But was it really like that? What do you think? Do you think the Indians were right or wrong to fight against the whites?