Gorky Park is a bright spot on the entertainment map of modern Moscow. It is one of the most interesting places to 13 ______ your leisure time. There are bike rental stations, a 14 ______ business area with Wi-Fi, an outdoor movie theatre in Gorky Park.

There are also several different sports options in the indoor sports centre or on the park’s grounds: you can 15 ______ volleyball, handball, football and hockey or go jogging, or cycling around the park. If you find that you are hungry, you can stop and 16 ______ a tasty break at one of Gorky Park’s many cafés. Many 17 ______ events such as exhibitions, Christmas and Easter fairs, concerts, theatre shows and environmental and charity events take place in Gorky Park. These events have become very 18 ______ among Moscow citizens.

The ninth planet of the solar system was 13 ______ not long ago. It happened in 1930. Scientists had been hunting for the planet for a 14 ______time. They had calculated its probable position but there was no proof that the planet really 15 ______. It was too 16 ______ away for the telescopes of that time to find it. It’s worth mentioning that the first photos of the planet were taken by a very young researcher. He was only twenty-four and had no formal education in astronomy. However, he was deeply involved in the search for the ninth planet. The planet at the edge of the 17 ______ system was called Pluto, after the Roman god. The name for the planet was 18 ______ by an 11-year-old British girl.

Nowadays solar energy is widely 13 ______ as an alternative form of power. Solar panels transform the energy from the sun into 14 ______. The first plane that does not need fuel was constructed in France, in 2015. It uses only the sun's energy. The panels are placed on the huge wings of the plane. It doesn’t fly very 15 ______. Solar energy can make the plane move at only 140 miles an hour. However, the plane is able to travel round the world. It is safe and can successfully 16______ areas of bad weather. In the future, engineers hope to construct a model that people can 17 ______ in. Our dream of environmentally friendly transport may 18 ______ true very soon. Would you like to take a flight on the solar plane?

We are always told that we should 13 ______ our teeth regularly to keep them healthy and to have fresh breath. It is believed that people 14 ______ using a kind of paste to clean their teeth around 5000 years ago. However, the ingredients of these tooth powders were very 15 ______ from ours. For example, the people of 16 ______ Egypt used salt, mint, dried flowers and pepper to create tooth powder. Later, in the 18th century, in some countries in Europe, people brushed their teeth with burnt bread. The first toothpaste 17 ______ in 1890, in Great Britain. At first it was sold in jars. Then special tubes were 18 ______ to make the toothpaste more comfortable to use.

Do you know why it is 13 ______ in the summer and cold in the winter? Most people believe that it is because the Earth is closer to the Sun in the summer and 14 ______ from it in the winter. But it is not like this at all! In fact, the distance between the Earth and the Sun is largest in July and smallest in January! Scientists 15 ______ that the reason for different summer and winter temperatures is the angle of the Sun’s rays. In the summer, the rays 16 ______ the Earth almost at a right angle. Due to this, the rays are not spread out and a smaller area of the planet's surface gets the energy. In the winter, the angle 17 ______ and the Sun’s rays are spread out over a larger area. Besides this, the long nights and short days do not give 18 ______ time for the land to warm up.

A robot is a machine that does work for people. The word ‘robot’ 13 ______ in the 1920s and it was first used in a science fiction story. In real life, the robot was invented later, in 1954. There are different kinds of robots which are used in 14 ______ industries. Most of them are operated with the help of a 15 ______ program. Instead of humans, robots do hard and boring work in unpleasant or dangerous environments. They usually work faster and more 16 ______ than people. They never get 17 ______ and do not make mistakes. Nowadays robots are often used for domestic needs – to clean houses or to look after sick and elderly people. Scientists say that soon robots will 18 ______ a normal part of our life, like mobiles and computers today.

Nowadays people can’t 13 ______ their kitchen without a refrigerator. The first refrigerators appeared at the end of the 18th century. They looked different: they were just iceboxes. The refrigerators of the past were just 14 ______ boxes, sometimes lined inside with metal. People put ice into the box and then placed the food inside to 15 ______ it cool. The refrigerator, 16 ______ to the one that we have now, was produced by General Electric in 1911, in France. It was very 17 ______. In those days, with the same money you could 18 ______ two cars. Today, in developed countries almost every family has enough money to buy a refrigerator for their kitchen. It’s hard to imagine how difficult and uncomfortable our lives would be without a refrigerator.

Without the energy from the Sun, the Earth would have no life at all. Nowadays everyone 13 ______ that the Sun is a star. Like all stars, the Sun is a great burning ball of gases. To us, it 14 ______ large and red. The other stars look white or light blue because they are much 15 ______ from us than the Sun. In the past, many people 16 ______ that the Earth was the centre of the universe. They thought that the Sun and the stars went 17 ______ it. Only in 1543, a great Polish scientist published a book in which he 18 ______ to prove a different point of view. According to him, the Earth and the other planets moved round the Sun. Those people who supported the scientist were often imprisoned and even killed.

The carrot is a 13 ______ vegetable which consists mostly of water and sugar. The carrots that we eat today originated from the wild ones which grew in Europe and Asia. The vegetable 14 ______ sweet and the people began to use it as food.

There are two main types of carrots. There are 15 ______ carrots that have dark purple roots and western carrots with orange roots. In fact, orange carrots first appeared in Europe in 1721. Dutch farmers 16 ______ orange carrots because orange is the colour of the Dutch Royal Family. Now orange carrots are 17 ______ grown all over the world. In modern households carrots are cooked and eaten in different ways. The vegetable is 18 ______ , fried, baked and eaten raw. People also make juice from it.

Since 2007 high-speed trains have become a 13 ______ type of transport in Europe. They 14 ______ it possible to cut travel times by hours. The trains travel at 350 kilometres an hour, and this is not the limit! The only problem for the engineers is the 15 ______ noise the trains produce. People living in the areas the trains travel through suffer from the noise 16 ______ . For the passengers, the situation is different. For their comfort, all the carriages are 17 ______ sound-proof from the inside. Travelling on high-speed trains is comfortable and pleasant. In the future, a high-speed railroad network could 18 ______ most of Europe. For example, a trip from Paris to Rome could take only 3 hours!

Venus is one of the 13 ______ planets in the Solar system. The temperature on its surface is 482 degrees. This 14 ______ place looks much the same as the Earth 4 billion years ago. Both planets were 15 ______ from the same gas cloud but Venus lost most of its water and atmosphere. This happened because the planet 16 ______ very slowly. As a result, now it has no magnetic field to 17 ______ it from the Sun's winds. The planet has turned into a lifeless desert. Most space modules that were sent to Venus, could not work on the planet more than two hours. The acidic clouds and high pressure quickly 18 ______ them absolutely useless.

Studies of the atmosphere first received 13 ______ support in 1912. Equipment to 14 ______ temperature and pressure was invented in Germany. But the question was how to 15 ______ it high into the air. In 1921, Russian engineers suggested using planes. The special equipment was put on planes that made 16 ______ flights. Thanks to this, scientists got a lot of new information about the structure of the atmosphere. Nowadays scientists use modern flying laboratories to 17 ______ the structure of clouds at different levels. Unlike the first planes, these laboratories can work in any weather and are able to 18 ______ climate changes.

Wombats are exotic animals that only live in Australia. They have become an 13 ______ symbol of the country. In 1974 a wombat appeared on an Australian stamp for the 14 ______ time. Since then it has been regularly used on different Australian stamps and coins. Wombats 15 ______ like little bears and prefer grass to meat. They also love eating berries, plant roots and mushrooms. Like camels, wombats drink little water because there is enough water in 16 ______ grass. Wombats 17 ______ most of their life in holes under the ground. With their strong arms and long nails they are able to dig very long and complex tunnels. Fortunately, wombats 18 ______ few enemies in the animal world. Most wombats live around 15 years.

The word ‘tsunami’ can be 13 ______ from Japanese as ‘big wave’. It describes a 14 ______ process that can be dangerous for people and their homes. Most of the huge waves appear after earthquakes. Most waves are 15 ______ in the Indian and the Pacific Oceans where volcanoes are active. The mass of water 16 ______ from the bottom of the ocean and moves to the shore. It moves at the speed of a plane and can be up to 40 meters high. The wave is very 17 ______ and dangerous. In 2004, a tsunami happened in the Indian Ocean. It was one of most terrible natural disasters in history. It 18 ______ 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean. Thousands of people were killed or went missing.

Snowdon is the highest mountain in Wales. It is 13 ______ in a national park. It stands at 1085 metres 14 ______ sea level, and it is often described as the busiest mountain in Great Britain. Snowdon is very popular with tourists. If you are strong and brave 15 ______ to get to the top, you can enjoy wonderful views from there. On a clear day, you can see as far as Ireland! During the summer months there is a café at the top. There, tourists can 16 ______ a welcome cup of tea, or soup if the weather is cold. If you 17 ______ too tired to walk back, you can always take the train down the mountain. The mountain railway was 18 ______ in 1896. It is safe, and there have never been any accidents on this route.

Most people enjoy watching the night sky. And the 13 ______ object in the sky is the Moon. Every night the Moon rises in the East and sets in the West. It takes about 27 days to go around the Earth, and it’s an interesting fact that we always 14 ______ the same side of the Moon. The Moon is the 15 ______ object to the Earth. It would take us only 13 hours to get to the Moon by rocket. If we were able to 16 ______ at the speed of light, it would take a bit less than two seconds.

There is a very 17 ______ atmosphere on the Moon. Life is not possible there. In spite of this, the Moon can be used as a base for space exploration and even for space tourism. Some space companies say that they will be able to 18 ______ tourists to the Moon as soon as in 2020.

People have always wanted to discover new things and new worlds. We have built spaceships to go to other planets and are planning to 13 ______ other galaxies one day. Meanwhile, we know very 14 ______ about our own planet. The oceans, which cover 70 percent of the planet, are an unknown world to us. The Pacific Ocean is the largest one. The 15 ______ point on the Earth is also there. It is 16 ______ Challenger Deep and it was discovered in 1875. The Pacific Ocean 17 ______ from the Arctic Ocean to the coast of Antarctica. But most of its water is in the warm tropics, which 18 ______ it warm. A lot of fish and animals live in the Pacific Ocean. The place is still waiting for researchers to discover its secrets for us.

The Arctic Ocean is the smallest ocean of the world. It covers the 13 ______ polar region of the Earth. The Arctic region is a very cold place. The lowest 14 ______ temperature there is minus 68 degrees. In spite of the cold, a lot of animals live on the Arctic ice. The polar bear is one of them. Now, due to global warming, the polar bear is in a 15 ______ trouble. The thing is that polar bears 16 ______ seals and they need ice to do this. The bears wait for seals on the ice, hunt them in the water and go back to the shore. If the ice is too thin, it 17 ______ under the bears’ heavy bodies and they may drown. The situation is getting 18 ______ and some researchers say the ocean may become ice-free as soon as 2050.

In 1642 a French student invented the first 13 ______ calculator. He was only 18 and the counting machine was a present for his father. The father worked as a tax collector and the young man wanted to make his job 14 ______.

The talented inventor made several machines but nobody 15 ______ interested. The young man was ahead of his time. Many years passed before people 16 ______ how useful these machines could be and started mass producing them.

Today most mechanical calculators have been 17 ______ with electronic models. These small devices can 18 ______ a lot of mathematical operations. You just need to enter the numbers by pressing the keys and you’ll see the final result on the screen in no time.

One day a young man who lived 13 ______ the lake in a small American town asked himself, “Why can’t people ski on water if they can ski on snow?” With his brother’s help he constructed several models of skis to test his ideas. He 14 ______ on the local lake for a few days and created skis 15 ______ for the water. This happened in 1922. The young man, who was only 18 at that time, didn’t 16 ______ his invention. However, he performed a lot of shows 17 ______ the country that made him and the sport of water skiing popular. Later, he was 18 ______ as the creator of a new sport – water skiing.

Water skiing equipment has been greatly improved since that time, and the number of people who enjoy this sport is growing in many countries.

The telescope is the oldest and probably the most effective tool to 13 ______ space. It has been used by astronomers since the 16th century and it has tremendously changed our knowledge of the universe. Certainly, the telescope itself has changed a 14 ______ since that time too.

The most famous telescope nowadays, the Hubble Telescope, works in space, in 15 ______ Earth orbit. It works from above the atmosphere of the Earth and that is why it 16 ______ fantastically clear photos. The Hubble was 17 ______ into space on 24th April, 1990 from the Space Shuttle Discovery and is still in operation. Scientists say its information could help them to 18 ______ the mystery of the black holes and to understand how they form.

Kuznеtsky Most is onе of thе oldеst strееts of Moscow. It is locatеd in thе vеry cеntеr of thе city and has always bееn a strееt with thе most 13 __________ shops in thе capital. Many of those shops belonged to French families and had French names. This was the reason why the street survived the Fire of Moscow in 1812  — Napoleon’s army 14 __________ the shops of their compatriots. Today, the name of the street, which can be translated into English as Smiths’ Bridge, may sound 15 __________ to those who do not know its history because there is no real bridge anywhere close to it, nor is there any river or lake nearby where a bridge might be 16 __________. But in reality the river exists. It is 17 __________ the Neglinka and it flows under the ground in canals that were created for it in the early 19th century. When the river was 18 __________ under the ground in 1819 and the bridge was turned into a road, many people found it funny that the street preserved its name.