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The Weather Through human history, weather has altered the march of events and
caused some mighty cataclysms. Since Columbus did not know where
he was going or where he had arrived when he got there, the winds truly
deserve nearly as much credit as he for the discovery of America. Ugly
westerlies helped turn the 1588 Spanish Armada away from England in
a limping panic. Napoleon was done in twice by weather: once by the
snow and cold that forced his fearful retreat from Moscow, later by the
rain that bedevilled him at Waterloo and caused Victor Hugo to write: "A few
drops of water ... an unseasonable cloud crossing the
sky, sufficed for the overthrow of a world." In 1944 the
Allied invasion of Normandy was made possible by a
narrow interval of reasonably good weather between the bad. It was so narrow, in fact, that Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower later expressed gratitude to "the gods of war".
Paganism dies hard.
Every year brings fresh reminders of the weather's
power over human life and events in the form of
horrifying tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. These leave
behind forgettable statistics and unforgettable images
of devastated towns and battered humanity that can only humble people in the
face of such wrath. Farmers often suffer the most, from the drought and
plagues of biblical times to the hailstorms or quick freezes that even today
can wipe out whole crops in minutes. Icy assaults serve as reminders of
the inescapable vulnerability of life and social well-being to the whims
of the weather. And history is packed with reminders of far worse. The
weather, for example, provoked a major social dislocation in the United
States in the 1930's when it turned much of the South-west into the Dust
Bowl.
No wonder, then, that man's great dream has been some day to control
the weather. The first step toward control, of course, is knowledge, and
scientists have been hard at work for years trying to keep track of the
weather. The United States and other nations have created an international apparatus that maintains some 100 000 stations to check the weather round the clock in every sector of the globe and, with satellites,
in a good deal of the more than 16 billion cubic kilometres of the atmosphere. With computers on tap and electronic eyes in the sky, modern
man has thus come far in dealing with the weather, alternately his nemesis
and benefactor. Yet man's predicament today is not too far removed
from that of his remote ancestors. For all the advances of scientific
forecasting, in spite of the thousands of daily bulletins and advisories
that get flashed about, the weather is still ultimately capricious and unpredictable. Man's dream of controlling it is still just that
-- a dream.
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1. |
The writer is of the opinion that Columbus |
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(A) |
did not discover America. |
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(B) |
stole the credit for the discovery of America from someone else. |
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(C) |
does not deserve to be known as the man who discovered America. |
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(D) |
was not aware he had discovered America. |
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2. |
According to the passage, what helped the Allies to carry out a
successful invasion of Normandy in 1944 ? |
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(A) |
It was a spell of bad weather. |
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(B) |
It was a short period of fairly good weather. |
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(C) |
It was good weather followed by bad weather. |
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(D) |
It was the excellent weather conditions. |
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3. |
What is the main topic of the first paragraph ? |
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(A) |
It is the development of history up to modern times. |
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(B) |
It is the part weather played in the progress of events in history. |
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(C) |
It is the way fate influenced the outcome of events in history. |
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(D) |
It is the idea that success in all past undertakings depended on the
weather. |
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4. |
In the second paragraph weather is seen as |
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(A) |
a capricious and an unpredictable force. |
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(B) |
man's benefactor. |
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(C) |
man's chief enemy. |
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(D) |
a powerful destroyer of human life and property. |
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5. |
How did the weather cause great upheaval in
America a few decades ago ? |
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(A) |
It devastated towns in the form of tornadoes, hurricanes
and floods. |
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(B) |
It destroyed crops in the form of hailstorms and quick
freezes. |
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(C) |
It turned cold so suddenly that it caught millions of
people unprepared. |
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(D) |
It created a large area of arid land from which people
had to move out. |
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6. |
How can man stop being a victim of the whims
of the weather ? |
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(A) |
He must find ways to control it. |
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(B) |
He must learn all he can about it. |
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(C) |
He must learn to live with it. |
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(D) |
He must protect himself against it. |
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7. |
In order to be able to control the weather
man must first |
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(A) |
fight it. |
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(B) |
know how to escape from it. |
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(C) |
be able to manipulate it. |
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(D) |
study it. |
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8. |
Today, man |
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(A) |
has the weather under control. |
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(B) |
is still far from being able to control the weather. |
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(C) |
has made no advance whatsoever towards the control of
weather. |
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(D) |
can forecast the weather with great accuracy. |
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9. |
Weather brings |
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(A) |
only benefits to man. |
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(B) |
only disadvantages to man. |
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(C) |
both benefits and disadvantages to man. |
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(D) |
nothing but inconvenience to man. |
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10. |
We can conclude from the passage that |
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(A) |
man is very much at the mercy of the weather. |
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(B) |
man is doomed to be destroyed by the weather. |
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(C) |
man cannot forecast the weather. |
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(D) |
man cannot keep track of the weather. |
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