in ancient times a celebrated Buddhist centre of learning (vihara) in India, identified with modern Bihar town in the Patna district of Bihar state. It was founded in the 7th century AD by Gopala, the first ruler of the Pala dynasty, no doubt in emulation of its neighbour Nalanda, another ... [1 Related Articles]
city, northern Akita ken (prefecture), northern Honshu, Japan, on the Yoneshiro River. As a castle town during the Edo (Tokugawa) era (1603-1867), it served as a market for the surrounding agricultural region. The city is now a lumbering centre and is known for the production of wood ...
city, southwestern Kanagawa ken (prefecture), east-central Honshu, Japan. It is located on the coast of Sagami Bay, between the Sakawa and Haya rivers, about 28 miles (45 km) southwest of Yokohama. The city was a local political centre during the Kamakura era (1192-1333), and in the early ...
(from the article "isotope") ...tend to decrease as mass increases. A third feature of interest is that stable isotopes with even numbers of protons and neutrons occur more often than do isotopes with odd ones (the so-called odd-even effect). Out of the almost 300 stable nuclides known, only five have odd numbers of both ...
(from the article "learning theory") ...may learn to distinguish any "odd" member of any set from those that are similar. Animals as low in the evolutionary scale as the pigeon can master the principle of this so-called oddity problem.
(from the article "saga") ...wrote a brilliant saga of St. Olaf, rejecting some of the grosser hagiographical elements in his sources; this work forms the central part of his Heimskringla.) About 1190 a Benedictine monk, Oddr Snorrason, wrote a Latin life of Olaf Tryggvason, of which an Icelandic version still survives. A brother in ...
(from the article "gambling") ...one wins (dies), the win is paid out to one's relatives, and if one loses (survives the specified time), the wager (premium) is kept by the insurance company, which acts as a bookmaker and sets the odds (payout ratios) according to actuarial data. These two forms of gambling are considered ...
(from the article "Iceland") On September 27 former prime minister David Oddsson resigned his post as foreign minister to become the head of the central bank. He also stepped aside as chairman of the Independence Party in favour of Geir H. Haarde, who had been finance minister since 1998 and was succeeding Oddsson at ...
ceremonious poem on an occasion of public or private dignity in which personal emotion and general meditation are united. The Greek word ode, which has been accepted in most modern European languages, meant a choric song, usually accompanied by a dance. Alcman (7th century BC) originated the strophic arrangement of ... [2 Related Articles]
(from the article "Purcell, Henry") The instrumental movements are the most striking part of the earliest of Purcell's Welcome Songs for Charles II-a series of ceremonial odes that began to appear in 1680. Possibly he lacked experience in writing for voices, at any rate on the scale required for works of this ...
British toy designer and manufacturer pioneered Matchbox toys-scale-model die-cast metal replicas small enough to fit inside a British cardboard matchbox. The phenomenally popular miniatures, which featured realistic detail and movable parts, were marketed around the world, with as many as 50 million sold annually by 1962. Odell, a self-taught engineer, ...
(from the article "Everest, Mount") Members of the expedition were Brigadier General Bruce (leader), Bentley Beetham, Captain Bruce, J. de V. Hazard, Major R.W.G. Hingston, Andrew Irvine, Mallory, Norton, N.E. Odell, E.O. Shebbeare (transport), Somervell, and Noel (photographer). Noel devised a novel publicity scheme for financing this trip by buying all film and lecture rights ...
(from the article "Namibia") ...and secretaries, as well as semiskilled workers, began to be trained and employed on a significant scale only in the mid-1970s. Land reallocations increased contract labour. A body called the Odendaal Commission organized separate development, which led to the creation of "homeland" authorities that benefited a new black elite (as ...
town and mining centre of the Free State goldfields, north-central Free State province, South Africa, at 4,411 ft (1,344 m) above sea level. Although it obtained municipal status in 1912, Odendaalsrus remained little more than a village until 1946, when a highly profitable goldfield was discovered 2 mi (3 km) ...
city, northern Funen island, Denmark, on the Odense River. The site was sacred in pagan times as the vi, or sanctuary, of Odin (one of the principal gods in Norse religion) but was first recorded in history about AD 1000. A bishop's seat from the 10th century, ...
wooded upland region in Germany, about 50 mi (80 km) long and 25 mi wide, situated mainly in Hesse Land (state) with small portions extending into the states of Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg. A popular tourist area, it extends between the Neckar and the Main rivers and overlooks the Rhine Valley. ... [1 Related Articles]
(from the article "Bernhardt, Sarah") In 1866 Bernhardt signed a contract with the Odeon theatre and, during six years of intensive work with a congenial company there, gradually established her reputation. Her first resounding success was as Anna Damby in the 1868 revival of Kean, by the novelist and playwright Alexandre Dumas ...
river of east-central Europe. It is one of the most significant rivers in the catchment basin of the Baltic Sea, second only to the Vistula in discharge and length. For the first 70 miles (112 kilometres) from its source, it passes through the Czech Republic. For a distance of 116 ... [8 Related Articles]
German waterway northeast of Berlin, linking the Havel and Oder rivers. It is 52 mi (83 km) long, 108 ft (33 m) wide, and 6 12 ft deep, and is navigable for vessels of up to 1,000 tons. Originally called the Hohenzollern Canal, it was built in 1908-14 to carry ... [1 Related Articles]
Polish-German border devised by the Allied powers at the end of World War II; it transferred a large section of German territory to Poland and was a matter of contention between the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the Soviet bloc for 15 years. [2 Related Articles]
(from the article "Oder River") ...largest river, by means of a water route utilizing the Warta and Notec rivers, together with the Bydgoszcz Canal, and is tied in with the waterway system of western Europe by way of the Oder-Spree and Oder-Havel canals in eastern Germany.
(from the article "Delaware") ...historic houses in the state are permanently open to the public, including the John Dickinson Plantation (1740), near Dover; the Parson Thorne Mansion (c. 1735), in Milford; several houses in Odessa and New Castle; and the Read House and Gardens (1804) in New Castle. The open-air Delaware Agricultural Museum and ...
(German: "Organization of Former SS Members"), clandestine escape organization of the SS (q.v.) underground, founded probably in early 1947 in Germany. A large organizational network was set up to help former SS and Gestapo members and other high Nazi functionaries to avoid arrest, to acquire legal aid if arrested, to ...
city, seat (1891) of Ector county and also partly in Midland county, western Texas, U.S. It lies on the southern High Plains, just southwest of Midland. The site was presumably named in 1881 by Russian railroad construction workers who noted the similarity of the prairie region to their Odessa steppe ...
seaport, southwestern Ukraine. It stands on a shallow indentation of the Black Sea coast at a point approximately 19 miles (31 km) north of the Dniester River estuary and about 275 miles (443 km) south of Kiev. Although a settlement existed on the site in ancient times, the history of ... [4 Related Articles]
shallow, cone-shaped impact crater in the High Plains just southwest of Odessa, Texas, U.S., produced by a meteorite. It is about 17 feet (5 metres) deep and 560 feet (170 metres) in diameter; its rim rises only 2 to 3 feet (less than a metre) above the surrounding area. In ...
(from the article "Selected universities and colleges of the world") ...was established in 1805 at Kharkiv, and for 30 years Sloboda Ukraine was the major centre for Ukrainian scholarship and publishing activities. In 1834 a university was founded in Kiev and in 1865 at Odessa. Though Russian institutions, they did much to promote the study of local history and ethnography, ...
(from the article "Odessa") ...ceded to Russia in 1792. A new fortress was built in 1792-93, and in 1794 a naval base and commercial quay were added. In 1795 the new port was named Odessa for the ancient Greek colony of Odessos, the site of which was believed to be in the vicinity.
leading dramatist of the theatre of social protest in the United States during the 1930s. His important affiliation with the celebrated Group Theatre contributed to that company's considerable influence on the American stage. [2 Related Articles]
(Latin: "concert hall," from Greek oideion, "school of music"), comparatively small theatre of ancient Greece and Rome, in which musicians and orators performed and competed. It has been suggested that these theatres were originated because early Greek musical instruments could not be heard in the vast open amphitheatres in which ... [3 Related Articles]
Kenyan entomologist (b. Feb. 4, 1931, Alego, Nyanza province, Kenya Colony-d. May 26, 2003, Nairobi, Kenya), was one of Africa's foremost scientists; he was renowned for his research into nonchemical methods of agricultural insect control and was a pioneer in the promotion of indigenous African scientific education and research. Odhiambo ...
town, northwestern Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), at the intersection of roads from Mali, Guinea, and the Ivoirian towns of Korhogo and Man. A traditional trading centre (yams, cassava, cattle, and sheep) among the Muslim Malinke people, it was part of the greater Mali (Malinke) Empire in the 14th century. The ...
(from the article "Hart") ...km) northeast. The district is primarily agricultural and produces cereals, dairy products, and lettuce. It has little industry except for motor-vehicle and textile plants in the locality of Fleet. Odiham is a historic market parish with the 13th-14th-century Church of All Saints and Georgian homes. Northwest of Odiham is the ...
one of the principal gods in Norse mythology. His exact nature and role, however, are difficult to determine because of the complex picture of him given by the wealth of archaeological and literary sources. The Roman historian Tacitus stated that the Teutons worshiped Mercury; and because dies Mercurii ("Mercury's day") ... [22 Related Articles]
(from the article "theatre") ...possible effect from the least possible means." The internationalism of the theatre is now such that groups modeled on Grotowski's have appeared throughout the world. Eugenio Barba, of Odin Theater in Holstebro, Den., a pupil of Grotowski, has formulated the ideological position of these theatres under the term third theatre. ...
African nationalist politician who was a leader in the opposition against the single-party rule of Jomo Kenyatta and his successor Daniel arap Moi. [3 Related Articles]
(from the article "Kibaki, Mwai") ...was one of the closest in Kenya's history and boasted a record-high voter turnout. After a delay in the release of the final election results, Kibaki was declared the winner, narrowly defeating Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Odinga immediately disputed the outcome, and international observers questioned the ...
half brother of William the Conqueror and bishop of Bayeux, Normandy. He probably commissioned the famed Bayeux tapestry, which pictures the Norman Conquest of England, for the dedication of his cathedral (1077). [3 Related Articles]
(from the article "Palatine Chapel") Constructed on the site of an earlier, smaller house of worship dating from the 780s and 790s, the Palatine Chapel was consecrated in 805 to serve as the imperial church. It was designed by Odo of Metz, who modeled it after the Byzantine-style church of San Vitale (consecrated 547) in ...
first barbarian king of Italy. The date on which he assumed power, 476, is traditionally considered the end of the Western Roman Empire. [7 Related Articles]
(from the article "carnivore") ...(mongooses), Viverridae (civets, genets, and related species), and Hyaenidae (hyenas). There are three aquatic families: Otariidae (sea lions and fur seals), Phocidae (true, or earless, seals), and Odobenidae (the walrus). These aquatic families are referred to as pinnipeds.classificationpinnipedClassification and paleontology
(from the article "speedometer") instrument that indicates the speed of a vehicle, usually combined with a device known as an odometer that records the distance traveled.
insect order comprising the dragonflies (suborder Anisoptera) and the damselflies (suborder Zygoptera). The adults are easily recognized by their two pairs of narrow, transparent wings, sloping thorax, and long, usually slender body; the abdomen is almost always longer than any of the wings. Large, active by day, and often strikingly ... [1 Related Articles]
(from the article "bird") The other major group of toothed Cretaceous birds, the Odonotornithes, included one of the best-known groups of fossil birds, Hesperornis and its relatives. These birds were highly specialized foot-propelled divers of the Late Cretaceous. Hesperornis was up to 1.8 metres (6 feet) long and had completely lost the power of ...
(from the article "neural crest") ...deep layers of the epidermis that contain pigment and are responsible for skin coloration. In the head region the neural crest cells contribute significantly to the formation of the facial bones. Odontoblasts, the cells that give rise to the dentine of the teeth, have their origin in the neural crest, ...
genus embracing some 150 species of orchids, family Orchidaceae, that are primarily native to mountainous areas of tropical America. Many orchids of other genera have been crossed with species of Odontoglossum to obtain beautiful hybrid flowers. Thousands of hybrids also have been obtained by crossing species within the genus.
fossil bone or tooth that consists of the phosphate mineral apatite (q.v.) coloured blue by vivianite. It resembles turquoise but may be distinguished chemically. [1 Related Articles]
(from the article "dentistry") In Britain, dentistry was also coming of age. In 1856 English dentist Sir John Tomes led the formation of the first dental organization in England, the Odontological Society. It was through the activity of this group that the Royal Dental Hospital of London was established in 1858. In opposition to ...
(from the article "gastropod") As in all molluscan groups except the bivalves, gastropods have a firm odontophore at the anterior end of the digestive tract. Generally, this organ supports a broad ribbon (radula) covered with a few to many thousand "teeth" (denticles). The radula is used in feeding: muscles extrude the radula from the ...
