The tallest building in the United States, the One World Trade Center, opened on November 3, 2014 in New York. The building is 1,776 feet tall, making it the 3rd tallest building in the world. It has 104 floors. The building stands in the area where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood. On September 11, 2001, a group of terrorists destroyed these twin towers and killed nearly 3,000 people. It took 8 years to build the new One World Trade Center. Does the height of the building in feet reminds you of something in history? The number is the year when the United States declared(宣布) its independence(独立) from Great Britain.

    One problem with such a tall building is how to clean the windows. Well, a platform(平台) hangs from ropes, and workers on the platform clean windows. On November 12, while two men were busy cleaning windows, a rope of the platform broke near the 68th floor. The two men were saved by cutting a hole in the glass window.

The two tallest buildings in the world are the BurjKhalifa in Dubai, UAE and the Makkah Royal Clock Tower in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

    Grandma celebrated her fifty-third birthday just weeks before grandpa died of cancer in 1965. Although his passing was very difficult for her, I think their shared struggle to make his life longer taught grandma that good health was not to be taken for granted, and she made up her mind to live her rest of her own life as fully and as long as she could. One day, when she announced to attend lessons at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio in Portland, Oregon, where she lived, we rolled-our eyes in embarrassment and helplessly wished she would just stay home and bake cookies as normal grandmothers did. Many years filled with countless dance lessons passed before we learned to appreciate the wonder of having a dancing grandma.

I suppose grandma's primary motivation for wanting to learn to dance was social. She had been a shy girl, always very tall and heavy, and had married into grandpa's quiet lifestyle before developing any elegance or confidence in her personal appearance. Dancing, on the other hand, filled her life with flash lights，wonderful parties, beautiful dresses, handsome young dance instructors, and the challenge of learning. Although the weekly dance lessons did not change her ample, two-hundred-pound figure, grandma surprised everyone with energetic performances on the dance floor, which soon gave her as much elegance and confidence as any Miss American competitor.

    Having taken weekly dance lessons for years, my grandma learned various dances easily and was soon participating in dancing matches all over the Northwest. When I was fourteen, grandma proudly invited me to watch her compete in one of these matches to be held in the grand ballroom of the Red Lion Inn. My attitude was still unenthusiastic at that point, but to make her happy, my mother and I attended the match. As if to prove me wrong, grandma made a wonderful showing in every event she entered. I thought she was truly the queen of the ball during the dance, and my thoughts were shared by the judges a short time later when she was awarded a gold cup for her outstanding performance.

    January means it's time for coats and gloves and cold weather. While many of us are preparing ourselves for the cold weeks ahead, in some cities winter is the “hottest” season of all because it's the time for winter festivities.

    Every year 2 million people visit the Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan. This internationally well-known event began in 1950, when some local high-school students built six snow statues in Odori Park. Since then, the festival has grown to include lots of snow sculptures as well as a snow-sculpting contest that draws competitors from all over the world.

    In December, Finland created its 13th annual Snow Village, which will remain open until April, if weather permits. Snow Village lies nearly 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. The village is designed by builders skilled in working with snow and ice. Visitors can take a tour of the village, eat in a restaurant made of ice or go dancing in the disco igloo(拱形圆顶小屋). They can also spend the night in a hotel made of snow. There's even an ice chapel(小礼拜堂) for couples who want to get married in Snow Village.

    Since 1935, the Fur Rendezvous has been held every February in Anchorage, Alaska, America's most northern state. Among the festival's many attractions is the World Championship Sled Dog Race, which draws sled dog teams from many countries. Dogs also take center stage in the Dog Weight Pull, in which dogs compete to see which one can pull the heaviest weight. The festival features sports like skiing, basketball, boxing and softball as well as the Grand Prix Auto Race in downtown Anchorage. True to the festival's name, there's also a fur auction(拍卖), where buyers buy real Alaskan furs. The first Fur Rendezvous lasted only three days. Now it's a 10-day event that attracts thousands of visitors.

    Bertie knew there was something in the wind. His mother had been sad in recent days, not sick, just strangely sad. The lion had just lain down beside him, his head warm on Bertie's feet, when Father cleared his throat and began, "You'll soon be eight, Bertie. A boy needs a proper education. We've found the right place for you, a school near Salisbury in England."

    His heart filled with a terrible fear, all Bertie could think of was his white lion. "But the lion," he cried, "What about the lion?"

"I'm afraid there's something else I have to tell you," his father said. Looking across at Bertie's mother, he took a deep breath. Then he told Bertie he had met a circus owner from France, who was over in Africa looking for lions to buy. He would come to their farm in a few days.

    "No! You can't send him to a circus!" said Bertie. "People will come to see him. He'll be shut up behind bars. I promised him he never would be. And they will laugh at him. He'd rather die. Any animal would! "But as he looked across the table at them, he knew their minds were quite made up.

    Bertie felt completely betrayed (出卖). He waited until he heard his father's deep breathing next door. With his white lion at his heels, he crept (蹑手蹑脚地移动) downstairs, took down his father's rifle (步枪) and stepped out into the night. He ran and ran till his legs could run no more. As the sun came up over the grassland, he climbed to the top of a hill and sat down, his arms round the lion's neck. The time had come.

    "Be wild now", he whispered. "You've got to be wild. Don't ever come home. All my life I'll think of you. I promise I will. "He buried his head in the lion's neck. Then, Bertie climbed down the hill and walked away.

    When he looked back, the lion was still sitting there watching him; but then he stood up, yawned, stretched, and sprang down after him. Bertie shouted at him, but he kept coming. He threw sticks. He threw stones. Nothing worked.

    There was only one thing left to do. With tears filling his eyes and his mouth, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired over the lion's head.

    Throughout history scientists have risked their health and their lives in their search for the truth.

    Sir Isaac Newton, the seventeenth century scientist, was very smart, but that didn't stop him from doing some pretty stupid things. In his laboratory in Cambridge he often did the strangest experiments. Once, while testing how light passes through lenses (晶状体), he put a long needle into his eye, pushed it to the back, and then moved it around just to see what would happen. Luckily, nothing long-lasting did. On another occasion he stared at the sun for as long as he could bear, to discover what effect this would have on his sight. Again he escaped suffering permanent damage, though he had to spend some days in a darkened room before his eyes recovered.

    In the 1750s the Swedish chemist Karl Scheele was the first person to find a way to produce phosphorus (磷). He in fact discovered eight more chemical elements including chlorine (氯), though he didn't get any praise for them. He was a very clever scientist, but his one failing was a curious habit of tasting a little of every substance he worked with. This risky practice finally caught up with him, and in 1786 he was found dead in his laboratory surrounded by a large number of dangerous chemicals, any of which might have been responsible for his death.

    Eugene Shoemaker was a respected geologist. He spent a large part of his life studying craters (火山口) on the moon, and how they were formed, and later did research into the comets of the planet Jupiter. In 1997 he and his wife were in the Australian desert where they went every year to search for places where comets might have hit the earth. While driving in the Tanami desert, normally one of the emptiest places in the world, another vehicle crashed into them and Shoemaker was killed on the spot. Some of his ashes (骨灰) were sent to the moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft and left there — he is the only person who has had this honor.

    We know that hugs make us feel easy inside. And this feeling could actually ward off stress and protect the immune (免疫) system,  according to a new research from Carnegie Mellon University.

    It's a well-known fact that stress can weaken the immune system. In this study, the researchers sought to determine whether hugs could protect individuals from the increased sensitivity to illness brought on by the particular stress that comes with interpersonal conflict.

    "We know that people experiencing ongoing conflicts with others are less able to fight off cold viruses. We also know that people who report having social support are partly protected from the effects of stress on psychological states, such as depression and anxiety," the study's lead author, psychologist Dr. Sheldon Cohen , said in a statement. "We have tested whether awareness of social support is equally effective in protecting us from sensitivity to infection caused by stress and also whether receiving hugs might partially account for those feelings of support and thus protect a person against infection."

    In the experiment, over 400 healthy adults filled out a questionnaire about their perceived (感知到的) social support and also participated in a nightly phone interview for two weeks. They were asked about the frequency that they engaged in interpersonal conflict and received hugs that day.

    Then, the researchers exposed the participants to a common cold virus, and monitored them to assess signs of infection. They found that both perceived social support and more frequent hugs reduced the risk of infection associated with experiencing interpersonal conflict. Regardless of whether or not they experienced social conflicts, infected participants with greater perceived social support and more frequent hugs had less severe illness symptoms.

    "This suggests that being hugged by a trusted person may act as an effective means of conveying support and that increasing the frequency of hugs might be an effective means of reducing the effects of stress," Cohen said. "The apparent protective effect of hugs may result from the physical contact itself or hugging being a behavioral indicator of support and closeness. Either way, those who receive more hugs are somewhat more protected from infection."

    If you need any more reason to wrap your arms around someone special, consider this: hugs also lower blood pressure, reduce fears, improve heart health and decrease feelings of loneliness.