文档介绍：2
2017年中考真题（阅读理解）
(2017•浙江宁波) D
THREE CENTURIES OF HQAXES（骗局；恶作剧）！
A THINKING MACHINE
In 1769, long before computers were invented, a man from Hungary（匈牙利）built a wonderful machine that could play chess very well. It delighted（使高兴）people all over Europe and beat nearly everyone it played, including famous figures like French leader Napoleon Bonaparte, and scientist and inventor Benjamin Franklin. For decades, many people believed that it was truly a thinking machine. There were people who said it was a hoax, but could not prove it or explain how it worked. About 85 years later, the secret was finally revealed. There was a man hiding inside the machine all the time……who was obviously very good at playing chess!
ZOO ESCAPE（逃脱）
On November 9, 1874, New York newspaper, The Herald, ran a shocking story on its front page. It said that all the animals in the Central Park Zoo had escaped and were running around the city. It said the police were working to save people, but 27 people had already been killed, and 200 people hurt. It warned everyone to stay at home to avoid the danger. Many people in New York were terrified, and did as the paper said. If only they had read the final words of the article, which said: “Not one word of it is true. Not a single act described has taken place,” It was all just a hoax. The story was made up by Thomas Connery, an editor at The Herald, who wanted to draw attention to the poor condition of cages in the zoo.
ROSIE THE RUNNER
The first woman to cross the finish line of the 1980 Boston Marathon（马拉松）was 23-year-old Rosie Ruiz. However, as she climbed the stairs to receive her prize, people started to become suspicious（怀疑的). She didn’t seem to be tired at all. Furthermore, none of the other runners remembered seeing her, and her picture never appeared in photos or TV broadcasts of the race. Later, several people said that they had seen her join the race only at the end. It turned out she had run only half a mile (about