Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

0-9

katsura tree ... Kawartha Lakes

katsura tree: (species Cercidiphyllum japonicum), upright, gracefully branching tree native to China and Japan, and the only remaining member of the family Cercidiphyllaceae. It is a handsome ornamental tree planted widely for its broadly oval form; it grows up to 15 m ...
Katsuta: city, Ibaraki ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. It lies along the Naka River, northeast of Mito, the prefectural capital. The city developed rapidly as an industrial site for the Hitachi Company, Ltd., after 1940, mainly producing electric locomotives and other electric ...
Kattakurgan: city, east-central Uzbekistan, in a thickly populated oasis in the Zeravshan River valley. It began in the 18th century as a centre of trade and handicrafts and now has various light-industrial plants for processing local agricultural produce. The Kattakurgan Reservoir ...
Kattegat: ("Cat's Throat"), strait forming part of the connection between the Baltic and North Seas. The strait trends north-south between the Jutland (Jylland) peninsula and Sjaelland (Zealand) island of Denmark (west and south) and Sweden (east); it connects through the Skagerrak ...
Katwijk: gemeente (commune), comprising Katwijk aan Zee and Katwijk aan den Rijn, Zuid-Holland provincie, western Netherlands. The gemeente lies along the North Sea at the mouth of the Old Rhine River. The Old Rhine was canalized there (1804-07) with huge locks. ...
katydid: any of numerous, predominantly nocturnal insects related to crickets and grasshoppers, noted for their loud mating calls. Katydids have large hind legs and are distinguished by their extremely long, threadlike antennae and the thick, upwardly curved ovipositor (egg-laying structure) of ...
Katyn Massacre: mass execution of Polish military officers by the Soviet Union during World War II. The discovery of the massacre precipitated the severance of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and the Polish government-in-exile in London.
Katz, Sir Bernard: German-born British physiologist who investigated the functioning of nerves and muscles. His studies on the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which carries impulses from nerve fibre to muscle fibre, won him a share (with Julius Axelrod and Ulf von Euler) ...
Katzir, Ephraim: Russian-born scientist and politician who was the fourth president of Israel (1973-78).
Kauai: volcanic island, Kauai county, Hawaii, U.S. It lies 72 miles (116 km) northwest of Oahu island across the Kauai Channel. The northernmost and geologically the oldest of the major Hawaiian Islands, it is also the most verdant and is known ...
Kaufbeuren: city, Bavaria Land (state), southern Germany. It lies along the Wertach River, in the eastern Allgau region of Schwaben (Swabia). Founded about 800 and chartered about 1220, it was a free imperial city from 1286 to 1803, when it passed ...
Kauffmann, Angelica: painter in the early Neoclassical style who is best known for her decorative wall paintings for residences designed by Robert Adam.
Kaufman, Bob: innovative African-American poet who became an important figure of the Beat movement.
Kaufman, George S: American playwright and journalist, who became the stage director of most of his plays and musical comedies after the mid-1920s. He was the most successful craftsman of the American theatre in the era between World Wars I and II, and ...
Kaufman, Irving Robert: U.S. judge who presided over the celebrated Julius and Ethel Rosenberg case in 1951 and sentenced them to death in the electric chair after finding them guilty of having conspired to deliver atomic-bomb secrets to the Soviet Union; they were ...
Kaufmann, Konstantin Petrovich: general who conquered vast territories in Central Asia for the Russian Empire and ruled Russian Turkistan for two decades.
Kaukauveld: westward extension of the Kalahari (desert) in Namibia and extreme northwestern Botswana, locally called the omaheke (sandveld). It has an area of about 32,000 square miles (83,000 square km), lies east of the town of Grootfontein, and is bordered on ...
Kaulbach, Wilhelm von: painter, illustrator, and muralist associated with the German Romantic movement.
Kaunas: town, southern Lithuania. It lies at the head of navigation on the Neman (Lithuanian Nemunas) River, there joined by the tributary Viliya (Lithuanian Neris) River.
Kaunda, Kenneth: politician who led Zambia to independence in 1964 and served as that nation's president until 1991.
Kaunitz, Wenzel Anton von: Austrian state chancellor during the eventful decades from the Seven Years' War (1756-63) to the beginning of the coalition wars against revolutionary France (1792). Kaunitz was responsible for the foreign policy of the Habsburg monarchy, and he served as principal ...
Kaura Namoda: town, northeastern Sokoto State, northern Nigeria, on the Gagere River (a tributary of the Rima). Originally a small settlement of Maguzawas (an animistic Hausa people), it was ruled by the kings of Zamfara, one of the banza bakwai ("the seven ...
kauri pine: (Agathis australis), a resinous timber conifer of the family Araucariaceae, native to the North Island of New Zealand. The tree sometimes reaches 45 metres (150 feet) in height, with a diameter up to 7 m (23 ft).
Kautilya: also called Canakya, or Visnugupta, Canakya also spelled Chanakya Hindu statesman and philosopher who wrote a classic treatise on polity, Arthasastra (Eng. trans., 3rd ed., 1929), a compilation of almost everything that had been written in India up to his ...
Kautner, Helmut: German film director, actor, and screenwriter who was acclaimed as one of the most intelligent and humanistic directors of the Third Reich. Although the quality of his work was uneven, attributed partially to poor working conditions, he remains a leading ...
Kautsky, Karl: Marxist theorist and a leader of the German Social Democratic Party. After the death of Friedrich Engels in 1895, Kautsky inherited the role of the intellectual and political conscience of German Marxism.
kava: nonalcoholic, euphoria-producing beverage made from the root of the pepper plant, principally Piper methysticum, in most of the South Pacific islands. It is yellow-green in colour and somewhat bitter, and the active ingredient is apparently alkaloidal in nature.
Kavadh I: king of the Sasanian empire of Persia (reigned 488-496 and 498/499-531). He was a son of Firuz and succeeded Firuz' brother Balash as ruler.
Kavala: commercial town and modern seaport of Greek Macedonia and capital of the nomos (department) of Kavala. It lies along the Gulf of Kavalas in the northern Aegean Sea. Since 1924 it has been the seat of the metropolitan bishop of ...
Kavan, Anna: British novelist and short-story writer known for her semiautobiographical surreal fiction dealing with the themes of mental breakdown and self-destruction.
Kavanagh, Patrick: poet whose long poem The Great Hunger put him in the front rank of modern Irish poets.
Kavango: geographic region, northeastern Namibia. It is separated mostly by the Okavango River from Angola on the north, includes the western part of Namibia's Caprivi Strip to the northeast, and is bounded by Botswana on the southeast and by the Owambo ...
Kavaratti: town and island, capital of Lakshadweep union territory, India. Kavaratti lies in the Arabian Sea about 215 miles (346 km) west-southwest of Calicut and the Malabar Coast of southern India. The island is 3.5 miles (5.6 km) long and tapers ...
Kavieng: chief port of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea, on Balgai Bay at the island's northern tip. It is a port of call for interisland and Australian shipping and handles copra, cocoa, and trochus and green snail shells (for buttons). The ...
Kavir Desert: great salt desert of central Iran. Located in a basin southeast of the Elburz Mountains, it is approximately 240 miles (390 km) wide. The desert is distinguished by salt crust, caused by the almost rainless climate and intense surface evaporation, ...
Kavkazsky Nature Reserve: natural area set aside for research in the natural sciences, at the western end of the Caucasus Mountains, in southwestern Russia. It includes the upper reaches of the Malaya Laba, Bolshaya Laba, Mzymta, and Shakhe rivers. The Kavkazsky Nature Reserve ...
kavvanah: in Judaism, the attitude or frame of mind that is appropriate when one performs religious duties, especially prayer. The 12th-century philosopher Moses Maimonides recommended that to attain kavvanah when praying, a person should mentally place himself in the presence of ...
kavya: highly artificial Sanskrit literary style employed in the court epics of India from the early centuries AD. It evolved an elaborate poetics of figures of speech, among which the metaphor and simile predominate. Other characteristics of the style are hyperbole, ...
Kawa: ancient Egyptian colony in Cush (Kush; modern Sudan) on the east bank of the Nile River, 4 to 5 miles (6 to 8 km) north of Dunqulah. It was excavated (1930-36) by Francis L. Griffith and Laurence Kirwan for the ...
Kawabata Yasunari: Japanese novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. His melancholic lyricism echoes an ancient Japanese literary tradition in the modern idiom.
Kawagoe: city, Saitama ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan, on the northern Musashino plateau. It developed around a castle built by the Ota family in the 15th century and prospered as a post town on the road to Edo (now Tokyo) and as ...
Kawaguchi: city, Saitama ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. It lies on the alluvial plain of the Ara River, just north of Tokyo. During the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) it was a post town and marketplace, with few industries. The manufacture of metal castings ...
Kawahigashi Hekigoto: Japanese poet who was a pioneer of modern haiku.
Kawai Gyokudo: original name Kawai Yoshisaburo artist who contributed to the rejuvenation of traditional Japanese painting.
Kawai Kanjiro: potter who sought to combine modern methods of manufacture with traditional Japanese and English designs.
Kawaib: South American Indian peoples of the Brazilian Mato Grosso. In the 18th and early 19th centuries they were driven out of their original home along the upper Tapajos River by the warlike Munduruku and split into six isolated groups between ...
Kawaihae: deepwater port lying along Kawaihae Bay, on the northwestern coast of Hawaii island, Hawaii, U.S. It marks the northernmost point of a 40-mile (65-km) stretch known as the "Gold Coast," a resort-beach development area that follows the Queen Kaahumanu Highway ...
Kawakami Hajime: journalist, poet, and university professor who was one of Japan's first Marxist theoreticians.
Kawanabe Gyosai: Japanese painter and caricaturist.
Kawanishi: city, Hyogo ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. It lies on the west bank of the Ina River. Using the river water, the city produces dyed cloth and bleached and tanned leather. Fruit, flowers, and garden plants are cultivated on the river ...
Kawartha Lakes: chain of 14 lakes in southeastern Ontario, Canada. They stretch across Peterborough and Victoria counties, just north and west of Peterborough and 30-70 miles (50-115 km) northeast of Toronto. Ranging in size from 2 to 18 square miles (5 to ...