Lesson72 A car called Bluebird “蓝鸟”汽车

The great racing driver, Sir Malcolm Campbell, was the first man to drive at over 300 miles per hour. He set up a new world record in September 1935 at Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah. Bluebird, the car he was driving, had been specially built for him. It was over 30 feet in length and had a 2500 horse-power engine. Although Campbell reached a speed of over 304 miles per hour, he had great difficulty in controlling the car because a tyre burst during the first run. After his attempt, Campbell was disappointed to learn that his average speed had been 299 miles per hour. However, a few days later, he was told that a mistake had been made. His average speed had been 301 miles per hour. Since that time, racing drivers have reached speeds of over 400 miles an hour. Following  his father's footsteps many years later, Sir Malcolm's son, Donald, also set up a world record. Like his father, he was driving a car called Bluebird.



Lesson73 The record-holder 纪录保持者

Little boys who play truant from school are unimaginative. A quiet day's fishing, or eight hours in a cinema seeing the same film over and over again, is usually as far as they get. They have all been put to shame by a boy who, while playing truant, travelled 1600 miles. He hitch- hiked to Dover and, towards evening, went into a boat to find somewhere to sleep. When he woke up next morning, he discovered that the boat had, in the meantime, travelled to Calais. No one noticed the boy as he crept off. From there, he hitch-hiked to Paris in a lorry. The driver gave him a few biscuits and a cup of coffee and left him just outside the city. The next car the boy stopped did not take him into the centre of Paris as he hoped it would, but to Perpignan on the French-Spanish border. There he was picked up by a policeman and sent back to England by the local authorities. He has surely set up a record for the thousands of boys who dream of evading school.