French composer whose best works reflect the verve and wit of the Paris scene of the 1880s and who was a musical counterpart of the early Impressionist painters.
Mayan god of rain, especially important in the Yucatan region of Mexico where he was depicted in Classic times with protruding fangs, large round eyes, and a proboscis-like nose.
(Feb. 12, 1817), in the Latin-American wars of independence, a victory won by South American patriots over Spanish royalists near Santiago, Chile. It began the expulsion of the Spaniards from Chile, completed the next year at the Battle of Maipu. ...
city, northwestern Miranda state, northern Venezuela. The city, in a valley in the central highlands, was formerly a commercial centre in an agricultural area producing coffee, corn (maize), sugarcane, and fruit. With the growth of the national capital, it has ...
leading mid-20th-century Spanish woman novelist and an accomplished essayist and poet who, as a member of the Generation of 1927, balanced her dense narrative style with surrealist imagery and psychological insights.
capital of Amazonas departamento, located in northern Peru. It lies at 7,657 feet (2,334 m) above sea level in the cool Utcubamba River valley. A site of ancient settlement, it is the oldest Spanish city east of the Andes. Founded ...
town, south-central Thailand, about 25 miles (40 km) east of Bangkok. It is a port on the Bang Pakong River. On the railway between Bangkok and the Cambodian border, Chachoengsao is connected by a coastal road to Trat (southeast) and ...
provincia, northeastern Argentina, between the northwestern Argentine highlands and the Parana River and bounded on part of the east by Paraguay. It has an area of 38,468 square miles (99,633 square km), most of which is low hardwood forest with ...
region of distinctive vegetation occupying about 100,000 square miles (259,000 square km) in northwestern Paraguay, southeastern Bolivia, and northern Argentina. The region is part of the vast, arid lowland known as the Gran Chaco (q.v.). The Chaco Boreal's land is ...
area of Native American ruins in northwestern New Mexico, U.S. It is situated some 45 miles (70 km) south of Bloomfield and about 55 miles (90 km) northeast of Gallup. The park was established in 1907 as Chaco Canyon National ...
(1932-35), costly conflict between Bolivia and Paraguay. Hostile incidents began as early as 1928 over the Chaco Boreal, a wilderness region of about 100,000 square miles (259,000 square km) north of the Pilcomayo River and west of the Paraguay River ...
fiery and suggestive dance that appeared in Spain about 1600 and eventually gave its name to a musical form. Miguel de Cervantes, Francisco Gomez de Quevedo, and other contemporary writers imply a Mexican origin but do not indicate whether it ...
landlocked state in north central Africa. It has an area of 495,755 square miles (1,284,000 square kilometres). It is bounded on the north by Libya, on the east by The Sudan, on the south by the Central African Republic, and ...
freshwater lake located in the Sahelian zone of west-central Africa at the conjunction of Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Niger. It is situated in an interior basin formerly occupied by a much larger ancient sea that is sometimes called Mega-Chad. Lake ...
group of languages spoken in northern Nigeria, northern Ghana, Niger, and Cameroon and in parts of Togo, Benin, Chad, and the Central African Republic and generally classified as a branch of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) language family. The group includes ...
English philologist and historian, professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Cambridge (1912-41), who helped develop an integral approach to Old English studies.
in ancient Greece, fortified town on Mt. Petrachus, guarding the entry into the northern plain of Boeotia. Controlled by the Boeotian city of Orchomenus (q.v.) in the 5th century BC, it was the scene of the battle in which Philip ...
three small rocky islets of the Spanish plaza (enclave) of Melilla, located off northeastern Morocco, 7 miles (11 km) northwest of the mouth of the Oued Moulouya. Probably the tres insulae (three islands) of the 3rd-century Roman ...
U.S. legal scholar known for his advocacy of civil liberties. His first book, Freedom of Speech (1920), was evoked by measures aimed at political dissenters in World War I. A rewritten and expanded version, Free Speech in the United States ...
any of several beetles of the insect subfamily Melolonthinae (family Scarabaeidae, order Coleoptera). The leaf chafers (Macrodactylus) eat foliage; the grub feeds underground on plant roots. The adult female deposits her eggs in the soil, and the larvae live underground ...
U.S. astronaut who was a member of the three-man Apollo 1 crew killed when a flash fire swept their space capsule during a simulation of a launching scheduled for Feb. 21, 1967. Chaffee died along with the veteran space travellers ...
(Fringilla coelebs), songbird of the family Fringillidae (order Passeriformes) that breeds in gardens and farmlands of Europe and northern Africa to central Asia (and, by introduction, South Africa). It is the commonest finch in western Europe. The 15-centimetre (6-inch) male ...
Bantu-speaking people living on the fertile southern slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro in northern Tanzania. They are one of the wealthiest and most highly organized of African peoples.
district in Quetta Division, Baluchistan Province, Pakistan. It is bounded on the north by Afghanistan, on the east and south by Kalat and Kharan districts, and on the west by Iran and has an area of 19,516 sq mi (50,546 ...
Belorussian-born French painter, printmaker, and designer. He composed his images based on emotional and poetic associations, rather than on rules of pictorial logic. Predating Surrealism, his early works, such as I and the Village (1911), were among ...
infection with the flagellate protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi. It is transmitted to humans by bloodsucking reduviid bugs and is endemic in most rural areas of Central and South America. The disease is most often transmitted by contact with the feces of ...
the second son of Genghis Khan who, at his father's death, received Kashgaria (now the southern part of Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang, China) and most of Transoxania between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya (ancient Oxus and Jaxartes ...
island group, a major geographic feature of the British Indian Ocean Territory, located in the central Indian Ocean about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south of the tip of the Indian subcontinent. The archipelago has a total area of 23 square ...
stream in Panama forming part of the Panama Canal system. It rises in the Cordillera de San Blas, flows south-southwest, and broadens to form Madden Lake (22 square miles [57 square km]) at Madden Dam, which was built in 1935 ...
eastern tribe of Mongols, prominent in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Chahar were part of the empire of Dayan Khan (1470-1543), the last great khan of a united Mongolia. After his death the khanate remained formally among the Chahar, ...
city, southern Bihar state, northeastern India. It lies just west of the Raru River, which is a tributary of the Subarnarekha. Although known as a road and agricultural-trade centre, the city is also heavily engaged in the mining (especially chromite) ...
mountain range in south-central Gabon, rising to more than 3,300 feet (1,000 m) between the Ngounie and the Ogooue rivers; it forms the country's main watershed. The range contains Mount Milondo (3,346 feet [1,020 m]), the highest peak in Gabon, ...
series of links, usually of metal, joined together to form a flexible connector for various purposes, such as holding, pulling, hoisting, hauling, conveying, and transmitting power.
form of body armour worn by European knights and other military men throughout most of the medieval period. An early form of mail, made by sewing iron rings to fabric or leather, was worn in late Roman times and may ...
in chemistry and physics, process yielding products that initiate further processes of the same kind, a self-sustaining sequence. Examples from chemistry are burning a fuel gas, the development of rancidity in fats, "knock" in internal-combustion engines, and the polymerization of ...
any of two or more retail stores having the same ownership and selling the same lines of goods. Chain stores account for an important segment of retailing operations in the Americas, western Europe, and Japan. Together with the department store ...
German-born British biochemist who, with pathologist Howard Walter Florey (later Baron Florey), isolated and purified penicillin (which had been discovered in 1928 by Sir Alexander Fleming) and performed the first clinical trials of the antibiotic. For their pioneering work on ...
seat with a back, intended for one person. It is one of the most ancient forms of furniture, dating from the 3rd dynasty of ancient Egypt (c. 2650-c. 2575 BC). It was common for early Egyptian chairs to have legs ...
(French: "chair"), originally a closed, two-wheeled, one-passenger, one-horse carriage of French origin, adapted from the sedan chair. The carrying poles, or shafts, were attached to the horse's harness in front and fixed to the axle in back. The body of ...
a long seat for reclining on. Developed in the 18th century, it closely resembled the daybed of the late 17th century and the bergere armchair, but with an extension of the seat beyond the front of the arms. Some chaise ...
Thailand's ruling house, founded by Rama I, who, under the title of Chao Phraya Chakkri (military commander of the Chao Phraya area), had played an important role in the struggle against Burma. Chakkri became king of Thailand in 1782 following ...
