Rifleman

A New Zealand wren of the family Xenicidae (q.v.).

Davies, Marion

Marion's father, Bernard J. Douras, was a lawyer who would serve as New York City magistrate from 1918 to 1930. Her three older sisters—Reine, Ethel, and Rose—also became actors, and, like Reine, Marion used

Sogn Og Fjordane

Fylke (county), western Norway, bordering the North Sea. Its inland extension includes the Jostedals Glacier and part of the Jotunheim Mountains. In the northern part of the fylke is Nord Fjord, which penetrates 55 miles (90 km) inland, and in the south is Norway's longest fjord, Sogn Fjord (q.v.). Centrally located on the northern bank of Sogn Fjord is the village of Leikanger, administrative

Tephroite

Olivine mineral found only in iron-manganese ore deposits and skarns and in metamorphosed manganese-rich sediments, such as those of Cornwall, Eng., and Franklin, N.J., in the United States. Tephroite (manganese silicate; Mn2SiO4) forms a solid solution series with the olivine fayalite in which iron completely replaces manganese in the molecular structure. Minerals intermediate

Equestrian Sports

In April 1997 Memo Gracida, the new leader of Isla Carroll, won his sixth consecutive and a record 15th career U.S. Open by defeating White Birch in the final at the Palm Beach (Fla.) Polo Club. Isla Carroll also gained the World Cup and the Gold Cup of the Americas, and White Birch won its eighth USPA Gold Cup. Grant's Farm Manor and Peapacton obtained the Sterling and Challenge cups,

Amphibole, Contact metamorphic rocks

Amphiboles occur in contact metamorphic aureoles around igneous intrusions. (An aureole is the zone surrounding an intrusion, which is a mass of igneous rock that solidified between other rocks located within the Earth.) The contact aureoles produced in siliceous limestones and dolomites, called skarns or calc-silicate rocks, characteristically contain metamorphic

Requests, Court Of

Called the Court of Poor Men's Causes until 1529, it was a popular court because of the limited expense of bringing suit before it. Modeled after the French Chambre

France, History Of, The Dreyfus affair

The 1890s also saw the Third Republic's greatest political and moral crisis—the Dreyfus affair. In 1894 Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a career army officer of Jewish origin, was charged with selling military secrets to the Germans. He was tried and convicted by a court-martial and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island off the South American coast. Efforts by the Dreyfus

Agoracritus

Greek sculptor said to have been the favourite pupil of Phidias. His most renowned work is the statue of Nemesis at Rhamnous, Greece, part of the head of which is in the British Museum, while fragments of the pedestal reliefs are in Athens.

Gable

The architectural treatment of a gable results from the effort to find an aesthetically pleasing solution to the problem of keeping water out of the intersection of walls and roof. This is accomplished either by

Tanzania, Settlement patterns

The two most important factors influencing the regional pattern of human settlement are rainfall and the incidence of tsetse fly. The tsetse, which thrives on wild game in miombo woodlands, is the carrier of Trypanosoma, a blood parasite that causes sleeping sickness in cattle and people. Tsetse infestation makes human settlement hazardous in areas of moderate

Hippie

Also spelled  hippy  member, during the 1960s and 1970s, of a countercultural movement that rejected the mores of mainstream American life. The movement originated on U.S. college campuses, although it spread to other countries, including Canada and Britain. The name derived from “hip,” a term applied to the Beats of the 1950s, such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who were generally considered to be the

Brianchon, Charles-julien

In 1804 Brianchon entered the École Polytechnique in Paris, where

China, Political history

Ineptitude on the throne, bureaucratic factionalism at court, rivalries among Mongol generals, and ineffective supervision and coordination of provincial and local administration had gravely weakened the Yüan government by the 1340s. And in 1351 disastrous flooding of the Huang and Huai river basins aroused hundreds of thousands of long-oppressed Chinese peasants

Gates Of Paradise

Italian  Porta Del Paradiso,   the pair of gilded bronze doors (1425–52) designed by the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti for the east entrance of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence. Each wing of the Gates of Paradise contains five rectangular reliefs of scenes from the Old Testament between figurated borders containing statuettes in niches and medallions with busts. The entire surface of the doors

Ortega, Daniel

Son of a veteran of the peasant army of César Augusto Sandino, Ortega moved with his family to Managua in the mid-1950s. He briefly attended the Central American University in Managua, then in 1963 he went

China, The Ch'ing period

(Revolutionary movements at the end of the Ch'ing): Michael Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911: The Birth of Modern Chinese Radicalism (1969); Robert A. Scalapino and George T. Yu, The Chinese Anarchist Movement (1961, reprinted 1980); Harold Z. Schiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (1968); John H. Fincher, Chinese Democracy, the Self-Government Movement in Local, Provincial, and National Politics, 1905–1914 (1981); Mary B. Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902–1911 (1971); Edward J.M. Rhoads, China's Republican Revolution: The Case of Kwangtung, 1895–1913 (1975); Joseph W. Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (1976); and Edmund S.K. Fung, The Military Dimension of the Chinese Revolution: The New Army and Its Role in the Revolution of 1911 (1980).

Mckean

The county was formed in

Qalamkari Textile

The textile designs reflect the Persianized tastes of the wealthy ruling class and also

Devaraja

The devaraja cult grew out of both Hindu and indigenous traditions. It taught that the king was a divine universal ruler, a manifestation

Ahmad

Succeeding his brother as the ruler of Tunis in 1837, Ahmad began at once to modernize his armed forces: Tunisian cadets were sent to France, a military and technical academy was established, and European instructors invited to Tunis. He organized a naval force with 12 frigates purchased from France. He sent

Tibet, Climate

Although Tibetans refer to their country as Gangs-ljongs or Kha-ba-can (“Land of Snows”), the climate is generally dry, and most of Tibet receives only 18 inches (460 millimetres) of rain and snow annually. The Himalayas act as a barrier to the monsoon (rain-bearing) winds from the south, and precipitation decreases from south to north. The perpetual snow line lies at about 16,000 feet in

Bahrain

Officially  State of Bahrain,  Arabic  Dawlat Al-Bahrayn   small Arab state in the Persian Gulf. It is an archipelago consisting of Bahrain Island—extending about 30 miles (50 km) from north to south and 10 miles (16 km) from east to west—and some 30 smaller islands. Its Arabic name means “two seas.” Bahrain is situated in a bay on the southwestern coast of the Persian Gulf; Saudi Arabia lies to the west across the Gulf of Bahrain, while the Qatar peninsula

United States, Prelude to revolution

The prolonged wars had also revealed the need to tighten the administration of the loosely run and widely scattered elements of the British Empire. If the course of the war had confirmed the necessity, the end of the war presented the opportunity. The acquisition of Canada required London officials to take responsibility for the unsettled western territories, now freed from the threat of French occupation. The British soon moved to take charge of the whole field of Indian relations. By royal proclamation (1763) a line was drawn down the Appalachians marking the limit of settlement from the British colonies, beyond which Indian trade was to be conducted strictly through British-appointed commissioners. These steps were not in time to prevent a serious uprising under the Ottawa chief Pontiac, however; and the proclamation, which sprang in part from a respect for Indian rights, caused consternation among British colonists for two reasons. It meant that limits were being set to the prospects of settlement and speculation in western lands, and it took control of the west out of colonial hands. The most ambitious men in the colonies thus saw the proclamation as a loss of power to control their own fortunes.

Talion

In ancient Palestine, injury and bodily mutilation, as well as theft, were considered

Futurology

In the social sciences, the study of current trends in order to forecast future developments. While the speculative and descriptive aspects of futurology are traceable to the traditions of utopian literature and science fiction, the methodology of the field originated in the “technological forecasting” developed near the end of World War II, of which Toward New

Theatrical Production, The modern repertory company

During the rise of the stock company and single-show system, there continued to exist highly refined examples of the repertory ensemble. The Comédie Française, originally an amalgamation of two Parisian troupes, has existed since 1680. In opera the repertory system remains fundamentally unchanged. Toward the end of the 19th century, however, a widespread transformation

Epistemology, The nature of knowledge

As indicated above, one of the basic questions of epistemology concerns the nature of knowledge. Philosophers normally interpret this query as a conceptual question, i.e., as an issue about a certain conception or idea or notion called knowledge. The question raises a perplexing methodological issue, namely, how does one go about investigating such conceptual questions?

Tadjoura, Gulf Of

French  Golfe De Tadjoura,   gulf indenting the coastline of Djibouti, eastern Africa, located at the extreme western end of the Gulf of Aden. It provides some shelter for the port of Djibouti on the southeastern shore of the gulf. The gulf is 35 miles (56 km) wide at the mouth and 50 miles long, with a depth of as much as 3,550 feet (1,082 m) near the centre. It is about 164 feet deep off the coast of Djibouti. The coastline is rather

Futurology

ALS affects the motor neurons—i.e., those neurons that control muscular movements.

Agunah

Hebrew  'aguna (“deserted woman”) , plural  agunahs,  'agunot , or  agunoth  in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, a woman who is presumed to be widowed but who cannot remarry because evidence of her husband's death does not satisfy legal requirements. The plight of the agunah has generated voluminous and complex treatment in Halakhic literature. Although religious courts are not empowered to grant remarriage without indisputable

Pyramid Texts

Collection of Egyptian mortuary prayers, hymns, and spells intended to protect a dead king or queen and ensure life and sustenance in the hereafter. The texts, inscribed on the walls of the inner chambers of the pyramids, are found at Saqqarah in several 5th- and 6th-dynasty pyramids, of which that of Unas, last king of the 5th dynasty, is the earliest known. The texts constitute

Nora

Ancient site about 22 miles (35 km) southwest of Cagliari (Caralis) on the island of Sardinia. Although tradition ascribes its foundation to Iberians from Tartessus, the site, which lies on a triangular promontory ending in a steep cliff, is characteristically Phoenician. Apart from remains of a Sardinian nuraghe, or towerlike monument, the earliest antiquities discovered

Vajpayee, Atal Bihari

Vajpayee was first elected to Parliament in 1957 as a member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), a forerunner of the BJP. In 1977 the BJS joined three other parties to form the Janata Party, which led a government that lasted until July 1979. As foreign minister

Avranches

In 1172 the excommunicated Henry II of England received absolution in Avranches for the

Stone Age, Ax factories and flint mines

Celts, or axes, were manufactured in factories where specially suitable rock outcrops occurred, and they were traded over great distances. Products of the factories at Graig Lwyd, Penmaenmawr, North Wales, were transported to Wiltshire and Anglesey, those of Tievebulliagh on the Antrim coast to Limerick, Kent, Aberdeen, and the Hebrides. Similarly, large nodules of

Eagles, The, Don Henley

Tachometer

Mechanical

Elizabeth Of Portugal, Saint

She was named for her great-aunt St. Elizabeth of Hungary and received a strict and pious education. In 1282 she was married to Dinis, a good ruler but an unfaithful husband. Despite the corrupt court life, Elizabeth maintained her devout habits, helped the sick

Tsong-kha-pa

Tibetan lama who founded a new Tibetan Buddhist sect known as the Dge-lugs-pa (q.v.), literally “Model of Virtue” but more commonly referred to as the Yellow Hat sect to distinguish it from the older Red Hat sect. Hoping to restore monastic discipline, Tsong-kha-pa enforced celibacy, required the wearing of yellow robes, and insisted on adherence to a rigorous routine. The

Aging

Aging has many facets. Hence there are a number of theories, each of which many explain one or more aspects of aging; there is, however, no single theory that explains all of the phenomena of aging.

Jiang Zemin

Jiang joined the CCP in 1946 and graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University the following year with a degree in electrical engineering. He worked in several factories as an engineer before receiving further technical training

France, History Of, Social classes

The collapse of Roman imperial power and the influx of Germans did not destroy the old Roman senatorial and landed aristocracy; the 6th-century kings called on its members to serve in the administration. A sort of military aristocracy had existed among the Germans: at the time of their settlement within the empire, its members were given tax revenues and lands confiscated

Lake, Simon

Lake's first experimental submarine, the “Argonaut, Jr.,” built in 1894, had a wooden hull and was about 14 feet (4 metres) long. It travelled the sea bottom on wheels turned by hand. The “Argonaut,” built in 1897, was 36 feet (11 metres) long and was powered by

Carnivore, Importance to humans

The seal is of significant importance to the survival of the Eskimos and other inhabitants of the north, who use almost every part of the animal: the meat is eaten; bones used for implements; tendons for sewing; hides for leather to make footwear, boats, shelters, bags, clothing, and ornaments; and the oil and fat for fuel, lubrication, and tanning. The ivory tusks of the walrus

Ibisbill

(Ibidorhyncha struthersii), Asian bird named for its long, red, down-curved bill (similar to that of an ibis), which it uses to probe for food under stones along streams and ponds. Rather heavyset birds about 40 centimetres (16 inches) long, ibisbills have shorter legs than their familial relatives the avocets and stilts (family Recurvirostridae,

Binnya Dala

In 1747 Binnya Dala succeeded Smim Htaw Buddhaketi, who had seven years earlier been set up as king of the Mon in the new capital of Pegu after their successful revolt against the Burmans. Binnya Dala, who was his predecessor's chief minister