Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Victoria Day ... Vieques Island

Victoria Day: Canadian holiday on which the British sovereign's birthday is celebrated. In 1845, during the reign of Queen Victoria, May 24, the queen's birthday, was declared a holiday in Canada. After Victoria's death in 1901, an act of the Canadian Parliament ...
Victoria de las Tunas: city, capital of Las Tunas provincia, eastern Cuba. It is principally a commercial and manufacturing centre for a rich agricultural and pastoral hinterland, whose major yields are sugarcane, bananas, oranges, and cattle; beeswax and honey are also produced. Deposits of ...
Victoria Falls: spectacular waterfall located about midway along the course of the Zambezi River, at the border between Zambia to the north and Zimbabwe to the south. Approximately twice as wide and twice as deep as Niagara Falls, the waterfall spans the ...
Victoria Falls: township, northwestern Zimbabwe. It is located on the south bank of the Zambezi River adjacent to Victoria Falls, the greatest waterfall in Africa. The town faces Livingstone (Maramba), Zambia, across the river. The first storage and rest huts in the ...
Victoria Island: second largest island in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Divided administratively between the Northwest Territories and the territory of Nunavut, it is separated from the mainland on the south by Dolphin and Union Strait, Coronation Gulf, Dease Strait, and Queen Maud ...
Victoria Land: physical region in eastern Antarctica, bounded by the Ross Sea (east) and Wilkes Land (west) and lying north of the Ross Ice Shelf. It was discovered in 1841 by a British expedition led by Sir James Clark Ross, and it ...
Victoria Nile: river that forms the upper section of the Nile River and issues from the northern end of Lake Victoria at Ripon Falls (now submerged), west of Jinja, Uganda. The river flows 260 miles (420 km) northwest over the Owen Falls ...
Victoria River: longest river in Northern Territory, Australia. The river rises in low sand hills at 1,200 feet (370 m) elevation north of Hooker Creek. It flows north and northwest for about 350 miles (560 km) across a region of hills and ...
Victoria Station: railway station in the borough of Westminster, London. It stands just south of Buckingham Palace. Victoria Station is actually two 19th-century stations combined into one unit. The eastern portion was built for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, and the ...
Victoria Strait: southern arm of the Arctic Ocean, lying between Victoria Island on the west and King William Island on the east, in eastern Kitikmeot region, Northwest Territories, Canada. The strait is about 100 miles (160 km) long and from 50 to ...
Victoria, Guadalupe: original name Manuel Felix Fernandez Mexican soldier and political leader who was the first president of the Mexican Republic.
Victoria, Lake: largest lake in Africa and chief reservoir of the Nile, lying mainly in Tanzania and Uganda but bordering on Kenya. Among the freshwater lakes of the world it is exceeded in size only by Lake Superior in North America, its ...
Victoria, Tomas Luis de: Spanish composer who ranks with Palestrina and Orlando di Lasso among the greatest composers of the 16th century.
Victoriaville: town, Mauricie-Bois-Francs region, southern Quebec province, Canada, on the Nicolet River. Originally called Demersville, it became a village in 1860 and was renamed for Queen Victoria in 1861.
Victorville: city, San Bernardino county, southwestern California, U.S. Located nearly 100 miles (160 km) northeast of Los Angeles, it lies along the Mojave River in the Victor Valley at the edge of the Mojave Desert, just north of the San Bernardino ...
Victory: flagship of the victorious British fleet commanded by Admiral Horatio Nelson in the Battle of Trafalgar on Oct. 21, 1805. The ship is preserved today as a historic relic at Portsmouth, Eng.
Victory Peak: mountain in the eastern Kokshaal-Tau Mountains, on the frontier of Kyrgyzstan and the People's Republic of China. It was first identified in 1943 as the highest peak (24,406 feet [7,439 m]) in the Tien Shan range and the second highest ...
vicuna: (Lama, or Vicugna, vicugna), South American member of the camel family, Camelidae (order Artiodactyla), that is closely related to the alpaca, guanaco, and llama (known collectively as lamoids). Depending on the authority, the llama, alpaca, and guanaco may be classified ...
Vidal de La Blache, Paul: French geographer who had a profound influence on the development of modern geography.
Vidal, Gore: prolific American novelist, playwright, and essayist, noted for his irreverent and intellectually adroit novels.
Vidalin, Jon Thorkelsson: Lutheran bishop, best known for his Huss-Postilla (1718-20; "Sermons for the Home"), one of the finest works of Icelandic prose of the 18th century.
Videla, Jorge Rafael: career military officer who was president of Argentina from 1976 to 1981. His government was responsible for human-rights abuses during Argentina's "dirty war," which began as an attempt to suppress terrorism but resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians.
video tape recorder: electromechanical device that records and reproduces an electronic signal containing audio and video information onto and from magnetic tape. It is commonly used for recording television productions that are intended for rebroadcasting to mass audiences. There are two types of ...
videocassette recorder: electromechanical device that records, stores, and plays back television programs on a television set by means of a cassette of magnetic tape. A videocassette recorder is commonly used to record television programs broadcast over the air or by cable and ...
videodisc: rigid circular plate of either metal or plastic used to record video and audio signals for playback. It resembles a phonograph record and can be played on a disc machine attached to a conventional television receiver. There are two major ...
videophone: device that simultaneously transmits and receives both audio and video signals over telephone lines. Such a device consists of a telephone; a display unit with a television picture tube, camera tube, and loudspeaker; a control unit with a microphone; and ...
Vidin: port town, extreme northwestern Bulgaria, on the Danube River. An agricultural and trade centre, Vidin has a fertile hinterland renowned for its wines and is the site of an annual fair. A regular ferry service connects it with Calafat, across ...
Vidisha: town, west-central Madhya Pradesh state, central India. It lies just east of the Betwa River. Formerly called Bhilsa (or Bhelsa), Vidisha is of great antiquity, being mentioned in the Sanskrit epics Mahabharata and Ramayana. Under the Maurya and Gupta empires ...
Vidocq, Francois: adventurer and detective who helped create the police de surete ("security police") in France.
Vidor, King: American motion-picture director whose films of the 1920s and '30s in both content and theme were among the most creative of those produced in Hollywood; they deal in relatively uncompromising terms with such themes as idealism and disillusionment in contemporary ...
Vidyasagar, Isvar Chandra: Indian educator and social reformer, considered the father of Bengali prose.
Vidzeme: plateau region of central Latvia, roughly corresponding to the historic state of Livonia. It is a hilly, irregular, partially terraced morainic area, dotted with many small morainal lakes. It reaches an elevation of 1,020 feet (311 m) at Mount Gaizins ...
Viedma: city, capital of Rio Negro provincia, south-central Argentina. It lies along the western bank of the Negro River 20 miles (32 km) from the river's mouth at the Atlantic Ocean, opposite Carmen de Patagones in Buenos Aires ...
Vieille, Paul: French scientist, known for his invention of smokeless powder.
Vieira da Cruz, Tomaz: Portuguese poet, musician, and journalist best known for the poems he dedicated to the woman he called his "bronze flower." His poetry evokes Angolan and African themes of beauty, drama, love, and misfortune.
Vieira da Silva, Maria Elena: Portuguese-born French painter of intricate, semiabstract compositions.
Vieira, Antonio: Jesuit missionary, orator, diplomat, and master of classical Portuguese prose who played an active role in both Portuguese and Brazilian history. His sermons, letters, and state papers provide a valuable index to the climate of opinion of the 17th-century world.
Vieira, Luandino: Angolan writer of short fiction and novels.
Viele-Griffin, Francis: American-born French poet who became an important figure in the French Symbolist movement.
Vienna: city and Bundesland (federal state), the capital of Austria. Of the country's nine states, Vienna is the smallest in area but the largest in population.
Vienna Circle: a group of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed in the 1920s that met regularly in Vienna to investigate scientific language and scientific methodology. The philosophical movement associated with the Circle has been called variously logical positivism, logical empiricism, scientific empiricism, ...
Vienna porcelain: ceramic ware made at the Vienna factory in Austria between 1719 and 1864. Claudius Innocentius du Paquier (d. 1751), a Dutchman, began making porcelain there with the help of two workmen from Meissen in Germany. In 1744 he sold the ...
Vienna State Opera: theatre in Vienna, Austria, that is one of the world's leading opera houses, known especially for performances of works by Richard Wagner, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Richard Strauss. The original theatre, located on the Ringstrasse, was built in 1869 to ...
Vienna, Congress of: assembly in 1814-15 that reorganized Europe after the Napoleonic Wars. Having begun in September 1814, five months after Napoleon's first abdication, it completed its "Final Act" in June 1815, shortly before the Waterloo campaign and the end of the Hundred ...
Vienna, Siege of: (July 17-Sept. 12, 1683), expedition by the Turks against the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor Leopold I that resulted in their defeat by a combined force led by John III Sobieski of Poland. The siege marked the beginning of the end ...
Vienna, University of: state-financed coeducational institution for higher learning at Vienna. Founded in 1365, it is the oldest university in the German-speaking world.
Vienne: town, Isere departement, Rhone-Alpes region, southeastern France. It lies along the Rhone River where the latter is joined by the Gere River. In ancient times Vienne was the capital of the Celtic tribe known as the Allobroges. It was conquered ...
Vienne River: river, western France, 217 mi (350 km) in length, a left-bank tributary of the Loire. Rising on the Plateau de Millevaches, the Vienne winds through the agricultural regions of five departements. It flows west-northwest into the Haute-Vienne departement, receiving the ...
Vienne, Council of: 15th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic church (1311-12), convoked by Pope Clement V at the insistence of Philip IV of France, who demanded the posthumous trial of Pope Boniface VIII and the suppression of the Knights Templars, one of ...
Vientiane: largest city and capital of Laos, situated on a plain just northeast of the Mekong River. The city's central river port location in a country relying heavily on its rivers for transportation and its surrounding hinterland of intensive rice cultivation ...
Vieques Island: island and municipio ("municipality"), Puerto Rico. It lies 13 miles (21 km) east of the main island, fronting south on the Caribbean Sea and north on the Vieques Sound, which connects the Caribbean with the Atlantic Ocean. Composed mostly of ...