Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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thrush ... Thutmose I

thrush: fungus infection characterized by raised white patches on the tongue that resemble milk curds. When gently scraped off, these patches reveal inflamed tissue that tends to bleed easily. Beginning on the tongue, the creamy white spots can spread to the ...
thrush: any of about 300 members of the songbird family Turdidae, treated by many modern authorities as a subfamily of the Old World insect eaters, family Muscicapidae. The thrushes are sometimes divided into two groups, the chat-thrushes (subfamily Saxicolinae) and the ...
Thu Dau Mot: city, southern Vietnam. It is located on the Saigon River (Song Sai Gon) at the head of a branch of the Mekong delta inland waterway and on a spur railway line from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), 14 miles ...
Thubron, Colin: British travel writer and novelist whose works, often set in foreign locales, explore love, memory, and the loss of faith, as well as the differences between the ideal and the real.
Thucydides: greatest of ancient Greek historians and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the struggle between Athens and Sparta in the 5th century BC. His work was the first recorded political and moral analysis of a nation's ...
thug: member of a well-organized confederacy of professional assassins who traveled in gangs throughout India for several hundred years. (The earliest authenticated mention of the thugs is found in Ziya'-ud-Din Barani, History of Firuz Shah, dated about 1356.) The thugs would ...
Thugga: the best-preserved ancient Roman city in modern Tunisia, located near modern Tabursuq, west of the ancient road between Carthage and Theveste (modern Tebessa, Algeria). Thugga's most notable pre-Roman ruin is a 2nd-century-BC mausoleum, built in honour of a Numidian prince. ...
thugyi: (Burmese: "headman"), in Myanmar (Burmese) history, the title of either of two local royal officials: the myothugyi, or township chief, most common in the south, and the thaikthugyi, or regional chief, exclusive to the north.
Thule culture: prehistoric Eskimo (Inuit) culture that developed along the Arctic coast in northern Alaska and possibly as far east as the Amundsen Gulf. It spread rapidly eastward, starting about 900 and reaching Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) by the 12th century. It continued ...
thulite: pink, manganese-rich variety of the mineral zoisite (q.v.).
thulium: (Tm), chemical element, rare-earth metal of transition Group IIIb of the periodic table. One of the rarest of the rare-earth elements, though more abundant than silver, thulium has few commercial uses. Natural thulium is wholly composed of the stable isotope ...
thuluth script: in calligraphy, medieval Islamic style of handwritten alphabet. Thuluth (Arabic: "one-third") is written on the principle that one-third of each letter slopes. It is a large and elegant, cursive script, used in medieval times on mosque decorations. It took on ...
thumb: short, thick first digit of the human hand and of the lower-primate hand and foot. It differs from other digits in having only two phalanges (tubular bones of the fingers and toes). The thumb also differs in having much freedom ...
Thun: city, Bern canton, central Switzerland, on the Aare River, which there issues from Lake Thun (Thuner See). It is the gateway and principal centre of the Berner Oberland (highland), just southeast of Bern city. Lakes Thun and Brienz occupy an ...
Thun und Hohenstein, Franz Anton, Prince zu: Austrian administrator, prime minister, and governor of Bohemia, who favoured compromise with Czech nationalists but was defeated by extremist Czech and German opposition.
Thun und Hohenstein, Friedrich, Count von: Austrian diplomat and administrator who served as president of the German federal diet at Frankfurt in 1850, where he repeatedly clashed with Prussia's representative Otto von Bismarck.
Thun und Hohenstein, Leo, Count von: pro-Czech Austrian statesman and administrator who improved the educational establishments of the Austrian Empire, sought to resolve the antagonisms between Czechs and Germans in Bohemia, and favoured the conversion of the Habsburg monarchy into a federal state.
Thunberg, Clas: Finnish speed skater who, with Ivar Ballangrud of Norway, dominated the sport in the 1920s and '30s. He won five Olympic gold medals, a record for male speed skaters that was matched by Eric Heiden in 1980.
thunder: sound caused by a lightning discharge. Lightning heats the air in its path and causes a large over-pressure of the air within its channel. The channel expands supersonically into the surrounding air as a shock wave and creates an acoustic ...
Thunder Bay: city, seat of Thunder Bay district, west-central Ontario, Canada, on Lake Superior's Thunder Bay, at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River. Probably first occupied by French fur traders as early as 1678, its site was permanently settled only after the ...
Thunder Bay: inlet of northwestern Lake Superior, indenting the coast of west-central Ontario, Canada. The bay is 35 miles (55 km) long and 15 miles (24 km) wide; it receives the Kaministiquia and Current rivers. Pie Island lies at the entrance to ...
thunder cult: prehistoric beliefs and practices that at times seem directed toward one aspect of the supreme sky god and at other times appear to be concerned with a separate thunder deity. Although beginning perhaps much earlier, the thunder cult became especially ...
thunderbird: in North American Indian mythology, a powerful spirit in the form of a bird. By its work, the earth was watered and vegetation grew. Lightning was believed to flash from its beak, and the beating of its wings was thought ...
Thunderer: in Baltic religion, a sky deity usually known as Perkunas (Lithuanian) or Perkons (Latvian). See Perkons.
thunderstorm: a violent, short-lived weather disturbance that is almost always associated with lightning, thunder, dense clouds, heavy rain or hail, and strong, gusty winds. Thunderstorms arise when layers of warm, moist air rise in a large, swift updraft to cooler regions ...
Thunen, Johann Heinrich von: German agriculturalist best known for his work on the relationship between the costs of commodity transportation and the location of production.
Thurber, James: American writer and cartoonist, whose well-known and highly acclaimed writings and drawings picture the urban man as one who escapes into fantasy because he is befuddled and beset by a world that he neither created nor understands. Walter Mitty, the ...
Thurber, Jeannette Meyer: American music patron who devoted her efforts to creating a government-funded music conservatory in the United States.
Thurgau: canton, northeastern Switzerland. It is bordered on the north by Lake Constance (Bodensee), by the Rhine River on the northwest, and by the cantons of Sankt Gallen on the south and Zurich and Schaffhausen on the west. With an area ...
thurible: vessel used in the Christian liturgy for the burning of aromatic incense strewn on lighted coals. Censers of terra-cotta or metal were widely used in Egypt, in the ancient Middle Eastern civilizations, including the Jewish, and in the classical world. ...
Thuringia: historic region and Land (state) of Germany. Thuringia Land was re-created just prior to the unification of East with West Germany in 1990. It was constituted from the former East German Bezirke (districts) of Suhl, Erfurt, and Gera and from ...
Thuringian Basin: fertile agricultural region of Germany, between the Harz mountains on the north and the Thuringian Forest range on the south. It extends westward from the Saxon lowland. The basin's eastward-flowing streams, tributaries of the Saale River, swell-and sometimes flood-with snowmelt ...
Thuringian Forest: range of forested hills and mountains in Germany, extending in an irregular line from the neighbourhood of Eisenach in west-central Thuringia southeastward to the Bavarian frontier, where it merges with the Franconian Forest. Its breadth varies from 6 to 22 ...
Thurles: town, County Tipperary, Ireland, on the banks of the River Suir. The seat of the Roman Catholic archbishopric of Cashel and Emly, the town is a marketing centre for a large agricultural area; it has a sugar beet factory, and ...
Thurloe, John: English secretary of state during Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. His voluminous correspondence provides one of the chief historical sources for the Cromwellian era.
Thurlow, Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron: lord chancellor of England from June 1778 to April 1783 and from December 1783 to June 1792, who gained that office and continued to hold it under a variety of prime ministers by supporting the extreme conservatism of King George ...
Thurman, Wallace Henry: African-American editor, critic, novelist, and playwright associated with the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s.
Thurmond, Strom: American politician, a prominent states' rights and segregation advocate who ran for the presidency in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket and was one of the longest-serving senators in U.S. history (1954-2003).
Thurn and Taxis postal system: imperial and, after 1806, private postal system operated in western and central Europe by the noble house of Thurn and Taxis. At least two early ancestors of the family, then called Tassis, had operated courier services in the Italian city-states ...
Thurneysen, Rudolf: German linguist and Celtic scholar who was one of the first to use the principles of modern historical linguistics in the field of Celtic studies. He was also an excellent Latinist.
Thurnwald, Richard: German anthropologist and sociologist known for his comparative studies of social institutions.
Thurrock: seaport and unitary authority, geographic and historic county of Essex, England, lying on the north bank of the Thames estuary. Its southern part was largely reclaimed from the Thames marshes by immigrant Dutch workers. Thurrock's chief town and administrative centre, ...
Thursby, Emma Cecilia: American singer and educator who enjoyed a popular concert career in both Europe and the United States in the 1870s and '80s.
Thursday: fifth day of the week (q.v.).
Thursday Island: island in the Torres Strait off northern Queensland, Australia. It is surrounded by Prince of Wales, Friday, Good's, Hammond, Wednesday, and Horn islands, and it is the administrative centre for the area. The principal town is Port Kennedy, on the ...
Thurso: burgh (town) and Atlantic Ocean seaport, Highland council area, historic county of Caithness, Scotland, and the most northerly town on the mainland of Great Britain. It was the centre of Norse power on the mainland before the Scots defeated the ...
Thurston, Howard: American magician who led the largest magic show in history.
Thurston, Lorrin A: leader of Hawaiians who opposed the monarchy and favoured U.S. annexation of the islands.
Thurston, William Paul: American mathematician who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1983 for his work in topology. See the table of Fields Medalists.
Thurstone, L.L.: American psychologist who was instrumental in the development of psychometrics, the science that measures mental functions, and who developed statistical techniques for multiple-factor analysis of performance on psychological tests.
Thutmose I: 18th-dynasty king of Egypt (reigned 1493-c. 1482 BC) who expanded Egypt's empire in Nubia (the modern Sudan) and also penetrated deep into Syria.