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Alnwick: district, administrative and historic county of Northumberland, northern England, that borders Scotland on the northwest and the North Sea on the east. The district descends eastward from the peaty moorlands ...
Alnwick: town, Alnwick district, administrative and historic county of Northumberland, England, on the south bank of the River Aln, between the Cheviot Hills and the sea. The town is dominated by ...
Aloadae: in Greek legend, the twin sons of Iphimedia, the wife of Aloeus, by the god Poseidon. Named Otus and Ephialtes, the Aloadae were of extraordinary strength and stature. The Aloadae ...
Aloe: genus of shrubby succulent plants in the lily family (Liliaceae), containing about 200 species native to Africa. Most members of the genus have a rosette of leaves at the base ...
Alonso, Alicia: Cuban ballerina highly regarded for her convincing portrayals of leading roles in the great works of classical and Romantic ballet. She was best known for her lively, precise Giselle and ...
Alonso, Damaso: Spanish poet, literary critic, and scholar, a member of the group of poets called the Generation of 1927.
Alor Islands: group of two major and several lesser islets constituting the Alor kabupaten (regency) in Nusa Tenggara Timur provinsi ("province"), Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia, between ...
Alor Setar: town, northwestern West Malaysia (Malaya), on the Kedah River. The town, neatly laid out, is concentrated on the west bank of the river and is the residence of the sultan ...
Alos, Concha: Spanish novelist and short-story writer, best known for her neorealistic, often existential works deploring social injustice, especially the institutionally sanctioned victimization of women.
Aloysius Gonzaga, Saint: patron saint of Roman Catholic youth.
Alp-Arslan: second sultan of the Seljuq Turks (1063-72), who inherited the Seljuq territories of Khorasan and western Iran and went on to conquer Georgia, Armenia, and much of Asia Minor (won ...
alpaca: (Lama pacos), South American member of the camel family, Camelidae (order Artiodactyla), that is closely related to the llama, guanaco, and vicuna, which are known collectively as lamoids. The alpaca ...
Alpenrhein River: the part of the Rhine River between the confluence of the Vorder- and Hinterrhein and its entry into Lake Constance. It is 63 miles (102 km) long. From Reichenau to ...
Alpha and Omega: in Christianity, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, used to designate the comprehensiveness of God, implying that God includes all that can be. In the New Testament ...
Alpha Centauri: triple star, the faintest component of which, Proxima Centauri, is the closest star to the Sun, at about 4.3 light-years' distance. The two brighter components, about 110 light-year farther from ...
Alpha Crucis: 13th brightest star (excluding the Sun) as seen from Earth. It actually is a binary star; its components have apparent magnitudes of 1.58 and 2.09. Alpha Crucis lies about 400 ...
alpha decay: type of radioactive disintegration in which some unstable atomic nuclei dissipate excess energy by spontaneously ejecting an alpha particle. Because alpha particles have two positive charges and a mass of ...
alpha particle: positively charged particle, identical to the nucleus of the helium-4 atom, spontaneously emitted by some radioactive substances, consisting of two protons and two neutrons bound together, thus having a mass ...
alphabet: set of graphs, or characters, used to represent the phonemic structure of a language. In most alphabets the characters are arranged in a definite order, or sequence (e.g., A, B, ...
alphabet rhyme: mnemonic verse or song used to help children learn an alphabet; such devices appear in almost every alphabetic language. Some of the early English favourites are about 300 years old ...
Alpheus River: river, the longest of the Peloponnese (Peloponnisos), Greece, rising near Dhavia in central Arcadia, with a course of about 70 mi (110 km). Leaving the plain of Megalopolis in a ...
alphorn: long horn played by Alpine herdsmen and villagers, sounded for intercommunication and at daily ceremonies and seasonal festivals. It is carved or bored in wood and overwound with birch bark. ...
Alpine: city, seat (1887) of Brewster county, extreme western Texas, U.S., in a high valley with an altitude of 4,481 feet (1,366 metres), flanked by the Davis Mountains (north) and the ...
Alpine lakes: the 11 significant European lakes fringing the great mountainous mass of the Alps. Set in magnificent scenery, they are the focus of considerable settlement and a thriving tourist traffic, as ...
Alpine orogeny: mountain-building event that affected a broad segment of southern Europe and the Mediterranean region during the middle Tertiary Period (the Tertiary began 66.4 million years ago and ended 1.6 million ...
Alpine skiing: skiing technique that evolved during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the mountainous terrain of the Alps in central Europe. Modern Alpine competitive skiing is divided into the ...
Alpini, Prospero: physician and botanist who is credited with the introduction to Europe of coffee and bananas. While a medical adviser to Giorgio Emo, the Venetian consul in Cairo (1580-83), Alpini made ...
Alps: in the Roman Empire, small provinces in the western Alps, occupying parts of present France, Italy, and Switzerland. The Alpes Maritimae were made a province about 14 BC and included ...
Alps: a small segment of a discontinuous mountain chain that stretches from the Atlas Mountains of North Africa across southern Europe and Asia to beyond the Himalayas. The Alps extend north ...
Alpujarra rug: handwoven floor covering with pile in loops, made in Spain from the 15th to the 19th century in the Alpujarras district south of Granada. The construction of these rugs makes ...
alpwirtschaft: type of pastoral nomadism that forms a unique economic system in the Alps and involves the migration of livestock between mountain pastures in warm months and lower elevations the remainder ...
Als: island (area 121 square miles [312 square km]), in the Little Belt (strait), Sonderjylland amtskommune (county commune), Denmark. It is separated from the Sundeved peninsula of southern Jutland by the ...
Alsace: region of France encompassing the northeastern departements of Haut-Rhin ("Upper Rhine") and Bas-Rhin ("Lower Rhine") and roughly coextensive with the historical region of Alsace. ...
Alsace-Lorraine: area comprising the present French departements of Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin, and Moselle. Alsace-Lorraine was the name given to the 5,067 square miles (13,123 square km) of territory that was ceded by ...
Alsop, Joseph: American journalist and longtime syndicated columnist known for straightforward but opinionated political reporting.
Alster River: tributary of the Elbe River in northern Germany. It rises 4 miles (6 km) southeast of Kaltenkirchen and flows generally south for 30 miles (50 km) to Hamburg, where a ...
Alston, Walter: professional National League baseball manager whose career with the Los Angeles (formerly Brooklyn) Dodgers was the third longest for managers, after Connie Mack and John McGraw.
alstonite: a barium and calcium carbonate mineral, CaBa(CO₃)₂, with minor amounts of strontium. It is colourless or light gray or pink in appearance and is also transparent or translucent. Its crystal ...
Alta: town and ski resort, Salt Lake county, northern Utah, U.S. Lying at an elevation of 8,583 feet (2,616 metres) in the Little Cottonwood Canyon of the Wasatch Range 26 miles ...
Altai Mountains: complex mountain system of Central Asia extending approximately 1,200 miles (2,000 km) in a southeast-northwest direction from the Gobi (Desert) to the West Siberian Plain, through China, Mongolia, Russia, and ...
Altaic languages: family of languages consisting of three branches-Turkic, Mongolian, and Manchu-Tungus-that show similarities in vocabulary, morphological and syntactic structure, and certain phonological features and which, on the basis of systematic sound ...
Altair: one of the 15 brightest stars, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila, with an apparent visual magnitude of 0.77. Its distance from the Earth is about 16 light-years. It ...
Altaisky Nature Reserve: natural area set aside for research in the natural sciences, in the northeastern Altai Mountains near Lake Teletsky, in south-central Russia. The reserve, established in 1932, has an area of ...
Altamira: cave in northern Spain famous for its magnificent prehistoric paintings and engravings. It is situated 19 miles (30 km) west of the port city of Santander, in Cantabria
Altamura: town, Bari provincia, Puglia (Apulia) regione, southeastern Italy. Altamura lies on the Murge plateau at 1,552 feet (473 m) above sea level, southwest of Bari. It was founded about 1200 ...
Altan: Mongol khan, or chief, who terrorized China during the 16th century. He converted the Mongols to the reformed, or Dge-lugs-pa (Yellow Hat), sect of Tibetan Buddhism.
altar: in religion, a raised structure or place that is used for sacrifice, worship, or prayer.
Altare glass: type of Italian glassware produced in the town of Altare, near Genoa. The Altare glass industry was established in the 11th century by glassmakers from Normandy and developed independently of ...
altarpiece: a work of art that decorates the space above and behind the altar in a Christian church. Painting, relief, and sculpture in the round have all been used in altarpieces, ...
Altay: kray (region), southwestern Siberia, Russia. Altay kray lies in the basin of the upper Ob River and its headstreams, the Biya and Katun. The kray borders Kazakstan in the southwest.
Altay: republic, southern Russia, in the Altai Mountains. It is bounded on the south by Mongolia and China. It embraces a complex series of ranges and high plateaus, divided by deep ...
Altdorf: capital of Uri canton, central Switzerland. It lies near the confluence of the Reuss River and the Schachen torrent, southeast of Lucerne. In the centre of the town a bronze ...
Altdorfer, Albrecht: German painter, printmaker, and draftsman who was one of the founders of landscape painting.
Altenburg: city, Thuringia Land (state), central Germany. It lies along the Pleisse River, at the southern edge of the central German brown-coal deposits, south of Leipzig. First mentioned in 976 as ...
alternating current: flow of electric charge that periodically reverses; it starts, say, from zero, grows to a maximum, decreases to zero, reverses, reaches a maximum in the opposite direction, returns again to ...
alternation of generations: in biology, the alternation of a sexual phase and an asexual phase in the life cycle of an organism. The two phases, or generations, are often morphologically, and sometimes chromosomally, ...
alternative rock: pop music style, built on distorted guitars and rooted in generational discontent, that dominated and changed rock between 1991 and 1996. It burst into the mainstream when "Smells Like Teen ...
Altgeld, John Peter: reformist Democratic governor of Illinois (1893-97) known principally for his pardon (June 26, 1893) of German-American anarchists involved in the Haymarket Riot, a labour protest meeting in which seven Chicago ...
Althiburos: ancient city of Numidia in North Africa, on the road constructed by the Roman emperor Hadrian in AD 123, between Carthage and Theveste (Tabassah) in what is now Tunisia. The ...
Althusius, Johannes: German political theorist who was the intellectual father of modern federalism and an advocate of popular sovereignty.
Althusser, Louis: French philosopher who attained international renown in the 1960s for his attempt to fuse Marxism and structuralism.
Altichiero: early Renaissance painter who was the effective founder of the Veronese school and perhaps the most significant northern Italian artist of the 14th century.
altimeter: instrument that measures the altitude of the land surface or any object such as an airplane. The two main types are the pressure altimeter, or aneroid barometer, which approximates altitude ...
Altiplano: region of southeastern Peru and western Bolivia. The Altiplano originates northwest of Lake Titicaca in southern Peru and extends about 600 miles (965 km) southeast to the southwestern corner of ...
Altis: in Greek religion, the sacred grove of Zeus, or the sacred precinct in Olympia, Greece. It was an irregular quadrangular area more than 200 yards (183 m) on each side, ...
altitude and azimuth: in astronomy, gunnery, navigation, and other fields, two coordinates describing the position of an object above the Earth. Altitude in this sense is expressed as angular elevation (up to 90°) ...
altitude sickness: acute reaction to a change from sea level or other low-altitude environments to altitudes above 8,000 feet (2,400 m). It is a condition in which the body is starved of ...
Altizer, Thomas J.J.: radical theologian associated with the Death of God movement (q.v.) in the 1960s and '70s.
Altman, Benjamin: American merchant, art collector, and philanthropist who established one of the world's great department stores, B. Altman & Co.
Altman, Robert: unconventional and independent American motion-picture director whose works emphasize character and atmosphere over plot in exploring themes of innocence, corruption, and survival. Perhaps his best-known film was his first and ...
Altman, Sidney: Canadian-American molecular biologist who, with Thomas R. Cech, received the 1989 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discoveries concerning RNA, or ribonucleic acid.
alto: (Italian: "high"), in vocal music the register approximately between the F below middle C to the second D above-the second highest part in four-part music. The word alto originally referred ...
Alton: town ("parish"), East Hampshire district, administrative and historic county of Hampshire, England. It lies among the downs on the River Wey, about 18 miles (29 km) northeast of Winchester by ...
Alton: city, Madison county, southwestern Illinois, U.S. Part of the St. Louis, Missouri, metropolitan area, Alton lies on the Mississippi River (bridged) near its confluence with the Missouri River.
Altona: northwest district of the city and Land (state) of Hamburg, northwestern Germany. It lies on cliffs above the right bank of the Elbe River. The name may have come originally ...
Altoona: city, Blair county, central Pennsylvania, U.S. It is situated on the eastern slopes of the Allegheny Front, a segment of the Allegheny Mountains that separates the Atlantic from the Mississippi ...