【正文】 believed umbrellas were only for women.When the Spanish explorers went to Mexico, they saw the Aztec kings using umbrellas. English explorers saw Native American princes carrying umbrellas on the east coast of North America. It seems that people in different parts of the world invented umbrellas at different times.England was probably the first country in Europe where ordinary people used umbrellas against the rain. England has a rainy climate, and umbrellas are very useful there.Everybody uses umbrellas today. The next time you carry one, remember that for centuries only great men and women used them. Perhaps you are really a king or queen, a princess or prince.(210 words)5 The Metric SystemPeople all over the world use grams, kilograms (kilos), meters, and liters. These are all ways to measure things. They are all part of the metric system.During the French Revolution (17891799) against the king, the revolutionary government started the metric system. Before that, every part of France had a different system for measuring things. Also, cloth makers measured cloth with one system. Jewelers used another system. Carpenters used another. Other countries used different systems. The revolutionary government wanted one scientific system of measurement. They asked a group of scientists and mathematicians to invent a system.The mathematicians and scientists decided to use the numbers ten, hundred, and thousand for their system.Next, they had to decide on a natural length. They chose one tenmillionth (1/ 10,000,000) of the distance from the equator to the North Pole. They called this distance the meter. Then they chose the gram for weighing things. A cubic centimeter of water weighs 1 gram.Mathematicians and scientists worked for 20 years until they finally had a plete measuring system. The biggest problem was measuring the meter.The metric system was a wonderful gift to the world. There are only a few countries that don39。s true that many are. However, it39。t want to get sick. However, there is one food that can be deadly, yet some people eat it on purpose. It39。s experiences with foreign food.Shao Wong is a student in France. He es from China. I never had cheese or even milk before I came to France. Cattle are rare in my part of China, so there are no dairy products. I drank some milk when I first arrived in France. I hated it ! I tried cheese, too, but I didn39。m a Hindu, and my religion forbids me to eat meat from the cow. That39。t really very old. Even so, I didn39。t allowed to vote. In protest, many women went on fasts. They hoped that fasting would bring attention to this injustice. Mohandas Gandhi, the famous Indian leader, fasted 17 times during his life. For Gandhi, fasting was a powerful political tool. In 1943, he fasted to bring attention to his country39。s diary was ten days earlier. However, the food on the table was only a few days old. Someone was on the ship a few days before, but they didn39。t have enough food for the winter, and there wasn39。t move, so the ship slowly moved closer. Finally, the sailors realized that the giants were statues. Who made these huge statues? How did they get there?Easter Island is a very small island in the Pacific Ocean. It is more than 2,000 miles from the nearest continent (South America). It is one of the most isolated places on earth.The biggest statue on Easter Island is over 60 feet high and weighs over 100 tons.There are hundreds of smaller ones, about 15 feet high. All of the statues are made of stone, and some wear stone hats. Their faces are solemn and unsmiling.Earlier inhabitants of Easter Island made the statues from the rocks in a volcanic crater. Next, they had to move the statues a long distance. In some cases, they moved the statues to locations more than ten miles away.No one knows for certain how the inhabitants were able to move the statues. Some scientists say that palm trees grew on Easter Island in the past. They think the inhabitants cut the trees down and placed the heavy statues on the trees. Then groups of 70 or more people rolled the statues to their present locations. Other scientists disagree with this theory because there are no palm trees on the island today. More important, the purpose of the statues is still a mystery. Was the purpose of the statues to prevent strangers from landing on the island?The result, however, has been the opposite. Large groups of eager people e to look at the statues. Easter Island now has a modern airport, and people e from all over the world to visit.(309 words)19 The Tunguska FireballThe Tunguska plateau is an isolated area in central Siberia. On the morning of June 30, 1908, inhabitants of the area saw and heard a mysterious explosion. Fire covered the sky, and the earth shook violently. In the following nights, there were strange lights in the sky. The night sky was so bright that people could read the newspaper outdoors. Far away in Europe, many people reported seeing unusual lights in the night sky.The Tunguska plateau is very difficult to reach, so no one went to inspect the site of the explosion. Most people thought the explosion was probably an earthquake, and they soon forgot about it.Nineteen years passed before Leonid Kulik, a Russian scientist, went to look for the site of the explosion. With great difficulty, he traveled on foot to the Tunguska plateau. What he saw there amazed him. As far as he could see, the trees were black. Many lay flat on the ground. The explosion burned perhaps 80 million trees over an area of about 1,000 square miles. After seeing the destruction, Kulik decided that a meteor probably caused the explosion.For many years, the meteor theory was the most popular explanation for the Tunguska explosion. However, there were problems with this theory. No one could find the crater where the meteor hit the ground, and no one could find any pieces of a meteor. In addition, some of the trees at the center of the explosion weren