A boy called Mario had many friends, and he was proud of it. Whoever he met, he would like to show off(炫耀) how popular he was at school.
One day, his grandpa said to him, “Mario, I know that you don’t have as many friends as you think. Many of them are not true to you.”
Mario thought maybe his grandpa was right. However, he wasn’t sure how he could test whether his schoolmates were real friends or not, so he asked his grandpa. The old man answered, “I have just exactly what you need. It’s in my room. Wait a minute.” The old man left, soon returning as if(好像) carrying something in his hand, but Mario could see nothing there.
“Take it. It’s a very special chair. Because it’s invisible, it will be hard for you to sit on it. However, if you manage to sit on it, you can use the chair’s magic power（力量） to tell who your real friends are.”
Mario took the strange invisible chair to school. At break time he asked everyone to form a circle, and he put himself in the middle, with his chair.
“Nobody move. You’re about to see something amazing，” said Mario. Then he tried sitting on the chair. Having difficulty seeing it, he missed and fell to the ground. Everyone had a pretty good laugh. “Wait, wait,” said Mario, making another try. But again he missed the seat.
Mario didn’t give up. He kept trying to sit on the magic chair. Finally, he did it. This time he felt himself in mid-air.
Then he experienced the magic that his grandpa had been talking about. Looking around, Mario saw George, Lucas and Diana holding him up, so he wouldn’t fall. But some schoolmates whom he had regarded as friends had done nothing but made fun of him. Mario was quite thankful to his grandpa, who helped him test who his true friends were.
【小题1】Mario’s grandpa gave him a special chair to _____.

Everyone would like to be remembered. A few people even try to do something that no one else in history has ever tried to do. These people sometimes have their names recorded（记录）in the Guinness Book of Records.
Often it takes a group of people to do something unusual. One such team paddled（用桨划）a bathtub（浴缸）145 kilometers for 24 hours. This group had 13 members. They paddled their bathtub on a river near Ashford, Great Britain on May 28 and 29. 1983. A month later, a racing team of hospital bed pushers in Avon, Great Britain, pushed a hospital bed 16 kilometers in just 50 minutes! However, the distance（距离）record for hospital bed pushing is still held by the men of Bruntsfield Bedding Center. This team from Edinburgh pushed a hospital bed 5,203 kilometers in 1979. It took the team 35 days to cover the distance.
Another group of record makers held the highest dinner party in the world. Nine people from Sydney,Australia, climbed Mountain Huascaran on June 28, 1989. The climbers carried a dinner table. chairs, and a meal up the mountain. When they reached the top, they all put on warm suits for dinner.
People all over the world are trying hard to do something unusual to make a record. It should be understood, however, that now not all the records will be kept in the Guinness Book of Records

1. 1.

   According to the passage, what record was made near Ashford in May, 1983?

   1. A.
      A record for paddling a bathtub
   2. B.
      A record for climbing a mountain
   3. C.
      A record for pushing a hospital bed
   4. D.
      A record for swimming across a river
2. 2.

   The word cover in the passage means _______

   1. A.
      start
   2. B.
      go through
   3. C.
      keep
   4. D.
      know
3. 3.

   What was unusual about the highest dinner party held by the nine people in the passage?

   1. A.
      The people who held the dinner party all came from Sydney
   2. B.
      Only nine people held the highest dinner party
   3. C.
      They had a meal on the mountain
   4. D.
      They carried a dinner table and chairs up the mountain to hold the dinner party
4. 4.

   Which of the following shows the right order（顺序）of what happened in the passage?
   a. A group of 13 members paddled a bathtub on a river near Ashford.
   b. A team from Edinburgh made a distance record for hospital bed pushing.
   c. A group of nine people from Sydney had a dinner party on the top of Mountain Huascaran.
   d. A racing team pushed a hospital bed 16 kilometers in just 50 minutes in Avon

   1. A.
      a-b-c-d
   2. B.
      d-b-c-a
   3. C.
      a-d-b-c
   4. D.
      b-a-d-c
5. 5.

   Which of the following is mentioned（提及）in the passage?

   1. A.
      Hospital bed pushing was a popular sport in Edinburgh
   2. B.
      People living in Ashford usually used a bathtub to carry things
   3. C.
      Two different records for hospital bed pushing were given
   4. D.
      Hospital bed pushing was held twice a year in Avon, Great Britain