Short Stories in English

When people of the Stone Age wanted to get from one side of a deep river to the other, what did they do? There were no boats at first, so the only way to do so was to swim across. This problem of rivers was a big one in the Stone Age. Families had to move quite often. They moved to new forests in which the men could find food. They roamed far and wide – it was move, move, and move. When a group of people came to a shallow river, the grown-ups could walk across, carrying the babies and the small children in their arms. But when the river was deep and the current strong it was very difficult for men and women to swim across with the children. So people learnt to make boats. The earliest boats were certainly very simple – perhaps just logs. How was the idea born? Perhaps the idea came to a man who liked to think about an easier and happier time. Such a man, let us suppose, once stood on the bank of a river and saw a tree floating down the river. ‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘it’s

Washington is the capital of the United States of America. It is situated in the District of Columbia and is like no other city in the USA. It is the world's largest one-industry city and the industry is government. The White House, where the US President lives and works, the Capitol, the home of the US Congress, and the Supreme Court, are all in Washington.  Washington was named after the first US President George Washington.  He selected the place for the capital and Pierre L'Enfant, a French engineer, designed the city.  Washington was first settled in 1790 and since 1800 it has been the federal capital.  Washington is one of the most beautiful and unusual cities in the United States. In the very center of it rises the huge dome of the Capitol — a big white dome standing on a circle of pillars. The 535 members of the Congress meet here to discuss the nation's affairs. It is easy to get lost in this huge building, full of paintings and statues.  Not

Can you imagine life without films or television?  Today we can watch television 24 hours a day; we can go to the cinema or watch a movie at home or even on the go. We can make video films ourselves.  But imagine the surprise and the shock that people felt when they saw the first films in 1895! There was no sound, no color and the films were very short: they lasted from 60 to 90 seconds! Besides, they did not tell a story. They were glimpses of real life: a military parade, a running horse, a boxing match, the ocean ... One of the first films showed a train coming towards the camera. The audience panicked and ran away! The frightened people were sure that the train was coming into the theater.  The early films were shown in music halls, theaters, cafes and even shops. Travelling projectionists brought the films to smaller cities and country towns. The cinema was the perfect popular entertainment. It was not expensive and, at first, the audience consisted mainl

There are many strange stories about things, which happen on the sea. Some of these are not true; but one of the strangest is the true story of a ship, which was called the Mary Celeste. About a hundred years ago, this ship left New York and another ship also left New York at about the same time. The name of the second ship was the Dei Gratia, and is captain’s name was Morehouse. This second ship, the Dei Gratia, crossed the sea for some days, and nothing unusual happened. But then Morehouse and his men saw another ship far away over the water. For a long time they were unable to read the name on the other ship’s side. But when they were nearer they were able to read it. The name was the Mary Celeste. Many people know this name now, because something very strange happened in the Mary Celeste. Morehouse and his men watched the ship for some time. They did not feel very happy about it, because the Mary Celeste was moving very strangely on the water. Something unusu

For the last five years, Colin Harrison has been leading a life which was described in court yesterday as "a hellish nightmare of his own making". Harrison who is 34, met his first wife, Eileen, eight years ago. They soon had two children and Harrison seemed to settle down in a Bristol suburb to a "solid, respectable life as a devoted husband and father".  His only apparent problem was his job as a long-distance lorry driver. This took him away for almost half of every month on long drives up to the northeast of England, particularly around the Newcastle area. However, as the court learned, after three years of marriage, Harrison met another woman and fell in love with her. She was a young widow, Mrs. Claudia Paisley, whose husband had died in a tragic motorcar accident two years earlier. Harrison married her as well, and began to lead a double life. The first was in his home in Bristol, and the second was in the village of Ormley, near Newcastle, with his sec

Asteroids are the many thousands of small worlds most of which move round the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. By far the largest of the asteroids is Ceres, with a diameter of 485 miles. Pallas is 304 miles in diameter; no other is more than 300 miles. The asteroids are so small that they cannot have an atmosphere of any sort. They are airless and lifeless. The asteroid you can easily see without a telescope is Vesta. It is only 214 miles across. Much less than Ceres and Pallas, but it is the brightest of the little planets that is, the asteroids. Its distance from the Sun is about 200 million miles.  One American astronomer says that there may be 44,000 asteroids, but Russian scientists believe that there are as many as 100,000. A few asteroids have orbits that bring them very close to the Earth. In 1937, a very small asteroid called Hermes passed the earth at a distance of only 400,000 miles – less than twice the distance of the Moon. But the chances