Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Macapa ... MacDonnell Ranges

Macapa: city, capital of Amapa state, northern Brazil, on the northern channel (Canal do Norte) of the Amazon Delta, situated on a small plateau of firm ground 50 feet (15 metres) above sea level, just on the Equator. It was given ...
Macapagal, Diosdado: reformist president of the Philippines from 1961 to 1965.
macaque: any of about 20 species of gregarious Old World monkeys, all of which are Asian except for the Barbary macaque of North Africa. Macaques are robust primates whose arms and legs are of about the same length. Their fur is ...
Macarius: Russian metropolitan (archbishop) of Moscow and head of the Russian Church during the period of consolidation of the Muscovite Empire.
Macarius Magnes: Eastern Orthodox bishop and polemicist, author of an apology for the Christian faith, a document of signal value for its verbatim preservation of early philosophical attacks on Christian revelation.
Macarius The Egyptian: monk and ascetic who, as one of the Desert Fathers, advanced the ideal of monasticism in Egypt and influenced its development throughout Christendom. A written tradition of mystical theology under his name is considered a classic of its kind.
macaroni: small tubular form of pasta (q.v.).
macaroni: in art, Late Paleolithic finger tracings in clay, the oldest form of art known. Innumerable examples appear on the walls and ceilings of limestone caves associated with human habitation in France and Spain, the oldest dating from about 30,000 BC. ...
macaronic: originally, comic Latin verse form characterized by the introduction of vernacular words with appropriate but absurd Latin endings: later variants apply the same technique to modern languages. The form was first written by Tisi degli Odassi in the late 15th ...
macaroon: cookie or small cake made of sugar, egg white, and almonds, ground or in paste form, or coconut. The origin of the macaroon is uncertain. The name is applied generally to many cookies having the chewy, somewhat airy consistency of ...
MacArthur, Charles: American journalist, dramatist, and screenwriter, a colourful personality who is remembered for his comedies written with Ben Hecht.
MacArthur, Douglas: U.S. general who commanded the Southwest Pacific Theatre in World War II, administered postwar Japan during the Allied occupation that followed, and led United Nations forces during the first nine months of the Korean War.
Macarthur, John: (christened Sept. 3, 1767, Stoke Damerel, Devonshire, Eng.-d. April 11, 1834, Camden, New South Wales), agriculturist and promoter who helped found the Australian wool industry, which became the world's largest.
Macartney, George Macartney, Earl, Viscount Macartney of Dervock, baron of Lissanoure, Baron Macartney of Parkhurst and of Auchinleck, Lord Macartney: first British emissary to Beijing.
Macas: town, southeastern Ecuador. It lies on the Upano River along the eastern slopes of the Andes, at an elevation of 3,445 feet (1,050 m). Founded by the Spanish captain Jose Villanueva Maldonado in the mid-16th century as the city of ...
Macau: special administrative region (Pinyin tebie xingzhengqu; Wade-Giles t'e-pieh hsing-cheng-ch'u) of China, on the country's southern coast. Macau is located on the western side of the Pearl River (Chu Chiang) estuary (at the head of ...
Macaulay, Catharine: British historian and radical political writer.
Macaulay, Dame Rose: author of novels and travel books characterized by intelligence, wit, and lively scholarship.
Macaulay, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron: English Whig politician, essayist, poet, and historian best known for his History of England, 5 vol. (1849-61); this work, which covers the period 1688-1702, secured his place as one of the founders of what has been called ...
macaw: common name of about 18 species of large colourful parrots native to tropical America. These brightly coloured, long-tailed birds are some of the most spectacular parrots in the world. The sexes look alike, which is uncommon among vividly coloured birds. ...
Macbeth: tragedy in five acts by William Shakespeare, written sometime in 1606-07 and published in the First Folio of 1623 from a playbook or a transcript of one. Some portions of the original text are corrupted or missing from the published ...
Macbeth: king of Scots from 1040, the legend of whose life was the basis of Shakespeare's Macbeth. He was probably a grandson of King Kenneth II (reigned 971-995), and he married Gruoch, a descendant of King Kenneth III ...
MacBeth, George Mann: British poet and novelist whose verse ranged from moving personal elegies, highly contrived poetic jokes, and loosely structured dream fantasies to macabre satires.
MacBride, Sean: Irish statesman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1974 for his efforts on behalf of human rights.
Maccabees: priestly family of Jews who organized a successful rebellion against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV and reconsecrated the defiled Temple of Jerusalem.
Maccabees, The Books of the: four books, none of which is in the Hebrew Bible but all of which appear in some manuscripts of the Septuagint. The first two books only are part of canonical scripture in the Septuagint and the Vulgate (hence are canonical ...
Maccabeus, Jonathan: Jewish general, a son of the priest Mattathias, who took over the leadership of the Maccabean revolt after the death of his elder brother Judas. A brilliant diplomat, if not quite so good a soldier as his elder brother, Jonathan ...
Maccabeus, Judas: Jewish guerrilla leader who defended his country from invasion by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, preventing the imposition of Hellenism upon Judaea, and preserving the Jewish religion.
Maccabiah Games: international games held in Palestine (later Israel) from 1932, sponsored by the World Maccabi Union, an international Jewish sports organization founded in 1921. Events held are such Olympic events as athletics (track and field), swimming, water polo, fencing, boxing, wrestling, ...
MacCaig, Norman: one of the most important Scottish poets of the 20th century.
MacCarthy Island: island, in the Gambia River, 176 miles (283 km) upstream from Banjul, central Gambia. It was ceded in 1823 to Captain Alexander Grant of the African Corps, who was acting for the British crown. Designated as a site for freed ...
MacCarthy, Sir Desmond: English journalist who, as a weekly columnist for the New Statesman known as the "Affable Hawk," gained a reputation for erudition, sensitive judgment, and literary excellence.
Macchiaioli: group of 19th-century Florentine and Neopolitan painters who reacted against the rule-bound Italian academies of art and looked to nature for instruction. The Macchiaioli felt that patches (Italian: macchia) of colour were the most significant aspect of ...
Macclesfield: town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Cheshire, England. The borough includes a narrow strip of the Pennines in the east that is part of the Peak District National Park. The principal town, Macclesfield, is the centre of ...
MacColl, Ewan: British singer, songwriter, and playwright.
MacCready, Paul Beattie: American aerodynamicist who headed a team that designed and built both the first man-powered aircraft and the first solar-powered aircraft capable of sustained flights.
MacDiarmid, Alan G.: New Zealand-born American chemist who, with Alan J. Heeger and Shirakawa Hideki, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2000 for their discovery that certain plastics can be chemically modified to conduct electricity almost as readily as metals.
MacDiarmid, Hugh: preeminent Scottish poet of the first half of the 20th century and leader of the Scottish literary renaissance.
MacDonagh, Donagh: poet, playwright, and balladeer, prominent representative of lively Irish entertainment in the mid-20th century.
Macdonald, Cynthia: American poet who employed a sardonic, often flippant tone and used grotesque imagery to comment on the mundane.
Macdonald, Flora: Scottish Jacobite heroine who helped Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, the Stuart claimant to the British throne, to escape from Scotland after his defeat in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46. The daughter of Ranald Macdonald, a tacksman or farmer of ...
Macdonald, George: novelist of Scottish life, poet, and writer of Christian allegories of man's pilgrimage back to God, who is remembered chiefly, however, for his allegorical fairy stories, which have continued to delight children and their elders. He became a Congregational minister, ...
Macdonald, Jacques, duc de Tarente: French general who was appointed marshal of the empire by Napoleon.
MacDonald, John D.: American fiction writer whose mystery and science-fiction works were published in more than 70 books. He is best remembered for his series of 24 crime novels featuring private investigator Travis McGee.
Macdonald, John Sandfield: prime minister of the province of Canada from 1862 to 1864 and first premier of Ontario from 1867 to 1871.
MacDonald, Ramsay: first Labour Party prime minister of Great Britain, in the Labour governments of 1924 and 1929-31 and in the national coalition government of 1931-35.
Macdonald, Ross: American mystery writer who is credited with elevating the detective novel to the level of literature with his compactly written tales of murder and despair.
Macdonald, Sir James Ronald Leslie: British soldier, engineer, and explorer who carried out a geographical exploration of British East Africa (now Kenya and Uganda) while surveying for a railroad and later mapped the previously untravelled mountains from East Africa to the Sudan.
Macdonald, Sir John: the first prime minister of the Dominion of Canada (1867-73, 1878-91), who led Canada through its period of early growth. Though accused of devious and unscrupulous methods, he is remembered for his achievements.
Macdonald-Wright, Stanton: painter and teacher who, with Morgan Russell, founded the movement known as Synchromism about 1912. Synchromism proclaimed colour to be the basis of expression in painting, and, although the movement was short-lived, it proved to be the first abstract art ...
MacDonnell Ranges: mountain system in south central Northern Territory, Australia, a series of bare quartzite and sandstone parallel ridges that rise from a plateau 2,000 ft (600 m) above sea level and extend east and west of the town of Alice Springs ...