A 108-year-old Message in a Bottle

    On November 30, 1906, George Bidder dropped a bottle from a boat into the North Sea. The weighted glass bottle sank almost to the sea floor, and then it move slowly for 108 years and 138 days.

    Its journey ended when Marianne Winkler found the bottle in 2015. Winkler was then on vacation on Amrum Island. She picked up the bottle when it was washed up onto the beach. She saw a piece of paper inside, but didn't break it open. She could tell that the bottle was old. So she didn't want to damage it.

    Finally she got the piece of paper out of the bottle. She found that the paper was actually a postcard. On the back of the card there was this message: The Marine Biological Association（海洋生物学协会） would pay a shilling（先令） for the bottle. A shilling was a unit of money that was used in Great Britain before the early 1970s.

    Winkler filled out the card and posted it. The association was surprised to get a postcard addressed to George Bidder, the president of the association from 1939 to 1945. The workers of the association searched on the Internet to find a shilling. They found one and sent it to Winkler as a reward.

    The message in the bottle was the oldest ever re-discovered. For this reason Marianne Winkler got a place in  “Guinness World Records”（吉尼斯世界纪录）. She broke the record for the oldest message in a bottle.

    Winkler's bottle was not the only one Bidder sent to sea. Between 1904 and 1906, he spent away more than one thousand bottles. He placed postcards inside them. The bottles were part of a research  project to map currents（洋流） in the North Sea. This was the best method at that time. But whether the association could get the bottles back depended on the people who found them. The association reported that about 55 percent of the bottles were returned. They added that the experiment was a success as it showed the east-to-west flow of the North Sea's currents.

    Charles Dickens was an English writer. He was born in 1812. He created some of the world's best-known characters and many readers think he is the most important writer of the Victorian era (1837-1901). Some of his famous novels are Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Great Expectations. Most people in his novels lived in London.

    In 1824, Dickens' father went to prison(监狱) because he couldn't pay money to someone. In those days, a man's wife and young children went to prison with him. Charles was 12, so he left school to work in the prison. Life was hard, and a lot of children worked in those days. Dickens' own experience helped him to write about poor children without a mother or father. Dickens' success began with the publication (出版) of The Pickwick Papers in 1836. And his book Oliver Twist is about a boy without father. Important people were more interested in the problems of poor people after reading Dickens' books.

    Dickens' novels are often very long and he wrote them in different parts for a newspaper each week. His novels have a lot of exciting and sad things in them. He wanted his readers to buy the newspaper every week. And the readers wanted to finish the story! Dickens' novels are popular because many of his stories are about social(社会的) problems and family life. Dickens was successful in writing and he has been praised by other writers for his style and characters.

    Winnie the Pooh is about 100 years old. It is my favourite, and I'm sure it's also yours. Do you know how it came to our life?

    Winnipeg is a place in Canada. Many years ago, Harry, a soldier, went to Europe from here. When he stopped at train station, he saw a man selling a little black bear. Harry bought it and named it Winnipeg. The name became Winnie in short later.

    Harry went to a lot of places. When he got to London, he left Winnie in the London Zoo. He thought they could look after Winnie.

    Near the zoo, there was a boy named Robin. He loved to visit the London Zoo with his dad. Winnie was his favourite animal. Robin's father was a writer. He wrote the bear in one of his poems for the first time. Later he wrote stories about Winnie and Robin. Slowly, the father wrote more characters(角色) like Piglet, Rabbit, Roo and Tigger and so on in his stories.

    Who is the greatest teacher in Chinese history？Many people would think of Confucius, whose birthday was September 28.Although he lived over 2, 000 years ago, people still remember and respect him for his contribution to the education today, Confucius lived in the Kingdom of Lu, which lies in Shandong Province. He lived during the Spring and Autumn Period. He had a hard childhood. His father died when he was only 3. His mother brought him up. As a child, he had to work to help his mother, but young Confucius didn't give up studying. He visited many famous teachers and learned music, history, poetry and sports.

    Later, he became a teacher and started the first public school in Chinese history. At that time only children from noble families could go to school, but (Confucius believed everyone should go to school if they wanted to learn. He had about 3,000 students in his lifetime.

    Today, people still follow Confucius' lessons. He told us that we all have some advantages. "When I am with three people, one of them must be better than me in some areas. I choose their good qualities and follow them."

    He also taught us that thinking is very important in study. "All study but no thinking makes people puzzled(困惑的).All thinking but no study makes people lazy."

    Confucius is not only a great teacher, but also a famous thinker with wise thoughts about the world and society. His most important theories are about kindness and good manners. "A person should be strict with himself, but be kind to others," he said.

    In ancient Greece, Socrates was a knowledgeable philosopher(哲学家). One day one person met him and said, "Do you know what I just heard about your friend?". "Hold on a minute," Socrates replied. "Before telling me anything I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test(三重过滤测试). Before you talk to me about my friend, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you're going to say. That's why I call it the Triple Filter Test. The first filter is truth. Have you made absolutely(完全地) sure that what you are about to tell me is true? ""No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it and…". "All right," said Socrates. "So you don't know whether it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?" "No, on the contrary…". "So, "Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, but you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though, because there's one filter left: the filter of Usefulness(有益性). Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?" "No, not really." "Well," said Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me?"