Friday, December 31, 2004

Handke, Peter

Handke, the son of a bank clerk, studied law at Graz University from 1961 to 1965 and contributed pieces to the avant-garde literary magazine manuskripte. He came to public notice as an anticonventional playwright

Théâtre-libre

(French: Free Theatre), independent, private theatre founded in Paris in 1887 by André Antoine, which became the proving ground for the new naturalistic drama. Antoine, an amateur actor, was influenced by the naturalistic novels of Émile Zola and by the theatrical realism of the Meiningen Company. Antoine believed that environment shaped character and behaviour, and he

Nabul

Also spelled  Nabeul,  Latin  Neapolis,   town, northeastern Tunisia, on the Hammamet Gulf. Formerly a Phoenician settlement, it was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC and later rebuilt as a Roman colony called Neapolis. It is a noted pottery and ceramics handicraft centre and the eastern terminus of a railroad from Tunis, 40 miles (65 km) northwest. Other industries include stone cutting, quarrying (chalk), citrus fruit and

Southern Africa, Xhosa-Dutch conflict

Settler expansion to the Cape's eastern frontier was blocked by the 1770s when trekboers came up against numerous Xhosa farmers in the area of the Great Fish River. During the 18th century the Xhosa had been embroiled in two major civil wars over the chiefly succession, of which the more important was the dispute, between the paramount Gcaleka and his ambitious brother

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Gambia, Flag Of The

The British Parliament's Colonial Naval Defence Act of 1865 provided that the British Blue Ensign would be “defaced” by a badge for each government department or colony making use of it. These distinctive ensigns became de facto national flags even before the colonies achieved independence. In the case of The Gambia, the badge in question was a yellow disk bearing an elephant

Daigo, Go-

In full  Go-daigo Tenno,  personal name  Takaharu  emperor of Japan (1318–39), whose efforts to overthrow the shogunate and restore the monarchy led to civil war and divided the imperial family into two rival factions.

Thomas à Kempis,

About 1392 Thomas went

Adams, John, Adams's writings

Other pieces of the massive Adams correspondence include: Charles Francis Adams (ed.), Letters of John Adams, Addressed to His Wife, 2 vol. (1841, reissued 1965); Alexander Biddle et al., Old Family Letters, 2 vol. (1892); Worthington Chauncey Ford (ed.), Statesman and Friend: Correspondence of John Adams with Benjamin Waterhouse, 1784–1822 (1927); Lester J. Cappon (ed.), The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 2 vol. (1959, reprinted in 1 vol., 1988); John A. Schutz and Douglass Adair (eds.), The Spur of Fame: Dialogues of John Adams and Benjamin Rush, 1805–1813 (1966, reissued 1980).

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Height, Dorothy

Reared in Rankin, Pennsylvania, Height graduated in 1933 from New York University with both bachelor's and master's degrees in educational psychology.

Haakon Ii Sigurdsson

On the death of his uncle King Eystein II in 1157, the 10-year-old Haakon received the support of Eystein's partisans against the rival king, Inge I, whom they finally defeated and killed in 1161. In 1162, however, the supporters of another pretender, Magnus Erlingsson, defeated the forces of the boy-king Haakon and killed him.

Frederick (iii)

After his father's murder (1308) Frederick became the head of the House of Habsburg and duke of Austria but did not succeed him as king, the count of Luxembourg being elected instead, as Henry VII. Frederick and his brothers made a treaty with Henry

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Ganapatya

Member of an esoteric Hindu sect devoted to the worship of the elephant-headed Ganesa (also called Ganapati) as the supreme deity. The sect was at its height in about the 10th century and helped to establish Ganesa as an important minor deity to be propitiated at the beginning of all important undertakings and religious ceremonies. The sect erected temples dedicated to

Shimazu Hisamitsu, Koshaku

In 1858 Hisamitsu succeeded to the head of Satsuma han, one of the largest feudal fiefs into which

Great Basin Indian

The Great Basin Indians occupied a 398,000-square-mile (1,031,000-square-km) area of interior western North America. Population density was sparse, ranging from 0.8 to 11.7 persons per 100 square miles. The area includes the physiographic Great Basin—the interior mountain

Monday, December 27, 2004

France, History Of, The interwar years

Frenchmen concentrated much of their energy during the early 1920s on recovering from the war. The government undertook a vast program of reconstructing the devastated areas and had largely completed that task by 1925. To compensate for manpower losses, immigration barriers were lowered, and two million foreign workers flooded into the country. Underlying all other

Kerll, Johann Caspar Von

In 1645 Kerll was sent by Ferdinand III to study in Rome with the prominent composers Giacomo Carissimi and Girolamo Frescobaldi; earlier he had studied in Vienna. His study in Italy had great influence on his composition, much of which is Italianate in

Eiselsberg, Anton, Freiherr Von

Eiselsberg studied medicine at Vienna, Würzburg, Zürich, and Paris. In 1884 he received his M.D. from Vienna, where he was a pupil of and assistant

Buisson, Ferdinand-édouard

Refusing to take the teacher's oath of loyalty to the French Second Empire of Napoleon III, Buisson went to Switzerland, teaching philosophy at Neuchâtel from

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Guna

Also spelled  Goona  city, northwestern Madhya Pradesh state, central India. A road and rail junction, Guna is a major agricultural distribution centre. Cotton ginning, oilseed milling, and handloom weaving are important industries. The city has several colleges affiliated with Jiwaji University. Wheat, sorghum, legumes, corn (maize), and oilseeds are the major crops grown in the surrounding

Nord-trøndelag

Fylke (county), central Norway. It extends from the Norwegian Sea (west) to the Swedish border (east), with the southern boundary running in a general northwest-southeast direction south of Trondheims Fjord. The fylke has an area of 8,673 square miles (22,463 square km); the county seat is at Steinkjer (q.v.). The major road and rail links between Trondheim and northern Norway pass through

Melanchthon, Philipp

Original name  Philipp Schwartzerd (German: “Black Earth”; in Greek, Melanchthon)   German author of the Confession of Augsburg of the Lutheran Church (1530), humanist, Reformer, theologian, and educator. He was a friend of Martin Luther and defended his views. In 1521 Melanchthon published the Loci communes, the first systematic treatment of evangelical doctrine. Because of his academic

Saturday, December 25, 2004

Forsterite-fayalite Series

These minerals are common

Río Gallegos

Founded in 1885, it was named for Blasco Gallegos, one of Ferdinand Magellan's pilots, who is credited with discovering the river. Prehistoric cave paintings

Jack

The jack's effectiveness stems from the ratio of the load, or weight of the object

Friday, December 24, 2004

Cheka

Also called  Vecheka,   early Soviet secret police agency and a forerunner of the KGB (q.v.).

Endocrine System, Phylum Chordata

The phylum Chordata is separated into three subgroups (or subphyla). The invertebrate subphylum Tunicata consists of the marine tunicates, including the ascidians and salps. The invertebrate subphylum Cephalochordata includes the fishlike amphioxus (or lancelet). Amphioxus is a small marine animal that closely resembles the larva of the jawless fishes (class

Turtle

One-man submarine, the first to be put to military use, built and designed by the American inventor David Bushnell (q.v.) in 1775 for use against British warships. The pear-shaped vessel, made of oak reinforced with iron bands, measured about 2.3 m (7.5 feet) long by 1.8 m (6 feet) wide. It was equipped with a mine that was to be attached to the hull of an enemy ship. In 1776, in New York harbour, the Turtle tried

Sun Bittern

(species Eurypyga helias), slender bird of tropical America, the sole member of the family Eurypygidae (order Gruiformes). It has strikingly patterned wings, which the male spreads in courtship and threat displays. The sun bittern is about 43 cm (17 inches) long, with full wings and a long tail beautifully marked in browns, yellows, black, and white. It lives on

Davidescu, Nicolae

Romanian poet and novelist whose early poems, Inscriptii (1916), showed the influence of Charles Baudelaire. Among his prose works the novel Zâna din fundul lacului (1912; “The Fairy at the Bottom of the Lake”) was an exercise in symbolism, and Vioara muta (1928; “The Muted Violin”), in social psychology. In the epic Cântecul omului (1928–37; “The Song of Man”), he aimed at re-creating world history.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Van Fleet, Jo

U.S. actress who played bold, matronly women on stage and screen, notably in Elia Kazan films, beginning with her role as the mother of James Dean's character in East of Eden (1955), for which she won an Academy Award (b. Dec. 30, 1919--d. June 10, 1996).

Iran, The Qajar dynasty (1796–1925)

Between 1779 and 1789 the Zands fought among themselves over their legacy. In the end it fell to the gallant Lotf 'Ali, the Zands' last hope. Agha Muhammad Khan relentlessly hunted him down until he overcame and killed him at the southeastern city of Kerman in 1794. In 1796 Agha Muhammad Khan assumed the imperial diadem, and later in the same year he took Mashhad. Shah Rokh died of the tortures inflicted

Sibasa

Village, Northern province, South Africa. It was once the capital of the nonindependent black state of Venda. A station was established there in 1872 by Carl Beuster of the Berlin Mission. The village is an industrial growth centre just northeast of Thohoyandou and about 4 miles (7 km) north of the Luvuvhu River. Located at an elevation of 2,428 feet (740 m) and named after a Venda chief, Tshivhase,

Karaganda

Oblast (province), central Kazakhstan. It lies mostly in the Kazakh Uplands in a dry steppe zone, rising gradually in elevation eastward to a maximum in the Karkaraly Mountains of 5,115 feet (1,559 m). The principal rivers, the Nura and Sarysu, are in the west, in the Musbel lowland. The climate is continental (tending to extremes) and dry, with severe winters, marked by prolonged snowstorms

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Mubi

Probably founded in the late 18th century by the Fulani people, Mubi remained under the jurisdiction of the sultanate of Mandara until conquered in the Fulani jihad

Bolivia, Ethnic and linguistic groups

The population of Bolivia consists of three groups—Indians (the indigenous peoples), mestizos (of mixed Indian and European descent), and whites of European (mainly Spanish) descent. After centuries of intermixing, it is difficult to determine the proportion of each, but it is estimated that Indians form nearly three-fifths of the total, mestizos nearly one-third, and

Furniture, Turned work

Turning is a process by which parts of furniture, such as legs and posts, are shaped while turning on a lathe. Turned work is found on Greco-Roman furniture. It is not certain whether the technique was actually employed in Egyptian furniture, though some members look as though they might have been turned. It was particularly in the shaping of wooden chair legs that Greek

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Camar

Widespread caste in northern India whose hereditary occupation is tanning leather; the name is derived from the Sanskrit word carmakara, or “skin worker.” The more than 150 subcastes are characterized by well-organized panchayats (governing councils). Because their work obliged them to handle dead animals, the Camars have suffered from the stigma of being considered

Lennox, Charlotte

Charlotte Ramsay was the daughter of a British army officer who was said to have been lieutenant governor of the colony of New York.

Monday, December 20, 2004

Blair

The Delaware, Shawnee, and

Mural

Mural painting is inherently different from all other forms of pictorial art in that it is organically connected

Integration

With a and b called the limits of integration, is

Farley, James A(loysius)

After moving to New York City in 1905, Farley studied bookkeeping and worked for the Universal Gypsum Company. He moved back to Stony Point, near

Moréas, Jean

Early inspired by a French governess who instilled in him a passion for French poetry, Moréas moved to Paris in 1879, becoming a familiar figure in the literary circles frequenting the cafés and in the literary pages of newspapers and reviews. He published

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Hale Observatories

The Palomar and Wilson observatories were operated

Antarctica, Post-IGY research

In order to continue and coordinate the international Antarctic scientific effort in the post-IGY period, ICSU in September 1957 organized the Special Committee on Antarctic Research, or SCAR. (In 1961 the word Scientific was substituted for Special.) The foundations for the committee were laid at its first meeting in The Hague in 1958. SCAR, a nonpolitical body, coordinates not

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Bondoukou

Town, eastern Côte d'Ivoire, situated at the intersection of roads from Ghana, Burkina Faso, and Abidjan, the national capital. An early trade centre of the Kulango (Koulango, Pakhalla, N'Gora) people, Bondoukou was captured in the late 15th century by the Brong (Abron), an Akan people from the west. The Brong were converted to Islam by Dyula traders from the north, who founded a

Augustine, Saint

Although autobiographical narrative makes up much of the first 9 of the 13 books of Augustine's Confessiones (397; Confessions), autobiography is incidental to the main purpose of the work. For Augustine confessions is a catchall term for acts of religiously authorized speech: praise of God, blame of self, confession of faith. The book is a richly textured meditation by a middle-aged

Henry, O.

Pseudonym of  William Sydney Porter  American short-story writer whose tales romanticized the commonplace—in particular the life of ordinary people in New York City. His stories expressed the effect of coincidence on character through humour, grim or ironic, and often had surprise endings, a device that became identified with his name and cost him critical

Friday, December 17, 2004

Kaffeklubben Island

Island and one of the world's northernmost points of land, in the Arctic Ocean, 37 km (20 nautical miles) east of Cape Morris Jesup, Greenland. Kaffeklubben (Danish: “Coffee Club”) was discovered in 1900 by Robert E. Peary, the American Arctic explorer. The island was visited in 1921 by the Danish explorer Lauge Koch, who named it for the Kaffeklub at the Mineralogical Museum in Copenhagen.

Yale School

Group of literary critics at Yale University, who became known in the 1970s and '80s for their deconstructionist theories. The Yale school's skeptical, relativistic brand of criticism drew inspiration from the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Its most prominent members were Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller. De Man, a professor of comparative literature and author

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Tarasova, Alla Konstantinovna

By the age of 14 Tarasova had become a member of the Second Studio of the Moscow Art Theatre. She rose quickly to become a supporting actress, and by the time the company toured England and the United States

Wansbeck

District, administrative and historic county of Northumberland, northern England, along the North Sea in the southeastern part of the county. Wansbeck spans a narrow coastal plain edging the Northumberland uplands to the west. Its three principal towns (Ashington, Bedlington, and Newbiggin-by-the-Sea) suffered economic decline in the 1960s and '70s because of the loss of

Fuselage

Central portion of the body of an airplane, designed to accommodate the crew, passengers, and cargo. It varies greatly in design and size according to the function of the aircraft. In a jet fighter the fuselage consists of a cockpit large enough only for the controls and pilot, but in a jet airliner it includes a much larger cockpit as well as a cabin that has separate decks

Kenya, Drainage

The major features of the drainage pattern of Kenya were created by the ancient crustal deformation of a great oval dome that arose in the west-central part of the country and created the Central Rift. This dome produced a primeval watershed from which rivers once drained eastward to the Indian Ocean and westward to the Congo system and the Atlantic Ocean. Still

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Perceval, Spencer

The second son of the 2nd Earl of Egmont, Perceval was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called to the bar by Lincoln's Inn in 1786 and became a king's counsel in 1796. In that same year he entered Parliament, where his rise to power was facilitated through

Aleandro, Girolamo

In 1520 Pope

Tarim River

Wade-Giles romanization  T'a-li-mu Ho,  Pinyin  Tarim He,  chief river of the Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang, extreme northwestern China. It lies immediately north of the Plateau of Tibet. The river gives its name to the great basin between the Tien Shan and Kunlun mountain systems of Central Asia. It flows for most of its length through the Takla Makan Desert. The word tarim is used to designate the bank of a river that

Arges

Judet (county), southern Romania. The Transylvanian Alps (Southern Carpathians) and the sub-Carpathians rise above the settlement areas that are found in intermontane valleys. The county is drained eastward by the Arges, Cotmeana, and Teleorman rivers. It was formerly included in feudal Walachia. Agricultural activities consist of vineyard and orchard cultivation

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Chang Tsai

The son of a magistrate, Chang studied Buddhism and Taoism but found his true inspiration in the Confucian Classics. In his chief work, Cheng-meng (“Correct Discipline for Beginners”), he declared that the universe is a unity,

Ashikaga Yoshiaki

Shogun (hereditary military dictator) of Japan who was the 15th and last of his family to hold the title. Yoshiaki had been a priest, but in 1568, with the aid of his protector, the general Oda Nobunaga, he deposed his cousin Yoshihide and took over the shogunate. Subsequently, rivalry developed between Yoshiaki and Oda, and the latter deposed Yoshiaki and banished

Monday, December 13, 2004

Taff Vale Case

(1900–01), in Great Britain, the successful trial of a suit brought by the Taff Vale Railway Company against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) in which the courts held that a union could be sued for damages caused by the actions of its officials in industrial disputes. Opposition to the decision did much to spur the growth of the nascent British Labour

Kyneton

Town, central Victoria, Australia, on the Campaspe River, about 50 mi (85 km) northwest of Melbourne. Squatters settled in the region in 1836–41; the town was surveyed in 1849 and named after Kineton (now known as Kington) in Hertfordshire, England. Kyneton is the service centre for an area producing wool, beef, dairy products, oats, wheat, and potatoes. There are abattoirs, knitting and timber

Armorial Ensign

Heraldic symbol carried on a flag or shield. The term is much misunderstood because of the popular use of ensign as a generic term for flag. A grant of arms or a matriculation (registration of armorial bearings) may in its text use the term ensigns armorial to mean the heraldic design of the bearer's arms. See heraldry.

China, Survival and consolidation

Despite the fall of the Pei Sung, the majority of scholar-officials refused to identify themselves with the alien conquerors. The same was generally true at the grass-roots level, among numerous roving bands of former volunteer militias, army units that had disintegrated, and bandits who had arisen during the disorder. As time went on, both civilians and military

Sunday, December 12, 2004

Ugra, Battle Of The

(1480), bloodless confrontation between the armies of Muscovy and the Golden Horde, traditionally marking the end of the “Mongol yoke” in Russia. By 1480 the Golden Horde had lost control of large portions of its empire; Ivan III of Moscow had stopped paying tribute to the Horde and no longer recognized it as an authority over Muscovy. In 1480 Akhmet, khan of the Golden Horde, led an army

Chatterjee, Bankim Chandra

Bankim Chandra was a member of an orthodox Brahman family and was educated at Hooghly College, at Presidency College, Calcutta, and at the University

La Follette, Robert M

In 1897 La Follette began to advocate programs that local-level progressives had popularized during the legislative session a few months earlier. Following their lead, he demanded tax reform, corporation regulation, and political democracy. In particular, he promoted steeper railroad taxes and a direct primary. Elected governor on this platform in 1900, he was reelected

Azeglio, Massimo Taparelli, Marquess (marchese) D'

After spending his youth dedicated to painting

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Celtic Literature, Prose

The early Irish epic was a prose narrative that usually contained non-narrative poetic passages, often in dialogue form. The resemblance between this and the type of epic found in early Sanskrit suggests that the tradition went back to Indo-European times. The oldest sagas probably were first written down in the 7th and 8th centuries, from an oral tradition. These were

Silver Age

In Latin literature, the period from approximately AD 18 to 133, which was a time of marked literary achievement second only to the previous Golden Age (70 BC–AD 18). By the 1st century AD political patronage of the arts begun in the Augustan Age (43 BC–AD 18) and a stifling reverence for the literature of the Golden Age, particularly for the poetry of Virgil, had led to a general decline in original literary

France, History Of, Education

In the 6th century, especially in southern Gaul, the aristocracy and, consequently, the bishops drawn from it preserved an interest in traditional classical culture. Beginning in the 7th century, the Columbanian monasteries insisted on the study of the Bible and the celebration of the liturgy. In the Carolingian era these innovations shared the focus of education

Friday, December 10, 2004

Halston

Halston studied at Indiana University and the Art Institute of Chicago and operated a millinery shop in Chicago before joining milliner Lilly Daché in New York City. In 1959 he became a milliner for Bergdorf Goodman; in 1966 he expanded his line into clothes

Crockford, William

Crocker was the son of a fishmonger, and he himself practiced the trade in his youth. After winning a large sum of money (£100,000, according to one story) either at cards or by running a gambling establishment, he built in 1827 a luxuriously decorated gambling house at 50 St. James's Street in London.

Thursday, December 09, 2004

Rivière, Jacques

Writer, critic, and editor who was a major force in the intellectual life of France in the period immediately following World War I. His most important works were his thoughtful and finely written essays on the arts. In 1912 a collection of these essays was published as Études; a second such collection, entitled Nouvelles études (“Further

Danieli, Cecilia

Italian industrialist who, as managing director of the Danieli Group, a company founded by her grandfather, revolutionized steelmaking throughout the world when she developed small, flexible steel mills, or minimills, that could produce high-quality steel more cheaply and efficiently than traditional mills could (b. 1943, Udine, Italy—d. June 17, 1999, Aviano, Italy).

Carlisle, Lucy Hay, Countess Of

The second daughter of Henry Percy, 9th earl of Northumberland, she married James Hay (the earl of Carlisle from 1622) and became a conspicuous figure at the court of Charles I. The King's adviser,

Amur River, Physiography

The Amur and its tributaries drain a basin of about 716,200 square miles (1,855,000 square km). The Amur proper begins at the confluence of the Shilka and the Argun (Ergun) rivers, 1,755 miles (2,824 km) from its mouth. The Shilka begins more than 340 miles (550 km) farther inland in Siberia at the junction of the Ingoda and Onon rivers, whose ultimate sources lie more than 300 miles (500 km) farther southwest in the Yablonovy

Jackson, Rachel

As Rachel was reluctantly preparing to move to Washington, D.C., following Andrew's electoral victory in 1828—she said that she “would rather be a door-keeper in the house of God than to live in that palace in Washington”—she died of a heart attack. She was buried on the grounds of the Hermitage on Christmas Eve in what was to be her inaugural gown. A young niece, Emily Donelson, became the surrogate first lady; after Emily's death in 1836, Sarah Yorke Jackson, the wife of Andrew Jackson, Jr., became the official White House hostess.

Jussieu, Joseph De

French botanist who accompanied the French physicist Charles-Marie de la Condamine's expedition to Peru to measure an arc of meridian. He remained in South America for 35 years, returning to Paris in 1771. He introduced the common garden heliotrope (Heliotropium peruvianum) into Europe. Joseph was a brother of Antoine and Bernard.

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Yad

Plural  Yadayim,   in Judaism, a ritual object, usually made of silver but sometimes of wood or other materials, that consists of a shaft affixed to a miniature representation of a hand with its index finger pointing. The yad is used optionally in liturgical services to indicate the place that is being read on a Torah (biblical) scroll, thus eliminating the necessity of touching the sacred

Aran Islands

Irish  Arainn,   three limestone islands—Inishmore, Inishmaan, and Inisheer—comprising 18 square miles (47 square km) and lying across the mouth of Galway Bay on the west coast of Ireland. They are administratively part of County Galway. The islands, whose sheer cliffs face the Atlantic Ocean, are generally bleak. Steamers and ferries call mainly at the town of Kilronan on Inishmore, the

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Wrist

Also called  carpus  complex joint between the five metacarpal bones of the hand and the radius and ulna bones of the forearm. The wrist is composed of eight or nine small, short bones (carpal bones) roughly arranged in two rows. The wrist is also made up of several component joints: the distal radioulnar joint, which acts as a pivot for the forearm bones;

Papua New Guinea, Flag Of

In the 20th century the two territories finally linked in Papua New Guinea were administered by the Germans, British, and Australians. The colonial governments had no official symbols of local relevance, although a proposed coat of arms for German New Guinea—never adopted because of Germany's involvement in World War I—featured a bird-of-paradise. In 1962 a local flag also

Monday, December 06, 2004

Allan, Sir Hugh

Allan emigrated to Canada in 1826 and in 1831 began work for a shipbuilding company in Montreal. By 1839 he was a senior partner, and by 1853 he and his brother

Scandinavian Literature

The body of writings in the North Germanic group of languages, the modern forms of which include Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, Danish, and Faeroese. The literary works written in these languages, though manifesting certain differences reflective of distinct national institutions, exhibit strong similarities stemming from deep-seated common linguistic and

Sør-trøndelag

Fylke (county), central Norway. It extends from the Swedish border (east) to the coast of the Norwegian Sea (west). The mouth of the deeply indented Trondheim Fjord lies in the northern part of the fylke; parts of the Dovre Mountains are in the south. Adjacent to the Norwegian Sea coast are the large islands of Hitra and Frøya. The fylke's economy is based on fishing and agriculture

Ford, Francis Xavier

Ford was ordained in 1917 and went to China the next year in the first group of Maryknoll missionaries sent to that country. He founded the Maryknoll Seminary for Chinese Boys in Yang-chiang in 1921 and in 1922 established the first overseas convent

Earplug

The Ainu of northern Japan have used plugs of fabric; in the New World, Mayan earplugs have been found made of thin jade, stone, bone, shell, wood, and metal in many sizes. The Berawan people

Bry, Theodor De

De Bry fled the Spanish persecution of Flemish Protestants and lived in Strassburg (Strasbourg) from 1570 to 1578 and then in Frankfurt am Main, where he established an engraving and publishing business. He twice visited London, where he executed such works as 12 plates for The Procession

Black Hills

Isolated, eroded mountain region in western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming, U.S., lying largely within the Black Hills National Forest. The hills lie between the Cheyenne and Belle Fourche rivers and rise about 3,000 feet (900 m) above the surrounding plains; they culminate in Harney Peak (7,242 feet [2,207 m]), the highest point in South Dakota. The Black Hills formed as a result of an upwarping

Sunday, December 05, 2004

Cojutepeque

Capital of Cuscatlán department, central El Salvador, located near Lake Ilopango on the Inter-American Highway, a section of the Pan-American Highway, at the northern foot of Cerro Las Pavas. Originally an Indian settlement, it was founded in 1571 and was declared a town in 1787 and a city in 1846. The economy is based on agriculture and associated industries (sugar milling, liquor

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Pantheism, Buddhist doctrines

Some 600 years after Buddha, a new and more speculative school of Buddhism arose to challenge the 18 or 20 schools of Buddhism then in existence. One of the early representatives of this new school, which came to be known as Mahayana (Sanskrit “Greater Vehicle”) Buddhism, was Asvaghosa. Like Sankara (whom he antedated by 700 years), Asvaghosa not only distinguished between the pure Absolute

Soissons

Soissons derives its name from the Suessiones,

Vacuum Technology

This type of pump utilizes extremely low temperatures to condense gases and thus remove them from the system. Pumping speeds of millions of cu ft per minute are possible with the cryopump over the pressure range 10-3 torr to well below 10-10 torr. This type of pump can develop its full speed curve over the entire pumping range. Most cryopumps employ helium to cool the low-temperature

Friday, December 03, 2004

Eyre, Lake

Great salt lake in central South Australia, with a total area of 3,700 square miles (9,300 square km). It lies in the southwestern corner of the Great Artesian Basin, a closed inland basin about 440,150 square miles (1,140,000 square km) in area that is drained only by intermittent streams. Normally dry but susceptible to occasional flooding, the lake occupies the lowest part of the Australian continent.

Atalanta

In Greek mythology, a renowned and swift-footed huntress, probably a parallel and less important form of the goddess Artemis. Traditionally, she was the daughter of Schoeneus of Boeotia or of Iasus and Clymene of Arcadia. Her complex legend includes the following incidents: at her father's instance she was left to die at birth but was suckled by a she-bear; she took part

Baden

Also called  Baden Bei Wien,   spa, Niederösterreich Bundesland (federal state), Austria. It lies along the Schwechat River, at the eastern edge of the Wiener Forest, south of Vienna. Settled in prehistoric times, it was a Roman watering place, or aquae, and was recorded in 869 as the seat of a Frankish imperial palace. Chartered in 1480, it was destroyed by the Turks in 1529 and 1683. It is famous for its warm sulfur-chlorine

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Pinar Del Río

Provincia, western Cuba, bounded on the north by the Gulf of Mexico, on the west by the Yucatán Channel, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, on the southeast by the Gulf of Batabanó, and on the east by La Habana province. Low mountain ranges, including the Sierra de los Órganos and the Sierra del Rosario, form the backbone of the territory, which has an area of 4,218 square miles (10,925 square

Kamil, Mustafa

Kamil believed that Egypt was already a nation and fully qualified to rule itself. To put forward his views, he founded the newspaper Al-Liwa' (“The Standard”) in 1900. He realized that independence would be difficult to obtain, and he looked

Olympus Mons

Volcano on the planet Mars, the highest point on the planet and the largest known volcano in the solar system. Centred at 19° N, 133° W, Olympus Mons consists of a central edifice 21 km (13 miles) high and 540 km (335 miles) across. Around its perimeter an outward-facing cliff ascends as high as 10 km (6 miles) above the surrounding area. At the summit is an 85-km- (53-mile-) diameter crater, or caldera, comprising

Akimov, Nikolay Pavlovich

Scenic designer and producer, known for the diversity of his bold experiments in stage design and dramatic interpretation—most especially for his cynical reinterpretation of Hamlet (1932), in which the king's ghost was represented as a fiction cunningly devised by Hamlet,

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Tarakanova, Yelizaveta Alekseyevna

She claimed to have been reared in St. Petersburg, but she was probably not Russian, and her origins and real name are unknown. She appeared in various cities of western Europe

David, Gerard

In his early work, such as the “Christ Nailed to the Cross” (c. 1480; National Gallery, London)

Priesthood, Ancient Greece and Rome

The ancient Greeks were devoid of hierarchical institutions composed of men and women through whom the gods were approached, though priests and priestesses could be found in many places engaging in specific sacerdotal functions and ritual acts. Some of them attained considerable social and civic prestige and importance and were attached to particular temples