Did you ever wonder how some of your favorite foods, products or toys came about? Believe it or not, they may have been an accident, or a failure of some other intention. Below, we found three mistakes we're thankful for turned out to be what they are.

1. Most historians hold that the Chinese invented fireworks in the 9^th century when they discovered how to make gunpowder. Story has it that a Chinese cook accidentally mixed together what were then considered common kitchen items and noticed they burnt. When put tightly in a bamboo tube and lit, it blew up.

2. In May of 1886, a law led John Pemberton, a pharmacist(药剂师), to rewrite the formula(配方) for "Pemberton's French Wine Coca", his popular headache treatment. Containing sugar instead of wine as a sweetener, the outcome became something for Coke, which was later mixed with carbonated(碳酸) water. His bookkeeper suggested the name Coca-Cola because he thought the two C's would look good together, which is how what we call Coca-Cola, a world-wide drink came into being.

3. During World WarⅡ, scientists at the University of Birmingham invented the magnetron(磁控管)—an important heat-producing part of the microwave oven. While working for Raytheon Corporation after the war, the American engineer Percy Spencer was testing the magnetron when a chocolate bar in his pocket melted. He went on to test other foods including popcorn kernels(仁), and found it to be a much more efficient way to cook. In 1947 Raytheon came out with the first restaurant microwave oven, which was six feet tall and weighed 750 lbs.

    “I can't see clearly, because I don't wear my glasses today.” We always hear people saying something like this. Glasses are very important to many people. Do you know how they were invented and developed?

    Glasses took a long time to develop into what you can find in the glasses store today. The Chinese first used colored glasses as fashion. They thought that those glasses had magic, but they didn't think that glasses could help eyes to see clearly.

    In 1262, the inventor, Roger Bacon, discovered the amazing function(功能) of lenses(镜片), and he thought that glasses could be used to help people to see. Twenty years later, in Florence, Italy, the inventor, Alessandro di Spina, made the first pair of glasses that could help people to see.

Although these glasses worked, scientists didn't understand how glasses helped eyes to see. They thought that eyes sent out light onto whatever a person was looking at, and then the light came back to the eyes. Johannes Kepler finally found out how glasses worked.

Inventors continued to improve glasses. In 1784, Ben Franklin created glasses that had bifocal(双焦的) lenses. Many years later, in 1827, George Airy made circle-shaped glasses to correct astigmatism, an eye problem that stops the eyes from seeing things clearly.

    As an English, I can speak three languages—English, German and French, so do you think the British people are very good language learners? The fact is that they aren't.

    Some statistics (数据) from the survey done by the European Commission (欧盟委员会) showed that 62% of the British people only speak English. 38% speak at least one foreign language and 18% speak two or more. Compared with the British people, 56% of the people in other European countries speak at least one foreign language and 28% speak two or more.

    From this you can see that the British people are famous for not speaking foreign languages and that they are not good language learners in Europe.

    And the survey also showed that English is the most widely-spoken foreign language. Many European people can have a conversation in English. That's why my people don't think it is necessary to learn a foreign language.

In Britain, students are not required to learn a foreign language. That means learning a foreign language is only an option at school. In UK schools it is common for children to start learning a foreign language at 11 and many of them give it up at 14. So why don't students continue learning foreign languages at school? Because they think it is more difficult to get good marks in languages than in other subjects such as science or history.

    To solve this situation, the British government is looking for different ways to improve language learning at school. One way is to start learning it at a much younger age. Another one is to give school children more choices.

Changing the British attitude (态度) to learning foreign languages may be a hard task but the government decides to try!

Sometimes we make friends with unexpected （料想不到的） people. For example, who has ever thought that a spider would make friends with a pig? But in E. B White's classic novel Charlotte's Web, this is exactly what happens. 

In the story, Wilbur is an unlucky pig. When he was born, he is so small that the farmer wants to end the pig's life. Luckily, the farmer's daughter stops him from killing Wilbur and decides to raise the pig in a barnyard（谷仓的院子）. 

Wilbur grows day by day and makes many friends in the barnyard, the spider, Charlotte is one of them. However, one day a sheep tells Wilbur that he will be served up as dinner. But Charlotte has decided to save her friend from this danger. By making words such as"famous pig" in her web（网）, she makes the farmer believe that Wilbur is some kind of amazing animal, too important to kill. After Wilbur is saved, Charlotte is so tired that she finally dies. 

Actually, the writer makes a spider the hero of the book. Many people are afraid of animals like spiders. But Charlotte does everything in her power to keep Wilbur alive. It shows how a strong friendship can last through the worst possible time. 

Hello, I'm Wu Dong. I study at a basketball school in Jiangxi, China. In this school, I learn 1 to play basketball. Also, I study other subjects like math and music. 

Every 2 , I get up at 6:00 a. m. and get dressed myself. Sometimes, I take a shower in the morning, I always brush my 3 twice a day to keep them clean. And I have classes in the classroom before lunch. The afternoon is the 4 for basketball. I 5 basketball so I practice it very hard. 

After dinner, I usually take a walk for half an hour with my friends. And then we go to the library to do our homework. I like going there because it's very 6 . In our library, there are many books for me to read. Every night, I must 7 at 9 o'clock. The teacher 8 says, "To have a healthy body, you must sleep for about 9 hours each day. "

From Mondays to Fridays, I can't use my phone and the teacher keeps it for me. On Saturdays, he will give it to me and I can 9 my parents. 

You may say my school 10 is very boring, but I think it's of great fun. I want to be a basket- ball player and I think I can make my dream come true in the future.