DeadWhip

Monday, May 31, 2004

Ob River, Physiography

There are more than 1,900 rivers within the basin, with an

Lowin, John

Lowin was the son of a carpenter. He worked as a goldsmith's apprentice for eight years and then joined the Earl of Worcester's Men as an actor in 1602. By 1603 he was a member of the King's Men. He is known to have specialized in the roles of comic soldiers as well as downright villains.

Animal Communication

The transmission of information from one animal to another by means of sound, visible sign or behaviour, taste or odour, electrical impulse, touch, or a combination of these mediums. In general, communication is employed by animals to attract or repel other individuals of particular groups and to establish and maintain distinct forms of social organization that

Saturday, May 29, 2004

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

East Hertfordshire

East Hertfordshire district is largely undulating and rural, characterized by medieval manor houses and thatched cottages. The River Lea, navigable to barge traffic from the London docks to the town of Hertford, drains the

Sacra Rappresentazione

(Italian: “holy performance”), in theatre, 15th-century Italian ecclesiastical drama similar to the mystery plays of France and England and the auto sacramental of Spain. Originating and flourishing in Florence, these religious dramas represented scenes from the Old and New Testaments, from pious legends, and from the lives of the saints. The plays were didactic, using

Kirkland Lake

Town, Timiskaming district, eastern Ontario, Canada. It is situated 125 miles (200 km) north-northwest of North Bay. Since the discovery of gold in the vicinity in 1911, at the time of the construction of the Ontario Northland Railway, the town has grown to become one of Canada's largest gold producers. During the bonanza years of 1927–28, dozens of mines sprang up along its “Golden Mile,” including

Friday, May 28, 2004

Fabriano

Town, Ancona province, in Marche (The Marches) region, central Italy. The town was the home of a minor school of painting founded in the late 14th century by Allegretto Nuzi and Gentile da Fabriano; frescoes by the former decorate the local cathedral. A Romanesque-Gothic mayoral palace (1255) and a municipal art gallery are other notable buildings. The town was severely damaged

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Kadar

The Kadar live in the forests and do not practice agriculture, building shelters thatched with leaves and shifting location as their employment requires. They prefer to eat rice obtained

Aerospace Industry, Lean manufacturing

Consistent with improving the economics of aerospace vehicles is the transition to a new paradigm for the entire industry, from concept development to operations. This approach involves all processes pertaining to the acquisition, design, development, and manufacturing of a product or system and has been variously called “lean,” “agile,” or “synchronous” manufacturing.

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Maurienne

High Alpine valley, about 80 miles (130 km) long, in southeastern France. Drained by the Arc River, a tributary of the Isère, it consists of a succession of large basins and narrow, wild gorges that are cut through outcrops of heavily folded and overthrust rocks. Twenty-four hydroelectric stations in the valley generate power for electrochemical plants, aluminum refining,

Swale

Borough (district), administrative and historic county of Kent, southeastern England, on the south side of the Thames estuary at its mouth. Swale borough includes the Isle of Sheppey, 9 miles (14 km) long and 4 miles (6 km) wide, to the north. The island is separated from the mainland (south) by The Swale, a branch of the River Medway estuary, which gives its name to the district. Land on

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Hydrogenation

Chemical reaction between molecular hydrogen and an element or compound, ordinarily in the presence of a catalyst. The reaction may be one in which hydrogen simply adds to a double or triple bond connecting two atoms in the structure of the molecule or one in which the addition of hydrogen results in dissociation (breaking up) of the molecule (called hydrogenolysis,

Foreign Affairs

Journal of international relations, published in New York City six times a year, one of the most prestigious periodicals of its kind in the world. The organ of the Council on Foreign Relations, by which it was founded in 1922, it provides a window on the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. It has an international reputation for its careful and probing analyses of political,

Monday, May 24, 2004

Aridisol

One of the 12 soil orders in the U.S. Soil Taxonomy. Aridisols are dry, desertlike soils that have low organic content and are sparsely vegetated by drought- or salt-tolerant plants. (Not included in this order are soils located in polar regions or high-elevation settings.) Dry climate and low humus content limit their arability without irrigation. Covering only about half

Good Friday

According to the Jewish calendar, Jesus died on 15 Nisan,

Sunday, May 23, 2004

Agramonte Y Simoni, Aristides

Agramonte was the son of a prominent physician who had been killed while serving in the Cuban Army of Liberation. Brought up in New York City, Agramonte

Andrew Ii

The son of Béla III, Andrew succeeded László III, his elder brother's son, on the throne in 1205. Powerful landed interests forced Andrew to spend royal funds so recklessly that the crown

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Murdoch, Rupert

In full  Keith Rupert Murdoch   Australian-born newspaper publisher and media entrepreneur, founder and head of the global media holding company the News Corporation Ltd., which governed News Limited (Australia), News International (U.K.), and News America Holdings Inc. (U.S.). Murdoch's corporate interests centred on newspaper, magazine, book, and electronic publishing;

Osaka-kobe Metropolitan Area, Industry

Osaka was once known as the Manchester of the Orient because of its great textile industry; now, however, its leading industries are the manufacture of electrical and other machinery, iron and steel, fabricated metals, and chemicals. Between Osaka and Kobe are several other industrial cities. The largest, Amagasaki, is a centre of machinery, metallurgy, chemicals, cement,

Friday, May 21, 2004

Selim I

Selim came to the throne in the wake of civil strife in which he, his brother, and their father, Bayezid II, had been involved. Selim eliminated all potential claimants to the sultanate, leaving only

Anezaki Masaharu

Anezaki started his academic

Thursday, May 20, 2004

Anatolian Religion, Divination

Divination, through which the cause of divine displeasure was ascertained, was mainly of three kinds: augury (divination by flight of birds), haruspicy (divination by examining the entrails of sacrificial animals), and an enigmatic procedure using tokens with symbolic names, arts said to be practiced respectively by the “bird-watcher,” the seer, and the “old woman.” The

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Asahikawa

City, Hokkaido, Japan. It lies along the Ishikari River in the agriculturally important Kamikawa Basin. Settled in 1889 and organized as a village in 1893, Asahikawa became the railway, marketing, and industrial centre of northern Hokkaido. Its industries include brewing and the manufacture of pulp, paper, wood chemicals, and cotton yarn. Asahikawa also serves as the entrance

Tonga

Officially  Kingdom of Tonga,  Tongan  Pule'anga Fakatu'i 'o Tonga,  also called  Friendly Islands,   country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of 169 islands divided into three main island groups: Tongatapu in the south, Ha'apai in the centre, and Vava'u in the north. Isolated islands include Niuafo'ou, Niuatoputapu, and Tafahi in the far north and 'Ata in the far south. Tonga's total land area of 290 square miles (750 square kilometres) is dispersed between latitudes 15° to

Cynric

King of the West Saxons, or Wessex (from 534). By some accounts he also reigned jointly (519–534) with his grandfather (or father?), Cerdic, founder of Wessex. The period was apparently one of consolidating gains climaxed by the Battle of Mount Badon (520) rather than a period of further expansion, though Cynric is said to have routed Britons in battle at least once, at a place called Searobyrg

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Le Maistre De Sacy, Isaac-louis

Important figure in the Jansenist religious movement in France, a member of the Arnauld family (q.v.).

Sabah

Region of East Malaysia, forming the northern part of the great island of Borneo, and bordered by Sarawak (southwest) and Kalimantan, or Indonesian Borneo (south). Sabah has an 800–900-mile- (1,290–1,450-kilometre-) long, heavily indented coastline that is washed by the South China, Sulu, and Celebes seas. It was known as North Borneo during the British colonial period (until 1963). Its 28,425-square-mile (73,620-square-kilometre)

Monday, May 17, 2004

Zittel, Karl Alfred, Ritter (knight) Von

In 1863 Zittel became an assistant to the royal mineral cabinet of Vienna and professor of mineralogy, geognosy, and paleontology at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic. In 1866 he became professor of geology and paleontology at the University

Piedmont

In geology, landform created at the foot of a mountain (Italian: ai piede della montagne) or mountains by debris deposited by shifting streams. Such an alluvial region in a humid climate is known as a piedmont for the Piedmont district of Italy; in arid climates such a feature is called a bajada (q.v.).

Sunday, May 16, 2004

Gonzaga Dynasty

Italian dynasty whose heads ruled Mantua from 1328 to 1707 and also Montferrat, with the stronghold of Casale, from 1536 to 1707. Their origins are uncertain, but by the 12th century the Corradi family of Gonzaga were established as members of the feudal gentry owning estates near Mantua, to which during the 13th century they managed to add other extensive properties. They took their name

Petralona Skull

The skull has a large brow and a slanting forehead, and, from the structure of the face, the jaw is estimated to have been larger

Saturday, May 15, 2004

Manas

(Sanskrit: “thought”), in Indian philosophy, the human “mind,” that faculty which coordinates sensory impressions before they are presented to the consciousness. Thus, when a person sees, hears, and smells an object—three different and not necessarily related impressions—the manas makes certain that he is conscious that it is the same object.

Tegal

Kotamadya (municipality) and port Jawa Tengah provinsi (“province”), central Java, Indonesia, located on the Java Sea about 160 miles (257 km) east-southeast of Jakarta. Roads and railway link it with Cirebon on the west, Semarang on the east, and Kroya and Yogyakarta on the south and southeast. Its population is mostly Javanese, and Islam is the dominant religion. Tegal is a centre for

Friday, May 14, 2004

Kabbala

By the mid-16th century the unchallenged centre of Kabbala was Safed, Galilee, where one of the greatest of all Kabbalists, Isaac ben Solomon Luria, spent the last years of his life. According to Gershom Gerhard Scholem, a modern Jewish scholar of Kabbala, Luria's influence was surpassed only by that of the Sefer ha-zohar. Lurianic Kabbala developed several basic doctrines:

France, History Of, Economy

Republican France remained a nation of small producers, traders, and consumers. The surge of industrialization that marked the era of Napoleon III had stopped short of a full-scale industrial revolution. The new dynamic sector of the economy was far outweighed by a static or slowly changing sector. The bulk of industry remained smaller and more dispersed than in

Thursday, May 13, 2004

Outlaw Music

Movement of American country music in the 1970s spearheaded by Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings (b. June 15, 1937, Littlefield, Texas, U.S.—d. February 13, 2002, Chandler, Arizona). Sometimes called progressive country, outlaw music was an attempt to escape the formulaic constraints of the Nashville Sound (simple songs, the use of studio musicians, and lush production), country's dominant style

Japanese Civil Code

Japanese  Mimpo,   body of private law adopted in 1896 that, with post-World War II modifications, remains in effect in present-day Japan. The code was the result of various movements for modernization following the Meiji Restoration of 1868. A legal code was required that would fill the needs of the new free-enterprise system that predominated with the dissolution of feudal landholdings. At

Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Ochsenbein, Ulrich

An ardent Bernese radical, Ochsenbein organized and directed an abortive military coup against the clerical government of Luzern (March 1845), precipitating

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

India, Coastal areas

Most of the coast of India flanks the Eastern and Western Ghats. In the northwest, however, much of coastal Gujarat lies to the northwest of the Western Ghats, extending around the Gulf of Khambhat (Cambay) and into the salt marshes of the Kathiawar and Kachchh (Kutch) peninsulas. These tidal marshes include the Great Rann of Kachchh along the border with Pakistan and the Little

Hinduism, Sacrifice and worship

Although the Vedic fire rituals were largely replaced in Puranic and modern Hinduism by image worship and other forms of devotionalism, many Hindu rites can still be traced back to Vedism. Certain royal sacrifices—such as the rajasuya, or consecration ritual, and the horse sacrifice (asvamedha)—remained popular with Hindu kings until very recently. Other large-scale

Great Appalachian Valley

Also called  Great Valley Region,   longitudinal chain of valley lowlands of the Appalachian mountain system of North America. Extending from Canada on the northeast to Alabama, U.S., on the southwest, it includes the St. Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Kittatinny, Cumberland, Shenandoah, and Tennessee river valleys in the United States. In its southerly region the Great Appalachian Valley divides

Monday, May 10, 2004

Al Bu Sa'id Dynasty

Ahmad ibn Sa'id, who had been governor of Suhar, Oman, in the 1740s under the Persian Ya'rubids, managed to displace the Ya'rubids by about 1749 and become imam of Oman and of Zanzibar, Pemba, and Kilwa, in East Africa. His successors—known as sayyids, or, later, as sultans—expanded their possessions

Bhaktivedanta, A(bhay) C(haranaravinda)

In 1920 Bhaktivedanta completed his B.A. in chemistry at the Scottish Churches' College in Calcutta; by that time, his family had arranged a marriage for him, and he later established

Sunday, May 09, 2004

Pietas

In Roman religion, personification of a respectful and faithful attachment to gods, country, and relatives, especially parents. Pietas had a temple at Rome, dedicated in 181 BC, and was often represented on coins as a female figure carrying a palm branch and a sceptre or as a matron casting incense upon an altar, sometimes accompanied by a stork, the symbol of filial piety.

Uddevalla

Town, Västra Götaland län (county), southwestern Sweden. It lies along the Bäve River, at the head of By Fjord (an inlet of the Skagerrak), north of Göteborg. The site has been identified with Odensvold, a pagan place of sacrifice. The town was incorporated in 1498. On several occasions during the Danish-Swedish wars, large parts of it were destroyed and ravaged by fire. Uddevalla

Saturday, May 08, 2004

Bach, Johann Sebastian, Early years

J.S. Bach was born at Eisenach, Thuringia, on March 21, 1685, the youngest child of Johann Ambrosius Bach and Elisabeth Lämmerhirt. Ambrosius was a string player, employed by the town council and the ducal court of Eisenach. Johann Sebastian started school in 1692 or 1693 and did well in spite of frequent absences. Of his musical education at this time, nothing definite is known; however,

Friday, May 07, 2004

Quimby, Harriet

Quimby's birth date and place are not well attested. (She sometimes claimed 1884 in Arroyo Grande, California.) By 1902, however, it is known that she and her family were living in California, and in that year she became

Syrinx

The vocal organ of birds, located at the base of the windpipe (trachea), where the trachea divides into the bronchi (tubes that connect the trachea with the lungs). The syrinx is lacking in the New World vultures (Cathartidae), which can only hiss and grunt, but reaches great complexity in the songbirds, in which it consists of paired specialized cartilages and membranes

Macarthur, John

In 1789 Macarthur went to Australia as a lieutenant in the New South Wales Corps. By 1793 he had become a large landholder, having attained power as inspector of public works and paymaster

Thursday, May 06, 2004

France, History Of, Foreign relations

France assumed a more active role in the politics of Christian Europe from the end of the 12th century. Philip Augustus led French contingents on the most fully international of the great Crusades (1190–91), although, having once demonstrated his energy in that work of piety, he could not afterward be persuaded to renew his vow. He preferred, through dynastic schemes and opportunism,

African Literature, Xhosa

As in Zulu literature, the themes of the heroic past and of the opposition between beneficent tradition and harsh modernity are much in evidence. The question of how best to come to terms with change is also central in Xhosa literature. Much important early writing, expressing Xhosa aspirations and views on Christianity and tradition, appeared in the Xhosa-language

Lenin, Order Of

Highest civilian award of the U.S.S.R. It was established in 1930 by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union and awarded to individuals, collectives, institutions, or organizations for outstanding achievements in research, art, technology, or economics or for the solution of tasks vital to the state. The order had one class. It was awarded automatically to “Heroes

Wednesday, May 05, 2004

Zapopan

City, north-central Jalisco estado (“state”), west-central Mexico. It is in the temperate Guadalajara Valley, at an elevation of 5,243 feet (1,598 m) above sea level, 4.5 miles (7 km) northwest of Guadalajara, the state capital. It is a commercial and manufacturing centre for the surrounding area that produces grain (principally corn [maize]), sugarcane, cotton, and fruits and vegetables. Livestock

Tuesday, May 04, 2004

France, History Of, Tax reform

In 1749–51 Jean-Baptiste de Machault d'Arnouville, then comptroller general of finances, proposed a partial reform of the tax system, his particular concern being to restrict the financial power of the church. In 1764 and 1765 another comptroller general, François de L'Averdy, attempted a reform of municipal representation and administration. All royal officials understood the

Morava River

German  March,   tributary of the Danube rising in eastern Czech Republic; in its lower course, the river divides the Czech Republic from Slovakia and then Slovakia from Austria. It gives its name to Moravia, an ancient region that covers most of the river's drainage basin, which is 15,000 square miles (38,900 square km) in area. Its western tributaries drain from the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands; the

Monday, May 03, 2004

Priesthood, Jainism and Buddhism

In Jainism and Buddhism, arising within Brahmanism as nontheistic sectarian movements, the Brahman priesthood was sublimated and the Vedic caste and sacrifice eliminated. In their place a monastic system was evolved, with monks and nuns devoted primarily to rigorous asceticism in the quest of perfection and in the pursuit of chastity and truthfulness. Complete

Earth, The introduction of triangulation

A new era in determining the size of the Earth began through the introduction of triangulation. The idea of triangulation was apparently conceived by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe before the end of the 16th century, but it was developed as a science by a contemporary Dutch mathematician, Willebrord van Roijen Snell. Snell used a chain of 33 triangles to determine

Sunday, May 02, 2004

Valencia

County, central New Mexico, U.S., in the Mexican Highland section of the Basin and Range Province. The Manzano Mountains lie at its eastern border, and mesas rise in the west. Between mountains and mesas are the southward-flowing Rio Puerco and the Rio Grande. The Isleta (Pueblo) Indian Reservation is in the north, and other areas of interest are Cibola National Forest, Manzano

Chancelade Skeleton

Human fossil remains discovered in a rock shelter at Chancelade in southwestern France in 1888. The skeleton was found in a curled posture—an indication of a deliberate burial—below the lower Magdalenian occupation floors of the shelter; it is assumed to be of Magdalenian age (about 17,000 years old). The Chancelade skull was studied by the French anatomist Jean-Léo Testut, who

Saturday, May 01, 2004

Nerchinsk, Treaty Of

(1689), peace settlement between Russia and the Manchu Chinese empire that checked Russia's eastward expansion by removing its outposts from the Amur River basin. By the treaty's terms Russia lost easy access to the Sea of Okhotsk and Far Eastern markets but secured its claim to Transbaikalia (the area east of Lake Baikal) and gained the right of passage to Beijing for its

Barry, Philip

Barry was educated at Yale and in 1919 entered George Pierce Baker's 47 Workshop at Harvard. His A Punch for Judy was produced by the workshop in 1920. You and I, also written while Barry was a student, played 170 performances on Broadway in 1923. Over the next 20 years