FrequentHat

World War I, The First Battle of the Marne

2005-04-05T19:34:00.000-07:00

Already on September 3, General J.-S. Gallieni, the military governor of Paris, had guessed the significance of the German 1st Army's swing inward to the Marne east of Paris. On September 4 Joffre, convinced by Gallieni's arguments, decisively ordered his whole left wing to turn about from their retreat and to begin a general offensive against the Germans' exposed right flank

Scat

2005-04-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

In biology, any of four species of fishes constituting the family Scatophagidae (order Perciformes). The few species are placed into two genera, Selenotoca and Scatophagus. They are found in marine waters or estuaries of the Indo-Pacific region from the western coast of India to New Guinea and northern Australia and also along the coast of Africa. Occasionally they

Eclogite

2005-04-03T04:41:00.000-07:00

Any member of a small group of igneous and metamorphic rocks whose composition is similar to that of basalt. Eclogites consist primarily of green pyroxene (omphacite) and red garnet (pyrope), with small amounts of various other stable minerals—e.g., olivine and diopside. They are formed when volcanic or metamorphic rocks rich in such mafic minerals are subjected to

East Hartford

2005-04-02T03:04:00.000-08:00

Urban town (township), Hartford county, central Connecticut, U.S., across the Connecticut River from Hartford. The area, called Podunk by the Indians, was first settled in 1639 by John Crow. Organized as a parish in 1746 and originally part of Hartford, it was incorporated as a separate town in 1783 and experienced early industrial development (papermaking and the manufacture of gunpowder,

Saxifragaceae

2005-03-31T20:57:00.000-08:00

The saxifrage family of flowering plants, in the order Rosales, comprising 36 genera of mostly perennial dicotyledonous herbs. The members are cosmopolitan in distribution but native primarily to northern cold and temperate regions. Members of the family have leaves that characteristically alternate along the stem and sometimes are deeply lobed or form rosettes.

Costain, Thomas B(ertram)

2005-03-31T10:06:00.000-08:00

A journalist for many years on Canadian newspapers and a Saturday Evening Post editor (1920–34), Costain was 57 when he published his first romance, For My Great Folly (1942), dealing with the 17th-century rivalry between England and Spain. An immediate success, it was followed almost yearly by historical

China, Foreign relations

2005-03-30T21:18:00.000-08:00

Whereas in Ming times the Chinese organized themselves along wholly bureaucratic and tightly centralized lines, the Ming emperors maintained China's traditional feudal-seeming relationships with foreign peoples. These included the aboriginal tribes of south and southwest China, who often rose in isolated rebellions but were gradually being assimilated.

Naguib, Muhammad

2005-03-29T16:23:00.000-08:00

A professional soldier, Naguib distinguished himself during the Egyptian defeat at the hands of Israel (1948) and won the respect of the Free Officers, a nationalist military group led by Gamal Abdel Nasser. In 1952 the Free

Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate Of Antioch

2005-03-28T23:51:00.000-08:00

In the 5th and 6th centuries a large body of Christians in Syria repudiated the patriarchs of Antioch who had supported the Council of Chalcedon (451) in affirming the dual nature of Christ. Like many Copts, Ethiopians, and Armenians,

Cumberland

2005-03-27T10:15:00.000-08:00

City, seat (1789) of Allegany county, northwestern Maryland, U.S. It lies in a bowl-shaped valley in the narrow panhandle region between Pennsylvania (north) and West Virginia (south), bounded by the Potomac River to the south. It is situated at the entrance to Cumberland Narrows, a natural gateway carved by Wills Creek through the Allegheny Mountains west to the Ohio River valley.

Earth Sciences, Observation and study of storms

2005-03-26T13:19:00.000-08:00

Storms, particularly tropical revolving storms, were subjects of much interest. As early as 1697 some of the more spectacular features of revolving storms were recorded in William Dampier's New Voyage Round the World. On July 4, 1687, Dampier's ship survived the passage of what he called a “tuffoon” off the coast of China. The captain's vivid account of this experience clearly describes

Ginsberg, (irwin) Allen

2005-03-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

American poet (b. June 3, 1926, Newark, N.J.--d. April 5, 1997, New York, N.Y.), was the poet laureate of the cultural movement in the 1950s whose members were known as the Beat Generation, disaffected antiestablishment writers whose lifestyle embraced alienation, nonconformity, and, often, drug use. His influence on art, music, and politics lasted throughout the following four decades, and such varied

Ear, Human, Transmission of sound waves in the cochlea

2005-03-24T19:15:00.000-08:00

The mechanical vibrations of the stapes footplate at the oval window creates pressure waves in the perilymph of the scala vestibuli of the cochlea. These waves move around the tip of the cochlea through the helicotrema into the scala tympani and dissipate as they hit the round window (Figure 8). The wave motion is transmitted to the endolymph inside the cochlear duct.

Anaximenes Of Miletus

2005-03-23T11:46:00.000-08:00

Anaximenes substituted aer (“mist,” “vapour,” “air”) for his predecessors'

Adams, Abigail

2005-03-22T05:47:00.000-08:00

Until the 20th century few first ladies shared Abigail Adams's interest in politics or in the treatment of government leaders by the press. She vigorously objected to what she considered inaccurate reporting on her husband and son. But she was not altogether surprised by the “lies [and] Falshoods,” writing in 1797 to her sister that she “expected to be vilified and abused, with my whole family.” Although her approach to the office of first lady was in many ways advanced, her fame rests primarily on her thousands of letters, which form an eloquent and evocative description of her life and times.

Saco

2005-03-21T13:37:00.000-08:00

City, York county, southwestern Maine, U.S., at the mouth of the Saco River opposite Biddeford. Founded with Biddeford in 1631 as a single plantation, it was the seat of Sir Ferdinando Gorges' government (1636–53) before passing to Massachusetts. It was called Saco until 1718 and Biddeford until it was separately incorporated (1762) as Pepperellboro Township. It developed a lumbering and seaport

Arginine

2005-03-19T21:49:00.000-08:00

An amino acid obtainable by hydrolysis of many common proteins but particularly abundant in protamines and histones, proteins associated with nucleic acids. First isolated from animal horn (1895), arginine plays an important role in mammals in the synthesis of urea, the principal form in which these species excrete nitrogen. Arginine is one of several nonessential

Metal Cut

2005-03-19T09:24:00.000-08:00

The English poet and artist William Blake (1757–1827) experimented with metal cuts, but the technique's greatest exponent was the Mexican

Ahab

2005-03-19T02:53:00.000-08:00

Omri left to Ahab an empire that comprised not only territory east of the Jordan River, in Gilead and probably Bashan, but also the land of Moab, whose king was tributary. The southern kingdom of Judah, if not actually subject to Omri, was certainly a

Scabious

2005-03-17T08:02:00.000-08:00

Also called Scabiosa (genus Scabiosa), any of about 100 species of annual and perennial herbs of the teasel family, Dipsacaceae, order Dipsacales. They are native to temperate Eurasia, the Mediterranean region, and the mountains of eastern Africa. Some are important garden plants. All species have basal leaf rosettes and leafy stems. The flower heads have many crowded, small,

Vasily Ii

2005-03-17T07:08:00.000-08:00

Although the 10-year-old Vasily II was named by his father Vasily I (ruled Moscow 1389–1425) to succeed him as the grand prince of Moscow and of Vladimir, Vasily's rule was challenged by his uncle Yury and his cousins Vasily the Squint-Eyed and Dmitry Shemyaka. After a long, chaotic, and bitter struggle, during which Vasily not only temporarily

Digestive System, Vertebrate, Endorphins and enkephalins

2005-03-16T14:31:00.000-08:00

Endorphins and enkephalins, each comprising five amino acids in the molecule, are present in the vagus nerves and the myenteric plexus. They have the properties of opiate (opium-derived) substances such as morphine; they bind to the same receptors and are neutralized by the opiate antagonist naloxone. There is no evidence that endorphins and enkephalins are circulating

Pavelic, Ante

2005-03-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

As a practicing lawyer in Zagreb, Pavelic entered the nationalist Croatian Party of Rights. In 1920 he was elected city and county alderman at Zagreb. From 1927 to 1929 he was a representative in the Yugoslav Skupština (parliament),

Hawes, Harriet Ann Boyd

2005-03-15T20:54:00.000-08:00

Harriet Boyd graduated from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1892; thereafter she taught ancient and modern languages for four years, first as a private tutor in Henderson, North Carolina, and then at a girls' school in Wilmington,

Byrne, (francis) Barry

2005-03-15T10:23:00.000-08:00

U.S. architect who emerged from the Prairie school of architecture influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright to develop a number of highly individual styles, especially in his designs for Roman Catholic ecclesiastical buildings. One of his finest works, the reinforced concrete Church of Christ the King, Cork, Ireland (from 1928), is said to be the first

Tall Za'tar

2005-03-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

Also called Zaátar, former Palestinian refugee camp, Jabal Lubnan muhafazah (governorate), central Lebanon, north of Beirut, near Nabay. The camp was the last large Muslim outpost in the midst of the predominantly Christian inhabited area of north Lebanon and had a population estimated at 15,000 in the mid-1970s. During the Lebanese civil war (that began in the spring of 1975) between Muslims and Christians,

Schaeffer, Pierre

2005-03-13T17:19:00.000-08:00

French composer, acoustician, and electronics engineer who in 1948, with his staff at Radio-diffusion et Télévision Française, introduced musique concrète (q.v.), in which sounds of natural origin, animate and inanimate, are recorded and manipulated so that the original sounds are distorted and combined in a musical fashion. The means

Suffren De Saint-tropez, Pierre André De

2005-03-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

A Knight of Malta, Suffren de Saint-Tropez served under Admiral C.H. d'Estaing in America and was sent to assist French military operations in India in 1781. In a remarkable series of engagements with British Admiral

Ribalta, Francisco

2005-03-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

Spanish painter who was one of the first artists to be influenced by the new realism initiated by Caravaggio in Italy. Ribalta's use of light and shadow to give solidity to his forms made him the first native Spanish tenebroso (a painter who emphasizes darkness rather than light), and he was a major influence on later Spanish

Indiana Dunes

2005-03-11T02:53:00.000-08:00

The state park, established in 1925, comprises 2,182 acres (883 hectares) of shoreline, marshland, dunes, and forests near Chesterton. In addition to a 3-mile (5-kilometre) white sand beach, it has facilities for camping, picnicking, fishing, and hiking. An outstanding feature is the Big

France, History Of, The religious wars and the monarchy

2005-03-10T21:18:00.000-08:00

This succession of civil disturbances brought the French state close to disintegration and posed a threat to the crown that would not be matched again until 1789. The key factor in producing this situation lay in the nature of Calvinism, which provided both a rallying point for a wide cross section of opposition and the organization necessary to make that opposition

Taconite

2005-03-10T03:48:00.000-08:00

A low-grade siliceous iron formation in Minnesota, U.S., from which high-grade iron ore is derived. The iron formation consists of fine-grained silica with variable ratios of hematite and magnetite totaling less than 30 percent iron. Recovery of the iron requires fine grinding and concentration of iron-bearing phases, which in turn are formed into pellets suitable for

Loxodrome

2005-03-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

Also called Rhumb Line, or Spherical Helix, curve cutting the meridians of a sphere at a constant nonright angle. Thus, it may be seen as the path of a ship sailing always oblique to the meridian and directed always to the same point of the compass. Pedro Nunes, who first conceived the curve (1550), mistakenly believed it to be the shortest path joining two points on a sphere (see great circle route). Any ship following such

Vinh

2005-03-09T07:56:00.000-08:00

City, north-central Vietnam, located on the Ca River delta, 160 miles (260 km) south of Hanoi. The Ca River enters the Gulf of Tonkin just northeast of Vinh. An important trade centre for the surrounding region, the city is the focus of a densely populated agricultural area. It is also the site of an electric power plant and has chemical and textile industries. Manganese and phosphates

Allah

2005-03-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

(Arabic: “God”), the one and only God in the religion of Islam. Etymologically, the name Allah is probably a contraction of the Arabic al-Ilah, “the God.” The name's origin can be traced back to the earliest Semitic writings in which the word for god was Il or El, the latter being an Old Testament synonym for Yahweh. Allah is the standard Arabic word for “God” and is used by Arab Christians

André, John

2005-03-07T06:45:00.000-08:00

Sent to America in 1774, André became chief intelligence officer to the British commander in chief, General Sir Henry Clinton, in New York City. From May 1779 he carried on a secret correspondence

Gabija

2005-03-06T09:38:00.000-08:00

Also spelled gabieta (Lithuanian) , Latvian uguns mate , Old Prussian panicke in Baltic religion, the domestic hearth fire. In pre-Christian times a holy fire (šventa ugnis) was kept in tribal sanctuaries on high hills and riverbanks, where priests guarded it constantly, extinguishing and rekindling it once a year at the midsummer festival. Eventually this tradition was moved into the home as the gabija, and its care became the responsibility

Deering, William

2005-03-06T06:29:00.000-08:00

Deering helped manage his family's woolen mill in South Paris in western Maine. About 1850 he went to Illinois and Iowa to invest in farmland, but he returned to South Paris in 1856 and set up a

Anstey, Christopher

2005-03-04T21:52:00.000-08:00

Poet whose epistolary novel in verse, The New Bath Guide, went through more than 30 editions between 1766 and 1830. After an education at Eton and at King's College, Cambridge, Anstey in 1754 inherited an independent income; and in 1770 he settled permanently at Bath, fashionable spa of the 18th century. The New Bath Guide; or, Memoirs of the B—R

Waring, Laura Wheeler

2005-03-04T16:45:00.000-08:00

The daughter of upper-class parents, Laura Wheeler graduated from Hartford (Connecticut) High School (with honours) during a time when few African American women attended school. In 1908 she entered the Pennsylvania Academy

Abu Al-hasan 'ali

2005-03-03T08:07:00.000-08:00

In 1331 Abu al-Hasan succeeded his father, Abu Sa'id, to the throne. With the goals of expelling the Christians from Spain and uniting all the Islamic lands of North Africa, Abu al-Hasan attacked and captured Algeciras and Gibraltar

Ta-ch'ing

2005-03-02T22:52:00.000-08:00

Pinyin Daqing oil field in Heilungkiang province, China, one of the country's most important sources of oil. It is situated in the north of the Sungari-Liao River basin, between Tsitsihar and Harbin, in the general vicinity of An-ta, northwest of Harbin. The field was discovered in the late 1950s and drilling began in 1958, often in difficult conditions caused by the extreme winter cold and by

Dragoman

2005-03-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

Arabic Tarjuman, Turkish Tercüman, official interpreter in countries where Arabic, Turkish, and Persian are spoken. Originally the term applied to any intermediary between Europeans and Middle Easterners, whether as a hotel tout or as a traveller's guide, but there developed the official dragomans of foreign ministries and embassies, whose functions at one time included the conduct of important

'abd Allah

2005-03-01T19:27:00.000-08:00

'Abd Allah followed his family's vocation for religion. In about 1880 he became a disciple of Muhammad Ahmad, who announced that he had a divine mission, became known as al-Mahdi, and appointed 'Abd Allah a caliph (khalifah). When al-Mahdi died

Switzerland, History

2005-03-01T09:48:00.000-08:00

Historical overviews are provided by Handbuch der schweizer Geschichte, 2 vol. (1972–77); Peter Dürrenmatt, Schweizer Geschichte (1957, reissued in 2 vol., 1976); Edgar Bonjour, H.S. Offler, and G.R. Potter, A Short History of Switzerland (1952, reprinted 1985); Georg Thürer, Free and Swiss: The Story of Switzerland (1970; originally published in German, 3rd ed., 1964); Marc-R. Sauter, Switzerland, from Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest (1976); and William Martin, Switzerland: From Roman Times to the Present (1971; originally published in French, 6th ed., 1966). Hektor Ammann and Karl Schib (eds.), Historischen Atlas der Schweiz, 2nd ed. (1958), is an excellent atlas of Swiss history.

Anger, Per Johan Valentin

2005-02-28T17:58:00.000-08:00

Swedish diplomat (b. Dec. 7, 1913, Göteborg, Swed.—d. Aug. 25, 2002, Stockholm, Swed.), helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from being transported to Nazi death camps during World War II. Anger, a member of the Swedish legation in Budapest when the Germans occupied Hungary in 1944, set up safe houses around Budapest and issued temporary passports and identity cards that identified Jews as Swedes.

Allen, Phog

2005-02-28T16:35:00.000-08:00

Allen succeeded James Naismith, who created the sport, as basketball coach in 1908–09 at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Allen's Kansas teams of 1920–56 won 771 games and lost 233; his 1951–52 Kansas team won the championship of the National Collegiate Athletic

Norge, Géo

2005-02-26T07:34:00.000-08:00

In the 1920s Norge flirted with the avant-garde, writing some loosely experimental plays (which were criticized by the Surrealists) and joining Raymond Rouleau in an experimental theatre group, Groupe Libre. Norge's good-natured irony

Oyo

2005-02-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

State, western Nigeria. Oyo was reduced in size when Osun state was created out of its eastern portion in 1991. Oyo is bounded by the states of Kwara on the north, Osun on the east, and Ogun on the south and by the Republic of Benin on the west. Oyo state is traversed by the Yoruba Hills in the north. The state has some tropical rain forest in the south around Ibadan, the state capital,

Mollien, Nicolas-françois, Count (comte)

2005-02-25T04:07:00.000-08:00

Mollien worked in the office that controlled the activities of the farmers general (private contractors who collected oppressive taxes from the peasants, often by harsh measures) from 1781, and in 1786 he drew up a contract whereby these tax collectors' payments to the Royal Treasury

Dadra And Nagar Haveli

2005-02-24T13:48:00.000-08:00

Works dealing specifically with the west and west-central area prior to its annexation by India are mainly in Portuguese; see Henry Scholberg, Archana Ashok Kakodker, and Carmo Azevedo, Bibliography of Goa and the Portuguese in India (1982). See also M.N. Pearson, Merchants and Rulers in Gujarat: The Response to the Portuguese in the Sixteenth Century (1976); and K.S. Mathew, Portuguese and the Sultanate of Gujarat, 1500–1573 (1986). Ganesh Dass, Socio-economic Profile of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, ed. by K.D. Ballal (1974); and P.S. Lele, Dadra and Nagar Haveli (1987), provide useful overviews. S.S. Desai, Goa, Daman and Diu, Dadra and Nagar Haveli (1976), is a study of the three union territories.

Osinniki

2005-02-24T08:40:00.000-08:00

City, Kemerovo oblast (province), central Russia. It is situated at the confluence of the Kandalep and Kondoma rivers. The city developed in the 1930s as a mining centre in the Kuznetsk Coal Basin; it supplies coal to the Kuznetsk metallurgical complex located in Novokuznetsk. A college of mining technology is located there. Inc. city, 1938. Pop. (1991 est.) 63,200.

Sokoto

2005-02-24T03:47:00.000-08:00

Sokoto was only a small village when selected to be the military headquarters

Gauss Elimination

2005-02-22T17:59:00.000-08:00

In linear and multilinear algebra, a process for finding the solutions of a system of simultaneous linear equations by first solving one of the equations for the first variable (in terms of all the others) and then substituting this expression into the remaining equations. The result is a new system in which the number of equations and variables is one less than in

Caribou

2005-02-21T08:04:00.000-08:00

City, Aroostook county, northeastern Maine, U.S. It lies along the Aroostook River, near the New Brunswick border, 13 miles (21 km) north of Presque Isle. Settled in 1824, it developed as a lumbering centre and was incorporated in 1859 as Lyndon. It was renamed Caribou in 1877 for the woodland caribou once plentiful in the region. The city is the shipping point for a large potato-growing region.

Academy

2005-02-20T16:30:00.000-08:00

At the close of the Middle Ages, academies

Rama Iii

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

Rama III was the eldest son of King Rama II by a royal concubine, and in his youth he was given responsibility for overseeing foreign trade and relations. On his father's

Wang Pi

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

By the time of his death at the age of 23, Wang was already the author of outstanding commentaries on the Taoist classic, the Tao-te Ching, or Lao-tzu, and the Confucian mystical classic, the I Ching (“Classic of Changes”). Through these commentaries he helped introduce metaphysics into Chinese

Hanafiyah

2005-02-18T08:10:00.000-08:00

Also called Madhhab Hanifah , English Hanafites in Islam, one of the four Sunni schools of religious law, incorporating the legal opinions of the ancient Iraqi schools of al-Kufah and Basra. Hanafi legal thought (madhhab) developed from the teachings of the theologian Imam Abu Hanifah (c. 700–767) by such disciples as Abu Yusuf (d. 798) and Muhammad ash-Shaybani (749/750–805) and became the official system of Islamic legal interpretation of the 'Abbasids, Seljuqs

Insurance, Indirect losses

2005-02-17T21:21:00.000-08:00

An entirely different branch of the insurance business has been developed to insure losses that are indirectly the result of one of the specified perils. A prominent example of this type of insurance is business income insurance. The insurer undertakes to reimburse the insured for lost profits or for fixed charges incurred as a result of direct damage. For example,

Bukavu

2005-02-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

Formerly (until 1966) Costermansville city, eastern Congo (Kinshasa), central Africa, on a peninsula extending into Lake Kivu. It is a commercial and industrial centre, a lake port, and a tourist city with road access northwest to Kisangani, southwest to Kasai, south to Lubumbashi and Katanga province, and to East Africa. There is also air transport to other Congolese cities and to Burundi. The region is known

Shammai Ha-zaken

2005-02-16T18:40:00.000-08:00

Little is known about Shammai's life. He became av-bet-din (“presiding justice”) of the Great Sanhedrin during the time that Hillel was nasi (president). Like Hillel,

Alipore

2005-02-16T01:43:00.000-08:00

Also spelled Alipur town, West Bengal state, northeastern India. A southern suburb of Calcutta included within the city municipality, it has major industries, including printing and bookbinding, cement manufacture, oilseed milling, and general engineering works. Alipore is the site of zoological-horticultural gardens and of Belvedere House, onetime residence of the former British

Salem

2005-02-15T16:42:00.000-08:00

County, southwestern New Jersey, U.S. It comprises a coastal lowland bounded by Delaware to the west (the Delaware River constituting the border), Oldmans Creek to the north, the Maurice River to the southeast, and Stow Creek to the southwest. The county is connected to Wilmington, Del., by way of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Other waterways are the Salem and Cohansey rivers

Soissons, Charles De Bourbon, Count (comte) De

2005-02-15T03:51:00.000-08:00

Louis I de Bourbon, the first prince de Condé, had acquired the countship of Soissons in 1557, and upon his death in 1569 it passed to his youngest son, Charles. This count fought for Henry of Bourbon (the future Henry IV) against Henry III of France at

Schmidt, Arno

2005-02-14T21:35:00.000-08:00

In full Arno Otto Schmidt novelist, translator, and critic, whose experimental prose established him as the preeminent Modernist of 20th-century German literature. With roots in both German Romanticism and Expressionism, he attempted to develop modern prose forms that correspond more closely to the workings of the conscious and subconscious mind

Dissociation

2005-02-14T16:38:00.000-08:00

In chemistry, the breaking up of a compound into simpler constituents that are usually capable of recombining under other conditions. In electrolytic, or ionic, dissociation, the addition of a solvent or of energy in the form of heat causes molecules or crystals of the substance to break up into ions (electrically charged particles). Most dissociating substances

Vieira Da Silva, Maria Elena

2005-02-13T04:03:00.000-08:00

Vieira da Silva studied sculpture first with Antoine Bourdelle at Paris in 1928 and later with Charles Despiau. Her interest in painting flowered under the tutelage of Fernand Léger and Stanley William Hayter.

Anthony, Katharine (susan)

2005-02-12T20:08:00.000-08:00

A college teacher of geometry, Anthony was deeply interested in psychiatry. Eventually this interest came to shape her approach to biography,

Zemes Mate

2005-02-12T06:17:00.000-08:00

(Latvian), Lithuanian Zemyna the Earth Mother of Baltic religion. Zemes mate represents the female aspect of nature and the source of all life—human, animal, and plant. Interacting with Dievs (the sky), Zemes mate stimulates and protects the power of life. Libations of beer were offered to her at the opening of every festival, and such products of the earth as bread, ale, and herbs were buried in the ground

Nichiren

2005-02-11T02:07:00.000-08:00

Original name Zennichi, also called Zenshobo Rencho, posthumous name Rissho Daishi militant Japanese Buddhist prophet who contributed significantly to the adaptation of Buddhism to the Japanese mentality and who remains one of the most controversial and influential figures in Japanese Buddhist history. After an exhaustive study of the various forms of Buddhism, he concluded (in 1253) that the Lotus Sutra teaching

Giresun

2005-02-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

Also spelled Keresun, city and seaport, northeastern Turkey. It lies along the Black Sea about 110 miles (175 km) west of Trabzon. The older parts of the city lie on a peninsula crowned by a ruined Byzantine fortress, sheltering the small natural harbour. Nearby is Giresun Island, in ancient times called Ares. Giresun was known to the ancient Greeks as Choerades or Pharnacia and to the Romans as Kerasous

Syzran

2005-02-09T10:40:00.000-08:00

City, Samara oblast (province), western Russia. It lies along the Volga River at the latter's confluence with the Syzran River. Founded in 1683 as a stronghold at the eastern end of the Syzran defensive line, the city is a significant river port and an important centre of the western Volga-Urals oil field. Oil refining, manufacture of chemicals, glassmaking, timber working, and

Hamasah

2005-02-08T15:23:00.000-08:00

The anthology consists of 10 books, containing,

Ito Jakuchu

2005-02-08T09:36:00.000-08:00

The son of a greengrocer, he first studied drawing with a painter of the Kano school (stressing Chinese subject matter and techniques). He also made copies of old Chinese

Einstein's Massenergy Relation

2005-02-08T08:12:00.000-08:00

In physical theories prior to that of special relativity, mass and energy were viewed as distinct entities. Furthermore, the energy of a body at rest could be assigned an arbitrary

Hawaii

2005-02-05T21:26:00.000-08:00

Hawaii was characterized

Uhf

2005-02-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

UHF waves are very weakly reflected by the ionized layers of the upper

Zealand

2005-02-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

Danish Sjælland largest and most populous island of Denmark, between the Kattegat and the Baltic Sea, separated from Sweden by The Sound (Øresund) and from Funen (Fyn) island by the Great Belt. Zealand is divided into seven major administrative units: the municipalities of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg and the amtskommuner (counties) of København, Frederiksborg, Vestsjælland, Roskilde

Aegospotami, Battle Of

2005-02-04T22:37:00.000-08:00

(405 BC), naval victory of Sparta over Athens, final battle of the Peloponnesian War. The fleets of the two Greek rival powers faced each other in the Hellespont for four days without battle, until on the fifth day the Spartans under Lysander surprised the Athenians in their anchorage off Aegospotami. Conon, the Athenian commander, escaped with only 20 of his 180 ships, and the 3,000–4,000 Athenians

Literature, Swedish.

2005-02-03T13:24:00.000-08:00

A feeling of lost control and an urge to use language to beseech a present and a past that had gone out of hand served as a rough summary of preferred themes in Swedish literature in 2001. Per Olov Enquist's Lewis resa portrayed revivalist Lewi Pethrus, the founding father of the Swedish branch of the Pentecostal

Steely Dan

2005-02-03T06:24:00.000-08:00

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

Saxony

2005-02-01T21:50:00.000-08:00

German Sachsen , French Saxe any of several major territories in German history. It has been applied: (1) before AD 1180, to an extensive far-north German region including Holstein but lying mainly west and southwest of the estuary and lower course of the Elbe River; (2) between 1180 and 1423, to two much smaller and widely separated areas, one on the right (east) bank of the lower Elbe southeast of Holstein, the other on the

Sea Swallow

2005-02-01T19:57:00.000-08:00

Any of certain coastal tern species. See tern.

France, History Of, The second revolution

2005-01-31T17:57:00.000-08:00

The insurrection of Aug. 10, 1792, did not of course stop the Prussian advance on the capital. As enthusiastic contingents of volunteers left for the front, fear of counterrevolutionary plots gripped the capital. Journalists like Jean-Paul Marat pointed to the prisons bursting with vagrants and criminals as well as refractory clergy and royalists and asked what would

Tobogganing

2005-01-31T09:10:00.000-08:00

The runnerless toboggan was originally an American Indian sled made of poles tied together with thongs. The modern version is usually built of thin, straight-grained

Clodius Pulcher, Publius

2005-01-30T14:26:00.000-08:00

Born into two distinguished families, Clodius served under his brother-in-law L. Lucullus in the war against Mithradates and instigated a mutiny among the troops in the winter of 68–67. In December 62, when the winter ceremony of the

Romania, The Slavs

2005-01-30T13:56:00.000-08:00

For nearly eight centuries after the withdrawal of the Roman administration and army, Dacia was overrun by a series of migratory peoples. The earliest of them—the Visigoths (275–376), the Huns (end of the 4th century to 454), and the Germanic Gepidae (454–567)—had little impact on the Daco-Roman population. But the Avars' defeat of the Gepidae in 567 opened the way for a massive advance of Slavs into

Teratology

2005-01-29T22:43:00.000-08:00

Branch of the biological sciences dealing with the causes, development, description, and classification of congenital malformations in plants and animals and with the experimental production, in some instances, of these malformations. Congenital malformations arise from interruption in the early development of the organism. Malformations in human infants,

Chouan

2005-01-29T05:10:00.000-08:00

Member of any of the bands of peasants, chiefly smugglers and dealers in contraband salt, who rose in revolt in the west of France in 1793 and joined the Vendéan royalists (see Vendée, Wars of the). The Breton word chouan, meaning “screech owl,” is supposed to have been applied originally as a nickname to Jean Cottereau (1757–94), leader of the unsuccessful revolt, and afterward extended

Rambouillet, Catherine De Vivonne, Marquise De

2005-01-27T20:40:00.000-08:00

Mme de Rambouillet was of noble background and was married at the age of 12 to Charles d'Angennes, later marquis de Rambouillet. Revolted by the coarseness of the French court under Henry IV and distressed by the amount

John Frederick (ii)

2005-01-27T03:29:00.000-08:00

On the imprisonment of his father, the former elector John Frederick the Magnanimous, John Frederick II and

Ramana Maharshi

2005-01-26T09:34:00.000-08:00

Original name Venkataraman Aiyer Hindu philosopher and yogi called “Great Master,” “Bhagavan” (the Lord), and “the Sage of Arunachala,” whose position on monism (the identity of the individual soul and the creator of souls) and maya (illusion) parallels that of Sankara (c. AD 700–750). His original contribution to yogic philosophy is the technique of vicara (self-“pondering”

Subsistence Farming

2005-01-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

Form of farming in which nearly all of the crops or livestock raised are used to maintain the farmer and his family, leaving little, if any, surplus for sale or trade. Preindustrial agricultural peoples throughout the world have traditionally practiced subsistence farming. Some of these peoples moved from site to site as they exhausted the soil at each location.

Gymnastics

2005-01-25T03:21:00.000-08:00

The performance of systematic exercises—often with the use of rings, bars, and other apparatus—either as a competitive sport or to improve strength, agility, coordination, and physical conditioning.

Kamloops

2005-01-24T01:12:00.000-08:00

City, southern British Columbia, Can. It lies astride the confluence of the North and South Thompson rivers near their expansion into Kamloops Lake and adjacent to the Kamloops Indian Reserve, 220 miles (355 km) by road northeast of Vancouver. It originated as a trading settlement, founded by Alexander Ross of the Pacific (Astoria) Fur Company, who called it Cumcloups (from an

Davidson, Thomas

2005-01-23T15:15:00.000-08:00

Davidson studied at the University of Edinburgh (1835–36) and on the Continent, where he participated in several geologic tours. Soon

Aerospace Industry, Propulsion

2005-01-22T21:29:00.000-08:00

There are three basic types of flight vehicle-propulsion systems: piston engines (or reciprocating engines), turbine engines (true-jet, turboprop, and turboshaft engines), and rocket engines (see airplane: Propulsion systems and rocket). At the low end of the performance spectrum are reciprocating engines. Although during World War II and the early postwar period the industry

Byte

2005-01-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

The basic unit of information in computer storage and processing. A byte consists of 8 adjacent binary digits (bits), each of which consists of a 0 or 1. The string of bits making up a byte is processed as a unit by a computer; bytes are the smallest operable units of storage in computer technology. A byte can represent the equivalent of a single character, such as the letter B,

Zacatecoluca

2005-01-21T20:12:00.000-08:00

City, southern El Salvador. It lies in the Lempa River Valley, at the foot of San Vicente Volcano. A commercial centre for the surrounding agricultural area, it also trades in cotton goods, baskets, salt, and lumber and produces cement. An earthquake in 1932 caused severe damage to the city. Zacatecoluca was the birthplace of José Simeón Cañas, who fought successfully to end