Scotland

Scotland is the north part of the island of Great Britain. The Atlantic Ocean is on the west and the North Sea on the east. Some people (6) .................. Scotland speak a different language called Gaelic. There are (7) .................. five million people in Scotland, and Edinburgh is (8) .................. most famous city. Scotland has many mountains; the highest one is called ‘Ben Nevis’. In the south Scotland, there are a lot of sheep. A long time ago, there (9) .................. many forests, but now there are only a (10) ................... . Scotland is only a small country, but it is quite beautiful.

Alice Guy Blaché

Alice Guy Blaché was the first female film director. She first became involved in cinema whilst working for the Gaumont Film Company in the late 1890s. This was a period of great change in the cinema and Alice was the first to use many new inventions, (11) ................... sound and colour.

In 1907 Alice (12) ................... to New York where she started her own film company. She was (13) …………… successful, but, when Hollywood became the centre of the film world, the best days of the independent New York film companies were (14) …………… 1968, hardly anybody (15) …………… her name.

UFOs – do they exist?

UFO is short for 'unidentified flying object'. UFOs are popularly known as flying saucers, (16) ........ that is often the (17) ................... they are reported to be. The (18) ................... "flying saucers" were seen in 1947 by an American pilot, but experts who studied his claim decided it had been a trick of the light. Even people experienced at watching the sky, (19) ................... as pilots, report seeing UFOs. In 1978 a pilot reported a collection of UFOs off the coast of New Zealand. A television (20) ................... went up with the pilot and filmed the UFOS. Scientists studying this phenomenon later discovered that in this case they were simply lights on boats out fishing.

The tallest buildings – SKYSCRAPERS

Nowadays, skyscrapers can be found in most major cities of the world. A building which was many (41)……….. high was first called a skyscraper in the United States at the end of the 19th century, and New York has perhaps the (42) ………………. skyscraper of them all, the Empire State Building.

The (43) ………. Beneath the streets of New York is rock, (44) …………….. enough to take the heaviest load without sinking, and is therefore well-suited to bearing the (45) ……………….. of tall buildings

SCRABBLE

Scrabble is the world’s most popular word game. For its origins, we have to go back to the 1930s in The USA, when Alfred Butts, an architect, found himself out of (46) ………………… . He decided that there was a (47) …………….. for a board game based on words and (48) …………………. to design one. Eventually he made a (49) ……………… from it, in spite of the fact that his original (50) ………………. was only three cents a game.