poet, patriot, and political figure, an archetype of the 19th-century Italian poet-patriots. His love poems and passionate diatribes against the Austrian government brought him renown.
20th-century music in which chance or indeterminate elements are left for the performer to realize. The term is a loose one, describing compositions with strictly demarcated areas for improvisation according ...
city, western Rio Grande do Sul estado ("state"), Brazil. It lies along the Ibirapuita River at 292 feet (89 metres) above sea level. It was founded in ...
poet, essayist, and journalist who was a major voice in the literature of contemporary Central America. Noted for her testimonio (testament) concerning the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, she was best ...
prolific and influential Brazilian sculptor and architect whose Rococo statuary and religious articles complement the dramatic sobriety of his churches. He was of Portuguese and black ancestry.
Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of 1927, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977. He was strongly influenced by the Surrealist technique of poetic composition.
city, Kirovograd oblast, Ukraine, on the Ingulets River. Founded as Usovka in 1754, it was incorporated and renamed in the same year. The city is now the centre of a ...
city, Sakhalin oblast (province), far-eastern Russia, on the western coast of Sakhalin Island. It was founded in 1881 as a centre for penal settlements. In 1890 the writer Anton Chekhov ...
commander in chief of the Russian Army for two months in World War I and a military and political leader of the White (anti-Bolshevik) forces in the Russian Civil War ...
city, Tula oblast (province), western Russia, on the Oka River, 40 miles (65 km) northwest of Tula city. Aleksin, first documented in 1236, was at first a fortress, then a ...
a Germanic people first mentioned in connection with the Roman attack on them in AD 213. In the following decades, their pressure on the Roman provinces became severe; they occupied ...
French mathematician, philosopher, and writer, who achieved fame as a mathematician and scientist before acquiring a considerable reputation as a contributor to and editor of the famous Encyclopedie.
journalist, novelist, and playwright whose novel O Guarani (1857; "The Guarani Indian") initiated the vogue of the Brazilian Indianista novel (romantic tales of indigenous life incorporating vocabulary of Amerindian origin ...
town, Orne departement, Basse-Normandie region, northwestern France. Alencon lies at the juncture of the Sarthe and Briante rivers, in the centre of a plain ...
needle lace made in the French city of Alencon, one of the centres designated by Jean-Baptiste Colbert, minister of finance under Louis XIV, for aid in his effort to make ...
historical province of south-central Portugal. It lies southeast of the Tagus (Tejo) River and is bounded on the east by the Spanish frontier and on the southwest by the Atlantic ...
(Hebrew: "it is our duty"), the opening word of an extremely old Jewish prayer, which has been recited at the end of the three periods of daily prayer since the ...
principal city of northern Syria. It is situated in the northwestern part of the country, about 30 miles (50 km) south of the Turkish border. Aleppo is located at the ...
(species Fitzroya cupressoides), coniferous tree that is the only species of the genus Fitzroya, of the cypress family (Cupressaceae), native to southern Chile and southern Argentina. In the wild it ...
town, Gard departement, Languedoc-Roussillon region, southeastern France. It lies along a bend of the Gardon d'Ales River, at the foot of the Cevennes mountains, ...
ancient town situated on Mont Auxois, above the present-day village of Alise-Sainte-Reine in the departement of Cote d'Or, France, famous as the site of the siege of Vercingetorix by Julius ...
Chilean president (1920-25, 1932-38) who early defended workers' groups, especially the nitrate miners of the north, but later became more conservative.
fishing port, western Norway, at the mouth of Stor Fjord. The city is set on two islands, Norvoya and Aspoy, which are connected by bridges. It dates from the 9th ...
the Alps' largest and longest glacier, lying in the Bernese Alps of south-central Switzerland. Covering an area of 66 square miles (171 square km), it is divided into the Great ...
a native of the Aleutian Islands and western portion of the Alaska Peninsula of northwest North America. Aleuts speak two mutually intelligible dialects and are closely related to the Eskimo ...
one of two branches of the Eskimo-Aleut languages (q.v.). Two mutually intelligible dialects survive, Eastern Aleut and Atkan Aleut. A third dialect, Attu, now extinct in Alaska, survives on Bering ...
submarine depression forming the floor of the southwestern section of the Bering Sea in the Pacific Ocean. On the west it rises to meet Siberia and the Kamchatka Peninsula; on ...
chain of small islands that separate the Bering Sea (north) from the main portion of the Pacific Ocean (south) and extend in an arc southwest, then northwest, for about 1,100 ...
segment of the Pacific mountain system, western North America. The range extends southwestward for about 600 miles (1,000 km) from the west end of the Alaska Range to the head ...
(Pomolobus, or Alosa,pseudoharengus), important North American food fish of the herring family, Clupeidae. Deeper-bodied than the true herring, the alewife has a pronounced saw-edge on the underside; it grows ...
Byzantine emperor from May 12, 912, third son of the emperor Basil I, who founded the Macedonian dynasty and caused the renewal of warfare between Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire.
Greek poet of Pleuron, in Aetolia. He was appointed by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Macedonian king of Egypt, to arrange and catalog the tragedies in the library at Alexandria. Nothing remains ...
group of about 1,100 islands (actually the tops of a submerged section of the Coast Ranges) off the coast of southeastern Alaska, U.S. Named by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic ...
city, Tallapoosa county, east-central Alabama, U.S., 75 miles (120 km) southeast of Birmingham. Early settlement began in 1836, and gold was discovered in the area in the early 1840s. It ...
king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1921-29) and of Yugoslavia (1929-34), who struggled to create a united state out of his politically and ethnically divided collection of ...
10th king of ancient Macedonia, who succeeded his father, Amyntas I, about 500 BC. More than a decade earlier, Macedonia had become a vassal state of Persia; and in 480 ...
emperor of Russia (1801-25), who alternately fought and befriended Napoleon I during the Napoleonic Wars but who ultimately (1813-15) helped form the coalition that defeated the emperor of the French. ...
fifth pope after St. Peter and successor to St. Evaristus. His 10-year rule (105-115 or 109-119) is attested by Pope St. Eusebius (309/310). Some Catholic writers ascribe to him the ...
emperor of Russia (1855-81). His liberal education and distress at the outcome of the Crimean War, which had demonstrated Russia's backwardness, inspired him toward a great program of domestic reforms, ...
pope from 1159 to 1181, a vigorous exponent of papal authority, which he defended against challenges by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa and Henry II of England.
emperor of Russia from 1881 to 1894, opponent of representative government, and supporter of Russian nationalism. He adopted programs, based on the concepts of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost (a belief ...
king of Scotland from 1249 to 1286, the last major ruler of the dynasty of kings descended from Malcolm III Canmore (reigned 1058-93), who consolidated royal power in Scotland. Alexander ...
large island in the Bellingshausen Sea, separated from the Antarctica mainland by the George VI Sound. An extremely rugged region with peaks up to 9,800 feet (2,987 m) above sea ...
prince of Novgorod (1236-52) and of Kiev (1246-52) and grand prince of Vladimir (1252-63), who halted the eastward drive of the Germans and Swedes but collaborated with the Mongols in ...
theologian and philosopher whose doctrines influenced the teachings of such thinkers as St. Bonaventure and John of La Rochelle. The Summa theologica, for centuries ascribed to him, is largely the ...
despot of Pherae in Thessaly, Greece, from 369 to 358, whose tyranny caused the intervention of a number of city-states in Thessalian affairs. The other Thessalian cities, refusing to recognize ...
(c. 525-c. 605), Byzantine physician who practiced and taught in Rome, best known for his treatise on pathology and therapy (in 12 books), which served as a basis for instruction ...
any of a body of legends about the career of Alexander the Great, told and retold with varying emphasis and purpose by succeeding ages and civilizations.
king of Macedonia (336-323 BC). He overthrew the Persian Empire, carried Macedonian arms to India, and laid the foundations for the Hellenistic world of territorial kingdoms. Already in his lifetime ...
celebrated impostor and worker of false oracles. The only account of his career occurs in an expose by Lucian, whose investigations of Alexander's frauds led to a serious attempt on ...
corrupt, worldly, and ambitious pope, whose neglect of the spiritual inheritance of the church contributed to the development of the Protestant Reformation.
