C2 Proficiency mock test: free sample

Most of us take the daily weather forecast for 1. (1), yet the word itself is a Victorian invention. It was coined by Robert FitzRoy, the naval officer who had captained the ship on which Charles Darwin sailed around the world. Appointed in 1854 to 2. (2) a new government department that gathered weather data at sea, FitzRoy became convinced that storms could be predicted, and that lives lost in shipwrecks could thereby be saved. By 1861 he was sending daily predictions to The Times, choosing the term 'forecast' 3. (3) to distinguish his work from the astrological almanacs then in circulation. The public took to the forecasts at once; the scientific establishment proved harder to 4. (4) over. Critics dismissed the whole enterprise as guesswork 5. (5) up as science, and every failed prediction was seized upon with glee by the newspapers. FitzRoy, a proud and 6. (6) sensitive man, took such attacks deeply to heart. After his death in 1865 the forecasts were suspended, only to be reinstated when shipowners and fishermen, who had come to set great 7. (7) by the storm warnings, protested. Modern forecasting relies on satellites and supercomputers rather than barometers, but it remains, in essence, a 8. (8) to FitzRoy's stubborn conviction that the sky could be read.

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