Allouez, Claude-jean

Allouez entered the Society of Jesus at Toulouse, was ordained priest in 1655, and sailed for Quebec in 1658. He was stationed at settlements along the St. Lawrence River until his appointment (1663) as vicar general of the Northwest. He

Bothwell, Francis Stewart Hepburn, 5th Earl Of

Nephew of the 4th earl; by his dissolute and proud behaviour he caused King James VI of Scotland (afterward James I of Great Britain) gradually to consider him a rival and a threat to the Scottish crown and was made an outlaw. Through his father, John Stewart, prior of Coldingham, he was a grandson of King James V and was thus related to Mary, Queen of Scots,

Kame

Moundlike hill of poorly sorted drift, mostly sand and gravel, deposited at or near the terminus of a glacier. A kame may be produced either as a delta of a meltwater stream or as an accumulation of debris let down onto the ground surface by the melting glacier. A group of closely associated kames is called a kame field, or kame complex, and may be interspersed with kettles

Mystery Story

Ages-old popular genre of tales dealing with the unknown; it may be a narrative of horror and terror, a pseudoscientific fantasy, a crime-solving story, an account of diplomatic intrigue, an affair of codes and ciphers and secret societies, or any situation involving an enigma. By and large, mystery stories may be divided into two sorts: tales of the supernatural and riddle

Cluster, Structure

The abundance distributions for several kinds of clusters show that there are certain sizes of clusters with exceptional stability, analogous to the exceptional stability of the atoms of the inert gases helium, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon and of the so-called magic number nuclei - i.e., the sequence of unusually stable atomic nuclei beginning with the a-particle,

Italy, The end of the Roman world

The Eastern emperors in Constantinople regarded themselves as the legitimate rulers of the West, including Italy, after 476; both Odoacer and, for a time, Theoderic had recognized them, and they had strong links with the Roman Senate. In 533 - 534 Belisarius, general for the Eastern emperor, Justinian (527 - 565), conquered Vandal Africa; Amalasuntha's death was the necessary excuse to invade

Tholeiite

Fine-grained extrusive igneous rock, a basalt that contains plagioclase feldspar (labradorite), clinopyroxene (augite with pigeonite or hypersthene), and iron ore (magnetite and ilmenite). Tholeiitic lavas often contain glass, but little or no olivine. Tholeiite occurs as extensive plateaus (volumes on the order of 200,000 to 800,000 cubic km [50,000 to 200,000 cubic miles]) in the Pacific Northwest

Baga

People who inhabit the swampy coastal region between Cape Verga and the city of Conakry in Guinea. They speak a language of the Atlantic branch of the Niger-Congo family. The women cultivate rice; the men fish and tend palm and kola trees. Some Baga are employed as wage labourers in the bauxite mines of the Los Islands off Conakry. Houses are typically cylindrical mud

Naga Hills

Part of the complex mountain barrier on the border of India and Myanmar (Burma). A northern extension of the Arakan Yoma system, the Naga Hills reach a height of 12,552 feet (3,826 m) in Mount Saramati on the India-Myanmar frontier. The part of the range within India constituted the Naga Hills district of Assam until 1961 and since 1963 has been part of Nagaland. The hills receive a heavy monsoon rainfall

France, History Of, The principalities of the south

Provence lay in what is now the southeastern corner of France; it was not part of the west Frankish domains. Included in the Middle Kingdom from 843, it passed to the kings of Burgundy after 879 and to the emperors in the 11th century. But it was local counts once again who won prestige

La Habana

Provincia, west-central Cuba, bounded on the north by the Straits of Florida and by Ciudad de la Habana provincia; on the south by the Gulf of Bataban�, an inlet of the Caribbean Sea; and on the east and west, respectively, by Matanzas and Pinar del R�o provincias. It has an area of 2,213 square miles (5,731 square km) and is densely populated, being near the national and provincial capital

Lira

The word lira, a misapplication

Grande Encyclop�die, La

(French: �The Great Encyclopaedia�), French general encyclopaedia, lavishly illustrated in 21 volumes and published in Paris (1971 - 78). The work has a French slant and an emphasis on 20th-century achievements in the fields of science and technology, political and social economy, and the social sciences. A completely new encyclopaedia, it is intended both to supplement and to replace

Terhune, Albert Payson

After schooling in Europe, Terhune graduated from Columbia University in 1893, traveled in Egypt and Syria, and joined the staff of the New York Evening World in 1894. His first book was Syria from the Saddle (1896); his first novel, Dr. Dale (1900), was written

Sylacauga

City, Talladega county, central Alabama, U.S. It is located at the southwestern corner of Talladega National Forest (eastern section) in the Coosa River valley, about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Birmingham. The area was visited by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1540 and was inhabited by the Creek until they were removed by the federal government in 1836. The arrival of the Anniston

Sylacauga

City, Talladega county, central Alabama, U.S. It is located at the southwestern corner of Talladega National Forest (eastern section) in the Coosa River valley, about 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Birmingham. The area was visited by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto in 1540 and was inhabited by the Creek until they were removed by the federal government in 1836. The arrival of the Anniston

Colchester

As Camulodunum, the town of Colchester was the capital of the pre-Roman Belgic ruler Cunobelinus and is so named on his coins. Although burned in 60 CE during the rising of the British queen Boudicca, Colchester soon became one of the

Cost

In common usage, the monetary value of goods and services that producers and consumers purchase. In a basic economic sense cost is the measure of the alternative opportunities foregone in the choice of one good or activity over others. This fundamental cost is usually referred to as opportunity cost. For a consumer with a fixed income, the opportunity cost of purchasing

C�rdoba

The city was founded in June 1573 by Jer�nimo Luis de Cabrera, then governor of Tucum�n, who named it C�rdoba de la Nueva Andaluc�a (C�rdoba of the

Chibchan Languages

A group of South American Indian languages that were spoken before AD 1500 in the area now comprising Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, western Colombia, and Ecuador. A now extinct Chibchan language sometimes known as Muisca was the language of a powerful Indian empire with its centre near Bogot�. Important present-day Chibchan languages include Guaym� and Move in Panama,

Endive

(Cichorium endivia), edible annual leafy plant of the family Asteraceae, variously believed to have originated in Egypt and Indonesia and cultivated in Europe since the 16th century. Its many varieties form two groups, the curly-leaved, or narrow-leaved, endive (crispa), and the Batavian, or broad-leaved, endive (latifolia). The former is mostly used for salads, the latter for

Salamis, Battle Of

(480 BC), battle in the Greco-Persian Wars in which a Greek fleet defeated much larger Persian naval forces in the straits at Salamis, between the island of Salamis and the Athenian port-city of Piraeus. By 480 the Persian king Xerxes and his army had overrun much of Greece, and his navy of about 800 galleys bottled up the smaller Greek fleet of about 370 triremes in the Saronic Gulf. The Greek

China, The Y�an dynasty

On Chinese contacts with Asia and the West, see E. Bretschneider, Mediaeval Research from Eastern Asiatic Sources: Fragments Towards the Knowledge of the Geography and History of Central and Western Asia from the 13th to the 17th Century, 2 vol. (1888, reprinted 1967); Herbert Franke, �Sino-Western Contacts Under the Mongol Empire,� Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 6:49 - 72 (1966); Leonard Olschki, Marco Polo's Asia: An Introduction to His �Description of the World� called �Il Milione� (1960; originally published in Italian, 1957); and Igor de Rachewiltz, Papal Envoys to the Great Khans (1971).

Priestley, Joseph

English clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist whose work contributed to advances in liberal political and religious thought and in experimental chemistry. He is best remembered for his contribution to the chemistry of

Chapman, Frank M(ichler)

A self-taught ornithologist, Chapman was appointed assistant curator of ornithology and mammalogy (1888 - 1908) and curator of ornithology (1908 - 42) at the American

Ray, John

Ray also spelled �(until 1670) Wray � leading 17th-century English naturalist and botanist who contributed significantly to progress in taxonomy. His enduring legacy to botany was the establishment of species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy.

Kalahari, Animal life

The animal life of the Kalahari is also richer and more varied in the north than in the south. Yet even in the arid south, many individuals of several species stay for long periods of the year despite the absence of surface water. The principal species found in the south are springbok, gnu (wildebeest), and hartebeest - all of which occasionally are present in great

Rare-earth Element, Sources and extraction

Though numerous minerals rich in rare earths are found in the Earth's crust, many are extremely rare, and many more are found only in small pockets in more massive rocks. Although such minerals are of considerable research interest they are not used commercially. Monazite, a mixed phosphate of calcium, thorium, cerium, and various lanthanides, occurs in extensive deposits

Rare-earth Element, Sources and extraction

Oceanographic study platform developed in the United States. It combines the advantages of extreme stability while floating on site and ease of movement to new areas. In the horizontal position, FLIP, 109 m (357 feet) long, can be towed behind a ship. When FLIP's ballast tanks are flooded, the platform tilts to an upright position with 17 m (55 feet) of its length above water. Above-water

Aldrin, Edwin Eugene, Jr.

A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. (1951), Aldrin became an air force pilot. He flew 66 combat missions in Korea and later served in West Germany. In 1963 he wrote a dissertation on orbital mechanics to earn his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute