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Mayence (Germany)
city, capital of Rhineland-Palatinate Land (state), west-central Germany. It is a port on the left bank of the Rhine River opposite Wiesbaden and the mouth of the Main River....
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Mayence Academy (academy, Mainz, Germany)
...and North Africa. The earliest known European commentary, though ascribed to Gershom ben Judah (10th–11th centuries), is actually an eclectic compilation of notes recorded by students of the Mayence (Mainz) Academy. Compilations of this kind, known as qunṭresim (“notebooks”), also developed in other academies. Their content was masterfully reshaped and......
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Mayenne (department, France)
région of France encompassing the western départements of Mayenne, Sarthe, Maine-et-Loire, Vendée, and Loire-Atlantique. Pays de la Loire is bounded by the régions of Brittany (Bretagne) to the northwest, Basse-Normandie to the north, Centre to the east,......
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Mayenne, Charles de Lorraine, duc de (French noble)
leader (1589–95) of the Holy League in France and opponent of Henry of Navarre’s claims to the French throne....
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Mayenne River (river, France)
river in northwestern France; its headwaters are west-northwest of Alençon in Forêt de Multonne, Orne département. It flows southward for 121 miles (195 km) to its confluence with the Sarthe above Angers. The combined rivers, called the Maine River, flow through Angers into the Loire. The Mayenne is canalized for 73 mi, having 45 dams and locks....
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mayeque (Aztec social class)
...nobles by birth and members of the royal lineage. Below them was the macehual class, the commoners who made up the bulk of the population. At the base of the social structure were the mayeques, or serfs, attached to private or state-owned rural estates. Within these three castes, a number of social classes could be differentiated, according to wealth, occupation, and political......
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Mayer, A. J. (American historian)
...a Nelsonian clash of dreadnoughts? Germans were not the only people who grew weary of peace or harboured grandiose visions of empire. To this universalist view leftist historians like the American A.J. Mayer then applied the “primacy of domestic policy” thesis and hypothesized that all the European powers had courted war as a means of cowing or distracting their working classes an...
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Mayer, Eliezer (American producer)
most powerful motion-picture executive in Hollywood for 30 years. As the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the largest and most prestigious film studio, he created the star system during the 1920s and ’30s and had under contract the outstanding screen personalities of the day....
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Mayer, Ernst (American biologist)
...periods of evolutionary time. From work involving population genetics has come the realization, eloquently documented by two contemporary American evolutionists, Theodosius Dobzhansky and Ernst Mayer, that the species is the basic unit of evolution. The process of speciation occurs as a gene pool breaks up to form isolated gene pools. When selection pressures similar to those of the......
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Mayer, Hans Heinrich (German literary scholar)
German literary scholar (b. March 19, 1907, Cologne, Ger.—d. May 18, 2001, Tübingen, Ger.), was a distinguished academic and critic who sought to achieve a greater understanding of German literature and culture through the application of Marxist-socialist analysis. Mayer, a member of the German Jewish bourgeoisie, trained as a lawyer. He left Germany for France shortly after Hitler...
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Mayer, Helene (German athlete)
Helene Mayer, a talented fencer whose father was Jewish, was selected to represent Germany at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin only after considerable political wrangling. The International Olympic Committee insisted that a Jewish athlete be placed on the German team as proof that Jews were not being denied the opportunity to compete, and the German Olympic Committee, which was then under the......
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Mayer, Jean-Ghislain-Joseph (artist)
...and the like were painted also in green, blue, brown, and reddish brown. In 1787 a service with birds, based on Georges-Louis-Leclerc Buffon’s Natural History of Birds (1771), was painted by Jean-Ghislain-Joseph Mayer. The service consists of panels with naturalistically coloured birds that alternate on the rim of the plates with panels of dark blue, diapered with gold. The blue w...
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Mayer, Johann Tobias (German astronomer)
German astronomer who developed lunar tables that greatly assisted navigators in determining longitude at sea. Mayer also discovered the libration (or apparent wobbling) of the Moon....
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Mayer, John (American singer, songwriter, and guitarist)
American singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose melodic, often soft rock earned him commercial success and a number of Grammy Awards in the early 2000s, paving the way for similar success in a blues-based vein....
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Mayer, John (psychologist)
Other intelligences were proposed in the late 20th century. In 1990 the psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey defined the term emotional intelligence asthe ability to perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and......
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Mayer, John Clayton (American singer, songwriter, and guitarist)
American singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose melodic, often soft rock earned him commercial success and a number of Grammy Awards in the early 2000s, paving the way for similar success in a blues-based vein....
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Mayer, Julius Robert von (German physicist)
...waves by a German physicist, Heinrich Hertz. It was not until the 19th century that the law of the conservation of energy was first recognized as a general law of nature, through the work of Julius von Mayer in Germany and James Joule in England, and that the concept of entropy (see below Problems at the macrophysical level) was formulated by Rudolf Clausius, a mathematical physicist. At......
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Mayer, Lazar (American producer)
most powerful motion-picture executive in Hollywood for 30 years. As the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the largest and most prestigious film studio, he created the star system during the 1920s and ’30s and had under contract the outstanding screen personalities of the day....
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Mayer, Louis B. (American producer)
most powerful motion-picture executive in Hollywood for 30 years. As the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the largest and most prestigious film studio, he created the star system during the 1920s and ’30s and had under contract the outstanding screen personalities of the day....
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Mayer, Louis Burt (American producer)
most powerful motion-picture executive in Hollywood for 30 years. As the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the largest and most prestigious film studio, he created the star system during the 1920s and ’30s and had under contract the outstanding screen personalities of the day....
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Mayer, Maria Goeppert (American physicist)
German-born American physicist who shared one-half of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physics with J. Hans D. Jensen of West Germany for their proposal of the shell nuclear model. (The other half of the prize was awarded to Eugene P. Wigner of the United States for unrelated work.)...
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Mayer, Simon (German astronomer)
German astronomer who named the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. All four are named after mythological figures with whom Jupiter fell in love. He and Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei both claimed to have discovered them, about 1610, and it is likely both did so indepen...
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Mayer, Walter (Austrian skier and coach)
...his success was overshadowed by the drug controversies in the Nordic skiing competition. Olga Pyleva, a Russian silver medalist in the biathlon, was disqualified after failing her drug test. Coach Walter Mayer, who had been banned for suspicion of blood doping, was discovered in the Austrian camp, resulting in an investigation of 10 athletes....
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Mayer, Werner (German composer)
German composer primarily of music for the theatre....
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Mayerling (Austria)
village on the Schwechat River in eastern Lower Austria (Niederösterreich), 24 kilometres (15 miles) southwest of Vienna. It is the site of a hunting lodge (now a Carmelite convent) where the Habsburg crown prince, Archduke Rudolf, and his paramour Mary Vetsera committed suicide under mysterious circumstances in January 1889. See Rudolf, Archduke and Crow...
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Mayet (Egyptian goddess)
in ancient Egyptian religion, the personification of truth, justice, and the cosmic order. The daughter of the sun god Re, she was associated with Thoth, god of wisdom....
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Mayetiola destructor (insect)
small fly in the gall midge family, Cecidomyiidae (order Diptera), that is very destructive to wheat crops. Though a native of Asia it was transported into Europe and later into North America, supposedly in the straw bedding of Hessian troops during the American Revolution (1775–83)....
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Mayfair (neighbourhood, London, United Kingdom)
neighbourhood of the City of Westminster, London. Mayfair extends east of Hyde Park, south of St. Marylebone, and north of Green Park. It is a fashionable district that includes the most important retail shopping activity in the United Kingdom. ...
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Mayfield (Kentucky, United States)
city, seat of Graves county, southwestern Kentucky, U.S., about 25 miles (40 km) west of Kentucky Lake and 25 miles south of Paducah. It was settled about 1820 and named for a local creek into which according to legend a George Mayfield fell, mortally wounded by robbers. The New Orleans and Ohio Railroad (now part of the Paducah & Lou...
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Mayfield, Curtis (American musician)
American singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, and entrepreneur who was one of the principal architects of Chicago-based soul music during the 1960s and ’70s. Beginning with his earliest songs—such as Gypsy Woman (1961), It’s All Right (1963), Keep On Pushing (1964), and ...
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mayflower (plant)
(species Epigaea repens), trailing plant of the heath family (Ericaceae), native to sandy or boggy, acid woodlands of eastern North America. It has oblong, hairy evergreen leaves 2–6 cm (0.75–2.5 inches) long. The highly fragrant white, pink, or rosy flowers have a five-lobed corolla (the petals, collectively) and grow in dense clusters. Trailing arbutus grows in shady wildfl...
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Mayflower (ship)
in American colonial history, the ship that carried the Pilgrims from England to Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they established the first permanent New England colony in 1620. Although no detailed description of the original vessel exists, marine archaeologists estimate that the square-rigged sailing ship weighed about 180 tons and measured 90 feet (27 metres) long....
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mayflower (plant)
perennial herbaceous plant of the family Berberidaceae (order Ranunculales) native to eastern North America, most commonly in shady areas on moist, rich soil....
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mayflower (plant)
either of two spring-blooming wild flowers native to eastern North America, or one of several plants that bloom in the spring in Europe. Podophyllum peltatum (family Berberidaceae) is more often called mayapple, and Epigaea repens (family Ericaceae) is the trailing arbutus. Crataegus monogyna (family Rosaceae), a species of hawthorn, is co...
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Mayflower (yacht)
During the last decade of the 19th century there was a boom in the construction of large steam yachts. Conspicuous among these was the Mayflower (1897) of 2,690 tons, containing triple-expansion engines, twin screws, and a compartmented iron hull and manned by a crew of more than 150. The Mayflower, purchased by the United States Navy in 1898, was the official yacht of the......
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Mayflower (work by Blasco Ibáñez)
Blasco Ibáñez’ early work, composed mainly of regional novels such as Flor de mayo (1895; Mayflower, 1921), La barraca (1898; The Cabin, 1917), and Cañas y barro (1902; Reeds and Mud, 1966), is marked by a vigorous and intense realism and considerable dramatic force in the depiction of the life of Valencia. Later novels, such as...
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Mayflower Compact (North America [1620])
(Nov. 21 [Nov. 11, Old Style], 1620), document signed by 41 of the male passengers on the Mayflower prior to their landing at Plymouth, Mass. The compact resulted from the fear that some members of the company might leave the group and settle on their own. The Mayflower Compact bound the signers into a body politic for the purpose of forming a government and pledged them...
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Mayflower II (ship)
...nearby at the site of Plymouth. The ship remained in port until the following April, when it left for England. In 1957 the historic voyage of the Mayflower was commemorated when a replica of the original ship was built in England and sailed to Massachusetts in 53 days....
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mayfly (insect)
any member of a group of insects known for their extremely short life spans and emergence in large numbers in the summer months. Other common names for the winged stages are shadfly, sandfly, dayfly, fishfly, and drake. The aquatic immature stage, called a nymph or naiad, is widely distributed in freshwater, although a few species can tolerate the brackish water of marine estuaries....
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mayhem (Anglo-American law)
in Anglo-American law, offense against the person in which the offender violently deprives his victim of a member of his body, thus making him less able to defend himself. The disabling of an arm, hand, finger, leg, foot, or eye are examples of mayhem. In a number of jurisdictions, mere disfigurement or maiming is considered mayhem. To be guilty of the criminal offense, one must intend to dismemb...
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Mayhew, Henry (British journalist)
English journalist and sociologist, a founder of the magazine Punch (1841), who was a vivid and voluminous writer best known for London Labour and the London Poor, 4 vol. (1851–62). His evocation of the sights and sounds of London in this work influenced Charles Dickens and other writers....
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Mayhew, Jonathan (American preacher)
vigorous Boston preacher whose outspoken political and religious liberalism made him one of the most controversial men in colonial New England....
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Mayhew, Thomas (British missionary)
...by many early navigators but was first recorded in 1602 by Bartholomew Gosnold and Gabriel Archer; the two explorers named it for its many vines and for Martha, Gosnold’s daughter. Purchased by Thomas Mayhew in 1641 and settled the following year, it was considered part of New York but was ceded in 1692 to Massachusetts. In 1695 it was incorporated into Dukes county (along with the......
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Maykop (Russia)
city and capital of the republic of Adygea, Krasnodar kray (region), Russia, on the right bank of the Belaya River. Maykop (from the Adyghian myequape meaning “valley of apple trees”) was founded in 1857 as a Russian fortress. Food processing is the city’s leading industry; metalworking, machine building, timber working, and tannin extracting are also important. ...
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Maykov, Nikolay (Russian mystic)
first Russian mystic to write about the contemplative life and to formulate a guide for spiritual self-perfection....
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Maykov, Vasily (Russian author)
...an epic by Mikhail Kheraskov, is a rather stilted effort that proved a literary dead end. It was the ode, rather than the epic, that was the successful high poetic genre of the age. But Vasily Maykov and Ippolit Bogdanovich wrote amusing mock epics. Maykov’s Elisey; ili, razdrazhenny Vakkh (1769; “Elisei; or, Bacchus Enraged”) cleverly parodies a Russian......
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Maymūn ibn Qays al-Aʿshā (Arab poet)
pre-Islāmic poet whose qaṣīdah (“ode”) is included by the critic Abū ʿUbaydah (d. 825) in the celebrated Muʿallaqāt, a collection of seven pre-Islāmic qaṣīdahs, each of which was considered by its author to be his best; the contents of the collection vary slightly, according ...
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Maymyo (Myanmar)
town, central Myanmar (Burma). It lies at the head of a shallow valley, at an elevation of about 3,450 feet (1,050 m). The town, named for Colonel (later Major General) James May of the 5th Bengal Infantry stationed there in 1886, served as the summer capital during the British administration. Although the Myanmar government does not leave Yangon (Rangoon), the national capital, the head of state ...
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“Mayn krig mit Hersh Rasseyner” (story by Grade)
Most of Grade’s subsequent works deal with issues related to the culture and tradition of his Jewish faith. Mayn krig mit Hersh Rasseyner (1950; My Fight with Hersh Rasseyner) is a “philosophical dialogue” between a secular Jew deeply troubled by the Holocaust and a devout friend from Poland. Grade’s novel ...
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Mayn yingele (poem by Rosenfeld)
...poets. Another, Morris Rosenfeld, wrote numerous poems describing the harsh conditions experienced by Jewish immigrants, who often worked in the textile industry. One famous poem, Mayn yingele (1887; “My Little Boy”), for example, expresses a worker’s estrangement from his family—resulting from endless hours spent in a sweatshop. David Edelst...
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Maynard, François (French poet)
French poet, leading disciple of François de Malherbe and, like him, concerned with the clarification of the French language. He is commonly confused with François Ménard (1589–1631) of Nîmes, also a poet....
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Maynard, Robert (British naval officer)
...Charles Eden, governor of the North Carolina colony. At the request of Carolina planters, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, dispatched a British naval force under Lieutenant Robert Maynard, who, after a hard fight, succeeded in killing Blackbeard. The pirate’s body was decapitated, and his head was affixed to the end of the bowsprit of his ship....
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Maynard, Robert Clyve (American journalist and publisher)
U.S. journalist and newspaper publisher (b. June 17, 1937, New York, N.Y.--d. Aug. 17, 1993, Oakland, Calif.), inspired and was mentor to hundreds of minority journalists as the first African-American to gain, through sheer determination, a prominent position in U.S. publishing; he was the first black national correspondent and the first black editor and owner of a major daily newspaper. Though M...
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Mayne, Cuthbert (English martyr)
Roman Catholic martyr executed during the persecution of Roman Catholics under the English queen Elizabeth I....
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Mayne, Thom (American architect)
American architect, whose bold and unconventional works were noted for their offset angular forms, layered exterior walls, incorporation of giant letter and number graphics, and emphasis on natural light. He was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 2005....
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Maynesborough (New Hampshire, United States)
city, Coos county, northern New Hampshire, U.S., at the falls of the Androscoggin River and on the northern rim of the White Mountains. Chartered in 1771 as Maynesborough, it was not settled until 1821. It was renamed for the city of Berlin (then in Prussia) in 1829. Available waterpower prompted development of the lumber and pulp industry i...
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Maynila (Philippines)
capital and chief city of the Philippines. The city is the centre of the country’s economic, political, social, and cultural activity. It is located on the island of Luzon and spreads along the eastern shore of Manila Bay at the mouth of the Pasig River. The city’s name, originally Maynilad, is derived from that of the ...
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Maynilad (Philippines)
capital and chief city of the Philippines. The city is the centre of the country’s economic, political, social, and cultural activity. It is located on the island of Luzon and spreads along the eastern shore of Manila Bay at the mouth of the Pasig River. The city’s name, originally Maynilad, is derived from that of the ...
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Maynooth (Ireland)
village, County Kildare, Ireland, situated 15 miles (24 km) west of Dublin. Historic remains in the locality include those of a castle built by Gerald FitzMaurice (died 1203) and an early manorial church that has been incorporated into the Church of Ireland. In medieval times Maynooth was at the perimetre of the English ...
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Mayo (people)
Indian people centred in southern Sonora and northern Sinaloa states on the west coast of Mexico. They speak a dialect of the Cahita language, which belongs to the Uto-Aztecan language family....
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Mayo (county, Ireland)
county in the province of Connaught, western Ireland. Mayo is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean (north and west) and by Counties Sligo (northeast), Roscommon (east), and Galway (southeast and south). Mayo’s extensive coastline is wild and broken, with many inlets from Killala Bay in the north to Killa...
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Mayo, Asociación de (Argentine political organization)
...elsewhere in the continent, it had gone from foreign rule to domestic despotism. Echeverría became an opponent of the Juan Manuel de Rosas dictatorship (1835–52). In 1837 he founded the Asociación de Mayo (“May Association,” after the month of Argentina’s independence), a group of liberal intellectuals who sought a national literature reflective of thei...
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Mayo Balleo (river, Africa)
principal river of West Africa. With a length of 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometres), it is the third longest river in Africa, after the Nile and the Congo. The Niger is believed to have been named by the Greeks. Along its course it is known by several names. These include the Joliba (a Malinke word meaning “great river”) in its upper course; the Mayo Balleo and the Isa...
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Mayo, Charles Horace (American physician)
Charles Horace Mayo (b. July 19, 1865, Rochester—d. May 26, 1939, Chicago, Ill.), the younger son of William Worrall Mayo, was characterized as a “surgical wonder.” He received an M.D. degree from the Chicago Medical College (later part of Northwestern University Medical School) in 1888 and in the same year began private practice of surgery with his father and brother....
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Mayo, Charles William (American physician)
Charles William Mayo (b. July 28, 1898, Rochester—d. July 28, 1968, Rochester) was the son of Charles Horace. He was a skilled surgeon and member of the board of governors of the Mayo Clinic, chairman of the Mayo Association, and a member (chairman 1961–67) of the board of regents of the University of Minnesota. He is noted for a speech he gave in 1953 as a member of the United......
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Mayo Clinic (medical complex, Rochester, Minnesota, United States)
the most famous group of physicians in the United States. Three generations of the Mayo family, pioneers in the practice of group medicine, established the world-renowned Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research at Rochester, Minn....
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Mayo, Elton (American psychologist)
Australian-born psychologist who became an early leader in the field of industrial sociology in the United States, emphasizing the dependence of productivity on small-group unity. He extended this work to link the factory system to the larger society....
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Mayo family (American physicians)
the most famous group of physicians in the United States. Three generations of the Mayo family, pioneers in the practice of group medicine, established the world-renowned Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research at Rochester, Minn....
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Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research
the most famous group of physicians in the United States. Three generations of the Mayo family, pioneers in the practice of group medicine, established the world-renowned Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research at Rochester, Minn....
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Mayo, George Elton (American psychologist)
Australian-born psychologist who became an early leader in the field of industrial sociology in the United States, emphasizing the dependence of productivity on small-group unity. He extended this work to link the factory system to the larger society....
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Mayo, Jim (American writer)
American writer, best-selling author of more than 100 books, most of which were formula westerns that were highly popular because of their well-researched portrayals of frontier life....
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Mayo, Mary Anne Bryant (American farm organizer)
American farm organizer, noted for her efforts toward farm-community improvement as part of the Granger movement in the United States....
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Mayo Medical Center (medical complex, Rochester, Minnesota, United States)
the most famous group of physicians in the United States. Three generations of the Mayo family, pioneers in the practice of group medicine, established the world-renowned Mayo Clinic and the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research at Rochester, Minn....
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Mayo, Plaza de (square, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
The modern city developed outward from the Plaza de Mayo, a historic square flanked by the Cabildo (Town Hall) on the western end of the square, which dates from the 18th century, and the Government House, commonly called the Casa Rosada (“Pink House”), on the eastern end. The Casa Rosada faces west, up the broad Avenida de Mayo, which leads directly to Plaza del Congreso and the......
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Mayo, Richard Southwell Bourke, 6th Earl of, Viscount Mayo of Monycrower, Baron Naas of Naas (viceroy of India)
Irish politician and civil servant best known for his service as viceroy of India, where he improved relations with Afghanistan, conducted the first census, turned a deficit budget into a surplus, and created a department for agriculture and commerce....
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Mayo, Virginia (American actress)
American actress (b. Nov. 30, 1920, St. Louis, Mo.—d. Jan. 17, 2005, Thousand Oaks, Calif.), appeared in more than 40 movies, many of them comedies and adventure films, but was most memorable for her dramatic portrayals of an unfaithful wife of a World War II veteran in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and of James Cagney’s gun-moll wife in White Heat (1949). She late...
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Mayo, William James (American physician)
William James Mayo (b. June 29, 1861, Le Sueur, Minn.—d. July 28, 1939, Rochester) was the eldest son of William Worrall Mayo. He received his M.D. degree in 1883 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and then engaged at Rochester in the private practice of medicine and surgery with his father and later with his younger brother Charles Horace Mayo. Though William J. Mayo became the......
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Mayo, William Worrall (American physician)
William Worrall Mayo (b. May 31, 1819, near Manchester, Eng.—d. March 6, 1911, Rochester, Minn., U.S.) was the father of the doctors Mayo who developed a large-scale, world-renowned practice of medicine....
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Mayombé Massif (region, Africa)
The country is fringed by a narrow coastal plain 40 miles (64 kilometres) wide, which stretches for about 100 miles between Gabon and Cabinda. The plain rises gradually from the sea to the Mayombé Massif, a low mountain range that parallels the coast. The Mayombé peaks are quite sharp and are separated by deep river gorges. At the southern end of the range, Mount Foungouti attains......
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Mayon (Tamil deity)
...was identified with Skanda, and his mother, the fierce war goddess Korravai, with Durga. Varunan, a sea god who had adopted the name of an old Vedic god but otherwise had few Aryan features, and Mayon, a black god who was a rural divinity with many of the characteristics of Krishna in his pastoral aspect, also are depicted in Tamil literature. The final Sanskritization of the Tamils was......
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Mayon Volcano (volcano, Philippines)
active volcano, southeastern Luzon, Philippines, dominating the city of Legaspi. Called the world’s most perfect cone, it has a base 80 miles (130 km) in circumference and rises to 8,077 feet (2,462 metres) from the shores of Albay Gulf. Popular with climbers and campers, it is the centre of Mayon Volcano National Park (21 square miles [55 square km]). There are large abaca plantations on ...
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Mayon Volcano National Park (park, Philippines)
...most perfect cone, it has a base 80 miles (130 km) in circumference and rises to 8,077 feet (2,462 metres) from the shores of Albay Gulf. Popular with climbers and campers, it is the centre of Mayon Volcano National Park (21 square miles [55 square km]). There are large abaca plantations on its lower slopes. There have been more than 30 eruptions recorded since 1616; an eruption in 1993......
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ma’yong (dance)
The ma’yong, a dance drama that probably dates back more than 1,000 years, was introduced in Kelantan under the patronage of the royal courts. In the 20th century it existed as a folk theatre with an all-female cast. The music that accompanies 12 surviving stories is played by an orchestra of one bowed lute (rebab), two suspended gongs, and a pa...
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mayonnaise (sauce)
cold sauce originating in French cuisine, an emulsion of raw egg yolks and vegetable oil. As the yolks are continuously beaten, oil is added little by little until a thick cream results. Plain mayonnaise is flavoured with lemon juice, mustard, or vinegar....
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mayor (municipal government)
in modern usage, the head of a municipal government. As such, the mayor is almost invariably the chairman of the municipal council and of the council executive committee. In addition he may fulfill the roles of chief executive officer, ceremonial figurehead, and local agent of the central government. In another, more recent, system of municipal management—the council-manager syste...
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mayor and council system (municipal government)
municipal government in which a locally elected council is headed by a mayor, either popularly elected or elected by the council from among its members. In strict usage, the term is applied only to two types of local governmental structure in the United States. In the weak-mayor and council form, the mayor is merely council chairman and has largely only ceremonial and parliamentary functions. In ...
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Mayor of Casterbridge, The (novel by Hardy)
...determination to stay by accepting an appointment as a local magistrate and by designing and building Max Gate, the house just outside Dorchester in which he lived until his death. Hardy’s novel The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) incorporates recognizable details of Dorchester’s history and topography. The busy market-town of Casterbridge becomes the setting for a tragic stru...
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Mayor of Garratt, The (work by Foote)
The series of mock elections that took place annually from 1747 to 1796 in the Garratt Lane district of Wandsworth inspired the 18th-century satirical playwright Samuel Foote to write The Mayor of Garratt. Wandsworth Prison (1851; originally named the Surrey House of Correction) held Oscar Wilde in 1895 and was the scene of a sensational escape in 1965 by the train robber Ronald......
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mayor of the palace (European official)
official of the western European kingdoms of the 6th–8th century, whose status developed under the Merovingian Franks from that of an officer of the household to that of regent or viceroy. The Merovingian kings adopted the system by which great landowners of the Roman Empire had employed a major domus (mayor, or supervisor, of the household) to s...
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Mayor Peak (mountain, Majorca Island, Spain)
...separated by a lowland that terminates in Palma Bay on the south and Alcudia and Pollensa bays on the north. The western mountains are the higher of the two and rise to 4,741 feet (1,445 metres) at Mayor Peak (Puig Major). Precipitous cliffs, often about 1,000 feet (300 metres) high, characterize much of the north coast. The island’s varied landscape includes pine forests, olive groves, ...
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Mayor, Plaza (plaza, Madrid, Spain)
...Real. Architects such as Juan de Herrera and Francisco de Mora contributed to the monumental quality of the city. But the most striking contribution of this period is generally considered to be the Plaza Mayor, designed by Juan Gómez de Mora and built between 1617 and 1619; it was modified after the great fire of 1790. Graceful in concept, it is surrounded by five-story houses with......
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Mayor, Plaza (plaza, Mexico City, Mexico)
The heart of the city is the enormous, concrete-covered Plaza de la Constitución, or Zócalo, the largest public square in Latin America. At its edges stand the Metropolitan Cathedral (north), National Palace (east), Municipal Palace, or city hall (south), and an antique line of arcaded shops (west). A few blocks to the west is the tallest building in the historic city centre, the......
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Mayor, Plaza (plaza, Salamanca, Spain)
The city still centres on its fine arcaded Plaza Mayor (1729–33; designed by Alberto Churriguera and completed by Andrés García de Quiñones), which was originally intended to serve on occasion as a bullring and which has a surrounding arcade ornamented on two sides with medallions of the kings of Spain and General Franco. There also is the Town Hall (Ayuntamiento)......
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mayordomo (Spanish royal official)
...officials of the royal household were the chancellor, usually an ecclesiastic, who was responsible for the issuance of royal letters and the preservation of records; the mayordomo, a magnate, who supervised the household and the royal domain; and the alférez (Catalan: ......
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Mayorga, Silvio (Nicaraguan revolutionary)
Named for César Augusto Sandino, a hero of Nicaraguan resistance to U.S. military occupation (1927–33), the FSLN was founded in 1962 by Carlos Fonseca Amador, Silvio Mayorga, and Tomás Borge Martínez as a revolutionary group committed to socialism and to the overthrow of the Somoza family. Over the next 10 years the FSLN organized political support among students,......
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Mayotte (island and French dependency, Indian Ocean)
southeasternmost island of the Comoros archipelago and a French dependency, situated in the Mozambique Channel of the Indian Ocean, about 193 miles (310 km) northwest of Madagascar. Pamandzi, an islet lying about 1.5 miles (2.5 km) east of Mayotte, is connected by a 1.2-mile causeway to the rocky outcrop known as Dzaoudzi, site of the capital city and port. Area 144 square miles (373 square km). P...
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Mayow, John (English chemist and physiologist)
English chemist and physiologist who, about a hundred years before Joseph Priestley and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, identified spiritus nitroaereus (oxygen) as a distinct atmospheric entity....
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maypole bower (shelter)
The “maypole” type consists of a tower of twigs erected around one or more saplings in a cleared court. The golden bowerbird (Prionodura newtoniana) makes a rooflike bridge from tower to tower. Male gardeners, any of the four species of the genus Amblyornis, plant a lawn of tree moss around the maypole and embellish it with......
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Maypole dance
ceremonial folk dance performed around a tall pole garlanded with greenery or flowers and often hung with ribbons that are woven into complex patterns by the dancers. Such dances are survivals of ancient dances around a living tree as part of spring rites to ensure fertility. Typically performed on May Day (May 1), they also occur at midsummer in Scandinavia and at other festiv...
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maypop (plant)
The wild passion-flower, passion vine, or maypop (P. incarnata) climbs about 3 to 9 m (10 to 30 feet) high and has pink and white flowers about 4 to 7.5 cm (1.5 to 3 inches) across and a yellow, berrylike, edible fruit about 5 cm long. The yellow passion-flower (P. lutea) is a smaller plant with greenish yellow flowers and purple fruits....
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