If you've ever seen travel photos of Venice or been to Venice yourself, you're probably familiar with the Rialto Bridge. The Ponte di Rialto is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Venice and one of the most iconic landmarks of the Italian city. Even in 1594, when the bridge was only recently completed, a British traveler called it the "eighth wonder of the world." The version of the bridge that most people know was built between 1588 and 1591, but there's been a bridge in this location since around 1180. The Rialto Bridge was the first bridge to cross the Grand Canal, and until the 1800s it remained the only bridge across Venice's major waterway. The Rialto district was the main commercial hub of Venice and people increasingly needed access to buy and sell goods. The first bridge built at this site was a pontoon bridge that was eventually replaced by a wooden bridge in 1264. This wooden bridge was destroyed and rebuilt several times: it burned down during an unsuccessful coup in 1310, and in 1444 collapsed under the weight of a crowd watching a boat parade during a wedding. Its last collapse came in 1524, and by then Venice decided it was time to build a more permanent and durable bridge. Beginning in 1525, many architects submitted designs for the Rialto Bridge, but none of them was unanimously selected for the commission. The elected council overseeing the bridge's construction deliberated and consulted several local builders to figure out how they could erect a stone bridge across the wide Grand Canal. They had a few limitations to consider: the sloped shores on either side, the need for boats to be able to pass underneath, and the practicality of having shops atop the bridge. Andrea Palladio's design for the Rialto Bridge, published in his architectural treatise, Quattro libri, in 1570, featured three arches that would have prevented larger boats from passing under the bridge. Although his design utilized an appealing classical aesthetic, it was rejected in favor of Antonio Da Ponte's. Question: Why was the wooden bridge replaced and not repaired? Options: - not enough information - because Venice decided on a more permanent and durable bridge - because of Andrea Palladio's aesthetic design - because of popularity of Venice === The correct answer is
because Venice decided on a more permanent and durable bridge

(Question)
Trisha dreamed of being a Playboy Bunny since the days she still had buck-teeth and fried egg boobs. She blu-tacked page threes above her bed-head and had me snap topless Polaroids till they littered the floor. She told me to imagine she had 36DDs and peroxide blonde hair. I used to wish like hell that she wasn't my cousin. When she was fifteen Trisha started putting out for the boys in the Kwik-Save car park for a tenner a time. She said she was an entrepreneur, not a prostitute. She started going steady with a kid called Keith. He was a fryer in the fish and chip shop. He had a future and a Ford Cortina. She got a job waitressing and she worked all the hours she could. Keith couldn't handle me and Trisha being as close as we were. Especially the time he caught Trisha bending over me in nothing but a frilly market stall thong while I worked the angles best I could to get a dangle-shot. Next night he took her in the car park woods and doped her up to the eyeballs. He took out a bottle of India ink and told her he would etch the love-heart she'd always wanted. Instead, he safety-pinned the word 'inbred' into her arse. Trisha's step-dad tracked the spits of blood and found her sobbing in the bathroom of their long-stay static. It didn't take him long to slap out the truth. He went straight round to Keith's place with a crow-bar and did enough damage to make sure he'd need more than laser treatment to put things right. Keith wasn't rolling in spare change so Trisha's step-dad took the Cortina as payment in lieu of her getting herself fixed up. Trisha got me to stash the Cortina up the lane at the back of Boyes' farm. Weekend nights, I drove her out to the dual carriageway truck-stop where she found a faster way to make her fortune in the fogged-up cabs. Question: who wanted to be a playboy bunny? Options: - trisha's dad - not enough information - trisha - the author === The correct answer is
(Answer)
trisha

"That's Glenn Miller," my father said. "But it can't be." He had the back of the hospital bed cranked upright, the lower lid of his left eye creeping up in a warning signal I'd learned to recognize as a child. My older sister Ann had settled deep in the recliner, and she glared at me too, blaming me for winding him up. The jam box sat on the rolling tray table and my father was working the remote as he talked, backing up my newly burned CD and letting it spin forward to play a few seconds of low fidelity trombone solo. "You know the tune, of course," he said. "'King Porter Stomp.'" Those childhood years of listening to him play Glenn Miller on the console phonograph were finally paying off. "He muffed the notes the same way on the Victor version." "So why can't it be Miller?" I asked. "He wouldn't have played with a rabble like that." The backup musicians teetered on the edge of chaos, playing with an abandon somewhere between Dixieland and bebop. "They sound drunk." My father had a major emotional investment in Miller. He and my mother had danced to the Miller band at Glen Island Casino on Long Island Sound in the summer of 1942, when they were both sixteen. That signature sound of clarinet and four saxes was forever tied up for him with first love and the early, idealistic months of the war. But there was a better reason why it couldn't have been Miller playing that solo. If the date on the original recording was correct, he was supposed to have died three days earlier. The date was in India ink on a piece of surgical tape, stuck to the top of a spool of recording wire. The handwritten numerals had the hooks and day-first order of Europe: 18/12/44. I'd won it on eBay the week before as part of a lot that included a wire recorder and a stack of 78s by French pop stars like Charles Trenent and Edith Piaf. Question: Who had a major emotional investment in Miller? Options: - The narrator - Ann - The father. - not enough information === The correct answer is
The father.