Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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UFA ... ulcerative colitis

UFA: German motion-picture production company that made artistically outstanding and technically competent films during the silent era. Located in Berlin, its studios were the best equipped and most modern in the world. It encouraged experimentation and imaginative camera work and employed ...
Ufa Plateau: plateau lying immediately to the west of the central Ural Mountains in Bashkortostan and in Sverdlovsk oblast (province), west-central Russia. The plateau embraces parts of the basins of the Ufa, Yuryuzan, and Ay rivers. It has a total north-south length ...
Ufer, Walter: American painter who was a member of the Taos Society of Artists and who specialized in portraits of Indians and landscapes of the southwestern United States.
Uffizi Gallery: art museum in Florence that has the world's finest collection of Italian Renaissance painting, particularly of the Florentine school. It also has antiques, sculpture, and more than 100,000 drawings and prints. In 1559 the grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I ...
UFJ Holdings, Inc.: Japanese bank holding company that became one of the world's largest banking institutions through the merger of Sanwa Bank, Tokai Bank, and Toyo Trust in 2001. With headquarters in Osaka, UFJ operates banks, issues credit cards, provides venture capital funding, ...
Ugaki Kazushige: Japanese soldier-statesman, who in the years before World War II headed the so-called Control Faction of the Japanese army, a group that stressed the development of new weapons and opposed the rightist "Imperial Way" faction, which emphasized increased indoctrination of ...
Uganda: landlocked country of East Africa. Covering a total area of 93,072 square miles (241,038 square km), the country is slightly smaller in size than its former colonial ruler, Great Britain. It is bordered by The Sudan to the north, Kenya ...
Uganda, Martyrs of: a group of 22 African Roman Catholics who were executed during the persecution of Christians under Mwanga, kabaka (ruler) of Buganda (now part of Uganda), from 1885 to 1887. Collectively, the martyrs were solemnly beatified by Pope Benedict XV in ...
Ugarit: ancient city lying in a large artificial mound called Ras Shamra (Ra's Shamrah), 6 miles (10 km) north of Al-Ladhiqiyah (Latakia) on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria. Its ruins, about half a mile from the shore, were first uncovered ...
Ugaritic alphabet: cuneiform writing system used on the Syrian coast from the 15th to 13th century BC. It is believed that it was invented independent of other cuneiform writing systems and of the linear North Semitic alphabet, though similarities in certain letters ...
Ughelli: town, Delta state, southern Nigeria. Ughelli lies in the western Niger River delta east of Warri. Originally an agricultural-trade centre (cassava, plantains, sugarcane, palm oil and kernels) for the Urhobo (Isoko) people, it has also developed industries producing sheet glass, ...
Ugra, Battle of the: (1480), bloodless confrontation between the armies of Muscovy and the Golden Horde, traditionally marking the end of the "Mongol yoke" in Russia. By 1480 the Golden Horde had lost control of large portions of its empire; Ivan III of Moscow ...
Uguccione Della Faggiuola: Tuscan noble who, as tyrant of Pisa and Lucca, played a role in the 14th-century Italian struggle between papal and imperial factions.
UHF: conventionally defined portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, encompassing radiations having a wavelength between 0.1 and 1 m and a frequency between 3,000 and 300 megahertz. UHF signals are used extensively in televison broadcasting. UHF waves typically carry televison signals on ...
Uhland, Ludwig: German Romantic poet and political figure who was an important figure in the development of German medieval studies.
Uhlenbeck, George Eugene: Dutch-American physicist who, with Samuel A. Goudsmit, proposed the concept of electron spin.
Uige: town, northwestern Angola. Uige grew from a small market centre in 1945 to become Angola's major centre for coffee production in the 1950s. The Portuguese designated Uige a city in 1956. Its prosperity was short-lived, however, as recurrent fighting between ...
Uighur: Turkic-speaking people of interior Asia who live for the most part in northwestern China, in the Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang; a small number live in the Central Asian republics. There were more than 7,700,000 Uighurs in China in the ...
Uighur language: member of the Turkic subfamily of the Altaic language family, spoken by Uighurs in the Uighur Autonomous Region of Sinkiang of northwestern China and in portions of Uzbekistan, Kazakstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The modern Uighur language, which was based on the ...
Uijongbu: city, Kyonggi do (province), north western South Korea. Uijongbu lies 12 miles (20 km) north of Seoul. Its name, meaning "the Cabinet" in old Korean, derives from its being the temporary site of the Cabinet office during the Choson (Yi) ...
Uinta Mountains: segment of the south-central Rocky Mountains, extending eastward for more than 100 miles (160 km) from the Wasatch Range across northeastern Utah and slightly into southwestern Wyoming, U.S. Many of the range's summits exceed 13,000 feet (4,000 m), including Kings ...
Uintatherium: extinct genus of large, primitive hoofed mammals found as fossils in North America in terrestrial deposits of the Middle and Late Eocene Epochs (52 million to 36.6 million years ago). The uintatherium, which was as large as the modern rhinoceros, ...
Uisang: Buddhist monk and founder of the Hwaom (Chinese: Hua-yen) sect of Korean Buddhism. He devoted himself to the propagation of the teaching of the Avatamsaka-sutra (Garland Sutra), which provided ideological support for the political system of the state of Unified ...
Uist: either of two islands of the Outer Hebrides, both lying off the northwestern coast of Scotland. See North Uist; South Uist.
Uitenhage: town, Eastern province, South Africa, near the Indian Ocean, northwest of Port Elizabeth. It was founded in 1804 by J.A. Uitenhage de Mist, a Dutch governmental official sent to the Cape Colony by the government of the Batavian Republic, and ...
Uitlander: (Afrikaans: "outlander"), any British or other non-Afrikaner immigrant in the Transvaal region in the 1880s and '90s. The prospect of gold lured large numbers of newcomers to Johannesburg, where they became a majority of the citizenry and were led by ...
uji: any of the hereditary lineage groups that, until their official abolition in AD 604, formed the basic, decentralized ruling structure of early Japan. They are often referred to as the great clans because of their traditions of common descent, and ...
Uji: city, Kyoto fu (urban prefecture), west-central Honshu, Japan. It lies along the Uji River in the southeastern corner of the Kyoto Basin. It developed in about the 7th century as a river crossing. During the Tokugawa era (1603-1867) it was ...
ujigami: in the Shinto religion of Japan, the tutelary deity of a village or geographic area. The meaning of ujigami has undergone considerable evolution over the centuries, mainly because of the historical migrations of clan communities in Japan. Originally the term ...
Ujjain: city, western Madhya Pradesh state, central India. It is located just east of the Sipra River. Ujjain, one of seven sacred Hindu cities, is the site of the Kumbh Mela festival every 12 years.
Ujung Pandang: kotamadya (municipality) and capital, Sulawesi Selatan provinsi (province), Celebes, Indonesia. It lies on the western side of the most southerly peninsula of Celebes.
Ujung-Kulon National Park: national park on the island of Java, in Jawa Barat provinsi (province), Indonesia. It is best known as the last refuge of the one-horned Javan rhinoceros. A remote area of low hills and plateaus, with small lagoons and coastal dunes, ...
Ukemochi no Kami: (Japanese: "Goddess Who Possesses Food"), in Shinto mythology, the goddess of food. She is also sometimes identified as Wakaukanome ("Young Woman with Food") and is associated with Toyuke (Toyouke) Okami, the god of food, clothing, and housing, who is enshrined ...
Ukhta: industrial city, Komi republic, northwestern Russia, on the Ukhta River. It was founded as the village of Chibyu in 1931 and became a city in 1943, when it was linked to the Pechora railway. Ukhta lies within the Pechora Basin, ...
Ukiah: city, seat (1859) of Mendocino county, northwestern California, U.S. It lies on the Russian River, 60 miles (100 km) north-northwest of Santa Rosa and 100 miles (160 km) north of San Francisco. Settled in 1856, the city derived its name ...
ukiyo-e: (Japanese: "pictures of the floating world"), one of the most important genres of art of the Tokugawa period (1603-1867) in Japan. The style is a mixture of the realistic narrative of the emaki ("picture scrolls") produced in the Kamakura period ...
Ukko: in Finnish folk religion, the god of thunder, one of the most important deities. The name Ukko is derived from ukkonen, "thunder," but it also means "old man" and is used as a term of respect. Ukko had his abode ...
Ukraine: country located in eastern Europe, after Russia the second largest on the continent. It is bordered by Belarus on the north, Russia on the east, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea on the south, Moldova and Romania on ...
Ukrainian Catholic church: largest of the Eastern Catholic churches, in communion with Rome since the Union of Brest-Litovsk (1596). Byzantine Christianity was established among the Ukrainians in 988 by St. Vladimir (Volodimir) and followed Constantinople in the Great Schism of 1054. Temporary reunion ...
Ukrainian language: East Slavic language spoken in Ukraine and in Ukrainian communities in neighbouring Belarus, Russia, Poland, and Slovakia. Ukrainian is a lineal descendant of the colloquial language used in Kievan Rus (10th-13th century). It is written in a form of the ...
Ukrainian literature: the body of writings in the Ukrainian language. The earliest writings of the Ukrainians, works produced in Kievan Rus from the 11th to the 13th century, were composed in Church Slavonic and are thus the common literary heritage of the ...
Ukrainka, Lesya: poet, dramatist, short-story writer, essayist, and critic who was the foremost woman writer in Ukrainian literature and a leading figure in its modernist movement.
ukulele: (Hawaiian: "flea"), small guitar derived from the machada, or machete, a four-stringed guitar introduced into Hawaii by the Portuguese in the 1870s. It is seldom more than 24 inches (60 cm) long.
Ulaanbaatar: capital and largest city of Mongolia. It is situated on the Tuul River on a windswept plateau at an elevation of 4,430 feet (1,350 m). The city originated as a seasonal migratory abode of the Mongolian princes and in 1639 ...
Ulam, Stanislaw Marcin: mathematician who played a major role in the development of the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico, U.S.
ulama: the learned of Islam, those who possess the quality of 'ilm, "learning," in its widest sense. From the 'ulama', who are versed theoretically and practically in the Muslim sciences, come the religious teachers of the Islamic community-theologians (mutakallimun), canon lawyers ...
Ulan-Ude: city and capital of Buryatiya, east-central Russia. It lies at the confluence of the Selenga and Uda rivers and in a deep valley between the Khamar-Daban and Tsagan-Daban mountain ranges. The wintering camp of Udinskoye, established there in 1666, became ...
Ulanova, Galina: first prima ballerina assoluta of the Soviet Union and one of the greatest ballet dancers of the 20th century.
Ulbricht, Walter: German Communist leader and head of the post-World War II German Democratic Republic, or East Germany.
ulcer: a lesion or sore on the skin or mucous membrane resulting from the gradual disintegration of surface epithelial tissue. An ulcer may be superficial, or it may extend into the deeper layer of the skin or other underlying tissue. An ...
ulcerative colitis: inflammation of the large intestine (colon), especially of its mucous membranes, characterized by patches of tiny ulcers in the inflamed membranese. The most common symptoms of ulcerative colitis are bloody diarrhea and abdominal pain. Other symptoms include fatigue, weight loss, ...