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.

Author Norman Mailer published an essay in which he declared the graffiti(涂鸦) of the New York subway to be "The Great Art of the 70s". But what happened to the artists and why is there no subway graffiti anymore?

"It started with someone just writing their name - someone saw that, and added on to it," recalls New York graffiti artist Nicer, born Hector Nazario."Letters going in front of letters, coming back through a letter, behind a letter, going across a letter... the subways became our playground," adds Riff170.

New York in 1974 was a city in crisis. The Mayor, Abe Beame, slashed the city's budget in a bid to stave off bankruptcy(破产), which meant laying off school teachers, police officers and subway staff.

"They were taking the money from the schools, there was a lot of corruption here, in this community, and so they took the after-school programmes away, and there was no outlets for this. So the outlet became our city," says Bronx-born designer Eric Orr.

"It was like an explosion. The graffiti explosion. All of a sudden it took over the whole city. I don't know what happened, but overnight in the early 70s it was from no graffiti to all graffiti," says another former artist, Flint Gennari.

Eric Felisbret, author and former graffiti artist, says graffiti culture was in a way a product of the civil rights movement. "It was never political," he says, "but many people were brought up with that, and to express yourself by breaking the law became a natural process for them."

The graffiti pioneers came from all races, however. "There were writers that were African American, Latino - Puerto Rico, Dominican, Cuban - Jewish, Asian, and it became one unit - one family," says another graffiti pioneer, Roberto Gualtieri.

Prof Gregory Snyder, sociologist and author of Graffiti Lives, says: "For lots of people, graffiti is ugly, vandalistic, and I'm not denying that. It's vandalism... now, oftentimes it's very clever vandalism. It can be written on a dumpster, like a garbage bin, and if someone's attempting to make a garbage bin look a little prettier maybe that's not the worst thing in the world."Although Mailer was not alone in welcoming the flowering of creativity, the authorities hated it, as did many passengers.

So when Mayor Ed Koch took office, he was determined to clean up the city and set about targeting graffiti.

"I remember in 1982 he brought everyone out to a train yard and there was a single train painted white," says former New York Daily News reporter Salvatore Arena. Trains were taken out of service and cleaned as soon as graffiti was spotted. Carriages were protected at night and the city agreed to ban the sale of spray cans.

If in 1984 80% of subway carriages contained graffiti by May 1989 the network was graffiti-free. “Graffiti has gone through an evolution, and it will continue to evolve. It’s now socially accepted in places where 20-30 years ago that would have been impossible. It’s now showcased(展示)in certain museums –and let’s say in another 30 years from now it may be hanging in the White House,” says Nicer.

Nowadays painted graffiti is largely gone from the New York subway trains themselves and is seen instead on the walls and tunnels of the city. It has been replaced by scratchiti(刮擦艺术) created onto carriage windows using keys, knives. Unlike the vivid images of 40 years ago, these ghostly patterns are somehow easy to ignore. After all, graffiti has faded quietly into the background.

I was born and raised in England in a culture where privacy and “keeping yourself to yourself” were valued traditions. Speaking to strangers was not encouraged. People were most hospitable and friendly—but only once they had been introduced to new people.

However, I have been lucky enough to spend some time in both Italy and the US，where I found traditions of hospitality and politeness to be very different.

I experienced Italian hospitality first-hand on a crowded railway carriage travelling, one afternoon，from Genoa to Florence. Sinking gratefully into an empty seat, I was berated(训斥) in rapid Italian by a gentleman who was returning to this seat—it had not been “spare” after all. I apologized in English，and got up to allow him back into the seat. The gentleman obviously had no understanding of the English language, but he, too，realized my genuine mistake. He smiled and gestured for me to remain in the seat，and he himself remained standing in the corridor for the remainder of the journey. The other occupants of the carriage smiled and nodded at me and made me feel quite welcome amongst them. I feel that if this had been in England, a foreigner who made a mistake would not always be so kindly treated.

Transport also featured in the differences I noticed between English and American culture. I flew to New York on a plane with mainly English passengers. We sat together in near silence. Nobody spoke to me nor, as I expected, to anyone else they did not know. They felt it was not polite to intrude on someone else’s privacy. However, when I travelled across the United States, whether by plane or Greyhound bus，I was never short of conversation. Conversation was going on all around me and whoever sat next to me was happy to introduce themselves and ask me about myself. They obviously felt it would have been rude not to speak to another person, whether they were strangers or not.

Before I had my son, I spent two years working with children with disabilities. I learned that shouting and threats of punishment would result in a disaster. Coming up against their behavior could only make the job harder and their behavior more extreme. I found something that worked, though.

    There was a very naughty boy in the nursery and a teacher who was generally very confident with the children was asked to take charge of him. One day the boy joined a session in the room next to mine. His appearance created an atmosphere of tension. He spent the entire session running around, hitting and kicking, and destroying property.

I was in the craft room working with some other children when my co-worker told me that this boy’s teacher was in tears, and could not get control of the situation. As we were talking, the boy ran in. I told my co-worker that I would take care of him.

I closed the door. He was full of energy, throwing things around and making a huge mess. But I could see that he was doing all these to annoy me. He needed connection, and this was the only way he knew how to ask for it. So I sat back down and kept quiet. Then he slowed and began making a rocket. I talked to him about it. We continued like this for a few minutes before I slipped into the conversation: “So what happened today?”

It was purely a question, no blame or anger in my tone. I believed that if I had criticized him, the gate that was slowly opening would have shut firmly closed. He told me that the teacher did what he disliked. He also admitted that he had enjoyed making her run around and saw it as a game. I explained that his teacher had not seen it as a game and was very upset. This again was stated simply as a fact. I suggested that next time he had a session, he talk about what he hoped to do at the start, which might be easier for everyone. He agreed and was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at me with tears in his eyes before quietly asking if he could go to find his teacher to apologize.

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Going green seems to be fad(时尚)for a lot of people these days. Whether that is good or bad, we can’t really say, but for the tow of us, going green is not a fad but a lifestyle.
    On April22, 2011, we decided to go green every single day for an entire year. This meant doing 365 different green things, and it also meant challenging ourselves to go green beyond easy things. Rather than recycle and reduce our energy, we had to think of 365 different green things to do and this was no easy task.
    With the idea of going green every single day for a year, Our Green Year started. My life and I decided to educate people about how they could go green in their lives and hoped we could show people all the green things that could be done to help the environment. We wanted to push the message that every little bit helps.
    Over the course of Our Green Year, we completely changed our lifestyle. We now shop at organic(有机的)stores. We consume less meat, choosing green food. We have greatly reduced our buying we don’t need. We have given away half of what we owned through websites. Our home is kept clean by vinegar and lemon juice, with no chemical cleaners. We make our own butter, enjoying the smell of home-made fresh bread. In our home office anyone caught doing something ungreen might be punished.
    Our minds have been changed by Our Green Year. We are grateful for the chance to have been able to go green and educate others. We believe that we do have the power to change things and help our planet.

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.

Deliberately making a road icy sounds like a method for disaster，but in 16th-century China it helped things run smoothly．Repairs to the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1557 called for huge stones from a quarry(采石场)more than 70 km away．The biggest was the 300-ton“Large Stone Carving．”Such stones were too heavy for any cart，and too fragile for rollers．The builders adopted a wise alternative approach to carry the heavy stone．

They dug a series of wells，spaced a few hundred metres apart，along the route to the quarry．Then，in the depth of winter，when temperatures reached around -4℃，buckets of water were poured on to the dirt track，transforming it into an ice road．

The stone blocks were pushed along the road on wooden sledges(雪橇)．Modern engineers have calculated that it would take 1，500 workers to drag a sledge on the dirt road，but only 300 on ice．Ancient texts suggested the ice was made slippery with more water；this reduced the friction further and just 50 men could pull a sledge．This technique only works when the temperature is close to zero，otherwise the film of water freezes too quickly．

The researchers at Princeton University estimated that the blocks could be moved at six metres a minute，and the journey could be completed in 28 days．This would be well before the spring when the ice would melt．

It was once suggested that similar ice-sledges transported Stonehenge stones，but the ground that had a lot of holes and comparatively mild conditions probably rule this out．