chancellor of France who succeeded in temporarily (1771-74) depriving the Parlements (high courts of justice) of the political powers that had enabled them to block the reforms proposed by the ...
statesman and five-time prime minister of Spain whose vision led him to undertake a series of democratic reforms to prevent revolution and foster a constitutional monarchy. His tolerance and lack ...
secretary of state under King Louis XV and chief royal adviser during the first seven years of the reign of King Louis XVI. By dissuading Louis XVI from instituting economic ...
transatlantic passenger liner of the Cunard Line, called the "Grand Old Lady of the Atlantic." It was launched in 1906 and made its maiden voyage in 1907; thereafter, it held ...
French novelist, journalist, and critic, a practitioner of the avant-garde school of nouveau roman ("new novel") writers, who, in the 1950s and '60s, spurned the traditional novel.
novelist, essayist, poet, playwright, journalist, and winner in 1952 of the Nobel Prize for Literature. He belonged to the lineage of French Catholic writers who examined the ugly realities of ...
duke (1541-53) and later elector (1547-53) of Saxony, whose clever manipulation of alliances and disputes gained the Albertine branch of the Wettin dynasty extensive lands and the electoral dignity.
outstanding general and emperor (582-602) who helped transform the shattered late Roman Empire into a new and well-organized medieval Byzantine Empire.
hereditary stadholder (1585-1625) of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, or Dutch Republic, successor to his father, William I the Silent. His development of military strategy, tactics, and engineering made ...
Australian poet, best known for his book To God: From the Warring Nations (1917), a powerful indictment of the waste, cruelty, and stupidity of war. He was also the author ...
Christian soldier whose alleged martyrdom, with his comrades, inspired a cult still practiced today. Among those martyred with him were SS. Vitalis, Candidus, and Exuperius.
high Alpine valley, about 80 miles (130 km) long, in southeastern France. Drained by the Arc River, a tributary of the Isere, it consists of a succession of large basins ...
member of a congregation of French Benedictine monks founded in 1618 and devoted to strict observance of the Benedictine Rule and especially to historical and ecclesiastical scholarship. Dom Gregory Tarrisse ...
state in northwestern Africa. With an area of 398,000 square miles (1,030,700 square kilometres), it has the shape of an indented rectangle measuring about 930 miles (1,500 kilometres) from north ...
island country, the central independent island state of the Mascarene group, lying about 500 miles (800 km) east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It is situated at latitude 20°18' ...
picture gallery in The Hague housed in a palace (1633-44) designed by Jacob van Campen and built by Pieter Post for Prince John Maurice of Nassau. The collection, opened to ...
Byzantine scholar and ecclesiastic, author of sermons, poems and epigrams, letters, a saint's life, and a large collection of canons, or church hymns (many unpublished).
French writer and political theorist, a major intellectual influence in early 20th-century Europe whose "integral nationalism" anticipated some of the ideas of fascism.
(c. 321-185 BC), in ancient India, a state centred at Pataliputra (later Patna) near the junction of the Son and Ganges rivers. In the wake of Alexander the Great's death, ...
any of a family of bolt-action rifles designed by Peter Paul Mauser (1838-1914), a German who had worked in an arms plant before entering the German army in 1859. Mauser's ...
large and impressive sepulchral monument. The word is derived from Mausolus, ruler of Caria, in whose memory his widow Artemisia raised a splendid tomb at Halicarnassus c. 353-c. 350 BC. ...
Persian satrap (governor), though virtually an independent ruler, of Caria, in southwestern Anatolia, from 377/376 to 353. He is best known from the name of his monumental tomb, the so-called ...
French sociologist and anthropologist whose contributions include a highly original comparative study of the relation between forms of exchange and social structure. His views on the theory and method of ...
one of the most notorious Nazi concentration camps, located near the village of Mauthausen, on the Danube River, 12 miles (20 km) east of Linz, Austria. It was established in ...
Dutch Romantic painter who, like his friends Jozef Israels and the three Maris brothers, was profoundly influenced by the French landscape painter Camille Corot and the Barbizon school.
African emperor who was installed as the ruler of the great Mwene Matapa empire by the Portuguese. His conversion to Christianity enabled the Portuguese to extend their commercial influence into ...
fraternity of Sufis (Muslim mystics) founded in Konya (Qonya), Anatolia, by the Persian Sufi poet Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi (d. 1273), whose popular title mawlana (Arabic: "our master") gave the order ...
official scientific research organization of Germany. It is headquartered in Munich. It was founded in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft), but its name was changed in 1948 ...
Belgian Liberal statesman who as burgomaster of Brussels at the beginning of World War I gained international fame for his resistance to the German occupation.
South American Indians speaking related languages of the Maxakali branch of the Macro-Ge language family. The tribes-Maxakali, Macuni, Kumanaxo, Kapoxo, Paname, and Monoxo-live in the mountains near the border between ...
Somali religious and nationalist leader (called the "Mad Mullah" by the British) who for 20 years led armed resistance to the British, Italian, and Ethiopian colonial forces in Somaliland. Because ...
large, roofed hall in Rome, begun by the emperor Maxentius and finished by Constantine about AD 313. This huge building, the greatest of the Roman basilicas, covered about 7,000 square ...
Roman emperor from 306 to 312. His father, the emperor Maximian, abdicated with Diocletian in 305. In the new tetrarchy (two augusti with a caesar under each) that was set ...
genus of more than 300 species of tropical American orchids, family Orchidaceae, that grow on other plants or on soil at high altitudes. Some species are less than 5 cm ...
first fully automatic machine gun (q.v.), developed by engineer and inventor Hiram Maxim in about 1884, while he was residing in England. It was manufactured by Vickers and was sometimes ...
archduke of Austria and the emperor of Mexico, a man whose naive liberalism proved unequal to the international intrigues that had put him on the throne and to the brutal ...
archduke of Austria, German king, and Holy Roman emperor (1493-1519), who made his family, the Habsburgs, dominant in 16th-century Europe. He added vast lands to the traditional Austrian holdings, securing ...
first Wittelsbach elector of Bavaria (1799-1806) and first king of Bavaria (1806-25), whose alliance with Napoleon gained him a monarch's crown and enabled him to turn the scattered, poorly administered ...
king of Bavaria from 1848 to 1864, whose attempt to create a "third force" in German affairs by an alliance of smaller states led by Bavaria, foundered on the opposition ...
Holy Roman emperor from 1564, whose liberal religious policies permitted an interval of peace between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Germany after the first struggles of the Reformation. A humanist ...
elector of Bavaria from 1679 and an able soldier whose quest for dynastic aggrandizement led him into a series of wars, first as an ally of the House of Habsburg, ...
elector of Bavaria (1745-77), son of the Holy Roman emperor Charles VII. By the Peace of Fussen signed on April 22, 1745, he obtained restitution of his dominions lost by ...
chancellor of Germany, appointed on Oct. 3, 1918, because his humanitarian reputation made the emperor William II think him capable of bringing World War I expeditiously to an end.
first soldier who rose through the ranks to become Roman emperor (235-238). His reign marked the beginning of a half century of civil war in the empire. Originally from Thrace, ...
Roman emperor from 310 to 313 and a persistent persecutor of the Christians. He was a nephew of Galerius, one of the two men named augustus after the abdication of ...
Neoplatonist philosopher and theurgic magician whose most spectacular achievement was the animation of a statue of Hecate. Through his magic he gained a powerful influence over the mind of the ...
the most important Byzantine theologian of the 7th century, whose commentaries on the early 6th-century Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and on the Greek Church Fathers considerably influenced the theology ...
Greek Orthodox monk, Humanist scholar, and linguist, whose principal role in the translation of the Scriptures and philosophical-theological literature into the Russian language made possible the dissemination of Byzantine culture ...
the tallest mountain range on Venus, rising to about 11 km (7 miles) above the planet's mean radius. It forms part of the continent-sized upland called Ishtar Terra and lies ...
hypothetical intelligent being (or a functionally equivalent device) capable of detecting and reacting to the motions of individual molecules. It was imagined by James Clerk Maxwell in 1871, to illustrate ...
four equations that, together, form a complete description of the production and interrelation of electric and magnetic fields. The physicist James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century based his description ...
American columnist, songwriter, and professional hostess, famous for her lavish and animated parties that feted the high-society and entertainment personalities of her day.
Scottish physicist best known for his formulation of electromagnetic theory. He is regarded by most modern physicists as the scientist of the 19th century who had the greatest influence on ...
