Sunday, October 31, 2004

Radha Soami Satsang

Also called  Radhasvami Satsang,   esoteric religious sect of India that has followers among both Hindus and Sikhs. The sect was founded in 1861 by Siva Dayal Saheb (also called Sivdayal), a Hindu banker of Agra, who believed that human beings could perfect their highest capabilities only through repetition of the sabd (“sound”), or nam (“name”), of the Lord. Radha soami signifies the union of the soul with God, the name of God,

Hughes, Sir Samuel

Hughes was a teacher and a member of the voluntary militia. In 1885–97 he was proprietor and editor of the Warder, a newspaper in Lindsay.

Saturday, October 30, 2004

Coraciiform, Similarities to birds of other orders

The size of the birds of this order and their propensity to take rather large prey bring them into competition with many other species of other groups. It is perhaps instructive to compare certain Old World groups with representatives of different orders in the New World tropics (see above Natural history). The most striking parallel is seen between the toucans

Steel

Alloy of iron and carbon in which the carbon content ranges up to 2 percent (with a higher carbon content, the material is defined as cast iron). By far the most widely used material for building the world's infrastructure and industries, it is used to fabricate everything from sewing needles to oil tankers. In addition, the tools required to build and manufacture such

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Latin Literature, Early writers

The ground for Roman literature was prepared by an influx from the early 3rd century BC onward of Greek slaves, some of whom were put to tutoring young Roman nobles. Among them was Livius Andronicus, who was later freed and who is considered to be the first Latin writer. In 240 BC, to celebrate Rome's victory over Carthage, he composed a genuine drama adapted from the Greek. His success

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Music, Orchestras.

For all the long-standing predictions of the imminent demise of the symphony, at least three major essays in the form had high-profile premieres: Alfred Schnittke's Sixth (by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., on tour in Moscow), Witold Lutoslawski's Fourth (by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, with the composer conducting), and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich's Third

Albany, Robert Stewart, 1st Duke Of

The third son of Robert II of Scotland, he was made high chamberlain of Scotland in 1382 and won a military reputation in campaigns against England.

Goby

The majority of species (more

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Toadstool

Any of various inedible or poisonous species of mushrooms (division Mycota). See mushroom.

Philip Iv

Byname  Philip The Fair,  French  Philippe Le Bel  king of France from 1285 to 1314 (and of Navarre, as Philip I, from 1284 to 1305, ruling jointly with his wife, Joan I of Navarre). His long struggle with the Roman papacy ended with the transfer of the Curia to Avignon, Fr. (beginning the so-called Babylonian Captivity, 1309–78). He also secured French royal power by wars on barons and neighbours and by restriction of

Alkalai, Judah Ben Solomon Hai

Alkalai was taken to Jerusalem at an early age, and there he was reared and educated for the rabbinate. At 25 he went to Semlin, in Croatia, as a rabbi and found himself teaching Hebrew to the young men of his congregation,

Monday, October 25, 2004

Spondee

Metrical foot consisting of two long (as in classical verse) or stressed (as in English verse) syllables occurring together. The term was derived from a Greek word describing the two long musical notes that accompanied the pouring of a libation. Spondaic metre occurred occasionally in classical verse. It does not, however, form the basis for any English verse, as there

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Wilkins, Maurice

Wilkins,

Allen, Viola (emily)

Born into a theatrical family, Allen made her debut at age 14 in New York City in the title role of Burnett's Esmeralda. Between 1884 and 1886 she appeared

Saturday, October 23, 2004

Zaltys

On special occasions the snake was asked to the table to share the family meal from their

Qiyas

The need for qiyas developed soon after the death of Muhammad, when the expanding

Friday, October 22, 2004

World War I, The war at sea, 1914–15

In August 1914 Great Britain, with 29 capital ships ready and 13 under construction, and Germany, with 18 and nine, were the two great rival sea powers. Neither of them at first wanted a direct confrontation: the British were chiefly concerned with the protection of their trade routes; the Germans hoped that mines and submarine attacks would gradually destroy Great Britain's numerical

Asylum

In international law, the protection granted by a state to a foreign citizen against his own state. The person for whom asylum is established has no legal right to demand it, while the sheltering state, which has the legal right to grant asylum, is under no obligation to give it. Asylum is thus a right of the state, not of the individual. The right of asylum falls into three

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Rawsthorne, Alan

Rawsthorne studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music (1926–30) and in Berlin (1930–31) with Egon Petri. His early music with its pervasive linear counterpoint shows the influence

Valdemar I

The son of Knud Lavard, duke of South Jutland, and a great-grandson of the Danish king Sweyn II, Valdemar gained sole possession of the monarchy, concluding

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Kwangsi

In full  Chuang Autonomous Region of Kwangsi,  Chinese (Wade-Giles)  Kuang-hsi Chuang-tsu Tzu-chih-ch'ü,  (Pinyin)  Guangxi Zhuangzu Zizhiqu,   autonomous region located in southern China. It is bounded by the Chinese provinces of Yunnan on the west, Kweichow on the north, Hunan on the northeast, and Kwangtung on the southeast, and by Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin on the southwest. It covers an area of 85,100 square miles (220,400 square kilometres). Nan-ning, the capital, is about 75 miles (121 kilometres) southwest of the region's geographic

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

Indiana State University

Public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Terre Haute, Ind., U.S. It comprises the College of Arts and Sciences and schools of Business, Education, Nursing, Technology, Graduate Studies, and Health, Physical Education, and Recreation. The university offers a range of undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Campus facilities include an observatory,

More, Sir Thomas

Also called  Saint Thomas More   humanist and statesman, chancellor of England (1529–32), who was beheaded for refusing to accept King Henry VIII as head of the Church of England. He is recognized as a saint by the Roman Catholic church.

Rio De Janeiro, Protocol Of

(1942), treaty settling possession of the disputed Oriente region on the border of Peru and Ecuador, arranged by a conference of Western Hemisphere foreign ministers held at Rio de Janeiro. Peruvian forces had occupied the area in 1941, defeating the poorly equipped Ecuadoran army. Initial attempts by the United States, Argentina, and Brazil to arrange a peaceful settlement

Monday, October 18, 2004

Gautsch Von Frankenthurn, Paul, Baron (freiherr)

A graduate of the University of Vienna, Gautsch von Frankenthurn entered the imperial Ministry of Education (1874) and served as Austrian minister of education in the cabinets of Eduard, Count von Taaffe (1885–93), and Kasimir, Count von Badeni (1895–97). With the fall of Badeni, he was appointed

Sunday, October 17, 2004

Bouchardon, Edmé

Bouchardon studied with Guillaume Coustou and in 1722 won the Prix de Rome. For the next 10 years he lived in Rome, executing marble replicas of antique statues as well as numerous

Vaigai River

River in Tamil Nadu state, southern India, flowing 150 miles (240 km) generally southeast. Rising in the Varushanad Hills of western Tamil Nadu, it initially flows northeast through the Kambam and Varushanad valleys. In its central reaches the Vaigai flows eastward into the Vaigai reservoir at Narasingapuram. Near Sholavandan it bends to the southeast, passing Madurai town on

Edmund I

He was the son of the West Saxon king Edward the Elder (reigned 899–924) and the half brother of King Athelstan (reigned 924–939), under whom the political unification of England had been accomplished. On Athelstan's death (939), Olaf Guthfrithson, the Norse king of Dublin,

Saturday, October 16, 2004

Asterism

In mineralogy, starlike figure exhibited in light reflected or transmitted by some crystals. The stars shown by star sapphires, some phlogopite mica, rose quartz, and garnet are due to minute oriented crystals (often rutile) included within the mineral; several sets of inclusions are present, and each set produces its own ray. In minerals with hexagonal or pseudohexagonal

Volcano, Lava domes

Landforms of this sort consist of steep domal mounds of lava so viscous that the lava piles up over its vent without flowing away. The rock types that form lava domes are generally andesites, dacites, or rhyolites. Somehow these viscous lavas have lost much of their gas content in prior eruptions or by slow rise to the surface. Even so, it is not unusual for an actively

Mindanao River

Also called  Río Grande De Mindanao, or Cotabato River,   main river of the Cotabato lowland, central Mindanao, Philippines. It rises in the central highlands of northeastern Mindanao (island) as the Pulangi and then flows south to where it joins the Kabacan to form the Mindanao. It meanders northwest through the Libungan Marsh and Liguasan Swamp, which is the habitat of crocodiles. At Datu Piang the river turns to enter Illana

Friday, October 15, 2004

China, Early power struggles

During the first years of the republic there was a continuing contest between Yüan and the former revolutionaries over where ultimate power should lie. The contest began with the election of parliament (National Assembly) in February 1913. The Nationalist Party (Kuomintang; KMT), made up largely of former revolutionaries, won a commanding majority of seats. Parliament

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Anti-comintern Pact

The treaties were sought by Adolf Hitler, who at the time was publicly inveighing against Bolshevism and who was interested in Japan's

Leacock, Stephen (butler)

Leacock immigrated to Canada with his parents at the age of six. He attended Upper Canada College (1882–87) and later received a B.A. degree from the University of Toronto (1891). After teaching for eight

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Strangford Treaty

(1810), agreement between the Portuguese government, then in exile in its Brazilian colony, and Great Britain, represented by its ambassador, Lord Strangford. The treaty provided for the importation of British manufactures into Brazil and the exportation of Brazilian agricultural produce to Great Britain; also, British naval vessels were allowed to be resupplied in

Zoe

Also called  Brotherhood of Theologians  in Eastern Orthodoxy, a semimonastic Greek association patterned on Western religious orders. Founded in 1907 by Eusebius Matthopoulos, Zoe (Greek: “Life”) brought together groups of more than 100 unmarried and highly disciplined members, bound by the monastic vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; approximately half of the brothers were ordained priests, and the rest

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Alabaster

Fine-grained, massive gypsum (q.v.) that has been used for centuries for statuary, carvings, and other ornaments. It normally is snow-white and translucent but can be artificially dyed; it may be made opaque and similar in appearance to marble by heat treatment. Florence, Livorno, and Milan, in Italy, and Berlin are important centres of the alabaster trade. The alabaster of

Mellon, Andrew W.

After completing his studies at Western University (now the University of Pittsburgh), Mellon entered

Monday, October 11, 2004

Bach, Johann Sebastian

Composer of the Baroque era, the most celebrated member of a large family of northern German musicians. Although he was admired by his contemporaries primarily as an outstanding harpsichordist, organist, and expert on organ building, Bach is now generally regarded as one of the greatest composers

Alimony

In divorce law, compensation owed by one spouse to the other for financial support after divorce. Alimony aims at support of the one spouse, not punishment of the other. In some places, the term means simply a property settlement irrespective of future support. Alimony has traditionally been granted from husbands to wives but has occasionally been granted from wives

Sunday, October 10, 2004

France, History Of, The Great Depression and political crises

France at the end of the 1920s had apparently recovered its prewar stability, prosperity, and self-confidence. For a time it even seemed immune to the economic crisis that spread through Europe beginning in 1929; France went serenely on behind its high-tariff barrier, a healthy island in a chaotic world. By 1931, however, France in its turn succumbed to the effects of the depression,

Cambridge, George William Frederick Charles, 2nd Duke Of

After brief service in the Hanoverian army, George William became a colonel in the British army in 1837 and inherited his father's dukedom in 1850. At the beginning of the

Saturday, October 09, 2004

Albanian Literature

The development of Albanian literature was seriously hindered by the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Albania from the 15th to the late 19th century and prohibited publications in the Albanian language for most of that time. The oldest fragment of writing in Albanian

Botrytis Blight

Also called  botrytis rot , or  gray mold blight  disease of plants growing in humid areas that is usually caused by the fungus Botrytis cinerea. Most vegetables, fruits, flowers, and woody plants are susceptible; injured, old, and dead plant parts become infected first. Soft, tan to brown spots or blotches become covered with a dusty mold in moist weather. Seedlings, young shoots, or leaves may wither and collapse; buds

Friday, October 08, 2004

Quantrill, William C.

Growing up in Ohio, Quantrill taught school in Ohio and then Illinois and, in 1857, moved to Kansas,

Carlsbad

City, San Diego county, southern California, U.S. It lies along the Pacific Ocean just south of Oceanside, in a winter vegetable- and flower-growing district. Settled in the 1870s, it was first called Frazier's Station but was renamed (1883) when its mineral waters were found to be similar to those of Carlsbad in Bohemia (now Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic). After the arrival (1885) of the Santa

Thursday, October 07, 2004

Cane Furniture

Furniture in which a mesh of split canes is stretched over parts of the framework, principally on the backs and seats of chairs. It was made in India as early as the 2nd century AD and was also known in China. Cane was imported into Europe by the East India Company, and cane furniture became fashionable in England and the Netherlands toward the end of the 17th century. It is particularly

San Felipe

City, capital of Yaracuy estado (“state”), northwestern Venezuela. It lies on the flanks of the eastern portion of the Segovia Highlands, at an elevation of 1,800 feet (550 m) above sea level. San Felipe is a commercial and manufacturing centre in the fertile Yaracuy River valley. Much of the sugarcane, cotton, cacao, corn (maize), fruit, rice, and hides produced there are sent to Barquisimeto

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Czech Republic

Czech  Ceská Republika,   landlocked country in central Europe. It comprises the historic lands of Bohemia and Moravia (collectively often called the Czech Lands) and the southwestern corner of Silesia. The modern Czech nation was inaugurated on Jan. 1, 1993, when the union with Slovakia, dating from 1918, was dissolved; the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia controlled the federal government from 1948 to

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Performing Arts, Germany.

Two notable films in a generally undistinguished year were Winfried Bonengel's Führer Ex, a dramatic investigation of contemporary neo-Nazism, seen as a legacy of communist oppression in the former East Germany, and Eoin Moore's Pigs Will Fly, a battered-wife story that observed the unhappy relationship through the psychology of the husband, himself a painfully

Jacob

According to the Old Testament, Jacob was the younger twin brother of Esau, who was the ancestor of Edom and the Edomites. The two are representatives of two different grades of social order,

Red River

Also called  Red River Of The South,   navigable river rising in the high plains of eastern New Mexico, U.S., and flowing southeast across Texas and Louisiana to a point northwest of Baton Rouge, where it enters the Atchafalaya River (q.v.), which flows south to Atchafalaya Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. Until the mid-20th century, the Red River contributed flow to both the Atchafalaya and, via the Old River, the Mississippi.

Monday, October 04, 2004

Van Depoele, Charles Joseph

After immigrating to the United States in 1869, Van Depoele became a successful manufacturer of church furniture and then began to pursue his interest in electricity. In addition to his notable

Habsburg, House Of

Albert IV's son Rudolf IV of Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I in 1273. It was he who, in 1282, bestowed Austria and Styria on his two sons Albert (the future German king Albert I) and Rudolf (reckoned as Rudolf II of Austria). From this date the age-long identification of the Habsburgs with Austria begins (see Austria, history of). The family's custom, however, was to vest the government

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Quicklime

Calcium oxide, an alkaline inorganic compound of calcium (q.v.).

Maccabeus, Judas

The son of Mattathias, an aged priest who took to the mountains in rebellion when Antiochus attempted to impose the Greek religion on the Jews, Judas took over the rebel

Saturday, October 02, 2004

Merchants Staplers

Formally  Company of the Merchants of the Staple  company of English merchants who controlled the export of English wool from the late 13th century through the 16th century. English wool exports were concentrated in one town (called the staple) in order to minimize the problems of collecting the export duties. The location of the staple varied, but in the 14th century it was fixed at Calais, then held by England. The crown

Agustín, José

Agustín was educated at National Autonomous University of Mexico and at Centro Mexicano de Escritores. He was a leader of Onda, a youth movement sympathetic to rock music and drug culture, and

Quilmes

Cabecera (principal built-up area) and partido (political subdivision), of Gran (Greater) Buenos Aires, southeast of the city of Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires province, Argentina, near the Río de la Plata estuary. Colonization of the area began with the second and permanent founding of Buenos Aires (1580). In 1666 Jose Martinez de Salazar (governor of Río de la Plata) established the

Friday, October 01, 2004

Ribbon Fall

Cataract on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada in Yosemite National Park, east-central California, U.S. With a drop of 1,612 feet (491 m), it is one of the world's highest waterfalls and one of the park's most scenic features. Reaching a peak volume during May and June, it is fed mainly by melting snow; hence, it is sometimes dry for part of the year.