SweetRod

Hoover, Lou

2005-04-05T23:57:00.000-07:00

The Hoovers retired to homes on both coasts—a house in Palo Alto, California, and an apartment in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. It was in the latter home that Lou died suddenly in January 1944. She was buried in West Branch, Iowa, at the site of her husband's presidential library, a place as understated as was the approach of this reticent, independent woman to the job of first lady.

Condorcet, Marie-jean-antoine-nicolas De Caritat, Marquis De

2005-04-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

He was descended from the ancient family of Caritat, who took their title from Condorcet, a town in Dauphiné. He was educated

Yellow-dog Contract

2005-04-04T16:17:00.000-07:00

Agreement between an employer and an employee in which the employee agrees, as a condition of employment, not to join a union during the course of his employment. Such contracts, used most widely in the United States in the 1920s, enabled employers to take legal action against union organizers for encouraging workers to break these contracts. A federal law prohibiting

Cumberland Wrestling

2005-04-03T03:34:00.000-07:00

Form of wrestling developed in northern England and southern Scotland, also called the North Country style. The wrestlers stand chest to chest, each grasping the other with locked hands around the body, each opponent's chin on the other's right shoulder. The right arm is placed below and the left above the adversary's. When the hold has been firmly taken, an umpire gives

Andreini, Isabella

2005-04-02T07:19:00.000-08:00

In 1578 Flaminio Scala, a theatrical manager and scenario writer, engaged Isabella Canali to play the female lead in his company. There she met Francesco Andreini and married him the same year. They helped form the

Metamorphosis

2005-04-01T16:53:00.000-08:00

In biology, striking change of form or structure in an individual after hatching or birth. Hormones called molting and juvenile hormones, which are not species specific, apparently regulate the changes. These physical changes as well as those involving growth and differentiation are accompanied by alterations of the organism's physiology, biochemistry, and

Mid Devon

2005-03-31T08:50:00.000-08:00

District, administrative and historic county of Devon, southwestern England, located between the bleak moorlands of Exmoor and Dartmoor. Mid Devon is a heavily dissected interior plateau 400 to 800 feet (120 to 245 metres) in elevation. It has variable soil types suited for grassland cultivation, except in the south-central area where the merging Exe, Culm, and Yeo river valleys

Sea Level

2005-03-31T00:04:00.000-08:00

Position of the air-sea interface, to which all terrestrial elevations and submarine depths are referred. The sea level constantly changes at every locality with the changes in tides, atmospheric pressure, and wind conditions. Longer-term changes in sea level are influenced by the Earth's changing climates. Consequently, the level is better defined as mean sea

Narashino

2005-03-29T13:17:00.000-08:00

City, Chiba ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. Narashino is situated on the northeastern shore of Tokyo Bay. Formed in 1951 by the merger of Minomi, Maka, Tsuda-numa, and Okubo, the settlement has no city centre because the former towns are lined up along two railways to Tokyo. Truck farming is an important economic activity. Narashino is a weekend vacation area because of its proximity

Levittown

2005-03-29T07:54:00.000-08:00

Extensive, unincorporated suburban housing development in Bucks county, eastern Pennsylvania, U.S., near the big bend of the Delaware River, approximately midway between Philadelphia and Trenton, New Jersey. It was built between 1951 and 1958 by Levitt & Sons, Inc., who repeated there the planned construction formula that resulted in the development of Levittown, New York, in

World War I, The Eastern Front, 1916

2005-03-28T19:18:00.000-08:00

In the hope of diverting German strength from the attack at Verdun on the Western Front, the Russians gallantly but prematurely opened an offensive north and south of Lake Naroch (Narocz, east of Vilna) on March 18, 1916, and continued it until March 27, though they won very little ground at great cost and only for a short time. They then reverted to preparations for a major offensive

Resonance

2005-03-28T10:57:00.000-08:00

In particle physics, an extremely short-lived phenomenon associated with subatomic particles called hadrons that decay via the strong nuclear force. This force is so powerful that it allows resonances to exist only for the amount of time it takes light to cross each such “object.” A resonance occurs when the net energy of the colliding subatomic particles is just

Aquileia

2005-03-28T03:09:00.000-08:00

Founded as a Roman colony in 181 BC to prevent barbarian incursions, Aquileia's position at the junction of the Via Postumia

Mahavira

2005-03-26T21:36:00.000-08:00

Also known as Vardhamana Epithet of Vardhamana, the last of the 24 Tirthankaras (“Ford-makers,” i.e., saviours who promulgated Jainism), and the reformer of the Jain monastic community. According to the traditions of the two main Jain sects, the Shvetambara (“White-robed”) and the Digambara (“Sky-clad,” i.e., naked), Mahavira became

Kitami-sammyaku

2005-03-26T03:45:00.000-08:00

(Japanese: Kitami Range), mountain range, northeastern Hokkaido, Japan, extending 180 mi (290 km) along the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk. The range is basically an upwarped block except in the west, where it drops abruptly to the Teshio-gawa (Teshio River) valley. Elevations are generally between 2,500 and 3,100 ft (750 and 950 m). In the south central part of the range, however, the Wenshiri horst (block of

China, The Plateau of Tibet

2005-03-25T07:38:00.000-08:00

This great massif occupies about one-fourth of the whole country. A large part of the plateau lies at elevations above 13,000–15,000 feet. The border ranges of the plateau are even higher, with individual peaks rising to heights of 23,000–26,000 feet. The interior slopes of these border mountains, as a rule, are gentle, while the exterior slopes are very steep. In its eastern and southern periphery,

Rupert

2005-03-24T21:56:00.000-08:00

A member of the Wittelsbach dynasty, he was chosen king by the German ecclesiastical electors on Aug. 22, 1400, to succeed Wenceslas, who had been deposed the day before by the German princes. After being crowned at Cologne on Jan.

Vulcanization

2005-03-23T19:59:00.000-08:00

The process was discovered in 1839 by the U.S. inventor

Scorsese, Martin

2005-03-23T02:42:00.000-08:00

Scorsese was a frail, asthmatic child who grew up in New York City in an Italian-American neighbourhood on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His early interest in film returned after he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Roman Catholic

Fuchs, (emil) Klaus (julius)

2005-03-22T14:45:00.000-08:00

Fuchs studied physics and mathematics at the universities of Leipzig and Kiel and joined the German Communist Party in 1930. He was forced to flee Germany after the Nazis came to power in

Shichi-go-san

2005-03-22T01:17:00.000-08:00

(Japanese: “Seven-Five-Three”), one of the most important festivals for Japanese children, observed annually on November 15. On this date girls of three and seven years of age and boys of five years of age are taken by their parents to the Shinto shrine of their tutelary deity to offer thanks for having reached their respective ages and to invoke blessings for the future. In

Anti-atlas

2005-03-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

Also called Lesser Atlas, mountain range in Morocco running parallel to and southward of the central range of the Atlas Mountains of North Africa. Although it has a mean elevation of 5,000 feet (1,500 m), some peaks and passes exceed 6,000 feet (1,800 m). This rugged, arid region, which encloses the Sous lowland and reaches the Atlantic coast at Sidi Ifni, is linked to the Haut (High) Atlas by Mount Siroua, a volcanic peak rising

Cadalso Y Vázquez, José De

2005-03-20T02:00:00.000-08:00

Cadalso also spelled Cadahlso Spanish writer famous for his Cartas marruecas (1793; “Moroccan Letters”), in which a Moorish traveler in Spain makes penetrating criticisms of Spanish life. Educated in Madrid, Cadalso traveled widely and, although he hated war, enlisted in the army against the Portuguese during the Seven Years' War. His prose satire Los eruditos a la

Morava River

2005-03-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

Serbo-Croatian Velika Morava river in Serbia, Yugoslavia, formed by the confluence of the South (Juzna) Morava and West (Zapadna) Morava rivers. It follows a 137-mile (221-kilometre) course, mainly northerly, to enter the Danube River near Smederevo. North of Lapovo the Morava opens into the wide, meandering Pomoravlje valley, a fertile agricultural region. The total area of the Morava River basin is 14,457 square miles

Andrea Del Sarto

2005-03-19T01:06:00.000-08:00

Original name Andrea d'Agnolo Italian painter and draftsman whose works of exquisite composition and craftsmanship were instrumental in the development of the Florentine-Roman school in the first half of the 16th century. His most striking among other well-known works is the series of frescoes on the life of St. John the Baptist about 1511 and

African Literature, English

2005-03-18T07:34:00.000-08:00

Although a genuine African literature in English did not emerge until the 1950s, writing in English by Africans goes back to the 18th century. Many slave narratives were published in English between 1760 and 1865, when the Civil War ended in the United States. Perhaps the most remarkable is The Interesting Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa,

Zeiss, Carl

2005-03-18T06:33:00.000-08:00

In 1846 Zeiss opened a workshop in Jena for producing microscopes and other optical instruments. Realizing that improvements in optical instruments depended on advances in optical theory, he engaged as research

Hungary, The Kádár regime

2005-03-17T15:01:00.000-08:00

In the first uncertain weeks of his regime Kádár made many promises. Workers' councils were to be given a large amount of control in the factories and mines. Compulsory deliveries of farm produce were to be abolished, and no compulsion, direct or indirect, was to be put on the peasants to enter the collectives. The five-year plan was to be revised to permit more production

Mughal Architecture

2005-03-16T17:15:00.000-08:00

Building style that flourished in northern and central India under the patronage of the Mughal emperors from the mid-16th to the late 17th century. The Mughal period marked a striking revival of Islamic architecture in northern India. Under the patronage of the Mughal emperors, Persian, Indian, and various provincial styles were fused to produce works of unusual quality

Biblical Literature, Biblical literature in liturgy

2005-03-16T06:35:00.000-08:00

Abraham Z. Idelsohn, The Jewish Liturgy and Its Development (1932, reprinted 1967); Joseph H. Hertz, The Authorized Daily Prayer Book, rev. ed. (1948), Hebrew and English with historical notes and commentary; Fan S. Noli, Three Liturgies of the Eastern Orthodox Church (1955); Donald Attwater, Eastern Catholic Worship (1945), eight Uniate liturgies in English; Josef A. Jungmann, Missarum Sollemnia: Eine Genetische Erklärung der römischen Messe, 2 vol. (1958; Eng. trans., The Mass of The Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, abridged ed., 1959); Clement J. McNaspy, Our Changing Liturgy (1966), reforms following Vatican II; Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (1945); Bard Thompson, Liturgies of the Western Church (1961), includes the main Protestant traditions.

Pembroke, William Herbert, 1st Earl Of, Baron Herbert Of Cardiff

2005-03-16T01:35:00.000-08:00

Also called (until 1551) Sir William Herbert the Earl of Pembroke of the second Herbert creation, a leading figure in the reigns of Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I of England. His father, Sir Richard Herbert, was an illegitimate son of William, the 1st Earl of Pembroke of the first creation. Sir William's first wife, Anne Parr, was a sister of Catherine Parr, who married Henry VIII

Thomism

2005-03-15T15:56:00.000-08:00

Philosophical and theological system developed by Thomas Aquinas, by his later commentators, and by modern revivalists of the system, known as neo-Thomists.

Computers, Workstation computers

2005-03-14T07:26:00.000-08:00

While the personal computer market grew and matured, a variation on its theme grew out of university labs and began to threaten the minicomputers for their market. The new machines were called workstations. They looked like personal computers, and they sat on a single desktop and were used by a single individual just like personal computers, but they were distinguished

Qantas Airways Limited

2005-03-14T05:18:00.000-08:00

Australian airline, the oldest in the English-speaking world, founded in 1920 as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd. (from which the name Qantas was derived). Its first operations were taxi services and joy flights. By the late 20th century, however, its scheduled air routes extended throughout Australasia and farther termini of San Francisco and Vancouver;

Nehru, Jawaharlal

2005-03-13T18:15:00.000-08:00

Byname Pandit (Hindi: “Pundit,” or “Teacher”) Nehru first prime minister of independent India (1947–64), who established parliamentary government and became noted for his “neutralist” policies in foreign affairs. He was also one of the principal leaders of India's independence movement in the 1930s and '40s.

Tientsin

2005-03-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

Central Tientsin (the municipality's urban core)

Alicyclic Compound

2005-03-13T01:19:00.000-08:00

In chemistry, any of a large class of organic compounds in which three or more atoms of the element carbon are linked together in a ring. The bonds between pairs of adjacent atoms may all be of the type designated single bonds (involving two electrons), or some of them may be double or triple bonds (with four or six electrons, respectively); six-membered rings for which a system

China, The Shang dynasty

2005-03-12T09:16:00.000-08:00

The first dynasty to leave historical records is thought to have ruled from the mid-16th to mid-11th century BC. (Some scholars date the Shang dynasty from the mid-18th to the late 12th century BC.) One must, however, distinguish Shang as an archaeological term from Shang as a dynastic one. Erh-li-t'ou in north central Honan, for example, was initially classified archaeologically as Early

Cabra

2005-03-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

Cabra has a ruined Moorish castle, and its parish church (the former cathedral) was originally a mosque. Called Baebro or Aegabro in ancient times, it was

Columbus, Christopher, Early career and preparation for the first voyage

2005-03-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

Little is known of Columbus's early life. The vast majority of scholars, citing Columbus's testament of 1498 and archival documents from Genoa and Savona, believe that he was born in Genoa to a Christian household; however, it has been claimed that he was a converted Jew or that he was born in Spain, Portugal, or elsewhere. Columbus was the eldest son of Domenico Colombo, a Genoese

Delors, Jacques

2005-03-11T05:46:00.000-08:00

The son of a courier at the Banque de France, Delors himself joined the bank in 1945, later earning a degree in economics from the Sorbonne. He became active in the Christian Trade Union Confederation (renamed the Democratic Trade Union

Fudge

2005-03-09T14:23:00.000-08:00

Creamy candy made with butter, sugar, milk, and usually chocolate, cooked together and beaten to a soft, smooth texture. Fudge may be thought of as having a consistency harder than that of fondant (q.v.) and softer than that of hard chocolate. According to most recipes, the ingredients of fudge are cooked to what is termed in kitchen parlance the soft ball stage, that point

Cilea, Francesco

2005-03-09T06:04:00.000-08:00

While studying at the Naples Conservatory, Cilea produced an opera, Gina, which secured for him a commission from a publisher. His first important work, L'Arlesiana (1897), after Alphonse Daudet, was the vehicle for the tenor Enrico Caruso's first success. Cilea's

Aeschylus, Texts

2005-03-09T01:35:00.000-08:00

The Greek text is available in Denys Page (ed.), Aeschyli septem quae supersunt tragoedias (1972, reprinted 1975), in the Oxford Classical Text series. Herbert Weir Smyth (trans.), Aeschylus, 2 vol. (1922–26, reprinted 1973–83), in the Loeb Classical Library series, presents the original text with an English translation.

Prickly Heat

2005-03-08T23:16:00.000-08:00

A noncontagious skin eruption of red pimples with intense itching and tingling caused by inflammation around the sweat glands. It is a form of miliaria (q.v.).

Rameau, Jean-philippe

2005-03-08T04:50:00.000-08:00

Rameau's father, Jean, played the organ for 42 years in various churches in Dijon and hoped one day to see his son on a lawyer's, rather than an organist's, bench. These hopes

Tabernacle

2005-03-08T03:45:00.000-08:00

Israel's earliest sanctuary was a simple tent within which, it was believed,

San Francisco Peaks

2005-03-07T11:46:00.000-08:00

The San Francisco Peaks, known by various Indian language names, are sacred to

Spondylolisthesis

2005-03-07T02:36:00.000-08:00

Forward slipping of the body of one of the lumbar (lower back) vertebrae on the subjacent vertebra or on the sacrum, the triangular bone at the base of the spinal column. The condition is often associated with incompleteness of the vertebral arch, which surrounds the spinal cord. Pressure transmitted to the arch from above encourages slippage. Deformity (lordosis)

Mesopotamia, History Of, Literary and other historical sources

2005-03-06T11:48:00.000-08:00

The picture offered by the literary tradition of Mesopotamia is clearer but not necessarily historically relevant. The Sumerian king list has long been the greatest focus of interest. This is a literary composition, dating from Old Babylonian times, that describes kingship (nam-lugal in Sumerian) in Mesopotamia from primeval times to the end of the 1st dynasty of

Race, Mendelian heredity and the development of blood group systems

2005-03-05T00:08:00.000-08:00

In 1900, after the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's experiments dealing with heredity, scientists began to focus greater attention on genes and chromosomes. Their objective was to ascertain the hereditary basis for numerous physical traits. Once the ABO blood group system was discovered and was shown to follow the pattern of Mendelian heredity, other systems—the MN

Kediri

2005-03-04T22:33:00.000-08:00

Ancient Kadiri traditional region and modern kabupaten (regency) of eastern Java, Indonesia. From the 11th to the early 13th century, Kediri was the dominant kingdom in eastern Java, renowned for its naval and commercial strength and for its achievements in literature. It was absorbed into the later kingdoms of Singasari and Majapahit and then by the central Java kingdom of Mataram.

Gonfalonier

2005-03-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

In Florence the gonfaloniers of the companies (gonfalonieri di compagnia) originated during the 1250s as commanders of the people's militia. In the 1280s a new office called the gonfalonier of justice (gonfaloniere di giustizia) was instituted to protect the interests of the people against

Accentor

2005-03-03T14:34:00.000-08:00

Accentors breed chiefly in mountains but winter at lower elevations. A widespread lowland species is

Conte

2005-03-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

Plural contes a short tale, often recounting an adventure. The term may also refer to a narrative that is somewhat shorter than the average novel but longer than a short story. Better known examples include Jean de La Fontaine's Contes et nouvelles en vers (Tales and Novels in Verse), published over the course of many years; Charles Perrault's Contes de ma mère l'oye (1697; Tales of Mother

Man-chou-li

2005-03-02T11:27:00.000-08:00

Pinyin Manzhouli, formerly (1910–49) Lupin, city in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, China. It is situated on the border opposite the Russian town of Zabaykalsk and lies 100 miles (160 km) west of Hailar and 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Lake Hu-lun. Man-chou-li was long a small Mongolian settlement in the Hu-lun-pei-erh League. It developed after 1900 when it became the western terminus of the Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway

Burgomaster

2005-03-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

German Bürgermeister (“town master”), mayor or chief magistrate of a German town, city, or rural commune. The title is also used in such countries as Belgium (bourgmeistre) and The Netherlands (burgemeester). Most German towns have a burgomaster, but larger cities may have several, one being the chief burgomaster (oberbürgermeister). Burgomasters may be elected by the voters or by a council, and

Romance Languages, The reduction of inflectional endings

2005-03-01T04:11:00.000-08:00

The inflectional endings have been lost most in nouns and adjectives. The Classical Latin five-case declensional system has everywhere been replaced (with a couple of doubtful exceptions) by a two-gender system, in which normally masculine gender is marked by survivors of the second (-us) declension endings of Latin (Italian cavallo, Portuguese cavalu, Romanian cal

Disjunction

2005-02-28T21:48:00.000-08:00

In logic, relation or connection of terms in a proposition to express the concept “or”; it is a statement of alternatives (sometimes called “alternation”). For clarity, exclusive disjunction (either x or y but not both), symbolized x Ú× y, x Ú y, or x º/y, must be distinguished from inclusive disjunction (either x or y or both x and y), symbolized x Ú y. See also implication.

Insurance, Group life insurance

2005-02-28T06:41:00.000-08:00

Under group life insurance an employer signs a master contract with the insurance company outlining the provisions of the plan. Each employee receives a certificate that gives evidence of participation in the plan. The amount of insurance depends on the employee's salary or job classification; usually the employer pays a portion of the premium and the employee

Resonance

2005-02-27T23:02:00.000-08:00

In physics, relatively large selective response of an object or a system that vibrates in step or phase, with an externally applied oscillatory force. Resonance was first investigated in acoustical systems such as musical instruments and the human voice. An example of acoustical resonance is the vibration induced in a violin or piano string of a given pitch when

Indian Museum

2005-02-27T15:11:00.000-08:00

In Calcutta, oldest museum in India and one of the most comprehensive in the Orient; its collections depict the cultural history of India from prehistoric to Muslim times. The present building, opened in 1875, comprises sections devoted to geology, zoology, industry, archaeology, art, and ethnology. The coin room contains the largest collection of Indian coins in the

Abraham Bar Hiyya

2005-02-27T09:27:00.000-08:00

In addition to translating scientific

Romania

2005-02-26T03:57:00.000-08:00

Also spelled Rumania , Romanian România country lying in the eastern half of the Balkan Peninsula. It is the largest country of the peninsula, having an area of 91,699 square miles (237,500 square kilometres). Its boundaries total 1,959 miles (3,153 kilometres), with Ukraine on the north, Moldova on the northeast, the Black Sea on the east, Bulgaria on the south, Serbia on the southwest, and Hungary on the west. The capital is Bucharest

Manchu-tungus Languages

2005-02-25T10:44:00.000-08:00

Also called Tungusic languages, smallest of three subfamilies of the Altaic language family. The Manchu-Tungus languages are a group of 10 to 17 languages spoken by fewer than 70,000 people scattered across a vast region that stretches from northern China across Mongolia to the northern boundary of Russia. Apart from the moribund Manchu and the now-extinct Juchen (Jurchen) languages, these languages have

Chinese Languages

2005-02-25T07:04:00.000-08:00

Modern Standard Chinese is based on the Peking (Beijing) dialect, which is of the Northern, or Mandarin, type. It employs about 1,300 different syllables. There are 22 initial consonants, including stops (made with momentary, complete closure in the vocal tract), affricates (beginning as stops but ending with incomplete closure), aspirated consonants, nasals, fricatives, liquid

Hesperus

2005-02-24T22:57:00.000-08:00

Greek Hesperos, also called Vesper, in Greco-Roman mythology, the evening star, son or brother of Atlas. He was later identified with the morning star, Phosphorus, or Eosphorus (Latin: Lucifer), the bringer of light. Hesperus is variously described by different authors as the father of the Hesperides (the guardians of the golden apples) or of their mother, Hesperis.

Pueblo

2005-02-24T21:37:00.000-08:00

The pueblo was constructed by stacking large adobe blocks, sun-dried and made from clay and water, usually measuring

Merchandising

2005-02-24T17:45:00.000-08:00

Element of marketing that is concerned specifically with promoting the sale of goods and services to consumers. See marketing.

Diplomatics

2005-02-23T16:32:00.000-08:00

The study of documents. The term is derived from the Greek word diploma, meaning “doubled” or “folded.” Besides the documents of legal and administrative import withwhich it is properly concerned, diplomatics also includes the study of other records such as bills, reports, cartularies, registers, and rolls. Diplomatics is therefore a basic and not simply an auxiliary

Gnetaceae

2005-02-22T22:24:00.000-08:00

A family of tropical gymnosperms in the order Gnetales, composed of one genus, Gnetum, with 30 or more species. Trees predominate among the African species; most of the Asian varieties are woody vines, but among the exceptions is G. gnemon, a tree about 20 metres (65 feet) tall that yields a useful fibre and an edible, plumlike fruit. The conspicuous, netlike veining of the broad leaves

Chandernagore

2005-02-22T03:56:00.000-08:00

Also called Chandannagar city, southeastern West Bengal state, northeastern India, just west of the Hooghly River and part of the Calcutta urban agglomeration. It is connected by road and rail with Calcutta and Burdwan. Settled in 1673 by the French and expanded commercially, it was captured by the English in 1757 and again in 1794 but was restored to France in 1815. Following the 1949 plebiscite, it merged with India.

Kharg Island

2005-02-22T02:53:00.000-08:00

Persian Jazireh-ye Khark, Arabic Jazirat Kharg, small Iranian island in the northern Persian Gulf, 34 miles (55 km) northwest of the port of Bushire (Bushehr). In the 15th century the Dutch established a factory (trading station) on the island, but in 1766 Kharg was taken by pirates based at Bandar-e Rig, a small Persian port north of Bushire. The island was virtually uninhabited for long periods thereafter, but, with Iran's 20th-century mineral

Shimabara Rebellion

2005-02-20T02:11:00.000-08:00

The revolt began as a result of dissatisfaction with the heavy taxation and abuses of local officials on the Shimabara Peninsula and the Amakusa-retto Islands.

Matthau, Walter

2005-02-20T01:10:00.000-08:00

Born into a family of Jewish-Russian immigrants, he was compelled to work at a very early age. By the time he was 11, he was employed at the concession stand in a Lower East Side Yiddish theatre. To pick up extra money, he began playing bit

Earn

2005-02-19T08:07:00.000-08:00

Loch (lake) and river, central Scotland. Loch Earn lies on the boundary between the council area of Stirling and the council area of Perth and Kinross, and the River Earn flows through Perth and Kinross. Loch Earn is 6.5 miles (10.5 km) from east to west with a maximum width of 0.5 mile (0.8 km). Lochearnhead is situated at the western end of the loch and St. Fillan's village at the eastern extremity,

Zaragoza

2005-02-19T06:34:00.000-08:00

Also spelled Saragossa, provincia, in the comunidad autónoma (“autonomous community”) of Aragon, northeastern Spain. Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, it formed the old kingdom of Aragon. It extends north and south of the middle course of the Ebro River; it reaches the foot of the Pyrenees (north) and is bounded west by the provinces of Navarra, Logroño, and Soria, south by Guadalajara

Nature, Philosophy Of, The range of topics

2005-02-18T18:42:00.000-08:00

An investigation of recent writings in biophilosophy reveals a continued preoccupation with unanswered—some say unanswerable—questions about evolutionary theory and a growing concern for a critical reappraisal of the question of whether biology is an autonomous discipline unamenable to reduction to mere physical and chemical underpinnings. Until the

Diffraction Grating

2005-02-18T01:29:00.000-08:00

Component of optical devices consisting of a surface ruled with close, equidistant, and parallel lines for the purpose of resolving light into spectra. A grating is said to be a transmission or reflection grating according to whether it is transparent or mirrored—that is, whether it is ruled on glass or on a thin metal film deposited on a glass blank. Reflection gratings

Air Warfare, Air superiority

2005-02-17T13:05:00.000-08:00

Airspeeds of the new fighters jumped to more than 400 miles per hour, and some planes could operate at altitudes of 30,000 feet. Wing-mounted machine guns and aerial cannon were lethal at 600 yards, and pilots communicated with one another and the ground via the radio telephone. These developments—especially the greater speeds—led Germans participating in the Spanish Civil

Sardinian Language

2005-02-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

Sardinian Sardo Romance language spoken on the Italian-ruled island of Sardinia; it is most similar to Vulgar Latin of all the modern Romance languages. Major dialects of Sardinian are Logudorian, spoken in central Sardinia; Campidanian, spoken in the south; Sassarian, spoken in the northwest; and Gallurian, spoken in the northeast. There is no standard form of Sardinian except the

Bel And The Dragon

2005-02-16T17:48:00.000-08:00

In full The History Of The Destruction Of Bel And The Dragon, Greek apocryphal addition to the biblical Book of Daniel. It is a deuterocanonical work in that it is accepted in the Roman canon but not by Jews or Protestants. It tells of the Jewish hero Daniel, who refuses to worship the god Bel and kills the dragon, thus being forced into a den of lions, which he is allowed to leave after seven days because he is unharmed. His enemies,

Faience Fine

2005-02-16T05:56:00.000-08:00

Fine white English lead-glazed earthenware, or creamware, imported into France from about 1730 onward. Staffordshire “salt glaze” was imported first, followed by the improved Wedgwood “Queen's ware” and the Leeds “cream-coloured ware.” It was cheaper than French faience, or tin-glazed earthenware, and more durable and was therefore subjected to heavy tariffs in 1741 and 1749. A Franco-British

Cheirolepis

2005-02-16T01:40:00.000-08:00

Extinct genus of primitive fishes whose fossils are found in European and North American rocks of the Devonian period (408 to 360 million years ago). The genus Cheirolepis is representative of the paleoniscoids, a group of primitive bony fishes, and may represent the common ancestor of the later, more progressive bony fishes. Cheirolepis was slim and streamlined,

Malachowski, Stanislaw

2005-02-15T11:52:00.000-08:00

The son of Jan Malachowski, the royal grand chancellor, Malachowski was named marshal (speaker) of the Sejm (Diet) in 1788. He was the prime force behind a constitution, adopted in 1791, that embodied such modern western European

Congo

2005-02-14T06:00:00.000-08:00

Congo's many ethnic groups and regions have developed a mosaic of traditional arts, including painting, sculpture, music, and dance. There has been a tendency to classify sculpture and carving according to the styles of the areas from which they originate. The South-West Group is represented by the Kongo people and is known for stone and nail-studded statues; the Yaka,

Insurance, FPA clause

2005-02-13T22:11:00.000-08:00

The FPA, or “free of particular average,” clause excludes from coverage partial losses to the cargo or to the hull except those resulting from stranding, sinking, burning, or collision. Under its provisions, losses below a given percentage of value, say 10 percent, are excluded. In this way the insurer does not pay for relatively small losses to cargo. The percentage deductible

Puerto Carreño

2005-02-13T08:15:00.000-08:00

Capital of Vichada departamento, eastern Colombia, situated at the junction of the Meta and Orinoco rivers, across from Puerto Páez, Venezuela. The easternmost of Colombia's urban centres and a potentially important port on the Orinoco River, the city is a collection centre for the cattle and livestock products, corn (maize), gums, and resins that are produced in the

Leninsk-kuznetsky

2005-02-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

Formerly (until 1925) Kolchugino, city, in Kemerovo oblast (province), central Russia. It lies along the Inya River, a tributary of the Ob. In 1912 a French company started coal-mining operations there; from the 1930s the city developed rapidly to become a major coal-mining centre, with many pits located in the city itself. Other industries produce chemicals, mining machinery, electric lamps, and timber goods. Pop.

Eliot, T.s.

2005-02-12T10:24:00.000-08:00

In full Thomas Stearns Eliot American-English poet, playwright, literary critic, and editor, a leader of the modernist movement in poetry in such works as The Waste Land (1922) and The Four Quartets (1943). Eliot exercised a strong influence on Anglo-American culture from the 1920s until late in the century. His experiments in diction, style, and versification revitalized English

Hupeh, Settlement patterns

2005-02-12T00:48:00.000-08:00

Population distribution, as in the rest of China, is predominantly rural. The main concentrations of rural population are found in the lake plain around the Yangtze and lower Han, notably from Wu-han downriver to Huang-shih; the lower Han Basin below Chung-hsiang (former An-lu) to Wu-han; and between I-ch'ang and Sha-shih. There is a smaller concentration at Hsiang-fan at the

Steely Dan

2005-02-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

Named after a prosthetic phallus in William S. Burroughs's novel Naked

Middle Way

2005-02-11T09:09:00.000-08:00

Sanskrit Madhyama-pratipada , Pali Majjhima-patipada in Buddhism, complement of general and specific ethical practices and philosophical views that are said to facilitate enlightenment by avoiding the extremes of self-gratification on one hand and self-mortification on the other. See Eightfold Path.

Cairo, Climate

2005-02-11T01:12:00.000-08:00

The typical desert climate contrasts daytime dry heat with cool nights freshened by Nile breezes. Cairo has only two seasons: approximately eight months of summer and four months of winter. In the hottest of the summer months—June, July, and August—the average daily maximum temperature is 95 °F (35 °C), and the average daily minimum is 70 °F (21 °C). The summer temperature has reached as

Ekman, V(agn) Walfrid

2005-02-10T16:32:00.000-08:00

Swedish physical oceanographer best known for his studies of the dynamics of ocean currents. The common oceanographic terms Ekman layer, denoting certain oceanic or atmospheric layers occurring at various interfaces; Ekman spiral, used in connection with vertical oceanic velocity; and Ekman transport, denoting

Amarillo

2005-02-09T22:42:00.000-08:00

At first called Oneida, the city originated in 1887 as a railroad construction camp and in the 1890s grew to become one of

China, Political policy changes

2005-02-09T08:03:00.000-08:00

The reformers led by Deng Xiaoping tried after 1978 to reduce the level of political coercion in Chinese society. Millions of victims of past political campaigns were released from labour camps (especially during 1978–80), and bad “class labels” were removed from those stigmatized by them. This dramatically improved the career and social opportunities available to millions

Protist, Section X. Rhizopod sarcodines

2005-02-09T06:12:00.000-08:00

Many possess nonaxopod pseudopodia in at least some stage of the life cycle, or a shuttle-type flow of cytoplasm is exhibited; tubular mitochondrial cristae; biflagellate stage is common in many species; pseudopodia are often employed in locomotion and holozoic feeding; some 44,000 described species, of which 85 percent are foraminiferans, with about 75 percent of the total

Amosite

2005-02-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

A variety of the silicate mineral cummingtonite, which is a source of asbestos (see cummingtonite).

Silesia

2005-02-08T00:30:00.000-08:00

Polish Slask , Czech Slezsko , German Schlesien historic region that is now in southwestern Poland. Silesia was originally a Polish province that became a possession of the Bohemian crown in 1335, passed with that crown to the Austrian Habsburgs in 1526, was taken by Prussia in 1742, and was returned to Poland in 1945. Silesia consists largely of the basin of the upper and middle Oder River, which flows from southeast to northwest. The