Thousands of years ago, people used different ways to measure things. Some people used the sof their king s foot or hand to measure things. After the king died, they used the new king's foot or hand, and so on. However, it was ifor people to tell the exact size of a thing. In 1584, the Dutch(荷兰的) engineer Simon Steven started to think about a set of measures, The measures used the number ten. H, it was just an idea. No one was interested in his idea at that time.

    About two hundred years later, the French scientists created a nsystem of units, using Simon Steven's idea. Around this time, the French scientists wout the length of a metre and began to use metres to measure length. They decided to ca hundredth of a metre a centimetre and a thousand metres a kilometre.

    I used the new machine to wash the clothes. Everything worked well, but I found one of my husband's socks missing. I looked everywhere for it, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

    The next morning I got ready for school as usual. When the bell rang, the students came in. We began the class. When I turned round to write on the black-board, the class broke out a roar! They laughed and laughed. They laughed so much that I was afraid that the headmaster would be in to see this. I asked the class to stop, but the more I asked, the more they laughed. I decided to go on with my lessons and I wrote on the blackboard. When I did this, they roared even more.

    At last the teacher who had the room next to mine came in to see what had happened. When he came in, he started to laugh, too.

    "Oh, dear!" I said. "Will someone please tell me what is so interesting?"

    "God," said the teacher, "You have a brown sock on the back of your skirt!"

    So that's how I found my husbands missing sock.

    A man got into a train and found himself sitting beside a woman. She was about thirty-five years old. Soon they began talking to each other. He asked her, "Do you have a family?" "Yes, I have one son," the woman answered. "Oh, really?" said the man. "Does he smoke?" "No." The woman answered. "That's good", man was glad to say. "I don't smoke, either. Smoking is bad for one's body son drink wine?"

    "Oh, no," the woman answered at once. "He has never drunk wine." "Good!" the man said. "And does he ever come home late at night?" "No, never," "his neighbour answered. "He goes to bed after dinner every nigh." "Well," the man said. "He's a good young man. How old is he?"

    "He's a good young man He is six months old today," the woman answered with a smile.

She never fails an exam, ?

is quite awful for us on the wet road.