The first known dress, as well as the earliest known bar and restaurant in France, were identified this week. The discoveries, reported in the journal Antiquity, provide a glimpse of what early life was like in both ancient Egypt and southern France thousands of years ago.

The garment, which dates to around 3482 BC, is known as the Tarkhan Dress, and now looks like a shabby and dirty shirt. When new, however, the linen dress would have looked fashionable even today, as researchers determined it featured a natural pale gray stripe with pleated sleeves and bodice. Its edge is missing, so the original length of the dress is unknown.

"The survival of highly perishable textiles（纺织品）in the archaeological record is exceptional（例外的）, the survival of complete, or almost complete, articles of clothing like the Tarkhan Dress is even more remarkable," Alice Stevenson, head of the University College London（UCL）Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, said in a press release.

Now that the dress' age has been confirmed, it has been named Egypt's oldest garment and is the oldest known surviving woven garment in the world. To calculate its age. Michael Dee of the University of Oxford and colleagues measured a small Sample of the dress to determine how much radiocarbon remained in the linen. Linen is especially   suitable for radiocarbon dating, according to the researchers, because it is made of flax fibers that grow over a relatively short time. The dress, currently on display at the UCI.

Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology, features wear and tear that date back to its earliest days. The researchers believe that a young teenager or a very slim woman wore it.

A separate study in the same journal reports the discovery of a hotel in southern France. At first the researcher thought that they had found a bakery, since they determined that the site once featured three huge ovens. They later, however, found that another nearby room across from a courtyard, had furniture lining its walls.

A Brief History of Eyeglasses

When it comes to inventions that have entirely changed human existence, what comes to mind? Probably it’s the wheel, the printing press, maybe the refrigerator and definitely personal computers. 【小题1】. Like eyeglasses, for example. Imagine a world without glasses—many of us would walk around knocking into things and driving our cars up onto the sidewalk. So who invented glasses, and how were they first made?

【小题2】. At some point in Italy between 1268 and 1289 someone came up with the idea, but the actual inventor remains mysterious. What we do know is that the earliest lenses were made from quartz(石英) and were usually set into bone, metal, or leather. 【小题3】, they started making lenses out of glass.

Although glasses spread quickly throughout Europe and Asia, there was one major problem: keeping them on the wearer’s face. 【小题4】. Ouch! It took nearly 400 years before opticians(验光师) figured out that accurate sidepieces resting on top of the ears might do the trick.

No history of glasses would be complete without some mention of Benjamin Franklin, who invented bifocals(双光眼镜) in the 1780s. Annoyed at having to constantly change glasses whenever he wanted to read or take in the sights while traveling, Franklin had his reading glasses cut in half and melted with his distance glasses. 【小题5】.

The words “England” and “English” are perhaps the two most misused words in the English language. The British themselves often say England and English when they really mean Britain and British.

What’s the difference, you may ask. To understand the question we have to know something about the history of the country and its people.

We all know that Britain is an island country separated from the European continent by the English Channel. Actually there are two main islands. The larger one is called Britain, or Great Britain, and the smaller one is called Ireland, and these two, together with many small islands make up what is called the British Isles.

The British Isles is a geographical term. It is not the name of any country. At present it is made up of two countries, the larger of which is the one we very often inaccurately call England. The full official name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but people call it Britain or Great Britain for that. It consists of England, Scotland, Wales and a small part of Ireland－the northeastern part.

People still tend to call Britain England not only because England is the largest in area and the most populous but mostly because England is the strongest and also the most influential country in every respect before it absorbed the other three countries(The whole of Ireland was a part of the United Kingdom at one time). Call it national chauvinism（沙文主义） if you like, but people in England call Britain England out of habit rather than conscious sense of superiority, though it annoys the Welsh and especially the Scots who are proud of their separate national tradition.