Russian theatre art director, painter, and ballet librettist who with Leon Bakst and Sergey Diaghilev cofounded the influential magazine Mir iskusstva ("World of Art"), from which sprang the Diaghilev Ballets ...
town, Gauteng province, South Africa, east of Johannesburg. It is situated at 5,419 feet (1,652 m) above sea level and covers two sides of a valley that borders four lakes.
writer of fiction, reminiscences, and biographies, of which the best remembered are his arch, satirical novels and his urbane autobiographical studies of Edwardian and Georgian society.
archbishop of Canterbury (1883-96), whose Lincoln Judgment (1890), a code of liturgical ritual, helped resolve the Church of England's century-old dispute over proper forms of worship.
any of the annual and perennial grasses of the genus Agrostis (family Poaceae), with about 125 species distributed in temperate and cool parts of the world and at high altitudes ...
British explorer and archaeologist who excavated the ruined Zimbabwe (dzimbahwe; i.e., stone houses, or chiefs' graves) in the land of the Shona people of eastern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe Rhodesia).
(Japanese: Divinity of the Reasoning Faculty), in Japanese mythology, one of the Shichi-fuku-jin (Seven Gods of Luck); the Buddhist patron goddess of literature and music, of wealth, and of femininity. ...
British botanist whose classification of seed plants (Spermatophyta), based on an exhaustive study of all known species, served as a foundation for modern systems of vascular plant taxonomy.
British engineer, naval architect, and navy official in Russia (1780-91) and England (from 1795) who was an early advocate of explosive-shell weapons for warships.
the assemblage of organisms inhabiting the seafloor. Benthic epifauna live upon the seafloor or upon bottom objects; the so-called infauna live within the sediments of the seafloor. By far the ...
town and seaport, western Guinea, western Africa. It lies at the head of the estuary of the Melikhoure (Melacoree) River, 10 miles (16 km) upstream from the Atlantic coast. Important ...
British politician who in 1846-47 articulately led the protective-tariff advocates who opposed the free-trade policy of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel.
British governor-general of Bengal (1828-33) and of India (1833-35). An aristocrat who sympathized with many of the liberal ideas of his day, he made important administrative reforms in Indian government ...
Italian churchman, diplomat, and historian, whose writings give precise accounts of his diplomatic activities and of affairs in the countries he visited. Pope Paul V sent him as nuncio to ...
private, coeducational institution of higher education in Waltham, Massachusetts, U.S. Although the college specializes in business-related education and training, it also offers a curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences. ...
American political scientist and philosopher known for his work in epistemology, logic, and linguistics and for his contributions to the development of a behavioral methodology of political science.
British journalist and man of letters who is remembered as the inventor of the clerihew (q.v.) and for his other light verse and as the author of Trent's Last Case ...
critic, translator, and stage director responsible for introducing the works of many European playwrights to the United States and known for his original, literate reviews of theatre and critical works ...
British clergyman, one of the great figures in the history of classical scholarship, who combined wide learning with critical acuteness. Gifted with a powerful and logical mind, he was able ...
city, northeastern Rio Grande do Sul estado ("state"), southern Brazil. Situated in the hills overlooking the Jaguari River valley, Bento Goncalves is a commercial centre in a fertile agricultural region ...
city, northwestern Liberia. Bentol is a marketing and commercial centre for the surrounding agricultural area. Prior to the outbreak of civil war in the 1990s, its industrial activity included the ...
city, seat (1835) of Saline county, central Arkansas, U.S. It lies along the Saline River, 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Little Rock. The site, on the old Military Road ...
city, Berrien county, southwestern Michigan, U.S. It lies on Lake Michigan near the mouth of the St. Joseph River, opposite its twin city of St. Joseph. Originally called Brunson Harbor ...
American writer and Democratic Party leader who championed agrarian interests and westward expansion during his 30-year tenure as a senator from Missouri.
town, West Malaysia. It lies on the Bentong River, northeast of Kuala Lumpur, across the Main Range. It is a commercial centre for local rubber estates and alluvial tin mines. ...
type of furniture made by bending wooden rods into the required shape after they have been heated with steam. Although this method of bending wood was used by makers of ...
state, east-central Nigeria. A wooded savanna region, it is bounded on the south by Cross River and Enugu states, on the west by Kogi state, and on the north and ...
river in western Africa, longest tributary of the Niger, about 673 miles (1,083 km) in length. It rises in northern Cameroon as the Benoue at about 4,400 feet (1,340 m) ...
the largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family, in terms of the number of speakers, the number of languages, and the wide geographic spread, stretching from the Benin-Nigeria border across ...
(C6H5CHO), the simplest representative of the aromatic aldehydes, occurring naturally as the glycoside amygdalin. Prepared synthetically, it is used chiefly in the synthesis of other organic compounds and to some ...
(C6H6), the simplest aromatic hydrocarbon, widely used in industry. Discovered by the English scientist Michael Faraday in 1825 in illuminating gas made from whale oil, it was named benzene in ...
any of several isomeric compounds (i.e., of the same composition but different structures) formed by the reaction of chlorine with benzene in the presence of light; one of these isomers ...
U.S. molecular biologist who developed (1955) a method for determining the detailed structure of viral genes and coined the term cistron to denote functional subunits of genes. He also did ...
an organic chemical belonging to the class of amines and used in making numerous dyestuffs. The azo dyes derived from benzidine are important because, unlike simpler classes of azo dyes, ...
a white, crystalline organic compound belonging to the family of carboxylic acids, widely used as a food preservative and in the manufacture of various cosmetics, dyes, plastics, and insect repellents.
an organic compound, of molecular formula C6H5CH2OH, that occurs combined with carboxylic acids (as esters) in balsams and oils of jasmine and other flowers. Several of its natural and synthetic ...
extinct American Indian tribe of hunters and gatherers that resided on the island of Newfoundland; their language, Beothukan, may be related to Algonkian, but some authorities believe it to have ...
heroic poem, the highest achievement of Old English literature and the earliest European vernacular epic. Preserved in a single manuscript (Cotton Vitellius A XV) from c. 1000, it deals with ...
city, Oita ken (prefecture), Kyushu, Japan, facing Beppu-wan (Beppu Bay). Located at the base of a steep symmetrical fan of coarse volcanic detritus, it has been a ...
in Judaism, a benediction (expression of praise or thanks directed to God) that is recited at specific points of the synagogue liturgy, during private prayer, or on other occasions (e.g., ...
French poet and writer of popular songs, celebrated for his liberal and humanitarian views during a period when French society as a whole was undergoing rapid and sometimes violent change.
cotton-growing region in east-central Maharashtra state, western India. The region extends for approximately 200 miles (320 km) east-west along the Purna River basin and lies 700 to 1,600 feet (200 ...
city, southern Albania. It lies along the Osum River, just west of Tomorr Peak (7,927 feet [2,416 m]). The town is situated among steep hills cut through by the Osum. ...
partido (county) at the southeastern limits of Gran (Greater) Buenos Aires, Argentina, in Buenos Aires provincia. It lies along the Rio de la Plata estuary. The subdivision was created in ...
any of the descendants of the pre-Arab inhabitants of North Africa. The Berbers are scattered in tribes across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt and tend to be concentrated in ...
group of languages that make up one of the constituent branches of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) language family; the other branches are Egyptian, Semitic, Cushitic, and Chadic. The Berber languages ...
port, northwestern Somalia, on the Gulf of Aden. It lies at the terminus of roads from the towns of Hargeysa and Burko and has an airport. Known during classical times ...
the barberry family of the buttercup order (Ranunculales), comprising 12 genera of perennial herbs and shrubs. Its members occur in most temperate regions of the world. In the shrubs the ...
river in eastern Guyana. The Berbice River rises in the highlands of the Rupununi region and flows northward for 370 miles (595 km) through dense forests to the coastal plain. ...
(French: "lullaby"), musical composition, typically of the 19th century, having the character of a lullaby. While the word appears to imply no particular formal pattern, rocking rhythms in 68 time ...
town, Bavaria Land (state), southern Germany. It is situated on the Berchtesgaden Stream in a deep valley surrounded on three sides by Austrian territory, just north of ...
author of works in Hebrew, German, and Yiddish. His impassioned writings, perhaps more than those of any other Jewish author, bear poignant witness to the "rent in the heart" of ...
city, Novosibirsk oblast (province), central Russia. It lies along the Novosibirsk Reservoir just south of Novosibirsk city. Founded at the beginning of the 18th century as a fortress, it became ...
city and port, Zaporizhzhya oblast (province), southeastern Ukraine. It lies along the Berdyansk Gulf of the Sea of Azov. Founded in 1827, the city is a holiday and health resort. ...
religious thinker, philosopher, and Marxist who became a critic of Russian implementation of Karl Marx's views and a leading representative of Christian existentialism, a school of philosophy that stresses examination ...
city, Zhytomyr oblast (province), northwestern Ukraine. Founded in 1482 as a Lithuanian fortress, Berdychiv was Polish from 1569 until 1793. The 16th-century fortress walls survive, as does the Roman Catholic ...
city, Madison county, central Kentucky, U.S., near the Cumberland Mountains, 14 miles (23 km) south of Richmond. The history of the city is centred on Berea College, founded by abolitionists ...
