Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Gaoual ... Gardenia

Gaoual: town and administrative capital of Gaoual region, northwestern Guinea, West Africa, on the Fouta Djallon plateau. It lies at the point where the Koumba and Nomo rivers join to form the Tomine and is at the intersection of trade routes ...
Gap: town, capital of the Hautes-Alpes departement, Provence-Alpes-Cote-d'Azur region, southeastern France, south-southeast of Grenoble. Situated at an altitude of 2,406 ft (733 m) in a valley on the right bank of the Luye, a tributary of the Durance, it is a ...
gaper clam: (Tresus nuttallii and Tresus capax), either of two species of bivalve mollusks of the family Mactridae. These clams live in sand and mud flats along the coast of western North America from Alaska to Baja California. The shells of both ...
Gaprindashvili, Nona: women's world chess champion from 1962 to 1978. A strong attacking player, Gaprindashvili won the title from Elizaveta Bykova of the Soviet Union in 1962 by a crushing score of 9-2. From the 1960s to the late 1970s, she was ...
gar: any of several large North or Middle American fishes of the genus Lepisosteus, in the family Lepisosteidae. Gars, which are related to the bowfin in the superorder Holostei, are confined chiefly to fresh water, though some of the eight or ...
garaba: dance form popular at festival times in Gujarat, India. It is a simple, joyful dance, based on a circular pattern and characterized by a sweeping action from side to side accompanied by hand clapping.
Garajonay National Park: national park located in the centre of Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, Spain. The park, created in 1980, occupies 15 square miles (40 square km) and encompasses the peak of Garajonay (4,869 feet [1,484 m]) and a small plateau ...
Garamba National Park: national park in northeastern Congo (Kinshasa), bordering on The Sudan. The park, which was created in 1938, has an area of 1,900 square miles (4,920 square km) and is a continuation of the Sudanese savanna fed by the Garamba and ...
Garamond, Claude: French type designer and publisher.
Garand rifle: semiautomatic, gas-operated .30-calibre rifle adopted by the U.S. Army in 1936. It was developed by John C. Garand, a civilian engineer employed at the Springfield Armory, Springfield, Mass. The Garand was the first semiautomatic military rifle used as a standard ...
Garand, John C.: Canadian-born U.S. firearms engineer, inventor of the M1 semiautomatic rifle, with which U.S. infantrymen fought in World War II and the Korean War.
Garanhuns: city, eastern Pernambuco estado ("state"), northeastern Brazil. The city lies in the Serra Garanhuns, at 2,841 feet (866 m) above sea level. It was elevated to city status in 1874. Garanhuns is a trade and manufacturing centre serving its coffee- ...
Garasanin, Ilija: statesman and administrator of Serbia who was twice prime minister (1852, 1861-67).
Garbett, Cyril Forster: archbishop of York and ecclesiastical writer who promoted a social conscience among the membership of the Church of England by his reports on the human misery in the areas he administered as bishop, particularly London's Southwark district (1919-32).
Garbo, Greta: one of the most glamorous and popular motion-picture stars of the 1920s and '30s who is best known for her portrayals of strong-willed heroines, most of them as compellingly enigmatic as Garbo herself.
Garborg, Arne Evensen: novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist, one of the first great writers to show the literary possibilities of Nynorsk, a language that many writers wished to establish in place of the standard Dano-Norwegian literary medium. The demand for social reform was ...
Garcao, Pedro Antonio Correia: one of Portugal's principal Neoclassical poets.
Garces, Francisco: Spanish Franciscan missionary-explorer, who from 1768 to 1775 explored, alone and with Juan Bautista de Anza, commandant of the presidio at Tubac (now in Arizona, U.S.), the Gila and Colorado rivers and sought a route from the province of Sonora ...
Garcia: self-styled king or chief of the Navarrese, centred in Pamplona. He is partly legendary, perhaps originally a count and vassal of Asturias, and is said to have reconquered many towns from the Moors. His son Fortun (or Fortunio) was captured ...
Garcia de la Huerta, Vicente: playwright, poet, and critic whose Neoclassical tragedy Raquel (1778) was once considered the most distinguished tragic drama of 18th-century Spain.
Garcia Gutierrez, Antonio: dramatist whose play El trovador (1836; "The Troubadour") was the most popular and successful drama of the Romantic period in Spain. It formed the basis for the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il trovatore (performed 1853).
Garcia I Sanchez: king of Pamplona (Navarre) from 925 to 970, son of Sancho I Garces and Queen Toda Aznar. He owed his throne to the support of his cousin 'Abd ar-Rahman III, the Umayyad caliph of Cordoba. The end of his reign ...
Garcia II: king of Pamplona (Navarre) and of Aragon from about 994 to about 1000, son of Sancho II Garces. Coming to the aid of besieged Castile, Garcia fought against the Muslim forces of Abu 'Amir al-Mansur. Mansur then turned his armies ...
Garcia II: king of Galicia from 1065 to 1071. His father, Ferdinand I the Great, divided his lands among his three sons: Alfonso VI received Leon; Sancho II received Castile; and Garcia II, the youngest, received Galicia with a portion of Portugal ...
Garcia III: king of Pamplona (Navarre) from 1035 to 1054. Following an old custom, Sancho III the Great divided his Spanish lands among his four sons: Ferdinand I received Castile; Gonzalo received Sobrarbe and Ribagorza (modern Huesca); Ramiro I received Aragon; and ...
Garcia IV: king of Pamplona (Navarre) from 1134 to 1150, grandson of Sancho IV and son of El Cid's daughter Cristina and Ramiro Sanchez, lord of Monzon.
Garcia Lorca, Federico: Spanish poet and playwright who, in a career that spanned just 19 years, resurrected and revitalized the most basic strains of Spanish poetry and theatre. He is known primarily for his Andalusian works, including the poetry collections Romancero gitano (1928; ...
Garcia Marquez, Gabriel: Colombian novelist and one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 (see Nobel Lecture: "The Solitude of Latin America"), mostly for his masterpiece Cien anos de ...
Garcia Moreno, Gabriel: initiator of a church-oriented dictatorship in Ecuador (1861-75). His rule, oppressive but often effective in its reformist aims, eventually cost him his life.
Garcia Robles, Alfonso: Mexican diplomat and advocate of nuclear disarmament, corecipient with Alva Myrdal of Sweden of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1982.
Garcia, Carlos Polestico: fourth president of the Republic of the Philippines. After graduating from law school in 1923, he became, successively, a schoolteacher, representative in the Philippine Congress, governor of his province (Bohol), and then (1941-53) senator. During the Japanese occupation of the ...
Garcia, Manuel: the most renowned European teacher of singing in the 19th century.
Garcia, Manuel del Popolo: Spanish tenor and composer, one of the finest singers of his time.
Garcilaso de la Vega: the first major poet in the Golden Age of Spanish literature (c. 1500-1650).
Garcilaso de la Vega: one of the great Spanish chroniclers of the 16th century, noted as the author of distinguished works on the history of the Indians in South America and the expeditions of the Spanish conquistadors.
Garcinia: genus in the family Clusiaceae, with about 200 species of tropical trees found in Asia and Australia. The best known of these species is a tropical fruit, the mangosteen (q.v.; G. mangostana). Imbe (G. livingstonei) has stiff leaves and small, ...
Gard, Pont du: (French: "Bridge of the Gard"), giant bridge-aqueduct, a notable ancient Roman engineering work constructed about 19 BC to carry water to the city of Nimes over the Gard River in southern France. Augustus' son-in-law and aide, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, is ...
Garda, Lake: the largest (area 143 square miles [370 square km]) of the Italian lakes, bordering Lombardy (southwest and west), Veneto (east and southeast), and Trentino-Alto Adige (north). It is surpassed in area in the Alpine region only by Lakes Geneva and ...
Gardel, Carlos: Argentine singer and actor, celebrated throughout Latin America for his espousal of tango music.
garden and landscape design: the development and decorative planting of gardens, yards, grounds, parks, and other types of areas. Gardening and landscape design is used to enhance the settings for buildings and public areas and in recreational areas and parks. It is one of ...
garden carpet: floor covering designed as a Persian garden seen from directly above. The design consists of a central watercourse, with tributary canals of various sizes, interrupted by islands or by ponds containing waterfowl and fishes, lined by avenues of stylized small ...
Garden City: city, seat (1883) of Finney county, southwestern Kansas, U.S. It lies on the Arkansas River. Founded in 1878, it acquired its name through the suggestion of a visitor who admired a local flower garden. The city is the centre of ...
Garden City: residential village, town (township) of Hempstead, Nassau county, New York, U.S. It is located on western Long Island. One of the nation's first planned communities, it was the aspiration of textile merchant Alexander Turney Stewart, who bought a 7,000-acre (2,800-hectare) ...
garden city: the ideal of a planned residential community, as devised by the English town planner Ebenezer Howard (q.v.) and promoted by him in Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Social Reform (1898). Howard's plan for garden cities was a response to the ...
garden cress: (Lepidium sativum), North African annual herb, of the mustard family (Brassicaceae), often cultivated as a salad plant for the peppery basal leaves of the young plants. Some varieties have golden leaves. Garden cress bears white, occasionally reddish, flowers. The flattened ...
Garden Grove: city, Orange county, southern California, U.S. Adjacent to the cities of Santa Ana (southeast) and Anaheim (northeast), Garden Grove is 25 miles (40 km) southeast of Los Angeles. The area was explored by Gaspar de Portola in 1769 and was ...
Garden Island: Australian island in the Indian Ocean, just off the southwest coast of Western Australia, 30 mi (48 km) southwest of Perth. With Green and Penguin islands, it shelters Cockburn Sound (east) and the approaches to the ports of Fremantle, Kwinana, ...
garden spider: (Araneus diadematus) member of the family Araneidae (suborder Labidognatha), characterized by white marks arranged in the form of a cross on the abdomen. A fairly common species, the garden spider occurs throughout the Northern Hemisphere and is often found in ...
Garden, Mary: soprano famous for her vivid operatic portrayals. She was noted for her acting as well as her singing and was an important figure in American opera.
Gardener, Helen Hamilton: American writer, reformer, and public official, a strong force in the service of woman suffrage and of feminism generally.
Gardenia: genus of ornamental shrubs and trees of the madder family (Rubiaceae), containing about 200 species native to tropical and subtropical Africa and Asia. Gardenias have white or yellow tubular flowers, evergreen leaves, and large, berrylike fruits containing a sticky, orange ...