SmallWire

Organic Underwear

2006-10-29T05:35:00.000-08:00

Natural soft Organic Clothinggoods are hard to find as they can often be a little course. Liv Organic Cotton Goodsare soft and luxurious and their Organic Underwear is to die for.

Ghat

2005-04-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

Also spelled Gat, oasis, southwestern Libya, near the Algerian border. Located on an ancient Saharan caravan route, it was a slave-trading centre and the object of European exploration in the 19th century. Ghat lies west of the Wadi (watercourse) Tanezzuft in hilly sandstone country, near the Jibal Akakus (mountains) and the Tadrart plateau. A nearby offshoot of the mountains, Idinen, is a legendary

Dependent States

2005-04-03T03:52:00.000-07:00

Puerto Rico's largest bank was fined $21.6 million in January 2003 by the U.S. Department of Justice for allegedly having allowed millions of dollars in drug money to be laundered because of a failure to report suspicious activities to the authorities. The head of the Cayman Islands' Financial Reporting Unit, Brian Gibbs, resigned

Términos Lagoon

2005-04-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

Spanish Laguna De Términos, lagoon in southwestern Campeche state, at the base of the Yucatán Peninsula, eastern Mexico. An inlet of the Bay of Campeche on the Gulf of Mexico, it measures 45 mi (72 km) east–west and 12 to 15 mi north–south. Long, narrow Carmen Island stretches across its entrance. The lagoon is fed by the Palizada and Candelaria rivers. Shrimp, fish, and turtles are taken from Términos, and crocodiles

Cádiz

2005-03-30T03:37:00.000-08:00

The eastern part of the provincia is crossed by wooded spurs of

Gulf Intracoastal Waterway

2005-03-27T03:27:00.000-08:00

An improved navigable waterway along the Gulf Coast of the United States, extending from Apalachee Bay, Florida, westward to the Mexican border at Brownsville, Texas, a distance of more than 1,100 miles (1,770 km). In part artificial, the waterway consists of a channel paralleling the coast behind barrier beaches, the channel being linked by a series of canals. The Gulf Intracoastal

Udall, Nicholas

2005-03-26T21:15:00.000-08:00

Udall was educated at the University of Oxford, where he became a lecturer and fellow. He became a schoolmaster in 1529 and was teaching in London in 1533 when he wrote “ditties and interludes” for Anne

Auchincloss, Louis

2005-03-23T10:34:00.000-08:00

Auchincloss studied at Yale University from 1935 to 1939 and graduated from the University of Virginia Law School in 1941. He was admitted to the New York state bar that same year and began a legal career that would last

Pueblo Rebellion

2005-03-21T03:32:00.000-08:00

(1680), carefully organized revolt of Pueblo Indians (in league with Apaches), who succeeded in overthrowing Spanish rule in New Mexico for 12 years. A traditionally peaceful people, the Pueblos had endured much after New Mexico's colonization in 1598. Catholicism was forced on them by missionaries who burned their ceremonial pits (kivas), masks, and other sacred objects. Indians

Scale Insect

2005-03-20T01:43:00.000-08:00

Any member of several families of the insect order Homoptera. The females are wingless, with reduced legs and antennae; the males have one pair of delicate wings, well-developed legs and antennae, and no mouthparts. The body is covered by a protective waxy shell, often resembling scales or cottony cushions, that gives these insects their common name. The eggs are always

Gymel

2005-03-19T17:26:00.000-08:00

(from Latin cantus gemellus, “twin song”), medieval musical style of two-part polyphonic composition, possibly of popular origin, in which the voices move mainly in consecutive intervals of a third or a sixth. Crossing of parts is a common characteristic. Although gymel compositions have been preserved in manuscripts dating from the beginning of the 13th century, the

Brunet, Andrée; And Brunet, Pierre

2005-03-18T15:13:00.000-08:00

Brunet and Joly each competed individually before their Olympic debut in 1924. Brunet became a national hero in France by winning consecutive national

Tigray

2005-03-16T19:37:00.000-08:00

The Tigray are descendants of a Semitic people who intermixed with the Cushitic inhabitants of the region and founded the Christian kingdom

Sigebert Of Gembloux

2005-03-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

After receiving

Amalaric

2005-03-14T19:21:00.000-08:00

Amalaric was a child when his father fell in battle against Clovis, king of the Franks (507). He was carried for safety into Spain, which country, with southern Languedoc and Provence, was thenceforth ruled by his maternal grandfather Theodoric the Great through his vice-regent, an Ostrogothic nobleman named Theudis. On Theodoric's death

Graebner, Fritz

2005-03-14T02:03:00.000-08:00

While a research assistant at the Royal Museum

Defoe, Daniel

2005-03-12T10:04:00.000-08:00

English novelist, pamphleteer, and journalist, author of Robinson Crusoe (1719–22) and Moll Flanders (1722).

Gattamelata

2005-03-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

Also called Equestrian monument of Erasmo da Narni bronze statue of the Venetian condottiere Erasmo da Narni, (popularly known as Gattamelata, meaning “honeyed cat”) by the 15th-century Italian Early Renaissance sculptor Donatello. It was completed between 1447 and 1450 but was not installed on its pedestal in the Piazza del Santo in front of the Basilica of Sant'Antonio in Padua, Italy, until 1453. The statue established a prototype

Edinburgh Review, The, Or The Critical Journal

2005-03-11T10:04:00.000-08:00

Scottish magazine that was published from 1802 to 1929, and which contributed to the development of the modern periodical and to modern standards of literary criticism. The Edinburgh Review was founded by Francis Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Henry Brougham as a quarterly publication, with Jeffrey as its first and longtime editor. It was intended as an outlet for liberal views

Argentina, Demographic trends

2005-03-09T11:42:00.000-08:00

The population of Argentina has increased 20-fold since 1869, when 1.8 million people were recorded there by the first census. Population growth was rapid through the early part of the 20th century, but it declined thereafter as both the birth rate and immigration began to drop off; the proportion of young people also declined. Argentina's rates of birth and population growth

Azores

2005-03-09T07:46:00.000-08:00

Portuguese in full Arquipélago Dos Açores, archipelago composed of nine major islands, in the North Atlantic Ocean; they lie roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) west of Portugal and are a part of that nation. The islands, which have a total land area of 868 square miles (2,247 square km), are divided into three widely separated groups: the eastern group, consisting of São Miguel, Santa Maria, and the Formigas islets; the central, of Faial, Pico,

Human Embryology, Amnion

2005-03-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

A cleft separates the outermost cells of the inner cell mass of the blastocyst from the remainder, which then becomes the embryonic disk (Figure 1G). The split-off, thin upper layer is the amnion, which remains attached to the periphery of the embryonic disk. As the disk folds into a cylindrical embryo, the amniotic margin follows the underfolding,

Hyannis

2005-03-07T20:48:00.000-08:00

Unincorporated village in Barnstable city, southeastern Massachusetts, U.S., on the southern coast of Cape Cod. Its name is that of a local 17th-century Algonquian Indian chief. A popular summer beach and yachting resort with ferryboat services to Nantucket Island and Martha's Vineyard, it is one of the cape's main business centres and a shipping point for fish and cranberries.

Ear, Human, Eustachian tube

2005-03-04T05:25:00.000-08:00

The eustachian tube, about 45 millimetres (1.75 inches) long, leads downward and inward from the tympanum to the nasopharynx, the space that is behind and continuous with the nasal passages and is above the soft palate. At its upper end the tube is narrow and surrounded by bone. Nearer the pharynx it widens and becomes cartilaginous. Its mucous lining, which is continuous with

Alarm Signal

2005-03-03T07:30:00.000-08:00

In zoology, a ritualized means of communicating a danger or threat among the members of an animal group. In many cases the signal is visual or vocal, but some animals—ants, bees, and certain fishes, for example—secrete chemical substances. Alarm communications frequently cross species boundaries. The hawking alarm calls of many small birds are similar and will cause

Binary Number System

2005-03-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

In mathematics, positional numeral system employing 2 as the base and requiring only two different symbols, 0 and 1. The importance of the binary system to information theory and computer technology derives mainly from the compact and reliable manner in which data can be represented in electromechanical devices with two states—such as “on-off,” “open-closed,” or “go-no

Cartwright, William

2005-03-01T23:56:00.000-08:00

Educated at Westminster School and the University of Oxford, Cartwright became a preacher, noted for his florid style, and a reader in metaphysics. In 1643 he was university junior proctor.

Rachmaninoff, Sergey

2005-02-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

Rachmaninoff's letters have been collected and published in Russian in Pisma, ed. by Z.A. Apetian (1955), which includes all previously published letters and some newly published ones. Rachmaninoff's Recollections, Told to Oskar von Riesemann, trans. from German by Dolly Rutherford (1934, reissued 1979), are reminiscences by the composer about his life and work; the last chapter is Riesemann's analysis of Rachmaninoff's qualities as a composer. Sergei Bertensson, Jay Leyda, and Sophia Satin, Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (1956, reissued 1965), is a comprehensive biography whose preparation was assisted by the composer's cousin and sister-in-law; it is especially useful for its description of the composer's years in the United States. Other biographical studies are Patrick Piggott, Rachmaninov (1978), including detailed musical commentary and critique; Barrie Martyn, Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor (1990), drawing extensively on archival and Russian-language sources, with a discography; and Geoffrey Norris, Rachmaninoff, rev. and updated ed. (1994).

Advocate

2005-02-27T02:06:00.000-08:00

In law, a person who is professionally qualified to plead the cause of another in a court of law. As a technical term, advocate is used mainly in those legal systems that derived from the Roman law. In Scotland the word refers particularly to a member of the bar of Scotland, the Faculty of Advocates. In France avocats were formerly an organized body of pleaders, while the

Costa-gavras

2005-02-25T22:51:00.000-08:00

The son of a Russian-born father and a Greek mother, Costa-Gavras left Athens in 1952 to go to Paris,

Monarch

2005-02-24T17:07:00.000-08:00

In all monarchines

Kohat

2005-02-24T15:02:00.000-08:00

Town, south-central North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan. The town lies just north of the Kohat Toi River at the entrance to the Kohat Pass, through which a military road was opened in 1901. The new town lies at some distance from the original 14th-century town, traditionally said to have been founded by the Buddhist raja Kohat. It is connected by rail with Thal and the main rail

Lancewood

2005-02-22T22:19:00.000-08:00

Tough, heavy, elastic, straight-grained wood obtained from several different trees of the custard-apple family (Annonaceae). True lancewood, Oxandra lanceolata, of the West Indies and Guianas, furnishes most of the lancewood of commerce in the form of spars about 13 feet (4 m) in length and 5 inches (13 cm) in diameter at the small end. Lancewood was formerly used by carriage builders

Combinatorics, Characterization problems of graph theory

2005-02-22T14:40:00.000-08:00

If there is a class C of graphs each of which possesses a certain set of properties P, then the set of properties P is said to characterize the class C, provided every graph G possessing the properties P belongs to the class C. Sometimes it happens that there are some exceptional graphs that possess the properties P. Many such characterizations are known. Here is presented a typical

Tait, Archibald Campbell

2005-02-20T23:35:00.000-08:00

The son of Presbyterian parents, Tait became an Anglican while a student at the University of Oxford, where in 1835 he became a tutor at Balliol College. A year later he was made a deacon,

Yemen

2005-02-19T20:21:00.000-08:00

Yemen held the second parliamentary election in its history on April 27, 1997. The General People's Congress (GPC) party of Pres. Ali Abdallah Salih won 187 of the 301 seats, and the Islah Party finished

Tabora

2005-02-19T13:15:00.000-08:00

Formerly Kazeh, town, west-central Tanzania. Lying on the Central Plateau at an elevation of 4,000 feet (1,200 m), it has a mean annual temperature of 73° F (23° C). The town has been the capital of the Nyamwezi people and was the major trade link between the coast and the Congo River basin prior to European colonial rule. As the junction point of the east-west (Dar es-Salaam–Ujiji) railway and the north-south railway

Japan, The Yamato polity

2005-02-18T18:09:00.000-08:00

The pattern of administrative control established is called the uji-kabane system. Uji is usually translated as “clan” in English. The uji are thought to be extensions of original agricultural communities, perhaps what early Chinese records referred to as “states.” Essentially, farming communities were associated into lineal groups, united by the belief that harvests

Azilian Industry

2005-02-16T22:09:00.000-08:00

Tool tradition of Late Paleolithic and Early Mesolithic Europe, especially in France and Spain. The Azilian industry was preceded by the richer and more complex Magdalenian industry and was more or less contemporary with such industries as the Tardenoisian, Maglemosian, Ertebølle, and Asturian. Stone tools of the Azilian were mostly extremely small, called microliths,

Backbone Mountain

2005-02-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

Highest point in Maryland, U.S., reaching an elevation of 3,360 feet (1,024 metres). It is located on a ridge of the Allegheny and Appalachian mountains, located in Garrett county 12 miles (19 km) south of Oakland. The ridge is 35 miles (56 km) long and extends southwestward into Preston and Tucker counties of West Virginia.

Pozzolana

2005-02-14T18:38:00.000-08:00

Also spelled pozzuolana , or pozzolan hydraulic cement discovered by the Romans and still used in some countries, made by grinding pozzolana (a type of slag that may be either natural—i.e., volcanic—or artificial, from a blast furnace) with powdered hydrated lime. Roman engineers used two parts by weight of pozzolana mixed with one part of lime to give strength to mortar and concrete in bridges and other masonry

Lockwood, Belva Ann

2005-02-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

Belva Bennett attended country schools until she was 15 and then taught in them until her marriage in 1848 to Uriah H. McNall, who died in 1853. She then resumed teaching and continued her own education. She graduated from Genesee College

Top

2005-02-13T05:01:00.000-08:00

A toy having a body of conical, circular, or oval shape, often hollow, with a point or peg on which it turns or is made to whirl. If given a knock, a spinning top will go around in a circle at a slant; if spun with a slant at the start, it will quickly stand upright until halted by friction. Its physical properties are similar to those of the gyroscope. Some tops, as the common peg top,

Theatre, Western, Commedia dell'arte

2005-02-12T02:46:00.000-08:00

Around the mid-16th century, there emerged in Italy a lively tradition of popular theatre that fused many disparate elements into a vigorous style, which profoundly influenced the development of European theatre. This was the legendary commedia dell'arte (“theatre of the professionals”), a nonliterary tradition that centred on the actor, as distinguished from the

Rif War

2005-02-11T06:14:00.000-08:00

By the Treaty of Fez (1912), Spain had been awarded the mountainous zones around Melilla and Ceuta, in Morocco. The two zones had few, if any, roads and were separated by the Bay of Alhucemas, making communications and development difficult. In 1920 the Spanish commissioner, General Dámaso Berenguer, decided

'abbasid Dynasty

2005-02-10T14:02:00.000-08:00

The name is derived from that of the uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, al-'Abbas (died c. 653), of the Hashimite clan of the Quraysh tribe in Mecca. From c. 718, members of his family worked to gain control

Albert, Heinrich

2005-02-08T20:32:00.000-08:00

Albert studied composition with his cousin Heinrich Schütz at Dresden. While he attended the University of Leipzig his musical activities were encouraged

Fry, Christopher

2005-02-07T16:24:00.000-08:00

Fry adopted his mother's surname after he became a schoolteacher at age 18, his father having died many years earlier. He was for many years an actor, director, and writer of revues and plays before he gained fame as a playwright with The Lady's Not for Burning (1948), an ironic medieval comedy whose heroine is charged

Loisy, Alfred Firmin

2005-02-06T19:48:00.000-08:00

Loisy trained at the Institut Catholique in Paris, where he was influenced by the historian L.-M.-O. Duchesne,

Venericardia

2005-02-05T18:57:00.000-08:00

Genus of pelecypods (clams) abundant during the Eocene Epoch (the Eocene Epoch began 57.8 million years ago and ended 36.6 million years ago). The shell, composed of two halves (valves), is distinctive in form and generally large. Transverse ribs radiate from the apex of the valves and are broken by a series of concentric growth rings. Internally, the valves

Cyprian, Saint

2005-02-05T08:51:00.000-08:00

Educated in Greece, Cyprian was appointed by Constantinople to be metropolitan of Kiev and Lithuania in 1375 and then of Moscow in 1381. In 1382 Cyprian was forced into exile by the prince of Moscow, Dmitry, who rejected all appointments made by Constantinople. Eight years later, following the succession of

Mana

2005-02-03T20:17:00.000-08:00

Town, northwestern French Guiana, on the south bank of the Mana River, near its mouth on the Atlantic coast. It originated in 1830 around an orphanage founded by a French nun and, after 1848, also served as a refuge for runaway and newly emancipated slaves. The site of a large leprosarium, its economy is basically agricultural, including sugarcane and cattle. Pop. (1982) mun. 1,721.

Clark, Abraham

2005-02-03T04:04:00.000-08:00

Benefiting little from formal education, Clark became a surveyor and managed transfers of property. He had a gift for politics and served in many public offices in New Jersey. He championed the cause of the colonies and in 1776 was elected to the Continental Congress,

Fisher, M.f.k.

2005-02-01T10:31:00.000-08:00

In full Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher American writer whose compelling style, wit, and interest in the gastronomical made her one of the major American writers on the subject of food. In her 15 celebrated books, Fisher created a new genre: the food essay. Seeing food as a cultural metaphor, she proved to be both an insightful philosopher of food and a writer of fine

Vending Machine

2005-01-31T09:13:00.000-08:00

Coin-actuated machine through which various goods may be retailed. Vending machines should not be confused with coin-operated amusement games or music machines. The first known commercial use of vending machines came early in the 18th century in England, where coin-actuated “honour boxes” were used to sell snuff and tobacco. These devices were also in use in the British-American

Amadís Of Gaul

2005-01-31T00:16:00.000-08:00

In Montalvo's version,

Dragonfish

2005-01-29T02:48:00.000-08:00

Also called sea moth any of about five species of small marine fishes comprising the family Pegasidae and the order Pegasiformes. Dragonfish are found in warm Indo-Pacific waters. They are small (to about 16 centimetres [6 1/2 inches] long), elongated fish encased in bony rings of armour. The armour is fused on the head and body but not on the tail, which is thus flexible. The pectoral

Hall, Charles Martin

2005-01-28T07:29:00.000-08:00

While a student at Oberlin (Ohio) College Hall became interested in producing aluminum inexpensively. He continued to use the college laboratory after his graduation in 1885, discovering his method

An-k'ang

2005-01-28T02:30:00.000-08:00

Pinyin Ankang, formerly Hsing-an, city in southeastern Shensi sheng (province), China. Situated in the narrow valley of the Han River between the Tsinling and Ta-pa mountain ranges, it has been an important trade centre since antiquity, being situated at the junction of the east-west route via the Han River valley and the route to the north over the mountains to Sian (Ch'ang-an). A rail line, completed in 1978, links

Integument, Variations among vertebrates

2005-01-27T01:54:00.000-08:00

The vertebrates belong to the phylum Chordata and are closely related to a small, fishlike, almost transparent invertebrate called amphioxus. Amphioxus represents chordate integument at its simplest: an epidermis, consisting of one layer of columnar or cuboidal epithelial cells and scattered mucous cells, covered by a thin cuticle, and a thin dermis of soft connective

Du Toit, Stephanus Jacobus

2005-01-25T07:44:00.000-08:00

South African pastor and political leader who, as the founder of the Afrikaner Bond (a bitterly anti-British political party of Dutch South Africans), was influential in generating Boer (Dutch) political opposition to British rule in South Africa. He was also instrumental in the establishment of Afrikaans

Cluster, Structure

2005-01-25T04:35:00.000-08:00

The abundance distributions for several kinds of clusters show that there are certain sizes of clusters with exceptional stability, analogous to the exceptional stability of the atoms of the inert gases helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon and of the so-called magic number nuclei—i.e., the sequence of unusually stable atomic nuclei beginning with the a-particle,

De Niro, Robert

2005-01-24T21:20:00.000-08:00

The son of two Greenwich Village artists, De Niro dropped out of school at age 16 to study at the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting. After working in a few Off-Off-Broadway plays, he appeared in his first film, Brian De Palma's The Wedding Party (1963, released

Osage

2005-01-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

North American Indian tribe of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan linguistic stock. They are now concentrated on a reservation in northeastern Oklahoma. Like other members of this subgroup (the Omaha, Ponca, Kansa, and Quapaw), the Osage migrated westward from the Atlantic coast, settling first in the Piedmont Plateau between the James and Savannah rivers in Virginia

Amateur Radio

2005-01-22T14:07:00.000-08:00

Interest in amateur radio arose around the turn of the century, shortly after the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi successfully sent the first transatlantic wireless signal in 1901. The interference of amateur broadcasts with commercial and military

Jhabvala, Ruth Prawer

2005-01-21T19:36:00.000-08:00

A Polish Jew, Jhabvala immigrated to England with her family in 1939. After receiving an M.A. in English (1951) from Queen Mary College, London, she married an Indian architect and moved to India, where she lived for the next 24 years. After 1975 she lived

Bruce, Michael

2005-01-20T14:30:00.000-08:00

Bruce's parents gave him a good education, and he attended four winter sessions at the University of Edinburgh. In 1766 he wrote his last and finest poem, “Elegy Written in Spring.” His reputation

Roberts, Owen (josephus)

2005-01-19T18:37:00.000-08:00

Upon graduating from law school, Roberts taught law at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, but by 1918 he had to devote his full time to his practice. While he was still teaching, Roberts had served as assistant district attorney and as special deputy attorney

Literature

2005-01-17T22:16:00.000-08:00

In many ways 1996 was a dispiriting year for literature. While more books were published than ever before, the rift between serious literary writing and the vast majority of titles grew wider. This was the result, particularly in the “first world,” of four converging trends: the continuing absorption of independent publishing houses; the focus on cultural studies that

Mashonaland

2005-01-17T15:15:00.000-08:00

Mashonaland consists largely of the northeastern part of Zimbabwe's Middle Veld, a wide plateau lying at an

Muhammad V

2005-01-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

Muhammad was the third son of Sultan Moulay Yusuf; when his father died in 1927, French authorities chose him to be successor, expecting him to be more compliant than his two older brothers. The

Córdoba

2005-01-15T06:08:00.000-08:00

Provincia, central Argentina, with an area of 65,161 square miles (168,766 square km). From the Sierra Grande in the west, which rises to 9,462 feet (2,884 m), the land slopes eastward to the great Pampa grasslands, being drained by the Primero, Segundo, Tercero, Cuarto, and Quinto rivers. Only the Tercero reaches the Paraná River; the others terminate in swamps or in the saline Laguna Mar Chiquita in the

Iridescence

2005-01-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

Interference of light either at the surface or in the interior of a material that produces a series of colours as the angle of incidence changes. Best known are the colours seen in precious opal resulting from the interference of light by submicroscopic layers of nearly spherical particles 1,500–3,000 angstroms in diameter that are arranged in a regular pattern. Common opal

Gaudier-brzeska, Henri

2005-01-13T06:19:00.000-08:00

Gaudier-Brzeska initially studied business before taking up sculpture in 1910. His early work was informed

Augustine, Saint

2005-01-11T21:25:00.000-08:00

Augustine was born in Tagaste, a modest Roman community in a river valley 40 miles (64 km) from the African coast. It lay just a few miles short of the point where the veneer of Roman civilization thinned out in the highlands of Numidia in the way the American West opens before a traveler leaving the Mississippi River valley. Augustine's parents were of the respectable class

Valéry, Paul

2005-01-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

In full Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry French poet, essayist, and critic. His greatest poem is considered La Jeune Parque (1917; “The Young Fate”), which was followed by Album de vers anciens 1890–1900 (1920) and Charmes ou poèmes (1922), containing “Le Cimetière marin” (“The Graveyard by the Sea”). He later wrote a large number of essays and occasional papers on literary topics and took a great interest in scientific discoveries

Vodou

2005-01-10T05:37:00.000-08:00

Also spelled Voodoo, Voudou, Vodun , or French Vaudou an official religion of Haiti (together with Roman Catholicism). Vodou is a creolized religion forged by descendents of Dahomean, Kongo, Yoruba, and other African ethnic groups who had been enslaved and brought to colonial Saint-Domingue (as Haiti was known then) and Christianized by Roman Catholic missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. The word Vodou means “spirit

Dziady

2005-01-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

In Slavic religion, all the dead ancestors of a family, the rites that are performed in their memory, and the day on which those rites are performed. Dziady take place three or four times a year; though the dates vary in different localities, dziady are generally celebrated in the winter before the beginning of Advent and in the spring on the Sunday of Doubting Thomas.

Adding Machine

2005-01-08T15:31:00.000-08:00

A type of calculator (q.v.) used for performing simple arithmetical operations.

Skene

2005-01-07T09:14:00.000-08:00

(from Greek skene, “scene-building”), in ancient Greek theatre, a building behind the playing area that was originally a hut for the changing of masks and costumes but eventually became the background before which the drama was enacted. First used c. 465 BC, the skene was originally a small wooden structure facing the circle of spectators. It developed into a two-story edifice decorated

Kachina

2005-01-06T05:52:00.000-08:00

In Pueblo Indian religious practice, any of more than 500 divine ancestral spirits who act as intermediaries between man and god. Each tribe has its distinct forms and variations. Kachinas are believed to reside with the tribe for half of each year. They will allow themselves to be seen by the community if the men properly perform a traditional ritual while wearing kachina

Radical

2005-01-04T17:38:00.000-08:00

Also called Free Radical, in chemistry, molecule that contains at least one unpaired electron. Most molecules contain even numbers of electrons, and the covalent chemical bonds holding the atoms together within a molecule normally consist of pairs of electrons jointly shared by the atoms linked by the bond. Most radicals may be considered to have arisen by cleavage of normal electron-pair

Kennewick

2005-01-03T17:31:00.000-08:00

City, Benton county, southeastern Washington, U.S. It lies along the Columbia River, opposite Pasco and immediately southeast of Richland. Laid out in 1892 by the Northern Pacific Irrigation Company, Kennewick is surrounded by farm country producing alfalfa, corn (maize), beans, sugar beets, grapes, and cherries. Hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River and the Hanford Works

Arabia, Ad-Dahna'

2005-01-03T00:19:00.000-08:00

The Ad-Dahna' belt, separating Najd from eastern Arabia, is a sand stream moving slowly over 800 miles from An-Nafud to the Rub' al-Khali. Usually it is no more than 50 miles wide. The sands, frequently reddish in colour, vary greatly in form; particularly in the central stretches, long parallel ridges rise to heights of approximately 150 feet, while some dunes are three times that height.

Scherchen, Hermann

2004-12-31T07:23:00.000-08:00

Scherchen was musically self-taught. Early in his career he played the viola, and for a time he toured with the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg. Interned in Russia during World War I, he returned to Berlin after

Châteauguay

2004-12-30T08:37:00.000-08:00

Town, Montérégie region, southern Quebec province, Canada. It lies at the mouth of the Châteauguay River, just south of its confluence with the St. Lawrence. The site of a Jesuit mission established in 1736, it served as a trading centre during the settlement of the surrounding region. On Oct. 26, 1813, the Battle of Châteauguay, a decisive engagement of the War of 1812, took place there; a small

Basel-stadt

2004-12-29T09:14:00.000-08:00

French Bâle-ville, Halbkanton (“demicanton”), northern Switzerland, consisting of the city of Basel (q.v.) and two small villages north of the Rhine. Occupying an area of 14 square miles (37 square km), it was formed in 1833 by the division of Basel canton into two half cantons, or demicantons. Its present constitution dates from 1889. The population is mainly German speaking and Protestant. Pop. (1988 est.) 192,559.

Extrametrical

2004-12-28T03:32:00.000-08:00

In prosody, exceeding the usual or prescribed number of syllables in a given metre. Also, in reference to a syllable or syllables not counted in metrical analysis. In the following final couplet from a sonnet by William Shakespeare, the ending syllables are extrametrical: Yet him for this my love no whit disdaineth;Suns of the world may stain when heaven's sun

Hadano

2004-12-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

Also spelled Hatano city, Kanagawa Prefecture (ken), Honshu, Japan, stretching between Tanzawa-yama (Mt. Tanzawa; north; 5,141 ft [1,567 m]) and the Hadano basin (south). It was a regional commercial centre during the Tokugawa era (1603–1867), when the cultivation of tobacco was introduced. The city is now a tobacco-trading centre, containing a processing plant of the Japanese Monopoly Bureau. Because of its convenient

Baldinucci, Filippo

2004-12-25T14:18:00.000-08:00

Working for Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici, Baldinucci advised on the acquisition of the great collection of drawings now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. His Notizie dei professori del disegno da Cimabue

Subduction Zone

2004-12-23T22:50:00.000-08:00

Oceanic trench area marginal to a continent in which, according to the theory of plate tectonics, older seafloor underthrusts the continental mass, dragging downward into the Earth's upper mantle the accumulated trench sediments. The subduction zone, accordingly, is the antithesis of the mid-oceanic ridge; new seafloor is generated from the upper mantle at the

Amargosa Range

2004-12-23T14:03:00.000-08:00

Group of mountains in eastern California and southern Nevada, U.S., separating Death Valley from the Amargosa Desert. Part of the Basin Ranges of eastern California, the Amargosa Range extends 110 miles (180 km) from Grapevine Peak (8,705 feet [2,653 m]), south-southeastward to the Amargosa River. It is composed of three distinct mountain groups: the Grapevine, Funeral, and Black. Dante's View,

China, Integration of the South

2004-12-22T02:42:00.000-08:00

The second Sui emperor, Yang-ti (reigned 604–617), has been depicted as a supreme example of arrogance, extravagance, and personal depravity who squandered his patrimony in megalomaniac construction projects and unwise military adventures. This mythical Yang-ti was to a large extent the product of the hostile record written of his reign shortly after his death. His reign

Man-of-war Fish

2004-12-21T17:27:00.000-08:00

(species Nomeus gronovii), small marine fish of the family Nomeidae (order Perciformes; sometimes placed in family Stromateidae), noted for living unharmed among the stinging tentacles of the Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish (Physalia). The man-of-war fish is usually found in the open sea, near its protector. It is striped or mottled, with large, black pelvic fins and is about

Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopoulos

2004-12-20T00:02:00.000-08:00

Also spelled Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos Byzantine historian and litterateur whose stylistic prose and poetry exemplify the developing Byzantine humanism of the 13th and 14th centuries and whose 23-volume Ecclesiasticae historiae (“Church History”), of which only the first 18 volumes survive, constitutes a significant documentary source for material on primitive Christianity, its doctrinal controversies

Acacia

2004-12-18T17:55:00.000-08:00

Any of about 800 species of trees and shrubs comprising a genus (Acacia) in the mimosa family (Mimosaceae) and native to tropical and subtropical regions of the world, particularly Australia (there called wattles) and Africa. Acacias' distinctive leaves take the form of small, finely divided leaflets that give the leafstalk a feathery or fernlike (i.e., pinnate) appearance.

Rousseau, Jean-jacques

2004-12-18T04:23:00.000-08:00

Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. His thought marked the end of the Age of Reason. He propelled political

Arda River

2004-12-16T13:53:00.000-08:00

Greek Árdhas, river in Bulgaria, rising in the central Rhodope Mountains near the town of Smolyan and following a 180-mile (290-kilometre) course eastward past Kurdzhali and Ivaylovgrad to enter the Maritsa just west of Edirne, Tur., after a 23-mile (37-kilometre) course in Greece. The Bulgarian section has three hydroelectric and irrigation dams, among the largest in Bulgaria. In the upper valley

Aethelwulf

2004-12-16T06:46:00.000-08:00

The son of the great West Saxon king Egbert (ruled 802–839), Aethelwulf ascended the throne four years after the Danes had begun large-scale raids on the English coast. In 851 he scored a major

'abd Al-rahman Iii

2004-12-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

Accounts of 'Abd ar-Rahman's reign may be found in W. Montgomery Watt, A History of Islamic Spain (1965, reissued 1977); and Stanley Lane-Poole, The Story of the Moors in Spain (1886, reprinted as The Moors in Spain, 1967).