ОТВЕТЫ НА ЗАДАНИЯ 3 ТУРА ПО АНГЛИЙСКОМУ ЯЗЫКУ

1. English is the only one that is accepted to write the pronoun “I” with a capital letter. However, it’s not related with some special egocentrism English. The pronoun “I” comes from old German word “ich” and at first was written as “ic” with a small letter. Then the pronunciation was changed, and last letter hasn’t used anymore. At the end of the XIV century Chaucer wrote his “Canterbury Tales”, where the personal pronoun “I” was higher than other letters. Since that time, it began to write with a capital letter.
2. George Washington Statue has stood in London since 1924 near the National Gallery in London. The first American president George Washington had never visited the UK. One day he said: “I’ll never step on British land”. Many years later, after the death of G. Washington, Americans gave his statue as a gift to the UK with some American land, on which this monument was erected.
3. In the famous song from novel by Stevenson “Treasure Island” there is an exclamation “Yo-ho-ho and the bottle of rum!” It is logical to assume that the “Yo-ho-ho” is laughing pirates, but it isn’t. “Yo-ho-ho” is a variant of “yo-heave-ho”, used by sailors in pulling or lifting together, as when hauling at a rope or heaving an anchor up. This exclamation means something like Russian «Раз, два, взяли…» or «Эх, дубинушка, ухнем…»
4. For a long time coins were made primarily of the precious metals silver and gold and the value of coins was equivalent to the amount they contain metal. In this regard, there was a problem - crooks cut small pieces of metal from the edges to make them into new coins. An English physicist and mathematician Isaac Newton, who was a part-time employee of the British Royal Mint, proposed a solution. His idea was simple - cut the edges of the coins in small lines, for which damaged edge would have been immediately noticeable. This part of the coins issued so to this day is called the edge.
   
5. London Duck Tour (“London duckling”) is a fun, unusual tour. Several amphibians painted in bright yellow colour and called “ducks” are used as the vehicle. All amphibians took part in World War II. The tour includes sightseeing, and even journey by land and by water. The tour starts from Chicheley Street, which is located behind the London Eye. During the tour, you will see: Big Ben, Westminster Palace and Trafalgar Square and then you will have a journey on the River Thames.
6. The teddy bear is named after U.S. President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt.

In 1902, President Roosevelt participated in a bear-hunting trip in Mississippi. While hunting, Roosevelt declared the behavior of the other hunters “unsportsmanlike” after he refused to kill a bear cub they had captured. As news of the hunting trip spread it became the topic of a political cartoon by Clifford Berryman in The Washington Post on November 16, 1902. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, New York, a shop owner named Morris Michtom saw the cartoon and had an idea. He decided to make plush, stuffed bears to sell in his shop. He asked Roosevelt for permission to use the name "Teddy's Bear" for his toys, as a reminder of the bear Roosevelt had set free. They were an instant success. Ladies and children carried the bears with them in public. President Roosevelt even used the teddy bear as his mascot when he ran for re-election. November, 14^th has been designated American Teddy Bear’s Day.

7. “Backs” or “bucks” is a slang name for a dollar.

There are some versions about the origin of this word:

1) From the word "buckskin" - reindeer skins. These skins were means of payment for Americans in 1748.

2) From the word “green back”. Green colour comes from the back of the American banknotes (1861).

3) From  English word “sawbuck "or “sawhorse”, which looked like large painted Roman numerals X on the back side of the first 10-dollar bill  in 1861.

8. Madam Tussaud’s is the most popular wax Museum in London, which has branches in 19 cities: Amsterdam, Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Washington, D.C., Vienna, Berlin, etc. There is no other place where you can see all the celebrities at once, even if they are only wax figures. Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, the British Royal family, Bill Clinton, Jack the Ripper... So if you want to rub shoulders with kings and queens or the latest pop stars, or probably with notorious criminals, this is the place to go. The museum is situated in Marylebone Road, not far from the street, which is famous as the home of the first great detective in fiction, Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. There are famous people from our country in this museum too. In London museum you can see the figures of former presidents of Russia Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the current Russian President Vladimir Putin; and also you can see an actor Gerard Depardieu who is now also a Russian citizen, a hockey player Alexander Ovechkin in Washington, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin in Amsterdam, Maria Sharapova in Hong Kong, etc.
9. Vasily Borisovich Livanov was born on 19 July 1935. He is a Russian film actor, a film director, a screenwriter and an artist. In the late 1970s and in the 1980s, Livanov played the role of Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles and other Holmes TV series directed by Igor Maslennikov. Livanov's performance as Holmes was so highly regarded in England that on February 20, 2006, Queen Elizabeth II awarded Livanov an honorary Commandership in the Order of the British Empire "for service to the theatre and performing arts," a rare honor for a non-British citizen. Livanov's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes is largely considered one of the best in the world. The daughter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jean Conan Doyle once commented that her father would approve Livanov as Holmes.
10. Kangaroo - a common myth about its English name is that it came from the Aboriginal words for “I don't understand you”. The name was first recorded on 4 August 1770, by Captain James Cook on the banks of the Endeavour River at the site of modern Cooktown, when HM Bark Endeavour was beached for almost 7 weeks to repair damage sustained on the Great Barrier Reef. This gave Cook and his naturalist Joseph Banks time to explore the area and the plants and animals. They asked an Aborigine the name of an interesting animal that was very tall and hopped on its two back feet. The local responded “Kan-ga-roo”, meaning “I don't understand you”, which Cook took to be the name of the creature. This myth was debunked in the 1970s by linguist John B. Havilland in his research with the Guugu Yimithirr people.

Источники информации при составлении вопросов игры 2014 года

1. Словарь употребительных английских пословиц М.В.Буковская и др. - М., Рус.яз., 1985 
2. Мир знаний М., Астрель  АСТ, 2002
3. www.smittenbybritain.com
4. en.wikipedia.org
5. http://muzey-factov.ru
6. http://www.interbridgestudy.ru
7. http://www.calend.ru
8. https://www.google.ru
9. blog.dictionary.com
10. http://zanimatika.narod.ru
11. http://fanparty.ru/fanclubs/teddy
12. English Idioms and How to Use Them, Jennifer Seidl, W McMordie. - Oxford University Press, 1978