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Venezuela ... Vereeniging, Peace of

Venezuela: country located at the northern end of South America. It occupies a roughly triangular area of 352,144 square miles (912,050 square km)-larger than the combined areas of France and Germany. ...
Venezuela, Gulf of: inlet of the Caribbean Sea in Venezuela and Colombia, extending 75 miles (120 km) north-south and reaching a maximum east-west width of 150 miles (240 km). It is bounded by ...
Venice: city, major seaport, and capital of both the provincia of Venezia and the regione of Veneto, northern Italy. An island city, it was once the centre of a maritime republic. ...
Venice: resort city, Sarasota county, west-central Florida, U.S. It lies along the Gulf of Mexico, about 20 miles (30 km) south of Sarasota. Originally a fishing village settled in the 1870s, ...
Venice majolica: tin-glazed earthenware made at Venice that reached its stylistic zenith in the 16th century. The workshops of Maestro Ludovico (fl. 1540-45), Domenigo da Venezia (fl. 1550-60), and Jacomo da Pesaro ...
Venice Palace, Museum of the: in Rome, museum occupying part of the papal apartment of the first great Renaissance palace of Rome. Dating from the middle of the 15th century, the Palazzo Venezia was built ...
Venice, Gulf of: northern section of the Adriatic Sea (an arm of the Mediterranean Sea), extending eastward for 60 miles (95 km) from the Po River delta, Italy, to the coast of Istria, ...
Vening Meinesz, Felix Andries: Dutch geophysicist and geodesist who was known for his measurements of gravity.
Venini, Paolo: Italian glassmaker and designer and manufacturer of glassware, whose works are outstanding for their combination of traditional technique and modern form. His glass factory in Murano contributed to a revival ...
venison: (from Latin venatus, "to hunt"), the meat from any kind of deer; originally, the term referred to any kind of edible game.
Venizelos, Eleutherios: prime minister of Greece (1910-15, 1917-20, 1924, 1928-32, 1933), the most prominent Greek politician and statesman of the early 20th century. Under his leadership Greece doubled in area and population ...
Venkataraman, Ramaswamy: Indian politician, government official, and lawyer who was president of India from 1987 to 1992.
Venlo: gemeente (commune), Limburg provincie, southeastern Netherlands. It lies along the Maas (Meuse) River, near the German border. Chartered in 1343, it joined the Hanseatic League in 1364 and was a ...
Vennberg, Karl: poet and critic who was the critical-analytical leader in Swedish poetry of the 1940s.
venom: the poisonous secretion of an animal, produced by specialized glands that are often associated with spines, teeth, stings, or other piercing devices. The venom apparatus may be primarily for killing ...
Venosa: town and episcopal see, Potenza provincia, Basilicata regione, southern Italy. It is situated on the lower slope of Mount Vulcano, north of Potenza. Originally a settlement of the Lucanians (an ...
venous sinus: in human anatomy, any of the channels of a branching complex sinus network that lies between layers of the dura mater, the outermost covering of the brain, and functions to ...
Vent, Iles du: eastern group of islands within the Society Islands, French Polynesia, in the central South Pacific. The group is composed of volcanic islands surrounded by coral reefs. The far larger Tahiti ...
Ventidius, Publius: Roman general and politician who rose from captivity to military fame, a change of fortune frequently cited by ancient authors.
ventifact: stone that has received one or more highly polished, flattened facets as a result of erosion by windblown sand. The facets are cut in sequence and correlate with the dominant ...
ventilating: the natural or mechanically induced movement of fresh air into or through an enclosed space. The supply of air to an enclosed space involves the removal of a corresponding volume ...
Ventimiglia: town, Imperia provincia, Liguria regione, northwestern Italy. It is situated at the mouth of the Roia River near the French border, just northeast of Nice, France. To the east of ...
Ventnor: town ("parish"), Isle of Wight, historic county of Hampshire, England. The town lies along the southeastern coast of the Isle of Wight. From a small fishing hamlet it grew in ...
Ventose Decrees: during the French Revolution, laws providing for the confiscation of the property of enemies of the revolution and its distribution to needy patriots. The Ventose Decrees are sometimes considered to ...
ventricle: muscular chamber that pumps blood out of the heart and into the circulatory system. Ventricles occur among some invertebrates. Among vertebrates, fishes and amphibians generally have a single ventricle, while ...
ventricular fibrillation: irregular and uncoordinated contraction of the muscle fibres of the ventricles, the heart's lower chambers. Since ventricular fibrillation completely prevents the heart's functioning as a pump, it quickly brings death ...
ventricular septal defect: opening in the partition between the two ventricles, or lower chambers, of the heart. Such defects are congenital and may be accompanied by other congenital defects of the heart, most ...
ventriloquism: the art of "throwing" the voice, i.e., speaking in such a manner that the sound seems to come from a distance or from a source other than the speaker. At ...
Ventris, Michael: English architect and cryptographer who in 1952 deciphered the Minoan Linear B script and showed it to be Greek in its oldest known form, dating from about 1400 to 1200 ...
Ventspils: city and port, western Latvia. It lies at the mouth of the Venta River on the Baltic Sea coast. A settlement existed there in the 2nd millennium BC, and by ...
Ventura: city, seat (1873) of Ventura county, southern California, U.S. It lies on the Pacific coast overlooking the Santa Barbara Channel. It is the site of the San Buenaventura Mission, the ...
Ventures, the: American musical group that gained fame with its instrumental interpretations of pop hits and that served as a prototype for guitar-based rock groups. The principal members were Don Wilson (b. ...
venturi tube: short pipe with a constricted inner surface, used to measure fluid flows and as a pump. The 18th-19th-century Italian physicist Giovanni Battista Venturi, observing the effects of constricted channels on ...
Venturi, Robert: American architect, who proposed alternatives to the Functionalist mainstream of 20th-century American architectural design. He became the unofficial dean of the eclectic movement known as postmodernism.
venue: in law, locality in which a criminal offense or civil litigation is to be conducted. The concept of venue involves important issues of public policy in the adjudication of crimes.
Venus: second planet from the Sun and sixth in the solar system in size and mass. No planet approaches closer to Earth than Venus; at its nearest it is the closest ...
Venus: ancient Italian goddess associated with cultivated fields and gardens and later identified by the Romans with the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite.
Venus and Adonis stanza: a stanza consisting of an iambic pentameter quatrain and couplet with the rhyme scheme ababcc. The stanza was so called because it was used by William Shakespeare in his poem ...
Venus comb: marine snail, a species of murex (q.v.).
Venus de Milo: ancient statue of Aphrodite, now in Paris at the Louvre Museum. Carved by a sculptor of Antioch on the Maeander River in about 150 BC, it was found on the ...
Venus's flower basket: any of several sponges of the genus Euplectella, especially E. aspergillum (class Hyalospongiae, glass sponges). The name Venus's flower basket derives from the sponges' delicate, white, latticelike skeletons. In the ...
Venus's girdle: (Cestum veneris) ribbon-shaped comb jelly of the order Cestida (phylum Ctenophora) found in the Mediterranean Sea. Its graceful, transparent body, which is a delicate violet in colour, ...
Venus's looking glass: (Legousia, or Specularia, speculum-veneris), species of annual herb of the bellflower family (Campanulaceae), native to sandy, sunny parts of the Mediterranean region. It is grown as a garden ornamental for ...
Venus's-flytrap: (species Dionaea muscipula), flowering perennial plant of the sundew family (Droseraceae), notable for its unusual habit of catching and digesting insects and other small animals. The only member of its ...
Venus's-hairstone: variety of quartz interspersed with fine crystals of the mineral rutile (q.v.).
Venyukovia: genus of extinct mammallike reptiles (therapsids) that are found as fossils in Permian deposits in eastern Europe (the Permian Period began 286,000,000 years ago and lasted 41,000,000 years). Venyukovia was ...
Veracruz: city and port on the Gulf of Mexico, east-central Veracruz estado ("state"), east-central Mexico.
Veracruz: estado ("state"), east-central Mexico. Long and narrow, it stretches 430 miles (690 km) along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and averages 55 miles (89 km) in width. Veracruz ...
Veracruz incident: (April 21-Nov. 14, 1914), the occupation of Veracruz, the chief port on the east coast of Mexico, by military forces of the United States during the civil wars of the ...
Veralden-radien: (Sami: "Ruler of the World"), the deity believed by the Sami (Lapps) to be closest to the starry heaven. Because the deity is associated with mailmen stytto, the pillar supporting ...
veranda: in architecture, most frequently, an open-walled, roofed porch attached to the exterior of a domestic structure and usually surrounded by a railing. The word came into English through the Hindi ...
Veratrum: genus of poisonous herbs of the lily family (Liliaceae). The genus includes about 15 to 45 perennial species, among them the American hellebore and the European hellebore (see hellebore) and ...
Veraval: city, south-central Gujarat state, west-central India. Veraval lies on the Arabian Sea coast of the Kathiawar Peninsula and is part of the Patan urban agglomeration. Its port principally handles timber ...
Verbania: commune, capital of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola provincia, Piemonte (Piedmont) regione, northern Italy. Verbania is a summer resort on Lake Maggiore (ancient Verbanus Lacus). Formed in 1939 by the union of the towns ...
Verbena: genus of plants in the family Verbenaceae that contains several species of garden flowers. Verbena consists of about 250 species, almost all of them native to the tropical and subtropical ...
Verbenaceae: the verbena, or vervain, family of plants in the order Lamiales, a worldwide but mainly tropical grouping of about 100 genera and more than 2,600 species, some of which are ...
Verbiest, Ferdinand: Dutch Jesuit missionary and astronomer who became an influential official in the Chinese government.
Vercelli: city, capital of Vercelli provincia, Piemonte (Piedmont) regione, northwestern Italy. It lies along the Sesia River, southwest of Novara. The chief city of the ...
Vercelli Book: Old English manuscript written in the late 10th century. It contains texts of the poem Andreas, two poems by Cynewulf, The Dream of the Rood, an "Address of the Saved ...
Vercingetorix: chieftain of the Gallic tribe of the Arverni whose formidable rebellion against Roman rule was crushed by Julius Caesar.
Vercors: French novelist and artist-engraver, who wrote Le Silence de la mer (1941; The Silence of the Sea), a patriotic tale of self-deception and of the triumph of passive resistance over ...
Verde, Cape: promontory along the coast of Senegal that is the westernmost part of continental Africa. It is shaped like a triangle (about 9 miles [15 km] per side), with the base ...
Verde, Cesario: poet who revived Portuguese poetry by introducing colloquial language and by exploring its capacity for expression at a time when exalted rhetoric was the accepted style. He dealt extensively with ...
Verdi, Giuseppe: leading Italian composer of opera in the 19th century, noted for operas such as Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), La traviata ...
Verdigris River: river rising southwest of Emporia, Kan., U.S., and flowing south and southeast past Neodesha, Independence, and Coffeyville and into Oklahoma to join the Arkansas River 5 miles (8 km) northeast ...
verdin: North American songbird of the family Remizidae (q.v.).
Verdon River: river, southern France. It is famous for its gorges, including its "Grand Canyon," which may be seen from the scenic road that runs 12 miles (20 km) between Pont de ...
Verdun: town, Meuse departement, Lorraine region, northeastern France, on the Meuse River. Most of the town is on the left bank, near the Citadel. Practically ...
Verdun: city, Montreal region, southern Quebec province, Canada. It lies on the Ile de Montreal (Montreal Island), overlooking the St. Lawrence River. Granted in 1672 to Zacharie Dupuis, a French military ...
Verdun, Battle of: (Feb. 21-July, 1916), one of the most devastating engagements of World War I, in which the French repulsed a major German offensive.
Verdun, Treaty of: (August 843), treaty partitioning the Carolingian empire among the three surviving sons of the emperor Louis I the Pious. The treaty was the first stage in the dissolution of the ...
verdure tapestry: type of tapestry decorated with a design based on plant forms. It is not known exactly when the first verdure tapestries were made, but, by the 16th century, tapestries with ...
Verdy, Violette: French ballerina and dance director, who was awarded the French Order of Arts and Letters in 1973 and the Dance Magazine Award in 1968.
Vere Family: noted English family that held the hereditary office of lord great chamberlain from 1133 to 1779 and the earldom of Oxford from 1142 to 1703.
Vereeniging: town, Gauteng province, South Africa. It lies along the Vaal River, south of Johannesburg, at the Free State border. Its name, which is an Afrikaans word meaning "association," refers to ...
Vereeniging, Peace of: (May 31, 1902), treaty that ended the South African War (q.v.), or Boer War; it was signed in Pretoria, after initial Boer approval in Vereeniging, between representatives of the British ...