Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Queen Elizabeth Islands ... Quiche

Queen Elizabeth Islands: part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, comprising all the islands north of latitude 74°30' N, including the Parry and Sverdrup island groups. The islands, the largest of which are Ellesmere, Melville, Devon, and Axel Heiberg, have a total land area ...
Queen Elizabeth National Park: national park, southwestern Uganda. It occupies an area of 764 square miles (1,978 square km) in a region of rolling plains east of Lake Edward and foothills south of the Ruwenzori Mountains. The park is located within the Western Rift ...
Queen Maud Land: region of Antarctica south of Africa, extending from Coats Land (west) to Enderby Land (east) and including the Princess Martha, Princess Astrid, Princess Ragnhild, Prince Harold, and Prince Olav coasts. A barren plateau covered by an ice sheet up to ...
Queen Maud Mountains: subdivision of the Transantarctic Mountains of central Antarctica, extending southeastward for 500 miles (800 km) from the head of Ross Ice Shelf. Discovered in 1911 by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, it was named for the queen of Norway. The ...
Queen's Bench, Court of: formerly one of the superior courts of common law in England. Queen's, or King's, Bench was so called because it descended from the English court held coram rege ("before the monarch") and thus traveled wherever the king went. King's Bench ...
Queen's Gallery: small public art gallery at the queen's official London residence, Buckingham Palace, in the borough of Westminster. Opened in 1962, the gallery is on the site of a private chapel destroyed during an air raid in 1940. The gallery was ...
Queen's University at Kingston: nondenominational, coeducational university at Kingston, Ont., Can. Originally called Queen's College, it was founded in 1841 as a Presbyterian denominational school to train young men for the ministry. The Presbyterian church's control over the school was gradually cut back and ...
Queen, Ellery: American cousins who were coauthors of a series of more than 35 detective novels featuring a character named Ellery Queen.
Queens: largest of the five boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Queens county, southeastern New York, U.S. The borough lies on western Long Island and extends across the width of the island from the junction of the East River and ...
Queens, Valley of the: gorge in the hills along the western bank of the Nile River in Upper Egypt. It was part of ancient Thebes and served as the burial site of the queens and some royal children of the 19th and 20th dynasties ...
Queensland: state of northeastern Australia, occupying the wettest and most tropical part of the continent. It is bounded on the north and east by the Pacific Ocean, on the south by New South Wales, on the southwest by South Australia, and ...
Queenston Delta: Late Ordovician wedge of sediments that spread across an extensive area of northeastern North America and was thickest in New York and Quebec (the Late Ordovician Period occurred from 458 to 438 million years ago). The Queenston Delta was produced ...
Queenston Heights, Battle of: (Oct. 13, 1812), serious U.S. reverse in the War of 1812, sustained during an abortive attempt to invade Canada. On Oct. 13, 1812, Major General Stephen Van Rensselaer, commanding a force of about 3,100 U.S. militia, sent advance units across ...
Queenstown: town, western Tasmania, Australia. It lies in the west-coast ranges, in the Queen River valley. Founded in 1897 after gold, silver, and copper were discovered at nearby Mount Lyell, the town was named for Queen Victoria and was proclaimed a ...
Queenstown: town, Eastern province, South Africa. The town lies in an upper valley of the Great Kei River. It has a distinctive hexagonal shape, designed by its founder, Sir George Cathcart (1853), as a precaution against tribal attack. Queenstown is a ...
Queiroz Law: (1850), measure enacted by the Brazilian parliament to make the slave trade illegal. In the mid-19th century the British government put pressure on Brazil to put an end to traffic in West African slaves, 150,000 of whom had arrived in ...
Queiroz, Rachel de: Brazilian novelist and member of a group of Northeastern writers known for their modernist novels of social criticism, written in a colloquial style (see also Northeastern school).
quelea: (species Quelea quelea), small brownish bird of Africa, belonging to the songbird family Ploceidae (order Passeriformes). It occurs in such enormous numbers that it often destroys grain crops and, by roosting, breaks branches. Efforts to control quelea populations with poisons, ...
Queler, Eve: American conductor, one of the first women to establish herself in the traditionally male-dominated field of orchestral conducting.
Quelimane: town and seaport, east-central Mozambique. It is situated near the mouth of the Bons Sinais River, on the Indian Ocean. One of the oldest settlements in the area, it was founded by the Portuguese as a trading station in 1544 ...
Queluz: town and palace, Lisboa distrito ("district"), Portugal, just northwest of Lisbon. During the 17th century the site was occupied by estates owned by Lisbon nobility. Queluz is known for the Palacio de Queluz. A Rococo edifice built between 1747 and ...
Quemoy Island: island under the jurisdiction of Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait at the mouth of mainland China's Xiamen (Amoy) Bay and about 170 miles (275 km) northwest of Kao-hsiung, Taiwan. Quemoy is the principal island of a group of 12, the ...
quenching: rapid cooling, as by immersion in oil or water, of a metal object from the high temperature at which it has been shaped. This usually is undertaken to maintain mechanical properties associated with a crystalline structure or phase distribution that ...
Queneau, Raymond: French author who produced some of the most important prose and poetry of the mid-20th century.
Quennell, Sir Peter: English biographer, literary historian, editor, essayist, and critic, a wide-ranging man of letters who was an authority on Lord Byron.
Quental, Antero Tarquinio de: Portuguese poet who was a leader of the Generation of Coimbra, a group of young poets associated with the University of Coimbra in the 1860s who revolted against Romanticism and struggled to create a new outlook in literature and society.
Querandi: South American Indians who inhabited the Argentine Pampas between Cabo Blanco on the Atlantic coast and the Cordoba Mountains on the western shores of the Rio de la Plata. Their language has been entirely lost. Little is known of the ...
quercitron bark: inner bark of the black oak, Quercus velutina, which contains a colouring matter used to dye wool bright yellow or orange. At one time this colorant was used with cochineal to produce scarlets of particular brilliance.
Quercy: historic and cultural region encompassing most of the southwestern French departements of Lot and Tarn-et-Garonne and coextensive with the former district of Quercy. The district was organized in Gallo-Roman times as a civitas of the Cadurci, a Celtic people whose ...
Queretaro: estado ("state"), central Mexico. It is bounded north and northeast by San Luis Potosi, southeast by Hidalgo and Mexico, southwest by a corner of Michoacan, and west by Guanajuato. Situated on the central plateau, its 4,420-square-mile (11,449-square-kilometre) territory is almost ...
Queretaro: city, capital of Queretaro estado (state), central Mexico. Situated on the Mexican Plateau at an elevation of about 6,100 feet (1,860 metres) above sea level, it is some 130 miles (210 km) northwest of Mexico City. Queretaro ...
Querido, Israel: Dutch novelist of the naturalist movement.
quern: ancient device for grinding grain. The saddle quern, consisting simply of a flat stone bed and a rounded stone to be operated manually against it, dates from Neolithic times (before 5600 BC). The true quern, a heavy device worked by ...
Quervain, Marcel Roland de: Swiss glaciologist known for his fundamental work on the metamorphism and physical properties of snow.
Quesnay, Francois: French economist and intellectual leader of the physiocrats, the first systematic school of political economy.
Quesnel: town, south-central British Columbia, Canada. It lies at the confluence of the Quesnel and Fraser rivers, 411 miles (661 km) north of Vancouver. The river and townsite (Quesnellemouth until 1864) were named for Jules Maurice Quesnelle, who accompanied Simon Fraser's ...
Quesnel, Pasquier: controversial French theologian who led the Jansenists (followers of Bishop Cornelius Jansen's heretical doctrines on predestination, free will, and grace) through the persecution by King Louis XIV of France until they were papally condemned.
Quetelet, Adolphe: Belgian mathematician, astronomer, statistician, and sociologist known for his application of statistics and probability theory to social phenomena.
Quetico Provincial Park: wilderness park, southwestern Ontario, Canada, west of Lake Superior and adjoining the U.S. border. Established in 1913, the park has an area of 1,832 sq mi (4,744 sq km). The region was formerly the site of a major east-west route ...
Quetta: city, district, and division of Baluchistan Province, Pakistan. The name is a variation of kwatkot, a Pashto word meaning "fort," and the city is still locally known by its ancient name of Shal or Shalkot.
quetzal: any of several birds belonging to the genus Pharomachrus of the trogon family. See trogon.
Quetzalcoatl: (from Nahuatl quetzalli, "tail feather of the quetzal bird [Pharomachrus mocinno]," and coatl, "snake"), the Feathered Serpent, one of the major deities of the ancient Mexican pantheon. Representations of a feathered ...
Quetzaltenango: capital, Quetzaltenango department, southwestern Guatemala, 7,656 feet (2,334 m) above sea level near the foot of the Santa Maria Volcano. The city's high elevation causes the temperature to drop below freezing in the dry season. It is near the site ...
queuing theory: subject in operations research that deals with the problem of providing adequate but economical service facilities involving unpredictable numbers and times or similar sequences. In queuing theory the term customers is used, whether referring to people or things, in correlating ...
Quevedo y Villegas, Francisco Gomez de: poet and master satirist of Spain's Golden Age, who, as a virtuoso of language, is unequaled in Spanish literature.
Queyras: high Alpine valley of the Guil River in Hautes-Alpes departement, in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region of southwestern France. The Queyras extends from the confluence of the Guil and Durance rivers (near the village of Mont-Dauphin) northeastward to Abries and then ...
Quezon City: chartered city and capital of the Philippines from 1948 to 1976. The city is located immediately northeast of Manila, in central Luzon. Named for President Manuel Luis Quezon, who selected the site (formerly a private estate) in 1939, it officially ...
Quezon, Manuel: Filipino statesman, leader of the independence movement, and first president of the Philippine Commonwealth established under U.S. tutelage in 1935.
Qui Nhon: city, central Vietnam. It is on the coast of the South China Sea at the entrance to the shallow 17-mile- (27-km-) long Qui Nhon Bay, which trends north-south. The port was opened to French trade in 1874, the harbour serving ...
Quibdo: city, western Colombia, on the Atrato River, in the Pacific coastal plain. It receives more than 420 inches (10,700 mm) of rain per year, which probably exceeds that of any other equatorial area on Earth. Founded in 1654 as San ...
Quiche: Mayan Indians living in the midwestern highlands of Guatemala. The Quiche Maya had an advanced civilization in pre-Columbian times, with a high level of political and social organization. Archaeological remains show large population centres and a complex class structure. Written ...