Лёгкие тексты > Газета "ENGLISH for Kids & Adults"

		Easy reading
SUPERMAN
	Why do so mamy people like Superman? Do you like to read books about heroes? Do you like to see movies? Do you have any real-life heroes? «Look, up In the sky. It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!» Everyone knows Superman. Old people know Superman. Young people know Superman. He is famous. Millions of people buy Superman comic books. Here is the story of Superman. It is 1939. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster are high school students. Jerry wants to be a writer. Joe wants to be an artist. They like to work together. One writes. The other draws pictures. They write stories with pictures for comic books. One day. Jerry has a great new idea. It is Superman! Superman is from another planet. But nobody knows. He lives like an ordinary person.
Superman does good things for people. Joe draws Superman. Joe and Jerry want to sell their story. They want to make money. But nobody buys Superman. Finally, after many years, someone wants to buy Superman. Jerry and Joe are very excited. But they sell Superman for only a little money. Superman becomes a great success. The people who own Superman make millions of dollars. But Joe and Jerry are poor. It is 1975. Joe cannot see well now. He cannot draw. He lives in a small apartment. Jerry works for very little money. The two men are both old and poor. They are angry, too. They tell the newspapers about their situation. Finally, the owners of Superman give Joe and Jerry some money. The money helps the old men. But it is still not much. Other people make a lot more money from Superman. It is also 30 years too late. Superman is famous. His owners are rich. But Joe and Jerry are not so lucky.

UNCLE SAM
	Who is the man in the picture? What is he wearing? Do you think this man is real? Uncle Sam is a tall, thin man. He’s an older man with white hair and a white beard. He often wears a tall hat, a bow tie, and the stars and stripes of the American flag. Would you believe that Uncle Sam is the U.S. government? But why do we call the U.S. government Uncle Sam? During the War of 1812, the U.S. government hired meat packers to provide meat to the army. One of these meat packers was a man named Samuel Wilson. Samuel was a friendly and fair man. Everyone liked him and called him Uncle Sam. Sam Wilson stamped the boxes of meat for the army with a large U.S. — for United States. Some government inspectors came to look over Sam’s company. They asked a worker what the U.S. on the boxes stood for. As a joke, the worker answered that these letters stood for the name of his boss, Uncle Sam. The joke spread, and soldiers began saying that their food came from Uncle Sam.
Before long, people called all things that came from the government «Uncle Sams.» «Uncle Sam» became a nickname for the U.S. government. Soon there were drawings and cartoons of Uncle Sam in newspapers. In these early pictures, Uncle Sam was a young man. He wore stars and stripes, but his hair was dark and he had no beard. The beard was added when Abraham Lincoln was President. President Lincoln had a beard. The most famous picture of Uncle Sam is on a poster from World War I. The government needed men to fight in the war. In the poster, a very serious Uncle Sam points his finger and says, «I want YOU for the U.S. Army.»