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阅读理解

　　The First of May is a Bank Holiday－the first public holiday of the year in England．

　　Most people consider it a special day, the beginning of summer, a day when the light lasts long into the evening, and when we can look for warm weather．We don't always get it．We feel disappointed, but not surprised if there are cold winds and frosts at night in May．Winter should be over．Most people know that in the past, when farming occupied almost everyone, the changing seasons were of great importance．In that older time there was every reason to celebrate May Day．Customs of those celebrations remain．

　　Of these customs, the best known is the choosing of a May Queen and the dancing round Maypole．Even these customs are little more than memories now－but in the last century it was quite common in villages and small towns, and even in schools and colleges, for a pretty and popular girl to be chosen Queen of the May．It was a great honour to be chosen．For a day she wore a light and flowery dress, carried garlands(花环)，and was ceremonially crowned with flowers．She presided over a procession, as a rule with a number of attendants, and over the Maypole dancing and all kinds of entertainment．The Maypole was slender(苗条的)tree trunk, cut off its branches, with beautiful ribbons fastened to the top．The dancing was designed in such a way that the dancer's movements move the ribbons into a pattern．This, as you can imagine, required skill from the dancer, and was not achieved without practice．

　　It's the Celtic(凯尔特的)people who celebrated the First of May as a spring festival．Their celebration seems to have had little to do with taking pleasure in early, beautiful flowers and in warmer weather!They called it Beltane－the fire of the god Bel．They lit fires, in the expectation that their blaze would help the sun in its struggle to regain its strength．They drove their cattle between banks of flame in the expectation that the terrified beasts would be purified(净化)and protected from disease．A tree, which must have been blackened with smoke, stood in the middle of the fires, and is thought to have been the origin of the Maypole．Their priests(牧师)made sacrifices to the goods in the hope of good harvests and sufficient store of food for the winter．There was dancing certainly, but it was noisy and cheerful, since its purpose was not to weave a pattern of colored ribbons, but to drive out evil spirits from the earth and to arouse those kind spirits．

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阅读理解

　　Since the beginning of time, man has been interested in the moon．The Romans designed a special day to show admiration and respect to the moon．They called it “Moonday”, or “Monday”, as we know it today．Later, the great mind of Leonardo da Vinci studied the moon and designed a machine to carry a human to the moon．Leonardo said that one day a great machine bird would take a person to the moon and bring great honour to the home where it was born．

　　Four and a half centuries later, Leonardo's idea was realized．Apollo II took three Americans Collins, Aldrin, and Armstrong to the moon．The mission(任务)did fill the whole world with great surprise, as Leonardo had said it would．Numerous essays, articles, and books were written about man's first moon mission．But perhaps the most interesting story was one written before the event over 100 years before．

　　In 1865, French author Jules Verne wrote a story about the first journey to the moon．His story was very similar to the 1969 Apollo II mission．

　　Verne's spacecraft also contained three men——two Americans and a Frenchman．The spacecraft was described as being almost the same size as Apollo II．The launch(发射)site in Verne's story was also in Florida．The spacecraft in Verne's story was named the “ Columbiad”．The Apollo II command ship was called “ Columbia”．His account of sending the spacecraft into the space could easily have been written about how Apollo II was sent into the space．

　　Verne's story was the same as the actual event in several other respects．The speed of Verne's spacecraft was 36, 000 feet per second; Apollo's was 35, 533 feet per second．Verne's spacecraft took 97 hours to reach the moon; Apollo's time was 103 hours．Like Apollo's spacemen, Verne's spacemen took pictures of the moon's surface, relaxed on their seats, cooked with gas, and experienced weightlessness．They too came down in the Pacific and were picked up by an American warship．

　　What were the reasons for Jules Verne's extreme accuracy in describing an event 100 years or more before it actually occurred? He based his writings on the laws of physics and astronomy(天文学)．Nineteenth-century science and the vivid Verne's imagination gave people an unbelievably accurate preview of one of the greatest events of the 20th century．

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