Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Shop

0-9

McPherson Range ... Medelpad

McPherson Range: mountain range, eastern spur of the Great Dividing Range, eastern Australia; its crest constitutes the Queensland-New South Wales border from Point Danger to Wallangara (140 miles [225 km]). Occupying a ...
McPherson, Aimee Semple: controversial American Pentecostal evangelist and early radio preacher whose International Church of the Foursquare Gospel brought her wealth, notoriety, and a following numbering in the tens of thousands.
McPherson, James Alan: African-American short-story writer whose realistic, character-driven fiction examines racial tension, the mysteries of love, and the pain of isolation. Despite his coming of age as a writer during the black ...
McPherson, James B.: Union general of the American Civil War about whose death General Ulysses S. Grant is reported to have said, "The country has lost one of its best soldiers, and I ...
McQueen, Steve: macho, laconic American movie star of the 1960s and '70s. Cool and stoical, his loner heroes spoke through actions and rarely with words.
McRae, Carmen: American jazz vocalist and pianist who outgrew an early emulation of vocalist Billie Holiday to become a distinctive stylist, known for her smoky voice and her lyrical, melodic variations-mostly on ...
McReynolds, James: U.S. Supreme Court justice (1914-41) who was a leading force in striking down the early New Deal program of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
McWilliam, F.E.: Irish sculptor who worked in wood, stone, and bronze to create Surrealist abstract and semiabstract sculptures.
Mdina: town, west-central Malta, adjoining Rabat, west of Valletta. Possibly Bronze Age in origin, it has Punic, Greek, and Roman ruins. The name derives from the Arabic word madinah ("town," or ...
me: city, Tokyo to (metropolis), east-central Honshu, Japan, on the Tama River. An early trade centre and post town, it was known as a weaving centre for cotton ...
Me 109: 109, fighter aircraft of Nazi Germany, used to great effect in World War II. Originally designated the Bf 109 for Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (BFW; Bavarian Airplane Company) when it was first ...
Me'assef: (Hebrew: Collector), first Hebrew publication of the Haskala cultural movement within central and eastern European Jewry in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Founded in Konigsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia), ...
mead: alcoholic beverage fermented from honey and water; sometimes yeast is added to accelerate the fermentation. Strictly speaking, the term metheglin (from the Welsh meddyglyn, "physician," for the ...
Mead Lawrence, Andrea: first American Alpine skier to win two gold medals in a single Winter Olympics. Her Olympic victories, coupled with her U.S. championship titles in the downhill, slalom, and Alpine combined ...
Mead, George Herbert: American philosopher prominent in both social psychology and the development of Pragmatism.
Mead, Lake: reservoir of Hoover Dam, one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, on the Arizona-Nevada border, 25 miles (40 km) east of Las Vegas, Nev., U.S. Formed by the ...
Mead, Margaret: American anthropologist whose great fame owed as much to the force of her personality and her outspokenness as it did to the quality of her scientific work.
Mead, Richard: leading 18th-century British physician who contributed to the study of preventive medicine.
Meade, George G: American army officer who played a critical role in the American Civil War by defeating the Confederate Army at Gettysburg, Pa. (July 1863). As commander of the 3rd Military District ...
Meade, James Edward: British economist whose work on international economic policy procured him (with Bertil Ohlin) the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1977.
meadow grasshopper: any member of the long-horned grasshopper subfamily Conocephalinae (family Tettigoniidae). The slender, small to medium-sized grasshoppers are found in grassy meadows near lakes and ponds. When disturbed, they enter the ...
meadow rue: any of approximately 100 species of perennial herbaceous plants constituting the genus Thalictrum of the buttercup family (Ranunculaceae). They occur in the North Temperate Zone and in South America and ...
meadow vole: one of the most common and prolific small mammals in North America. Weighing less than 50 grams (1.8 ounces), this stout vole is 15 to 20 cm (5.9 to 7.9 ...
meadowlark: any member of the genus Sturnella, belonging to the family Icteridae (order Passeriformes). Meadowlarks are sharp-billed plump birds, 20 to 28 cm (8 to 11 inches) long. The two species ...
Meadows, Earle: American pole-vaulter who, tied with Bill Sefton, set the world record in 1937 of 4.54 m (14 feet 11 inches). Meadows and Sefton were nicknamed "the Heavenly Twins."
Meads, Colin Earl: New Zealander rugby player and former team captain (1971) whose outstanding performance as a lock forward made him a national figure. Meads was a farmer before becoming an athlete, and ...
Meadville: city, seat of Crawford county, Pennsylvania, U.S., on the French Creek, 87 miles (140 km) north of Pittsburgh. The oldest settlement in the northwestern part of the state, it was ...
Meagher, Thomas Francis: Irish revolutionary leader and orator who served as a Union officer during the American Civil War (1861-65).
mealybug: any small sap-sucking insect of the family Pseudococcidae (order Homoptera). They are worldwide in distribution and attack citrus trees and potted plants. Observed most frequently is the ovoid, sluggish mature ...
mean: in mathematics, a quantity that has a value intermediate between those of the extreme members of some set. Several kinds of mean exist, and the method of calculating a mean ...
mean free path: average distance an object will move between collisions. The actual distance a particle, such as a molecule in a gas, will move before a collision, called free path, cannot generally ...
mean life: in radioactivity, average lifetime of all the nuclei of a particular unstable atomic species. This time interval may be thought of as the sum of the lifetimes of all the ...
mean-value theorem: theorem in mathematical analysis dealing with a type of average useful for approximations and for establishing other theorems, such as the fundamental theorem of calculus.
meander: extreme U-bend in a stream, usually occurring in a series. Meanders are most often formed in alluvial materials (stream-deposited sediments) and thus freely adjust their shapes and shift downstream according ...
meantone temperament: system of tuning keyboard instruments, prevalent from c. 1500 through the 18th century. It enabled keyboard instruments to play in five or six closely related keys, rather than in only ...
Meany, George: U.S. labour leader, president of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) from the time the two unions merged in 1955 until 1979, when he retired.
Mears, Helen Farnsworth: American sculptor best remembered for her large-scale public commissions in bronze and bas-relief.
measles: contagious viral disease marked by fever, cough, conjunctivitis, and a characteristic rash. Measles is commonest in children but may appear in older persons who have escaped it earlier in life. ...
measure: in mathematics, generalization of the concepts of length and area to arbitrary sets of points not composed of intervals or rectangles. Abstractly, a measure is any rule for associating with ...
Measure for Measure: a "dark" comedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written about 1603-04 and published in the First Folio of 1623 from a transcript of an authorial draft. The play examines ...
measurement: the process of associating numbers with physical quantities and phenomena. Measurement is fundamental to the sciences; to engineering, construction, and other technical fields; and to almost all everyday activities. For ...
measurement system: any of the systems used in the process of associating numbers with physical quantities and phenomena. Although the concept of weights and measures today includes such factors as temperature, luminosity, ...
measuring worm: (family Geometridae), larva of any member of a large, cosmopolitan class of moths (order Lepidoptera). Because it lacks the middle pair of legs, it moves in a characteristic "inching," or ...
meat processing: preparation of meat for human consumption.
Meath: county in the province of Leinster, northeastern Ireland. It is bounded by Counties Monaghan (north), Louth (northeast), Dublin (southeast), Kildare (south), Offaly (southwest), Westmeath (west), and Cavan (northwest); the Irish ...
Meath, Hugh de Lacy, 1st Lord of: one of the Anglo-Norman justiciars of Ireland who went to Ireland with England's King Henry II in 1171.
Meaux: town, Seine-et-Marne departement, Ile-de-France region, northern France, east-northeast of Paris. Situated in a loop of the Marne River in an intensively cultivated region, it has been an agricultural market centre ...
Mecca: city, western Saudi Arabia, located in the Sirat Mountains, inland from the Red Sea coast. It is the holiest of Muslim cities. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was born in ...
Mechain, Pierre: French astronomer and hydrographer who, with Jean Delambre, measured the meridian arc from Dunkirk, Fr., to Barcelona. The measurement was made between 1792 and 1798 to establish a basis for ...
mechanical advantage: force-amplifying effectiveness of a simple machine, such as a lever, an inclined plane, a wedge, a wheel and axle, a pulley system, or a jackscrew. The theoretical mechanical advantage of ...
mechanical efficiency: measure of the effectiveness with which a mechanical system performs. It is usually the ratio of the power delivered by a mechanical system to the power supplied to it, and, ...
mechanical energy: sum of the kinetic energy, or energy of motion, and the potential energy, or energy stored in a system by reason of the position of its parts. Mechanical energy is ...
mechanical engineering: the branch of engineering concerned with the design, manufacture, installation, and operation of engines and machines and with manufacturing processes. It is particularly concerned with forces and motion.
mechanical engineering: the branch of engineering concerned with the design, manufacture, installation, and operation of engines, machines, and manufacturing processes.
mechanics: science concerned with the motion of bodies under the action of forces, including the special case in which a body remains at rest. Of first concern in the problem of ...
mechanics' institute: a voluntary organization common in Britain and the United States between 1820 and 1860 for educating manual workers. Ideally such an institute was to have a library, a museum, a ...
mechanism: in philosophy, the predominant form of Materialism, which holds that natural phenomena can and should be explained by reference to matter and motion and their laws. Upholders of this philosophy ...
mechanism: in mechanical construction, the means employed to transmit and modify motion in a machine or any assemblage of mechanical parts. The chief characteristic of the mechanism of a machine is ...
mechanoreception: ability of an animal to detect and respond to certain kinds of stimuli-notably touch, sound, and changes in pressure or posture-in its environment.
Mechelen: municipality, Antwerp province, north-central Belgium. It lies along the Dijle River, a few miles north-northeast of Brussels. St. Rumoldus (Rombold) was said to have come there in 756. In the ...
Mechitarist: a congregation of Roman Catholic Armenian monks, widely recognized for their contribution to the renaissance of Armenian philology, literature, and culture early in the 19th century and particularly for the ...
Meckel, Johann Friedrich: German anatomist who first described the embryonic cartilage (now called Meckel's cartilage) that ossifies to form part of the lower jaw in fishes, amphibians, and birds. He also described a ...
Mecklenburg: historic region of northeastern Germany, located along the Baltic Sea coastal plain, from the Bight of Lubeck about 100 miles (160 km) eastward. It is now included in the German ...
Mecklenburg-West Pomerania: Land (state), northeastern Germany. It extends about 100 miles (160 km) along the Baltic Sea coastal plain, from the Bight of Lubeck on the west to the Darss Peninsula on ...
Meconopsis: genus of about 45 species of herbaceous plants of the poppy family (Papaveraceae) native to Eurasia, several of which are grown for their poppylike flowers. The only European representative is ...
medal: piece of metal struck with a design to commemorate a person, place, or event. Medals can be of various sizes and shapes, ranging from large medallions to small plaques, or ...
medal: piece of metal struck with a design to commemorate a person, place, or event. Medals can be of various sizes and shapes, ranging from large medallions to small plaques, or ...
medallion carpet: any floor covering on which the decoration is dominated by a single symmetrical centrepiece, such as a star-shaped, circular, quatrefoiled, or octagonal figure. The name, however, is sometimes also given ...
Medan: kotamadya (municipality) and capital, Sumatera Utara provinsi ("province"), Indonesia. It lies along the Deli River in northeastern Sumatra. Medan's harbour is Belawan, 12 miles (19 km) north on the Strait ...
Medawar, Sir Peter B.: Brazilian-born British zoologist who received with Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1960 for developing and proving the theory of acquired immunological tolerance, a ...
Medb: (Celtic: "Drunken Woman"), legendary queen of Connaught (Connacht) in Ireland. In the Irish epic tale Tain Bo Cuailnge, she led her forces against those of Ulster and fought in the ...
Mede: one of an Indo-European people, related to the Persians, who entered northeastern Iran probably as early as the 17th century BC and settled in the plateau land that came to ...
Medea: in Greek mythology, an enchantress who helped Jason, leader of the Argonauts, to obtain the Golden Fleece from her father, King Aeetes of Colchis. She was perhaps a goddess and ...
Medea: town, north-central Algeria. It is situated on a plateau 56 miles (90 km) south of Algiers. Shadowed by Mount Nador (3,693 feet [1,126 m]) to the northwest, the town is ...
Medellin: city, capital of Antioquia departamento, northwestern Colombia. It lies along the Porce River (a tributary of the Cauca) at an elevation of 5,000 feet (1,500 m) above sea level, in ...
Medelpad: landskap (province) in the administrative lan (county) of Vasternorrland, northeastern Sweden. Its land area of 2,725 square miles (7,058 square km) is bounded on the south by the landskap of ...