Unit 3. What’s Your Knowledge? » Стр.60 (3)

Fill in the gaps with the past tense of the verbs in brackets. BELIEVE OR NOT? Lawrence Richard Walters was an American adventurer who lived in California. He wanted to become a pilot but was turned down because of his poor eyesight. One day he saw a picture of weather balloons in the newspapers and got an idea. He went to the shop, bought 45 weather balloons and several tanks of helium. He took a garden chair, tied the balloons to it and filled the balloons with helium. He made sandwiches and took an airgun because he had planned to land the chair by shooting the balloons one by one. But things went terribly wrong. When his friends cut the string which had tied his chair to the jeep, his chair rised much higher than he had originally planned. He reached the height of almost 3 miles. He was afraid to shoot the balloons, so he went on drifting towards the corridor of Long Beach airport. One of the pilots saw him and reported to the traffic control that there was a man floating in a garden chair with an airgun in his hand above the airport. The traffic controller did not believe it at first but when he heard the same message from another pilot he decided to take action.In the meantime, Lawrence's balloons got caught in a power line which caused a blackout in a Long Beach neighbourhood. He climbet down safely, and as soon as he hit the ground he was arrested. When asked by a reporter why he had done it, he said "A man can't just sit around!"