Топик: Билеты и ответы на них по Английскому языку на 2002 год
In 1674 two small skeletons were found in a wooden box buried ten feet under a small staircase that workmen were removing from the White Tower. They were thought to be the bones of the little princes. King Charles II had his own reasons for being offended at the murder of kings, so he placed these bones in the chapel of Henry VII in Westminster Abbey.
Vocabulary
usurpation - узурпация, незаконный захват
allege - утверждать, заявлять (голословно)
invalid - не имеющий законной силы
bastard - внебрачный ребенок
security - безопасность
rally – сплотиться
standard - знамя, флаг
murder - убийство
disappear - исчезнуть
it-rightful - законный
condemn - осуждать
Youth and unemployment
In the year 1000, Western Europe was just emerging from the long depression commonly known as the Dark Ages. Shortly before the beginning of the millennium, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III moved his capital and court back to the Eternal City. But what little grandeur Rome still possessed paled by comparison with the splendors of 'the new Rome, Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine empire. Byzantium was one of three centers of wealth and power in the known world of the 11th century, India and China were the others. There were sophisticated cultures elsewhere, notably the Mayans of Mexico, but they were virtually out of touch with other civilizations — thus lacking an essential condition for being considered part of world history.
Little of Europe's coming dynamism was apparent in the year JOOO, although there were signs that the Continent was getting richer. Wider use of plows had made farming more efficient. The planting of new crops, notably beans and peas, added variety to Europe's diet Windmills and watermills provided fresh sources of power. Villages that were to become towns and eventually cities grew up around trading markets. Yet the modern nation-state, with its centralized bureaucracies and armies under unified command came into being in the 15th century. For most of the Middle Ages, Roman Catholicism was Europe's unifying force. Benedictine abbeys had preserved what fragments of ancient learning the Continent possessed. Cistercian monks had cleared the land and pioneered in agricultural experimentation. Ambitious popes competed with equally ambitious kings to determine whether the spiritual realm would hold power over the tea or vice versa. Symbolic of the church's power were great Gothic cathedrals of Europe: construction of Reims began 13th century, and Charters—the most glorious of all such edifices—was consecrated in 1260.
By the 20th century the ingenuity, coupled with an aggressive wanderlust, brought Europeans and their culture to the ends earth. By the year 1914, eighty four per cent of the world' surface, apart from the polar regions, was under the influence European civilization. The hegemony of European civilization was based on the successful application of new knowledge to a problems and conquering nature, and much of that success based on circumstance and ingenuity.
Vocabulary
emerge - выходить millennium – тысячелетие
asceticism - аскетизм sophisticated - сложный
bureaucracies - чиновники apparent - явный
watermill - водяная мельница ambitious - честолюбивый
ingenuity - изобретательность wanderlust - страсть к путешествиям
surface - поверхность conquer - завоевать
assertion - утверждение accomplishment - достижение
grandeur - великолепие, пышность, грозность
Mass media
The problem between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland started a long time ago. It is more political than religious. For centuries the English had tried to gain control of Ireland. Until the 16-th century, England controlled only a small area of Ireland around Dublin. English rulers, including King Henry VIII (1491-1547), Queen Elizabeth I (153-1603) and Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) gradually conquered the whole of Ireland. The last area to resist the province in Ulster, in the north of Ireland, but in the Irish were defeated.