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Chaco ... Challis, James

Chaco: provincia, northeastern Argentina, between the northwestern Argentine highlands and the Parana River and bounded on part of the east by Paraguay. It has an area of 38,468 square miles (99,633 ...
Chaco Boreal: region of distinctive vegetation occupying about 100,000 square miles (259,000 square km) in northwestern Paraguay, southeastern Bolivia, and northern Argentina. The region is part of the vast, arid lowland known ...
Chaco Culture National Historical Park: area of Native American ruins in northwestern New Mexico, U.S. It is situated some 45 miles (70 km) south of Bloomfield and about 55 miles (90 km) northeast of Gallup. ...
Chaco War: (1932-35), costly conflict between Bolivia and Paraguay. Hostile incidents began as early as 1928 over the Chaco Boreal, a wilderness region of about 100,000 square miles (259,000 square km) north ...
chaconne: fiery and suggestive dance that appeared in Spain about 1600 and eventually gave its name to a musical form. Miguel de Cervantes, Francisco Gomez de Quevedo, and other contemporary writers ...
Chad: landlocked state in north central Africa. It has an area of 495,755 square miles (1,284,000 square kilometres). It is bounded on the north by Libya, on the east by The ...
Chad, Lake: freshwater lake located in the Sahelian zone of west-central Africa at the conjunction of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger. It is situated in an interior basin formerly occupied by a ...
Chad, Saint: monastic founder, abbot, and first bishop of Lichfield, who is credited with the Christianization of the ancient English kingdom of Mercia.
Chadic languages: group of languages spoken in northern Nigeria, northern Ghana, Niger, and Cameroon and in parts of Togo, Benin, Chad, and the Central African Republic and generally classified as a branch ...
Chadwick, George Whitefield: composer of the so-called New England group, whose music is rooted in the traditions of European Romanticism.
Chadwick, H. Munro: English philologist and historian, professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Cambridge (1912-41), who helped develop an integral approach to Old English studies.
Chadwick, Sir Edwin: physician and social reformer who devoted his life to sanitary reform in Britain.
Chadwick, Sir James: English physicist who received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1935 for the discovery of the neutron.
Chaeronea: in ancient Greece, fortified town on Mt. Petrachus, guarding the entry into the northern plain of Boeotia. Controlled by the Boeotian city of Orchomenus (q.v.) in the 5th century BC, ...
Chafarinas Islands: three small rocky islets of the Spanish plaza (enclave) of Melilla, located off northeastern Morocco, 7 miles (11 km) northwest of the mouth of the Oued Moulouya. ...
Chafee, Zechariah, Jr.: U.S. legal scholar known for his advocacy of civil liberties. His first book, Freedom of Speech (1920), was evoked by measures aimed at political dissenters in World War I. A ...
chafer: any of several beetles of the insect subfamily Melolonthinae (family Scarabaeidae, order Coleoptera). The leaf chafers (Macrodactylus) eat foliage; the grub feeds underground on plant roots. The adult female deposits ...
Chaffee, Adna R: U.S. army officer who enlisted in the Union cavalry in 1861 and rose in rank to become chief of staff of the U.S. army.
Chaffee, Roger B: U.S. astronaut who was a member of the three-man Apollo 1 crew killed when a flash fire swept their space capsule during a simulation of a launching scheduled for Feb. ...
chaffinch: (Fringilla coelebs), songbird of the family Fringillidae (order Passeriformes) that breeds in gardens and farmlands of Europe and northern Africa to central Asia (and, by introduction, South Africa). It is ...
Chaga: Bantu-speaking people living on the fertile southern slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania. They are one of the wealthiest and most highly organized of African peoples.
Chagai: district in Quetta Division, Baluchistan Province, Pakistan. It is bounded on the north by Afghanistan, on the east and south by Kalat and Kharan districts, and on the west by ...
Chagall, Marc: Belorussian-born French painter, printmaker, and designer. He composed his images based on emotional and poetic associations, rather than on rules of pictorial logic. Predating Surrealism, his early works, such as ...
Chagas' disease: infection with the flagellate protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi. It is transmitted to humans by bloodsucking reduviid bugs and is endemic in most rural areas of Central and South America. The disease ...
Chagatai: the second son of Genghis Khan who, at his father's death, received Kashgaria (now the southern part of Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang, China) and most of Transoxania between the ...
Chagos Archipelago: island group, a major geographic feature of the British Indian Ocean Territory, located in the central Indian Ocean about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south of the tip of the Indian ...
Chagres River: stream in Panama forming part of the Panama Canal system. It rises in the Cordillera de San Blas, flows south-southwest, and broadens to form Madden Lake (22 square miles [57 ...
Chahar: eastern tribe of Mongols, prominent in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Chahar were part of the empire of Dayan Khan (1470-1543), the last great khan of a united Mongolia. ...
Chaibasa: city, southern Bihar state, northeastern India. It lies just west of the Raru River, which is a tributary of the Subarnarekha. Although known as a road and agricultural-trade centre, the ...
Chaillu Massif: mountain range in south-central Gabon, rising to more than 3,300 feet (1,000 m) between the Ngounie and the Ogooue rivers; it forms the country's main watershed. The range contains Mount ...
chain: series of links, usually of metal, joined together to form a flexible connector for various purposes, such as holding, pulling, hoisting, hauling, conveying, and transmitting power.
chain: in surveying, a unit of length. See surveyor's chain.
chain mail: form of body armour worn by European knights and other military men throughout most of the medieval period. An early form of mail, made by sewing iron rings to fabric ...
chain reaction: in chemistry and physics, process yielding products that initiate further processes of the same kind, a self-sustaining sequence. Examples from chemistry are burning a fuel gas, the development of rancidity ...
chain store: any of two or more retail stores having the same ownership and selling the same lines of goods. Chain stores account for an important segment of retailing operations in the ...
Chain, Sir Ernst Boris: German-born British biochemist who, with pathologist Howard Walter Florey (later Baron Florey), isolated and purified penicillin (which had been discovered in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming) and performed the first ...
chair: seat with a back, intended for one person. It is one of the most ancient forms of furniture, dating from the 3rd dynasty of ancient Egypt (c. 2650-c. 2575 BC). ...
chaise: (French: "chair"), originally a closed, two-wheeled, one-passenger, one-horse carriage of French origin, adapted from the sedan chair. The carrying poles, or shafts, were attached to the horse's harness in front ...
chaise longue: a long seat for reclining on. Developed in the 18th century, it closely resembled the daybed of the late 17th century and the bergere armchair, but with an extension of ...
Chajang Yulsa: Buddhist monk who attempted to make Buddhism the Korean state religion.
Chakkri Dynasty: Thailand's ruling house, founded by Rama I, who, under the title of Chao Phraya Chakkri (military commander of the Chao Phraya area), had played an important role in the struggle ...
Chakma: largest of the tribal populations in the Chittagong area in southeastern Bangladesh, numbering 350,000 in the late 20th century. The Chakma dwell in Kassalong and in the middle Karnafuli valleys ...
chakra: ("wheel"), any of a number of psychic-energy centres of the body, prominent in the occult physiological practices of certain forms of Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism. The chakras are conceived of ...
chakravartin: the ancient Indian conception of the world ruler, derived from the Sanskrit cakra, "wheel," and vartin, "one who turns." Thus, a chakravartin may be understood as a ruler "whose chariot ...
Chalatenango: city, northern El Salvador. It lies along the Tamulasco and Cholco rivers at an altitude of 1,660 feet (506 metres). Originally an Indian settlement, it was placed under the Spanish ...
chalcanthite: a widespread sulfate mineral, naturally occurring hydrated copper sulfate, CuSO₄·5H₂O. It occurs in the oxidized zone of copper deposits and is frequently found on the timbers and walls of mine ...
Chalcedon: ancient maritime town on the eastern shore of the Bosporus, opposite modern Istanbul, Turkey. It was originally a Megarian colony founded in the early 7th century BC on a site ...
Chalcedon, Council of: the fourth ecumenical council of the Christian Church, held in Chalcedon (modern Kadikoy, Tur.) in 451. Convoked by the emperor Marcian, it was attended by about 520 bishops or their ...
chalcedony: a very fine-grained (cryptocrystalline) variety of the silica mineral quartz (q.v.). A form of chert, it occurs in concretionary, mammillated, or stalactitic forms of waxy lustre and has a compact ...
Chalchiuhtlicue: Aztec goddess of rivers, lakes, streams, and other freshwaters. Wife (in some myths, sister) of the rain god Tlaloc, in Aztec cosmology she ruled over the fourth of the previous ...
chalcid: any member of the more than 25,000 species of the superfamily Chalcidoidea, a large group of rather small, widely distributed insects of the order Hymenoptera. The average size is about ...
Chalcidian alphabet: one of several variants of the Greek alphabet, used in western Greece (Evvoia) and in some of the Greek colonies in Italy (Magna Graecia); probably ancestral to the Etruscan alphabet. ...
Chalcidian League: (432-348 BC), confederacy of the Greek cities of Chalcidice in northeastern Greece directed at first against Athens and later, after the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, against encroachment ...
Chalcidice: peninsula, northern Greece, and a nomos (department) terminating in (east-west) the three fingerlike promontories of Kassandra, Sithonia, and Ayion Oros (Mount Athos). The promontories were once islands, ...
Chalcis: capital, nomos (department) of Euboea, on the island of Euboea (Evvoia), Greece, at the narrowest point (measured only in yards) of the Euripus (Evripos) channel, separating Euboea ...
chalcocite: a sulfide mineral that is one of the most important ores of copper. Valuable occurrences include deposits of sulfide minerals at Ely, Nev., and Morenci, Ariz., where other components of ...
Chalcocondyles, Laonicus: Byzantine historian, the author of the valuable work Historiarum demonstrationes ("Demonstrations of History").
Chalcolithic Age: beginning of the Bronze Age (q.v.).
chalcopyrite: the most common copper mineral, a copper and iron sulfide, and a very important copper ore. It typically occurs in ore veins deposited at medium and high temperatures, as in ...
chalcotrichite: variety of the copper oxide mineral cuprite (q.v.).
Chaldea: land in southern Babylonia (modern southern Iraq) frequently mentioned in the Old Testament. Strictly speaking, the name should be applied to the land bordering the head of the Persian Gulf ...
Chaldean Catholic Church: Eastern rite church prevalent in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, united with the Roman Catholic Church since 1830, and intermittently from 1551.
Chaldean rite: system of liturgical practices and discipline historically associated with the Church of the East, or Nestorian Church, and also used today by the Catholic patriarchate of Babylon of the Chaldeans, ...
Chaldiran, Battle of: (Aug. 23, 1514), military engagement in which the Ottomans won a decisive victory over the Safavids of Iran and went on to gain control of eastern Anatolia.
chalet: timber house characteristic of Switzerland, the Bavarian Alps, Tirol, and the French Alps. The name originally referred to a sheepherder's dwelling and, later, to any small house in the mountains.
Chaleur Bay: inlet of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, extending between Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula and northern New Brunswick, Canada, and called by the Indians the "sea of fish". It is a submerged ...
Chalfont St. Giles: town (parish), Chiltern district, administrative and historic county of Buckinghamshire, England, 24 miles (39 km) northwest of London. Much frequented by visitors because of its Quaker associations as well as ...
Chalgrin, Jean-Francois-Therese: French architect, developer of an influential Neoclassical architectural style and designer of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
Chaliapin, Feodor: Russian operatic basso profundo whose vivid declamation, great resonance, and dynamic acting made him the best-known singer-actor of his time.
chalice: a cup used in the celebration of the Christian Eucharist. Both the statement of St. Paul about "the cup of blessing which we bless" (1 Corinthians 10:16) and the accounts ...
Chalicotherium: genus of extinct perissodactyls, the order including the horse and rhinoceros. Fossil remains of the genus are common in deposits of Asia, Europe, and Africa from the Miocene Epoch (23.7 ...
chalk: soft, fine-grained, easily pulverized, white-to-grayish variety of limestone. Chalk is composed of the shells of such minute marine organisms as foraminifera, coccoliths, and rhabdoliths. The purest varieties contain up to ...
chalk drawing: in the visual arts, technique of drawing with chalk, a prepared natural stone or earth substance that is usually available in black (made either from soft black stone or from ...
Chalk River: village, Renfrew county, southeastern Ontario, Canada. The village lies along the Chalk River near its mouth on the Ottawa River, 90 miles (145 km) northwest of Ottawa. It was a ...
Challenger Expedition: prolonged oceanographic exploration cruise from Dec. 7, 1872, to May 26, 1876, covering 127,600 km (68,890 nautical miles) and carried out through cooperation of the British Admiralty and the Royal ...
Challis, James: British clergyman and astronomer, famous in the history of astronomy for his failure to discover the planet Neptune.