1. Euro Disneyland: 
an extremely large amusement park, run by the Walt Disney Company, just outside Paris in France. It is based on Disneyland and Disneyworld in the US. For more information, please refer to the website: http://www.disneylandparis.com/ or http://www.eurodisney.com/.
2. theme park: Also known as amusement park, it is an outdoor area containing amusements, such as games of skill and big machines to ride on, which are sometimes all based on a single subject, for example, space travel. The first theme park was Disneyland, at Anaheim, California, opened in 1955 and based on Walt Disney’s cartoon characters. For a brief history about theme parks, check out the web page at http://www.napha.org/history.html. For a complete list of theme parks in the west, please visit the website at http://www.themeparkcity.com. 3. TGV: 
The name “Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV)” translated into English means high speed train. The TGV is a system which comprises train, track, and signalling technologies that when combined make high speeds (typically 300 km/h, or 186 mph) possible. The TGV system is owned and operated by SNCF, the French national railways, and is an integral part of French rail travel.
The TGV program was launched in the late 1960s. In its early stages, the program was considered a technological dead end. Conventional wisdom at the time held that steel wheel on steel rail technology had been explored and understood to its fullest, and it was time to move on to more innovative technologies like magnetic levitation and jet-powered hover trains. As a result, the project did not originally receive any government funding.
Today, there are three major trunk lines radiating out of Paris, the most recent one being the Nord-Europe line, opened in 1993 and connects Paris to Lille, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Britain through the Channel tunnel. Extensions continue to be built, although budgetary constraints have slowed the momentum of the TGV expansion.
For detailed information about TGV including both its history and photos, check out the website at http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/tgv/. General information about high-speed rail in other parts of the world can be found at http://www.o-keating.com/hsr/.
4. Sleeping Beauty: a fairy-tale heroine who slept for 100 years until wakened by the kiss of a prince. Its complete story can be found at http://www.nogginworks.org/evans/sb/beauty_fr.html. An annotated version of the story is available at http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/sleepingbeauty/index.html. The web page at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0410.html provides information about the original story. The story of Sleeping Beauty, as told by Charles Perrault, formed the subject of a ballet by Tchaikovsky (http://www.balletmet.org/Notes/Sleeping.html). 
5. Snow White: the main character in an old fairy tale. Snow white is a beautiful princess who has a jealous stepmother. The stepmother owns a magic mirror which when asked “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of us all?” always answers that she is the most beautiful, until one day it says “Snow White”. The stepmother is very angry and sends Snow White into the forest to be killed. Snow White does not die, but finds and lives with seven Dwarfs. Her stepmother tries to kill her with a poisoned apple, but instead of dying she goes to sleep until a prince kisses her and wakes her, and they live happily ever after. To read different versions of the story, check out the web page at http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0709.html.
6. Peter Pan: the main character in a story titled Peter and Wendy by James M. Barrie (Scottish playwright and novelist, 1860 — 1937), a young boy who never grows up but lives in a magic land called Never-never Land. In the story, three children, Michael, John, and Wendy, go with Peter Pan and Tinkerbell to stay in the Never-Never Land, where they have many adventures. Peter Pan’s enemy in the story is Captain Hook, an evil pirate who has a metal hook in the place of one of his hands. Captain Hook lost his hand in a fight with Peter Pan, and Peter Pan threw the hand into some water. It was eaten by a crocodile, who liked the taste so much that it then followed Captain Hook around trying to catch and eat the rest of him. The complete story can be found at http://www.hoboes.com/html/FireBlade/Barrie/Peter/.
7. Pinocchio: The international classic of childhood literature “Pinocchio” was written by Carlo Lorenzini (Italian journalist and writer, 1826 — 1890), under the pen name of C. Collodi, and first published in Rome in 1881. Its hero Pinocchio is the little wooden puppet who walks and talks, and whose nose grows every time he tells a lie. Brief text of the complete story can be found at http://www.textlibrary.com/download/adv-pino.txt. Information about its author can be found at http://www.pinocchio.it (check out its English section there) and http://www.arca.net/db/pinocchio/pinocchio.htm. 8. Mickey Mouse: 
Mickey Mouse is probably the most famous of the Disney cartoon characters. Making his debut in “Steamboat Willie” at the Colony Theatre in New York City on November 18, 1928, Mickey went on to star in over 120 different cartoons. He also starred in “The Mickey Mouse Club” television show of the 1950s.
Mickey Mouse’s original drawings used circles for his head, body and ears. 1939's “The Pointer” saw a bold, new design for Mickey as his body became more pear-shaped and pupils were added to his eyes to increase his range of expression. Later on, animators of the 1940s would add a perspective aspect to his ears, giving them a three-dimensional effect. This change, however, was short-lived. The Mickey Mouse of today appears much as he did in the early days with the exception of a costume change here and there.
Originally, Mickey was voiced by Walt Disney himself. Later, those duties were assumed by Jim Macdonald and today Wayne Allwine provides Mickey’s distinctive voice.
Mickey Mouse has appeared on thousands of merchandise items, and currently holds the esteemed title of Chief Greeter at the Disney theme parks.
For information about the history of the character, check out the web pages at http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Mouse and http://www.toonopedia.com/mickey.htm. More detailed information can be found at http://www.mickey-mouse.com and http://www.surfnetkids.com/mickey.htm. For a complete list of Disney cartoon characters, check out the web page at http://disney.go.com/disneyatoz/archives/charnav.html. 9. Magic Kingdom in California: the name of a theme park sometimes used instead of Disneyland in California. For more information, check out http://www.pansophist.com/mk.htm and http://www.vcsc.k12.in.us/staff/hackneyl/mkwebquest/. For a list of Disney's theme parks, check out the website at http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/waltdisneyworld/index.
10. Walt Disney World in Florida: a very large amusement park opened in 1971, featuring many of the characters from Disney films. Both Disneyland and Disney world are very popular holiday places for tourists, especially those with children. The following website offers us a lot of site listings about it: http://dir.yahoo.com/Entertainment/Amusement_and_Theme_Parks/Disney_Theme_Parks/. 11. Jules Verne (1828—1905): 
He was a French writer and a pioneer of the science fiction genre. His most famous books are Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and Around the World in Eighty Days.
Verne was born in Nantes to attorney Pierre Verne and his wife Sophie. The oldest of the family's five children, he spent his early years at home with his parents, on a nearby island in the Loire River. This isolated setting helped to strengthen both his imagination and the bond between him and his younger brother Paul. At the age of nine, he and his younger brother were sent to boarding school at the Nantes lycée. Verne’s fascination with adventure asserted itself at an early age, inspiring him at one point to stow away on a ship bound for the Orient. His voyage was cut short, however, as he found his father waiting for him at the next port.
After completing his studies at the lycée, Verne went to Paris to study for the bar. About 1848, in conjunction with Michel Carre, he began writing librettos for operettas. For some years his attentions were divided between the theatre and work, but some travellers’ stories which he wrote for the Musée des Families seem to have revealed to him the true direction of his talent: the telling of delightfully extravagant voyages and adventures to which cleverly prepared scientific and geographical details lent an air of verisimilitude.
When Verne’s father discovered that his son was writing rather than studying the law, he promptly withdrew his financial support. Consequently, the author was forced to support himself with the income from his work, which he found to be a difficult proposition with his limited contacts. During this period, he met the authors Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo, who offered him some advice on his writing.
It was during this period that Verne met and married Honorine Morel, a widow with two daughters. At his father’s urging, Verne took a job as a stockbroker, though with his wife’s encouragement he continued to write. In 1861 his son, Michel Jean Pierre Verne, was born.
Verne’s situation improved when he met Paul Hetzel, a publisher specializing in books for young people. Hetzel read a draft of Verne’s story about the balloon exploration of Africa, which had been rejected by other publishers on the ground that it was “too scientific”. With Hetzel’s help, Verne rewrote the story and in 1862 it was published in Hetzel’s own Magazin d’Education as Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon).
The story was an enormous success, and was republished in a number of languages. Verne became wealthy and famous. From that point on, and for nearly a quarter of a century, scarcely a year passed in which Hetzel did not publish one or more of his stories. The most successful of these include: Voyage au centre de la terre (Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1864); De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon, 1865); Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1869); and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days), which first appeared in Le Temps in 1872.
Verne died at Amiens. His brother, Paul Verne, contributed to the Transactions of the French Alpine Club, and to his brother's collection of Voyages Extraordinaires in 1874.
For more comprehensive information about Verne and his writings, check out the websites at http://jv.gilead.org.il and http://avery.med.virginia.edu/~mtp0f/flips/jules.html. A selected collection of his stories can also be found at http://www.literature.org/authors/verne-jules/index.html. 
12. The Louvre art museum: the most famous French museum of art located in Paris and has many important paintings, including the Mona Lisa (http://www.louvre.fr/anglais/collec/peint/inv0779/peint_f.htm). To learn more about the museum, please visit its official website at http://www.louvre.fr. A brief history about the museum can be found at http://www.hlla.com/reference/louvre1.html. 13. Minnie Mouse: a cartoon character, a female mouse who is the partner of Mickey Mouse. Please refer to the websites listed in Background Information #8 above for more information. 14. Mona Lisa: 
(also Monna Lisa; Italian, La Gioconda; French, La Joconde) (http://www.louvre.fr/anglais/collec/peint/inv0779/peint_f.htm), by Leonardo da Vinci, is perhaps the most famous painting in the world, going so far as to be iconic of painting, art, and even visual images in general. No other work of art is so romanticized, celebrated, or reproduced.
The work, which was accomplished between 1503 and 1506, measures 77 x 53 cm and is an oil painting on wood. It was brought to France by Leonardo when King Francois I invited the great painter to work at the Clos Lucé near the king’s chateau in Amboise. As a result, the Mona Lisa today hangs in the Louvre in Paris, and is the museum’s star attraction.
The identity of the lady in the painting is not known for certain, except that she was a wealthy Florentine. The most probable suspect is Madonna Lisa del Giocondo.
Although it is definitely difficult to view the painting critically and ignore all the mythology behind it, it does display a technical mastery that more or less unquestionably seats it amongst Leonardo's masterworks (although some count The Last Supper as a greater work).
The compelling nature of the image has been the subject of reams of discussion. In general, it can be stated that the vividness and ambiguity of the facial expression is due to Leonardo's use of sfumato (a term coined by Leonardo da Vinci to refer to a painting technique which overlays translucent layers of colors to create perceptions of depth, volume and form), blurring the most expressive portions of the face (the corners of the eyes and mouth) to give the picture greater mystery. Indeed, the eyes appear to follow the viewer around the room, and the enigmatic smile is the picture's most famous feature (giving us the expression, “a Mona Lisa smile”).
The painting was also one of the first portraits to depict the sitter before an imaginary landscape. One interesting feature of the landscape is that it is uneven. The landscape to the left of the figure is noticeably lower than that to the right of her. This has led some critics to suggest that it was added later.
The painting has been restored numerous times: unfortunately, several details have been lost in the process, including Lisa's eyebrows and (possibly) a pearl necklace she was wearing.
On August 22, 1911, Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia, who at first believed the Italian painting belonged to Italy and shouldn’t be kept in France, stole the painting by simply walking out the door with it hidden under his coat. However, greed got the better of him and the Mona Lisa was not returned to the Louvre until 1913 when Peruggia attempted to sell it to a Florence art dealer.
The Guinness Book of Records counts the painting as the most valuable object ever insured.
For more information about the painting, check out http://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/wm/paint/auth/vinci/joconde/.
Make Euro Disney More European 背景知识(background info)
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