The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens in 1896.There are nine sports: cycling, tennis, gymnastics, swimming, athletics, weightlifting, rowing, wrestling and shooting. Sailing was also to have taken place, but had to be cancelled (取消) because of bad weather at sea.

In the first Olympics there were no real team sports. Then, slowly, a few team sports joined the program. Football and hockey were the first team sports introduced into the Olympics in London in 1908.Then in 1936, at the Berlin Olympics, the Germans brought in handball and the Americans had basketball accepted as an Olympic sport.

It often happens that the country that introduces a new sport into the Olympics then goes on to win the gold medals. In 1904, at the Olympics in St. Louis, the Americans introduced boxing and won all seven events. Five horse riding events were introduced into the 1912 Stockholm (斯德哥尔摩) Olympics, and Swedish riders won four of them. And in 1964, at the Tokyo Olympics, two sports which are popular in Japan were introduced: judo (柔道) and volleyball. The Japanese won all three gold medals in the judo, and also won the first women’s volleyball competition. Some new sports have recently been added to the Olympics. In Los Angeles, in 1984, baseball was introduced and became an Olympic sport. In Seoul (汉城), Korea in 1988, table tennis was introduced for the first time, and tennis returned as an Olympic sport. Unlike tennis, some sports, such as golf and rugby (橄榄球), have been tried in the Olympics but have never returned.

Possibly the funniest day of the year is April Fools’ Day. 【小题1】 On that day, people usually play tricks and jokes on friends and family, and sometimes strangers. The phrase to use is “April Fools!” after you complete a trick or joke. But there is much more to this day than these common facts. There is a mysterious history of this celebration. There is no real consensus (共识) on when the holiday officially or unofficially began.

The earliest possible mention of April Fools’ Day is in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, written in 1392. In the story “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” it is mentioned that “Syn March bigan thritty dayes and two”. 【小题2】 However, modern scholars believe there was a misprint.

The next piece of evidence about April Fools’ Day comes from the French poet Eloy d’Amerval. He wrote about “poisson d’avril”. 【小题3】 Some scholars say that April Fools’ Day started in the Middle Ages in Europe, where some people celebrated the New Year on April 1^st. Those who had New Year’s Day on January 1st made fun of those who partook (共享) in the celebration on April 1st by sending people fish.

【小题4】 In 1686, writer and philosopher John Aubrey wrote about a celebration called “Fooles Holy Day”. It is certain that the celebration became popular through Great Britain in the 18th. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event. As time went on and the celebration became more widespread, it became a one-day holiday.

As you might have noticed, April Fools’ Day has a confusing history. There are multiple theories about its origins. It variously started in many different places. It may also have different meanings. 【小题5】

The Art of Healing

If no further evidence available of the sophistication of China in the Tang Dynasty, then a look at Chinese medicine would be sufficient. At the western end of the Eurasian continent, the Roman empire disappeared, and there was nowhere new to claim the important position of the cultural and political centre of the world. In fact, for a few centuries, the centre happened to be the capital of the Tang Empire, which boasted its national health service, and Chinese medicine under the Tang was far ahead of European medicine. The organizational context of health and healing was structured to a degree that had never happened in China before and found a similar one nowhere else.

An Imperial Medical Office had been inherited from previous dynasties: it was immediately restructured and staffed with directors, chief and assistant medical directors, pharmacists and managers of medicinal herb gardens. Within the first two decades after enforcing its rule, the Tang administration set up one central and several provincial medical colleges to train students in one or all of the departments of medicine, acupuncture (针灸) and physical therapy. Physicians were given positions in governmental medical service only after passing qualifying exams. They were paid according to the number of cures they had effected during the past year.

In 723, Emperor Xuanzong personally composed a formulary of prescriptions（方剂集）recommended to him by an imperial pharmacist and sent it to all the provincial medical schools. An Arabic traveller, who visited China in 851, noted with surprise that prescriptions from the emperor’s formulary were posted on notice boards at crossroads to enhance the welfare of the population.

The government protected people from potentially harmful medical practice. The Tang legal code was the first in China to include laws concerned with harmful medical practice. For example, to treat patients for money without following standard procedures was defined as deceiving combined with theft and had to be tried as theft. If such therapies resulted in death of a patient, the healer was to be sent to a remote place for years. In case a physician purposely failed to practice according to the standards, he was to be tried as murdering. Even if no harm resulted, he was to be punished.