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Allgood, Sara ... alnico

Allgood, Sara: Irish character actress who performed in the original Sean O'Casey plays produced at Dublin's Abbey Theatre and in many American motion pictures of the 1940s. Her early instructors included Frank ...
Alliaceae: family of flowering plants in the order Liliales, with about 30 genera and more than 670 species, distributed throughout most regions of the world, except for the tropics, Australia, and ...
Alliance: city, Stark county, northeastern Ohio, U.S., on the Mahoning River, 21 mi (34 km) northeast of Canton. In 1854 the villages of Williamsport, Freedom, and Liberty were incorporated as the ...
alliance: in international relations, a formal agreement between two or more states for mutual support in case of war. Contemporary alliances provide for combined action on the part of two or ...
Alliance for Progress: former international economic development program established by the United States and 22 Latin American countries in the Charter of Punta del Este (Uruguay) in August 1961. Objectives stated in the ...
Alliance Party of Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland's oldest interdenominational party, a small, moderate party that represents middle-class interests primarily in the eastern areas of the province.
Allied Powers: those nations allied in opposition to the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey) in World War I or to the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) in World War II.
Allied-Signal Inc.: American corporation, a leading manufacturer of aerospace systems and components. Headquarters are in Morristown, N.J.
Allier River: river, central France, that joins the Loire River 4 miles (6 km) west of Nevers after a course of 255 miles (410 km). Rising in Lozere departement, it races through ...
alligator: either of two long-snouted crocodilian reptiles usually placed with the South American caimans in the family Alligatoridae. Alligators, like other crocodilians, are large lizardlike animals with powerful tails that are ...
alligator apple: fruit tree of tropical America valued for its wood. See custard apple.
Alligator Rivers: three perennial rivers, northeastern Northern Territory, Australia, that empty into Van Diemen Gulf, an inlet of the Timor Sea. They were explored in 1818-20 by Captain Phillip Parker King, who ...
Alliluyeva, Svetlana: Russian-born daughter of Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin; her defection to the United States in 1967 caused an international sensation.
Allingham, Margery: British detective-story writer of unusual subtlety, wit, and imaginative power, who created the bland, bespectacled, keen-witted Albert Campion, one of the most interesting of fictional detectives.
Allison, William B.: U.S. representative (1863-71) and senator (1873-1908) from Iowa, cosponsor of the Bland-Allison Act of 1878, which expanded U.S. Treasury purchase of silver bullion and restored the silver dollar as legal ...
alliteration: in prosody, the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or stressed syllables. Sometimes the repetition of initial vowel sounds (head rhyme) is also referred to as alliteration. ...
alliterative prose: prose that uses alliteration and some of the techniques of alliterative verse. Notable examples are from Old English and Middle English, including works by the Anglo-Saxon writer Aelfric and the ...
alliterative verse: early verse of the Germanic languages in which alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of words or stressed syllables, is a basic structural principle rather than an ...
Allman Brothers Band, the: American rock band whose bluesy, jam-oriented sound helped spark the Southern rock movement of the 1970s and set the stage for several generations of roots-oriented improvisational rock bands. The members ...
Allobroges: ancient Celtic tribe living in the northeast of Gallia Narbonensis (i.e., Narbonne Gaul, in the part of southeastern France bounded by the Rhone and Isere rivers) and in the area ...
allocation of resources: apportionment of productive assets among different uses. Resource allocation arises as an issue because the resources of a society are in limited supply, whereas human wants are usually unlimited, and ...
allodium: land freely held, without obligation of service to any overlord. Allodial land tenure was of particular significance in Europe during the Middle Ages, when most land was held by feudal ...
Allon, Yigal: Israeli soldier and politician who was best known as the architect of the Allon Plan, a peace initiative that he formulated after Israel captured Arab territory in the Six-Day War ...
allophone: one of the phonetically distinct variants of a phoneme (q.v.). The occurrence of one allophone rather than another is usually determined by its position in the word (initial, final, medial, ...
allopurinol: drug used in the treatment of gout, a disease that is characterized by severe inflammation in one or more of the joints of the extremities. Allopurinol inhibits an enzyme that ...
Allosaurus: large carnivorous dinosaurs that lived from 150 million to 144 million years ago during the Late Jurassic Period; they are best known from fossils found in the western United States, ...
allosteric control: in enzymology, inhibition or activation of an enzyme by a small regulatory molecule that interacts at a site (allosteric site) other than the active site (at which catalytic activity occurs). ...
allotropy: the existence of a chemical element in two or more forms, which may differ in the arrangement of atoms in crystalline solids or in the occurrence of molecules that contain ...
Allouez, Claude-Jean: Jesuit missionary to New France who has been called the founder of Catholicism in the West.
Alloway: southern suburb of the town of Ayr, South Ayrshire council area, historic county of Ayrshire, Scotland, famous as the birthplace of Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns. There is a museum ...
alloy: metallic substance composed of two or more elements, as either a compound or a solution. The components of alloys are ordinarily themselves metals, though carbon, a nonmetal, is an essential ...
Allport, Gordon W.: American psychologist and educator who developed an original theory of personality.
allspice: tropical evergreen tree (Pimenta diocia, formerly P. officinalis) of the myrtle family (Myrtaceae), native to the West Indies and Central America and valued for its berries, the source of a ...
Allston, Robert: rice planter and governor of South Carolina whose papers, South Carolina Rice Plantation, provide important agricultural, political, and social information about the pre-Civil War South. By scientifically draining and reclaiming ...
Allston, Washington: painter and author, commonly held to be the first important American Romantic painter. Allston is known for his experiments with dramatic subject matter and his use of light and atmospheric ...
allusion: in literature, an implied or indirect reference to a person, event, or thing or to a part of another text. Allusion is distinguished from such devices as direct quote and ...
alluvial fan: unconsolidated sedimentary deposit that accumulates at the mouth of a mountain canyon because of a cessation of sediment transport by the issuing stream. The deposits, which are generally fan-shaped in ...
alluvium: material deposited by rivers. It is usually most extensively developed in the lower part of the course of a river, forming floodplains and deltas, but may be deposited at any ...
Alma: city, Gratiot county, central Michigan, U.S., on the Pine River, some 50 miles (80 km) north of Lansing. Founded in 1853, it is in the heart of an agricultural area ...
Alma: city, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region, south-central Quebec province, Canada, on Alma Island and both banks of the Saguenay River, an outlet of Lac-Saint-Jean (Lake St. John) 140 miles (230 km) north of ...
Alma, Battle of the: (Sept. 20, 1854), victory by the British and the French in the Crimean War that left the Russian naval base of Sevastopol vulnerable and endangered the entire Russian position in ...
Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence: Dutch-born painter of scenes from everyday life in the ancient world whose work was immensely popular in its time.
Almaden: town, Ciudad Real provincia, in the comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community") of Castile-La Mancha, west-central Spain. Almaden is located in one of the world's richest mercury-producing regions.
Almagest: astronomical manual written about AD 150 by Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaeus of Alexandria). It served as the basic guide for Islamic and European astronomers until about the beginning of the 17th ...
Almagro, Diego de: Spanish soldier who played a leading role in the Spanish conquest of Peru.
almanac: book or table containing a calendar of the days, weeks, and months of the year; a record of various astronomical phenomena, often with weather predictions and seasonal suggestions for farmers; ...
almandine: either of two semiprecious gemstones: a violet-coloured variety of ruby spinel (q.v.) or iron aluminum garnet, which is most abundant of the garnets. Specimens of the garnet, frequently crystals, contain ...
Almansa Dam: dam on the Vega de Belen River, in Albacete province, Castile-La Mancha autonomous community, Spain. It is said to be the oldest masonry gravity dam still in use. Probably built ...
Almaty: city, southeastern Kazakstan. It was formerly the capital of the Kazakh S.S.R. (1929-91) and of independent Kazakstan (1991-97). Almaty lies in the northern foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau at an ...
Almeida de Portugal, Leonor de: Portuguese poet whose work forms a bridge between the literary periods of Arcadia and Romanticism in Portugal; her style leans toward the Romantic, but she favoured such classical forms as ...
Almeida, Francisco de: soldier, explorer, and the first viceroy of Portuguese India.
Almeida, Jose Americo de: novelist whose works marked the beginning of a major Brazilian generation of northeastern regional writers. Their fiction presents a largely socioeconomic interpretation of life in Brazil's most impoverished and drought-stricken ...
Almeida, Jose Valentim Fialho de: Portuguese short-story writer and political essayist of the realist-naturalist period.
Almeida, Lourenco de: Portuguese sea captain and leader of a 1505 expedition to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), probably the first Portuguese voyage to that island.
Almeida, Manuel Antonio de: author of what is now considered to have been the first great novel in Brazilian literature, Memorias de um sargento de milicias (anonymously in parts, 1853; as a novel, 1854-55; ...
Almelo: gemeente (municipality), Overijssel provincie (province), eastern Netherlands, at the junction of the Overijssel Canal and the Almelo-Nordhorn branch of the Twente Canal; it comprises ...
Almendares River: river of La Habana province, western Cuba, rising at about 740 ft (225 m) in the Alturas (heights) de Bejucal and flowing in a semicircle north and west, then northward ...
almendro: tree of the Central American tropical forest canopy whose trunk forks repeatedly, resulting in a graceful, rounded crown. Bunches of flowers are produced at the end of the tree's branches ...
Almendros, Nestor: cinematographer and recipient of an Oscar from the U.S. Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences for the best cinematography for his work on Days of Heaven (1978).
Almeria: port city and capital of Almeria provincia, in the comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community") of Andalusia, southern Spain, on the Mediterranean Golfo de Almeria. Known ...
Almeria: provincia in the comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community") of Andalusia, southeastern Spain, bordering the Mediterranean. Formed in 1833, it has an area of 3,388 square ...
Almetyevsk: city, Tatarstan republic, Russia, on the left bank of the Stepnoy (Steppe) Zay River. It was founded in 1950 in connection with the discovery of petroleum in the area. Crude ...
Almirante Brown: cabecera (principal built-up area) and partido (political subdivision) of Gran (Greater) Buenos Aires, Argentina, south of the city of Buenos Aires, in Buenos Aires ...
Almohads: Berber confederation that created an Islamic empire in North Africa and Spain (1130-1269), founded on the religious teachings of Ibn Tumart (died 1130).
Almon, John: parliamentary reporter and political writer, who took part in the struggle between press and Parliament for the right to publish reports of debates.
almond: (Prunus dulcis), tree native to southwestern Asia and its edible seed, or nut. The nuts are of two types, sweet and bitter. Sweet almonds are the familiar edible type consumed ...
Almond, Gabriel Abraham: American political scientist noted for his comparative studies of political systems and his analysis of political development.
almoner: originally, an officer responsible for distributing alms to the poor, usually connected with a religious house or other institution but also a position with some governments. In the 13th century, ...
almonry school: medieval English monastic charity school supported by a portion of the funds allocated to the almoner (q.v.). The practice began in the early 14th century when a form of scholarship ...
Almora: town, Uttaranchal state, northern India. It lies on a ridge of the Himalayan foothills about 170 miles (275 km) northeast of New Delhi. After the Gurkhas captured Almora in 1790, ...
Almoravids: confederation of Berber tribes-Lamtunah, Gudalah, Massufah-of the Sanhajah clan, whose religious zeal and military enterprise built an empire in northwestern Africa and Muslim Spain in the 11th and 12th centuries. ...
Almqvist, Carl Jonas Love: writer whose vast literary output, ranging from bizarre romanticism to bold realism, greatly influenced the development of Swedish literature. Although his work is uneven, he is a master of Swedish ...
almshouse: in the United States, a locally administered public institution for homeless, aged persons without means. Such institutions radically declined in number in the second half of the 20th century, replaced ...
almucantar: in astronomy, any circle of the celestial sphere parallel to the horizon; when two objects are on the same almucantar, they have the same altitude. The term also refers to ...
Alness: village, Highland council area, historic county of Ross-shire, historic region of Ross and Cromarty, northern Scotland, situated on the northern shore of the Cromarty Firth. The village was planned in ...
alnico: any member of a series of alloys used to make powerful permanent magnets. Primary constituents are aluminum, nickel, and cobalt in various proportions, with small amounts of one or more ...