Searching for Guinevere

Stories of kings and queens have appealed to readers for centuries, and arguably, the tales of King Arthur and Guinevere are among the most appealing. Arthur ruled the kingdom of Camelot, and Guinevere was his queen.     1     The debate has continued for centuries. Though many scholars have found evidence that the legendary Arthur was, at the very least, based on a real person who lived in Britain roughly between 450 and 500 CE, they continue to search for the historical identity of Guinevere. Guinevere first appeared as King Arthur’s queen in one of the most widely-studied works of Arthurian literature, The History of the Kings of Britain , written by Geoffrey of Monmouth around 1135 CE.     2    

Guinevere is identified by Geoffrey a noblewoman of Roman descent （血统） who met King Arthur in the court of Duke Cador of Cornwall.     3     In Malory’s portrayal, Guinevere had no real power as a monarch but served as a kind of spiritual leader, providing guidance and moral support to the knights in their roles as defenders of the kingdom. Le Morte d’Arthur was also one of the first works to refer to Guinevere’s romance with the knight, Sir Lancelot.

As many Arthurian scholars know, the distinction between history and literature was unclear in the Middle Ages.     4     Yet regardless of whether Guinevere was real or fictional, her story has endured centuries-and through each retelling, she continues to live on in the imaginations of people around the world.

4 . Can we humans avoid war? Can war be prevented ?

    1    . Throughout the ages, from the Stone Age to the Atomic Age, men     have been fighting, first with swords and shields, then with pins and cannous, and now,hydrogen bombs and missiles are used for military purpose. But, in spite of all these. it is still belief that war can prevented and prace can be won, but it requires the effort of every one of us.

    2    If it ever happens, two - thirds of the world and much of the civilization which men have gained   through time,patience and effort will be destroyed.Will then the remaining one - third of the world be able to   survive on its own?

Our task now is not to blame the past，but to plan for the future.

If there is peace in the world, men can use their rockets to explore the mystery of space,their submarines to explore the depth of the sea,their missiles to deliver to mails and their fine equipment to penetrate(穿透）jungles of Africa ,instead of using them military.

Governments can use their money to build more schools,so that more children can be educated to be useful citizens.    3    , They can also design new machines to increase the production of goods and thus improve the way of the people.

    4    It requires,in my opinion,the understanding and friendship be-tween all people from all nations.Let no one suffer discrimination by reason of color,race,reli-gion,or national origin.Let the rich support the poor and the strong help the weak.

We know that neither peace nor such a dream world can come true in a day or month.    5    .But let us plan and begin now.

5 . A total of 17 paintings worth between 10 and 15 million euros were stolen at a museum in northern Italy,local officials said.

Three armed men with masked faces broke into the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona at night, a local newspaper reported.Located inside a castle which was built in 1354, the Castelvecchio Museum is one of the most important museums in the northern city.

The stolen paintings included masterworks from Andrea Mantegna, Jacopo Tintoretto, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacopo Bellini, Hans de Jode and other world-famous artists.

The group controlled the only private security guard who was there and the cashier, and then forced the guard to accompany them to the rooms where they stole the paintings.

Verona Mayor Flavio Tosi, who stayed at the scene until late in the night, said that surely someone sent them, because they acted professionally, and knew what they were looking for."The paintings stolen,"he added,"basically are the most valuable works on display."An investigation was opened over the theft.

The museum displays a very important collection of Italian and European art in 29 rooms on various levels exhibiting early Christian finds, Lombard gold work, sculptures from the 10th to the 14th century, medieval arms and armor, and paintings from the 14th to the 18th century.

The museum's director, Paola Marini, called herself shocked by the theft. The experienced art historian, who is about to leave her post after over 20 years, was receiving an award in a nearby restaurant when she was informed of what had happened.

The theft came just a day after two stolen paintings recently recovered by Italian heritage police were displayed in Rome during a ceremony attended by President Sergio Mattarella and Culture Minister Dario Franceschini.

6 . What happens when you want to go from one place to another, but there's water in the way？That's the problem people faced for hundreds of years in the area that is now New York City. In the city, there is a natural canal called the Narrows, separating Brooklyn on one side from Staten Island on the other.

But the Narrows isn't really so narrow. The water is almost a mile wide, and it's more than 100 feet deep.     1     When they wanted to talk to each other, they climbed into their boats and sailed across.

By the late 1800s, circumstances had changed dramatically. Population growth meant there were now many people needing to travel between Staten Island and Brooklyn for work.     2    

Between 1888 and 1920 there were two major efforts to build a train tunnel to connect the areas.     3     Proposals to build a connecting bridge made during the 1910s also ended in failure due to opposition from the US Navy.

Finally, after World War II, there were so many people living in New York City that leaders decided Brooklyn and Staten Island needed a direct connection. Since tunnels were too expensive, they decided to build a bridge. The design selected had two separate roadways stacked on top of each other.     4     Construction, which took five years, was completed in 1964 and cost $320 million. Today about 190,000 cars and trucks cross the bridge every day.

    5     But in the case of the Narrows, figuring out a good solution took hundreds of years.

7 . Zhoukoudian is a small village situated about 50 kilometers to Beijing City. In the 1920s, archaeologists discovered some prehistoric human bones there which changed people’s view of China’s history. They came from an unknown species of man and were the first evidence of human life in China thousands of years ago. The remains were three teeth!

In 1929, a complete skull was also discovered. Eventually, archaeologists found almost 200 items, including six skulls and more than 150 teeth. These discoveries proved the existence of a human species who lived in the area between 700,000 and 200,000 years ago. Four sites where Peking Man and their relatives lived were discovered on the northern face of Longgushan. They lived in the caves in the area.

However, the lifespan of Peking Man was short. About 70% of the people probably died before the age of 14. Fewer than 5% lived to the age of 50. Ashes were found alongside the fossils, which showed they had used fire for cooking food and also for light, warmth, and protection against wild animals. This is the earliest evidence of the use of fire in the world. They also made tools of bones and stones.

Unfortunately, when Japan invaded China in 1937, excavations at the Peking Man Site stopped and most of the fossils disappeared, including a Peking Man skull. After the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949, the work started again.

Zhoukoudian was listed as a World Heritage Site in December 1987. It has not only given us important information about prehistoric Asian societies, but also provided amazing evidence about the process of evolution. Today, parts of the caves have been badly eroded (侵蚀) by rain. Some areas are almost completely covered in weeds, causing serious damage. Pollution from the nearby factories has also contributed to the problem. This is a very serious matter and the Chinese Academy of Sciences is trying to raise public awareness of it.

8 . Throughout July 1945, the Japanese mainland, from Tokyo on Honshu northward to the coast of Hokkaido, were bombed as if an invasion were about to take place. In fact, something far more threatening was at hand, as the Americans were telling Stalin at Potsdam (伯茨坦).

In 1939 physicists in the United States had learned of experiments in Germany showing the possibility of atomic power and understood the coming damage of an atomic bomb. On August 2, 1939, Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt of the danger of Nazi Germany’s advances in development of the atomic bomb. Eventually, the U.S. Office of Scientific Research Development was created in June 1941 and given combined responsibility with the War Department in the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear bomb. After four years of research and development efforts, an atomic device was set off on July 16, 1945, in a desert area at Alamogordo, New Mexico, producing an explosive power equal to that of more than 15,000 tons of TNT. Thus, the atomic bomb was born. Truman, the new U.S. president, believed that this terrible object might be used to defeat Japan in a way less costly of U.S. lives than an ordinary invasion of the Japanese homeland. Japan’s unsatisfactory reply to the Allies’ Potsdam Declaration decided the matter.

On August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb, carried from Tinian Island in the Mariana in a specially equipped B-29 was dropped on Hiroshima, at the southern end of Honshu. The combined heat and explosion destroyed everything in the explosion’s immediate neighbourhood , produced fires that burned out almost 4.4 square miles completely, and killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people, in addition to injuring more than 70,000 others. A second bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, killed between 35,000 and 40,000 people, injured a like number and ruined 1.8 square miles.