Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Pervomaysk ... Peter II

Pervomaysk: city, Nikolayev oblast (province), Ukraine, at the confluence of the Sinyukha and Yuzhny Bug rivers. The city, formerly known as Olviopol, was incorporated in 1773 and renamed, literally, First of May, after the international (Communist) holiday, in 1919. The city ...
Pervomaysk: mining town, Luhansk oblast (province), Ukraine, on the Donets Coal Basin. The town, the name of which means First of May, after the international (Communist) holiday, was incorporated in 1938, before which it was known as Petromaryevka. Besides mining, ...
Pervouralsk: city, Sverdlovsk oblast (province), western Russia, located on the upper Chusovaya River and on the railway from Yekaterinburg to Perm. Founded in 1732 as an ironworks, the modern city of Pervouralsk has several large steel-pipe factories. It also produces mining ...
Pesaro: city, capital of Pesaro e Urbino provincia, Marche regione, northern Italy. Pesaro is a seaport lying along the Adriatic Sea at the mouth of the Foglia (Pisaurum) River. Destroyed by Witigis the Ostrogoth in 536, the town was rebuilt and ...
Pescara: city, capital of Pescara provincia, Abruzzi regione, central Italy. Pescara lies along the Adriatic Sea at the mouth of the Pescara River, east-northeast of Rome. The Roman Aternum, the city was almost destroyed in the barbarian invasions and arose again ...
Pescara, Fernando Francesco de Avalos, marchese di: (marquess of) Italian leader of the forces of Holy Roman emperor Charles V against the French king Francis I.
Peschiera del Garda: port village, Verona provincia, Veneto regione, northern Italy. Situated on the southeast end of Garda Lake at the efflux of the Mincio River, Peschiera lies about 14 miles (23 km) west of Verona. It is a rail junction. The village ...
Pescia: town, Pistoia provincia, Toscana regione, central Italy, at the base of the Etruscan Apennines and at the western end of the Nievole River. Its cathedral is notable for an ancient tower, and in the 14th-century Church of St. Francis is ...
Pesellino: Italian artist of the early Renaissance who excelled in the execution of small-scale paintings.
peseta: former monetary unit of Spain. The peseta ceased to be legal tender in 2002, when the euro, the monetary unit of the European Union, was adopted as the country's sole monetary unit. In 1868 the peseta replaced the peso, which ...
peshat: (Hebrew: "spread out"), in Jewish hermeneutics, the simple, obvious, literal meaning of a biblical text. In the interpretation of the Halakha (the "Proper Way"; i.e., the Oral Law that was essentially an interpretation of the Written Law), peshat was preferred. ...
Peshawar: city, central North-West Frontier province, Pakistan. The city (capital of the province) lies just west of the Bara River, a tributary of the Kabul River, near the Khyber Pass. The Shahji-ki Dheri mounds, situated to the east, cover ruins of ...
Peshitta: (Syriac: "simple," or "common"), Syriac version of the Bible, the accepted Bible of Syrian Christian churches from the end of the 3rd century AD. The name Peshitta was first employed by Moses bar Kepha in the 9th century to suggest ...
Peshtigo: city, Marinette county, northeastern Wisconsin, U.S. It is situated on the Peshtigo River, about 45 miles (70 km) northeast of Green Bay. The site was first settled about 1838. On October 8, 1871, the date of the more famous but ...
peshwa: the office of chief minister among the Maratha people of India. The peshwa, also known as the mukhya pradhan, originally headed the advisory council of the raja Sivaji (reigned c. 1659-80). After Sivaji's death, the council broke up and the ...
Pesne, Antoine: French-born Rococo painter of historical subjects and portraits who was the most important artist in Prussia in the first half of the 18th century.
peso: the monetary unit of several Latin American countries and the Philippines; it is divided into 100 centavos. The peso was introduced into Spain by the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, who reformed the Spanish coinage system in 1497; it did not ...
Pessac: town, southwestern suburb of Bordeaux, Gironde departement, southwestern France. It was the site of a Gallo-Roman villa of the patrician Pesus. Located in the Graves vineyard district, it is noted for its red wines (Haut-Brion, Pape Clement). The 17th-century chateau ...
Pessanha, Camilo: Portuguese poet whose work is the representative in Portuguese poetry of Symbolism in its purest and most genuine form and the chief precursor of Modernist poetry.
Pessoa, Fernando Antonio Nogueira: poet whose part in Modernism gave Portuguese literature European significance.
Pest: megye (county), north-central Hungary, extending southward from the Budapest area to near the Tisza River and with an area of 2,469 square miles (6,394 square km). The megye is very much oriented toward Budapest, the national capital and megye seat, ...
pest: any organism judged as a threat to human beings or to their interests. When early man hunted animals and foraged for food, he shared the natural resources with other organisms in the community. As human culture developed and population rose, ...
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich: Swiss educational reformer, who advocated education of the poor and emphasized teaching methods designed to strengthen the student's own abilities. Pestalozzi's method became widely accepted, and most of his principles have been absorbed into modern elementary education.
Pestalozzianism: pedagogical doctrines of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) stressing that instruction should proceed from the familiar to the new, incorporate the performance of concrete arts and the experience of actual emotional responses, and be paced to follow the gradual ...
Pestel, Pavel Ivanovich: Russian military officer and a radical leader of the Decembrist revolutionaries.
pesticide: any toxic substance used to kill animals or plants that cause economic damage to crop or ornamental plants or are hazardous to the health of domestic animals or humans. All pesticides interfere with normal metabolic processes in the pest organism ...
pet: any animal kept by human beings as a source of companionship and pleasure.
Pet Shop Boys, the: British pop music duo that recorded a string of international hits, several of which topped the charts in the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. The band comprised Neil Tennant (b. July 10, 1954, Gosforth, Tyne and Wear, Eng., ) ...
Petah Tiqwa: city, west-central Israel, on the Plain of Sharon, east-northeast of Tel Aviv-Yafo and part of that city's metropolitan area. Situated in the valley of Achor near the Yarqon River, the city takes its name (meaning "Door of Hope") from the ...
Petain, Philippe: French general who was a national hero for his victory at the Battle of Verdun in World War I but was discredited as chief of state of the French government at Vichy in World War II. He died under sentence ...
Petaling Jaya: city, Peninsular (West) Malaysia, about 7 miles (11 km) southwest of Kuala Lumpur, the national capital. Established (1953) originally as a satellite settlement for squatters of Kuala Lumpur, Petaling Jaya is among the most industrialized and prosperous cities in Malaysia. ...
Petaluma: city, Sonoma county, western California, U.S. It lies at the head of navigation on the Petaluma River, 39 miles (63 km) north of San Francisco. The area was once part of Rancho Petaluma, granted to Mexican General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo ...
Petare: city, northwestern Miranda estado ("state"), in the central highlands of northern Venezuela. Formerly a commercial centre in a fertile agricultural area producing coffee, cacao, and sugarcane, the city has become a residential suburb of the national capital and a part ...
petasos: wide-brimmed hat with a conical crown worn in ancient Greece. The petasos worn by men had a rather low crown, while that worn by women had a tall one.
Peten: region of northern Guatemala, bounded on the north and west by Mexico and on the east by Belize. It constitutes more than one-third of the nation's territory. Peten is a low limestone plateau, varying in elevation between 500 and 700 ...
Peten Itza, Lake: lake, northern Guatemala, 160 miles (260 km) northeast of Guatemala City. A depression in the low limestone plateau at an elevation of 262 feet (80 m) above sea level, it measures about 22 miles (35 km) from east to west ...
Peter: celebrated king of Castile and Leon from 1350 to 1369, charged by his contemporary enemies with monstrous cruelty but viewed by later writers as a strong executor of justice.
Peter: briefly Latin emperor of Constantinople, from 1217 to 1219.
Peter: Russian Orthodox metropolitan of Kiev and Moscow (1308-26) and the first metropolitan to reside in Moscow.
Peter Chrysologus, Saint: archbishop of Ravenna, whose orthodox discourses earned him the status of doctor of the church. The title Chrysologus (Golden Orator) was added to his name at a later date, probably to create a Western counterpart to the Eastern patriarch St. ...
Peter Claver, Saint: Jesuit missionary to South America who, in dedicating his life to the aid of Negro slaves, earned the title of apostle of the Negroes.
Peter Damian, Saint: cardinal and Doctor of the Church, an original leader and a forceful figure in the Gregorian Reform movement, whose personal example and many writings exercised great influence on religious life in the 11th and 12th centuries.
Peter Des Rivaux: one of the Poitevin administrators who dominated the government of young King Henry III of England from 1232 to 1234; Peter failed in his efforts to create an all-powerful central administration.
Peter Des Roches: Poitevin diplomat, soldier, and administrator, one of the ablest statesmen of his time, who enjoyed a brilliant but checkered career, largely in England in the service of kings John and Henry III.
Peter I: the great vladika, or prince-bishop, of Montenegro from 1782 to 1830, who won full independence of his country from the Turks.
Peter I: king of Portugal from 1357 to 1367.
Peter I: king of Aragon from June 1094. The son of Sancho Ramirez, the third in order of the historic kings of Aragon, Peter belonged to times anterior to the authentic written history of his kingdom; and little is known of him ...
Peter I: king of Serbia from 1903, the first strictly constitutional monarch of his country. In 1918 he became the first king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later called Yugoslavia).
Peter I: duke or count of Brittany from 1213 to 1237, French prince of the Capetian dynasty, founder of a line of French dukes of Brittany who ruled until the mid-14th century.
Peter I: tsar of Russia, who reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V (1682-96) and alone thereafter (1696-1725) and who in 1721 was proclaimed emperor (imperator). He was one of his country's greatest statesmen, organizers, and reformers.
Peter II: the vladika or prince-bishop of Montenegro from 1830 to 1851, renowned as an enlightened ruler, an intrepid warrior, and especially as a poet. His principal works were "The Ray of the Microcosm," "The False Tsar Stephen the Small," and "The ...