Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Mariners' Museum ... mark system

Mariners' Museum: museum in Newport News, Virginia, founded in 1930 by the author Archer M. Huntington and his wife, Anna, and devoted to the "culture of the sea." Its notable collections include ship models and ornaments and examples of sailors' crafts. In ...
Marinette: city, seat (1879) of Marinette county, northeastern Wisconsin, U.S. It is a port of entry at the mouth of the Menominee River, opposite Menominee, Michigan, on Green Bay of Lake Michigan. A trading post established in 1794 by Stanislaus Chappu ...
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso: Italian-French prose writer, novelist, poet, and dramatist, the ideological founder of Futurism (q.v.), an early 20th-century literary, artistic, and political movement.
Maring: city, northwestern Parana state, southern Brazil. It lies on the Parana Plateau, at an elevation of 169 feet (52 metres) above sea level. Maringa grew rapidly after its founding in 1947. Many of its residents are of Japanese ancestry. Much ...
Marini, Marino: Italian artist who was instrumental in the revival of the art of portrait sculpture in Italy during the first half of the 20th century.
Marinid Dynasty: Berber dynasty that replaced Almohad rule in Morocco and temporarily in other parts of northern Africa during the 13th-15th centuries.
Marinism: (Italian: "17th century"), style of the 17th-century poet Giambattista Marino (q.v.) as it first appeared in part three of La lira (1614; "The Lyre"). Marinism, a reaction against classicism, was marked by extravagant metaphors, hyperbole, fantastic word play, and original ...
Marinkovic, Vojislav: influential statesman and eloquent spokesman for Serbia and later Yugoslavia in the early 20th century.
Marino: town, Roma province, Lazio (Latium) region, central Italy, in the Colli Albani (Alban Hills) near Lago (lake) Albano, southeast of Rome. Near the site of the ancient Castrimoenium, the town became a possession of the Orsini family in 1370 and ...
Marino, Giambattista: Italian poet, founder of the school of Marinism (later Secentismo), which dominated 17th-century Italian poetry. Marino's own work, praised throughout Europe, far surpassed that of his imitators, who carried his complicated word play and elaborate conceits and metaphors to such ...
Marinot, Maurice: French painter and glassmaker who was one of the first 20th-century glassworkers to exploit the aesthetic qualities of weight and mass and one of the first to incorporate bubbles and other natural flaws as elements of design.
Marinus I: pope from 882 to 884. He was a deacon when, in 869, Pope Adrian II sent him as emissary to the fourth Council of Constantinople, which condemned Patriarch St. Photius of Constantinople for defending Eastern traditions against the Roman Church. ...
Marinus II: pope from 942 to 946. He was a priest when nominated by the senator Alberic II, marquess of Spoleto. Marinus' pontificate was subsequently dictated by Alberic. He managed, however, to work for church reform, contributing mainly to discipline and monasticism.
Mario, Giovanni Matteo: Italian romantic tenor, known for his striking good looks, grace, and charm as well as for the beauty and range of his voice.
Mariology: in Christian, especially Roman Catholic, theology, the study of doctrines concerning Mary, the mother of Jesus; the term also refers to the content of these doctrines.
Marion: county, eastern South Carolina, U.S. It is situated between the Little and Great Pee Dee rivers to the east and west, respectively; the rivers join at the county's southern tip. The county lies within the Coastal Plain and features generally ...
Marion: city, seat (1824) of Marion county, north central Ohio, U.S., 45 miles (72 km) north of Columbus. Laid out about 1820, it was first called Jacob's Well (for Jacob Foos, who dug for water there). Renamed in 1822 for Gen. ...
Marion: city, seat (1831) of Grant county, north-central Indiana, U.S., on the Mississinewa River, 67 miles (108 km) northeast of Indianapolis. Settled in 1826, it was named for General Francis Marion of the American Revolutionary War. It developed as an agricultural ...
Marion: city, seat (1822) of Perry county, west-central Alabama, U.S. It is situated near the Cahaba River, about midway between Tuscaloosa (northwest) and Montgomery (southeast). Settled in 1817, it was known as Muckle's Ridge until it was renamed to honour Francis ...
Marion Island: one of the two Prince Edward Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, about 1,190 miles (1,920 km) southeast of Cape Town. In 1947 South Africa proclaimed sovereignty of the islands and established a meteorological station on Marion Island in 1948. ...
Marion, Frances: American motion picture screenwriter whose 25-year career spanned the silent and sound eras.
Marion, Francis: colonial American soldier in the American Revolution (1775-83), nicknamed the "Swamp Fox" by the British for his elusive tactics.
marionette: any of several types of puppet figures manipulated from above by strings or threads attached to a control. In a simple marionette, the strings are attached in nine places: to each leg, hand, shoulder, and ear and at the base ...
Mariotte, Edme: French physicist and plant physiologist who, independent of Robert Boyle, discovered the law that states that the volume of a gas varies inversely with its pressure. Although widely known as Boyle's law, this basic tenet of physics and chemistry is ...
mariposa lily: (genus Calochortus), tuliplike perennial plants of the lily family (Liliaceae), consisting of about 40 species native to western North America. They have simple or somewhat branched stems, 15 to 130 cm (0.5 foot to 4 feet) tall, rising from corms ...
Maris, Jacob: Dutch landscape painter who, with his brothers Matthijs and Willem, formed what has come to be known as the Hague school of painters, influenced by both the 17th-century Dutch masters and the Barbizon school.
Maris, Matthijs: Dutch painter, brother of Jacob and Willem Maris, noted for his movement away from the Realism of the Hague school toward a more symbolic expression. He was without doubt the most gifted of the brothers.
Maris, Roger: professional baseball player whose one-season total of 61 home runs (1961) was the highest recorded in the major leagues until 1998. As this feat was accomplished in a 162-game schedule, baseball commissioner Ford C. Frick decreed that Maris had not ...
Mariscal Estigarribia: town, northern Paraguay. It lies in the sparsely settled Chaco Boreal region, on the bank of Mosquitos Creek, which drains into the Paraguay River. Until 1945 it was a military outpost known as Lopez de Filippis; it was renamed to ...
Marisol: American sculptor of boxlike figurative works combining wood and other materials and often grouped as tableaux.
Marist Brother: a Roman Catholic congregation of teaching brothers founded near Lyon, Fr., on Jan. 2, 1817, by Marcellin Champagnat for the Christian education of French youth. In 1836 several brothers accompanied the first Marist Fathers to the mission field of the ...
Marist Father: a Roman Catholic religious congregation founded in 1816 in the diocese of Belley, Fr., by Jean-Claude Courveille and Jean-Claude-Marie Colin to undertake all ministerial works-parishes, schools, hospital chaplaincies, and the foreign missions-while stressing the virtues of the Virgin Mary. Its ...
Maritain, Jacques: Roman Catholic philosopher, respected both for his interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and for his own Thomist philosophy.
marital exchange: system of mate recruitment in which specific families, groups of families, tribes, or segments of a tribe are designated as those groups from which one must choose a spouse. See exchange marriage; cross-cousin.
Maritime: economic region, southern Togo, West Africa, bordering the Plateaux region on the north, Benin on the east, the Gulf of Guinea on the south, and Ghana on the west. The region's relief consists of coastal sandbars with inland lagoons backed ...
maritime air mass: vast body of air of oceanic origin; also, an air mass (q.v.) that has had a long trajectory over water and has been so modified that it has the characteristics of an air mass of oceanic origin.
Maritime Alps: segment of the Western Alps extending in an arc along the French-Italian border for 120 mi (190 km) between two passes, the Colle di Cadibona (east) and Colle della Maddalena (west). Punta Argentera (10,817 ft [3,297 m]) is the highest ...
maritime law: the body of legal rules that governs ships and shipping.
Maritime Provinces: the Canadian Atlantic Coast-Gulf of St. Lawrence provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. With Newfoundland they form the Atlantic Provinces. During the French period much of the region was known as Acadia, which was ceded to ...
Maritsa River: river in Bulgaria, rising in the Rila Mountains southeast of Sofia on the north face of Musala Peak. It flows east and southeast across Bulgaria for 170 miles (275 km), forms the Bulgaria-Greece frontier for a distance of 10 miles ...
Maritsa River, Battle of the: (Sept. 26, 1371), Ottoman Turk victory over Serbian forces that allowed the Turks to extend their control over southern Serbia and Macedonia. After the Ottoman sultan Murad I (reigned 1360-89) advanced into Thrace, conquered Adrianople, and thereby gained control of ...
Maritz, Salomon Gerhardus: general and rebel who was an ardent believer in the Boer nationalist cause in South Africa. He fought against the British in the South African War (Boer War; 1899-1902) and led a rebellion against British rule during World War I.
Mariupol: city, Donetsk oblast (province), Ukraine. It lies along the estuary of the Kalmius and Kalchik rivers, 6 miles (10 km) from the Sea of Azov. The original 18th-century settlement of Pavlovsk was renamed Mariupol by Greek settlers in 1779. In ...
Marius, Gaius: Roman general and politician, consul seven times (107, 104-100, 86 BC), who was the first Roman to illustrate the political support that a successful general could derive from the votes of his old army veterans.
Marius, Simon: German astronomer who named the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. All four are named after mythological figures with whom Jupiter fell in love. He and Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei both claimed to have discovered them, ...
Marivaux, Pierre: French dramatist, novelist, and journalist whose comedies are, after those of Moliere, the most frequently performed in today's French theatre.
Marj 'Uyun: town, southern Lebanon, lying on a fertile plain east of Al-Litani River, at an elevation of 2,500 feet (760 m) above sea level. Marj 'Uyun is an agricultural market centre serving a tobacco-, cereal-, grape-, and orange-growing region. The nearby ...
Marj, Al-: town, northeastern Libya, on Al-Marj plain at the western edge of the Akhdar Mountains, near the Mediterranean coast. Site of the 6th-century-BC Greek colony of Barce, it was taken by the Arabs in about AD 642. The present town grew ...
marjoram: (species Majorana hortensis), perennial herb of the mint family (Lamiaceae, or Labiatae) or its fresh or dried leaves and flowering tops, used to flavour many foods. Its taste is warm, aromatic, slightly sharp, and bitterish. A herb of many culinary ...
mark: former monetary unit of Germany.
mark system: penal method developed about 1840 by Alexander Maconochie at the English penal colony of Norfolk Island (located east of Australia). Instead of serving fixed sentences, prisoners there were held until they had earned a number of marks, or credits, fixed ...