Birthday facts

Many centuries ago, birthdays were considered a time when the bad spirits were able to harm you. It was believed that you should have your friends and family around you【小题1】 their good wishes and present-giving would keep the bad spirits away. People also believed that, by lighting candles, they were sending a signal or wishes to the gods.

Later on, candles started 【小题2】 (use) on birthday cakes. One story about the beginnings of the birthday cake is【小题3】 it started with the Greeks, who made round cakes 【小题4】(represent) the full moon for their moon goddess . They also placed candles on the cake to make it light, again like the moon.

However, the Germans are said to have first used cakes and candles. They used a sweet cake and they put a large candle in the centre of the cake to mean “the light of life”.

The “Happy Birthday” song is more than a hundred years old. The music was written in 1893 by two sisters, Patty and Mildred Hill, 【小题5】 were schoolteachers in Louisville, Kentucky. The music was first used as a morning greeting to their students 【小题6】(entitle)“Good Morning To All”. In 1935, the words legally 【小题7】(belong)   to the Hill sisters, and the copyright has been bought and sold for millions of dollars ever since. The present copyright is owned by Warner Communications. They bought it in 1989【小题8】 more than $22 million.

‘Happy Birthday to you’ 【小题9】 (recognize) around the world and has been translated into many different languages. And children still love to make new versions of 【小题10】.

The following passage is from the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s by Douglas Adams.

It is an important and 【小题1】 fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man has always 【小题2】that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--- the wheel, New York, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was much about in the water having a good time. And vice versa; the dolphins had always believed they were far more intelligent than man—for 【小题3】 the same reason.

Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the 【小题4】 destruction of the planet Earth, and had made many attempts to 【小题5】 mankind to the danger; but most of their【小题6】 were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for food, so they【小题7】 gave up and left the Earth shortly before the Vogons arrived.

The last even dolphin message was misinterpreted as a(n) 【小题8】 difficult attempt to do a double-backwards somersault( 筋斗) through a hoop while whistling The Star-Spangled Banner, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for the fish.

In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins , and they spent a lot of time in research laboratories running around inside wheels and 【小题9】 frightening experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to the plans of these【小题10】.