Japanese politician and one of the samurai leaders who in 1868 overthrew the Tokugawa family, which had ruled Japan for 264 years, and restored the government of the emperor. After ...
politician who twice served as prime minister of Japan (1898; 1914-16). He organized the Rikken Kaishinto ("Progressive Party") and founded Waseda University.
founder of one of the largest zaibatsu, or gigantic industrial-financial combines that dominated the Japanese economy throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
active volcano, northern Tanzania, East Africa, located at the southern end of Lake Natron. It rises to an elevation of 9,442 ft (2,878 m) and is one of the many ...
the first effective king of all Norway and the country's patron saint, who achieved a 12-year respite from Danish domination and extensively increased the acceptance of Christianity. His religious code ...
king of Norway (1066-93) who guided the nation through one of its most prosperous periods, maintaining an extended peace rare in medieval Norwegian history. He also strengthened the organization of ...
king of Denmark (as Olaf III, 1376-87) and of Norway (1380-87). He was the son of Haakon VI and of Margaret (Margrete), daughter of Valdemar IV, king of Denmark.
town, northern Iceland. It lies on Olafs Fjord, a small inlet indenting the western coastline of Eyja Fjord. Olafsfjordhur is situated 39 miles (63 km) north of Akureyri, the largest ...
Hungarian-American chemist who won the 1994 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for work conducted in the early 1960s that isolated the positively charged, electron-deficient fragments of hydrocarbons known as carbocations (or ...
in Jewish theology, either "the world after death" or the new creation or restoration of the world that is to follow the messianic millennium. Because this latter interpretation stemmed from ...
(Hebrew: "this world"), in Jewish theology, present life on earth, as opposed to 'olam ha-ba ("the world to come"). Though 'olam ha-ze is full of misery and injustice, one's view ...
island and landskap (province) in the Baltic Sea, lan (county) of Kalmar, Sweden. It is connected to Kalmar on the Swedish mainland by a road bridge across Kalmar Sound. With ...
city, seat (1858) of Johnson county, northeastern Kansas, U.S. Olathe, which lies 20 miles (32 km) southwest of Kansas City, was founded in 1857 on the Santa Fe Trail. Its ...
in cosmology, paradox relating to the problem of why the sky is dark at night. If the universe is endless and uniformly populated with luminous stars, then every line of ...
town, Sassari provincia, northeastern Sardinia, Italy, on the Gulf of Olbia, an inlet of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Originating as the Greek colony of Olbia, it later passed to the Romans ...
German architect who was a cofounder of the Wiener Sezession, the Austrian manifestation of the Art Nouveau movement. Olbrich was a student of Otto Wagner, one of the founders of ...
American author, attorney, philosopher, and cofounder of the Theosophical Society, a religious sect incorporating aspects of Buddhism, Brahmanism, and Christian esotericism.
in human beings, the final stage of the normal life span. Definitions of old age are not consistent from the standpoints of biology, demography (conditions of mortality and morbidity), employment ...
member of a group of Russian religious dissenters who refused to accept the liturgical reforms imposed upon the Russian Orthodox Church by the patriarch of Moscow Nikon (1652-58). Numbering millions ...
historic provincial region, north-central Spain, generally including the limits reached by the kingdom of Castile in the 11th century. Touching the Bay of Biscay on the north, it is separated ...
any of the groups of Western Christians who believe themselves to maintain in complete loyalty the doctrine and traditions of the undivided church but who separated from the see of ...
small, independent Roman Catholic church in The Netherlands that dates from the early 18th century. A schism developed in the Roman Catholic church in Holland in 1702 when Petrus Codde, ...
Slavic language based primarily on the Macedonian (South Slavic) dialects around Thessalonica (Thessaloniki). It was used in the 9th century by the missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius, who were natives ...
initial phase of ancient Greek comedy (c. 5th century BC), known through the works of Aristophanes. Old Comedy plays are characterized by an exuberant and high-spirited satire of public persons ...
ancient North American culture of the Pacific Northwest that appeared about 9000 or 10,000 BC and persisted until about 5000 BC in some areas. Subsistence was based on hunting, fishing, ...
public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. It is a sea- and space-grant institution. The university comprises the Darden College of Education and colleges of arts and ...
language spoken and written in England before 1100; it is the ancestor of Middle English and Modern English. Scholars place Old English in the Anglo-Frisian group of West Germanic languages.
shaggy working dog developed in early 18th-century England and used primarily in driving sheep and cattle to market. A compact dog with a shuffling, bearlike gait, the dog stands 53 ...
most famous, though not the highest, of all North American geysers, at the head of the Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, U.S. It was so named in ...
any of the West Germanic dialects spoken in the highlands of southern Germany, Switzerland, and Austria until the end of the 11th century. High German differs most noticeably from the ...
simple card game popular with young children. It takes its name from a 19th-century specially illustrated deck of cards showing colourful characters in matching pairs, plus a single old maid ...
classical North Germanic language used from roughly 1150 to 1350. It is the literary language of the Icelandic sagas, skaldic poems, and Eddas. The term Old Norse embraces Old Norwegian ...
historic spit and point, part of the city of Hampton, southeastern Virginia, U.S. It lies at the southeast end of the peninsula between the James and York rivers and is ...
West Baltic language extinct since the 17th century; it was spoken in the former German area of East Prussia (now in Poland and Russia). The poorly attested Yotvingian dialect was ...
thick sequence of Devonian rocks (formed from 408 to 360 million years ago) that are continental rather than marine in origin and occur in northwestern Europe. They have been extensively ...
first basilica of St. Peter's in Rome, a five-aisled basilican-plan church with apsed transept at the west end that was begun between 326 and 333 at the order of the ...
earliest recorded form of Low German, spoken by the Saxon tribes between the Rhine and Elbe rivers and between the North Sea and the Harz Mountains from the 9th until ...
town (township), Middlesex county, southern Connecticut, U.S. It lies on Long Island Sound at the mouth of the Connecticut River. The town includes the resort borough of Fenwick, Old Saybrook ...
any of more than 180 species of large-eyed fruit-eating or flower-feeding bats widely distributed from Africa to Southeast Asia and Australia. Some species are solitary, some gregarious. Most roost in ...
usually Cephalocereus senilis, a columnar species of cactus (family Cactaceae), native to central Mexico. Because of the wisps of whitish hair along its stem, it is a popular potted plant ...
distinguished soldier and martyred leader of the Lollards, a late medieval English sect derived from the teachings of John Wycliffe. He was an approximate model for 16th-century English dramatic characters, ...
lawyer, statesman, and, after William I the Silent, the second founding father of an independent Netherlands. He mobilized Dutch forces under William's son Maurice and devised the anti-Spanish triple alliance ...
city, Lower Saxony Land (state), northwestern Germany. Situated at the junction of the Hunte River and the Kusten Canal, which links the Hunte and Ems rivers, about ...
former German state, successively a countship, a duchy, a grand duchy, and a Land (state) before it became a Regierungsbezirk (administrative district) of Lower Saxony Land in West Germany in ...
urban area and metropolitan borough, metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, England. The historic town of Oldham and the western part of the borough lie in the historic county of Lancashire, ...
river in southern Alberta, Canada, one of the major headstreams of the South Saskatchewan River. Rising in the Canadian Rocky Mountains from several sources, it flows eastward through Lethbridge, past ...
toolmaking tradition characterized by crudely worked pebble (chopping) tools from the early Paleolithic, dating to about 2 million years ago and not formed after a standardized pattern. The tools are ...
American inventor and automobile manufacturer, designer of the three-horsepower, curved-dash Oldsmobile, the first commercially successful American-made automobile and the first to use a progressive assembly system, which foreshadowed modern mass-production ...
paleoanthropological site in the eastern Serengeti Plain, within the boundaries of the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in northern Tanzania. It is a steep-sided ravine consisting of two branches that have a ...
the olive family, belonging to the order Scrophulariales and named for the economically important olive tree (species Olea europaea). A number of plants in the family are of economic or ...
city, Cattaraugus county, western New York, U.S. It lies along the Allegheny River at the mouth of Olean Creek, 60 miles (97 km) southeast of Buffalo. First settled in 1804 ...
small deciduous tree of Eurasia, about 4.5 to 6 m (15 to 20 feet) high. It has smooth, dark brown branches that often bear spines and narrow, light green leaves ...
any unsaturated hydrocarbon containing one or more pairs of carbon atoms linked by a double bond. The olefins are classified in either or both of the following ways: (1) as ...
uppermost of two divisions of the Lower Triassic Series, representing those rocks deposited worldwide during Olenekian time (245 million to 242 million years ago) in the Triassic Period. The stage ...
