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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
photographed bridge in the world ? are visible from almost every point of elevation1 in San Francisco. The only cleft2 in Northern California's 600-mile continental3 wall, for years this mile-wide strait was considered unbridgeable. As much an architectural as an engineering feat4,The orange towers of the Golden Gate Bridge ? probably the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed bridge in the world ? are visible from almost every point of elevation in San Francisco. The only cleft in Northern California's 600-mile continental wall, for years this mile-wide strait was considered unbridgeable. As much an architectural as an engineering feat, the Golden Gate took only 52 months to design and build, and was opened in 1937. Designed by Joseph Strauss, it was the first really massive suspension bridge, with a span of 4200ft, and until 1959 ranked as the world's longest. It connects the city at its northwesterly point on the peninsula to Marin County and Northern California, rendering5 the hitherto essential ferry crossing redundant6, and was designed to withstand winds of up to a hundred miles an hour and to swing as much as 27ft. Handsome on a clear day, the bridge takes on an eerie7 quality when the thick white fogs pour in and hide it almost completely.
You can either drive or walk across. The drive is the more thrilling of the two options as you race under the bridge's towers, but the half-hour walk across it really gives you time to take in its enormous size and absorb the views of the city behind you and the headlands of Northern California straight ahead. Pause at the midway point and consider the seven or so suicides a month who choose this spot, 260ft up, as their jumping-off spot. Monitors of such events speculate that victims always face the city before they leap. In 1995, when the suicide toll8 from the bridge had reached almost 1000, police kept the figures quiet to avoid a rush of would-be suicides going for the dubious9 distinction of being the thousandth person to leap.
Perhaps the best-loved symbol of San Francisco, in 1987 the Golden Gate proved an auspicious10 place for a sunrise party when crowds gathered to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Some quarter of a million people turned up (a third of the city's entire population); the winds were strong and the huge numbers caused the bridge to buckle11, but fortunately not to break.
1 elevation | |
n.高度;海拔;高地;上升;提高 | |
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2 cleft | |
n.裂缝;adj.裂开的 | |
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3 continental | |
adj.大陆的,大陆性的,欧洲大陆的 | |
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4 feat | |
n.功绩;武艺,技艺;adj.灵巧的,漂亮的,合适的 | |
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5 rendering | |
n.表现,描写 | |
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6 redundant | |
adj.多余的,过剩的;(食物)丰富的;被解雇的 | |
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7 eerie | |
adj.怪诞的;奇异的;可怕的;胆怯的 | |
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8 toll | |
n.过路(桥)费;损失,伤亡人数;v.敲(钟) | |
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9 dubious | |
adj.怀疑的,无把握的;有问题的,靠不住的 | |
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10 auspicious | |
adj.吉利的;幸运的,吉兆的 | |
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11 buckle | |
n.扣子,带扣;v.把...扣住,由于压力而弯曲 | |
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