Next month, about 30,000 runners will take to the streets of Boston, Massachusetts, for one of the world’s oldest and most famous races, the Boston Marathon. Nearly half the competitors in the 26.2-mile race will be women. But for most of the race’s 119-year history, only men were officially allowed to compete.

A woman named Roberta “Bobbi” Gibb helped change that in 1966, when she secretly ran the marathon and finished ahead of most of the men. “Word went out around the world that a woman had done the impossible,” says Gibb. “It changed the way men thought about women.”

Gibb saw her first Boston Marathon in 1964, while running through her neighborhood. She was inspired to run the race herself. For nearly two years, Gibb trained to build the energy and strength she’d need to finish. But when she sent in an application for the 1966 race, it was turned down.

At the time, the longest official races for women were only 1.5 miles. Many people didn’t think women were physically capable of running longer distances. Running a marathon was also seen as “unladylike”.

But the 23-year-old Gibb refused to let go of her dream. She came up with a plan to run the race anyway. On April 19, she showed up at the marathon wearing her brother’s shorts and a sweatshirt to hide the fact that she was a woman.

Gibb hid in the bushes near the starting line. When the race began, she jumped into the pack. Shortly into the race, Gibb took off her sweatshirt. To her surprise, the crowd cheered when they realized she was a woman. Gibb finished the race in 3 hours and 21 minutes- faster than two thirds of the male runners.

Gibb opened the door for future female long-distance runners. In the years that followed, she and other women ran in the Boston Marathon, even though the rules still prohibited women from running in the race. Finally, in 1972, the marathon was officially opened to women.

Thomas Alva Edison lit up the world with his invention of the electric light. Without him, the world might still be a dark place. However, the electric light was not his only invention. He also invented the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and over 1,200 other things. About every two weeks he created something new.

   Thomas A．Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847. His family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, when he was seven years old. Surprisingly, he attended school for only two months. His mother, a former teacher, taught him a few things, but Thomas was mostly self-educated. His natural curiosity led him to start experimenting at a young age with electrical and mechanical things at home.

   When he was 12 years old, he got his first job. He became a newsboy on a train that ran between Port Huron and Detroit. He set up a laboratory in a baggage car of the train so that he could continue his experiments in his spare time. Unfortunately, his first work experience did not end well. Thomas was fired when he accidentally set fire to the floor of the baggage car. Thomas then worked for five years as a telegraph operator, but he continued to spend much of his time on the job conducting experiments. He got his first patent in 1868 for a vote recorder run by electricity. However, the vote recorder was not a success. In 1870, he sold another invention, a stock-ticker, for $40,000. A stock-ticker is a machine that automatically prints stock prices on a tape. He was then able to build his first shop in Newark, New Jersey.

   Thomas Edison was totally deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other, but thought of his deafness as a blessing in many ways. It kept conversations short, so that he could have more time for work. He called himself a "two-shift man" because he worked 16 out of every 24 hours. Sometimes he worked so intensely that his wife had to remind him to sleep and eat.

   Thomas Edison died at the age of 84 on October 18,1931, at his estate in West Orange, New Jersey. He left numerous inventions that improved the quality of life all over the world.

You probably know who Marie Curie was, but you may not have heard of Rachel Carson. Of the outstanding ladies listed below, who do you think was the most important woman of the past 100 years?

Jane Addams (1860-1935)

   Anyone who has ever been helped by a social worker has Jane Addams to thank. Addams helped the poor and worked for peace. She encouraged a sense of community by creating shelters and promoting education and services for people in need. In 1931. Addams became the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Rachel Carson (1907-1964)

   If it weren’t for Rachel Carson, the environment movement might not exist today. Her popular 1962 book Silent Spring raised awareness of the dangers of pollution and the harmful effects of chemicals on humans and on the world’s lakes and oceans.

Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-present)

   When Sandra Day O’Connor finished third in her class at Stanford Law School in 1952, she could not find work at a law firm because she was a woman. She became an Arizona state senator and, in 1981, the first woman to join the U.S. Supreme Court. O’Connor gave the deciding vote in many important cases during her 24 years on the top court.

Rosa Parks (1913-2005)

   On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks would not give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Her simple act landed Parks in prison. But it also set off the Montgomery bus boycott. It lasted for more than a year, and kicked off the civil-rights movement. “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” said Parks.

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946), is an American businessman and politician who became the President-elect of the United States on November 8, 2016. Since 1971 he has chaired The Trump Organization, the principal holding company for his real estate ventures and other business interests. During his business career, Trump has built office towers, hotels, casinos(赌场), golf courses, and other branded facilities worldwide.

Trump was born and raised in New York City and received a bachelorˈs degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. In 1971, he was given control of his father Fred Trumpˈs real estate and construction firm. Trump has appeared at the Miss USA pageants, which he owned from 1996 to 2015, and has made cameo appearances in films and television series.

Trump and his businesses, as well as his three marriages, have received prominent media exposure. He hosted a popular NBC reality show, The Apprentice, from 2004 to 2015. As of 2016, he was listed by Forbes as the 324th wealthiest person in the world, and 156th in the United States, with a net worth of $3.7 billion in October 2016.

Trump first campaigned for the U.S. presidency in 2000, winning two Reform Party primaries. On June 16, 2015, Trump again announced his candidacy for president, this time as a Republican. Trump became known for his opposition to illegal immigration and free trade agreements, as well as his frequently non-interventionist views on foreign policy, and quickly emerged as the Republican nomination front-runner. As of March 23, 2016, Trump has won 21 contests in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries.

He was elected as the 45th U.S. president in the 2016 election on the Republican ticket, defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, and is scheduled to take office on January 20, 2017. At 70 years old, he will be the oldest person to ever assume the presidency.

Jesse Owens was one of the greatest athletes in the history of Olympic sports. He was born in Alabama, the US, on September 12,1913. He lived there with his ten brothers and sisters until he was nine. The family moved to Ohio then. When Jesse was a child, he found out that he was faster than the rest of the kids around him.

In middle school, his track coach, Charles Riley, let him practice before school. Jesse said that this coach’s encouragement went a long way towards helping him to succeed in track and field.

Jesse first showed what he could do on a national stage at the National High School Championships. He tied(平局) the world record in the 100-yard sprint(短跑) at 9.4 seconds and in the long jump.

After leaving high school, Jesse went to Ohio State University for college. While at Ohio State, Jesse was the best track and field athlete in the NCAA. He won eight individual(个人的) championships in two years. At the 1935 Big Ten track meet in Michigan, Jesse tied one world record (the 100-yard sprint) and broke three world records (the 220-yard sprint, the 220-yard hurdles and the long jump) in a period of 45 minutes.

The 1936 Olympic Games were held in Berlin, Germany. Adolf Hitler was ruling the country at that time. Hitler expected Germans to win most of the gold medals in the Olympic Games. Jesse Owen, however, really let him down. He won four gold medals in the games. They were gold medals for the 100-meter sprint, the 200-meter sprint, the 2×100 meter relay, and the long jump.

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   At a click of mouse consumers can purchase the goods and service they need at online shops. What they have to do is waiting for the goods sent to their homes. We shall all be grateful to the pioneers of online shopping for bringing us such convenience.

   Michael Aldrich ( the UK)

   Online shopping was invented and pioneered by Michael Aldrich in the UK. In 1979 he connected a television via a telephone line to a real-time multi-user transaction(交易)processing computer. He sold mainly Business-to-Business systems. There were a number of significant world firsts with new applications in several business fields.

   Jeff Bezos (the USA)

   Jeff Bezos defined online shopping and rewrote the rules of commerce. Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web server and browser(游览器) in 1990. In 1994, Jeff Bezos read an article about how the World Wide Web was growing by 2,300 percent a year. He knew he had to tap into such a great potential for commerce. On July 6, 1995, Bezos launched Amazon. com, which operated out of the garage of his two bedroom home in suburban Seattle, Washington. With almost no publicity, sales took off immediately. The company has now expanded into dozens of product categories, forcing the world's biggest retailers(零售商) to rethink their business models, and finally changing the way people shop.

   Jack Ma (China)

   As a child, Jack Ma was bad at maths but fascinated by English. He travelled to the United States in 1995 as a translator to help a Chinese firm recover payment. The attempt failed. But a friend in Seattle showed Ma the Internet, and an idea began brewing.

   In 1999, Mr Ma gathered 17 friends and founded Alibaba in his apartment in Hangzhou. Alibaba's model was simple: allow small and medium-sized Chinese companies to find global buyers they would otherwise only be able to meet at trade shows. It works brilliantly. Alibaba's sales are now more than those of eBay and Amazon combined.

I am astonished at the way God knows when to send a special gift of encouragement at just the right time! It might be in a dream, a lost letter, a memory, or something found that we’d forgotten about.

My grandmother was from a town in Michigan. And summer after summer I enjoyed staying with my grandparents as a young child. I was from the city and loved the small town where they lived. People knew everyone, their children, their pets, their ancestors.

Grandma was always using her hands for something exciting... she would make sandwiches and we’d have tea parties, plant flowers and carefully tend them. She loved knitting sweaters as well as making beautiful quilts for her grandchildren. I remember the small thimble (顶针) she would place on her finger while doing her needlework.

A few years ago, when Grandma left this earth for her new residence in Heaven, I bid farewell to my loving grandmother. How quickly our lives can change! We had just had tea together a couple of months earlier, on her 91st birthday. I missed her very much, but I noticed it mostly on my birthdays, because there was no card from Grandma. She’d never forgotten my birthday!

On one particular birthday when I was feeling a little low, something happened made me feel as if she was sharing that special day with me. I was arranging some colorful pillows that she had made, and suddenly I felt something inside one pillow; it was small and hard. I moved the object to a seam（缝）that I carefully opened, and, to my delight, out came a tiny silver thimble!

How happy I was to find something that had been a part of her! Not realizing it had fallen off her finger, I pictured her sewing it into that little pillow that I just happened to fluff（抖松）, to place on my bedspread（床罩）that day. I carefully laid the thimble alongside the others I’d collected over the years. What a precious memory of a very special lady who, somehow, I knew, was laughing in delight at sewing her thimble into my pillow. I heated the kettle and made some tea, using my best china, as Grandma always did, and then enjoyed my tea and Grandma’s thimble. What a wonderful birthday that was!