Frederick I

An implacable enemy of the Bohemian followers of Jan Hus, church reformer and accused heretic, Frederick aided the Holy Roman emperor Sigismund against them from 1420 on. When the last Saxon elector

Rinzai

One of two major Zen Buddhist sects in Japan; it stresses the abrupt awakening of transcendental wisdom, or enlightenment. Among the methods it practices are shouts (katsu) or blows delivered by the master on the disciple, question-and-answer sessions (mondo), and meditation on paradoxical statements (koan), all intended to accelerate a breakthrough of the normal boundaries

Shih Huang-ti

Pinyin �Shi Huangdi�, personal name (hsing-ming) �Chao Cheng� emperor of the Ch'in dynasty (221 - 210/209 BC) and creator of the first unified Chinese empire (which collapsed, however, about four years after his death).

Insurance, Settlement options

The death proceeds or cash values of insurance may be settled in various ways. The insured may take the cash value and lapse the policy. A beneficiary may take a lump sum settlement of the face amount upon the death of the insured. The beneficiary may, instead, elect to receive the proceeds over a given number of years or in some fixed amount, such as $100 a month, for as long as

Umuahia

Town, capital of Abia state, southern Nigeria. It lies along the railroad from Port Harcourt to Enugu. It is an agricultural market centre and (since 1916) collecting point on the railway for the crops of the surrounding region: yams, cassava, corn (maize), taro, citrus fruits, and palm oil and kernels. The town has a palm-oil-processing plant and several breweries, and the National

Policy

Policy, a true lottery initiated in the United States by Italian-Americans, derives its name from the Italian polizza (�receipt,� or �ticket�) and retains only occasional

France, History Of

From the 9th to the 11th century the peoples and lands dominated by west Frankish kings were transformed. The Carolingian protectorate of local order collapsed under the pressures of external invasions and internal usurpations of power. Growing populations and quickening economies were reorganized in principalities whose leaders struggled to carry on the

Raddall, Thomas Head

Raddall immigrated to Nova Scotia with his family in 1913 after his father, a military officer, was transferred to Halifax. The younger Raddall was briefly employed as a wireless operator before becoming

Denmark

Officially �Kingdom of Denmark�, Danish �Kongeriget Danmark�, Faroese �Kongar�kidh Danmark�, Greenlandic �Danmarkip N�lagauvfia� country occupying the peninsula of Jutland, which extends northward from the centre of continental western Europe, and an archipelago of more than 400 islands to the east of the peninsula. Of the country's total land area of 16,639 square miles (43,094 square km), the largest part, 11,497 square miles (29,777 square km), is Jutland; the largest of the islands are Zealand (Sj�lland; 2,876 square miles [7,449 square

Quantitative Verse

In prosody, a metrical system based on the duration of the syllables that make up the feet, without regard for accents or stresses. Quantitative verse is made up of long and short syllables, the duration of which is determined by the amount of time needed for pronunciation. This system has only rarely been used successfully in English poetry because of the strongly

Quantitative Verse

Any of five species of large, robust, and primarily terrrestrial monkeys found in dry regions of Africa and Arabia. Males of the largest species, the chacma baboon (Papio ursinus), average 30 kg (66 pounds) or so, but females are only half this size. The smallest is the hamadryas, or sacred baboon (P. hamadryas), with males weighing about 17 kg and females only

Amin, Hafizullah

Amin was born into a Ghilzay Pashtun family. After graduating from Kabul University, he traveled to the United States for graduate study at Columbia University in New York. Upon returning to Afghanistan, he became a teacher and later the principal

Winterthur

City, Z�rich canton, northern Switzerland. It lies in a wooded basin east of the T�ss River, northeast of Z�rich city. The Roman settlement of Vitodurum was on the site of the city's northeastern suburb of Ober-Winterthur. Winterthur was founded about 1175 by the counts of Kyburg, who granted it a charter with extensive privileges. It was inherited in 1264 by the Habsburgs, who sold

Earth, Development of the Earth's structure and composition

The origin of the Earth in its present form has been the subject of intellectual interest for centuries, but the decades since 1950 have seen major advances both in concepts and in measurements pertaining to this topic. The quantitative analysis by geochemists of the isotopes in meteorites and, in particular, the study of lunar rocks obtained during the U.S. Apollo program

Haarlem Lake

Dutch �Haarlemmermeer, � polder (area 45,700 acres [18,486 hectares]) coextensive with the gemeente (commune) of Haarlemmermeer in Noord-Holland provincie, western Netherlands. Originally, a number of lakes - with a combined area of about 14,000 acres (5,700 hectares) in 1531 - were formed into one by successive inundations, and by the 1830s the water area had increased to nearly 45,000 acres (18,200 hectares). Floods frequently threatened the cities

Marsh, George Perkins

Educated at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., Marsh developed a successful law practice, but his wide-ranging mind led him into the study of

Bohemian Confession

Latin �Confessio Bohemica, � Protestant doctrinal statement formulated in Bohemia by the Czech Utraquists (moderate Hussites) in 1575 and subscribed to by the Unitas Fratrum, Lutherans, and Calvinists in the kingdom. The document was based on the Augsburg Confession, and it upheld the Lutheran position on justification and the Calvinist interpretation of the Eucharist. Though Emperor Maximilian

Nora

Ancient site about 22 miles (35 km) southwest of Cagliari (Caralis) on the island of Sardinia. Although tradition ascribes its foundation to Iberians from Tartessus, the site, which lies on a triangular promontory ending in a steep cliff, is characteristically Phoenician. Apart from remains of a Sardinian nuraghe, or towerlike monument, the earliest antiquities discovered

Riot

In criminal law, a violent offense against public order involving three or more people. Like an unlawful assembly, a riot involves a gathering of persons for an illegal purpose. In contrast to an unlawful assembly, however, a riot involves violence. The concept is obviously broad and embraces a wide range of group conduct, from a bloody clash between picketers and strikebreakers

Dialect

A variety of a language. The word comes from the Ancient Greek dialektos �discourse, language, dialect,� which is derived from dialegesthai �to discourse, talk.� A dialect may be distinguished from other dialects of the same language by features of any part of the linguistic structure - the phonology, morphology, or syntax. In the sound system of American English, for example,

B.e.m.

Recipient of the British Empire Medal. See British Empire, The Most Excellent Order of the.

Wright Flyer Of 1903

First powered airplane to demonstrate sustained flight under the full control of the pilot. Designed and built by Wilbur and Orville Wright in Dayton, Ohio, it was assembled in the autumn of 1903 at a camp at the base of the Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, a village on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. After a first attempt failed on December 14, the machine was flown four times

Sculpture, Western, The Orientalizing period

Sculpture of the Orientalizing period was profoundly affected by technical and stylistic influences from the East. In about 700 BC, the Greeks learned from their Eastern neighbours how to use molds to mass-produce clay relief plaques. Widely adopted, this technique helped to establish in Greece a stereotyped convention for figure representation, even in freestanding,

Ashland

Settled in 1815 as Poage's Settlement, it was renamed (1854) in honour of Henry Clay's home in Lexington, Kentucky. Ashland's proximity to coal and timber regions

Munch, Peter Rochegune

After a career as a historian of modern Europe, Munch entered the Danish Parliament in 1909 as a member of the Radical Party. In the same year he became minister

Uccello, Paolo

Organization formed in New York City in 1911 during a convention of state antisuffrage groups. Led by Josephine Dodge, the founder and first president, the NAOWS believed that woman suffrage would decrease women's work in communities and their ability to effect societal reforms. Active on a state and federal level, the group also established a newsletter, Woman's