A-Z Browse

Previous Next

Lancelot du Lac (legendary knight)
one of the greatest knights in Arthurian romance; he was the lover of Arthur’s queen, Guinevere, and was the father of the pure knight Sir Galahad....
Lancelot of the Lake (legendary knight)
one of the greatest knights in Arthurian romance; he was the lover of Arthur’s queen, Guinevere, and was the father of the pure knight Sir Galahad....
Lancelotti, Paul (Italian canonist)
...little that was new legislation. The 2,414 canons were divided into five books that no longer followed the system of the collections of decretals but did follow that of the Perugian canonist Paul Lancelotti’s Institutiones juris canonici (1563; “Institutions of Canon Law”), which in turn went back to the division of the 2nd-century Roman lawyer Gaius’s......
lanceolated monklet (bird)
The smallest species is the lanceolated monklet (Micromonacha lanceolata) from deep forests of northern South America. This 14-cm species derives its name from its quiet habits and modest brown plumage....
lancer (military)
...1690 and 1740. Heavy cavalry would be held in reserve, ready to strike when a gap was created or a flank presented itself. During the second half of the 18th century another type of cavalry, the lancers, was added specifically to root out gunners hiding under their cannons’ barrels....
Lancereaux, Étienne (French physician)
...sciences. In 1888 he went to Paris to study medicine, and three years later he took a post as a nonresident medical student at the Hôtel-Dieu de Paris. There he worked with French physician Étienne Lancereaux, who was the first to suggest that diabetes mellitus originated in the pancreas, and with French scientist Albert Dastre, who had studied with Claude Bernard, the renowned......
lancers (dance)
...each other by the right hand, and then each gave her left hand to the opposite man, who turned her into place beside himself. The quadrille was frequently danced to a medley of opera melodies. The lancers, a variation of the quadrille, became popular in the late 1800s and was still danced in the mid-20th century in folk-dance clubs. ...
lancet fish
either of two species of widely distributed, deepwater marine fish of the genus Alepisaurus (family Alepisauridae). Lancet fish are elongated and slender, with a long, very tall dorsal fin and a large mouth that is equipped with formidable fanglike teeth. The fish grow to a large size, attaining a maximum length of about 1.8 m (6 feet)....
Lancet, The (British medical journal)
British medical journal established in 1823. The journal’s founder and first editor was Thomas Wakley, considered at the time to be a radical reformer. Wakley stated that the intent of the new journal was to report on the metropolitan hospital lectures and to describe the important cases of the day. The Lancet has since played an important role in medical and hospital ...
lancet window (architecture)
narrow, high window capped by a lancet, or acute, arch. The lancet arch is a variety of pointed arch in which each of the arcs, or curves, of the arch have a radius longer than the width of the arch. It takes its name from being shaped like the tip of a lance. The lancet window is one of the typical features of the Early English (13th century...
lancewood (wood)
tough, heavy, elastic, straight-grained wood obtained from several different trees of the custard-apple family (Annonaceae). True lancewood, Oxandra lanceolata, of the West Indies and Guianas, furnishes most of the lancewood of commerce in the form of spars about 13 feet (4 m) in length and 5 inche...
Lanchas en la bahía (work by Rojas)
His first novel, Lanchas en la bahía (1932; “Launches in the Bay”), is an ironic and satirical presentation of some of the social ills afflicting Chile. Rojas’ most acclaimed work is Hijo de ladrón (1951; “Son of a Thief”; Eng. trans., Born Guilty), an autobiographical novel with existential preoccupations. The use of interior.....
Lanchester, Elsa (British-born American actress)
...refusing to help, Frankenstein relents after Pretorius has the monster kidnap Frankenstein’s wife, Elizabeth (Valerie Hobson). However, once the two scientists have animated their new creation (Elsa Lanchester), a grotesque beauty with a frizzled shock of hair, even she rejects the monster by screaming at him in horror. Dejected, the monster destroys Frankenstein’s laboratory, ost...
Lanchester, Frederick William (British engineer)
English automobile and aeronautics pioneer who built the first British automobile (1896)....
Lanchester, Waldo (British puppeteer)
...by the Russian puppeteer Sergey Obraztsov with a performance of charm and wit that was quite different from those of the great rod-puppet theatre that he founded. In England the fine craftsman Waldo Lanchester played an important part in the marionette revival; his productions included the early madrigal opera L’Amfiparnaso. Jan Bussell, with the Hogarth Puppets, achieved an......
Lanchester-Prandtl wing theory (aerodynamics)
...work by a British physicist, Frederick W. Lanchester, but was carried out independently, elucidated the process of airflow over airplane wings of finite span. That body of work is known as the Lanchester-Prandtl wing theory....
Lanchow (China)
city, capital of Gansu sheng (province), west-central China. It is situated in the southeastern portion of the province on the upper course of the Huang He (Yellow River), where the river emerges from the mountains. Lanzhou has been a centre since ea...
Lanciani, Rodolfo Amadeo (Italian archaeologist)
Italian archaeologist, topographer, and authority on ancient Rome who discovered many antiquities at Rome, Tivoli, and Ostia. He published a 1:1,000-scale map of classical, medieval, and modern Rome in Forma Urbis Romae (1893–1901)....
Lanciano (Italy)
town, Abruzzi regione, south-central Italy. An archbishopric and agricultural centre, it has textile, machinery, and furniture manufactures. It originated as the Roman Anxanum. The town’s Cistercian-Gothic church of Santa Maria Maggiore dates from 1227, and its cathedral has a late 13th-century campanile. Up to the 17th century Lanciano held fairs that attracted me...
Lancidae (gastropod family)
...terrestrial; 2 families.Superfamily LymnaeaceaSmall to large, spiral-shelled snails of ponds, lakes, and rivers; 1 limpet group (Lancidae) and larger typical group (Lymnaeidae).Superfamily AncylaceaLimpets (Ancylidae), ramshorns (Planorbidae), and pond snails.....
Lancisi, Giovanni Maria (Italian physician)
Italian clinician and anatomist who is considered the first modern hygienist....
Lanclos, Anne De (French courtesan)
celebrated French courtesan....
Lanclos, Ninon de (French courtesan)
celebrated French courtesan....
Lancret, Nicolas (French painter)
French genre painter whose brilliant depictions of fêtes galantes, or scenes of courtly amusements in Arcadian settings, reflected the society of his time....
land (economics)
In economics, the resource that encompasses the natural resources used in production. In classical economics, the three factors of production are land, labour, and capital. Land was considered to be the “original and inexhaustible gift of nature.” In modern economics, it is...
land (physical feature)
a measure of the difference between continental and marine climates characterized by the increased range of temperatures that occurs over land compared with water. This difference is a consequence of the much lower effective heat capacities of land surfaces as well as of their generally reduced evaporation rates....
Land (German political unit)
...has a central government and 12 district governments, with a chief burgomaster, or mayor, a 16-member government, and a city assembly, or parliament, on the central, or Land (state), level, and district mayors, district councils (governments), and district assemblies on the local level. The city has various local and state courts, including a......
Land Act (United Kingdom [1881])
In Parliament Healy became an authority on the Irish land question, and the “Healy Clause” of the Land Act of 1881, which protected tenant farmers’ agrarian improvements from rent increases imposed by landlords, not only made him popular throughout nationalist Ireland but also won his cause seats in Protestant Ulster. He broke with Parnell in 1886 and generally remained at odd...
Land Acts (South African history)
...each race, and members of other races were barred from living, operating businesses, or owning land in them. In practice this act and two others (1954, 1955), which became known collectively as the Land Acts, completed a process that had begun with similar Land Acts adopted in 1913 and 1936; the end result was to set aside more than 80 percent of South Africa’s land for the white minorit...
Land and Freedom (political party, Russia)
first Russian political party to openly advocate a policy of revolution; it had been preceded only by conspiratorial groups. Founded in 1876, the party two years later took its name from an earlier (1861–64) secret society. A product of the Narodnik (Populist) mov...
Land Apportionment Act (Africa [1930])
...to attract immigrants and raise revenue, even the limited African reserves that had been set aside at imperial insistence were a subject of constant contention. The crucial legislation was the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, which barred African landownership outside the reserves, except in a special freehold purchase area set aside for “progressive farmers.” The best land was......
Land Between the Lakes (region, United States)
...shoreline and is impounded on the Cumberland River by Barkley Dam, lies east of Kentucky Lake. A wooded isthmus of about 265 square miles (690 square km) between the two lakes known as the Land Between the Lakes is a major recreation and conservation area and the site of an environmental-education centre....
land breeze (meteorology)
a local wind system characterized by a flow from land to water late at night. Land breezes alternate with sea breezes along coastlines adjacent to large bodies of water. Both are induced by differences that occur between the heating or cooling of the water surface and the adjacent land surface. The land breeze is typically shallower than the ...
land bridge (isthmus)
any of several isthmuses that have connected the Earth’s major landmasses at various times, with the result that many species of plants and animals have extended their ranges to new areas. A land bridge that had a profound effect on the fauna of the New World extended from Siberia to Alaska during most of the Paleogene, Neogene, and Quaternary periods (beginning approximately 65.5 million y...
land captain (Russian politics)
...strict censorship was placed on the press, and some newspapers and periodicals had to submit all copy to official censors before publication. In July 1889 the peasant townships were placed under land captains chosen by the minister of the interior. Land captains had to be members of the landowning nobility, and they appointed the town elders who had the power to fine and arrest the peasants......
Land Charter of Bishop Arnold (Netherlands [1375])
...In Utrecht, too, there was cooperation between the prince (the bishop) and the estates; and the clergy, particularly the collegiate churches of the town of Utrecht, played an important part: the Land Charter of Bishop Arnold in 1375 was inspired by the Joyeuse Entrée of Brabant. In the prince-bishopric of Liège, cooperation between prince and estates had to be won by violent......
Land Chenla (ancient state, Indochina)
...what became, in the 9th century, the great Cambodian Khmer empire.) Between about 550 and 680 the kingdom retreated from the coast up the Mekong River into Laos, where it was called by the Chinese Chenla. This joint Funan-Chenla tradition produced some of the world’s most magnificent stone cult images. Though Buddhist icons are known, these images principally represent Hindu deities incl...
Land Conference (Irish history)
...to mediate between the Parnellites and their opponents, although he sided with the majority in rejecting Parnell’s continued leadership of the Irish Home Rule struggle. In 1902 he supported the Land Conference, which secured agreement between landlords and tenants’ representatives and resulted in the Wyndham Land Purchase Act of 1903, which was designed to turn Irish tenant farmer...
land crab (invertebrate)
any crab of the family Gecarcinidae (order Decapoda of the class Crustacea), typically terrestrial, square-bodied crabs that only occasionally, as adults, return to the sea. They occur in tropical America, West Africa, and the Indo-Pacific region. All species feed on both animal and ...
Land Dayak (people)
Like the Iban, the Bidayuh originally came from regions that now lie in northwestern Indonesian Borneo; in Sarawak the Bidayuh homeland is in the far western portion of the state. Most rural Bidayuh practice shifting rice cultivation. Although they have for centuries lived in close proximity to the Iban, the Bidayuh speak a separate language, with a number of different but related dialects that......
land diving (Oceanic ritual)
...fertile valleys, where copra and coffee are cultivated. Pentecost is known for a fertility ritual performed (usually at various times from April through May) to guarantee a good yam harvest; “land divers” jump headfirst from towers up to 80 feet (24 metres) tall that are made of bush timber and vines. The divers are suspended only by vines, short and springy enough to break their....
Land, Edwin Herbert (American inventor and physicist)
American inventor and physicist whose one-step process for developing and printing photographs culminated in a revolution in photography unparalleled since the advent of roll film....
Land Grant Mural (work by Poor)
...for Pennsylvania State College (now Pennsylvania State University), which was established there in 1855. The Old Main building (1859) on the campus contains a renowned American mural, the “Land Grant Mural” by Henry Varnum Poor. The town, a service centre for the university (in University Park), has high technology industries and is also a shipping point for surrounding farmlands....
land irrigation (agriculture)
artificial application of water to land and artificial removal of excess water from land, respectively. Some land requires irrigation or drainage before it is possible to use it for any agricultural production; other land profits from either practice to increase production. Some land, of course, does not need either. Although either practice may be, and both often are, used for nonagricultural pur...
Land Law (Ottoman Empire [1858])
After 1840 the reforms the sultan promulgated gradually took effect in Palestine. Increased security in the countryside and the Ottoman Land Law of 1858 encouraged the development of private property, agricultural production for the world market, the decline of tribal social organization, growth of the population, and the enrichment of the notable families. As the Ottomans extended the central......
Land League (Irish agrarian organization)
Irish agrarian organization that worked for the reform of the country’s landlord system under British rule. The league was founded in October 1879 by Michael Davitt, the son of an evicted tenant farmer and a member of the Fenian (Irish Republican) Brotherhood. Davitt asked Charles Stewart Parnell, leader of the ...
land leech (worm)
Aquatic leeches may feed on the blood of fishes, amphibians, birds, and mammals, or they may eat snails, insect larvae, and worms. True land leeches feed only on the blood of mammals. Three jaws set with sharp teeth make a Y-shaped incision in the flesh. The leech’s saliva contains substances that anesthetize the wound area, dilate the blood vessels to increase blood flow, and prevent the b...
Land Management, Bureau of (United States government agency)
agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior. It was established in 1946 through the consolidation of the General Land Office (created in 1812) and the U.S. Grazing Service (1934). The BLM is responsible for managing hundreds of millions of acres of public land, including timber, minerals, oil and gas, geothermal energy...
Land, Michael F. (British neurobiologist)
Scallops (Pecten) have about 50–100 single-chambered eyes in which the image is formed not by a lens but by a concave mirror. In 1965 British neurobiologist Michael F. Land (the author of this article) found that although scallop eyes have a lens, it is too weak to produce an image in the eye. In order to form a visible image, the back of the eye contains a mirror that......
land mine (weapon)
stationary explosive charge used against military troops or vehicles. See mine....
land mine: Year In Review 1996
U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has called them "weapons of mass destruction in slow motion"--the 110 million land mines buried in 68 countries stretching from Cambodia to Costa Rica. The United Nations has estimated that they kill or maim roughly 20,000 people each year. Most of the casualties are innocent civilians, many of them children, because practically all of ...
Land of Cockaygne, The (Middle English work)
...de Renart. In the same manuscript with this work is Dame Sirith, the earliest English fabliau. Another sort of humour is found in The Land of Cockaygne, which depicts a utopia better than heaven, where rivers run with milk, honey, and wine, geese fly about already roasted, and monks hunt with hawks and dance with nuns....
“Land of Cokaygne, The” (Middle English work)
...de Renart. In the same manuscript with this work is Dame Sirith, the earliest English fabliau. Another sort of humour is found in The Land of Cockaygne, which depicts a utopia better than heaven, where rivers run with milk, honey, and wine, geese fly about already roasted, and monks hunt with hawks and dance with nuns....
Land of God (historical region, Africa)
in ancient Egyptian and Greek geography, the southern coast of the Red Sea and adjacent coasts of the Gulf of Aden, corresponding to modern coastal Ethiopia and Djibouti....
Land of Green Plums, The (novel by Müller)
...(1989; Traveling on One Leg), Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger (1992; “Already Back Then, the Fox Was the Hunter”), Herztier (1994; The Land of Green Plums), and Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet (1997; The Appointment). In 1998 Müller received the International IMPAC Dubli...
Land of Lamps (state, India)
southwestern coastal state of India. It is a small state, constituting only about 1 percent of the total area of the country. Kerala stretches for about 360 miles (580 km) along the Malabar Coast, varying in width from roughly 20 to 75 miles (30 to 120 km). It is bordered by the states of Karnataka (formerly Mysore) to the north and ...
Land of Little Rain, The (work by Austin)
...various towns in California’s Owens Valley. Mary Austin soon learned to love the desert and the Native Americans who lived in it, and both figured in the sketches that constituted her first book, The Land of Little Rain (1903), which was a great and immediate success. It was followed by a collection of stories, The Basket Woman (1904), a romantic novel, Isidro (1905)...
Land of Look Behind (region, Jamaica)
an approximately 500-square-mile (1,300-square-kilometre) region in the interior of Jamaica, southeast of Montego Bay. It is part of the great White Limestone plateau and has typical karst topography, with innumerable conical and hemispherical hills covered with dense scrubby trees, rising hundreds of fee...
Land of Oz (fictional place)
...return home to her family. Before they can be reunited, however, she is knocked unconscious during a tornado. When she awakens, she and her farmhouse, along with Toto, are being transported to the Land of Oz, a magical place inhabited by strange characters, including munchkins, talking trees, and witches. Dorothy’s house lands in the midst of Oz’s Munchkinland, and she soon realiz...
Land of Ten Thousand Sinks (geological region, Kentucky, United States)
in west-central Kentucky, U.S., area of numerous sinkholes and caves in the Pennyrile (or Pennyroyal) region. The area includes the interconnected caves of Mammoth Cave National Park and Flint Ridge Cave System. Abundant surface and underground water together with limestones deposited during the Early Car...
Land of Unlikeness (work by Lowell)
...Castle (1946) comments on this experience, as does in greater detail “Memories of West Street and Lepke” in Life Studies (1959). His first volume of poems, Land of Unlikeness (1944), deals with a world in crisis and the hunger for spiritual security. Lord Weary’s Castle, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947, exhibits great...
land otter (mammal)
The 11 species often referred to as river otters are found throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, in freshwater ecosystems that sustain an abundance of prey such as fish, crayfish, crabs, mussels, and frogs. Most river otters are opportunistic, feeding on whatever is most easily obtained. Diet often varies seasonally or locally, depending on which prey is available. River otters......
land planning (landscape design)
...Site planning involves plans for specific developments in which precise arrangements of buildings, roadways, utilities, landscape elements, topography, water features, and vegetation are shown. Land planning is for larger scale developments involving subdivision into several or many parcels, including analyses of land and landscape, feasibility studies for economic, social, political,......
land pollution
the deposition of solid or liquid waste materials on land or underground in a manner that can contaminate the soil and groundwater, threaten public health, and cause unsightly conditions and nuisances....
land presser (farm machine)
...air spaces. The plain roller is often used to compact grassland damaged by winter heaving. Corrugated rollers, single or tandem, crush clods and firm the soil after plowing. A type usually called a roller-packer or land presser has heavy, wedge-shaped wheels about 3 feet (1 m) in diameter and is used in dry seasons to compress the soil after plowing....
Land Purchase Act (United Kingdom [1903])
...of the century, the Conservatives initiated a policy designed to “kill Home Rule by kindness” by introducing constructive reforms in Ireland. Their most important achievement was the Land Purchase Act of 1903, which initiated the greatest social revolution in Ireland since the 17th century. By providing generous inducements to landlords to sell their estates, the act effected by.....
land rail (bird)
The corncrake, or land rail (Crex crex), of Europe and Asia, migrating south to Africa, is a slightly larger brown bird with a rather stout bill and wings showing reddish in flight. Africa’s black crake (Limnocorax flavirostra) is a 20-centimetre- (8-inch-) long form, black with a green bill and pink legs. It is less secretive than most. Pygmy crakes (Sarothrura species...
land reclamation
...and generally unsuitable for any immediate land use. Such spoil areas are now routinely reclaimed and permanent vegetation reestablished as an integral part of surface-mining operations. Generally, reclamation is performed concurrently with mining. See mining and coal mining....
land reform (agricultural economics)
a purposive change in the way in which agricultural land is held or owned, the methods of cultivation that are employed, or the relation of agriculture to the rest of the economy. Reforms such as these may be proclaimed by a government, by interested groups, or by revolution....
land, right of (property law)
...William probably distributed estates to his followers on a piecemeal basis as lands came into his hands. He granted lands directly to fewer than 180 men, making them his tenants in chief. Their estates were often well distributed, consisting of manors scattered through a number of shires. In vulnerable regions, however, compact blocks of land were formed, clustered around castles. The......
Land Rover (automobile)
...for millions of middle- and lower-income consumers both in India and abroad. The first Nano hit the road in India in July 2009. Tata Motors purchased the elite British brands Jaguar and Land Rover from the Ford Motor Company in 2008....
land sinking (geology)
sinking of the Earth’s surface in response to geologic or man-induced causes. When subsidence occurs in great belts, providing troughs for the accumulation of sediments, the resulting features are termed geosynclines; nonlinear subsidence produces basins and irregular depressions. Subsurface solution during cave formation may lead to a series of subsidence features at th...
land snail (gastropod)
any of the approximately 35,000 species of snails (phylum Mollusca) adapted to life away from water. Most species are members of the subclass Pulmonata (class Gastropoda); a few are members of the subclass Prosobranchia. Typically, land snails live on or near the ground, feed on decaying plant matter, and lay their eggs in t...
land spirit (mythology)
A good deal is told of land spirits (landvœttir). According to the pre-Christian law of Iceland, no one must approach the land in a ship bearing a dragonhead, lest he frighten the land spirits. An Icelandic poet, cursing the king and queen of Norway, enjoined the landvœttir to drive them from the land....
land tax
...The revival and rationalization of these ancient rights created an outcry. As early as 1604 Salisbury was examining proposals to commute these fiscal rights into an annual sum to be raised by a land tax. By 1610 negotiations began for the Great Contract between the king and his taxpaying subjects that aimed to raise £200,000 a year. But at the last moment both royal officials and......
land tenure
In some of the developing countries, traditional patterns of land tenure and laws of inheritance may result in one farmer holding many quite small plots at some distance from each other. To reduce the resulting labour inefficiency and low productivity and to spur development of large-scale agriculture, governments in these countries have frequently legislated to permit or compel consolidation......
Land Tenure Act (Zimbabwe [1969])
...city centres. The cities of Harare and Bulawayo therefore constitute studies in contrast, with impressive office buildings and quiet white suburbs partially ringed by crowded black townships. The Land Tenure Act, a more rigidly segregationist law that superseded the Land Apportionment Act in 1969, was amended in 1977, while the civil war was still being fought, to allow blacks to purchase......
Land Tenure Reform Association (British organization)
...1869 he published The Subjection of Women (written 1861), the classical theoretical statement of the case for woman suffrage. His last public activity was concerned with the starting of the Land Tenure Reform Association, for which he wrote in The Examiner and made a public speech a few months before his death; the interception by the state of the unearned increment on land and......
land transportation (technology)
An airport should always be considered an interchange where different modes of transportation connect. Since the airport itself is not a primary destination, consideration must be given to access by surface vehicles. This is as critical a factor in airport layout and design as it is in the process of site selection. A large airport can quite easily generate in excess of 100,000 daily access......
land treatment (sanitation engineering)
In some locations, secondary effluent can be applied directly to the ground and a polished effluent obtained by natural processes as the wastewater flows over vegetation and percolates through the soil. There are three types of land treatment: slow-rate, rapid infiltration, and overland flow....
land use (economics)
There are a number of ways in which changes in land use can influence climate. The most direct influence is through the alteration of Earth’s albedo, or surface reflectance. For example, the replacement of forest by cropland and pasture in the middle latitudes over the past several centuries has led to an increase in albedo, which in turn has led to greater reflection of incoming solar......
land van Rembrandt, Het (work by Busken Huet)
...(1868–88; “Literary Fantasies and Criticisms”). They are still read with enjoyment for their style and acute perception. His history of Dutch culture in the 17th century, Het land van Rembrandt (1882–84; “The Country of Rembrandt”), remains a classic....
land warfare
This article discusses the tactics of land warfare. For treatment of tactics on sea, see naval warfare, and for tactics in air combat, see air warfare....
land warrant (law)
Other types of warrants include tax warrants, which provide the authority to collect taxes, and land warrants, transferable certificates issued by the government entitling the holder to a specific tract of public land....
Land Without Bread (film by Buñuel)
His next two films—L’Âge d’or (1930; The Golden Age), a radically anticlerical and antibourgeois film made in France, and Las Hurdes (1932; Land Without Bread), a documentary about a particularly wretched region of Spain—asserted his concern with the freedom to dream and to imagine, his revolutionary attitude toward social problems, hi...
Land Without Thunder (work by Ogot)
...published by the East African Publishing House. Her stories—which appeared in European and African journals such as Black Orpheus and Transition and in collections such as Land Without Thunder (1968), The Other Woman (1976), and The Island of Tears (1980)—give an inside view of traditional Luo life and society and the conflict of traditional......
land-derived sediment (geology)
deep-sea sediment transported to the oceans by rivers and wind from land sources....
land-grant college (American education)
any of numerous American institutions of higher learning that were established under the first Morrill Act (1862). This act was passed by the U.S. Congress and was named for the act’s sponsor, Vermont congressman Justin S. Morrill....
Land-Grant College Act of 1862 (United States legislation)
Act of the U.S. Congress (1862) that provided grants of land to states to finance the establishment of colleges specializing in “agriculture and the mechanic arts.” Named for its sponsor, Vermont Congressman Justin Smith Morrill (1810–98), it granted each state 30,000 acres (12,140 hectares) for each of its congressional seats. Funds from the sale of the lan...
Land-Wheelwright Laboratories (American company)
American manufacturer of cameras, film, and optical equipment founded by Edwin Herbert Land (1909–91), who invented instant photography....
Land-Without-Evil (religious doctrine)
...of each village was usually a successful shaman who advised his group according to the revelations of his dreams. In 1879, an entire village followed its shaman in an eastward trek, in search of the Land-Without-Evil, which was believed to be somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. In 1910, another Apapocuva group attempted to reach the Land-Without-Evil by dancing feverishly for days, in the hope o...
Landa, Diego de (Spanish priest)
Spanish Franciscan priest and bishop of Yucatán who is best known for his classic account of Mayan culture....
Landa script
writing system developed by the Sikhs in India for their sacred literature. It seems to have been modified from the Landa script, which is used to write the Punjabi, Lahnda, and Sindhi languages. Landa, Gurmukhi, and two other scripts used in northwestern India, Śāradā and Ṭākrī, make up a related group that is probably descended from a common ancestor......
Landais, Pierre (French official)
When Francis’ chief counsellor, Pierre Landais, provoked the hatred of the Breton nobles by his persecution of the chancellor Guillaume Chauvin, the nobles, with the support of Anne of Beaujeu, regent of France, had Landais hanged (1485). When Anne sent French troops into Brittany, however, the nobles rallied to the Duke’s side. Defeated in 1488, Francis was forced to sign the Treaty...
Landau (Germany)
city, Rhineland-Palatinate Land (state), southwestern Germany. Its location is picturesque, along the Queich River in the Haardt Mountains. The settlement was first mentioned in 1106, and an Augustinian monastery was founded there in 1276. Landau became a free imperial city in 1291. I...
landau (carriage)
four-wheeled carriage, invented in Germany, seating four people on two facing seats with an elevated front seat for the coachman. It was distinguished by two folding hoods, one at each end, which met at the top to form a boxlike enclosure with side windows. It was a heavy vehicle, often drawn by a team of four horses, and was widely used from the 18th century in England. Usually...
Landau damping (physics)
...Langmuir and Tonks. Even without particle collisions, waves shorter than the Debye length are heavily damped—i.e., their amplitude decreases rapidly with time. This phenomenon, called Landau damping, arises because some electrons have the same velocity as the wave. As they move with the wave, they are accelerated much like a surfer on a water wave and thus extract energy from the....
Landau, Ezekiel (Polish rabbi)
Polish rabbi, the learned author of a much-reprinted book on Jewish law (Halakha)....
Landau in der Pfalz (Germany)
city, Rhineland-Palatinate Land (state), southwestern Germany. Its location is picturesque, along the Queich River in the Haardt Mountains. The settlement was first mentioned in 1106, and an Augustinian monastery was founded there in 1276. Landau became a free imperial city in 1291. I...
Landau, Jon (American motion-picture executive and producer)
...