题目内容
Skeletal remains with animal bone blades tied to the feet testify to skating's existence as early as 10, 000 BC. These remains were found in the Netherlands. Scandinavia is called the mother of skating because of the sport's popularity there, beginning around 1000AD. Ice skating was primarily a means of transportation at first, although documents from the Netherlands indicate that speed races were held in towns as early as the 15th century.
American athlete Jackson Haines is known as the father of modern figure skating. Haines was born in 1840 in New York City. After studying dance and ballet, he became a dancing master and applied his dancing techniques to figure skating. He performed around the world and became well known for his imaginative and artistic techniques. Haines' s style. was enthusiastically received in Europe and eventually became accepted internationally.
The formation of national and international skating organizations began during the 1890s. In 1892 the International Skating Union (ISU) was established. Today the ISU defines the rules and sets performance standards for speed skating, figure skating, and ice dancing competitions. Also in the late 1800s the National Amateur Skating Association of the United States and the International Skating Union of America were founded. In 1921 national standards were set down for skating, and the United States Figure Skating Association (USFSA) was formed to govern the sport in the United States, superseding the earlier organizations. Speed skating in the United States is governed by the United States International Speed Skating Association and the Amateur Speedskating Union of the United States, both of which are affiliated with the ISU.
The first official men's world speed skating championships were held in 1893. Women's world championship speed skating events first took place in 1947. The first men's world figure skating championships were held in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1896, and in 1906 the first women's championships were held in Davos, Switzerland. Figure skating was included in the Summer Olympics of 1908 and 1920 and at the first Winter Olympics in 1924, where men's speed skating events were also held. Women's speed skating made its Olympic debut in the 1960 Olympic Games. Ice dancing was added to Olympic competition in 1976, and short-track speed skating was first included in the 1988 Games.
Norway's Sonja Henie played a large role in popularizing figure skating during the 1920s and 1930s. On the strength of her athletic jumps, modern costumes, and inventive choreography she won gold medals at the Winter Olympic Games in 1928, 1932, and 1936. Henie later skated in ice shows and in motion pictures, inspiring many people to take up skating. American skater Dick Button; a five-time world champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist, brought outstanding athleticism to skating. Along with inventing the flying camel sit spin, he was also the first skater to successfully complete a double axel and a triple jump in competition. In the 1970s Soviet pairs skaters Oleg and Ludmila Protopopov trans- formed pairs skating with their elegant, balletlike movements. In the 1980s British ice dancers Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean dominated competition with innovative routines that broke away from ice dancing traditions.
The development of modern speed skating is credited to Jaap Eden, a Dutch skater born in 1873. He set a world record in 1894, completing a 5000-meter race in 8 minutes 37. 6 seconds. Since then Eden's record has been broken many times and today the best skaters complete the same distance in a little over 6 minutes, primarily as a result of more sophisticated training methods. Other successful speed skaters include Eric Heiden of the United States, a three-time world champion who won five gold medals during the 1980 Winter Olympics; Norway's Johann Olay Koss. who set three new world records during the 19
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The statement"Washington, we have a problem"was said by_____.
My family's slave-era history has survived in rich detail, thanks to my aggressively talkative great-grandfather John Wesley Staples (1865-1940), who was conceived in the closing days of the Civil War and became the first freeborn black person in the Staples family line. My family has always treasured these stories, but my generation is just beginning to realize the value of the gift John Wesley left us.
Most black families have found it impossible to learn even the most basic facts about ancestors who were born as slaves. That's partly because enslaved people do not appear in the public record as full-fledged human beings-with families, addresses, surnames and occupations-until after Emancipation in 1865. Even more of their stories were lost in the early 20th century, when black families reacted to the stigma of slavery by forbidding their elderly relatives to talk about it at all.
This produced a truncated view of black American history, in which slaves were seen as anonymous victims-defined only by suffering-and the heroic roles were largely reserved for their freeborn descendants.
John Wesley spoke often of his enslaved mother, Somerville, and the stories he left behind have allowed us to locate her in the public records and to piece together the basic outlines of her life. The portrait is still sketchy. But it's already clear that she was a formidable person, who had high ambitions for herself and her Son.
Somerville was most likely born in the 1820's in Virginia. Her adolescent years would have been dominated by the upheaval that followed the bloody slave rebellion mounted by Nat Turner. Fearful of being murdered in their beds, white lawmakers curtailed the already meager fights of free blacks, with the aim of driving them out of the state. For slaves, the ensuing exodus of free blacks they knew must have seemed like the end of even the possibility of freedom.
By the 1860's, Somerville had been sold to the Lowry family in Bedford County, where she became the property of Triplett Lowry, a doctor. As was common at the time, she conceived a child by young Marshall Lowry, the farm manager, and gave birth to John Wesley, whom she named after the abolitionist theologian and founder of the Methodist Church.
In the oral tradition passed down through the generations, Marshall Lowry is named as John Wesley's father. That Somerville named him - instead of keeping his identity secret as many enslaved mothers did - suggests that the truth was more important to her than traditional plantation etiquette. As a servant in an educated household, she would have had a close vantage point to observe middle-class culture and aspirations-which may account for the fact that my great- grandfather could read and write.
Born on the Fourth of July in 1865, the year of Emancipation, John Wesley was one of those freedom babies of whom much was expected. He was still a young man in February 1886, when his mother walked into the Bedford County registrar's office to record the purchase of a little under a half-acre of land, bought for the princely sum of ＄50. By then she had married a laborer named John Staples. But she registered the property in her name only, a gesture of independence that was common among free black women of the period. This purchase of land-a momentous act in the lives of former Slaves-would have set a powerful example for her son.
John Wesley lived up to his family's expectations. He and his wife, Eliza, established a large family and a successful farm in the Virginia countryside.
They joined with two adjacent neighbors to build the one-room schoolhouse where their children were educated, and hired the teacher who worked there, partly in exchange for room and board. He drove a fancy Model T Ford-and let it be known that he paid for the car in cash-while his neighbors moved about in horse-drawn carriages. At a time when the Ku Klux Kla
SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文：A: So, you're an architect？
B: Yes.
A: Do you work for a public or private organisation, or are you self-employed, that is, working on your own？
B: I'm working for a private design and construction company.
A: How did you start your career？
B: I started with the government.
A: Oh, did you？ What made you decide to work for the government？
B: Well, it was a matter of chance really. I saw an advertisement for a vacant position in a newspaper, and I thought "Why don't you try it？ " In fact, I have no preferences to where I work, public or private.
A: And do you still have this idea, or. . .
B: More or less, yes, although I'm now working for a private firm, I worked for the government for about three years. It was alright. Of course there's the bureaucracy one has to put up with, but it's not that bad, if you don't mind bureaucratic wheels turning slowly, and things not being as efficient.
A: Ah-ah. And what made you leave the public sector？
B: Money mainly. You see, I got married, and my wife doesn't work, and we wanted to start a family right away. So we thought it might be better off if I movered to the private sector. This is why it's hard for me to be self-employed because self-employed work has the disadvantage that there may be time, or a period of time when you're unemployed.
A: I see, so did you join this company straight away or. . .
B: No, I worked for, in a couple of private firms before I came to this one.
A: Hmm, hmm. Now what qualifications does one have to become an architect？
B: Well, you've got to have a degree in architecture. That means before you apply to study architecture in any university, you have to pass exams, usually three A-levels with good results. Also you generally have to study sciences at school rather than arts. . . as the basis for the subject to be studied at university level, although when you really get down to it, the subject involves some aspects of arts too. Then you need between six and seven years to work through, by the end of which you usually sit for the final examination.
A: So you mean to take up architecture, one has to have a scientific background？
B: Well, yes, mainly scientific, but it helps if you have some general arts background too. You know, architecture is not a pure science.
A: Now, if one wants to take up architecture, one has got to be able to draw？ Is that really true？
B: Well, it is true that the work of an architect involves a lot of drawing, and to be an architect you must be able to draw. But this doesn't mean that if you can't at present draw, you won't have the opportunity to be an architect, because you can be taught to draw. In fact drawing in architecture is different from drawing in art. An artist's drawing must be good in the sense that it gives a certain impression in the mind of the viewer, in fact some famous artists can't draw very well at ail, at least not from a technical point of view. On the other hand, an architect's drawing must be accurate. So I'd say that accuracy of the drawings is what we aim at, what's important.
A: Now what qualities do you think make a good architect, apart from being accurate in his drawings？
B: Well, I'm not sure if I can generalise about that. You see architecture is a mixture of theory and practice. So I suppose a good architect should be good at both. An architect's work is good in as much as the construction is built precisely as the theory requires, so that it doesn't collapse o
听力原文： Washington (dpa)-The United States, never shy to lecture the rest of the world on the virtues of democracy, has become the target of ridicule from newspapers and hostile governments delighting at the Election 2000 paralysis.
The Washington Times noted that "nations used to being targets of lectures for their own election irregularities were taking barely disguised glee in the drawn-out battle for the White House between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
The leaders of the United States allies have politely held back with mockery, but not so their newspapers, or officials from countries that have less than cordial ties with Washington. A brief selection of the global ridicule:
Rome's La Republica judged in a front-page headline that Tuesday was "A day worthy of a banana republic. "
"Washington, we have a problem, " joked the French-language Swiss daily 24 Heures.
A Russian daily quipped about the "Divided States of America. "
British tabloid the Daily Mirror ran the headline "Forrest Chumps" with the kicker "This election's like a box of chocolates you never know what you're going to get. "
Iran's Khabar state broadcaster delighted in showing the 1996 Hollywood comedy "My Fellow Americans, about corruption in the White House, on election night. "
In Russia, the recipient of generous advice from Washington over the years, President Vladimir Putin offered to send election monitors to help with the vote count.
His election commission chief Alexander Veshnyakov who was invited to the U. S. to observe the poll, rubbed salt into the wound by praising a system which "definitely enriches my understanding of how irregularities can occur. "
Officials in India, the world's largest democracy, also offered advice and offered to send help, as did Zimbabwe.
There, the campaign chief of President Robert Mugabe, Jonathan Moyo, said: "Perhaps now we have reached a time when they can learn a lot from us. Maybe Africans and others should send observers to help Americans with their democracy. "
Libya's U. N. envoy commented about the "Florida model: We can see from the elections that we are the true democracies and not this ridiculous American model. "
In a Washington press briefing, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was forced to tell journalists questioning him that the United States had not entertained a proposal to allow observers from the Organization of American States, a common practice in elections in many Latin American countries.
Pushed by journalists, he added: "I think pretty much most of the world maybe most of the world outside this room understands that this is a regular, normal, legal, clear, transparent, open process for United States democracy. "
According to the news, why does U. S. become the butt of world's jokes？
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