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2017 ‫מועד יולי‬ - 49 - ‫ פרק שנ י‬- ‫ אנגלית‬

Text II (Questions 18-22)

(1) On New Year's Eve 2011, residents of the small town of Beebe, Arkansas, were
astonished to witness some three thousand birds falling from the sky. Official sources –

among them the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission – speculated that the birds might
have been killed by lightning, high-altitude hail, or possibly even fireworks. Laboratory

(5) examinations revealed that the birds had died on impact with the ground or each other;
no sign of poison or disease was found.

Alternative explanations for the freak phenomenon were quick to emerge, each one
more outlandish than the next. From military testing, to alien experiments, to terrorist
activity, the theories abounded. Some interpreted the falling of the birds as an omen of

(10) the apocalypse – proof that our days on the planet are numbered. The mystery
deepened when, exactly one year later, the same thing happened again in Beebe, albeit
on a smaller scale.

Such events, although disturbing, are not really that unusual. Mass deaths of birds
and fish have been reported in many different places over the last two centuries. A

(15) researcher named Charles Fort, for example, described dozens of such incidents in the
second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Although
there is probably a rational explanation for these peculiar occurrences, we may never
discover it. There are some things, to borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, that are
"a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma".

Questions

18. The main purpose of the first paragraph is to -

(1) explain what made the birds fall from the sky
(2) discuss a strange event that occurred in Beebe, Arkansas
(3) discuss the results of the investigation into the bird deaths
(4) introduce the residents of a small town in Arkansas

)‫© כל הזכויות שמורות למרכז ארצי לבחינות ולהערכה (ע"ר‬

.‫ בלא אישור בכתב מהמרכז הארצי לבחינות ולהערכה‬- ‫ כולה או חלקים ממנה‬- ‫ או ללמדה‬,‫אין להעתיק או להפיץ בחינה זו או קטעים ממנה בכל צורה ובכל אמצעי‬