American railroad magnate and philanthropist who nearly doubled the Vanderbilt family fortune established and in large part bequeathed to him by his father, Cornelius.
U.S. painter and one of the first American artists to study in Paris. He was largely responsible for introducing the Neoclassical style to the United States.
Belgian statesman and a prominent figure in European Socialism who served in Belgian coalition governments from 1914 to 1937 and was influential in the peace negotiations following World War I.
English statesman, a prominent royal adviser who played an equivocal role in the events leading to the outbreak of the Civil War between King Charles I and Parliament.
English biochemist who, with Sune K. Bergstrom and Bengt Ingemar Samuelsson, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1982 for the isolation, identification, and analysis of prostaglandins, which ...
English playwright, remembered for his unusual and highly successful play Outward Bound (1923), about a group of passengers who find themselves making an ocean voyage on a ship that seems ...
largest lake in Sweden, 2,156 square miles (5,585 square km) in area, in the southwestern part of the country. The lake is about 90 miles (145 km) long and as ...
any of the 12 species of Madagascan birds constituting the bird family Vangidae (order Passeriformes). The coral-billed nuthatch is sometimes included. They are 13 to 30 cm (5 to 12 ...
any of a series of unmanned U.S. experimental test satellites. Vanguard I, launched March 1, 1958, consisted of a tiny 3.25-pound (1.47-kilogram) sphere equipped with two radio transmitters. It was ...
(Spanish: "The Spanish Vanguard"), morning daily newspaper published in Barcelona, one of the largest and most influential newspapers in Spain. It was established in 1881 by Carlos Godo, in whose ...
(genus Vanilla), any member of a group of tropical climbing orchids, from the pods of which a widely used flavouring agent is extracted. Vanilla had been used to flavour xocoatl, ...
minor port, northwestern Papua New Guinea. Located on a peninsula surrounded by a white sand beach fronting the Pacific Ocean, Vanimo is about 20 miles (30 km) east of the ...
in Norse mythology, race of gods responsible for wealth, fertility, and commerce and subordinate to the warlike Aesir. As reparation for the torture of their goddess Gullveig, the Vanir demanded ...
in art, a genre of still-life painting that flourished in the Netherlands in the early 17th century. A vanitas painting contains collections of objects symbolic of the ...
town, capital of Morbihan departement, Bretagne region, western France. It is situated at the confluence of two streams forming the Vanne River, which opens into the virtually ...
nature reserve, located in the departement of Savoie, southeastern France, and contiguous with the Gran Paradiso National Park in Italy. The park, created in 1963, is the oldest French national ...
city, southern Finland, just north of Helsinki. Located in the estuary of the Vantaa River, it was incorporated as a city in 1972. Notable landmarks are the Church of St. ...
volcanic island in the Banks Islands of Vanuatu, southwestern Pacific Ocean, 75 mi (120 km) north-northeast of Espiritu Santo. The island, 15 mi long by 12 mi wide, was first ...
second largest island (2,137 sq mi [5,535 sq km]) of Fiji, bordering the Koro Sea in the South Pacific, 40 mi (64 km) northeast of the island of Viti Levu. ...
country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of a chain of 13 principal and many smaller islands located 500 miles (800 kilometres) west of Fiji and 1,100 miles east ...
ancient site in Laconia, Greece, on the right bank of the Eurotas River, five miles south of Sparta; the site is known for its tholos tomb, excavated in 1888. The ...
conversion of a substance from the liquid or solid phase into the gaseous (vapour) phase. If conditions allow the formation of vapour bubbles within a liquid, the vaporization process is ...
partial or complete interruption of the fuel flow in an internal-combustion engine, caused by the formation of vapour or bubbles of gas in the fuel-feeding system. Vapour forms because of ...
pressure exerted by a vapour when the vapour is in equilibrium with the liquid or solid form, or both, of the same substance-i.e., when conditions are such that the substance ...
streamer of cloud sometimes observed behind an airplane flying in clear, cold, humid air. It forms upon condensation of the water vapour produced by the combustion of fuel in the ...
(Sanskrit: Boar), third of the 10 incarnations (avatars) of the Hindu god Vishnu. When a demon named Hiranyaksa dragged the earth to the bottom of the sea, Vishnu took the ...
Indian philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, author of the Panca-siddhantika ("Five Treatises"), a compendium of Greek, Egyptian, Roman, and Indian astronomy.
(1790), settlement ending the Russo-Swedish War begun by Sweden (with British diplomatic support) in 1788. It maintained, in Russia's favour, the territorial dispositions of 1743. See Abo, Treaty of.
town, Vercelli province, Piemonte (Piedmont) region, northwestern Italy. It lies along the Sesia River, 31 miles (50 km) northwest of Novara. The town is rich in art and churches, among ...
city, southeastern Uttar Pradesh state, northern India. It is located on the left bank of the Ganges River and is one of the seven sacred cities of the Hindus.
sole genus of the lizard family Varanidae, and composed of the monitor lizards (see monitor lizard); one of the Varanidae is Varanus komodoensis, the Komodo dragon (q.v.).
French still photographer and one of the few successful female motion-picture directors. Her first film, Le Pointe courte (1954), was a precursor of the French New Wave films of the ...
major river in Macedonia and in Greece. It rises in the Sar Mountains and flows north-northeast past Gostivar and Tetovo (in the Gostivar-Tetovo depression); it then turns sharply to flow ...
a major figure in the revival of geographic learning in Europe, whose scholarly general geography remained the accepted standard authority for more than a century.
city, capital of Varese provincia, Lombardia (Lombardy) regione, northern Italy. It lies among the Alpine foothills descending to the Lake Varese, north of Milan. The modern Piazza Monte Grappa is ...
Peruvian writer whose commitment to social change is evident in his novels, plays, and essays. In 1990 he was an unsuccessful candidate for president of Peru.
president of Brazil (1930-45, 1951-54), who brought social and economic changes that helped modernize the country. Although denounced by some as an unprincipled dictator, Vargas was revered by his followers ...
wooden cabinet of mixed Spanish and Oriental origin that first appeared in Europe in the late Middle Ages and became a common article of furniture in the Spanish colonial empire ...
one of the oldest and most widely used techniques for solving some types of partial differential equations. A partial differential equation is called linear if the unknown function and its ...
in statistics, the square of the standard deviation of a sample or set of data, used procedurally to analyze the factors that may influence the distribution or spread of the ...
in biology, any difference between cells, individual organisms, or groups of organisms of any species caused either by genetic differences (genotypic variation) or by the effect of environmental factors on ...
vein that is twisted-tortuous-and distended with blood. The term varix is also used for similar abnormalities in arteries and in lymphatic vessels. Varicose veins occur in a number of areas, ...
(Portuguese: "Rio Grandense Air Transport Enterprise"), Brazilian airline founded on May 7, 1927, with the assistance of a Berlin trading concern, Kondor Syndicat, which had begun flights in the state ...
obsolete method of immunizing patients against smallpox by infecting them with substance from the pustules of patients with a mild form of the disease (variola minor). The disease then usually ...
phosphate mineral, hydrated aluminum phosphate (AlPO4·2H2O), which is valued as a semiprecious gemstone and an ornamental material. Both variscite and strengite, a similar mineral in which iron replaces aluminum in ...
lan (county) of west-central Sweden, extending north from Vanern (lake) and northwest to the Norwegian frontier. It takes in most of the traditional landskap (province) of Varmland. Much of its ...
American virologist and cowinner (with J. Michael Bishop) of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1989 for their work on the origins of cancer.
seaport and third largest city in Bulgaria. Lying on the north shore of Varna Bay on the Black Sea coast, the city is sheltered by the Dobrudzhansko plateau, which rises ...
any one of the four traditional social classes of Hindu India. Although the literal meaning of the word varna (Sanskrit: "colour") has invited speculation that class distinctions were originally based ...
(Nov. 10, 1444), Turkish victory over a Hungarian force, ending the European powers' efforts to save Constantinople (now Istanbul) from Turkish conquest and enabling the Ottoman Empire to confirm and ...
liquid coating material containing a resin that dries to a hard transparent film. Most varnishes are a blend of resin, drying oil, drier, and volatile solvent. When varnish dries, its ...
any of various trees whose milky juice is used to make a varnish or lacquer. The term is applied particularly to an Asian tree (Rhus verniciflua), related to poison ivy, ...
Rome's greatest scholar and a satirist of stature, best known for his Saturae Menippeae ("Menippean Satires"). He was a man of immense learning and a prolific author. Inspired by a ...
intrepid Italian traveler and adventurer whose account of his Middle Eastern and Asiatic wanderings was widely circulated throughout Europe and earned him high fame in his own lifetime. He made ...
in the Vedic phase of Hindu mythology, the god-sovereign, the personification of divine authority. He is the ruler of the sky realm and the upholder of cosmic and moral law ...
Roman general whose loss of three legions to Germanic tribes in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest caused great shock in Rome and stemmed Roman expansion beyond the Rhine River.
any form of repetitive sedimentary rock stratification, either bed or lamination, that was deposited within a one-year time period. This annual deposit may comprise paired contrasting laminations of alternately finer ...
megye (county), western Hungary, occupying an area of 1,288 square miles (3,337 square km), most of which consists of hill pasture and deciduous forest. A maximum elevation of 2,897 feet ...
Swedish (and Polish) dynasty descended from an old family of Uppland, related both to the Sture family and to the Bonde family of Sweden's King Charles VIII (d. 1470). Its ...
Mexican educator, politician, essayist, and philosopher, whose five-volume autobiography, Ulises Criollo (1935; "A Creole Ulysses"), La tormenta (1936; "The Torment"), El desastre (1938; "The Disaster"), El proconsulado (1939; "The Proconsulship"), ...
