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U Geminorum star ... Uitenhage

U Geminorum star: any of a class of irregular variable stars that display sudden increases in brightness so great that they are sometimes called dwarf novae. Some have been observed to brighten by ...
U Thong style: one of the canonical styles for Buddha icons developed in Thailand (Siam) in the southern capital of Ayutthaya, beginning in the 14th century. To retain the greatest spiritual potency, Buddha ...
U-2: single-seat, U.S. high-altitude jet reconnaissance and research aircraft. A prototype flew in 1955. On May 1, 1960, a U-2 was shot down over the Soviet Union (see U-2 Affair), and ...
U-2 Affair: (1960), confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that began with the shooting down of a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane over the Soviet Union and that caused the ...
U-boat: ("undersea boat"), a German submarine. The destruction of enemy shipping by German U-boats was a spectacular feature of both World Wars I and II.
U.S. News & World Report: weekly news magazine published in Washington, D.C., one of the most influential of its kind and the first to successfully imitate the general format pioneered by Time. It was established ...
U2: Irish postpunk band that by the end of the 1980s had established itself not only as one of the world's most popular bands but also as one of the most ...
uakari: any of several types of short-tailed South American monkeys with shaggy fur, humanlike ears, and distinctive bald faces that become flushed when the animal is excited. In two of the ...
Uaxactun: ruined ancient Mayan city of the southern lowlands, located in what is now north-central Guatemala, about 12 miles (20 km) north of the ancient Mayan city of Tikal. Uaxactun was ...
Ubangi River: largest right-bank tributary of the Congo River, marking the border between Congo (Kinshasa) and Congo (Brazzaville). The Ubangi is formed by the union (near Yakoma, Congo [Kinshasa], on the border ...
Ubayd, Tall al-: ancient site that gave its name to a prehistoric cultural period, the Ubaid, in Mesopotamia; it is located near the ruins of ancient Ur in present-day southeastern Iraq. Excavations have ...
Ubayyid, al-: town, central Sudan. It lies on a sandy, scrub-covered plateau at an elevation of 1,869 feet (570 m). Founded by the Egyptians in 1821, the town was captured and largely ...
Ube: city, Yamaguchi ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan, on the Inland Sea. Coal was mined in the area in the late 17th century, but Ube remained a small village until undersea mining ...
Ubeda: city, Jaen province, in the comunidad autonoma ("autonomous community") of Andalusia, southern Spain. Ubeda lies northeast of the city of Jaen, on the Ubeda Hills in the ...
Uber Cup: trophy representing the women's world championship in the sport of badminton. The cup was contributed by Mrs. H.S. Uber, former English champion, in 1956 for a series of women's international ...
Uberaba: city, western Minas Gerais estado (state), southern Brazil. It is located in the highlands at 2,575 feet (785 metres) above sea level, on the Uberaba River. Uberaba ...
Uberlndia: city, western Minas Gerais estado (state), southern Brazil. It lies along the Bom Jardim River, which is a tributary of the Araguari River (also known as the ...
Uberti, Farinata degli: Florentine nobleman who became the leader of the Florentine Ghibellines, the proimperial party. According to Dante (Inferno, canto X), Uberti alone dissuaded the members of the Ghibelline coalition from razing ...
ubi sunt: a verse form in which the poem or its stanzas begin with the Latin words ubi sunt ("where are &elipsis;") or their equivalent in another language and which has as ...
Ubico, Jorge: soldier and dictator who ruled Guatemala for 13 years (1931-44).
ubiquinone: any of several members of a series of organic compounds belonging to a class called quinones. Widely distributed in plants, animals, and microorganisms, ubiquinones function in conjunction with enzymes in ...
Ubon Ratchathani: town, eastern Thailand, on the Khorat Plateau. It lies near the confluence of the Mun and Chi Rivers and is a major trading centre for rice, cattle, and tobacco. A ...
UBS AG: major bank formed in 1998 by the merger of two of Switzerland's largest banks, the Swiss Bank Corporation and the Union Bank of Switzerland.
UBV system: system of classifying stars by spectral type, based on photometric measurements of the ultraviolet (U), blue (B), and visual (V [yellow]) magnitudes. It was introduced in the early 1950s by ...
Ucayali: departamento of eastern Peru (until 1980 part of Loreto department) spanning the upper and middle sections of the meandering Ucayali River, a principal tributary of the Amazon. Formerly a very ...
Ucayali River: headwater of the Amazon, formed by the junction of the Apurimac and Urubamba rivers in east-central Peru. The Ucayali meanders northward from this junction for about 910 miles (1,465 km) ...
Uccello, Paolo: Florentine painter whose work attempted uniquely to reconcile two distinct artistic styles-the essentially decorative late Gothic and the new heroic style of the early Renaissance. Probably his most famous paintings ...
Uccle: municipality, Brussels region, central Belgium. It lies just south of Brussels and is one of the 19 communes that make up Greater Brussels. Formerly a separate town dating back to ...
Uchimura Kanzo: Japanese Christian who was an important formative influence on many writers and intellectual leaders of modern Japan.
Ucicky, Gustav: Austrian film director known for historical and nationalistic German films done during Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
ud: stringed musical instrument prominent in medieval and modern Islamic music. It was the parent of the European lute. The 'ud has a deep, pear-shaped body; a fretless fingerboard; and a ...
Uda: 59th emperor of Japan, from 887 to 897.
Udaipur: city, southern Rajasthan state, northwestern India. It lies in the hills of the Aravali Range. Udaipur ("City of Sunrise") was made the capital of the princely state of Udaipur in ...
Udall, Nicholas: English playwright, translator, and schoolmaster who wrote the first known English comedy, Ralph Roister Doister.
Udasi: sect within Sikhism, a religion of India. The Udasi (from the Sanskrit udas, "to renounce") sect, which requires celibacy and asceticism of its members, originated with the followers of Siri ...
Udayagiri: village and archaeological site, south-central Orissa state, eastern India. In the village are located several Jaina and Buddhist rock-cut caves. One of these is a double-storied cave with ranges of ...
Udayanacarya: Hindu logician who attempted to reconcile the views held by the two major schools of logic out of which developed the Navya Nyaya ("New Nyaya") school of "right" reasoning, which ...
Uddevalla: town, Vastra Gotaland lan (county), southwestern Sweden. It lies along the Bave River, at the head of By Fjord (an inlet of the Skagerrak), north of Goteborg. The site has ...
Udhagamandalam: town, western Tamil Nadu state, southern India. It is situated in the Nilgiri Hills at about 7,500 feet (2,300 metres) above sea level, sheltered by several peaks, including Doda Betta ...
Udhampur: town in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir state, situated at an elevation of 2,500 feet (760 m). It is named for Udham Singh, eldest son of Gulab Singh, the founder and ...
Udi-Nsukka Plateau: pair of plateaus in south-central Nigeria that form a nearly continuous elevated area. The Nsukka Plateau, which forms the main eastward-facing escarpment, extends about 80 miles (130 km) from Nsukka ...
Udine: city, capital of Udine provincia, Friuli-Venezia Giulia regione, northeastern Italy. It lies northwest of Trieste, near the border with Slovenia. Possibly the site of a Roman frontier station called Utina, ...
Udmurtiya: republic in west-central Russia. It lies partly in the basin of the middle Kama River, which flows along part of its southeastern boundary. The larger part of Udmurtiya lies in ...
Udon Thani: town, northeastern Thailand, near the northern (Laotian) border. Udon Thani is the major town of the northern Khorat Plateau and is served by road, rail, and air. The surrounding area ...
Ueda: city, Nagano ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. It lies along the Chikuma River. Ueda was a castle town during the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) and later became a centre of silk manufacturing ...
Ueda Akinari: preeminent writer and poet of late 18th-century Japan, best known for his tales of the supernatural.
Ueno: city, Mie ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. It lies in an intermontane basin at the head of the Kii Peninsula. The city developed around a castle built in 1611 and still ...
Ueno Zoological Gardens: oldest and most famous zoological garden in Japan. It was founded in 1882, and its administration was transferred to the Tokyo city government in 1924. Occupying a 32-acre (13-hectare) site ...
Uesugi Family: one of the most important warrior clans in Japan from early in the 15th century until the last half of the 19th.
Uesugi Kenshin: one of the most powerful military figures in 16th-century Japan.
UFA: German motion-picture production company that made artistically outstanding and technically competent films during the silent era. Located in Berlin, its studios were the best equipped and most modern in the ...
Ufa: city and capital, Bashkortostan republic, western Russia. It lies along the Belaya (White) River just below its confluence with the Ufa River. A defensive site in a loop formed by ...
Ufa Plateau: plateau lying immediately to the west of the central Ural Mountains in Bashkortostan and in Sverdlovsk oblast (province), west-central Russia. The plateau embraces parts of the basins of the Ufa, ...
Ufer, Walter: American painter who was a member of the Taos Society of Artists and who specialized in portraits of Indians and landscapes of the southwestern United States.
Uffizi Gallery: art museum in Florence that has the world's finest collection of Italian Renaissance painting, particularly of the Florentine school. It also has antiques, sculpture, and more than 100,000 drawings and ...
UFJ Holdings, Inc.: Japanese bank holding company that became one of the world's largest banking institutions through the merger of Sanwa Bank, Tokai Bank, and Toyo Trust in 2001. With headquarters in Osaka, ...
Ugaki Kazushige: Japanese soldier-statesman, who in the years before World War II headed the so-called Control Faction of the Japanese army, a group that stressed the development of new weapons and opposed ...
Uganda: landlocked country of East Africa. Covering a total area of 93,072 square miles (241,038 square km), the country is slightly smaller in size than its former colonial ruler, Great Britain. ...
Uganda, Martyrs of: a group of 22 African Roman Catholics who were executed during the persecution of Christians under Mwanga, kabaka (ruler) of Buganda (now part of Uganda), from 1885 to 1887. Collectively, ...
Ugarit: ancient city lying in a large artificial mound called Ras Shamra (Ra's Shamrah), 6 miles (10 km) north of Al-Ladhiqiyah (Latakia) on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria. Its ruins, ...
Ugaritic alphabet: cuneiform writing system used on the Syrian coast from the 15th to 13th century BC. It is believed that it was invented independent of other cuneiform writing systems and of ...
Ughelli: town, Delta state, southern Nigeria. Ughelli lies in the western Niger River delta east of Warri. Originally an agricultural-trade centre (cassava, plantains, sugarcane, palm oil and kernels) for the Urhobo ...
Ugra, Battle of the: (1480), bloodless confrontation between the armies of Muscovy and the Golden Horde, traditionally marking the end of the "Mongol yoke" in Russia. By 1480 the Golden Horde had lost control ...
Uguccione Della Faggiuola: Tuscan noble who, as tyrant of Pisa and Lucca, played a role in the 14th-century Italian struggle between papal and imperial factions.
UHF: conventionally defined portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, encompassing radiations having a wavelength between 0.1 and 1 m and a frequency between 3,000 and 300 megahertz. UHF signals are used extensively ...
Uhland, Ludwig: German Romantic poet and political figure who was an important figure in the development of German medieval studies.
Uhlenbeck, George Eugene: Dutch-American physicist who, with Samuel A. Goudsmit, proposed the concept of electron spin.
Uige: town, northwestern Angola. Uige grew from a small market centre in 1945 to become Angola's major centre for coffee production in the 1950s. The Portuguese designated Uige a city in ...
Uighur: Turkic-speaking people of interior Asia who live for the most part in northwestern China, in the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang; a small number live in the Central Asian republics. ...
Uighur language: member of the Turkic subfamily of the Altaic language family, spoken by Uighurs in the Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang of northwestern China and in portions of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and ...
Uijongbu: city, Kyonggi do (province), north western South Korea. Uijongbu lies 12 miles (20 km) north of Seoul. Its name, meaning "the Cabinet" in old Korean, derives from its being the ...
Uinta Mountains: segment of the south-central Rocky Mountains, extending eastward for more than 100 miles (160 km) from the Wasatch Range across northeastern Utah and slightly into southwestern Wyoming, U.S. Many of ...
Uintatherium: extinct genus of large, primitive hoofed mammals found as fossils in North America in terrestrial deposits of the Middle and Late Eocene Epochs (52 million to 36.6 million years ago). ...
Uisang: Buddhist monk and founder of the Hwaom (Chinese: Hua-yen) sect of Korean Buddhism. He devoted himself to the propagation of the teaching of the Avatamsaka-sutra (Garland Sutra), which provided ideological ...
Uist: either of two islands of the Outer Hebrides, both lying off the northwestern coast of Scotland. See North Uist; South Uist.
Uitenhage: town, Eastern province, South Africa, near the Indian Ocean, northwest of Port Elizabeth. It was founded in 1804 by J.A. Uitenhage de Mist, a Dutch governmental official sent to the ...