社会历史类 知识点题库

阅读下列短文：从每题所给的 A、B、C、D 四个选项中，选出最佳选项，将正确的选项涂在答题卡上。

A

       You probably know who Marie Curie was, but you may not have heard of Rachel Carson.Of the outstanding ladies listed below, who do you think was the most important woman of the past 100 years?

 Jane Addams(1860-1935)

Anyone who has ever been helped by a social worker has Jane Addams to thank. Addans helped the poor and worked for peace. She encouraged a sense of community(社区)by creating shelters and promoting education and services for people in need In 1931,Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

  Rachel Carson(1907-1964)

If it weren’t for Rachel Carson, the environmental movement might not exist today. Her popular 1962 book Silent Spring raised awareness of the dangers of pollution and the harmful effects of chemicals on humans and on the world's lakes and oceans.

  Sandra Day O’Connor(1930-present)

When Sandra Day O’Connor finished third in her class at Stanford Law School, in 1952,she could not find work at a law firm because she was a woman. She became an Arizona state senator(参议员) and ,in 1981, the first woman to join the U.S. Supreme Court. O’Connor gave the deciding vote in many important cases during her 24 years on the top court.

  Rosa Parks(1913-2005)

On December 1,1955,in Montgomery, Alabama,Rasa Parks would not give up her seat on a bus to a passenger. Her simple act landed Parks in prison. But it also set off the Montgmery bus boycott. It lasted for more than a year, and kicked off the civil-rights movement. “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” said Parks.

A

    When people first walked across the Bering Land Bridge thousands of years ago, dogs were by their sides, according to a study published in the journal Science.

    Robert Wayne of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jennifer Leonard of the Smithsonian Institute, used DNA material—some of it unearthed by miners in Alaska—to conclude that today's domestic dog originated in Asia and accompanied the first humans to the New World about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. Wayne suggests that man's best friend may have enabled the tough journey from Asia into North America. “Dogs may have been the reason people made it across the land bridge,” said Wayne. “They can pull things, carry things, defend you from fierce animals, and they're useful to eat.”

    Researchers have agreed that today's dog is the result of the domestication(驯化) of wolves thousands of years ago. Before this recent study, a common thought about the precise origin of North America's domestic dog was that Natives domesticated local wolves, the descendents(后代) of which now live with people in Alaska, Canada, and the Lower 48.

    Dog remains from a Fairbanks-area gold mine helped the scientists reach their conclusion. Leonard, an evolutionary biologist, collected DNA from 11 bones of ancient dogs that were locked in permafrost(永冻层) until Fairbanks miners uncovered them in the 1920s. The miners donated the preserved bones to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where they remained untouched for more than 70 years. After borrowing the bones from the museum, Leonard and her colleagues used radiocarbon techniques to find the age of the Alaska dogs. They found the dogs all lived between the years of 1450 and 1675 A.D., before Vitus Bering and Aleksey Chirikov who were the first known Europeans to view Alaska in 1741. The bones of dogs that wandered the Fairbanks area centuries ago should therefore be the remains of “pure native American dogs,” Leonard said. The DNA of the Fairbanks dogs would also expose whether they were the descendents of wolves from North America.

    Along with the Fairbanks samples, the researchers collected DNA from bones of 37 dog specimens(标本) from Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia that existed before the arrival of Columbus. In the case of both the Alaska dogs and the dogs from Latin America, the researchers found that they shared the most genetic material with gray wolves of Europe and Asia. This supports the idea of domestic dogs entering the New World with the first human explorers who wandered east over the land bridge.

    Leonard and Wayne's study suggests that dogs joined the first humans that made the adventure across the Bering Land Bridge to slowly populate the Americas. Wayne thinks the dogs that made the trip must have provided some excellent service to their human companions or they would not have been brought along. “Dogs must have been useful because they were expensive to keep,” Wayne said. “They didn't feed on mice; they fed on meat, which was a very guarded resource.”

    The Chinese invented paper in 105 A. D. They mixed the bark of a tree and rags (破布) with water, put a screen into the mixture, and lifted out a thin piece of wet paper. They dried the paper in the sun.

    The Chinese kept their secret of how to make paper until a war with Muslims in the ninth century. The art of papermaking soon spread throughout the Muslim world.

    The Mayan Indians in Central America and Pacific Islanders also discovered how to make paper, but their knowledge never spread to the rest of the world.

    For centuries, all paper was made by hand. Rags were the main material. Then a French scientist discovered that people could make paper from wood, too. Finally, in the eighteenth century. a Frenchman invented a machine to make paper from wood.

    Argentina in the late nineteenth century was an exciting place. Around 1870, it was experiencing an economic(经济的)boom, and the capital, Buenos Aires, attracted many people. Farmers, as well as a flood of foreigners from Spain and Italy, came to Buenos Aires seeking jobs. These jobs didn′t pay well, and the people felt lonely and disappointed with their new life in the city. As the unhappy newcomers mixed together in the poor parts of the city, the dance known an the tango(探戈舞)came into being.

    At the beginning the tango was a dance of the lower classes. It was danced in the bars and streets. At that time there many fewer women than men, so if a man didn′t want to be left out, his only choice was to dance with another man so that he could attract the attention of the few available women. Gradually, the dance spread into the upper classes of Argentinean society and became more respectable.

    In Europe at this time, strong interest in dance from around the world was beginning.

    The interest in international dance was especially evident in Paris. Every kind of dance from ballet(芭蕾舞)to belly dancing could be found on the stages of the Paris theaters of the Paris theaters. After tango dances from Argentina arrive in Europe, they began to draw the interest of the public an they performed their exiting dance in cafes, Though not everyone approved of the new dance, saying it was a little too shocking, the dance did find enough supporters to make it popular.

    The popularity（流行）Of the tango continued to grow in many other parts of the world. Soldiers who returned to the United States from World War I brought the tango to North America, It reached Japan in 1926, and in 2003 the Argentinean embassy in Seoul hired a local tango dancer to act an a kind of dance ambassador, and promote tango dancing throughout South Korea.

    There are two ways of driving in the world: if the driver's seat is on the left and cars travel on the right side of the road, it is called “left-hand driving”, as it is in China, while the other way of driving is called “right-hand driving”, as it is in Britain. Nowadays, around 65% of the world's population drives on the right of the road, while the rest is used to driving on the left.

    Though no one knows the exact reasons, it seems likely that people in ancient times travelled on the left. Roman coins show pictures of horsemen passing on each other's right. And right-hand people generally got on a horse from the animal's left. Obviously, it's safer to do this at the left side of the road, and it makes sense for the horse to be ridden on the left.

    A change happened in the late 1700s. When Napoleon conquered nations, he forced them to travel on the right side of the road, which spread left-hand driving throughout Europe. However, Britain still stuck with the right-hand driving rule and countries which were part of the British Empire (帝国) were made to follow. This is why India, Australia and the former British colonies (殖民地) in Africa continue to drive on the left. One exception is Egypt, as that country was defeated by Napoleon before becoming part of the British Empire.

    Some countries changed sides' until modem times. Sweden only moved to driving on the right in 1967 and Iceland changed the following year. Ghana changed sides in 1974. On September 7,2009, Samoa became the third country ever to change from left-to-right-hand driving for the reason that it made it easier to import (进口) cheap cars from right-hand driving Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

    So if you want to travel to another country or go on business, make sure you know whether it is left-or right- hand driving to avoid unnecessary troubles.

    People have been acting like people-in other words, they've been making tools, creating ceremonies, and sharing food—for a long time. That's the conclusion of a recent study from South Africa's southern coast.

    There, in a cave lying above the sea, researchers from Arizona State University have found evidence that humans were behaving in surprisingly complex ways as early as 164,000 years ago. Our species. Homo sapiens, appeared an estimated 200,000 years ago.

    The cave held three important evidences about the behavior of these Stone Age people.

    First, the researchers found the remains of all kinds of shellfish. The people who lived in the cave probably collected these creatures from rocky shores and tide pools and brought them to the cave to eat.

    The researchers consider the early Africans move to the South African coast between 195,000 and 130,000 years ago. Around that time, the climate inland turned relatively cold and dry. Therefore, there were fewer plants and animals to eat away from the coast.

    When these ancient people moved to the coast, they probably experienced a major cultural shift, the researchers suspect. That's because observations of modem hunter-gatherer societies suggest that men are more likely to hunt for big animals when people live inland. On the coast, women play a more important role in providing food by gathering plants and shellfish.

    As for the second clue, the researchers unearthed 57 pieces of reddish pigment (颜料). The researchers think that the cave habitants used the paint for coloring their bodies or for other ceremonies. Symbolic behavior is a clearly human feature.

    Finally, the search discovered over 1,800 stone tools, including well crafted blades (刀片). These blades came in various sizes. The smallest were just less than a half inch wide. Ancient people may have attached these blades to the end of a stick to make spears or other tools.

    The people who built Stonehenge in southern England thousands of years ago had wild parties, eating barbecued pigs and breaking pottery. This is according to recent work by archaeologists — history experts who investigate (调查) how human beings lived in the past.

    Archaeologists digging near Stonehenge last year discovered the remains of a large prehistoric village where they think the builders of the mysterious stone circle used to live.

    The village is about 4,600 years old, the same age as Stonehenge and as old as the pyramids in Egypt. It is less than two miles from the famous ancient landmark and lies inside a massive man­made circular dirt wall, or "henge", known as the Durrington Walls.

    Remains found at the site included jewellery, stone arrowheads, tools made of deer antlers, wooden spears and huge amounts of animal bones and broken pottery. "These finds suggest Stone Age people went to the village at special times of the year to feast and party", says Mike Parker Pearson from Sheffield University in England.

    He said many of the pig bones they found had been thrown away half-­eaten. He also said the partygoers appeared to have shot some of the farm pigs with arrows, possibly as a kind of sport before barbecuing them.

    An ancient road which led from the village to the River Avon was also found. Here, the experts think, people came after their parties to throw dead relatives in the water so the bodies would be washed downstream to Stonehenge.

    Parker Pearson believes Stonehenge was like a cemetery where ancient Britons buried the dead and remembered their ancestors. "The theory is that Stonehenge is a kind of spirit home to the ancestors."

    The recent discovery of the village within the Durrington Walls shows that Stonehenge didn't stand alone but was part of a much bigger religious site, according to Parker Pearson.

    People still come to worship and celebrate at Stonehenge today. They meet there when the sun sets on the shortest day of winter and when it rises on the longest day of summer. But the days of barbecuing whole pigs there and throwing family members into the river are a thing of the past.

    For 80 years, Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade has kicked off the holiday season with glorious bands, balloons and floats (花车)，and for one day, it has transformed New York City into a living comic book.

    The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is an annual parade presented by Macy's Department Store. It was first held in 1924. It was organized by Macy's employees, most of whom were first­ generation immigrants(移民)，who wanted to celebrate holidays like they did in Europe. The employees dressed in costumes(盛装)and marched on the streets with floats, bands and live animals borrowed from a zoo.

    With an audience of over a quarter of a million people, the parade was such a success that Macy's declared it would become an annual event.

    In 1927 Felix, the Cat became the first parade balloon to float over the city. Large animal­ shaped balloons replaced the live animals from then on. These giant signature(特有的)balloons are by far the biggest attraction of the parade. Each year sees parade balloons adding new characters from comic strip characters to timeless toys.

    One tradition long gone is the releasing of the balloons after the parade. They would float for days and the lucky finder or finders could claim a cash reward if he or she returned the balloon or its remains to Macy's.

    The parade has gone on every year except during World War Ⅱ when, aside from not having much to cheer about, the helium(氦气)air and rubber used for the balloons were needed for the war effort.

    When the parade returned in 1945，it was televised in New York for the first time and also traveled its current route for the first time.

    Nowadays, more than 10,000 people participate in the parade and the National Broadcasting Company(NBC) will nationwide broadcast it live from 9 a.m. to noon. The NBC has even earned several Emmy Awards for this program.

    As always, the parade will end with a visit from Santa Claus. The joyful old man will get settled in Macy's Department Store after the parade to start a­month­long search for who's been naughty and who's been nice.

    If we were asked exactly what we were doing a year ago，we should probably have to say that we could not remember. But if we had kept a book and had written in it an account of what we did each day, we should be able to give an answer to the question．

    It 1s the same in history．Many things have been forgotten because we do not have any written account of them. Sometimes men did keep a record of the most important happenings in their country, but often it was destroyed by fire or in a war．Sometimes there was never any written record at all because the people of that time and place did not know how to write．For example，we know a good deal about the people who lived in China 4,000 years ago，because they could write and leave written records for those who lived after them．But we know almost nothing about the people who lived even 200 years ago in Central Africa，because they had not learned to write．

    Sometimes，of coures，even if the people cannot write，they may know something of the past．They have heard about it from older people，and often songs, dances and stories have been made about the most important happenings, and these have been sung，acted and told for many generations，for most people are proud to tell what their fathers did in the past．This we may call”remembered history”．Some of it had been written down. It is not so exact or so valuable to us as written history is，because words are much more easily changed when used again and again in speech than when copied in writing．But where there are no written records，such spoken stories are often very helpful．

    Residents in the poorest counties in the U.S. face a life expectancy up to decade shorter than their counterparts in the wealthiest areas, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

    Researchers from East Tennessee State University wanted to better understand how socioeconomic status was associated with heath outcomes. To find out they divided the country's 3,141 counties into 50 new 'states' (with 2 percent of the counties in each) based on household income as opposed to geographic proximity (接近).

    The researchers broke down the data by county since they found state-level data may hide some 'impact of socioeconomic differences on both the best-off and worst-off counties.' They then examined health data from the wealthiest and poorest 'states' (top and bottom 2 percent) to see how residents differed on factors like smoking, clinical care and excessive drinking. Researchers found that there was nearly a 10-year gap in the life expectancy of men with an average of 79.3 years in the wealthy counties compared to 69.8 years in the poorest. For women, the difference was slightly less - 83 years in the wealthiest counties and 76 years in the poorest.

    The study authors caution that while they found a connection between socioeconomic status and health outcomes, they did not analyze cause and effect. But they suggest that the data shows how policy makers should not just focus on state-wide initiatives (主动性) but more targeted efforts to help those most at risk. “With limited resources, methods of pinpointing the poorest counties can assist in the allocation of resources and programs to those communities that are in the greatest need,'' the study authors wrote.

    Are you interested in country music? I like it very much! It will take me away for a while after I am tired. The guitars and songs will take me to mountains and fields.

    Country music usually talks of everyday life and feelings. It's the spirit of America, easy to understand, slow and simple.

    Country music developed in the Southern United States. It was the folk music of American countryside. Many of songs tell about the lives of farmers. They talk about love, crops or death.

    The life of the countryside can be hard, so the words in country music are often sad. At first, people played the music only at family parties. But it became more popular later. In the 1920s, people played country songs on the radio, and they made them into records.

    When people in the countryside moved to towns and cities to look for work, they took their music with them. Country music continued to change and became popular across America.

    John Denver was one of America's most famous country singers in the 1970s.His song Take Me Home, Country Roads is well­known and people still play it today.

    For thousands of years, we have looked for ways to measure time. Early humans found that the regular movements of the sun, the earth> the moon, and the stars made good ways to measure time. The rising and setting of the sun were used to distinguish (辨别) day from night.

    But, eventually, people needed to tell time more accurately, or exactly. So, by using the sun's position in the sky, they divided the day into dawn, morning, midday and evening.

    Then it was noted that the sun cast a changing shadow as it moved across the sky. Time could be told more accurately by setting up a stick and marking the positions of the sun's shadow. It was the ancient Greeks who divided each position of this “sundial (日晷)” into hours.

    But the sun doesn't always shine. So, for the past 6,000 years, many other ways of keeping time have been tried. Slow-burning candles were divided into hours, and the hourglass was invented. When all the sand in the top of an hourglass has shifted to the bottom, an hour has passed.

    Later, the pendulum (摆钟), with its regular back-and-forth movement of weights, was used to move the hands on a clock. Pendulums are still used in grandfather clocks.

    Today, even more accurate clocks are in use, such as battery-operated quartz clocks (石英钟), digital clocks, and clocks run by electrical tuning forks and tiny atoms. These atomic clocks are the most accurate clocks ever invented. The exact time can be kept to within 1 second a century.

    Imagine walking through an ancient city, then climbing a gate tower to take in a wonderful view of the city and its more than 600-year-old walls. You can hear the city's heartbeat in the air. This is the Ancient City of Pingyao in Shanxi Province, a place that should definitely be on your travel route if you enjoy history or ancient architecture since its origins can be traced back to more than 2,700 years ago.

    Located in the center of Shanxi Province, Pingyao is the hometown of Jin merchants, a group of merchants who actively dominated (支配) a booming commodity market throughout China for more than 500 years, especially during the Ming and Qing dynasties. After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the city's agriculture and manufacturing industries developed rapidly. Following China's reform and opening-up in the 1980s, Pingyao struggled with the transition from a managed economy to the current market-oriented economy. During this time, the city government sought out new ways to break through this economic bottleneck.

    Finally in the winter of 1997, opportunity came knocking. Through the efforts of the city government, Pingyao earned its place on the UNESCO World Heritage list, which caused the entire world to take notice of the city.

    Since the city's fame has risen, locals in Pingyao have deepened their understanding of the conservation efforts preserving the historical relics in their hometown. Meanwhile the city administration has continued to upgrade itself through a strategy that follows the pillars of “conservation, entrepreneurship, development and protection.”

    Currently, the city is focused on establishing a sustainable industry that will enable it to continue to grow while also protecting its relics and introducing them to the world.

    Before the coming of the first settlers from Europe, Canada's local people had discovered a new kind of food—maple sap(汁液)，which they gathered every spring. According to many historians, the maple leaf began to serve as a Canadian symbol as early as 1700.

    In 1834, the first St. Jean Baptise Society in North America made the maple leaf its sign. In 1836, Le Canadian, a newspaper, referred to it as a suitable symbol for Canada. In 1860, the maple leaf was used widely in decorations for the visit of the Prince of Wales. Alexander Muir wrote The Maple Leaf Forever in 1867; it was regarded as the national song for several decades. The army uniforms created the next year for Ontario and Quebec both included the maple leaf. Later the maple leaf appeared on coins. Between 1876 and 1901, it appeared on all Canadian coins. The modern one-cent piece has two maple leaves on a common twig(细枝)，a design that has gone almost unchanged since 1937.

    During the First World War, the maple leaf was included on the badge(徽章) of the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Since 1921, the Royal Arms of Canada have included three maple leaves as a special Canadian symbol. In 1939, at the time of World War Ⅱ, many Canadian troops used the maple leaf as a special sign.

    With the announcement of Canada's new flag in 1965, the maple leaf has become the Canadian symbol. On February 15 of that year, the red maple leaf flag first appeared as the National Flag of Canada.

    New York City is a world capital in every sense of the word—it's a cultural and economic powerhouse, and arguably the most influential city on the planet. But it wasn't always this way, as the following cities once dominated the world around them.

    Djenne­Djenno

    In the flood lands of the Niger delta people have been building houses and other structures with clay for centuries. The town of Djenne­Djenno is made entirely out of clay. It was inhabited as far back as 250 BC, and became an important link in the trans­Saharan gold trade(跨撒哈拉黄金交易). Constructed on hills called " toguere", the city managed to escape the marshy(沼泽 ) landscape and annual floods produced by the rainy season. Djenne­Djenno is believed to be one of the earliest settlements in the sub­Saharan region, and is considered by some to be "the typical African City".

    Archeological evidence shows us a continuous human presence in the area up until the 14th century AD, when people moved to the nearby town of Djenne, founded in the 11th century. Further evidence points out that even before the city's construction, the Bozo people were growing wild rice in the region. In the 13th century AD, with King Koumboro's conversion to Islam, its palace transformed into a mosque.

    Carthage

    Legend has it that Carthage was founded by Queen Dido of the Phoenicians. She fled the city of Tyre located in present­day Lebanon in order to escape the hatred of her brother Pygmalion, who was her rival to the throne. Along with a group of settlers, she traveled a great distance by sea and landed in North Africa, where she met King Iarbas. He offered to give them land in order to build a settlement, but no bigger than the surface covered by the hide(牛皮) of an ox. They cleverly cut the hide into thin strips and were able to enclose a fairly large area of land. On this land, the mighty city of Carthage was built.

    These stories are most likely just that, but the fact that the Phoenicians built the city around 760 BC is true. Located in such a good position—in the middle of the Mediterranean, close to Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica, and a pretty good distance from Egypt—helped make Carthage a leading trade center and military power. The population soon reached half a million citizens and, in order to house them all, buildings were all built five or six stories tall. Carthage was the first city in ancient times to have a centralized sewage system, linking all buildings within the city walls. The most notable of structures among the ruins was the " Thophet", which is believed to be an altar(圣坛) for child sacrifice.

    Tenochtitlan

    Tenochtitlan was the capital city of the Aztec Empire. It was built on an island surrounded by Lake Texcoco deep inside the jungles of Central America. By the time the Spanish conquerors were aware of its existence, the population was around 200，000. This was a city very different from what the Europeans were used to. Founded in 1325 AD, the Aztec capital was joined to the mainland by three causeways(堤道). It was laid out in straight street grids and had enormous pyramids at its center, which were surrounded by the skulls of the dead and ceremonial sculptures.

    Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness (荒野) . But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.

    Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warning. An avalanche (雪崩) once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.

    But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go—to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City—its present population is 762.

Human beings have used tools for a very long time. In some parts of the world you can still find tools that people used more than two million years ago. They made these tools by hitting one stone against another. In this way, they broke off pieces from one of the stones. These chips of stone were usually sharp on one side. People used them for cutting meat and skin from dead animals, and also for making other tools out of wood. Human beings needed to use tools because they did not have sharp teeth like other meat eating animals, such as lions and tigers. Tools helped people to get food more easily.

Working with tools also helped to develop human intelligence. The human brain grew bigger, and human beings began to invent more and more tools and machines. The stone chip was one of the first tools that people used, and perhaps it is the most important. Some scientists say that it was the key to success of mankind.

Since 1960 a new kind of tool has appeared. This is the silicon chip (硅芯片). It is smaller than a finger nail, but it can store lots of information. It is an electronic brain. Every year these chips get cleverer, but their size gets smaller, and their cost gets less. They are used in watches, calculators and intelligent machines that we can use in many ways. In the future we will not need to work with tools in the old way. Machines will do everything for us. People will have plenty of spare time. But what will they do with it?

Human beings used stone chips for more than two million years, but human life changed very little in that time. We have used silicon chips for only a few years, but life is changing faster every day. What will life be like twenty years from now? What will the world be like two million years from now?

Photographic self-portraits have existed for as long as cameras have been in human hands. But what about selfies in space? On Twitter last year, NASA astronaut Edwin Aldrin, who famously became the second man to walk on the moon in July 1969, laid claim to a spaceflight first: taking the first selfie in space during the Gemini XII mission in 1966.

"For me, it needs to be digital to be selfie," argues Jennifer Levasseur, a director at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. According to Levasseur, the concept of a selfie is directly linked to internet culture. "The thing that makes a selfie is sharing it," she says.

Still, astronauts have been carrying cameras aboard space vehicles since the 1960s. In 1966, Aldrin used a Hasselblad camera designed specifically for space. Hasselblad also painted the first camera in space a matte(磨砂) black to reduce reflections in the orbiter window. But cameras used in space need to survive extreme conditions, like temperature swings from -149° to 248°F, so Hasselblad painted later model silver.

Astronauts visiting the moon then had to take out the film and leave their camera bodies behind when they returned to Earth, because early space missions were limited by a weight limit on the returned trip. Then a big change in space camera technology came after the space shuttle Columbia broke apart on its return to Earth in 2003, Levasseur notes. "Fear that they'd never be able to bring film back from space and lose all that hard work accelerated the push for digital," she says.

Today, astronauts also have access to internet and social platforms in space and can post true space selfies made using digital cameras. Similarly, space robots are participating in selfie culture, capturing remote pictures of themselves in space or on other planets and sending them back to Earth.

    We are all busy talking about and using the Internet, but how many of us know the history of the Internet?

    Many people are surprised when they find that the Internet was set up in the 1960s. At that time, computers were large and expensive. Computer networks didn't work well. If one computer in the network broke down, then the whole network stopped. So a new network system had to be set up. It should be good enough to be used by many different computers. If part of the network was not working, information could be sent through another part. In this way, computer network system would keep on working all the time.

    At first the Internet was only used by the government, but in the early 1970s, universities, hospitals and banks were allowed to use it, too. However, computers were still very expensive and the Internet was difficult to use. By the start of the 1990s, computers had become cheaper and easier to use. Scientists had also developed software that made "surfing" the Internet more convenient.

    Today it is easy to get online and it is said that millions of people use the Internet every day. Sending email is more and more popular among students.

    The Internet has now become one of the most important parts of people's life.

Cities usually have a good reason for being where they are, like a nearby port or river. People settle in these places because they are easy to get to and naturally suited to communications and trade （贸易）. New York City, for example, is near a large harbour at the mouth of the Hudson River. Over 300 years its population grew gradually from 800 people to 8 million. But not all cities develop slowly over a long period of time. Boom towns grow from nothing almost overnight. In 1896, Dawson, Canada, was unmapped wilderness （荒野）. But gold was discovered there in 1897, and two years later, it was one of the largest cities in the West, with a population of 30,000.

Dawson did not have any of the natural conveniences of cities like London or Paris. People went there for gold. They travelled over snow-covered mountains and sailed hundreds of miles up icy rivers. The path to Dawson was covered with thirty feet of wet snow that could fall without warning. An avalanche （雪崩） once closed the path, killing 63 people. For many who made it to Dawson, however, the rewards were worth the difficult trip. Of the first 20,000 people who dug for gold, 4,000 got rich. About 100 of these stayed rich men for the rest of their lives.

But no matter how rich they were, Dawson was never comfortable. Necessities like food and wood were very expensive. But soon, the gold that Dawson depended on had all been found. The city was crowded with disappointed people with no interest in settling down, and when they heard there were new gold discoveries in Alaska, they left Dawson City as quickly as they had come. Today, people still come and go — to see where the Canadian gold rush happened. Tourism is now the chief industry of Dawson City — its present population is 762.