city, Nagano Prefecture (ken), central Honshu, Japan, in a mountain basin on the Narai-gawa (Narai River). It is noted for its silk industry, which dates from feudal times. Mulberry and ...
renowned Japanese scholar and haikai poet of the early Tokugawa period (1603-1867) who founded the Teitoku (or Teimon) school of haikai poetry. Teitoku raised haikai-comic renga ("linked verses") from which ...
(Japanese: "festival"), in general, any of a wide variety of civil and religious ceremonies in Japan; more particularly, the shrine festivals of Shinto. Matsuri vary according to the shrine, the ...
Japanese industrialist who founded the Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., the largest manufacturer of consumer electric appliances in the world.
capital, Ehime ken (prefecture), northwestern Shikoku, Japan. It is a seaport that faces the Inland Sea and lies on the fertile Dogo Plain. Matsuyama is the largest city on Shikoku, ...
city, Mie ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan, facing Ise Bay. It was a castle town and commercial centre during the Tokugawa era (1603-1867), when cotton spinning was introduced there. Agricultural products ...
(Sanskrit: "Fish"), first of the 10 avatars (incarnations) of the Hindu god Vishnu. In this appearance Vishnu saved the world from a great flood. Manu, the first man, caught a ...
first human guru, or spiritual teacher, of the Natha cult, a popular Indian religious movement combining elements of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Hatha Yoga, a form of yoga that stresses breath ...
former township in Kerala state, southwestern India. It lies adjacent to the city of Cochin on the Arabian Sea coast. In 1970 Mattancheri township was incorporated with the Cochin urban ...
Jewish priest and landowner of Modein, near Jerusalem, who in 167 defied the decree of Antiochus IV Epiphanes of Syria to Hellenize the Jews; he fled to the Judaean hills ...
crude mixture of molten sulfides formed as an intermediate product of the smelting of sulfide ores of metals, especially copper, nickel, and lead. Instead of being smelted directly to metal, ...
Italian Socialist leader whose assassination by Fascists shocked world opinion and shook Benito Mussolini's regime. The Matteotti Crisis, as the event came to be known, initially threatened to bring about ...
one of the best-known mountains (14,692 feet [4,478 metres]) in the Alps, straddling the frontier between Switzerland and Italy, 6 miles (10 km) southwest of the village of Zermatt, Switzerland. ...
Italian explorer who was the first European to traverse the whole of the African continent north of the equator from Egypt to the Gulf of Guinea. The journey took him ...
German football (soccer) player who set a world record by making his 144th international appearance on February 23, 2000, in a game against The Netherlands, the same national team against ...
English pianist, teacher, and composer noted for his detailed examination of the problems of piano technique, the interpretation of music, and the psychology of teaching.
Dutch-born American geologist and topographer whose mapping of some of the most rugged and scenic features of the western United States was instrumental in the establishment of several notable national ...
East German swimmer who is considered one of the greatest backstrokers of all time. Undefeated in major backstroke competitions between 1967 and 1974, Matthes set 16 world records and won ...
active volcano in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, within the French overseas territory of New Caledonia but disputed by Vanuatu. It was sighted in 1788 by the English mariner Thomas Gilbert ...
first of the four New Testament Gospels (narratives recounting the life and death of Jesus Christ), and, with Mark and Luke, one of the three so-called Synoptic Gospels (i.e., those ...
football (soccer) player, an outside right forward considered by many to be one of the greatest dribblers in the history of the sport. In 1965 he became the first British ...
Holy Roman emperor from 1612, who, in a reversal of the policy of his father, Maximilian II, sponsored a Catholic revival in the Habsburg domains that, despite his moderating influence, ...
king of Hungary (1458-90), who attempted to reconstruct the Hungarian state after decades of feudal anarchy, chiefly by means of financial, military, judiciary, and administrative reforms. His nickname, Corvinus, derived ...
American novelist, naturalist, and wilderness writer whose work deals with the destructive effects of encroaching technology on preindustrial cultures and the natural environment. Both his fiction and nonfiction works combine ...
Italian physician and botanist whose DiPedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo libri cinque (1544) is an Italian translation, with critical commentary, of Dioscorides' classical 1st-century Greek herbal. It served as one of ...
city, Coles county, east-central Illinois, U.S. Mattoon lies near the Little Wabash River (impounded to form Lake Mattoon), about 45 miles (70 km) south of Champaign. Originally called Pegtown (for ...
a Muslim orthodox school of theology named after its founder Abu Mansur Muhammad al-Maturidi (d. 944). The Maturidiyah is similar in basic outlook to another orthodox school, that of al-Ash'ari ...
city, capital of Monagas state, northeastern Venezuela, on the Rio Guarapiche, between the easternmost outliers of the Andean highlands and the Orinoco Delta. Founded in 1710 by Capuchin missionaries, the ...
Irish clergyman, dramatist, and author of Gothic romances. He has been called "the last of the Goths," as his best known work, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), is considered the last ...
Spanish novelist known for her sympathetic treatment of the lives of children and adolescents, their feelings of betrayal and isolation, and their rites of passage.
Russian diplomat and statesman who was a friend and influential adviser of Tsar Alexis of Russia (ruled 1645-76) and did much to introduce western European culture into Russia.
a stone pillar erected on elevated ground beside a sacrificial altar. It was considered sacred to the god it symbolized and had a wooden pole (ashera) nearby to signify a ...
unleavened bread eaten by Jews during the holiday of Passover (Pesah) in commemoration of their Exodus from Egypt. The rapid departure from Egypt did not allow for the fermentation of ...
steep natural rampart along the western rim of the Great Rift Valley in western Kenya, west and south of the town of Nakuru; it rises to more than 10,000 feet ...
militant African nationalist movement that originated in the 1950s among the Kikuyu people of Kenya. The Mau Mau (origin of the name is uncertain) advocated violent resistance to British domination ...
town, Nord departement, Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, northern France, on the Sambre River, near the Belgian frontier, south of Mons. Maubeuge (Latin: Malbodium, signifying "bad place or dwelling") grew up around the ...
explorer who made geologic and archaeological discoveries in southern Africa, notably goldfields in Hartley Hills (1867) and the ruins of the ancient city of Zimbabwe.
a nickel arsenide mineral with chemical composition approximating Ni3As2 or Ni11As8, assigned to the group of sulfide minerals. It often occurs with niccolite (to which it alters), as at Mansfeld, ...
village, situated near the River Ayr in East Ayrshire council area, historic county of Ayrshire, Scotland, and closely associated with the Scottish national poet, Robert Burns. It is the site ...
American physicist and engineer, coinventor in 1946, with John P. Eckert, of the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), the first general-purpose electronic computer.
Pleistocene locality on the Neckar River of Germany and the name of a Pleistocene deposit, the Mauer Sands (the Pleistocene epoch began about 1,600,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 ...
German athlete who won a gold medal for the discus throw at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, where whe was portrayed by Germany's Nazi government as an ideal model ...
English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer whose work is characterized by a clear unadorned style, cosmopolitan settings, and a shrewd understanding of human nature.
French mineralogist and crystallographer who first studied the structure of the mica group of minerals by X-ray-diffraction analysis. His work was one of the earliest contributions to the systematic study ...
volcanic island, Maui county, Hawaii, U.S. It is separated from Molokai (northwest) by the Pailolo Channel, from Hawaii (southeast) by the Alenuihaha Channel, and from the small islands of Lanai ...
American cartoonist who gained initial fame for his sardonic drawings of the life of the World War II combat soldier and who later became well known for editorial cartoons dealing ...
region, central Chile. It faces the Pacific Ocean on the west and borders Argentina on the east. Created in 1974, it comprises Curico, Talca, Cauquenes, and Linares provincias. Its area ...
river formed near Fort Wayne, Ind., U.S., by the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Marys rivers. It flows northeast into Ohio, past Defiance and on to Toledo, where ...
village, northwestern Botswana. It lies at the southern edge of the Okavango Swamp, northeast of Lake Ngami. The traditional capital of the Tswana people, Maun is the centre of the ...
dormant volcano, north-central Hawaii island, Hawaii, U.S. The focus of a state forest preserve, it is the highest point in the state (13,796 feet [4,205 metres] above sea level). Mauna ...
astronomical observatory in Hawaii, U.S., that has become one of the most important in the world owing to its outstanding observational conditions. The Mauna Kea Observatory is operated by the ...
volcano, south-central Hawaii Island, Hawaii, U.S., and a part of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park (established as Hawaii National Park in 1916). One of the largest single mountain masses in the ...
the Thursday before Easter, observed in commemoration of Jesus Christ's institution of the Eucharist. The name is taken from an anthem sung in Roman Catholic churches on that day: "Mandatum ...
