Encyclopædia Britannica Australia -

Encyclopedias since 1768

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Wilson, Woodrow ... Windsor

Wilson, Woodrow: 28th president of the United States (1913-21), an American scholar and statesman best remembered for his legislative accomplishments and his high-minded idealism. Wilson led his country into World War I and became the creator and leading advocate of the League ...
wilt: common symptom of plant disease resulting from a water loss in leaves and stems. Affected parts lose their turgidity and droop. Specific wilt diseases-caused by a variety of fungi, bacteria, and viruses-are easily confused with root and crown rots, stem ...
Wilton: town ("parish"), Salisbury district, administrative and historic county of Wiltshire, England. The town is internationally known for its carpets. The Royal Carpet Factory was built there in 1655, and the production of Wilton and Axminster carpets became the town's main ...
Wiltshire: administrative, geographic, and historic county of southern England, on a low plateau draining into the basins of the Bristol Channel, the English Channel, and the eastward-flowing River Thames. Trowbridge is the administrative centre. The administrative, geographic, and historic counties occupy ...
Wimbledon: neighbourhood in Merton, an outer borough of London. Located about 8 miles (13 km) southwest of the City of London, it is the site of the annual All-England Championships, better known as the Wimbledon Championships, in lawn tennis. The district ...
Wimborne Minster: town ("parish"), East Dorset district, administrative and historic county of Dorset, England, on the River Allen. Cuthburga and Cwenburh, sisters of King Ine of Wessex, founded a convent there in 718; the present minster, reputedly occupying the same site, is ...
Wimmera: region, west-central Victoria, Australia. First surveyed (1836) by Thomas Mitchell, the area was settled in the 1860s. Its generally level terrain, in the basin of the north-flowing, dissipative Wimmera River, is bounded by the Murray River on the north and ...
wimple: headdress worn by women over the head and around the neck, cheeks, and chin. From the late 12th until the beginning of the 14th century, it was worn extensively throughout medieval Europe, and it survived until recently as a head ...
Winam Gulf: gulf of the northeastern corner of Lake Victoria, southwestern Kenya, East Africa. It is a shallow inlet, 35 mi (56 km) long and 15 mi wide, and is connected to the main lake by a channel 3 mi wide. The ...
Winchcombe: village ("parish"), Tewkesbury borough, administrative and historic county of Gloucestershire, England, on the River Isbourne, near the Cotswolds. The site was first settled when Cenwulf, king of Mercia (reigned 796-821), founded a Benedictine abbey there in the 8th century; it ...
Winchell, Walter: U.S. journalist and broadcaster whose newspaper columns and radio broadcasts containing news and gossip gave him a massive audience and much influence in the United States in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.
Winchelsea: place in Rother district, administrative county of East Sussex, historic county of Sussex, England, with historical importance as a former English Channel port and as an example of medieval town planning. Old Winchelsea, reputed to have consisted of 700 houses, ...
Winchelsey, Robert: archbishop of Canterbury who was a champion of clerical privilege and a leading opponent of kings Edward I and Edward II of England.
Winchester: city, seat (1738) of Frederick county (though administratively independent of it), northern Virginia, U.S. It lies at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, 70 miles (113 km) northwest of Washington, D.C.
Winchester: town and city (district), in the central part of the administrative and historic county of Hampshire, England, best known for its cathedral. The town lies in the valley of the River Itchen. Although few traces of the ancient Venta Belgarum ...
Winchester College: one of the oldest of the great public schools of England, in Winchester, Hampshire. Its formal name, St. Mary College of Winchester near Winchester, dates from 1382, when it was founded by Bishop William of Wykeham (q.v.) to prepare boys ...
Winchester school: painting style of English illuminated manuscripts produced primarily at Winchester but also at Canterbury and in various southern monasteries in the 10th and early 11th centuries. The Winchester style is characterized by boldness, incisiveness, and sumptuous ornament, many of the ...
Winchester, Oliver Fisher: U.S. manufacturer of guns and ammunition who developed the Winchester rifle and made the Winchester Repeating Arms Company a success by the shrewd purchase and improvement of the inventions of other men.
Winckelmann, Johann: German archaeologist and art historian whose writings directed popular taste toward classical art, particularly that of ancient Greece, and influenced not only Western painting and sculpture but also literature and even philosophy.
Winckler, Hugo: German archaeologist and historian whose excavations at Bogazkoy, in Turkey, disclosed the capital of the Hittite empire, Hattusa, and yielded thousands of cuneiform tablets from which much of Hittite history was reconstructed.
wind: in climatology, the movement of air relative to the surface of the Earth. Winds play a significant role in determining and controlling climate and weather.
Wind Cave National Park: scenic area in southwestern South Dakota, U.S., about 35 miles (56 km) south-southwest of Rapid City. It was established in 1903 to preserve a series of limestone caverns and a tract of unspoiled prairie grassland in the Black Hills. The ...
wind chill: a measure of the rate of heat loss from skin that is exposed to the air. It is based on the fact that, as wind speeds increase, the heat loss also increases, making the air "feel" colder. Wind chill is ...
wind instrument: any musical instrument that uses air as the primary vibrating medium for the production of sound.
Wind River: river in west-central Wyoming, U.S. It rises in several branches at the northern edge of the Wind River Range in the Shoshone National Forest and flows generally southeast past Dubois through the Wind River Indian Reservation (Shoshone and Arapaho) to ...
Wind River Range: mountain range in the central Rocky Mountains, west-central Wyoming, U.S. The range extends for 100 miles (160 km) northwest-southeast to the Sweetwater River and is part of the Continental Divide. Many peaks in the range are above 12,000 feet (3,658 ...
wind rose: map diagram that summarizes information about the wind at a particular location over a specified time period. A wind rose was also, before the use of magnetic compasses, a guide on mariners' charts to show the directions of the eight ...
wind shear: rapid change in wind velocity or direction. A very narrow zone of abrupt velocity change is known as a shear line. Wind shear is observed both near the ground and in jet streams, where it may be associated with clear-air ...
wind tunnel: device for producing a controlled stream of air in order to study the effects of movement through air or resistance to moving air on models of aircraft and other machines and objects. Provided that the airstream is properly controlled, it ...
wind-bell: a bell or a cluster of resonating pieces that are moved and sounded by the wind. The wind-bell has three basic forms: (1) a cluster of small pieces of metal, glass, pottery, bamboo, seashell, or wood that tinkle when blown ...
wind-blown moss: any plant of the genus Dicranum (order Bryales), numbering several hundred species distributed primarily throughout the Northern Hemisphere. They form dense cushions on soil, logs, or rocks. More than 20 species are native to North America. The most common is ...
Windaus, Adolf: German organic chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1928 for research on substances, notably vitamin D, that play important biological roles.
Windermere: lake, largest in England, in the southeastern part of the Lake District, in the administrative county of Cumbria, along the border between the historic counties of Lancashire and Westmorland. The lake is 10.5 miles (17 km) long and 1 mile ...
Windham: county, northeastern Connecticut, U.S. It is bordered to the north by Massachusetts and to the east by Rhode Island and consists of a hilly region forested by hardwoods and pines. The county is drained by the Quinebaug, Natchaug, and Shetucket ...
Windham: county, southeastern Vermont, U.S., bounded to the west by the Green Mountains, to the south by Massachusetts, and to the east by New Hampshire (the Connecticut River constitutes the border). It is a hilly upland with elevations generally rising to ...
Windham: town (township), Windham county, east-central Connecticut, U.S. It is situated in an area drained by the Willimantic and Natchaug rivers, which merge southeast of Willimantic to form the Shetucket. The original Indian land granted by Joshua, son of the Mohegan ...
Windhoek: town, capital of Namibia, located roughly in the centre of the country. It lies at an elevation of 5,428 feet (1,654 metres) and is about 400 miles (650 km) north of the Orange River and 760 miles (1,225 km) north ...
Windischgratz, Alfred, Prince zu: Austrian field marshal who was the leader of the reactionary faction of the Habsburg empire during the 1848 revolutions.
windmill: device for tapping the energy of the wind by means of sails mounted on a rotating shaft. The sails are mounted at an angle or are given a slight twist so that the force of wind against them is divided ...
window: opening in the wall of a building for the admission of light and air; windows are often arranged also for the purposes of architectural decoration. Since early times, the openings have been filled with stone, wooden, or iron grilles or ...
window fly: (family Scenopinidae), any of a group of rare, black flies (order Diptera) that are a little smaller than the housefly. The adults are seen on windows; the larvae live in decaying wood, in fungi, or in carpets. Most are parasitic, ...
Window Rock: capital of the extensive Navajo Nation Reservation, Apache county, northeastern Arizona, U.S. It lies 23 miles (37 km) northwest of Gallup, New Mexico. Established in 1936 as the Central Agency Headquarters to consolidate the many Indian agencies scattered throughout the ...
window-winged moth: any of the several hundred species of tropical insects constituting the family Thyrididae (order Lepidoptera). They are generally dark-coloured and small to medium-sized, with a wingspan of from 10 to 30 mm (0.4 to 1.2 inches). The middle area of ...
windrower: self-propelled or tractor-drawn farm machine for cutting grain and laying the stalks in windrows for later threshing and cleaning. The modern descendant of the header, the windrower is used to harvest grain in parts of the United States, Canada, and ...
Winds, Tower of the: ("Timepiece"), building in Athens erected about 100-50 BC by Andronicus of Cyrrhus for measuring time. Still standing, it is an octagonal marble structure, 42 feet (12.8 m) high and 26 feet (7.9 m) in diameter. The building's eight sides, which ...
Windscale: nuclear reactor facility and plutonium production plant in the county of Cumberland (now part of Cumbria), in northwestern England, that in 1957 was the site of the United Kingdom's most serious nuclear power accident. The Windscale plant consisted of two ...
Windsor: town, part of the Richmond-Windsor urban area, New South Wales, Australia, on the Hawkesbury River. In 1794, Major Francis Grose, then acting governor, placed 22 settlers in the riverside district known as Green Hills. In 1810 Governor Lachlan Macquarie founded ...
Windsor: town, Windsor and Maidenhead unitary authority, historic county of Berkshire, England. Windsor is situated on the south bank of the River Thames and lies to the west of London. The modern town is dominated by Windsor Castle, standing on the ...
Windsor: town, seat of Hants county, Nova Scotia, Canada. It lies at the confluence of the Avon and St. Croix rivers, 41 miles (66 km) northwest of Halifax. The site was settled as Piziquid by the French in 1703. Fort Edward ...
Windsor: county, eastern Vermont, U.S., bounded to the east by New Hampshire (the Connecticut River constituting the border). It consists mostly of a piedmont region that rises to the Green Mountains in the west and slopes to the Connecticut River valley ...
Windsor: town (township), Hartford county, north-central Connecticut, U.S. It is a northern suburb of the city of Hartford. Windsor was the site of the first English settlement of any kind in Connecticut-a trading post established in 1633 at the junction of ...