A-Z Browse

architect important for establishing classicism in Baroque architecture in mid-17th-century France. His buildings are notable for their subtlety, elegance, and harmony. His most complete surviving work is the château of Maisons....

French architect and city planner to King Louis XIV who completed the design of Versailles....

largely self-educated educator, the founder and chief organizer of the adult-education movement in Great Britain....

town, northeastern North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan. The town is situated at the southern end of the Pakhli Plain on the Bhut Stream, a tributary to the Siran River, at an elevation of 3,682 feet (1,122 m) above sea level. It is a market town surrounded by pine-covered hills and has a flour mill, a woolen-yarn mill, and an agricultural research centre. The nearby Aś...

British philosopher and Anglican theologian and priest remembered for his exposition of the philosophy of the Scottish thinker Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856)....

...that cut the cordillera to reach the Amazon basin. These include Rentema (about one and one-fourth miles long and 200 feet wide), Mayo, Mayasito, and Huarcaya gaps and—the most important—Manseriche Gap, which is seven miles long....

Roman Catholic mercenary who fought for the Protestant cause during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48); he was the Catholic League’s most dangerous opponent until his death in 1626....

Roman Catholic mercenary who fought for the Protestant cause during the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48); he was the Catholic League’s most dangerous opponent until his death in 1626....

town and district, administrative and historic county of Nottinghamshire, England, on the River Maun. Mansfield was the chief town of Sherwood Forest—the legendary base for the activities of Robin Hood, the medieval robber and popular hero—and the forest court was held in the town’s Moot Hall (built 1752). The population of Mansfield grew with the 19th-century expansion of coa...

city, seat (1808) of Richland county, north-central Ohio, U.S., about 65 miles (105 km) northeast of Columbus, on a fork of the Mohican River. Laid out in 1808, it was named for Jared Mansfield, U.S. surveyor general. The arrival of the Mansfield and Sandusky Railroad (1846), followed by the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway (1849) and the Atlantic and Great Western Rai...

town (township), Tolland county, northeastern Connecticut, U.S. It lies just north of Willimantic city. Settled in 1686, it was originally part of Windham, known as Ponde Town. In 1702 it was incorporated as a separate town and renamed for Major Moses Mansfield, an early settler. A busy manufacturing centre noted for its production of raw si...

town and district, administrative and historic county of Nottinghamshire, England, on the River Maun. Mansfield was the chief town of Sherwood Forest—the legendary base for the activities of Robin Hood, the medieval robber and popular hero—and the forest court was held in the town’s Moot Hall (built 1752). The population...

American educator who was the first woman admitted to the legal profession in the United States....

chief justice of the King’s Bench of Great Britain from 1756 to 1788, who made important contributions to commercial law....

New Zealand-born English master of the short story, who evolved a distinctive prose style with many overtones of poetry. Her delicate stories, focused upon psychological conflicts, have an obliqueness of narration and a subtlety of observation that reveal the influence of Anton Chekhov. She, in turn, had much influence on the development of the short story as a form of literature....

Democratic politician who was the longest-serving majority leader in the U.S. Senate (1961–77). He also served as U.S. ambassador to Japan from 1977 to 1988....

Democratic politician who was the longest-serving majority leader in the U.S. Senate (1961–77). He also served as U.S. ambassador to Japan from 1977 to 1988....

highest point (4,393 feet [1,339 metres]) in Vermont, U.S., standing 20 miles (30 km) northeast of Burlington in the Green Mountains, a segment of the Appalachian Mountains. Mount Mansfield is actually a series of summits that together resemble the profile of a face. Individual peaks include the Adam’s Apple, Forehe...

...in November 1811. Both of the leading reviews, the Critical Review and the Quarterly Review, welcomed its blend of instruction and amusement. Meanwhile, in 1811 Austen had begun Mansfield Park, which was finished in 1813 and published in 1814. By then she was an established (though anonymous) author; Egerton had published Pride and Prejudice in January 1813, and......

one of the last of the great Romantic actors in the United States....

English physicist who, with American chemist Paul Lauterbur, won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a computerized scanning technology that produces images of internal body structures, especially those comprising soft tissues....

Royalist commander during the English Civil Wars and a noted patron of poets, dramatists, and other writers....

chief justice of the King’s Bench of Great Britain from 1756 to 1788, who made important contributions to commercial law....

arsenate mineral (AlAsO4·2H2O) similar to scorodite....

American sculptor whose subjects and modern, generalized style were largely inspired by classical sculpture. He is particularly well known for his large public commissions....

Dutch politician (b. Sept. 13, 1908, Ulrum, near Groningen, Neth.--d. June 30, 1995, Wapserveen, Neth.), was the guiding force behind the Mansholt Plan, a proposed radical restructuring of Western European agriculture that became the basis for the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Economic Community (EEC) and its successor, the European Community (EC). Mansholt, who was born into a dairy...

western Siberian peoples, living mainly in the Ob River basin of central Russia. They each speak an Ob-Ugric language of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic languages. Together they numbered some 30,000 in the late 20th century. They are descended from people from the south Ural steppe who moved into this region about the middle of the 1st millennium ad....

division of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic language family, comprising the Mansi (Vogul) and Khanty (Ostyak) languages; they are most closely related to Hungarian, with which they make up the Ugric branch of Finno-Ugric. The Ob-Ugric languages are spoken in the region of the Ob and Irtysh rivers in central Russia. They had no written tradition or literary language until 1930; since 1937......

scenic device used in medieval theatrical staging. Individual mansions represented different locales in biblical stories and in scenes from the life of Christ as performed in churches. A mansion consisted of a small booth containing a stage with corner posts supporting a canopy and decorated curtains and often a chair and props to be used by the actors in that scene. Mansions were usually arranged...

official residence of the lord mayor of the City of London. It stands in the City’s central financial district, across from the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange. Notable sections of the house include the dining room known as the Egyptian Hall, the second-story Ball Room, and the Court of Justice. Designed by George Dance the Eld...

...structured novel about World War I, demands attention as the work in which Faulkner made by far his greatest investment of time, effort, and authorial commitment. In The Town (1957) and The Mansion (1959) Faulkner not only brought the “Snopes” trilogy to its conclusion, carrying his Yoknapatawpha narrative to beyond the end of World War II, but subtly varied the......

...of the relationship between Brazil’s Portuguese colonizers and their African slaves. His other works include Sobrados e mucambos (1936; “The Rich and the Servants”; Eng. trans. The Mansions and the Shanties), Brazil: An Interpretation (1945; rev. and enlarged as New World in the Tropics, 1980), Nordeste (1937; “The Northeast”...

city, capital of Belarus, and administrative centre of Minsk oblast (province). The city lies along the Svisloch River. First mentioned in 1067, it became seat of a principality in 1101. Minsk passed to Lithuania in the 14th century and later to Poland, being regained by Russia in the second partition in 1793. The city has suffered many disasters, including frequent destruction by fire, sac...

in Anglo-American criminal law, a category of criminal homicide that generally carries a lesser penalty than the crime of murder. Different legal systems use different criteria to distinguish the kinds and degrees of unjustified killing. See homicide. ...

...a cowardly and defensive bull with unclear intentions.) A bull that bellows, shakes its head, and paws the sand, though looking ferocious to the uninitiated, often is a manso....

Only two puppet-show texts are extant, Kkoktukaksi nori (also called Pak Ch’ŏmjikuk; “Old Pak’s Play”) and Mansŏk chung nori. Both titles are derived from names of characters in the plays. No theory has been formulated as to the origin and development of these plays. The plots of the puppet plays, like those of the mask plays,...

American criminal and cult leader whose followers carried out several notorious murders in the late 1960s. Their crimes inspired the best-selling book Helter Skelter (1974)....

British parasitologist who founded the field of tropical medicine. He was the first to discover (1877–79) that an insect (mosquito) can be host to a developing parasite (the worm Filaria bancrofti) that is the cause of a human disease (filariasis, which occurs when the worms invade body tissues). His research, and Alphonse Laveran’s discov...

...but seldom permanent damage. Treatment includes surgical removal of the worms from the conjunctiva and drug therapy. Other forms of filariasis are caused by Acanthocheilonema perstans and Mansonella ozzardi and are not in most cases associated with specific symptoms. The prevention of filariasis relies heavily on insecticides and insect repellents. ...

...organisms: (1) Japonica, or Eastern, schistosomiasis is caused by Schistosoma japonicum, found in Japan, southern China, the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia. (2) Manson’s, or intestinal, schistosomiasis is caused by S. mansoni, found in Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and northern South America. (3) Vesical, or urinar...

...routes along coastal northern Africa. Tlemcen was coveted by the neighbouring Marīnid kingdom of Fès (Fez) to the west, however, and the Marīnids established the fortified camp of Mansoura 1.5 miles (2.4 km) west of Tlemcen as a base from which to besiege the town. Tlemcen was periodically besieged by the Marīnids throughout the 14th century, but during times of truc...

Swedish ecclesiastic and author of an influential history of Scandinavia....

German field marshal who was perhaps the most talented German field commander in World War II....

The first studies, called manṣūbāt and dating from Arabic and Persian manuscripts, were intended to instruct players on how to win endgames. Themes of instructional studies, such as the pursuit of more than one aim at a time, are often used in practical play to turn what otherwise would be a draw or loss into a win. Highly praised studies have been composed with a......

...power was thus fragmented, and Shāh Shojāʿ’s sons were forced to become vassals of Timur, who in 1393 extinguished the dynasty by defeating and killing its last ruler, Manṣūr (reigned 1384–93)....

a leading member of the 17th-century Jahāngīr studio of Mughal painters, famed for his animal and bird studies. The emperor Jahāngīr honoured him with the title Nādir-ul-ʿAsr (“Wonder of the Age”), and in his memoirs Jahāngīr praises Manṣūr as “unique in his generation...

the chief minister and virtual ruler of the Umayyad caliphate of Córdoba for 24 years (978–1002)....

Persian poet, author of the Shāh-nāmeh (“Book of Kings”), the Persian national epic, to which he gave its final and enduring form, although he based his poem mainly on an earlier prose version....

third ruler of the Muʾminid dynasty of Spain and North Africa, who during his reign (1184–99) brought the power of his dynasty to its zenith....

the second caliph of the ʿAbbāsid dynasty (754–775), generally regarded as the real founder of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate. He established the capital city at Baghdad (762–763)....

...when it was ruled by his freed slave, Sābūr (976–1022). In 1022, at Sābūr’s death, his minister ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Maslamah, who was known as Ibn al-Afṭas, seized control of the kingdom and, assuming the title Al-Manṣūr Billāh (“Victorious by God”), ruled fairly peacefully until 104...

On the west bank are a number of residential quarters, including Al-Karkh (an older quarter) and several upper middle-class districts with walled villas and green gardens. Chief among these is Al-Manṣūr, surrounding the racetrack, which provides boutiques, fast-food restaurants, and sidewalk cafés that appeal to its affluent professional residents. These areas were the most......

...power with little difficulty, restoring equilibrium to the Yemeni kingdom during his reign (1089–c. 1106). After much family feuding over a successor to Jayyāsh, his grandson al-Manṣūr was installed in Zabīd c. 1111 by the Ṣulayḥids as their vassal. Manṣūr was poisoned in 1123 by his Mamlūk vizier Mann......

teacher and the last major exponent in Egypt of the Ḥanbalī school of Islāmic law....

the chief minister and virtual ruler of the Umayyad caliphate of Córdoba for 24 years (978–1002)....

Mamlūk sultan of Egypt (1279–90), the founder of a dynasty that ruled that country for a century....

...appointed bendahara (chief minister) by Muzaffar Shah. Tun Perak thereafter played a dominant role in the history of the state, securing the succession of the next three rulers—Sultans Mansur Shah, reigned about 1459–77; Alaʾud-din, 1477–88; and Mahmud Shah, 1488–1511, all of whom were related to him—and pursuing an aggressive foreign policy that...

capital of Al-Daqahlīyah muḥāfaẓah (governorate) on the east bank of the Damietta Branch of the Nile Delta, Lower Egypt. It originated in ad 1219 as the camp of al-Malik al-Kāmil, nephew of the Saracen Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn (Saladin). It was occupied briefly by crusaders, who in 1250 were decimated by the...

city, capital of Egypt, and one of the largest cities in Africa. Cairo has stood for more than 1,000 years on the same site on the banks of the Nile, primarily on the eastern shore, some 500 miles (800 km) downstream from the Aswān High Dam. Located in the northeast of the country, Cairo is the gateway to the Nile d...

port city, western Ecuador, on the Bahía (bay) de Manta. Originally known as Jocay (“Golden Doors”), it was inhabited by 3000 bc and was a Manta Indian capital by ad 1200. Under Spanish rule it was renamed Manta and was reorganized by the conquistador Francisco Pancheco in 1535. In 1565 families from Portoviejo were moved to the ...

The smallest of the devil rays, species Mobula diabolis of Australia, grows to no more than 60 cm (2 feet) across, but the Atlantic manta, or giant devil ray (Manta birostris; see photograph), largest of the family, may grow to more than 7 m (23 feet) wide. The Atlantic manta is a well-known species, brown or black in colour and very powerful, but inoffensive. It does not, old......

any of several genera of marine rays comprising the family Mobulidae (class Selachii). Flattened, and wider than they are long, devil rays have fleshy, enlarged pectoral fins that look like wings; extensions of these fins, looking like devils’ horns, project as the cephalic fins from the front of the head. Devil rays have long, whiplike tails provided, in some species, with one or more stin...

...narrow and trends northeast-southwest between the South China and Sulu seas. It has a maximum width of 24 miles (39 km) and a mountainous backbone that runs its entire 270-mile (434-km) length, with Mount Mantalingajan (6,840 feet [2,085 m]) in the south as its highest peak. The Balabac-Bugsuk group of islands off the southern tip is a remnant of a land bridge that connected Palawan and Borneo....

...the people have been popularly divided into three artistic style groups: the Usiai, who lived in the interior of Manus Island (Great Admiralty Island), the largest of the Admiralty Islands; the Matankor, who lived on the small islands to the north, east, and southeast of Manus; and the largest group, the Manus, who lived on the southern coast of Manus as well as on some offshore islands.......

The upheaval affected the southern chiefdoms and rebellious tributaries attacked by Shaka as far away as Pondoland. Many of the refugees fled either into the eastern Cape or west onto the Highveld, although their precise number is a matter of dispute. In both areas the arrival of the refugees added to upheavals of very different origin. The Mfengu, as the refugee population was known in the......

city, northwestern Jamaica, 85 mi (137 km) northwest of Kingston. It lies on the site of an Arawak village visited by Columbus in 1494. Its original Spanish name, Bahía de Manteca (“Butter Bay”), probably recalls its early function as a lard (“hog’s butter”) centre. The Spanish, ousted by the British after 150 years, destroyed most of th...

painter and engraver, the first fully Renaissance artist of northern Italy. His best known surviving work is the Camera degli Sposi (“Room of the Bride and Groom”), or Camera Picta (“Painted Room”) (1474), in the Palazzo Ducale of Mantua, for which he developed a self-consistent illusion of a total environment. Mantegna’s other principal works include the Ovetari...

hood or other similar projection, usually ornamented, that surrounds the opening of a fireplace and directs smoke up to the chimney flue. See chimneypiece. ...

British physician, geologist, and paleontologist, who discovered four of the five genera of dinosaurs known during his time. Mantell studied the paleontology of the Mesozoic Era (about 245,000,000 to 66,400,000 years ago), particularly in Sussex, a region he made famous in the history of geological discovery. He demonstrated the freshwater origin of the Wealden series of the Cretaceous Period (abo...

...administering parishes, giving missions, and in fostering devotion to Mary, especially under the title of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Servite family also includes sisters, traditionally known as Mantellate Sisters, engaged in many active works, and nuns devoted entirely to prayer within the monastery....

...cm (0.5–3 inches); 4 subfamilies: Hyperoliinae (Africa and Madagascar), Kassininae (Africa), Leptopelinae (Africa), and Tachycneminae (Seychelles).Family MantellidaeNo fossil record; 8 presacral vertebrae; vertebral column procoelous; intercalary cartilages present; 3 tarsals; aquatic larvae; 3 genera, 61 species; ...

...cm (0.5–3 inches); 4 subfamilies: Hyperoliinae (Africa and Madagascar), Kassininae (Africa), Leptopelinae (Africa), and Tachycneminae (Seychelles).Family MantellidaeNo fossil record; 8 presacral vertebrae; vertebral column procoelous; intercalary cartilages present; 3 tarsals; aquatic larvae; 3 genera, 61 species; ...

...and published 1953; “A Clinical Case”), a modern Kafkaesque horror story in which medical specialists and machinery destroy a perfectly healthy man. Buzzati’s other plays include Il mantello (performed 1960; “The Overcoat”), a supernatural drama in which a soldier who has been declared missing mysteriously returns and is discovered to be a spirit, and.....

hood or other similar projection, usually ornamented, that surrounds the opening of a fireplace and directs smoke up to the chimney flue. See chimneypiece. ...

The greatest of his works is the well-known Manṭeq al-ṭeyr (The Conference of the Birds). This is an allegorical poem describing the quest of the birds (i.e., Sufis) for the mythical Sīmorgh, or Phoenix, whom they wish to make their king (i.e., God). In the final scene the birds that have survived the journey approach the throne contemplating......

Prussian field marshal, a victorious general and able diplomat of the Bismarck period....

German military strategist whose skillful deployment of tanks repeatedly thwarted Allied offensives in World War II....

The final years of his reign were a period of reaction. Frederick William, rejecting the bureaucratic absolutism of his prime minister Otto von Manteuffel, worked above all for recasting the constitution of 1848 in a conservative mold. This included the disastrous introduction of three-class suffrage according to income in 1850 instead of universal suffrage, the retention of the monarchical......

city, seat (1850) of Sanpete county, central Utah, U.S. Located in an agricultural district at an altitude of 5,530 feet (1,685 metres), the city was settled in 1849 by a party of Mormons ordered there from Salt Lake City by church leader Brigham Young; at the time, it was the southernmost white settlement in Utah. The town site was named after a legendary cit...

a legendary animal having the head of a man (often with horns), the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. The earliest Greek report of the creature is probably a greatly distorted description of the Caspian tiger, a hypothesis that accords well with the presumed source of the Greek word, an Old Iranian compound meaning “man-eater.” Medieval writers used the manticore ...

a legendary animal having the head of a man (often with horns), the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. The earliest Greek report of the creature is probably a greatly distorted description of the Caspian tiger, a hypothesis that accords well with the presumed source of the Greek word, an Old Iranian compound meaning “man-eater.” Medieval writers used the manticore ...

a legendary animal having the head of a man (often with horns), the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. The earliest Greek report of the creature is probably a greatly distorted description of the Caspian tiger, a hypothesis that accords well with the presumed source of the Greek word, an Old Iranian compound meaning “man-eater.” Medieval writers used the manticore ...

...(1958), all of which are comedies of manners set in a provincial Canadian university town. Even better known are the novels of the Deptford trilogy, consisting of Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972), and World of Wonders (1975). These books examine the intersecting lives of three men from the small Canadian town of Deptford and interweave Davies’ moral concer...

any of approximately 2,000 species of large, slow-moving insects that are characterized by front legs with enlarged femurs (upper portion) that have a groove lined with spines into which the tibia (lower portion) presses. Using their spined front legs, mantids, which feed exclusively on living insects, seize prey in a viselike grip. When alarmed the mantid assumes a “threatening” att...

any of approximately 2,000 species of large, slow-moving insects that are characterized by front legs with enlarged femurs (upper portion) that have a groove lined with spines into which the tibia (lower portion) presses. Using their spined front legs, mantids, which feed exclusively on living insects, seize prey in a viselike grip. When alarmed the mantid assumes a “threatening” att...

any of a group of insects in the order Neuroptera, the adults of which bear a superficial resemblance to the praying mantid (suborder Mantodea). The European mantispid (Mantispa styriaca) is 12 to 20 mm (0.5 to 0.8 inch) long and has a wingspread of about 25 mm (1 inch)....

a legendary animal having the head of a man (often with horns), the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion. The earliest Greek report of the creature is probably a greatly distorted description of the Caspian tiger, a hypothesis that accords well with the presumed source of the Greek word, an Old Iranian compound meaning “man-eater.” Medieval writers used the manticore ...

ancient Greek city of Arcadia, situated about eight miles north of modern Trípolis between Mt. Maínalon and Mt. Artemísion, mentioned as a source of soldiers in the catalog of ships in Book II of Homer’s Iliad. It was the site of three ancient battles. Until the early 5th century bc, it had been a cluster of five villages, but, at the suggestion of...

ancient Greek city of Arcadia, situated about eight miles north of modern Trípolis between Mt. Maínalon and Mt. Artemísion, mentioned as a source of soldiers in the catalog of ships in Book II of Homer’s Iliad. It was the site of three ancient battles. Until the early 5th century bc, it had been a cluster of five villages, but, at the suggestion of...

...sided with Sparta, especially during the revolt of the Messenian helots (464 bc). But in 420 it formed an alliance with Elis, Argos, and Athens against Sparta, only to be defeated at the first Battle of Mantineia in 418 by the Spartan forces of King Agis. In 362 the city was again prominent when the Theban army, cleverly outmanoeuvring the Spartan troops, won the battle and lost t...

The greatest of his works is the well-known Manṭeq al-ṭeyr (The Conference of the Birds). This is an allegorical poem describing the quest of the birds (i.e., Sufis) for the mythical Sīmorgh, or Phoenix, whom they wish to make their king (i.e., God). In the final scene the birds that have survived the journey approach the throne contemplating......

mountain range of eastern Brazil, rising abruptly from the northwestern bank of the Rio Paraíba do Sul and extending northeastward for approximately 200 mi (320 km), reaching a height of 9,255 ft (2,821 m) in the Pico (peak) das Agulhas Negras. The mountains, which eventually merge with the Serra do Espinhaço, were originally forest-covered except for the peaks tha...

any of approximately 2,000 species of large, slow-moving insects that are characterized by front legs with enlarged femurs (upper portion) that have a groove lined with spines into which the tibia (lower portion) presses. Using their spined front legs, mantids, which feed exclusively on living insects, seize prey in a viselike grip. When alarmed the mantid assumes a “threatening” att...

any member of the marine crustacean order Stomatopoda, especially members of the genus Squilla. Mantis shrimps are so called because the second pair of limbs are greatly enlarged and shaped like the large grasping forelimbs of the praying mantid, or mantis, an insect....

any of a group of insects in the order Neuroptera, the adults of which bear a superficial resemblance to the praying mantid (suborder Mantodea). The European mantispid (Mantispa styriaca) is 12 to 20 mm (0.5 to 0.8 inch) long and has a wingspread of about 25 mm (1 inch)....

any of a group of insects in the order Neuroptera, the adults of which bear a superficial resemblance to the praying mantid (suborder Mantodea). The European mantispid (Mantispa styriaca) is 12 to 20 mm (0.5 to 0.8 inch) long and has a wingspread of about 25 mm (1 inch)....

any of a group of insects in the order Neuroptera, the adults of which bear a superficial resemblance to the praying mantid (suborder Mantodea). The European mantispid (Mantispa styriaca) is 12 to 20 mm (0.5 to 0.8 inch) long and has a wingspread of about 25 mm (1 inch)....

...and 0.0046 would be written as 4.6 × 10−3. Then the logarithm of the significant digits—a decimal fraction between 0 and 1, known as the mantissa—can be found in a table. Finally, the integer exponential power, known as the characteristic of the logarithm, is appended before the decimal point to give the logarithm of the......

cloak fashioned from a rectangular piece of cloth, usually sleeveless, of varying width and length, wrapped loosely around the body. Usually worn as an outer garment in the ancient Mediterranean world, it developed in different styles, colours, and materials. The Greek chlamys (worn only by men) was a short mantle draped around the upper shoulders, pinned on the right shoulder ...

in biology, soft covering, formed from the body wall, of brachiopods and mollusks; also, the fleshy outer covering, sometimes strengthened by calcified plates, of barnacles, or the flexible body wall of tunicates....