простинький рассказ про жореса альфёрова на английском желательно с переводом.

The harshest winter weather in a decade lashes (охватывать) Europe, disrupting (разрушать) travel by air, land and sea — and claims (угрожать) the lives of hundreds
BY David Gordon

The new year made a stormy entrance last week, lashing the Continent with the severest cold snap (похолодание) in a decade. Snow, ice and subfreezing temperatures spelled (означать) chaos, and sometimes death, from the Mediterranean* to the Urals. More than 220 deaths, mostly among the homeless and the elderly, were reported as far south as Valencia, Spain.

Travel became a Homeric* task. In the Caucasus, an avalanche (лавина) sealed (окружить кольцом) 300 people in a mountain tunnel connecting Russia and Georgia for days. Air traffic was disrupted as was train travel. A Paris-bound Eurostar train carrying some 500 passengers got stuck in the Chunnel* for more than two hours, its engine stalled (останавливать) by snow. Ice clogged (препятствовать) river traffic on the Loire, Elbe, Main

and Danube. Even England's Thames* froze in places for the first time since 1963.

The brutal weather put a damper (действовать угнетающе) on New Year celebrations. Those who booked holiday trips to resorts on the Adriatic found snow, not sun, on beaches. Parisians ice-skated in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower early in the week, but by New Year's Day the city was a ghost town as its citizens hid from the chill (прохлада). In London, the freeze even muzzled (заставлять молчать) the chimes of Big Ben for a few hours on New Year's Eve.

The cold snap didn't spoil all the fun. In London, brave bathers still took the annual New Year's Day dip (ныряние) in Hyde Park's Serpentine.* And in the Netherlands, some 16,000 Dutch donned (надевать) ice skates Saturday for a 200-kilometer race across the frozen lakes and canals in Friesland. That's marking the best of a bitter situation.