Captain James Cook was a famous English explorer(探险者). He was the first European to visit many Pacific islands. He put these islands on maps around the world.

 James Cook was born in1728. His parents were poor farm workers. James started to work on ships as a sailor when he was eighteen. When he was twenty-seven, he went into the navy(舰队). He fought a war in Canada and made maps of some of the eastern coast there.

 In1768, the King of England sent him to explore the Pacific Ocean. Cook spent three years on that trip. He went to the Pacific again in 1772 and made maps of the coasts of Australia and New Zealand.

 He began his third trip in 1776. This time he went to the North Pacific and made maps of the west coast of North America. When he finished making maps there, he went to Hawaii. Then the sailors and the Hawaiians  started fighting and some Hawaiians killed Captain Cook.

 Captain Cook took gifts to the Pacific Islander·. He gave them cattle, sheep, goats and new plants. He was a very good leader of his men.  When Captain Cook died, the world 1ost one of the greatest explorers in history.

 Judge the following sentences true( T) or false( F) according to the passage.

    Jack thought himself a basketball fan. He watched quite a lot of American NBA basketball games. Not only did he watch them, he spent much of his free time playing on the court too. Then came the final year of his middle school. All of his regular teammates stopped showing up on the court because they were simply too busy preparing for the high school entrance exam to play. He was, of course, under much stress himself, like everyone else. A good exam result meant a good high school; a mediocre(平庸的) score meant a mediocre school. Much was at stake.

    However, he loved basketball so much that he still found time to play, this time with a group of guys who were said to have skipped classes(逃课) before.

    Some of his teachers started worrying about him. They asked his mother to go to school to let her know that Jack was hanging out with problem kids. When his mother returned home that day, she wanted to talk to Jack. Knowing the purpose of her visit to the school, Jack though his mother would punish him for befriending those bad guys. To his surprise, his mother was not angry with him at all. She wanted to hear her son's side of story. So Jack told his mother about what he knew of Simon and Peter. Simon's parents were badly ill; Peter's father had lost his job. They both seemed to Jack to be normal kids. Jack's mother thought for a moment, and then went on to say that she was OK with her son playing with them and that she and her son should think of ways to help these kids. Soon Jack's mother introduced some part -time jobs to Simon and Peter, which they accepted. She believed in her son and cared about those who were less lucky.

    Jack's basketball friends and he have left for different places, but they still keep in touch. He knows Peter is now a manager of a local bank. Simon is currently a freshman at a university. Sadly, it is impossible to get together to play basketball again, but whenever they get on the phone, they talk about all the time.

    It was Mother's Day. But the young mother was a little unhappy. Because she was 800 miles away from her parents. In the morning she phoned her mother to wish her a happy Mother's Day. and her mother told her about the beautiful lilacs(丁香)in the garden.

    Later that day. When she told her husband about the lilacs. He said. "I know where we can find all that you want. Get the children and come on. "So they went. Driving down the country roads.

    There on a small hill. They saw a lot of beautiful purple lilacs. The young woman ran quickly to enjoy the flowers. Carefully. She picked a few here and a few there. On their way home there was a smile on her face.

    When they were passing a nursing home(养老院). The young woman saw an old granny sitting in a chair. She had no children with her. They stopped the car and the young woman walked to the old woman. Put the flowers in her hands. And smiled at her. The old granny thanked her again and again. She smiled happily. Too.

    When the young mother came back to her car. Her children asked her. "Who is that old granny？Why did you give our flowers to her？"

    "I don't know her." their mother said. "But it's Mother's Day. And she has no children. I have all of you. And I still have my mother. Just think how much those flowers meant to her. "

    Long long ago, there was a blacksmith(铁匠). He was always unhappy with his life. "I'm always hot as a blacksmith. I want to be a stone on the mountain. There it must be cool." A wise man could change everything. The blacksmith went to the wise man. The wise man said, "Be a stone!" The blacksmith became a stone. A moment later, a stonemason(石匠) came and saw the stone. "It's what I want," he said and began to cut it. The stone cried, "Ouch! I don't want to be a stone. I want to be the sun. That would be great." The wise man said, "Be the sun!" And he became the sun. But the sun was much hotter, so he said, "I don't like this. I'd like to be the moon. It looks cool!" The wise man said again, "Be the moon!" And he became the moon. "This is hotter than being the sun, because the light from the sun shines（照射）on me" he said, "I don't want to be the moon. I want to be a blacksmith again. That's the best life."

    But the wise man said, "I'm tired of your changing. You want to be the moon, now you are the moon, and you'll be the moon in the future."

    One day, John read an advertisement in a newspaper. It said "Wanted. The best salesman in the world." John thought he was a great salesman and went to ask for the job. "I'm the best salesman in the world," he said to the manager. "Give me the job."

   "You must prove you're the best," the manager said.

   "OK I will," John said.

   "Good." The manager took several boxes of sweets out of his desk." Last week I bought a thousand boxes of sweets. If yon can sell them all before the end of the week, yon can have the job," said the manager.

   "That's easy," John said. He took the boxes of sweets and left the office.

    Every day and all day he went from shop to shop, trying to sell the sweets. But he couldn't sell one. The sweets were too bad for him to sell. At the end of the week he went back to the manager." I'm sorry, sir," he said," I was wrong about myself. I'm not the best salesman in the world, but I know who is."

   "Oh" said the manager. "Who?"

   "The person who sold you a thousand boxes of the sweets."

After winning the first prize at the ASICS Tennis Junior Tour in Guangzhou in late August, 2022, Wang Fa quickly became popular online. Wang was known for carrying his tennis rackets in a bamboo basket, making him get the name of "basket tennis boy".

The boy, Wang Fa, 14, is a member of the Va ethnic group（佤族） from Yunnan. "We always carry bamboo baskets when we work on the farm. This is a typical farming tool（具有代表性的农具） of the Va ethnic group. I carried my rackets this way to honor（致敬） my hometown," Wang said.

Before playing tennis, Wang was just a common boy from a village. But in 2016, he was chosen by a club as one of the first 10 children to learn to play tennis. Over the past six years, Wang has practiced hard along with other players. The children would get up at 6:30 A．m. and practice for more than six hours a day. Every day, they needed to swing a racket more than 7,000 times and run 9 kilometers.

Wang's parents didn't want him to learn tennis at first. They thought it was too expensive. But the tennis club said they would teach him for free. Wang's hometown was just lifted out of poverty （脱贫） in 2019.

For Wang, winning the competition was the beginning of a hopeful future. "I will go for the top places in the tennis world," he said.