英语听力：自然百科 尼尔斯湖怪之谜

 Loch Ness(尼斯湖), a beautiful but forbidding（可怕的）lake in the Scottish Highlands. The first recorded sighting of a Loch Ness monster goes all the way back to the 6th century when an Irish monk¹ was said to have chastised（责骂） the vicious creature and ordered it back into the depth. But it wasn't until a string of sightings in the 1930s that hunting for the Loch Ness monster began in earnest.

 

London tabloids（小报） printed eyewitness² accounts and they desperately³ wanted a photo to go with the stories. In 1934, a London surgeon named R. Kenneth Wilson provided this snapshot. The image was immediately dubbed⁴ "the Surgeon's Photo". It was printed and reprinted, appearing in countless⁵ newspapers and books, and the Loch Ness legend continued to grow.

 

Then nearly 60 years later, a man named Christian⁶ Spurling made a stunning⁷ revelation. The photo was the brainchild(想法) of his stepfather Duke Wetherell, a flamboyant（爱炫耀的） big game hunter, the Daily Mail（每日邮报）had sent to Loch Ness to capture Nessie（怪兽的昵称） on film. According to Spurling, when Duke failed to come up with a photo, the paper fired him. So Wetherell decided⁸ to settle the score（以牙还牙）. Wetherell took a toy submarine, fashioned a Nessie-shaped head and neck, and launched the monster in the shallows of Loch Ness. He took the famous photo and later convinced the London surgeon to claim it as his own.

1 monk   

n.和尚，僧侣，修道士

参考例句：

• The man was a monk from Emei Mountain.那人是峨眉山下来的和尚。
• Buddhist monk sat with folded palms.和尚合掌打坐。

2 eyewitness   

n.目击者，见证人

参考例句：

• The police questioned several eyewitness to the murder.警察询问了谋杀案的几位目击者。
• He was the only eyewitness of the robbery.他是那起抢劫案的唯一目击者。

3 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

4 dubbed   

v.给…起绰号( dub的过去式和过去分词 )；把…称为；配音；复制

参考例句：

• Mathematics was once dubbed the handmaiden of the sciences. 数学曾一度被视为各门科学的基础。
• Is the movie dubbed or does it have subtitles? 这部电影是配音的还是打字幕的？ 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 countless   

adj.无数的，多得不计其数的

参考例句：

• In the war countless innocent people lost their lives.在这场战争中无数无辜的人丧失了性命。
• I've told you countless times.我已经告诉你无数遍了。

6 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

7 stunning   

adj.极好的；使人晕倒的

参考例句：

• His plays are distinguished only by their stunning mediocrity.他的戏剧与众不同之处就是平凡得出奇。
• The finished effect was absolutely stunning.完工后的效果非常美。

8 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。