Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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viper ... Virunga Mountains

viper: any of more than 200 species of venomous snakes belonging to two groups: pit vipers (subfamily Crotalinae) and Old World vipers (subfamily Viperinae), which are considered separate families by some authorities. They eat small animals and hunt by striking and ...
viperfish: any of six species of marine fishes belonging to the genus Chauliodus, the sole genus in the family Chauliodontidae (order Salmoniformes). They are found in tropical regions of the major oceans. The viperfishes are deep-sea dwellers and have luminescent organs ...
Viphya Mountains: highlands in north-central Malawi. They comprise two main blocks, divided by a 15-mile- (24-km-) wide saddle (pass), and extend 130 miles (209 km) from Mount Champhila (5,971 feet [1,820 metres]) in the south to Mount Uzumara (6,375 feet [1,943 metres]) ...
Vir Singh, Bhai: Sikh writer and theologian who was chiefly responsible for raising the Punjabi language to a literary level never before attained.
Viracocha: creator deity originally worshiped by the pre-Inca inhabitants of Peru and later assimilated into the Inca pantheon. He was believed to have created the sun and moon on Lake Titicaca. According to tradition, after forming the rest of the heavens ...
viral hemorrhagic fever: any of a variety of highly fatal viral diseases that are characterized by massive external or internal bleeding or bleeding into the skin. Other symptoms vary by the type of viral hemorrhagic fever but often include fever, malaise, muscle aches, ...
Virchow, Rudolf: German pathologist and statesman, one of the most prominent physicians of the 19th century. He pioneered the modern concept of pathological processes by his application of the cell theory to explain the effects of disease in the organs and tissues ...
Virden: town, southwestern Manitoba, Canada. It lies near the Assiniboine River, 47 miles (76 km) west of Brandon. A farming and grain-shipping centre, the community prospered after the discovery of oil in 1951 and has become the operational headquarters of the ...
Virden: city, Macoupin county, west-central Illinois, U.S. Virden lies about 20 miles (30 km) south of Springfield. Laid out in 1852 along the Chicago and Mississippi Railroad, it was named for John Virden, a local innkeeper. A coal-mining town, Virden was ...
virelai: one of several formes fixes ("fixed forms") in French lyric poetry and song of the 14th and 15th centuries (compare ballade; rondeau). It probably did not originate in France, and it takes on several different forms even within the French ...
Viren, Lasse: Finnish distance runner, who was the first athlete to win gold medals for both the 5,000- and 10,000-metre races at consecutive Olympic Games: at Munich, West Germany, in 1972 and at Montreal in 1976.
vireo: any of 42 species of New World birds constituting the family Vireonidae (order Passeriformes). This includes pepper-shrikes and shrike-vireos-about five tropical species sometimes separated as the families Cyclarhidae and Vireolaniidae, respectively. About 15 tropical forms are called greenlets-formerly the usual ...
Viret, Pierre: champion of the Reformation in the Swiss canton of the Vaud and the most important native religious Reformer of French-speaking Switzerland.
Virgil: Roman poet, best known for his national epic, the Aeneid (from c. 30 BC; unfinished at his death).
Virgilian series: major division of Late Carboniferous rocks and time in the United States (the Late Carboniferous epoch, approximately equivalent to the Pennsylvanian period, began about 320 million years ago and ended about 286 million years ago). Named for exposures studied in ...
Virgin Birth: fundamental doctrine of orthodox Christianity that Jesus Christ had no natural father but was conceived by Mary through the power of the Holy Spirit. The doctrine that Mary was the sole natural parent of Jesus is based on the infancy ...
Virgin Gorda Island: one of the British Virgin Islands, in the West Indies, lying 80 miles (130 km) east of Puerto Rico. It forms two rectangles joined by a spit, or point, of land. The peninsula in the southwest is flat and strewn ...
Virgin Islands: group of about 90 small islands, islets, cays, and rocks in the West Indies, situated some 40 to 50 miles (64 to 80 kilometres) east of Puerto Rico. The islands extend from west to east for about 60 miles and ...
Virgin Islands National Park: conservation area covering nearly two-thirds of the island of St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, West Indies. The park (area 14,696 ac [5,947 ha]) has steep mountains, deep valleys, white beaches, and coral reefs. Most of the tree cover ...
Virgin Islands of the United States: organized unincorporated island territory of the United States, at the eastern end of the Greater Antilles, about 40 miles (64 km) east of Puerto Rico, in the northeastern Caribbean Sea. Composed of three large islands, St. Croix, St. John, and ...
Virgin Mary, Presentation of the: feast celebrated in the Roman Catholic and Eastern churches on November 21. Based on a legend contained in the Protevangelium of James, a 2nd-century work not included in the Bible, the feast commemorates a visit by the three-year-old Mary to ...
virginal: musical instrument of the harpsichord family, of which it may be the oldest member. The virginal may take its name from Latin virga ("rod"), referring to the jacks, or wooden shafts that rest on the ends of the keys and ...
Virginia: town and gold-mining centre, north-central Free State province, South Africa, in one of the world's richest goldfields. Virginia was a former whistle stop (named, 1892) on the line between Johannesburg and Cape Town. A modern, well-planned town, it was founded ...
Virginia: city, St. Louis county, northeastern Minnesota, U.S. It lies in the Mesabi Range, about 60 miles (95 km) northwest of Duluth. Iron ore was discovered in 1890 by Leonidas Merritt at the site of the nearby city of Mountain Iron. ...
Virginia: constituent state of the United States of America, one of the original 13 colonies. It has an area of 40,767 square miles (105,587 square kilometres). It is bordered by Maryland to the northeast, North Carolina and Tennessee to the south, ...
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions: (1798 and 1799), in U.S. history, measures passed by the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky as a protest against the Federalist Alien and Sedition Acts. The resolutions were written by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson (then vice president in the ...
Virginia Beach: independent city, southeastern Virginia, U.S., on the Atlantic coast and Chesapeake Bay, adjacent to the cities of Norfolk and Chesapeake in the Hampton Roads region. The city extends 28 miles (45 km) southward from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to ...
Virginia Capes, Battle of: (September 5, 1781), in the American Revolution, French naval victory over a British fleet that took place outside Chesapeake Bay. The outcome of the battle was indispensable to the successful Franco-American Siege of Yorktown from August to October.
Virginia City: town, seat (1876) of Madison county, southwestern Montana, U.S., on the Ruby River. Founded as Verona (after Varina Davis, wife of the president of the Confederate States of America) in 1863, when gold was discovered in nearby Alder Gulch, it ...
Virginia City: unincorporated town, seat (1861) of Storey county, western Nevada, U.S., on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada range, 20 miles (32 km) south of Reno. Settled in 1859 and named for a prospector, "Old Virginia" Fennimore, it became a ...
Virginia Commonwealth University: public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Richmond, Virginia, U.S. It comprises the College of Humanities and Sciences and 12 other schools, including the School of Medicine on the Medical College of Virginia campus (also in Richmond). The university offers ...
Virginia Company: commercial trading company, chartered by King James I of England in April 1606 with the object of colonizing the eastern coast of North America between latitudes 34° and 41° N. Its shareholders were Londoners, and it was distinguished from the ...
Virginia creeper: woody vine, in the grape family (Vitaceae), that climbs by means of disk-tipped tendrils. It is commonly found in eastern North America and is often grown as a covering vine for walls, fences, and trunks of large trees. Its fall ...
Virginia Declaration of Rights: in U.S. constitutional history, declaration of rights of the citizen adopted June 12, 1776, by the constitutional convention of the colony of Virginia. It was a model for the Bill of Rights added to the U.S. Constitution 15 years later. ...
Virginia Falls: cataract on the South Nahanni River, a tributary of the Liard, in Nahanni National Park (1,840 square miles [4,766 square km]), Northwest Territories, Canada, 76 miles (120 km) east of the Yukon border. Highest in the region, the spectacular falls ...
Virginia Military Institute: , public institution of higher learning in Lexington, Virginia, U.S. It is a state military college modeled on the U.S. service academies. Students are referred to as cadets; all cadets enroll in U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, or Marine Corps ...
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S. Virginia Tech is a comprehensive, land-grant university, consisting of colleges of agriculture and life sciences, architecture and urban studies, arts and sciences, business, human resources and education, engineering, forestry and ...
Virginia reel: spirited American country dance for couples. It stems from the rinnce fadha, a pre-Christian Irish dance that evolved into the English dance called the Sir Roger de Coverley. Brought to Virginia by English colonists, the Sir Roger de Coverley in ...
Virginia State University: public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Petersburg, Virginia, U.S. The historically African-American university consists of schools of agriculture, business, liberal arts and education, science and technology, and graduate studies and continuing education. It awards a variety of bachelor's degrees, ...
Virginia, University of: public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., on a campus of 1,000 acres (405 hectares) near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Founded by Thomas Jefferson, it was chartered in 1819. Jefferson was aided by Joseph ...
Virginius affair: (1873), seizure of the Cuban ship Virginius (fraudulently flying the U.S. flag and carrying U.S. registration) by Spanish authorities and the summary execution of 53 of its passengers and crew, among them U.S. and British citizens. Hostilities between the United ...
Virgo: in astronomy, zodiacal constellation lying between Leo and Libra, at about 13 hours right ascension (the coordinate on the celestial sphere analogous to longitude on the Earth) and 2° south declination (angular distance south of the celestial equator). The constellation's ...
Virgo A: giant elliptical galaxy in the constellation Virgo whose nucleus provides the strongest observational evidence for the existence of a black hole. Virgo A is the most powerful known source of radio energy among the thousands of galactic systems comprising the ...
virion: an entire virus particle, consisting of an outer protein shell called a capsid and an inner core of nucleic acid (either ribonucleic or deoxyribonucleic acid-RNA or DNA). The core confers infectivity, and the capsid provides specificity to the virus. In ...
viroid: an infectious particle smaller than any of the known viruses, an agent of certain plant diseases. The particle consists only of an extremely small circular RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecule, lacking the protein coat of a virus. Viroids appear to be ...
virology: branch of microbiology that deals with the study of viruses.
Virtanen, Artturi Ilmari: Finnish biochemist whose investigations directed toward improving the production and storage of protein-rich green fodder, vitally important to regions characterized by long, severe winters, brought him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1945.
virtual museum: a collection of digitally recorded images, sound files, text documents, and other data of historical, scientific, or cultural interest that are accessed through electronic media. A virtual museum does not house actual objects and therefore lacks the permanence and unique ...
virtual reality: the use of computer modeling and simulation that enables a person to interact with an artificial three-dimensional (3-D) visual or other sensory environment. VR applications immerse the user in a computer-generated environment that simulates reality through the use of interactive ...
virtue: in Christianity, any of the seven virtues selected as being fundamental to Christian ethics. They consist of the four "natural" virtues, those inculcated in the old pagan world that spring from the common endowment of humanity, and the three "theological" ...
Virunga Mountains: volcanic range north of Lake Kivu in east-central Africa, extending about 50 miles (80 km) along the borders of Congo (Kinshasa), Rwanda, and Uganda. The range runs east-west, perpendicular to the rift valley in which lie Lakes Kivu and Edward. ...