A-Z Browse

American educator, writer, and philosopher, best remembered as the leader and chief interpreter of the Harlem Renaissance....

South African golfer who won the British Open four times....

South African golfer who won the British Open four times....

American humorist who had considerable influence on public issues during and after the American Civil War....

English philosopher who was an initiator of the Enlightenment in England and France, an inspirer of the U.S. Constitution, and the author of, among other works, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, his account of human knowledge, including the “new science” of his day—i.e., modern science....

Irish tenor who was a beloved performer of sentimental and traditional Irish songs in British music halls, on radio, and in films in the 1940s and ’50s; his professional achievements—and his subsequent flight to Ireland to evade British tax officials—served as the basis for the 1991 film Hear My Song (b. March 23, 1917, Londonderry, N.Ire.—d. Oct. 15, 1999, Clane...

leading English composer for the stage in the period before Henry Purcell....

...entangled in a mystery that causes him to assume various identities; Ghosts (1986), about a private eye known as Blue who is investigating a man named Black for a client named White; and The Locked Room (1986), the story of an author who, while researching the life of a missing writer for a biography, gradually assumes the identity of that writer....

...that a terrorist attack is successful, identifying the culprit allows for reprisals, which are crucial to combating terrorism. In December 1988 an American commercial aircraft was destroyed over Scotland, and neither the United States nor Great Britain initially could identify the terrorist organization involved. As a result, the act was successful from the perspective of the terrorists, who......

...The solution contains sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride, and sodium bicarbonate in the concentrations in which they occur in body fluids. Mammalian Ringer’s solution (Locke’s, or Ringer-Locke’s, solution) differs in that it contains glucose and more sodium chloride than the original solution....

The remarkable goal-kicking career of Australian Football League (AFL) full-forward Tony “Plugger” Lockett came to an end at the conclusion of the 1999 season. When the final curtain came down, Lockett had kicked a record-breaking 1,357 goals, an average of 4.88 a game, in his memorable 278 games. The previous record of 1,299 goals, set by Gordon Coventry of Collingwood, had been a p...

The remarkable goal-kicking career of Australian Football League (AFL) full-forward Tony “Plugger” Lockett came to an end at the conclusion of the 1999 season. When the final curtain came down, Lockett had kicked a record-breaking 1,357 goals, an average of 4.88 a game, in his memorable 278 games. The previous record of 1,299 goals, set by Gordon Coventry of Collingwood, had been a p...

Scottish critic, novelist, and biographer, best remembered for his Life of Sir Walter Scott (1837–38; enlarged 1839), one of the great biographies in English....

...(October 1917), Litvinov was appointed diplomatic representative in London. Arrested in October 1918 for engaging in propaganda activities, he was released the following January in exchange for Robert Bruce Lockhart, the British journalist who led a special mission to the Soviet Union in 1918. Litvinov then returned to Russia and joined the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. He achieved......

...The ultimate versions appeared in 1956–57 as the DC-7C, known as the “Seven Seas,” which was capable of nonstop transatlantic flights in either direction, and the Lockheed 1649A Starliner, which could fly nonstop on polar routes from Los Angeles to Europe. The Starliner carried 75 passengers at speeds of 350 to 400 miles (560 to 640 km) per hour. Each of its Wright......

major American diversified company with core business concentrations in aerospace products—including aircraft, space launchers, satellites, and defense systems—and other advanced-technology systems and services. About half of the company’s annual sales are to the U.S. Department of Defense. Lockheed Martin is also a leading contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy and the ...

...service on the longer routes, even across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Even more important was the introduction of a plane that for a decade became the prime competitor of the DC-4, the Lockheed Constellation. The rapid growth in the power produced by American aircraft engines encouraged TWA to turn to the Lockheed company in search of a plane that would add more than 100 miles/h to the......

major American diversified company with core business concentrations in aerospace products—including aircraft, space launchers, satellites, and defense systems—and other advanced-technology systems and services. About half of the company’s annual sales are to the U.S. Department of Defense. Lockheed Martin is also a leading contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy and the ...

major American diversified company with core business concentrations in aerospace products—including aircraft, space launchers, satellites, and defense systems—and other advanced-technology systems and services. About half of the company’s annual sales are to the U.S. Department of Defense. Lockheed Martin is also a leading contractor for the U.S. Department of Energy and the ...

Aircraft also provide detailed information concerning the structure of the atmosphere. Airplanes used in field experiments, such as the Lockheed P-3 aircraft employed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States, are heavily instrumented and often carry Doppler radar, turbulence sensors, and in situ measurement devices for cloud water, cloud ice content,......

...the stage of planes so that a single-stop transcontinental flight was possible in either direction. When put into service, the Constellation had an 80 mile/h speed advantage over the DC-4. When the Super-Constellation went into service in 1957, it weighed twice as much as its precursor, was considerably faster, and carried a much increased payload....

...Ryan monoplane, which made the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 (see photograph). By 1929 the United States was building 5,500 aircraft, up from only 60 five years earlier. The Vega of 1927 had increased cruising speed up to 150 mile/h....

acute infectious disease of humans and other animals, caused by toxins produced by the bacillus Clostridium tetani and characterized by rigidity and spasms of the voluntary muscles. The almost constant involvement of the jaw muscles accounts for the popular name of the disease....

Welsh naturalist (b. Nov. 8, 1903, Cardiff, Wales—d. April 12, 2000, Auckland, N.Z.), wrote about island life, seabirds, and marine mammals; founded bird observatories in Great Britain and New Zealand; and wrote the script for the Academy Award-winning documentary The Private Life of the Gannet (1934), but it was his rigorous scientific study of rabbits for the British Natur...

the tactic of withholding employment, typically used by employers to hinder union organization or to gain leverage in labour disputes. It is often accomplished by literally locking employees out of the workplace, but it can also be achieved through work stoppage, layoffs, or the hiring of nonunion replacement workers....

city, seat (1822) of Niagara county, western New York, U.S. It lies 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Buffalo. It was founded in 1821 and grew around the series of five double locks (1847) of the Erie Canal built to overcome a difference of about 60 feet (18 metres) between the levels of Lake Erie and the ...

Tennyson accepted a peerage (after some hesitation) in 1884. In 1886 he published a new volume containing “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,” consisting mainly of imprecations against modern decadence and liberalism and a retraction of the earlier poem’s belief in inevitable human progress....

American feminist and lawyer who was the first woman admitted to practice law before the U.S. Supreme Court....

British actress noted for her versatility and craftsmanship, who became Britain’s most popular leading lady in the late 1940s....

American blues musician (b. March 27, 1915, Turkey Scratch, Ark.—d. Nov. 21, 2006, Cleveland, Ohio), was perhaps best known for his relationship with blues legend Robert Johnson, but he was an important guitarist, composer, and bandleader in his own right. Lockwood began to learn the piano as a child, but when Johnson began a relationship with young Lockwood’s mother, he studied the ...

...at the site, the settlement was abandoned and reestablished at the site of present-day Brisbane in February 1825. In the next few years exploration of the region continued as Capt. Patrick Logan and Edmund Lockyer explored the hinterland of the penal settlement, discovering coal and limestone deposits in the process. In 1827 Cunningham was the first European to explore the Darling Downs region....

British astronomer who in 1868 discovered in the Sun’s atmosphere a previously unknown element that he named helium....

village and seaside resort, on the coast of the Gulf of Morbihan, Morbihan département, Bretagne région, western France, south of Auray. It is famous for its megalithic monuments, notably the Fairies’ Stone, a huge, broken standing stone, originally 66 feet (20 m) high—the greatest known menhir (upright monumental stone) in existence. B...

...themselves through dances and songs that blend indigenous and European influences. During such festivities, symbolic dress shows the Indian interpretation of European attitudes: the dance of the palla-palla caricatures the 16th-century Spanish invaders, the dance of the waka-tokoris satirizes bullfights, and the morenada mocks white men, who......

in U.S. history, radical wing of the Democratic Party, organized in New York City in 1835. Made up primarily of workingmen and reformers, the Locofocos were opposed to state banks, monopolies, paper money, tariffs, and generally any financial policies that seemed to them antidemocratic and conducive to special privilege. The Locofocos received their name (which was later derisively applied by pol...

...since the era of the Stanley brothers—one of whose “steamers” took the world speed record at 127.66 miles (205.45 km) per hour in 1906. The car designed by them and sold as the Locomobile became the first commercially successful American-made automobile (about 1,000 were built in 1900). It is estimated that in the year 2000 there were still some 600 steam cars in the United...

in ethology, any of a variety of movements among animals that results in progression from one place to another....

any of various self-propelled vehicles used for hauling railroad cars on tracks....

Debs left home at age 14 to work in the railroad shops and later became a locomotive fireman. In 1875 he helped organize a local lodge of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, of which he was elected national secretary and treasurer in 1880. He also served as city clerk of Terre Haute (1879–83) and as a member of the Indiana legislature (1885)....

...and the enmity of the horse-coach interests, which resulted in such penalties as a charge of £5 for passing a tollgate that cost a horse coach only three pence. The crushing blow was the Locomotives on Highways Act of 1865, which reduced permissible speeds on public roads to 2 miles (3 km) per hour within cities and 4 miles (6 km) per hour in rural areas. This legislation was known......

rare neurologic form of tertiary syphilis, involving sensory deficits, loss of neuromuscular coordination, and diminished reflexes. Symptoms of this form of neurosyphilis chiefly affect the legs and may not appear for more than 25 years after the initial infection. Untreated, tabes dorsalis usually makes unassisted walking impossible and severely debilitates the victim....

any of several species of poisonous plants of the genera Astragalus and Oxytropis, in the pea family (Fabaceae), native to the prairies of north central and western North America. Locoweeds pose a danger to livestock, horses, and other grazing animals, because they contain a toxin that affects muscle control, producing frenzied behaviour, impaired vision, and sometimes death. Most l...

ancient city on the eastern side of the “toe” of Italy, founded by Greeks c. 680 bc; the inhabitants used the name of Locri Epizephyrii to distinguish themselves from the Locri of Greece. Locri Epizephyrii was the first Greek community to have a written code of laws, given by Zaleucus c. 660 bc. Locri Epizephyrii founded colonies, repelled th...

ancient city on the eastern side of the “toe” of Italy, founded by Greeks c. 680 bc; the inhabitants used the name of Locri Epizephyrii to distinguish themselves from the Locri of Greece. Locri Epizephyrii was the first Greek community to have a written code of laws, given by Zaleucus c. 660 bc. Locri Epizephyrii founded colonies, repelled th...

in ancient Greece, the chief city of the Locri Opuntii. Its site may have been at modern Atalándi or at Kiparíssi. Homer in his Iliad mentioned Opus, and Pindar devoted his ninth Olympian ode mainly to its glory and traditions. By the 5th century bc, Opus gave its name to some of the eastern Locrians. Locri Opuntii fought with the Greeks at Thermopylae but surren...

In 339, by provoking the council of the Amphictyonic League to declare a sacred war against the town of Amphissa, in Locris, Aeschines gave Philip a pretext on which to enter central Greece as the champion of the Amphictyonic forces. The eventual result was the establishment of Macedonian hegemony over central Greece (including Athens) after the Battle of Chaeronea (338). The bitter hostility......

...but in a few genera (e.g., Zanthoxylum, Rutaceae) there are separate simple pistils in the flower. The ovary is almost always superior and is composed of 1 to 20 carpels. The ovary is usually multilocular, but it may be multilocular at the base and unilocular above in several members of the Meliaceae. It is unilocular in simple pistils. Ovules are typically two per locule, although they....

city, Puglia (Apulia) region, southeastern Italy, on the eastern slopes of the Murge plateau, just south of Barletta. Andria was perhaps the Netium mentioned by the 1st-century bc Greek geographer Strabo, but its recorded history began with the arrival of the Normans in the 11th century ad, when Pietro I, Norman count of nearby Trani, enlarged and for...

...people make in achievement-related situations suggests that the four causal ascriptions mentioned above and perhaps other ascriptions as well can best be understood as falling along three dimensions: locus, stability, and controllability. Locus refers to the location, internal or external, of the perceived cause of a success or failure. Ability and effort, for example, are seen as internal......

...of organisms of the same species. It can be described by citing the frequencies of the alternative genetic constitutions. Consider, for example, a particular gene (which geneticists call a locus), such as the one determining the MN blood groups in humans. One form of the gene codes for the M blood group, while the other form codes for the N blood group; different forms of the same gene......

...for the major part of its contents can be traced back to research from the 4th century bc and in some cases even earlier. The first four books present constructions and proofs of plane geometric figures: Book I deals with the congruence of triangles, the properties of parallel lines, and the area relations of triangles and parallelograms; Book II establishes equalities relating to...

...present). This decrease in muscle tonus and a similarly observed suppression of spinal reflexes are indicative of heightened motor inhibition during REM sleep. Animal studies have identified the locus ceruleus, in the pons, as the probable source of this inhibition. (The pons is in the brain stem, directly above the medulla oblongata; the locus ceruleus borders on the brain cavity known as......

any of a group of insects (order Orthoptera) that are distributed worldwide, the common name of which generally refers to the group of short-horned grasshoppers that often increase greatly in numbers and migrate long distances in destructive swarms. In Europe the term locust connotes large acridids, whereas smaller species are called grasshoppers. In North America the names locust and...

in botany, any tree of the genus Robinia within the pea family (Fabaceae). About 20 species are known, all occurring in eastern North America and Mexico. The best known is the black locust (R. pseudoacacia), often called false acacia, or yellow locust. It is widely cultivated in Europe as an ornamental. It grows to 24 m (80 feet) high and bears long, compound leaves with 6 to 20 obl...

any of various African birds that eat grasshoppers and locusts, especially the black-winged pratincole (see pratincole). In India the rose-coloured starling is called locust bird....

...in a U.S. Supreme Court decision established his patent rights in 1854. As telegraph lines lengthened on both sides of the Atlantic, his wealth and fame increased. By 1847 Morse had bought Locust Grove, an estate overlooking the Hudson River near Poughkeepsie, New York, where, early in the 1850s, he built an Italian villa-style mansion. He spent his summers there with his large family......

...Va., in 1884 and worked for five years as a teacher before establishing an informal day-care school in her home in Hampton. Her school grew rapidly, and in 1890 it was formally organized as the Locust Street Social Settlement, the nation’s first settlement house for African-Americans. In 1902 she and her husband built a separate structure on their property to house the settlement’...

Serial murder has occurred throughout history. One of the earliest documented cases involved Locusta, a Roman woman hired by Agrippina the Younger, the mother of Nero, to poison several members of the imperial family; Locusta was executed in ad 69. Serial murders also were documented in medieval England, Germany, Hungary, and Italy. The French baron Gilles de Rais, who is the likely ...

...which are transported by winds or flight for hundreds or thousands of miles. These swarms may completely destroy crops in an invaded region. The desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) and migratory locust (Locusta migratoria) are two examples of this type of life cycle....

city, central Israel, on the Plain of Sharon southeast of Tel Aviv–Yafo. Of ancient origin, it is mentioned several times in the Bible: in a New Testament account (Acts 9:32), the apostle Peter healed the paralytic at Lod. The city was a well-known centre of Jewish scholars and merchants from the 5th century bc until the Roman conquest in ad 70. It was the Roman ...

river, central Victoria, Australia, rising in the Eastern Highlands 50 miles (80 km) northwest of Melbourne and flowing northwest and north for more than 200 miles (320 km), past Kerang, joining with the Little Murray and then with the Murray near Swan Hill. Inconstant in volume, the Loddon has been dammed for several reservoirs, including Cairn Curran and Tullaroop, to form part of the Goulburn ...

in geology, ore body that is disseminated within definite boundaries in unwanted rock or minerals (gangue). The term, as used by geologists, is nearly synonymous with the term lode, as used by miners. There are two distinct types: fissure veins and ladder veins....

jacket of Tyrolean origin, made of loden cloth, which was first handwoven by peasants living in Loderers, Austria, in the 16th century. The material comes from the coarse, oily wool of mountain sheep and is thick, soft, and waterproof....

iron oxide mineral (FeFe2O4, or Fe3O4) that is the chief member of one of the series of the spinel group. Minerals in this series form black to brownish, metallic, moderately hard octahedrons and masses in igneous and metamorphic rocks and in granite pegmatites, stony meteorites, and high-temperature sulfide veins. The magnetite series...

nobleman who provided key military and political leadership in the early phases (1566–74) of the Netherlands’ revolt against Spanish rule and who served as a valued ally of his older brother William, Prince of Orange (William I the Silent)....

originally an insubstantial house or dwelling, erected as a seasonal habitation or for some temporary occupational purpose, such as woodcutting. In this sense the word is currently used to describe accommodations for sportsmen during hunting season and for recreationists, such as skiers....

English novelist, literary critic, and editor known chiefly for his satiric novels about academic life....

English novelist, literary critic, and editor known chiefly for his satiric novels about academic life....

U.S. senator and diplomat who ran unsuccessfully for the vice presidency of the United States in 1960....

Republican U.S. senator for more than 31 years (1893–1924); he led the successful congressional opposition to his country’s participation in the League of Nations following World War I....

British physicist who perfected the coherer, a radio-wave detector and the heart of the early radiotelegraph receiver....

English poet, dramatist, and prose writer whose innovative versatility typified the Elizabethan age. He is best remembered for the prose romance Rosalynde, the source of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It....

All North American tree species are distributed across the continent except jack pine (Pinus banksiana), lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta), and balsam fir (Abies balsamea). Jack pine is a relatively small, short-lived, early successional tree occurring in the eastern and central parts of boreal forests east of the Rocky Mountains. Lodgepole pine is a longer-lived, early......

...The Heart of Penelope (1904) and Barbara Rebell (1905)—she wrote The Chink in the Armour (1912), a psychological study of a murder-plot victim. The Lodger, published the following year, was a fictional treatment of the Jack the Ripper murders. Her numerous works, spanning the first 40 years of the 20th century, include a series featuring......

...as ablation till. In many cases, the material located between a moving glacier and its bedrock bed is severely sheared, compressed, and “over-compacted.” This type of deposit is called lodgment till. By definition, till is any material laid down directly or reworked by a glacier. Typically, it is a mixture of rock fragments and boulders in a fine-grained sandy or muddy matrix......

town, Lombardia (Lombardy) regione, northern Italy. It lies on the right bank of the Adda River, southeast of Milan. The original settlement (5th century bc) on the site of the present suburb of Lodi Vecchio obtained Roman citizenship in 89 bc as Laus Pompeia. Destroyed in the communal struggles of 1111 and by the Milanese in 1158, it was refou...

city, San Joaquin county, central California, U.S. Lodi lies along the Mokelumne River at the junction of the San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys just northeast of Stockton, on the edge of the Sacramento River delta. It originated as Mokelumne Station (1869) on the Central Pacific (later part of the Southern Pacific) Railroad. In 1873 it was ...

(May 10, 1796), small but dramatic engagement in Napoleon Bonaparte’s first Italian campaign, in which he earned the confidence and loyalty of his men, who nicknamed him “The Little Corporal” in recognition of his personal courage. It was fought at the Lodi Bridge, over the Adda River, 19 miles (31 km) southeast of Milan, between 5,000 troops of Napoleon...

(1451–1526), last ruling family of the Delhi sultanate of India. This dynasty was of Afghan origin....

(April 9, 1454), treaty between Venice and Milan ending the war of succession to the Milanese duchy in favour of Francesco Sforza. It marked the beginning of a 40-year period of relative peace, during which power was balanced among the five states that dominated the Italian peninsula—Venice, Milan, Naples, Florence, and the Papal Stat...

...other plants. Hidden within the lemma and palea, they are evident only by the brief appearance of some of their parts during flowering. In place of the petals there are translucent structures called lodicules. They are two or three (rarely none or up to six) in number and too small to be seen well without magnification. They vary in shape, but all function similarly in that they swell rapidly.....

native palm of the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean. The flowers are borne in enormous fleshy spadices (spikes), the male and female on distinct plants. Coco de mer fruits, among the largest known, take about 10 years to ripen; they have a fleshy and fibrous envelope surrounding a hard, nutlike portion that is generally two-lobed, suggesting a double coconut. The contents of the nut are edib...

...Even in operas that dealt with subjects from classical antiquity, such as Médée (1797), he reveals a concern for human traits. The opera that inaugurated his new style was Lodoïska (1791). It moved away from the emphasis on the solo voice found in opera seria to give new scope to ensembles and choruses and a fresh dramatic importance to the orchestra. He thus....

In the field of pure theory, a Venetian, Carlo Lodoli, was an important early advocate of Functionalism. His ideas are known through the writings of Francesco Algarotti, including the Saggio sopra l’architettura (1753) and Lettere sopra l’architettura (beginning 1742). Lodoli’s theories were similar to those of Laugier, requiring that every part of a ...

city, capital of Łódzkie województwo (province), central Poland. It lies on the northwestern edge of the Łódź Highlands, on the watershed of the Vistula and Oder rivers, 81 miles (130 km) southwest of Warsaw....

województwo (province), central Poland. It is bordered by six provinces: Kujawsko-Pomorskie to the north, Mazowieckie to the east, Świętokrzyskie to the southeast, Śląskie to the south, Opolskie to the southwest, and Wielkopolskie to the west. It was formed in 1999—when the 49 provinces first established in 1975 were ...

...Essex countryside, where he came under Puritan influences. After Admiral Penn’s naval defeat in the West Indies in 1655, the family moved back to London and then to Ireland. In Ireland William heard Thomas Loe, a Quaker itinerant, preach to his family at the admiral’s invitation, an experience that apparently intensified his religious feelings. In 1660 William entered the Universi...

German-born American biologist noted chiefly for his experimental work on artificial parthenogenesis (reproduction without fertilization)....

prolific writer of poems, short stories, drama, humorous sketches, and satire who was instrumental in raising the standard of Yiddish literature to a high level....

Wealthy and intellectually brilliant (Leopold had graduated from the University of Chicago at 18, Loeb from the University of Michigan at 17), the two had committed several petty acts of theft and arson before attempting the “perfect murder”—in the kidnap of Bobbie Franks in a rented automobile on May 21, 1924, on Chicago’s south side; Loeb, the more ruthless of the two...

...by the 19th century, but it had long been less productive than room-and-pillar mining. This began to change in the 1940s, when a continuous system involving the “plow” was developed by Wilhelm Loebbe of Germany. Pulled across the face of the coal and guided by a pipe on the face side of a segmented conveyor, the plow carved a gash off the bottom of the seam. The conveyor snaked......

American composer whose works are distinguished by a poetic lyricism in an Impressionist style....

American composer whose works are distinguished by a poetic lyricism in an Impressionist style....

an iron arsenide mineral (FeAs2) that usually occurs with iron and copper sulfides in hydrothermal vein deposits. It typically occurs with impurities of cobalt, nickel, and arsenic—as at the Andreas-Berg, in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) of Germany; Andalusia, Spain; and Franklin, New Jersey, U.S. Loellingite is classified in a group of iron...

an unstratified, geologically recent deposit of silty or loamy material that is usually buff or yellowish brown in colour and is chiefly deposited by the wind. Loess is a sedimentary deposit composed largely of silt-size grains that are loosely cemented by calcium carbonate. It is usually homogeneous and highly porous and is traversed by vertical capillaries that permit the sediment to fracture a...

highland area in north-central China, covering much of Shanxi, northern Henan, Shaanxi, and eastern Gansu provinces and the middle part of the Huang He (Yellow River) basin. Averaging about 4,000 feet (1,200 metres) in elevation and covering some 154,000 square miles (400,000 square km...

American composer, librettist, and lyricist, who achieved major success writing for Broadway musicals, culminating in the 1962 Pulitzer Prize-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying....

American composer, librettist, and lyricist, who achieved major success writing for Broadway musicals, culminating in the 1962 Pulitzer Prize-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying....

American motion-picture executive and pioneer motion-picture theatre owner whose consolidation and expansion of his business interests helped establish Hollywood as the centre of the film industry....

German composer and singer who is best-known for his songs, particularly his dramatic ballads....