Before the Tangshan Earthquake, Strange things    1    (happen) in the countryside. For several days, the water in the village wells     2       ( rise) and fell. There were deep cracks     3       appeared in the well walls. At least one well had some     4     (smell) gas coming out of it. Chickens and even pigs were too nervous     5     (eat), and dogs refused to go inside buildings.    6     (mouse)ran out of the fields looking for places to hide, and fish jumped out of the water. At about 3:00 a.m.,    7    28 July 1976, bright lights     8     (see) in the sky outside the city of Tangshan and loud noises were heard.       9       the city’s one million people were asleep as usual that night.     10       (fortunately), it led to a lot of people losing their lives.

On a grey afternoon on 19 November 1863, Abraham Lincoln mounted a platform in a field in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He was there in memory of the    1    (die)soldiers. The place was the site of a recent battle     2    thousands of soldiers had died.

At that time, America was    3     (bitter) divided. For two years, its people had been deep in a civil war. The Union side won but    4    a great cost. Over 50,000 soldiers    5     (kill)or wounded, and people lost hope and purpose.

Lincoln understood the feelings of the civilian people. His speech gave them hope, belief and a reason     6     (look) to the future. He gave them    7    new vision of what the United States of America should be     8     (base)on the ideals set down by its Founding Fathers 87 years before. It was what the soldiers had died for. Now it was up to the    9     (live) to remove not only the divisions between North and South, but the boundaries between black and white, and work step by step towards the    10     (equal)of humankind.

The Amber Room, one of the greatest     1     (wonder) of the world, was a great work that took about ten years     2     (make). In 1716, the Amber Room was given to the Russian people as a gift of friendship by William I, who loved soldiers more     3     the Amber Rootn itself. In Russia, the room first served as a small reception hall for     4     (importance) visitors,     5     later was moved and redesigned by Catherine II.     6     (fortunate), the Amber Room disappeared when the Nazi Germans and Russia were at war and until now nobody knows     7    happened to it. In 2003, however, a new Amber Room     8     (build)by the Russians and Germans on the basis of the old photos     9    (be) ready for the people of St Petersburg when they celebrated the 300th birthday of     10    (they) city.

From 1405 to 1433, Zheng He made seven historic voyages to Asia and Africa. Thanks to frequent friendly     1     (exchange) between China and foreign countries, Zheng He successfully     2     （promote）friendship between China and Southeast Asian countries to new heights. From 1403 to 1424, the number of envoys（使者）visit China a record 318 times,     3     average of 15 times a year.

Zheng He’s fleet traveled from the Western Pacific through the Indian Ocean to West Asia and the east coast of Africa,     4     （involve） three oceans and providing valuable records for the history of Chinese navigation（航海）. His voyages,     5     happened earlier than the Westerners’ Voyages of Discovery, came 87 years before Columbus, 92 years before Vasco da Gama, and 116 years before Magellan’s     6     （arrive） in the Philippines.

Sadly, many of the official Chinese records of these voyages were destroyed     7     his death. Zheng He’s rightful place in Chinese history     8     （confirm） by Deng Xiaoping in 1984. Following a more realistic evaluation of Zheng He’s achievements by scholars East and West, his standing as one of the     9     (great) maritime explorers of all time has at last been     10     (firm) recognized worldwide.

The Amber Room was made of several tons of amber. The amber which    1    (select ) had a beautiful yellow-brown colour like honey. The design of the room was in the fancy style popular in those days. It was also a treasure decorated with gold and jewels,     2    took the country's best artists about ten years     3     (make).

The Amber Room was designed for the palace of Frederick I.     4    , the next King of Prussia Frederick William I, to whom the Amber Room belonged, decided not to keep it. In 1716 he gave     5     to Peter the Great.     6     return, the Czar sent him a troop of his best soldiers. So the Amber Room became part of the Czars winter palace in St Petersburg.

Later, Catherine II had the Amber Room     7    (move )to a palace outside St Petersburg where she spent her summers. She told her artists to add more details to it. In 1770 the room was completed the way she wanted. Almost six hundred candles lit the room and its mirrors and pictures shone like gold.    8    (lucky), although the Amber Room was considered one of the    9     (wonder)of the world, it is now    10    (miss).

When digging outside the city walls, researchers     1     (discover) thirty to forty bodies lying one on top of another. They had been murdered.

The men dug with great care, trying not to disturb the       2    (evident) of what had happened. Everyone was curious     3    why all these people had been killed at the same time. Was it just     4     coincidence?

Deep in the ground below the bodies, they found a tomb     5     was made of stone. It contained many valuable things,     6     (include) much gold and many jewels. Inside it lay the body of a man that was     7     (good) preserved. It was clear that the man had been a king,     8     explained why the other bodies were there. The workers who had built the tomb were killed shortly after the king     9     (die). That was because they wanted to keep the tomb a secret, and to make     10     (they) companions for him in death.