Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Pavlovsky Posad ... peacock

Pavlovsky Posad: city, Moscow oblast (province), western Russia, on the Klyazma River. It grew from a monastic village and, in the 18th century, was a centre of peasant silk weaving. In 1844 it became an industrial centre (posad) with other villages and ...
Pavon, Battle of: (Sept. 17, 1861), in Argentine history, military clash at Pavon in Sante Fe province between the forces of the Argentine Confederation, commanded by Justo Jose de Urquiza, and those of Buenos Aires province, led by the governor, Bartolome Mitre. Mitre's ...
Pawcatuck River: river rising in Worden Pond and Great Swamp, South Kingstown, R.I., U.S. It flows generally southwestward, emptying into Little Narragansett Bay after a course of about 30 miles (50 km). The river passes Shannock, Carolina, Bradford, Potter Hill, and Westerly ...
Pawhuska: city, seat (1907) of Osage county, northeastern Oklahoma, U.S. It was settled in 1872 and named for an Osage chief, Paw-Hiu-Skah ("White Hair"), and the first buildings were those of the Indian Agency (established 1873). Cattle and oil (discovered in ...
Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Maria: Polish poet whose work is representative of modern lyrical poetry. She is particularly notable for the urbane sensitivity of her poems.
pawnbroking: business of advancing loans to customers who have pledged household goods or personal effects as security on the loans. The trade of the pawnbroker is one of the oldest known to humanity; it existed in China 2,000 to 3,000 years ...
Pawnee: North American Plains Indian people of Caddoan linguistic stock who lived on the Platte River, Nebraska, from before the 16th century to the latter part of the 19th. In the 19th century the Pawnee tribe was composed of relatively independent ...
pawpaw: deciduous tree or shrub of the custard-apple family, Annonaceae (order Magnoliales), native to the United States from the Atlantic coast north to New York state and west to Michigan and Kansas. It can grow to 12 metres (40 feet) tall ...
Pawtucket: city, Providence county, northeastern Rhode Island, U.S., on the Blackstone River (there bridged and known locally as the Pawtucket or the Seekonk) just northeast of Providence city and adjoining the city of Central Falls to the northwest. In the heart ...
Pax: in Roman religion, personification of peace, probably recognized as a deity for the first time by the emperor Augustus, in whose reign much was made of the establishment of political calm. An altar of Pax Augusta (the Ara Pacis) was ...
Pax Romana: a state of comparative tranquillity throughout the Mediterranean world from the reign of Augustus (27 BC-AD 14) to that of Marcus Aurelius (AD 161-180). Augustus laid the foundation for this period of concord, which also extended to North Africa and ...
Paxinou, Katina: internationally recognized Greek actress known for her tragic roles in both modern and classic drama. With her second husband, the Greek actor-producer Alexis Minotis, she produced revivals of classic plays in ancient outdoor Greek theatres and translated modern plays into ...
Paxos: island, Kerkira nomos (department), the smallest of the seven major Ionian Islands of Greece, 8 miles (19 km) southwest of Parga on the coast of Epirus. A hilly mass of limestone covered with olive groves, Paxos rises to about 750 ...
Paxton Boys uprising: attack by Pennsylvania frontiersmen upon an Indian settlement that occurred in December 1763 during the Pontiac Indian uprising. About 57 drunken rangers from Paxton, Pa., slaughtered 20 innocent and defenseless Conestoga Indians near Lancaster, Pa. Governor John Penn thereupon issued ...
Paxton, Sir Joseph: English landscape gardener and designer of hothouses, who was the architect of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London.
Paxton, Tom: American folk singer-songwriter who was especially prominent in the folk music revival of the 1960s.
Payen, Anselme: French chemist who made important contributions to industrial chemistry and discovered cellulose, a basic constituent of plant cells.
Payette River: watercourse, southwestern Idaho, U.S., formed by the confluence of the North Fork Payette River and South Fork Payette River in Boise National Forest near the village of Banks. The North Fork originates in Payette Lake, a popular recreation site near ...
Payne, Humfry: English archaeologist noted for the publication Necrocorinthia (1931), in which a vast body of important information on archaic vase painting and other arts practiced at Corinth was gathered and classified.
Payne, John: American actor, a popular leading man during the 1940s who appeared opposite Alice Faye and Betty Grable in a succession of Twentieth Century-Fox musicals.
Payne, John Howard: American-born playwright and actor, who followed the techniques and themes of the European Romantic blank-verse dramatists.
Payne, Peter: Czech Petra Payna English theologian, diplomat, and follower of the early religious Reformer John Wycliffe; he was a leading figure in securing Bohemia for the Hussites.
payroll tax: levy imposed on wages and salaries. In contrast to income taxes, payroll taxes do not include income from capital sources such as dividends and interest.
Pays de la Loire: region of France encompassing the western departements of Mayenne, Sarthe, Maine-et-Loire, Vendee, and Loire-Atlantique. Pays de la Loire is bounded by the regions of Brittany (Bretagne) to the northwest, Basse-Normandie to ...
Paysandu: city, western Uruguay, on the Uruguay River. The city was founded in 1772 by a priest, Policarpo Sandu, and 12 families of Christianized Indians, who translated the Spanish word padre ("father") into the Guarani Indian word pay, from which stems ...
Payson: city, Utah county, northern Utah, U.S. Nestled in the foothills of the southern Wasatch Range, the city was founded as an agricultural colony in 1850 and was named after pioneer James Pace. A centre of grain and food-crop production, Payson ...
Payton, Walter: American professional gridiron football player whose productivity and durability made him one of the game's greatest running backs. He retired in 1987 as the leading rusher in the history of the National Football League (NFL), a title he held until ...
Paz Estenssoro, Victor: Bolivian statesman, founder and principal leader of the left-wing Bolivian political party National Revolutionary Movement (MNR), who served three times as president of Bolivia (1952-56, 1960-64, 1985-89).
Paz, Octavio: Mexican poet, writer, and diplomat, recognized as one of the major Latin American writers of the 20th century. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990. (See Nobel Lecture: "In Search of the Present.")
Pazardzhik: town, west-central Bulgaria. It lies along the upper Maritsa River, between the Rhodope Mountains to the south and the Sredna Mountains to the north. It is a rail junction and an industrial centre, specializing in textiles, rubber, furniture, engineering, and ...
Pazyryk: Scythian burial site in a dry valley opening on the Bolshoy Ulagan River valley in Kazakstan. The site, which consists of five large and nine smaller burial mounds and dates from about the 5th to the 3rd century BC, was ...
Pazzi conspiracy: (April 26, 1478), unsuccessful plot to overthrow the Medici rulers of Florence; the most dramatic of all political opposition to the Medici family. The conspiracy was led by the rival Pazzi family of Florence.
PCI: Italian political party that was renamed the Democratic Party of the Left (q.v.) in 1991.
PCP: hallucinogenic drug with anesthetic properties, having the chemical name 1-(1-phencyclohexyl) piperidine. PCP was first developed in 1956 by Parke Davis Laboratories of Detroit, Mich., for use as an anesthetic in veterinary medicine, although it is no longer used in this ...
PDE-5 inhibitor: category of drugs that relieve erectile dysfunction (impotence) in men. Two common commercially produced PDE-5 inhibitors are sildenafil (sold as Viagra) and vardenafil (Levitra). PDE-5 inhibitors work by blocking, or inhibiting, the action of phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5), an enzyme naturally present ...
pea: any of several species, comprising hundreds of varieties, of herbaceous annual plants belonging to the family Leguminosae, grown virtually worldwide for their edible seeds. Pisum sativum is the common garden pea of the Western world. While their origins have not ...
pea crab: any member of a genus (Pinnotheres) of crabs (order Decapoda) living in certain bivalve mollusks as a commensal (i.e., on or in another animal host but not deriving nourishment from it). Females of Pinnotheres ostreum, also known as the oyster ...
Pea Ridge, Battle of: bitterly fought American Civil War clash in Arkansas, during which 11,000 Union troops under General Samuel Curtis defeated 16,000 attacking Confederate troops led by Generals Earl Van Dorn, Sterling Price, and Ben McCulloch. Following a fierce opening assault from the ...
Peabody: city, Essex county, northeastern Massachusetts, U.S. It lies 17 miles (27 km) northeast of Boston. Originally part of Salem, it became part of Danvers in 1752 and was separately incorporated as the town of South Danvers in 1855. In 1868 ...
Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer: American educator and participant in the Transcendentalist movement, who opened the first English-language kindergarten in the United States.
Peabody, George: American-born merchant and financier whose banking operations in England helped establish U.S. credit abroad.
Peabody, Josephine Preston: American writer of verse dramas and of poetry that ranged from precise, ethereal verse to works of social concern.
Peabody, Lucy Whitehead McGill Waterbury: American missionary who was an influential force in a number of Baptist foreign mission societies from the 1880s well into the 20th century.
Peace Corps: U.S. government agency of volunteers, created by the Peace Corps Act of 1961. (From 1971 to 1982 it was a subagency of an independent agency called ACTION.) It was initiated by President John F. Kennedy, and its first director was ...
Peace Mission: predominantly black 20th-century religious movement in the United States, founded and led by Father Divine (1878/80-1965), who was regarded, or worshiped, by his followers as God, Dean of the Universe, and Harnesser of Atomic Energy.
Peace River: river in northern British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, forming the southwestern branch of the Mackenzie River system. From headstreams (the Finlay and the Parsnip rivers) in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, the Peace River flows northeastward across the Alberta ...
Peacekeeper missile: intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that was part of the United States' strategic nuclear arsenal at the end of the 20th century.
peach: (species Prunus persica), fruit tree of the rose family (Rosaceae), grown throughout the warmer temperate regions of both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.
Peacham, Henry: English author best known for his The Compleat Gentleman (1622), important in the tradition of courtesy books. Numerous in the late Renaissance, courtesy books dealt with the education, ideals, and conduct befitting a gentleman or lady of the court.
peachblow glass: American art glass made in the latter part of the 19th century by factories such as the Mount Washington Glass Works of New Bedford, Mass., and the New England Glass Company of East Cambridge, Mass. The name is derived from ...
peacock: any of several resplendent birds of the pheasant family, Phasianidae (order Galliformes). Strictly, the male is a peacock, and the female is a peahen; both are peafowl. Two species of peafowl are the blue, or Indian, peacock (Pavo cristatus; see ...