city, west-central Dominican Republic. It was founded in 1495 by Bartolomeo Colombo at the foot of Concepcion fortress, which had been built by Christopher Columbus in 1494. La Vega was moved to the bank of the Camu River after an ...
ancient Olmec settlement, located near the border of modern Tabasco and Veracruz states, on the gulf coast of Mexico. La Venta was originally built on an island in the Tonala River; now it is part of a large swamp. After ...
French-Canadian soldier, fur trader, and explorer whose exploits, little honoured during his lifetime, rank him as one of the greatest explorers of the Canadian West. Moreover, the string of trading posts he and his sons built in the course of ...
quarter and district of the Lima-Callao metropolitan area of Peru, south of downtown Lima. It is mainly residential, with slums in the north, pueblos jovenes ("young towns"), or squatter settlements, in the east, and middle-income housing in the south. The ...
dance theorist and teacher whose studies of human motion provided the intellectual foundations for the development of central European modern dance. Laban also developed Labanotation, a widely used movement-notation system.
early king of the Hittite Old Kingdom in Anatolia (reigned c. 1680-c. 1650 BC). Though perhaps not the first of his line, he was traditionally regarded as the founder of the Old Kingdom (c. 1700-c. 1500)-a tradition reinforced by the ...
sacred military standard of the Christian Roman emperors, first used by Constantine I in the early part of the 4th century AD. The labarum-a Christian version of the vexillum, the military standard used earlier in the Roman Empire-incorporated the Chi-Rho, ...
town, west-central Guinea. Located on the Fouta Djallon plateau (at 3,445 feet [1,050 m]) near the source of the Gambia River, it lies at the intersection of roads from Mamou to the Senegal border and from the Guinean towns of ...
any of numerous species of African and Asian river fishes belonging to the genus Labeo in the carp family, Cyprinidae. Labeos have a thick-lipped, sucking mouth on the underside of the head and two to four small mouth barbels. They ...
Roman knight with a caustic wit who was one of the two leading writers of mimes. In 46 or 45 BC he was compelled by Julius Caesar to accept the challenge of his rival, Publilius Syrus, and appear in one ...
city and administrative centre of Labinsk rayon (sector), Krasnodar kray (region), western Russia. Labinsk lies along the Laba River where it flows into a plain. Founded in 1840 as a fortress, it was known as Labinskaya Stanitsa (stanitsa meaning "Cossack ...
in the United States and Canada, holiday (first Monday in September) honouring workers and recognizing their contributions to society. In many other countries May Day serves a similar purpose.
elementary and secondary schools founded in Iowa City in 1916 to experiment with curriculum development and to serve as model schools for Iowa. Over the next several decades the schools exercised national and international influence through their pioneer studies in ...
British politician, publicist, and noted wit who gained journalistic fame with his dispatches from Paris (for the Daily News, London, of which he was part owner) while the city was under siege during the Franco-German War (1870-71). ...
group of fungi (division Mycota) in the class Ascomycetes. It includes more than 1,500 species, which live off the chitin (exoskeleton) of arachnids (e.g., spiders) and insects. The minute species are highly specialized, some attacking only specific areas on one ...
in economics, the general body of wage earners. It is in this sense, for example, that one speaks of "organized labour." In a more special and technical sense, however, labour means any valuable service rendered by a human agent in ...
organization in existence from 1923 until the advent of World War II that defined itself in its constitution as "a union of such parties as accept the principles of the economic emancipation of the workers from capitalist domination and the ...
study of the labour force as an element in the process of production. The labour force comprises all those who work for gain, whether as employees, employers, or as self-employed, and it includes the unemployed who are seeking work. Labour ...
the varied body of law applied to such matters as employment, remuneration, conditions of work, trade unions, and industrial relations. In its most comprehensive sense the term includes social security and disability insurance as well. Unlike the laws of contract, ...
British political party whose historic links with trade unions have led it to promote an active role for the state in the creation of economic prosperity and in the provision of social services. In opposition to the Conservative Party, it ...
the separation of a work process into a number of tasks, with each task performed by a separate person or group of persons. It is most often applied to systems of mass production and is one of the basic organizing ...
the proportion of a person's time spent at work. Hours of labour have declined significantly since the middle of the 19th century, with workers in advanced industrial countries spending far fewer hours per year in a given place of work ...
first Russian Marxist organization, founded in September 1883 in Geneva, by Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov and Pavel Axelrod. Convinced that social revolution could be accomplished only by class-conscious industrial workers, the group's founders broke with the Narodnaya Volya and devoted themselves ...
northeastern portion of the Canadian mainland. It embraces the great peninsula of northern Quebec and Newfoundland, an area of approximately 625,000 square miles (1,620,000 square km) that is bounded by the Hudson Strait (north), Atlantic Ocean (east), Gulf of St. ...
town, southwestern Labrador, Newfoundland, Canada, near the Quebec border. It was developed in the 1950s as a planned community to serve the surrounding mining region (Carol Lake), one of Canada's largest producers of iron-ore concentrates and pellets. The community has ...
surface oceanic current flowing southward along the west side of the Labrador Sea. Originating at the Davis Strait, the Labrador Current is a combination of the West Greenland Current, the Baffin Island Current, and inflow from Hudson Bay. The current ...
northwestern arm of the North Atlantic Ocean, between Labrador, Canada (southwest), and Greenland (northeast). It is connected with Baffin Bay (north) through Davis Strait and with Hudson Bay (west) through Hudson Strait. The cold, low-salinity Labrador Current flows southward along ...
(Ledum groenlandicum), low-growing, perennial evergreen shrub of the heath family (Ericaceae), native to eastern North America. The name is also sometimes applied to L. glandulosum, a closely related shrub of the Rocky Mountains region.
a feldspar mineral in the plagioclase (q.v.) series that is often valued as a gemstone and as ornamental material for its red, blue, or green iridescence. The mineral is usually gray or brown to black and need not be iridescent; ...
philosopher who systematized the study of Marxist socialism in Italy. The first in his nation to expound orthodox Marxism, he profoundly influenced contemporaries of diverse political persuasions.
island, East Malaysia, 6 miles (10 km) off northwestern Borneo in the South China Sea. Commanding the entrance to Brunei Bay, it is roughly triangular. Its chief town, Victoria, on the southeastern coast, is a free port whose deep, well-sheltered ...
any member of the genus (Laburnum) of trees and shrubs having butterfly-like flowers, and belonging to the subfamily Papilionoideae of the pea family (Leguminosae). The leaves are composed of three leaflets, and the flowers are disposed in hanging clusters (see ...
system of intricate passageways and blind alleys. "Labyrinth" was the name given by the ancient Greeks and Romans to buildings, entirely or partly subterranean, containing a number of chambers and passages that rendered egress difficult. Later, especially from the European ...
any of the small tropical fish of the suborder Anabantoidei (order Perciformes). Labyrinth fishes, like most other fishes, breathe with their gills, but they also possess a supplemental breathing structure, the labyrinth, for which they are named. This apparatus, located ...
inflammation, either acute or chronic, of the inner ear (the labyrinth). It is often a complication of a respiratory-tract infection, of syphilis, or of inflammation of the middle ear. Symptoms include vertigo and vomiting. There is also a loss of ...
any member of an extinct order (Labyrinthodontia) or subclass of amphibians that constituted the dominant animals of Late Paleozoic and Triassic time (about 350 to 210 million years ago). Labyrinthodonts first appeared in the Late Devonian (374 to 360 million ...
sticky, resinous secretion of the tiny lac insect, Laccifer lacca, which is a species of scale insect. This insect deposits lac on the twigs and young branches of several varieties of soapberry and acacia trees and particularly on the sacred ...
Italian politician and man of letters who was best known for his part in the diplomatic maneuvers surrounding Giuseppe Garibaldi's expedition in 1860 to liberate Naples and Sicily from Bourbon rule.
