irregularly shaped patches of endocrine tissue located within the pancreas of most vertebrates. They are named for the German physician Paul Langerhans, who first described them in 1869. The normal ...
poet and English translator of the 1st-century Greek biographer Plutarch; his work anticipates that of George Crabbe in its description of the problems facing the poor. He was a country ...
(Icelandic: "Long Glacier"), large ice field, west-central Iceland. Langjokull is 40 miles (64 km) long and 15 miles (24 km) wide and covers an area of 395 square miles (1,025 ...
main island of the Langkawi group, in the Strait of Malacca, Peninsular (West) Malaysia. It lies just south of the Thai island of Tarutao. Langkawi, 18 miles (29 km) long ...
presumed author of one of the greatest examples of Middle English alliterative poetry, generally known as Piers Plowman, an allegorical work with a complex variety of religious themes. One of ...
city ("district municipality"), southwestern British Columbia, Canada, just east-southeast of Vancouver, near the U.S. (Washington) border. The historic Hudson's Bay Company post, Fort Langley (named for Thomas Langley, a company ...
American astronomer, physicist, and aeronautics pioneer who contributed to the knowledge of solar phenomena as related to meteorology and built the first heavier-than-air flying machine to achieve sustained flight.
American physical chemist whose studies of molecular films on solid and liquid surfaces opened new fields in colloid research and biochemistry and won him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in ...
people inhabiting the marshy lowlands northeast of Lakes Kwania and Kyoga in northern Uganda and speaking an Eastern Sudanic language of the Nilo-Saharan language family.
town (parish), South Somerset district, administrative and historic county of Somerset, England, at the head of the Somerset marshes and for centuries the main crossing point of the River Parrett.
town, eastern France, Haute-Marne departement, Champagne-Ardenne region, north-northeast of Dijon. A medieval fortified city, it is situated 1,529 feet (466 metres) above sea level ...
public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Langston, Oklahoma, U.S. It is Oklahoma's only historically black institution of higher learning and has land-grant status. It includes schools of Arts and ...
author of an Anglo-Norman chronicle in alexandrines, canon of the Augustinian priory at Bridlington. He took his name from the village of Langtoft in East Yorkshire. It is known that ...
English cardinal whose appointment as archbishop of Canterbury precipitated King John's quarrel with Pope Innocent III and played an important part in the Magna Carta crisis.
a leading adviser of King Edward I of England; he was treasurer of the exchequer from 1295 to 1307 and bishop of Lichfield from 1296 until his death. In both ...
a system of conventional spoken or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, communicate.
historical and cultural region encompassing the southern French departements of Herault, Gard, and Ardeche and parts of Haute-Loire, Lozere, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, Haute-Garonne, and Ariege and coextensive with the former province ...
region of France encompassing the southern departements of Lozere, Gard, Herault, Aude, and Pyrenees-Orientales and roughly coextensive with the former province of Languedoc. Languedoc-Roussillon ...
the general name given to numerous species of Asian monkeys belonging to the subfamily Colobinae. The term is often restricted to nearly two dozen species of leaf monkeys but is ...
English composer, singer, and painter, who probably introduced Italian monody into England. In 1617 he painted the scenery, composed the music for, and sang in Ben Jonson's masque Lovers Made ...
American professional gridiron football player who was an outstanding defensive player for the Kansas City Chiefs in the 1960s and '70s, overturning the stereotype that African Americans could not handle ...
city, southeastern Azerbaijan. It lies on the shore of the Caspian Sea, in the Lankaran Lowland. First mentioned in the 17th century, it was capital of the Talysh khanate of ...
(Sanskrit: "Sutra of the Appearance of the Good Doctrine in Lanka"), distinctive and influential philosophical discourse in the Mahayana Buddhist tradition that is said to have been preached by the ...
British authority on general zoology at the turn of the 19th century, who made important contributions to comparative anatomy, embryology, parasitology, and anthropology.
American scholar of Sanskrit who wrote the widely used Sanskrit Reader (1884) and helped edit the "Harvard Oriental Series," which offered scholarly English translations of the ancient Hindu Vedic texts.
French general who, despite his humble origins, rose to the rank of marshal of the First Empire; Napoleon said of him, "I found him a pygmy and left him a ...
purified form of wool grease or wool wax (sometimes erroneously called wool fat), used either alone or with soft paraffin or lard or other fat as a base for ointments, ...
French army commander during the first part of World War I who, though a capable tactician, proved unable to stop the German advance in northern France and was consequently replaced.
leader of the British Labour Party (1931-35), a Socialist and poor-law reformer who was forced to resign the party leadership because of his extreme pacifism.
capital of Michigan, U.S., in Ingham county, on the Grand River at its junction with the Red Cedar River. The site was a wilderness when the state capital was moved ...
international lawyer and U.S. secretary of state (1915-20), who negotiated the Lansing-Ishii Agreement (1917) attempting to harmonize U.S.-Japanese relations toward China; he eventually broke with Pres. Woodrow Wilson over differences ...
(Nov. 2, 1917), attempt to reconcile conflicting U.S. and Japanese policies in China during World War I by a public exchange of notes between the U.S. secretary of state, Robert ...
one of the most powerful and richest of U.S. crime syndicate chiefs and bankers, who had major interests in gambling, especially in Florida, pre-Castro Cuba, Las Vegas, and the Bahamas.
genus of more than 150 shrubs native to tropical America and Africa and belonging to the verbena family (Verbenaceae), order Lamiales. Common lantana (L. camara; see ), growing to 3 ...
island located about 6 miles (10 km) west of Hong Kong Island, part of the New Territories of Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China. About 17 miles (27 ...
in architecture, originally an openwork timber construction placed on top of a building to admit light and allow smoke to escape. Something of this idea persists in medieval examples such ...
any of the numerous species of small, abundant, deep-sea fish of the family Myctophidae. Lantern fish live in the depths by day, but at night they may approach the surface ...
small stone structure with windows in the upper part, in which lamps were placed to mark the position of a cemetery at night. Their use, which seems limited to western ...
(Crinodendron hookeranum), tree of the family Elaeocarpaceae native to western South America and cultivated in other regions for its handsome flowers. It grows to 4.5 to 7.5 m (15 to ...
any of three species of fishes in the family Anomalopidae (order Beryciformes), characterized by the presence of luminescent organs just below the eye. They are among the few species of ...
(Lanternaria phosphorea), a large, brightly coloured South American plant hopper (order Homoptera) that lives on trees and is relatively uncommon. Its most remarkable feature is the inflated anterior prolongation of ...
in chemistry, the steady decrease in the size of the atoms and ions of the rare-earth elements with increasing atomic number from lanthanum (atomic number 57) through lutetium (atomic number ...
(La), chemical element, rare-earth metal of transition Group IIIb of the periodic table, prototype of the lanthanide series of elements. Lanthanum is a ductile and malleable, silvery-white metal, soft enough ...
fossils of hominins (members of the human lineage) found in 1963 and 1964 by Chinese archaeologists at two sites in Lantian district, Shaanxi province, China. One specimen was found at ...
Italian statesman and political activist of the Risorgimento who was premier in 1870 when Rome became the capital of a united Italy and who helped organize the political forces of ...
island, Las Palmas provincia, in Canarias comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community"), Spain. It is the easternmost of the Canary Islands in the North Atlantic. It has an area of 307 square ...
town, northwestern Vietnam, on the China-Vietnam border. It lies at the junction of the Red River (Song Hong) and the Nam Ti River about 160 miles (260 km) northwest of ...
Laotian political movement against French colonial control, founded in 1945. The departure of the Japanese from Laos in 1945 left the Laotian ruling elite divided over the issue of the ...
one of the Tai languages of Southeast Asia, and the official language of Laos. Lao occurs in various dialects, which differ among themselves at least as much as Lao as ...
Chinese author of humorous, satiric novels and short stories and, after the onset of the Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), of patriotic and propagandistic plays and novels.
town in northern Hupeh sheng (province), China. It is situated on the Han River at its confluence with the Lao River, some 30 miles (50 km) northwest of Hsiang-fan.
the first philosopher of Chinese Taoism and alleged author of the Tao-te Ching (q.v.), a primary Taoist writing. Modern scholars discount the possibility that the Tao-te Ching was written by ...
city, northwestern Luzon, Philippines. It lies on the north bank of the nonnavigable Laoag River, a few miles above the latter's mouth. Laoag was first occupied by the Spaniards in ...
in Greek legend, a seer and a priest of the god Apollo; he was the son of Agenor of Troy or, according to some, the brother of Anchises (the father ...
the ancient name of several cities of western Asia, mostly founded or rebuilt in the 3rd century BC by rulers of the Seleucid dynasty, and named after Laodice, the mother ...
county in the province of Leinster, east-central Ireland, formerly called Queen's county. It is bounded by Counties Offaly (north and west), Kildare (east), Carlow and Kilkenny (south), and Tipperary (southwest). ...
legendary king of Troy and father of Podarces (later famous as King Priam of Troy). Laomedon refused to give the gods Apollo and Poseidon their wages after they had built ...
town, capital of Aisne departement, Picardie region, northern France. It lies northwest of Reims and northeast of Paris. The picturesque old town, situated on the summit of a scarped hill, ...
landlocked country located on the Indochinese Peninsula. It is bounded on the north by China, on the northeast and east by Vietnam, on the south by Cambodia, on the west ...
town and traditional emirate, southeastern Niger state, west-central Nigeria. It lies near the Gurara River, which is a tributary to the Niger River. It was originally inhabited by the Gbari ...
procedure that permits visual examination of the abdominal cavity with an optical instrument called a laparoscope, which is inserted through a small incision made in the abdominal wall. The term ...
in calligraphy, style of lettering characteristically used for inscription in marble or other stone by chisel strokes, as, for example, on Trajan's Column in the Forum at Rome. The words ...
