Table of contents for No 458 in Speak Up

With the slogan “My name is Jimmy Carter and I’m running for President”, Washington outsider James Earl Carter Jr., a former peanut farmer from the American Deep South, introduced himself as the Democrat who would return integrity to US politics. While he did not quite1 succeed, Carter stands out2 as a president who did everything he could to make America moral again. PEANUTS TO PRESIDENT Born in Georgia on 1 October 1924, Carter won the US presidency in 1976. It was a time of despondency3: the Watergate scandal had led to Richard Nixon’s resignation but his successor, Gerald Ford, had issued4 a presidential pardon5, enraging6 many people. Carter was deeply religious but he was also just, and wanted both US domestic and foreign policy to be “competent and compassionate.”In his…

PLACES INTERVIEW Until the end of 2023, London is celebrating the history, heritage and innovation of the Tube with a series of activities and events. Some of these are organised by the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. Here you can discover how the evolution of the British capital has been shaped from the 19th century on by its transport system. Also on show are historic vehicles and other exhibits, including the very first1 Tube map design. To find out more, Speak Up contacted Sam Mullins, director and chief executive of the London Transport Museum. We began by asking him about the Tube’s long history. Sam Mullins (English accent): From 1800 to the First World War, London grew six times in population, from 1 million to 6.5 million. So it’s…

CULTUREINTERVIEW In 2021, US President Joe Biden designated 10 October Indigenous People’s Day. It falls two days before the now-controversial Columbus Day celebration. The aim1 of Indigenous People’s Day is to honour the sovereignty, resilience and cultural heritage2 of the Native American people, and to acknowledge3 the painful history of wrongs and atrocities that many European explorers inflicted on Native communities after Columbus journeyed to the Americas in the late 1500s. To find out more about Columbus Day and its controversial history, Speak Up talked with Professor Laura Ruberto of the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at Berkeley City College. After extensive research on the topic, Ruberto co-authored4 a series of articles on the Italian American engagement5 with Columbus as an identitarian symbol. We began by asking what sparked6…

An epic western crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon is based on the 2017 non-fiction book by David Grann. Set in 1920s Oklahoma in the American Midwest, it tells the true story of serial murders of members of Native American tribe the Osage Nation. The movie stars Robert De Niro as real-life figure William Hale, and Leonardo Di-Caprio as his nephew1 Ernest Burkhart. Both are self-appointed2 white guardians sanctioned3 by US law to look after the Osage’s wealth after oil is discovered on their land. Ernest marries Osage woman Mollie, but then follows his uncle’s orders to steal the tribe’s money by killing its people, one by one. CRIMINAL COMPLICITY Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth spent years adapting Grann’s book for the screen. As…

PLACESINTERVIEW The International African American Museum (IAAM) in Charleston, South Carolina opened in 2023 after a twenty-year campaign to raise1 the $100 million to build it. The museum stands on Gadsden’s Wharf, where an estimated 45 per cent of enslaved Africans entered the US after a journey from West Africa to America, across the so-called Middle Passage. On arrival2, women, men and children were shackled3 in a storehouse4 until they were sold in the city markets. Martina Morale is the director of curatorial and special exhibitions at the IAAM. We began by asking her how you begin to address the sheer5 scale of cruelty and suffering. As she explained, the location of the museum is considered a sacred site because so many human beings were tortured and died there. Martina…

ARTÍCULOS POR NIVELES Todos nuestros artículos se presentan con un código de color para indicar el nivel de dificultad del inglés empleado de acuerdo con la Common European Framework of Reference for Languages. A2 PRE-INTERMEDIATE B1 LOWER INTERMEDIATE B2 UPPER INTERMEDIATE C1 ADVANCED C2 PROFICIENCY GLOSARIO Encontrarás el vocabulario más relevante de cada artículo indicado con un número en el color correspondiente a su nivel de dificultad y su traducción en el glosario adjunto. A towering1 figure in British history, Queen Victoria was actually a diminutive figure, just one metre fifty EXPLAINS Los textos subrayados en amarillo indican que la frase requiere de una explicación más extensa, como referencias históricas o culturales, frases hechas, proverbios o argot. Encontrarás la explicación al final del artículo. SPEAK UP IN CLASS Cada mes…

TOP BRITS The Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) made one of the most important discoveries in history when he accidentally happened on1 the world’s first-ever antibiotic. Penicillin has been described as a “miracle cure” and the “single greatest victory ever achieved2 over disease3.” The discovery, made in 1928, changed the course of medicine by starting the antibiotic revolution, and it has saved the lives of millions of people. SAVING LIVES Fleming first started to make history during the First World War, working as a doctor. He saw the death of many soldiers from sepsis resulting from infected wounds4. In an article in the medical journal The Lancet, he said that antiseptics actually worsened5 some injuries, but he was ignored. He saved many soldiers’ lives by washing deep wounds with…

Hi, I need to travel on the Tube, but I don’t have an Oyster card. Is that possible? Yes, of course, you can still buy paper tickets. But there are Visitor Oyster cards, too, you know. Oh, really? I didn’t know that. Isn’t that a lot more expensive, though1? No, fares are actually2 cheaper than single paper tickets or paper Travelcards. But don’t I need to pay for the card itself? Yes, it’s a contactless card that costs £5. You load it with credit which you pay as you go. I’m only here for the weekend. What happens if I haven’t spent3 it all? Whatever4 credit you have left never expires. Then, if you come back, you just top it up. Oh, well, I’m sure I’ll be back, so I…

SCIENCE The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or Webb) is the biggest and most sophisticated space observatory ever built. Launched on 25 December 2021, its five to ten year mission is to send back images of the first stars forming in galaxies at a distance of some 13.7 billion1 light years away. At that time, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the universe was in its infancy. LIGHT-YEARS AWAY Because of the way light travels, the further we look into space the further back in time we see. To complicate matters2, the universe is expanding, so objects move away faster the further they are. In 1990, a revolutionary telescope called the Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) was launched into space and is still up there…

CULTURE The bald eagle1 is the national emblem of the United States. It appears in many government institutions and on official documents, as well as on the president’s flag2, military insignia and billions of one-dollar bills3. However, not everyone was happy about its choice4 as America’s national bird. 18th-century statesman Benjamin Franklin preferred the turkey5, believing the bald eagle to be “a bird of bad moral character”. DISTINCTIVE STYLE The bald eagle is the only eagle native to North America. It is strikingly6 colourful, with a yellow beak7 and eyes and a white head and tail8 that contrast with the rest of its dark-brown feathered9 body. It is not born this way: eaglets10 have a brown beak, eyes and feathers, but their colours change at the age of four or…

SCIENCE On 5 October 1823 the first edition of an independent general medical journal appeared on London’s newsstands1. Its editor was Thomas Wakley, a surgeon2 from Devon, who brought on medical colleagues William Lawrence and James Wardrop, journalist William Cobbett, and a libel3 lawyer as associates. PRIVILEGE AND NEPOTISM Wakley named the journal The Lancet after the small very sharp4 surgical instrument, more commonly known as a ‘scalpel’. The weekly publication claimed to report on London’s hospital lectures5 and describe the important cases of the day. However, Wakley’s specific aim6 was to attack incompetence, privilege and nepotism in the British medical establishment. MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT The journal dissected medical lectures, exposed malpractices, and even accused the nephew7 of the president of the Royal College of Surgeons of incompetence (in his…

This year, London is celebrating the 160th anniversary of one of its most famous icons: the London Underground, aka1 ‘the Tube’. The underground passenger railway was proposed by Charles Pearson, a city solicitor2, as part of a city improvement3 plan. In 1843, a pioneering tunnel connecting South East London and East London had opened. The Thames Tunnel had become a major tourist attraction as well as a speedy way to cross the city by carriage4 or on foot. Why not, thought Pearson, do the same and provide transportation, too? STEAM TO ELECTRIC On 10 January 1863, the world’s first London Underground line opened between Paddington (then Bishop’s Road) and Farringdon Street in London. Based on the overground train, wooden carriages were pulled5 along by steam locomotives6 that burned coke7 and…

CULTURE Italian explorer Christopher Columbus never set foot1 in what is now the US, but he is the third most memorialised2 person in the nation, behind Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. He is particularly celebrated on Columbus Day on 12 October. This annual celebration is now highly controversial — but it is a big deal3 for many Italian Americans, especially those who live in New York City. LATE STARTER Columbus only became an American symbol three hundred years after his death, in 1506 because 18th-century revolutionaries seeking4 independence from Britain needed a historical figurehead5, a hero who could unite the young country. The first celebration of Columbus Day dates back to 1792. However, controversy over Columbus Day began in the 19th century, when anti-immigrant groups rejected it because of its…

To burn one’s bridges’ means to commit yourself to an irreversible course. It could be cutting off a relationship with someone (the infamous ‘blocking’ them on your phone!) or leaving a city, a country or a continent without any chance of returning (think Brexit). The idiom originated in ancient Rome, but came into common use as a military term in the late 1800s. It is usually used in the negative as a warning: “Keep your options open! Don’t burn your bridges!” It was a practice in Roman warfare to destroy bridges. Sometimes to stop the enemy from escaping, sometimes to leave no way for the Roman army to go back. This sense that burning one’s bridges may hurt you as much as it rejects the situation you leave behind is…