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La Roche-sur-Yon ... Lacaille, Nicolas Louis de

La Roche-sur-Yon: town, capital of Vendee departement, Pays de la Loire region, western France, south of Nantes. The Vendee region had been pacified at the time of the French Revolution but still ...
La Rochefoucauld Family: one of France's noblest families, traceable in Angoumois to the year 1019. Ducal titles belonging to it are: duke (duc) de La Rochefoucauld (1622); duke de La Roche-Guyon (1679); duke ...
La Rochefoucauld, Francois VI, Duke de: French classical author who had been one of the most active rebels of the Fronde before he became the leading exponent of the maxime, a French literary form of epigram ...
La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Francois-Alexandre-Frederic, Duke de: educator and social reformer who founded the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts et Metiers at Chalons and whose model farm at Liancourt contributed to the development of French agriculture.
La Rochelle: town, Atlantic seaport and capital of Charente-Maritime departement, Poitou-Charentes region, western France, situated on an inlet opposite Re Island. The town, which has straight, regular streets, a large park, and ...
La Romana: city and port, southeastern Dominican Republic, on the Caribbean Sea opposite Catalina Island. Founded near the end of the 19th century, La Romana grew rapidly after the establishment of a ...
La Rue, Pierre de: composer in the Flemish, or Netherlandish, style that dominated Renaissance music, known for his religious music.
La Sale, Antoine de: French writer chiefly remembered for his Petit Jehan de Saintre, a romance marked by a great gift for the observation of court manners and a keen sense of comic situation ...
La Salle: city, La Salle county, north-central Illinois, U.S. It lies on the Illinois River, about 90 miles (150 km) southwest of Chicago. With Peru (adjacent to the west) and Oglesby (southeast), ...
La Salle: city, Montreal region, southern Quebec province, Canada, on the south shore of Ile de Montreal (Montreal Island), at the head of the Lachine Rapids of the St. Lawrence River. Settlement ...
La Salle University: private, coeducational institution of higher learning in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. It is operated by the Christian Brothers, a teaching order of the Roman Catholic church. It comprises schools of Arts ...
La Salle, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de: French explorer in North America, who led an expedition down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers and claimed all the region watered by the Mississippi and its tributaries for Louis XIV ...
La Salle, Saint Jean-Baptiste de: French philanthropist, educator, and founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, the first Roman Catholic congregation of male nonclerics devoted solely to schools, learning, and teaching.
La Scala: theatre in Milan, one of the principal opera houses of the world and the leading Italian house.
La Serena: capital of Coquimbo region, northern Chile, lying on a marine terrace overlooking Bahia (bay) de Coquimbo, just south of the Rio Elqui and east of Coquimbo city. Founded c. 1543 ...
La Spezia: capital of La Spezia province, Liguria region, northern Italy. The city, a major naval base, is located at the head of the Golfo della Spezia, southeast of Genoa. The site ...
La Taille, Jean de: poet and dramatist who, through his plays and his influential treatise on the art of tragedy, helped to effect the transition from native French drama to classical tragedy.
La Tene: (French: The Shallows), archaeological site at the eastern end of Lake Neuchatel, Switz., the name of which has been extended to distinguish the Late Iron Age culture of European Celts. ...
La Tour, Charles: French colonist and fur trader who served as governor of Acadia (Nova Scotia) under the French and the English.
La Tour, Georges de: painter, mostly of candlelit subjects, who was well known in his own time but then forgotten until well into the 20th century, when the identification of many formerly misattributed works ...
La Tour, Maurice-Quentin de: pastelist whose animated and sharply characterized portraits made him one of the most successful and imitated portraitists of 18th-century France.
La Tremoille Family: noble family that contributed numerous generals to France. The family's name was taken from a village in Poitou (modern La Trimouille). A Pierre de La Tremoille is recorded as early ...
La Tremoille, Georges de: powerful lord who exercised considerable influence over Charles VII of France.
La Trobe Valley: (Australia): see Latrobe Valley.
La Tuque: town, Mauricie-Bois-Francs region, southern Quebec province, Canada, situated on the Saint-Maurice River. During the French regime, the site was occupied by a trading post of the Company of New France. ...
La Union: city, eastern El Salvador. It is located at the northern foot of Conchagua Volcano (about 4,100 feet [1,250 m]), on La Union Bay, an inlet of the Gulf of Fonseca. ...
La Valliere, Louise-Francoise de La Baume le Blanc, Duchess de: mistress of King Louis XIV (reigned 1643-1715) from 1661 to 1667.
La Vega: city, west-central Dominican Republic. It was founded in 1495 by Bartolomeo Colombo at the foot of Concepcion fortress, which had been built by Christopher Columbus in 1494. La Vega was ...
La Venta: ancient Olmec settlement, located near the border of modern Tabasco and Veracruz states, on the gulf coast of Mexico. La Venta was originally built on an island in the Tonala ...
La Verendrye, Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, et de: French-Canadian soldier, fur trader, and explorer whose exploits, little honoured during his lifetime, rank him as one of the greatest explorers of the Canadian West. Moreover, the string of trading ...
La Victoria: quarter and district of the Lima-Callao metropolitan area of Peru, south of downtown Lima. It is mainly residential, with slums in the north, pueblos jovenes ("young towns"), or squatter settlements, ...
Laatste Nieuws, Het: daily newspaper published in Brussels. The largest daily in Belgium, it was founded in 1888 to serve Flemish-speaking citizens.
Labadie, Jean de: French theologian, a Protestant convert from Roman Catholicism who founded the Labadists, a Pietist community.
Laban, Rudolf: dance theorist and teacher whose studies of human motion provided the intellectual foundations for the development of central European modern dance. Laban also developed Labanotation, a widely used movement-notation system.
labanotation: system of recording human movement, originated by the Hungarian-born dance theorist Rudolf Laban.
Labarnas I: early king of the Hittite Old Kingdom in Anatolia (reigned c. 1680-c. 1650 BC). Though perhaps not the first of his line, he was traditionally regarded as the founder of ...
labarum: sacred military standard of the Christian Roman emperors, first used by Constantine I in the early part of the 4th century AD. The labarum-a Christian version of the vexillum, the ...
Labe: town, west-central Guinea. Located on the Fouta Djallon plateau (at 3,445 feet [1,050 m]) near the source of the Gambia River, it lies at the intersection of roads from Mamou ...
Labe, Louise: French poet, the daughter of a rope maker (cordier).
labeo: any of numerous species of African and Asian river fishes belonging to the genus Labeo in the carp family, Cyprinidae. Labeos have a thick-lipped, sucking mouth on the underside of ...
Labeo, Marcus Antistius: Roman jurist who was the greatest figure in imperial jurisprudence before the time of the emperor Hadrian (reigned AD 117-138).
Laberius, Decimus: Roman knight with a caustic wit who was one of the two leading writers of mimes. In 46 or 45 BC he was compelled by Julius Caesar to accept the ...
Labiche, Eugene-Marin: comic playwright who wrote many of the most popular and amusing light comedies of the 19th-century French stage.
Labinsk: city and administrative centre of Labinsk rayon (sector), Krasnodar kray (region), western Russia. Labinsk lies along the Laba River where it flows into a plain. Founded in 1840 as a ...
Lablache, Luigi: Italian operatic bass admired for his musicianship and acting.
Labor Day: in the United States and Canada, holiday (first Monday in September) honouring workers and recognizing their contributions to society. In many other countries May Day serves a similar purpose.
Laboratory Schools of the University of Iowa: elementary and secondary schools founded in Iowa City in 1916 to experiment with curriculum development and to serve as model schools for Iowa. Over the next several decades the schools ...
Labori, Fernand-Gustave-Gaston: French lawyer who served as defense counsel in the prosecution of Alfred Dreyfus for treason.
Labouchere, Henry Du Pre: British politician, publicist, and noted wit who gained journalistic fame with his dispatches from Paris (for the Daily News, London, of which he was part owner) while ...
Laboulbeniomycetes: group of fungi (division Mycota) in the class Ascomycetes. It includes more than 1,500 species, which live off the chitin (exoskeleton) of arachnids (e.g., spiders) and insects. The minute species ...
labour: in human physiology, the physical activity experienced by the mother during parturition (q.v.), or childbirth.
labour: in economics, the general body of wage earners. It is in this sense, for example, that one speaks of "organized labour." In a more special and technical sense, however, labour ...
Labour and Socialist International: organization in existence from 1923 until the advent of World War II that defined itself in its constitution as "a union of such parties as accept the principles of the ...
labour economics: study of the labour force as an element in the process of production. The labour force comprises all those who work for gain, whether as employees, employers, or as self-employed, ...
labour law: the varied body of law applied to such matters as employment, remuneration, conditions of work, trade unions, and industrial relations. In its most comprehensive sense the term includes social security ...
Labour Party: main party of the left in the Republic of Ireland.
Labour Party: British political party whose historic links with trade unions have led it to promote an active role for the state in the creation of economic prosperity and in the provision ...
labour, division of: the separation of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of persons. It is most often applied to systems ...
labour, hours of: the proportion of a person's time spent at work. Hours of labour have declined significantly since the middle of the 19th century, with workers in advanced industrial countries spending far ...
Labour, Liberation of: first Russian Marxist organization, founded in September 1883 in Geneva, by Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod. Convinced that social revolution could be accomplished only by class-conscious industrial workers, the ...
Labrador: northeastern portion of the Canadian mainland. It embraces the great peninsula of northern Quebec and Newfoundland, an area of approximately 625,000 square miles (1,620,000 square km) that is bounded by ...
Labrador City: town, southwestern Labrador, Newfoundland, Canada, near the Quebec border. It was developed in the 1950s as a planned community to serve the surrounding mining region (Carol Lake), one of Canada's ...
Labrador Current: surface oceanic current flowing southward along the west side of the Labrador Sea. Originating at the Davis Strait, the Labrador Current is a combination of the West Greenland Current, the ...
Labrador Sea: northwestern arm of the North Atlantic Ocean, between Labrador, Canada (southwest), and Greenland (northeast). It is connected with Baffin Bay (north) through Davis Strait and with Hudson Bay (west) through ...
Labrador tea: (Ledum groenlandicum), low-growing, perennial evergreen shrub of the heath family (Ericaceae), native to eastern North America. The name is also sometimes applied to L. glandulosum, a closely related shrub of ...
labradorite: a feldspar mineral in the plagioclase (q.v.) series that is often valued as a gemstone and as ornamental material for its red, blue, or green iridescence. The mineral is usually ...
Labriola, Antonio: philosopher who systematized the study of Marxist socialism in Italy. The first in his nation to expound orthodox Marxism, he profoundly influenced contemporaries of diverse political persuasions.
Labrouste, Henri: French architect important for his early use of iron frame construction.
Labuan: island, East Malaysia, 6 miles (10 km) off northwestern Borneo in the South China Sea. Commanding the entrance to Brunei Bay, it is roughly triangular. Its chief town, Victoria, on ...
laburnum: any member of the genus (Laburnum) of trees and shrubs having butterfly-like flowers, and belonging to the subfamily Papilionoideae of the pea family (Leguminosae). The leaves are composed of three ...
labyrinth: system of intricate passageways and blind alleys. "Labyrinth" was the name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to buildings, entirely or partly subterranean, containing a number of chambers and ...
labyrinth fish: any of the small tropical fish of the suborder Anabantoidei (order Perciformes). Labyrinth fishes, like most other fishes, breathe with their gills, but they also possess a supplemental breathing structure, ...
labyrinthitis: inflammation, either acute or chronic, of the inner ear (the labyrinth). It is often a complication of a respiratory-tract infection, of syphilis, or of inflammation of the middle ear. Symptoms ...
labyrinthodont: any member of an extinct order (Labyrinthodontia) or subclass of amphibians that constituted the dominant animals of Late Paleozoic and Triassic time (about 350 to 210 million years ago). Labyrinthodonts ...
lac: sticky, resinous secretion of the tiny lac insect, Laccifer lacca, which is a species of scale insect. This insect deposits lac on the twigs and young branches of several varieties ...
Lacaille, Nicolas Louis de: French astronomer who mapped the constellations visible from the Southern Hemisphere and named many of them.