Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Gadsden ... Gajah Mada

Gadsden: city, seat (1866) of Etowah county, northeastern Alabama, U.S. It is situated on the Coosa River in the Appalachian foothills, 65 miles (105 km) northeast of Birmingham. The original farming settlement was known as Double Springs, and the town was ...
Gadsden Purchase: (December 30, 1853), transaction that followed the conquest of much of northern Mexico by the United States in 1848. It assigned to the United States nearly 30,000 additional square miles (78,000 square km) of northern Mexican territory (La Mesilla), now ...
Gadsden, James: U.S. soldier, diplomat, and railroad president, whose name is associated with the Gadsden Purchase (q.v.).
Gadus: fish genus of the family Gadidae, including the individuals and groups known as bib, cod, pollock, and whiting (qq.v.).
gadwall: (Anas strepera), small, drably coloured duck of the family Anatidae, a popular game bird. Almost circumpolar in distribution in the Northern Hemisphere, the gadwall breeds above latitude 40° and winters between 20-40°. In North America the densest breeding populations occur ...
Gaea: Greek personification of the Earth as a goddess. Mother and wife of Uranus (Heaven), from whom the Titan Cronus, her last born child by him, separated her, she was also mother of the other Titans, the Gigantes, the Erinyes, and ...
Gaekwar Dynasty: Indian ruling family and title of its head whose capital was at Baroda in Gujarat state. The state became a leading power in the 18th-century Maratha confederacy.
Gaelic football: Irish version of football (soccer), an offshoot of Britain's medieval melee, in which entire parishes would compete in daylong matches covering miles of countryside. A code of rules slightly restricting the ferocity of the sport was adopted in 1884, and ...
Gaelic revival: resurgence of interest in Irish language, literature, history, and folklore inspired by the growing Irish nationalism of the early 19th century. By that time Gaelic had died out as a spoken tongue except in isolated rural areas; English had become ...
Gaeta: town, seaport, and archiepiscopal see, Latina province, Lazio region, south-central Italy, on the Gulf of Gaeta, northwest of Naples. Gaeta first came under the influence of the Romans in the 4th century BC; a road was built c. 184 BC ...
Gaetulia: ancient district of interior North Africa that in Roman times, at least, was inhabited by wandering tribes, the Gaetuli. The area, not clearly defined, included the southern slopes of the Atlas Mountains, from the Aures Massif westward as far as ...
Gafencu, Grigore: Romanian diplomat, journalist, and politician who as foreign minister at the outbreak of World War II tried to maintain Romania's neutrality.
Gaffney: city, seat of Cherokee county, northern South Carolina, U.S., near the Broad River. Named for Michael Gaffney, an Irish settler who arrived in 1803, it early developed as a resort where plantation owners sought therapeutic treatment at local limestone springs. ...
gag rule: in U.S. history, any of a series of congressional resolutions that tabled, without discussion, petitions regarding slavery; passed by the House of Representatives between 1836 and 1840 and repealed in 1844. Abolition petitions, signed by more than 2,000,000 persons, had ...
Gag, Wanda Hazel: American artist and author whose dynamic visual style imbued the often commonplace subjects of both her serious art and her illustrated books for children with an intense vitality.
gagaku: ancient court music. The name is a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters for elegant music (ya yueh). Such music first appeared in Japan as an import from Korea in the 5th century and had become an established court tradition ...
Gagarin, Yury Alekseyevich: Soviet cosmonaut who in 1961 became the first man to travel into space.
Gage, Frances Dana Barker: American social reformer and writer who was active in the antislavery, temperance, and women's rights movements of the mid-19th century.
Gage, Matilda Joslyn: American women's rights advocate who helped to lead and publicize the suffrage movement in the United States.
Gage, Thomas: British general who successfully commanded all British forces in North America for more than 10 years (1763-74) but failed to stem the tide of rebellion as military governor of Massachusetts (1774-75) at the outbreak of the American Revolution.
Gagern, Friedrich, Freiherr von: Hans Christoph von Gagern's eldest son, a German soldier and administrator, and military commander of several Dutch provinces, who served as chief of staff during the wars against the Belgian rebels opposing Dutch rule. Returning to Germany, he led the ...
Gagern, Hans Christoph, Freiherr von: (baron of) conservative German administrator, patriotic politician, and writer who unsuccessfully called for arming the entire German nation during the French Revolutionary Wars. He represented The Netherlands at the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) and favoured restoring the Holy Roman Empire ...
Gagern, Heinrich, Freiherr von: second son of Hans Christoph von Gagern, liberal, anti-Austrian German politician and president of the 1848-49 Frankfurt National Assembly, who was one of the leading spokesmen for the Kleindeutsch (Little German) solution to German unification before and during the 1848 ...
Gagern, Maximilian Freiherr von: 10th son of Hans Christoph, liberal Dutch and German diplomat and politician, who played a prominent part in the German Revolution of 1848, attempting to institute the Kleindeutsch ("small German") solution to German unification, which aimed at excluding Austria's non-German ...
Gagliano, Marco da: one of the earliest composers of Italian opera.
Gagnoa: town, southern Cote d'Ivoire. It is the chief collecting point for a forest region that sends coffee, cocoa, and timber (sipo and mahogany) to the coast for export and is a major market centre (rice, bananas, and yams) for the ...
Gahadavala Dynasty: one of the many ruling families of North India on the eve of the Muslim conquests in the 12th-13th century. Its history, ranging between the second half of the 11th century and the mid-13th century, illustrates all the features of ...
Gahanbar: in Zoroastrianism, any of six festivals, occurring at irregular intervals throughout the year, which celebrate the seasons and possibly the six stages in the creation of the world (the heavens, water, the earth, the vegetable world, the animal world, and ...
Gahn, Johan Gottlieb: Swedish mineralogist and crystallographer who discovered manganese in 1774. His failure to win fame may be related to the fact that he published little. He saved the notes, papers, and letters of his friend Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who discovered chlorine, ...
gahnite: the mineral zinc aluminum oxide, a member of the spinel (q.v.) series.
gai saber: the art of composing love poetry; especially the art of the Provencal troubadours as set forth in a 14th-century work called the Leys d'amors. The Old Provencal phrase gai saber is associated with the Consistori del Gai Saber, originally the ...
Gailhard, John: English author of an educational treatise on proper training for the English nobility that is noteworthy for its insights into the educational goals and techniques of the 17th-century English upper classes. Gailhard seems to have spent a number of years ...
Gaillard, Chateau: (French: "Saucy Castle"), 12th-century castle built by Richard the Lion-Heart on the Andelys cliff overlooking the Seine River in France; substantial portions of it still stand. Chateau Gaillard, the strongest castle of its age, guarded the Seine River valley approach ...
Gaillardia: genus of leafy, branching herbs of the family Asteraceae, native to North America. Several summer-blooming species are cultivated as garden ornamentals, especially blanketflower (G. aristata) and annual blanketflower (G. pulchella; see ).
Gaines's Mill, Battle of: in the American Civil War, one of the Seven Days' Battles, which ended the Peninsular Campaign. See Cold Harbor, battles of.
Gaines, Ernest J.: American writer whose fiction, as exemplified by The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), his most acclaimed work, reflects African-American experience and the oral tradition of his rural Louisiana childhood.
Gaines, William Maxwell: American publisher who launched Mad magazine (1952), an irreverent monthly with humorous illustrations and writing that satirized mass media, politicians, celebrities, and comic books.
Gainesville: city, seat (1823) of Hall county, northeastern Georgia, U.S., about 50 miles (80 km) northeast of Atlanta. It is located along Lake Sidney Lanier (which is impounded by Buford Dam on the Chattahoochee River), in the foothills of the southern ...
Gainesville: city, seat (1853) of Alachua county, north-central Florida, U.S., about 70 miles (115 km) southwest of Jacksonville. The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto marched through the area in 1539, and settlement eventually developed around a trading post known as Hog ...
Gainsborough: town, West Lindsey district, administrative and historic county of Lincolnshire, England. It stands on the River Trent, bordering Nottinghamshire. Gainsborough's early importance as a Saxon settlement was augmented when it became a military centre under the Danes (9th-11th centuries). Its ...
Gainsborough: (foaled 1915), English racehorse (Thoroughbred) who won the British Triple Crown, consisting of the Two Thousand Guineas at Newmarket, the Derby at Epsom Downs, and the Saint Leger at Doncaster in 1918. The horse later became a stud of worldwide ...
Gainsborough chair: type of English armchair made in the mid-18th century. A wide chair with a high back, it was normally upholstered in leather. The sides are open, and the short, upholstered arms are set well back from the seat, to which ...
Gainsborough, Thomas: portrait and landscape painter, the most versatile English painter of the 18th century. Some of his early portraits show the sitters grouped in a landscape ("Mr. and Mrs. Andrews," c. 1750). As he became famous and his sitters fashionable, he ...
Gainza Paz, Alberto: editor of the influential Buenos Aires daily La Prensa whose opposition to dictator Juan Peron led to the newspaper's confiscation by the government, 1951-55.
Gairdner, Lake: largest of a group of shallow depressions west of Lake Torrens in central South Australia, 240 mi northwest of Adelaide. It measures 100 mi (160 km) long by 30 mi wide. Lying at the base of the Eyre Peninsula, the ...
Gaiseric: also spelled Genseric king of the Vandals and the Alani (428-477) who conquered a large part of Roman Africa and in 455 sacked Rome.
Gaitan, Jorge Eliecer: political leader who was considered a champion of the Colombian people and was revered as a martyr after his assassination.
Gaitskell, Hugh: British statesman, leader of the British Labour Party from December 1955 until his sudden death at the height of his influence.
Gaius: Roman jurist whose writings became authoritative in the late Roman Empire. The Law of Citations (426), issued by the eastern Roman emperor Theodosius II, named Gaius one of five jurists (the others were Papinian, Ulpian, Modestinus, and Paulus) whose doctrines ...
Gaius, Saint: pope from 283 (possibly December 17) to 296. Nothing about him is known with certainty. Supposedly a relative of the Roman emperor Diocletian, he conducted his pontificate at a period of Diocletian's reign when Christians were tacitly tolerated. Gaius is ...
Gajah Mada: prime minister of the Majapahit Empire and a national hero in Indonesia. He is believed to have unified the entire archipelago. The principal poet of the era, Prapanca, eulogized Gajah Mada in an epic, and the first Indonesian university in ...