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marabou ... March, Fredric

marabou: (Leptoptilos crumeniferus), large African bird of the stork family, Ciconiidae (order Ciconiiformes). The marabou is the largest stork, 150 cm (5 feet) tall with a wingspread of 2.6 m (8 ...
marabout: ("one who is garrisoned"), originally, in North Africa, member of a Muslim religious community living in a ribat, a fortified monastery, serving both religious and military functions. Men who possessed ...
Maracaibo: city, capital of Zulia estado ("state"), northwestern Venezuela, the country's second largest city and one of its largest seaports. On the western shore of the channel connecting Lake Maracaibo with ...
Maracaibo, Lake: large inlet of the Caribbean Sea, lying in the Maracaibo Basin of northwestern Venezuela. It is the largest natural lake in South America, covering an area of about 5,150 square ...
Maracay: city, capital of Aragua estado ("state"), northern Venezuela. In the central highlands at 1,500 feet (460 m) above sea level and 70 miles (110 km) southwest of Caracas, Maracay rose ...
Maradi: town, south-central Niger, western Africa. The town is located on the banks of the Maradi, a seasonal stream, in a region consisting largely of a flat sandy plain (1,000 to ...
Maradona, Diego Armando: Argentine football (soccer) player who is generally regarded as the top footballer of the 1980s and one of the greatest of all time. Renowned for his ability to control the ...
Maragheh: town in the Azerbaijan region of northwestern Iran. It lies in the shelter of Mount Sahand (12,100 feet [3,700 m]) in a well-watered valley. The town is the prosperous centre ...
Marais des Cygnes River: river flowing through east-central Kansas and west-central Missouri, U.S. It rises near Eskridge, Kansas, and flows nearly 220 miles (355 km) eastward into Missouri, where it joins the Little Osage ...
Marais Theatre: one of the major theatrical companies in 17th-century France. With the actor Montdory as its head, the company performed at various temporary theatres in Paris from 1629 before finding a ...
Marais, Jean: French actor who was a protege and longtime partner of French writer-director Jean Cocteau. Marais was one of the most popular leading men in French films during the 1940s and ...
Marais, Marin: French composer who was also a celebrated virtuoso of the viola da gamba.
Marajo Island: island, in the Amazon River delta, eastern Para state, Brazil. It is the world's largest fluvial island (i.e., one produced by sediments deposited by a stream or river). The island ...
Maramures: judet (county), northwestern Romania. It occupies an area of 2,400 square miles (6,215 square km) and is bounded in the north by Ukraine. It is mostly mountainous and is dominated ...
Maranao: largest of the Muslim cultural-linguistic groups of the Philippines. Numbering more than 840,000 in the late 20th century, they live around Lake Lanao on the southern island of Mindanao. Rice ...
Maranhao: estado (state) of northern Brazil, situated south of the Equator and to the southeast of the Amazon River basin. About two-thirds of its area consists of a low, heavily wooded ...
Maranon River: headwater of the Amazon, rising in the snowcapped Andes above Lake Lauricocha in central Peru, about 100 miles (160 km) from the Pacific Ocean. It flows northwest across windswept plateaus ...
Marantaceae: the prayer plant family of the ginger order (Zingiberales), composed of about 31 genera and 550 species of rhizomatous perennial herbs that are native to moist or swampy tropical forests, ...
Maranville, Rabbit: American professional baseball player who is rated as one of the finest shortstops of the game.
Maranzano, Salvatore: American gangster of the Prohibition era, leader among the old-country-oriented Italians, known as "Moustache Petes," many of whom were former members of the Sicilian Mafia and Neapolitan Camorra.
marasmus: a form of protein-energy malnutrition occurring chiefly among very young children in developing countries, particularly under famine conditions, in which a mother's milk supply is greatly reduced. Marasmus results from ...
Marat, Jean-Paul: French politician, physician, and journalist, a leader of the radical Montagnard faction during the French Revolution. He was assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday, a young Girondin conservative.
Maratha: a major people of India, famed in history as yeoman warriors and champions of Hinduism. Their homeland is the present state of Maharashtra, the Marathi-speaking region that extends from Bombay ...
Maratha confederacy: alliance formed in the 18th century after Mughal pressure forced the collapse of Sivaji's kingdom of Maharashtra in western India. After the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb's death (1707), Maratha power revived ...
Maratha Wars: (1775-82, 1803-05, 1817-18), three conflicts between the British and the Maratha confederacy, resulting in the destruction of the confederacy.
Marathi language: Indo-Aryan language of western and central India. Its range extends from north of Bombay down the western coast past Goa and eastward across the Deccan; in 1966 it became the ...
marathon: long-distance footrace first held at the revival of the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. It commemorates the legendary feat of a Greek soldier who, in 490 BC, is supposed ...
Marathon Oil Corporation: American oil and gas company with a full range of operations from exploration and production to marketing and transportation. Marathon Oil, founded in 1887 as the Ohio Oil Company, came ...
Marathon orogeny: mountain-building event in the Marathon region of western Texas, U.S., during the Late Carboniferous Period (from 320 to 286 million years ago). Rocks of Early Permian age (from 286 to ...
Marathon, Battle of: (September 490 BC), in the Greco-Persian Wars, decisive battle fought on the Marathon plain of northeastern Attica in which the Athenians, in a single afternoon, repulsed the first Persian invasion ...
Maratta, Carlo: one of the leading painters of the Roman school in the later 17th century, and one of the last great masters of Baroque classicism, who (with Francesco Solimena) established the ...
Marattiaceae: the giant fern family, the only family of the fern order Marattiales, or, in some classification systems, one of four families in that order. The family contains as many as ...
Maravi: cluster of nine Bantu-speaking peoples living in the tree-studded grasslands of Malawi and along the lower Zambezi River. The two largest groups are the Chewa (or Cewa) and the Nyanja. ...
Maravi Confederacy: centralized system of government established in southern Africa about 1480. The members of the confederacy were related ethnolinguistic groups who had migrated from the north into what is now central ...
Marawi: chartered city, capital of Lanao del Sur province, north-central Mindanao, Philippines. It is located on the northern shore of Lake Lanao, 3,500 feet (1,100 metres) above sea level, and it ...
Marbeck, John: English composer, organist, and author, known for his setting of the Anglican liturgy.
marble: small, hard ball that is used in a variety of children's games and is named after the 18th-century practice of making the toy from marble chips. The object of marble ...
marble: granular limestone or dolomite (i.e., rock composed of calcium-magnesium carbonate) that has been recrystallized under the influence of heat, pressure, and aqueous solutions. Commercially, it includes all decorative calcium-rich rocks ...
marble bone disease: rare recessive hereditary abnormality in which the bones become extremely dense, hard, and brittle. The disease progresses as long as bone growth continues: the marrow cavities become filled with compact ...
Marble, Alice: American tennis player, known for her powerful serves and volleys, who dominated the women's game during the late 1930s.
marbled cat: (species Felis marmorata), rare Southeast Asian cat, family Felidae, often referred to as a miniature version of the unrelated clouded leopard. The marbled cat is about the size of a ...
marbled pottery: a type of ware obtained by mixing clays of various colours to imitate natural marbles or agate. The working of marbled pottery can be traced back at least as far ...
Marblehead: town (township), Essex county, northeastern Massachusetts, U.S. It lies on a rocky peninsula jutting into Massachusetts Bay, 18 miles (29 km) northeast of Boston. Its deep, narrow harbour is sheltered ...
Marbot, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcelin, baron de: general and author of memoirs of the Napoleonic period, whose book on war, Remarques critiques, prompted Napoleon to leave him a legacy.
Marburg: city, Hessen Land (state), central Germany. It lies on the Lahn River north of Frankfurt am Main.
Marburg, Colloquy of: important debate on the Lord's Supper held in Marburg, Germany, on October 1-4, 1529, between the Reformers of Germany and Switzerland. It was called because of a political situation. In ...
Marburg, Philipps University of: coeducational institution of higher learning at Marburg, Ger. Marburg was the first Protestant university in Germany. It was founded in 1527 by Philip the Magnanimous of Hesse as a state ...
Marbury v. Madison: (Feb. 24, 1803), landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, the first instance in which the high court declared an act of Congress unconstitutional, thus establishing the doctrine of judicial review.
Marbury, Elisabeth: American theatrical and literary agent who represented a stellar array of theatrical performers and writers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Marbut, Curtis Fletcher: American geologist and authority on soils who worked closely with experts from many countries to develop international classification systems for soil materials.
Marc, Franz: German painter and printmaker who is known for the intense mysticism of his paintings of animals. He was a founding member of Der Blaue Reiter ("The Blue Rider"), an association ...
Marca: port city, southern Somalia, on the Indian Ocean, about 45 miles (70 km) southwest of Mogadishu, the national capital and main port. The town, which was founded by Arab or ...
Marca-Relli, Conrad: American artist associated with Abstract Expressionism. He was the first to raise the art of collage to a scale and complexity comparable to monumental painting, paving the way for the ...
Marcabru: Gascon poet-musician and the earliest exponent of the trobar clus, an allusive and deliberately obscure poetic style in Provencal.
marcasite: an iron sulfide mineral that forms pale bronze-yellow orthorhombic crystals, usually twinned to characteristic cockscomb or sheaflike shapes; the names spear pyrites and cockscomb pyrites refer to the shape and ...
Marceau, Francois-Severin: French general, a notable young military hero of the early years of the French Revolutionary wars.
Marceau, Marcel: French mime of the 20th century whose silent portrayals are executed with eloquence, deceptive simplicity, and balletlike grace. His most celebrated characterization is Bip, a character half-Pierrot, half-Charlie Chaplin's tramp, ...
Marcel, Etienne: bourgeois leader, a clothier and provost of the merchants of Paris, who played a major part in the Paris revolution of 1355-58 and was for a time able to coerce ...
Marcel, Gabriel: philosopher, dramatist, and critic, usually regarded as the first French Existential philosopher.
Marcellinus, Saint: pope probably from 291/296 to 304, although the dates of his reign, as well as those of his predecessors Eutychianus and Gaius, are uncertain. His pontificate saw a long, tranquil ...
Marcello, Benedetto: Italian composer and writer, especially remembered for two works: the satirical pamphlet Il teatro alla moda (1720); and Estro poeticoarmonico (1724-26), a setting for voices and instruments of the first ...
Marcellus I, Saint: pope from May or June 308 to Jan. 16, 309. He succeeded St. Marcellinus after an interval of three or four years. The penances that he imposed on apostates resulting ...
Marcellus II: pope from April 9/10 to May 1, 1555. He was made cardinal in December 1539 by Pope Paul III, for whom he served in numerous politico-ecclesiastical missions. With Cardinal Giovanni ...
Marcellus, Marcus Claudius: Roman general who captured Syracuse during the Second Punic War (218-201). Although his successes have been exaggerated by the historian Livy, Marcellus deserved his sobriquet, "the sword of Rome."
Marcellus, Marcus Claudius: leading member of the Optimate (conservative senatorial aristocracy) and an uncompromising opponent of Julius Caesar. As consul in 51, Marcellus attempted to remove Caesar from his army command but was ...
Marcellus, Marcus Claudius: nephew of the emperor Augustus (reigned 27 BC-AD 14) and presumably chosen by him as heir, though Augustus himself denied it.
Marcellus, Theatre of: in Rome, building begun by Julius Caesar and completed by Augustus in 13 BC. It was dedicated in the name of Augustus' nephew, Marcus Claudius Marcellus (42-23 BC). According to ...
march: originally, musical form having an even metre with strongly accented first beats to facilitate military marching; many later examples, while retaining the military connotation, were not intended for actual marching. ...
March: third month of the Gregorian calendar. It was named after Mars, the Roman god of war. Originally, March was the first month of the Roman calendar. See month and the ...
March First Movement: series of demonstrations for Korean national independence from Japan that began on March 1, 1919, in the Korean capital city of Seoul and soon spread throughout the country. Before the ...
March fly: any stout, armoured insect of the family Bibionidae (order Diptera), with strong spurs on its legs. March flies are commonly seen around flowers during spring and early summer. The dark, ...
March Laws: measures enacted by the Hungarian Diet at Pozsony (modern Bratislava) during the Revolution of 1848 that created a modern national Magyar state. After revolutions had broken out in Paris (Feb. ...
March, Ausias: first major poet to write in Catalan, whose verse greatly influenced other poets both of his own time and of the modern period.
March, Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of, 3rd Earl Of Ulster: friend of the Lancastrian king Henry V and an unwilling royal claimant advanced by rebel barons.
March, Francis Andrew: American language scholar and lexicographer who was a principal founder of modern comparative Anglo-Saxon (Old English) linguistics.
March, Fredric: versatile American stage and film actor, adept at both romantic leads and complex character roles.