Вопрос № 605260 - Английский язык

Three men came to New York on holiday. Having taken the room at the hotel they went to amuse themselves. Their room happened to be on the forty-fifth floor.

In the evening the young men went to the cinema and then to the restaurant to have supper there. They came back to the hotel very late. On coming back they found out that the lifts in the hotel didn’t work at night.

“I am very sorry”, said the clerk of the hotel, “but if you don’t want to walk up in your room you can sleep in the hall.” But the young men preferred to sleep in their room. And then Alan said to his friend, “I think I Know how to make it easy for us to walk up to the forty-fifth floor. On our way to the room we’ll tell each other some jokes and funny stories.”

They began to walk up to their room. Having come to the forty-fifth floor, they were out of breath and being very tired they decided to have a rest. “Now listen to my story,” said Bernard, “it will not be long, but it will be sad enough. We have left the key to our room in the hall downstairs.”

George Harrison was born in 1943 in Liverpool, England. When he was 12 years old, he met and became good friends with Paul McCartney who was a member of John Lennon’s band, The Quarrymen.

Three years later George, a gifted guitar player, joined the band too. In the early 1960’s the band changed its name to The Beatles. In 1970 The Beatles disbanded.

But Harrison’s solo career was just beginning. George went on to release many songs. He also started his own record and movie companies. He was deeply interested in charity work.

George Harrison died of cancer at the age of 58. He will always be remembered as a talented musician as well as a caring and generous man.

Many years ago a London theatre performed a play with a terrible storm at sea in one of the scenes. The waves were made by some boys who jumped up and down under a large piece of green cloth. Each boy received a shilling a night for his work.

The play was very popular, and the hall was usually full. But the director of the theatre wanted to make still more money from the performances, and he decided to lower the boys’ pay from a shilling to sixpence.

This made the boys angry, and they decided to go on strike. During the next performance, when the storm began not one wave could be seen. The theatre director raised a corner of the green cloth and shouted: “Why aren’t you making waves?!”

One of the boys sitting under the cloth asked him: “Do you want sixpenny waves or shilling waves?” “All right!” the director said. “I’ll give you a shilling, only give me the waves!” Tremendous waves immediately began to appear on the sea.

Basket-ball is perhaps the only sport whose origin we can speak of without fear of a mistake. During the winter of 1891—1892, James Naesmith, a college instructor in Springfield, Massachusetts, invented the game of basket-ball.

He wanted his students to have physical exercise between the time when the football season closed and the baseball season opened.

He hung fruit baskets on the walls at opposite ends of the gymnasium and organized nine-men teams to play his new game. The purpose of the game was to throw the ball into a basket.

There have since been many changes in the rules (for example, the number of players is now reduced to five), but the game is basically the same today as it was more than eighty years ago.

Nobody lives on the little island of Ata, in the warm South Seas. Everybody knows that ships don’t stop at Ata, but once the Mary Jane suddenly changed her course and went towards the island. Some people on the ship had noticed a number of small figures on a hill not far from the sea coast.

When the ship came nearer, the small figures ran down the hill and into the water to meet her. There were six of them, all boys. They swam to the ship, climbed up and were soon telling their strange story.

Fifteen months before, they had gone out fishing. There was a terrible storm, and the sea had carried them 140 kilometres to this little island. The boys had arranged their life very well: each boy had his own duties. Their food was birds, birds’ eggs, fruit, fish.

The Robinson Crusoes had even made a kind of guitar: they danced and sang songs. They explained that they had enjoyed their fine life on the island, but they were glad to be saved, and were happy to return home to their own island.

The Royal Society is an English Scientific Society which was founded in 1662. Isaac Newton is the greatest name in its history. He was elected a member of the Society after he presented it with a special telescope that he had made himself.

When Newton became President of the Royal Society its reputation rose rapidly. Among the most active members at that time was Christopher Wren, who was widely known for his work in geometry.

But his main interest soon turned from geometry to architecture. Christopher Wren rebuilt St. Paul’s Cathedral after the Great Fire of London in 1666.

In the 19th century the Royal Society became more and more important in the scientific world. Among the members were world-famous names: Maxwell, Kelvin, Darwin, Rutherford.