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E region ... East China Sea
E region
ionospheric region that extends from an altitude of 90 kilometres (60 miles) to about 160 kilometres (100 miles). As in the D region (70-90 kilometres), the ionization is primarily molecular-i.e., ...
e-commerce
maintaining business relationships and selling information, services, and commodities by means of computer telecommunications networks.
e-mail
messages transmitted and received by digital computers through a network. An e-mail system allows computer users on a network to send text, graphics, and sometimes sounds and animated images to ...
Ea
Mesopotamian god of water and a member of the triad of deities completed by Anu (Sumerian: An) and Enlil. From a local deity worshiped in the city of Eridu, Ea ...
Eadbald
king of Kent, who succeeded his father Aethelberht in 616. He had not been influenced by the teaching of the Christian missionaries, and his first step on his accession was ...
Eadred
king of the English from 946 to 955, who brought Northumbria permanently under English rule. Eadred was the son of the West Saxon king Edward the Elder (ruled 899-924), the ...
Eadric Streona
ealdorman of the Mercians, who, though a man of ignoble birth, was advanced to the revived office of ealdorman by the English king Ethelred II, whose daughter Eadgyth Eadric married ...
Eads, James B.
American engineer best known for his triple-arch steel bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis, Mo. (1874). Another project provided a year-round navigation channel for New Orleans by means ...
Eadwig
king of the English from 955 to 957 and ruler of Wessex and Kent from 957 to 959. The eldest son of King Edmund I (ruled 939-946) and the nephew ...
Eagan, Eddie
American boxer and bobsledder who was the only athlete to win gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics.
Eagels, Jeanne
American actress who, through force of will and personality rather than training, forged a successful career onstage and in motion pictures.
eagle
any of many large, heavy-beaked, big-footed birds of prey belonging to the family Accipitridae (order Falconiformes). In general, an eagle is any bird of prey more powerful than a buteo. ...
eagle owl
(Bubo bubo), bird of the family Strigidae (order Strigiformes), characterized by its large size (often 70 centimetres [about 2.3 feet] long), two tufts of feathers on the head (ear tufts), ...
Eagle Pass
city, seat (1856) of Maverick county, southwestern Texas, U.S., on the Rio Grande, bridged to Piedras Negras, Mexico, 130 miles (210 km) southwest of San Antonio. It evolved as a ...
eagle ray
any of about two dozen species of exclusively marine rays constituting the family Myliobatidae (order Rajiformes), occurring in the major oceans. They have the enlarged, winglike pectoral fins characteristic of ...
Eagles, the
American band that cultivated country rock as the reigning style and sensibility of white youth in the United States during the 1970s. The original members were Don Henley (b. July ...
Eakins, Thomas
painter who carried the tradition of 19th-century American Realism to perhaps its highest achievement. He painted mainly portraits of his friends and scenes of outdoor sports, such as swimming and ...
Ealdred
also spelled Aldred Anglo-Saxon archbishop of York from 1060, played an important part in secular politics at the time of the Norman conquest and legitimized the rule of William the ...
Ealing
outer borough of London, part of the historic county of Middlesex, midway between central London and the western periphery. The borough was established in 1965 by the amalgamation of the ...
Ealing Studios
English motion-picture studio, internationally remembered for a series of witty comedies that reflected the social conditions of post-World War II Britain. Founded in 1929 by two of England's best known ...
EAM-ELAS
communist-sponsored resistance organization (formed September 1941) and its military wing (formed December 1942), which operated in occupied Greece during World War II. Fighting against the Germans and the Italians as ...
Eames, Charles; and Eames, Ray
American designers best known for the beauty, comfort, elegance, and delicacy of their mass-producible furniture. They also wrote books, made motion pictures, and designed exhibitions, fabrics, and industrial and consumer ...
Eames, Emma
American lyric soprano, admired for her beauty and for the technical control and dramatic expressiveness of her voice.
ear disease
any of the diseases or disorders that affect the human ear and hearing.
ear shell
any of various marine snails of the subclass Prosobranchia (class Gastropoda) that constitute the genus Haliotis and family Haliotidae. The characteristic planispiral shell has a broad, oblique aperture, which gives ...
ear squeeze
effects of a difference in pressure between the internal ear spaces and the external ear canal. These effects may include severe pain, inflammation, bleeding, and rupture of the eardrum membrane. ...
ear, human
organ of hearing and equilibrium that detects and analyzes noises by transduction (or the conversion of sound waves into electrochemical impulses) and maintains the sense of balance (equilibrium).
Earhart, Amelia
American aviator, one of the world's most celebrated, who was the first woman to fly alone over the Atlantic Ocean.
Earl of Leicester's Men
earliest organized Elizabethan acting company. Formed in 1559 from members of the Earl of Leicester's household, the troupe performed at court the following year. A favourite of Queen Elizabeth, the ...
Earle, Alice Morse
American writer and antiquarian whose work centred on the manners, customs, and handicrafts of various periods of American history.
Earle, John
Anglican clergyman, best known as author of Micro-cosmographie. Or, A Peece of the World Discovered; in Essayes and Characters (1628; enlarged 1629 and 1630).
Earlham College
private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Richmond, Ind., U.S. It is affiliated with the Society of Friends (Quakers). A four-year liberal arts college, it offers bachelor's degree programs in ...
Early American furniture
furniture made in the last half of the 17th century by American colonists. Furniture made by the earliest settlers, none of which is known to have survived, was probably crude ...
Early Christian art
architecture, painting, and sculpture from the beginnings of Christianity until about the early 6th century, particularly the art of Italy and the western Mediterranean. (Early Christian art in the eastern ...
Early Netherlandish art
sculpture, painting, architecture, and other visual arts created in the several domains that in the late 14th and 15th centuries were under the rule of the dukes of Burgundy, coincidentally ...
Early, Jubal A
Confederate general in the American Civil War (1861-65) whose army at one time threatened Washington, D.C., but whose series of defeats during the Shenandoah Valley campaigns of late 1864 and ...
Earn
loch (lake) and river, central Scotland. Loch Earn lies on the boundary between the council area of Stirling and the council area of Perth and Kinross, and the River Earn ...
Earnhardt, Dale
American stock-car racer who was the dominant driver in the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) during the 1980s and '90s.
Earnshaw, Thomas
English watchmaker, the first to simplify and economize in producing chronometers so as to make them available to the general public.
Earp, Wyatt
legendary frontiersman of the American West, who was an itinerant saloonkeeper, gambler, lawman, gunslinger, and confidence man. The first major biography, Stuart N. Lake's Wyatt Earp, Frontier Marshal (1931), written ...
earphone
small loudspeaker held or worn close to the listener's ear or within the outer ear. Common forms include the hand-held telephone receiver; the headphone (q.v.), in which one or two ...
earplug
type of ear ornament usually inserted in pierced and distended earlobes and generally worn by traditional peoples. Earplugs were the direct forerunners of today's pierced earrings.
earring
a personal ornament worn pendent from the ear, usually suspended by means of a ring or hook passing through a pierced hole in the lobe of the ear or, in ...
Earth
third planet from the Sun and the fifth in the solar system in terms of size and mass. Its single most outstanding feature is that its near-surface environments are the ...
Earth exploration
the investigation of the surface of the Earth and of its interior.
Earth impact hazard
the danger of collision posed by astronomical small bodies whose orbits around the Sun carry them near Earth. These objects include the rocky asteroids and their larger fragments and the ...
Earth Mother
in ancient and modern nonliterate religions, an eternally fruitful source of everything. Unlike the variety of female fertility deities called mother goddesses (q.v.), the Earth Mother is not a specific ...
Earth satellite
man-made object launched into a temporary or permanent orbit around the Earth. Spacecraft of this type may be either manned or unmanned, the latter being the most common.
Earth sciences
the fields of study concerned with the solid Earth, its waters, and the air that envelops it. Included are the geologic, hydrologic, and atmospheric sciences.
Earth tide
deformation of the solid Earth as it rotates within the gravitational fields of the Sun and Moon. Earth tides are similar to ocean tides. The Earth deforms because it has ...
Earth, geologic history of
evolution of the continents, oceans, atmosphere, and biosphere. The layers of rock at the Earth's surface contain evidence of the evolutionary processes undergone by these components of the terrestrial environment ...
Earth, Wind and Fire
American pop, soul, and jazz-fusion band that became one of the best-selling and most influential black groups of the 1970s. The principal members were Maurice White (b. December 19, 1941, ...
earthenware
pottery that has not been fired to the point of vitrification and is thus slightly porous and coarser than stoneware and porcelain. The body can be covered completely or decorated ...
earthfill dam
dam built up by compacting successive layers of earth, using the most impervious materials to form a core and placing more permeable substances on the upstream and downstream sides. A ...
earthflow
sheet or stream of soil and rock material saturated with water and flowing downslope under the pull of gravity; it represents the intermediate stage between creep and mudflow. Earthflows usually ...
earthnut
(Conopodium majus), European plant of the carrot family (Apiaceae), so called because of its edible tubers. It grows in woods and fields in the British Isles and from Norway, France, ...
earthquake
any sudden shaking of the ground caused by the passage of seismic waves through the Earth's rocks. Seismic waves are produced when some form of energy stored in the Earth's ...
earthshine
sunlight reflected from the Earth, especially that reflected to the Moon and back again. For a few days before and after New Moon, this doubly reflected earthshine is powerful enough ...
earthworm
any one of more than 1,800 species of terrestrial worms of the class Oligochaeta (phylum Annelida)-in particular, members of the genus Lumbricus. Seventeen native species and 13 introduced species (from ...
earwax impaction
filling of the external auditory canal with earwax, or cerumen. Normally the wax produced by skin glands in the outer ear migrates outward. If the earwax is produced too rapidly, ...
earwig
any insect of the order Dermaptera (about 1,100 species), characterized by large membranous hindwings that lie hidden under short, leathery forewings. The earwig varies from 5 to 50 millimetres (0.2 ...
easel painting
painting executed on a portable support such as a panel or canvas, instead of on a wall. It is likely that easel paintings were known to the ancient Egyptians, and ...
easement
in Anglo-American property law, a right granted by one property owner to another to use a part of his land for a specific purpose.
Easington
district, administrative and historic county of Durham, northeastern England, that extends north-south along the North Sea coast between the industrialized metropolitan areas of Tyne and Wear to the north and ...
East African lakes
group of lakes in East Africa. The majority of the East African lakes lie within the East African Rift System, which forms a part of a series of gigantic fissures ...
East African mountains
mountain region of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo (Kinshasa), Rwanda, and Burundi. The mountains are intimately related to the East African Rift System, the fractures of which extend discontinuously between the ...
East African Rift System
one of the most extensive rifts on the Earth's surface, extending from Jordan in southwestern Asia southward through eastern Africa to Mozambique. The system is some 4,000 miles (6,400 km) ...
East Anglia
traditional region of eastern England, comprising the historic counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and, more loosely, Cambridgeshire and Essex. The traditional central town is the cathedral city of Norwich, which ...
East Aurora
village, Erie county, western New York, U.S. It lies 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Buffalo and, oddly enough, 90 miles (145 km) west of Aurora. Settled in 1804, it ...
East Australian Current
surface oceanic current, a section of the counterclockwise flow in the Tasman Sea, southwestern Pacific Ocean. It is formed by water masses from the Coral Sea-equatorial water driven by monsoonal ...
East Ayrshire
council area, southwestern Scotland. It covers an undulating lowland in the north and west that rises to forested and moor-covered uplands in the east and south, where Blackcraig Hill reaches ...
East Berlin
eastern part of the city of Berlin (q.v.) that served as the capital of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) until the reunification of the German state in 1990.
East Cambridgeshire
district, administrative and historic county of Cambridgeshire, east-central England, occupying an area northeast of the city of Cambridge. Situated predominantly within the Fens, an expanse of reclaimed marshland, the district ...
East Chicago
industrial city and port, Lake county, northwestern Indiana, U.S., adjoining Gary, Hammond, and Whiting. It is a part of the Chicago-Calumet industrialized metropolitan complex. Laid out in 1887, its industrial ...
East China Sea
arm of the Pacific Ocean bordering the East Asian mainland and extending northeastward from the South China Sea, to which it is connected by the shallow Taiwan Strait between Taiwan ...
East China Sea
arm of the Pacific Ocean and part of the China Sea (q.v.). It covers about 290,000 square miles (752,000 square km) and is bounded by the islands of Cheju (north), ...