Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Mansfield ... Manuel II Palaeologus

Mansfield: town and district, administrative and historic county of Nottinghamshire, England, on the River Maun. Mansfield was the chief town of Sherwood Forest-the legendary base for the activities of Robin Hood, the medieval robber and popular hero-and the forest court was ...
Mansfield: town (township), Tolland county, northeastern Connecticut, U.S. It lies just north of Willimantic city. Settled in 1686, it was originally part of Windham, known as Ponde Town. In 1702 it was incorporated as a separate town and renamed for Major ...
Mansfield, Arabella: American educator who was the first woman admitted to the legal profession in the United States.
Mansfield, Katherine: New Zealand-born English master of the short story, who evolved a distinctive prose style with many overtones of poetry. Her delicate stories, focused upon psychological conflicts, have an obliqueness of narration and a subtlety of observation that reveal the influence ...
Mansfield, Michael: Democratic politician who was the longest-serving majority leader in the U.S. Senate (1961-77). He also served as U.S. ambassador to Japan from 1977 to 1988.
Mansfield, Mount: highest point (4,393 feet [1,339 metres]) in Vermont, U.S., standing 20 miles (30 km) northeast of Burlington in the Green Mountains, a segment of the Appalachian Mountains. Mount Mansfield is actually a series of summits that together resemble the profile ...
Mansfield, Richard: one of the last of the great Romantic actors in the United States.
Mansfield, Sir Peter: English physicist who, with American chemist Paul Lauterbur, won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a computerized scanning technology that produces images of internal body structures, especially those comprising soft ...
Mansfield, William Murray, 1st Earl of, Earl Of Mansfield, Baron Of Mansfield, Lord Mansfield: chief justice of the King's Bench of Great Britain from 1756 to 1788, who made important contributions to commercial law.
mansfieldite: arsenate mineral similar to scorodite (q.v.).
Manship, Paul: American sculptor whose subjects and modern, generalized style were largely inspired by classical sculpture. He is particularly well known for his large public commissions.
mansion: scenic device used in medieval theatrical staging. Individual mansions represented different locales in biblical stories and in scenes from the life of Christ as performed in churches. A mansion consisted of a small booth containing a stage with corner posts ...
Mansion House: official residence of the lord mayor of the City of London. It stands in the City's central financial district, across from the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange. Notable sections of the house include the dining room known as ...
manslaughter: in Anglo-American criminal law, a category of criminal homicide that generally carries a lesser penalty than the crime of murder. Different legal systems use different criteria to distinguish the kinds and degrees of unjustified killing. See homicide.
Manson, Sir Patrick: British parasitologist who founded the field of tropical medicine. He was the first to discover (1877-79) that an insect (mosquito) can be host to a developing parasite (the worm Filaria bancrofti) that is the cause of a human disease (filariasis, ...
Manstein, Erich von: German field marshal who was perhaps the most talented German field commander in World War II.
Mansur: a leading member of the 17th-century Jahangir studio of Mughal painters, famed for his animal and bird studies. The emperor Jahangir honoured him with the title Nadir-ul-'Asr ("Wonder of the Age"), and in his memoirs Jahangir praises Mansur as "unique ...
Mansur, Abu 'Amir al-: the chief minister and virtual ruler of the Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba for 24 years (978-1002).
Mansur, Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-: third ruler of the Mu'minid dynasty of Spain and North Africa, who during his reign (1184-99) brought the power of his dynasty to its zenith.
Mansur, al-: the second caliph of the 'Abbasid dynasty (754-775), generally regarded as the real founder of the 'Abbasid caliphate. He established the capital city at Baghdad (762-763).
Mansurah, al-: capital of ad-Daqahliyah muhafazah (governorate) on the east bank of the Damietta Branch of the Nile Delta, Lower Egypt. It originated in AD 1219 as the camp of al-Malik al-Kamil, nephew of the Saracen Salah ad-Din (Saladin). It was occupied ...
Manta: port city, Manabi province, western Ecuador, on the Bahia (bay) de Manta. Originally known as Jocay (Golden Doors), it was inhabited in 3000 BC and was a Manta Indian capital by AD 1200. Under Spanish rule it was renamed Manta ...
Mantegna, Andrea: painter and engraver, the first fully Renaissance artist of northern Italy. His best known surviving work is the Camera degli Sposi (Wedding Chamber; 1474 [see ]), the painted room in the Palazzo Ducale, in which he developed a self-consistent illusion ...
mantel: hood or other similar projection, usually ornamented, that surrounds the opening of a fireplace and directs smoke up to the chimney flue. See chimneypiece.
Mantell, Gideon Algernon: British physician, geologist, and paleontologist, who discovered four of the five genera of dinosaurs known during his time. Mantell studied the paleontology of the Mesozoic Era (about 245,000,000 to 66,400,000 years ago), particularly in Sussex, a region he made famous ...
Manteuffel, Edwin, Freiherr von: Prussian field marshal, a victorious general and able diplomat of the Bismarck period.
Manteuffel, Hasso, Freiherr von: German military strategist whose skillful deployment of tanks repeatedly thwarted Allied offensives in World War II.
Manti: city, seat (1850) of Sanpete county, central Utah, U.S. Located in an agricultural district at an altitude of 5,530 feet (1,685 metres), the city was settled in 1849 by a party of Mormons ordered there from Salt Lake City by ...
manticore: a legendary animal having the head of a man (often with horns), the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. The earliest Greek report of the creature is probably a greatly distorted description of the ...
mantid: any of about 2,000 species of large (about 5 centimetres [2 inches] long), slow-moving insects characterized by an elongated prothorax (i.e., first thoracic segment) and front legs modified so that the tibia of the lower leg fits into a spined ...
Mantineia: ancient Greek city of Arcadia, situated about eight miles north of modern Tripolis between Mt. Mainalon and Mt. Artemision, mentioned as a source of soldiers in the catalog of ships in Book II of Homer's Iliad. It was the site ...
Mantiqueira Mountains: mountain range of eastern Brazil, rising abruptly from the northwestern bank of the Rio Paraiba do Sul and extending northeastward for approximately 200 mi (320 km), reaching a height of 9,255 ft (2,821 m) in the Pico (peak) das Agulhas ...
mantis shrimp: any member of the marine crustacean order Stomatopoda, especially members of the genus Squilla. Mantis shrimps are so called because the second pair of limbs are greatly enlarged and shaped like the large grasping forelimbs of the praying mantid, or ...
mantispid: any insect of the neuropteran family Mantispidae, usually found in tropical and subtropical areas. The adult mantispid bears a superficial resemblance to the praying mantid (order Dictyoptera). The European mantispid (Mantispa styriaca) is 12 to 20 millimetres long and has ...
mantle: that part of the Earth (q.v.) that lies beneath the crust and above the central core.
mantle: cloak fashioned from a rectangular piece of cloth, usually sleeveless, of varying width and length, wrapped loosely around the body. Usually worn as an outer garment in the ancient Mediterranean world, it developed in different styles, colours, and materials. The ...
mantle: in biology, soft covering, formed from the body wall, of brachiopods and mollusks; also, the fleshy outer covering, sometimes strengthened by calcified plates, of barnacles, or the flexible body wall of tunicates.
Mantle, Mickey: professional American League baseball player for the New York Yankees (1951-68), who was a powerful switch-hitter (right- and left-handed) and who hit 536 home runs.
mantra: in Hinduism and Buddhism, a sacred utterance (syllable, word, or verse) that is considered to possess mystical or spiritual efficacy. Various mantras are either spoken aloud or merely sounded internally in one's thoughts, and they are either repeated continuously for ...
Mantua: city, capital of Mantova provincia, Lombardia (Lombardy) regione, northern Italy. The city is surrounded on three sides by lakes formed by the Mincio River, southwest of Verona. It originated in settlements of the Etruscans and later of the Gallic Cenomani. ...
Mantua, Siege of: (June 4, 1796-Feb. 2, 1797), the crucial episode in Napoleon Bonaparte's first Italian campaign; his successful siege of Mantua excluded the Austrians from northern Italy. The city was easy to besiege: the only access to it was via five causeways ...
Mantyranta, Eero: Finnish Nordic skier who took part in four Olympic Games, winning a total of seven medals. One of the oustanding Nordic skiers of the 1960s, he also won two 30-km world championships (1962 and 1966).
Manu: in the mythology of India, the first man, and the legendary author of an important Sanskrit code of law, the Manu-smrti. The name is cognate with the Indo-European "man" and also has an etymological connection with the Sanskrit verb man-, ...
Manu-smrti: (Sanskrit: "Tradition of Manu"), traditionally, the most authoritative of the books of the Hindu code (Dharma-sastra) in India. Manu-smrti is the popular name of the work, which is officially known as Manava-dharma-sastra. It is attributed to the legendary first man ...
Manua Islands: group of three islands (Tau [Ta'u], Ofu, and Olosega), American Samoa, southwestern Pacific Ocean. Tau, the chief island, has an area of about 15 square miles (39 square km). It is conical in shape, rising to Lata Mountain (3,179 feet ...
Manual of Discipline: one of the most important documents produced by the Essene community of Jews, who settled at Qumran in the Judaean desert in the early 2nd century BC. They did so to remove themselves from what they considered a corrupt religion ...
manucode: any of certain Australian bird-of-paradise species. See bird-of-paradise.
Manuel I: king of Portugal from 1495 to 1521, whose reign was characterized by religious troubles (all Moors and Jews refusing baptism were expelled), by a policy of clever neutrality in the face of quarrels between France and Spain, and by the ...
Manuel I Comnenus: military leader, statesman, and Byzantine emperor (1143-80) whose policies failed to fulfill his dream of a restored Roman Empire, straining the resources of Byzantium at a time when the Seljuq Turks menaced the empire's survival.
Manuel II: king of Portugal from 1908 to 1910, when the republic was declared.
Manuel II Palaeologus: soldier, statesman, and Byzantine emperor (1391-1425) whose diplomacy enabled him to establish peaceful relations with the Ottoman Turks throughout his reign, delaying for some 50 years their ultimate conquest of the Byzantine Empire.