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CULTURE Sunglasses are an ancient idea, but a modern fashion phenomenon. Like other premium brands, Ray-Bans1 are worn as much for their stylish look as the practical protection they offer from the sun. A pair of these iconic American shades2 can cost you anything from a couple of hundred to over three thousand dollars. SNOW GOGGLES The earliest sunglasses were created for snow blindness3. In ancient times, the Inuit, an indigenous people of the Arctic region, wore goggles4 made of driftwood5, bone or walrus ivory6 with slits7 cut into them to protect their eyes. In the 12th century, Chinese opticians made their own sunglasses using the gemstone8 smoky quartz9. HIGHER GOALS The story of modern sunglasses begins in the United States. Founded in Rochester, New York in 1853, Bausch &…

The Wimbledon Championships are a quintessential date in the British social season. Like Royal Ascot and the Henley Regatta, the tennis tournament is steeped in history1 and tradition. Since 1877, it has been held2 at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, London, at the end of June and the start of July. MAJOR EVENT What started as a garden party competition is today a major international sports event. Along with the Australian Open, Roland-Garros in France and the US Open, Wimbledon is one of the world’s four Grand Slam tournaments and the only one played on grass. It ends on the second weekend, with the women’s and men’s singles finals held on Centre Court3. The British summer being what it is, Centre Court was equipped with a retractable…

The isles of Manhattan and Pulau Rhun could hardly be farther apart1, not just in geography, but also in culture, economy and global prominence. Rhun, in the Banda Sea in Indonesia, has no cars or roads and only about twenty motorbikes. Most people get around by walking along its paved footpaths2 or up steep stairways3, often toting4 plastic jugs5 of water from the numerous village wells or sometimes lugging6 a freshly caught tuna. But in 1667, in what might now seem one of the most lopsided trades7 in history, the Netherlands believed it got the better part of a bargain8 with the British when it swapped9 Manhattan, then known as New Amsterdam, for this tiny speck10 of land. The delight the Dutch took in11 the deal can be summed up12…

Aldous Huxley’s science-fiction masterpiece imagines a futuristic dystopia, in which technological progress and state control have supplanted individuality, freedom and human connection. It is largely set in a place called World State that initially appears utopic: family structures have been abolished, babies are grown in glass jars1, and sexual promiscuity is moral. Everyone is happy, as any negative feelings are easy to fix2 using “soma”, a drug that the government provides. REPRODUCTION The book begins at the Central London Hatchery3 and Conditioning Centre, where thousands of human embryos in glass jars are receiving a careful balance of chemicals until they’re ready to be “decanted.” The idea of being born from a human is obscene and the word ‘mother’ is taboo. Some embryos are predestined to become elite adults: these Alphas…

ARTÍCULOS POR NIVELES Todos nuestros artículos se presentan con un código de color para indicar el nivel de dificultad del inglés empleado de acuerdo con la Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. A2 PRE-INTERMEDIATEB1 LOWER INTERMEDIATEB2 UPPER INTERMEDIATEC1 ADVANCEDC2 PROFICIENCY GLOSARIO Encontrarás el vocabulario más relevante de cada artículo indicado con un número en el color correspondiente a su nivel de dificultad y su traducción en el glosario adjunto. A towering1 figure in British history, Queen Victoria was actually a diminutive figure, just one metre fifty GLOSSARY 1 towering: imponente 2 to rule: gobernar 3 to number: ascender, sumar EXPLAINS Los textos subrayados en amarillo indican que la frase requiere de una explicación más extensa, como referencias históricas o culturales, frases hechas, proverbios o argot. Encontrarás la explicación al final del artículo. SPEAK UP…

Sixty years ago, US congressmen passed1 a new law to end discrimination based on race, colour, religion, sex and national origin. The Civil Rights Act2 of 1964 was the crowning achievement3 of the civil rights movement. It marked a new era of legislative equality. The landmark4 law continues to protect voter rights and prohibit racial segregation and employment discrimination. Its introduction, however, was the result of a long and difficult journey. RACIAL TENSION After the American Civil War, the abolition of slavery did not create equality in the United States. The 14th Amendment5 was added to the Constitution in 1868, granting6 citizenship to formerly enslaved people. It also gave citizens equal protection under the law. However, over a century later, despite many additional acts, laws and executive orders, discrimination was…

One of the biggest hits of recent times, Cruel Summer by American singer Taylor Swift was written in 2016, recorded for her 2019 album “Lovers”, and not released until 2023. Although she had described the song as “pride and joy1” on the album, she acknowledged that releasing a single with that title during the pandemic was “a not-so-great2 idea”. The enthusiastic reaction to the song when performed during Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour finally prompted3 its late release4. The song was written when Swift was embarking on a six-year relationship with English actor Joe Alwyn, and the song is about feelings of uncertainty and desperation that accompanied the romance. In the first verse, the singer is excited about her new love story and in the second, defiantly5 commits6 to it despite7 the…

So you have finally done it. You had been dreaming of this trip for months, maybe years, and now you really are there, in Piccadilly Circus, the rain soaking1 even your underwear, about to be run over2 by one of those massive poppy-red3 double-decker buses4 (for the third time), and surrounded by packs5 of loud tourists with no sense of personal space — or embarrassment6, because, of course, you couldn’t go to London and not take that photo. Congratulations: your followers must be thrilled7 — all fifteen of them! Now, here is the article you should have read before setting foot in Albion. THE WEATHER First things first: you will need a jacket. Is it the 5 August? Jacket. The sun is shining? Jacket. The thermometer marks 30°C? Grab8 that jacket!…

THE PEOPLE IN INSTAGRAM ALWAYS LOOKED SO elegant. She knew she looked like a clown. It was embarrassing. I don’t know why you have to go all the way to1 Hawaii,” Caoimhe’s dad said, for what seemed like the hundredth time. “Don’t you live a mile from…” “…the most beautiful beach in Ireland?” Caoimhe finished his phrase for him. “I know, Dad! But this is Ireland, where we had the rainiest July on record last year. I don’t want to risk that again.” Last summer had been Caoimhe’s first summer since completing secondary school. And she had spent all of July at home, feeling depressed because of the constant rain. Now she had finished her first year at university, and had been working part-time2 to save enough money for a…

LANGUAGE The word ‘wow’ is used to express surprise, excitement or admiration. It is a versatile term with a curious history. Even though it sounds like a modern word, its origins date back1 centuries. It was first recorded in writing in a 1513 English-language version of Virgil’s Aeneid translated by a Scottish bishop2. It was originally used as an interjection to express surprise or astonishment3, and may be related to the old exclamation ‘vow’, a shorter form of ‘I vow4!’ (I promise), which was used to add emphasis to a statement5. Over6 the centuries, the meaning of ‘wow’ has evolved, and by the late 1800s7 it was in common use among English speakers. VERSATILE In the early 1920s the word ‘wow’ was used as a noun8, (“The show we saw…

SCIENCE Modern physics deals with some truly mind-boggling1 extremes of scale. Cosmology reveals the Earth as a tiny dot amid an observable universe that is a staggering2 93bn light years across3. Meanwhile, today’s particle colliders4 are exploring a microcosmic world billions of times smaller than the smallest atom. These two extremes, the biggest and smallest distances probed5 by science, are separated by forty-seven orders of magnitude. That’s one with forty-seven zeros after it, a number so ludicrously huge6 that it isn’t worth trying to get your head around7. And yet, despite exploring such radically different distances and phenomena, cosmology and particle physics are deeply connected. Observing the motions of stars and galaxies can reveal the influence of as-yet-undiscovered8 particles, while studying fundamental particles in the lab can tell us about…

NOW LET’S REVIEW THE VOCABULARY! The greeting1 “Good Morning!” is often shortened2 to just Morning! Here you go, is an idiom3 often used when handing over4 something to another person. A cup of tea is colloquially called a cuppa, which is short for5 ‘cup of’. The tea is implied because, in Britain, what else would it be? Like that means ‘in that way’ or ‘in that manner’. Coming up is way of saying, ‘on its way’or ‘about to be served’. By describing tea as weak and watery, the server is expressing the opinion that it is not appetising and not the right way to drink tea. The verb to brew refers to the preparation of tea or coffee (and also the manufacture of beer.) A cup of tea is sometimes…