Questões Militares Comentadas por alunos sobre interpretação de texto | reading comprehension em inglês

Anonymous

        The Statue of Liberty is probably the ______ icon of the USA.

       ( ...) When the American Civil war ended, Édouard de Laboulaye wanted to commemorate the end of the slave trade with a gift. He and other people who opposed slavery raised money and hired a sculptor, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, to design the Statue. Bartholdi later employed the French engineer, Gustave Eiffel, to devise its structure.

        Eiffel designed the Statue to be built around a massive metal skeleton, similar to the Eiffel Tower. In 2018, a map dealer bought some historic papers at an auction in Paris, which included original plans. After special treatment, the papers clearly showed that Eiffel’s plans had been changed by Bartholdi.

       (...) We don’t know what Eiffel thought of Bartholdi’s changes. By then, Eiffel was working on other projects, and only his assistants were working with Bartholdi.

      (...) At first, visitors could climb a ladder to the torch in Liberty’s arm, but in 1916, there was an explosion on a nearby island. It damaged the Statue and made it unsafe, and the stairway to the torch has been closed ever since. During restoration work in the 1980s, engineers noticed that the structure inside Liberty’s head, shoulders, and arm were different from how they were shown on Eiffel’s plans. They thought that the builders had made mistakes, but some historians believed that Bartholdi had changed Eiffel’s design. The newly discovered papers confirm those theories.

       A few decades ago, professional footballers spent their nights partying. Now, they are much more aware of the benefits of a good night’s sleep.

     The change began in the mid-1990s, when mattress salesman Nick Littlehales contacted the manager of the Manchester United football team, Alex Ferguson, asking whether he had ever considered how sleep affected performance on the pitch. Interested, Ferguson arranged for Littlehales to give a presentation to his team.

        Gradually, club managers began to pay more attention to scientific sleep research, and for good reason. (...)

         Now, many teams and players are making an effort to improve their sleep patterns, using various means. James Milner from Manchester City found it hard to sleep after evening games, so would play computer games into the early hours. As a result, he was too tired to train the following morning. Since these interventions are cheap and effective, even the less well-known teams can benefit. (...)

          Whereas in the past, playing after a party and a few hours’ sleep was seen as a badge of honour, a good sleep is now considered an essential part of performance.