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Vernam, Gilbert S. (American engineer)
In 1918 Gilbert S. Vernam, an engineer for the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), introduced the most important key variant to the Vigenère system. At that time all messages transmitted over AT&T’s teleprinter system were encoded in the Baudot Code, a binary code in which a combination of marks an...
Vernam-Vigenère cipher (cryptology)
type of substitution cipher used for data encryption. The Vernam-Vigenère cipher was devised in 1918 by Gilbert S. Vernam, an engineer for the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T), who introduced the most important key variant to the Vigenère cipher system, which was invented by the 16t...
vernation (botany)
The fern leaf, or pteridophyll, differs from the “true leaf” (euphyll) of the flowering plants in its vernation, or manner of expanding from the bud. In most ferns, vernation is circinate; that is, the leaf unrolls from the tip, with the appearance of a fiddlehead, rather than expanding from a folded condition. It also differs in....
Verne, Jules (French author)
prolific French author whose writings laid much of the foundation of modern science fiction....
verné rug
handmade Caucasian floor covering that was formerly termed a sileh. It is usually woven in two pieces joined at the middle, with a design composed of squarish compartments, usually in horizonal rows of two per panel. Within the squares are large backward S-shaped figures, representing ...
verneh rug
handmade Caucasian floor covering that was formerly termed a sileh. It is usually woven in two pieces joined at the middle, with a design composed of squarish compartments, usually in horizonal rows of two per panel. Within the squares are large backward S-shaped figures, representing ...
Verner, David Frederick Wingfield (Canadian magician and sleight-of-hand artist)
Canadian magician and sleight-of-hand artist who was one of the 20th century’s most renowned practitioners of “up-close” magic and card tricks....
Verner, Karl (Danish linguist)
linguist and formulator of Verner’s law, which provided convincing evidence of the regularity of sound change in the historical development of languages. His findings were a decisive influence in establishing the direction taken by the Neogrammarian school of historical linguists (see Neogrammarians...
Verner, Karl Adolf (Danish linguist)
linguist and formulator of Verner’s law, which provided convincing evidence of the regularity of sound change in the historical development of languages. His findings were a decisive influence in establishing the direction taken by the Neogrammarian school of historical linguists (see Neogrammarians...
Verner’s law (linguistics)
linguistic explanation of the apparent exceptions to Grimm’s law, which first demonstrated the significant role that accent (stress) played in linguistic change in the Germanic languages. It provided further evidence for the important claim of 1...
Vernet, Antoine-Charles-Horace (French painter)
French painter of battle scenes for Napoleon I and of sporting subjects, notably horses, for King Louis XVIII....
Vernet, Carle (French painter)
French painter of battle scenes for Napoleon I and of sporting subjects, notably horses, for King Louis XVIII....
Vernet, Charlot (French painter)
French painter of battle scenes for Napoleon I and of sporting subjects, notably horses, for King Louis XVIII....
Vernet, Claude-Joseph (French painter)
French landscape and marine painter whose finest works, the series of 15 Ports of France (1754–65), constitute a remarkable record of 18th-century life....
Vernet, Émile-Jean-Horace (French painter)
French painter of sporting subjects and vast battle panoramas, notably those in the Gallery of Battles at Versailles....
Vernet, Horace (French painter)
French painter of sporting subjects and vast battle panoramas, notably those in the Gallery of Battles at Versailles....
Vernet, Joseph (French painter)
French landscape and marine painter whose finest works, the series of 15 Ports of France (1754–65), constitute a remarkable record of 18th-century life....
Verneuil, Edouard de (French paleontologist)
During the early 1840s, Murchison traveled with the French paleontologist Edouard de Verneuil and the Latvian-born geologist Alexandr Keyserling to study the rock succession of the eastern Russian platform, the area of Russia west of the Ural Mountains. Near the town of Perm, Murchison and Verneuil identified fossiliferous strata containing......
Verneuil process (gem synthesis)
method for producing synthetic rubies and sapphires. Originally developed (1902) by a French chemist, Auguste Verneuil, the process produces a boule (a mass of alumina with the same physical and chemical characteristics as corundum) from finely ground alumina (Al2O3) by means of an inverted oxyhydrogen torch that opens into a ceramic muffle. With slight modifications, this me...
Verney, Luís António (Portuguese theologian and philosopher)
...influence of French classicism and of the Enlightenment; the ideas of the latter would be mobilized as a challenge to the aristocracy. Barbadiño (pseudonym of the theologian and philosopher Luís António Verney) poured scorn on prevailing methods of education in Veradeiro método de estudar (1746; “True Method of Studying”). Matias Aires, who...
verni rug
handmade Caucasian floor covering that was formerly termed a sileh. It is usually woven in two pieces joined at the middle, with a design composed of squarish compartments, usually in horizonal rows of two per panel. Within the squares are large backward S-shaped figures, representing ...
Vernichtungslager (Nazi concentration camp)
Nazi German concentration camp that specialized in the mass annihilation (Vernichtung) of unwanted persons in the Third Reich and conquered territories. The camps’ victims were mostly Jews but also included Roma (Gypsies), Slavs, homosexuals, alleged mental defectives, and other...
vernier caliper (measurement instrument)
instrument for making very accurate linear measurements introduced in 1631 by Pierre Vernier of France. It utilizes two graduated scales: a main scale similar to that on a ruler and an especially graduated auxiliary scale, the vernier, that slides parallel to the main scale and enables readings to be made to a fraction of a division on the main scale. Vernier calipers are widely...
Vernier, Pierre (French mathematician)
French mathematician and government official who is best remembered for his invention of the vernier caliper, an instrument for making accurate linear measurements. Taught by his scientist-father, Claude Vernier, he developed an early interest in measuring instruments. During his adult years, however, scie...
vernier scale (measurement standards)
French mathematician and government official who is best remembered for his invention of the vernier caliper, an instrument for making accurate linear measurements. Taught by his scientist-father, Claude Vernier, he developed an early interest in measuring instruments. During his adult years, however, scie...
Vernio, Giovanni Bardi, conte di (Italian musician, writer, and scientist)
musician, writer, and scientist, influential in the evolution of opera. About 1573 he founded the Florentine Camerata, a group that sought to revive ancient Greek music and drama. Among the members were the theorist Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo) and the composer Giulio Caccini. Bardi collaborated with these and othe...
vernis Martin (lacquer technique)
lustrous lacquer substitute widely used in the 18th century to decorate furniture and such personal articles as brisé fans and snuffboxes. The process of adding bronze or gold powder to green varnish was perfected by the Martin family, hence its name vernis Martin (“Martin varnish”). Highly praised by Voltaire, it was developed to ...
vernis mou (art)
Soft-ground etching is basically the same as hard-ground etching except that the ground contains about one-third grease, which keeps it in a semihard, or tacky, condition....
Vernon (British Columbia, Canada)
city, southern British Columbia, Canada. It lies in Okanagan Lake country, 274 miles (441 km) northeast of Vancouver. Pioneers called the early settlement Priest’s Valley owing to a missionary outpost maintained there by Paul Durieu. It was also known as Forge Valley (for its blac...
Vernon (Texas, United States)
city, southern British Columbia, Canada. It lies in Okanagan Lake country, 274 miles (441 km) northeast of Vancouver. Pioneers called the early settlement Priest’s Valley owing to a missionary outpost maintained there by Paul Durieu. It was also known as Forge Valley (for its blac...
Vernon Civic Complex (Vernon, British Columbia, Canada)
...canning, leather tanning, logging, and sawmilling. The city is a popular hunting and fishing base and holds an annual winter carnival at Silver Star Mountain. Architecturally, it is dominated by the Vernon Civic Complex (opened 1966), comprising the City Hall, museum, library, fire and police buildings, and Convention Hall. Inc. 1892. Pop. (2006) city, 35,944; ......
Vernon, Dai (Canadian magician and sleight-of-hand artist)
Canadian magician and sleight-of-hand artist who was one of the 20th century’s most renowned practitioners of “up-close” magic and card tricks....
Vernon, Edward (British admiral)
...(so called after an alleged Spanish atrocity against a British merchant navy officer, Captain Robert Jenkins) was initially successful. Admiral Edward Vernon became a popular and Opposition hero when he captured the Spanish settlement of Portobelo (in what is now Panama) in November 1739. But his victory was followed by several defeats, and...
Vernon, Philip E. (Canadian psychologist)
Although the debate between Spearman and Thurstone has remained unresolved, other psychologists—such as Canadian Philip E. Vernon and American Raymond B. Cattell—have suggested that both were right in some respects. Vernon and Cattell viewed intellectual abilities as hierarchical, with g, or general ability, located at the top of the hierarchy. But below......
Vernonia (plant)
any of about 500 species of perennial plants constituting the genus Vernonia of the family Asteraceae. Small herbaceous species are distributed throughout the world, while shrubs and trees are native primarily to tropical regions....
“Vernunft und Existenz” (work by Jaspers)
...1933 he was excluded from the higher councils of the university but was allowed to teach and publish. In 1935 the first part of his future work on logic, entitled Vernunft und Existenz (Reason and Existenz, 1955), appeared; in 1936 a book on Nietzsche; in 1937 an essay on Descartes; in 1938 a further work preliminary to his logic, entitled Existenzphilosophie......
Vernünftige Gedanken (work by Wolff)
Wolff wrote numerous works in philosophy, theology, psychology, botany, and physics. His series of essays all beginning under the title Vernünftige Gedanken (“Rational Ideas”) covered many subjects and expounded Leibniz’s theories in popular form. Wolff emphasized that every occurrence must have an adequate reason for happening or there arises the impossible alte...
vernünftigen Tadlerinnen, Die (German journal)
Earlier, in 1725 and 1726, Gottsched had published Die vernünftigen Tadlerinnen (“The Reasonable Female Critics”), a journal aimed at improving the intellectual and moral standards of women. A second journal, Der Biedermann (1727–29; “The Honest Man”), undertook the broader task of......
Verny (Kazakhstan)
city, southeastern Kazakhstan. It was formerly the capital of the Kazakh S.S.R. (1929–91) and of independent Kazakhstan (1991–97). Almaty lies in the northern foothills of the Trans-Ili Alatau at an elevation of 2,300–3,000 feet (700–900 m), where the Bolshaya and Malaya Almaatinka rivers emerge into the plain. The modern city was founded in 1854 when...
vero amico, Il (work by Goldoni)
...best, notably I pettegolezzi delle donne (“Women’s Gossip”), a play in Venetian dialect; Il bugiardo (The Liar, 1922), written in commedia dell’arte style; and Il vero amico (“The True Friend”), an Italian comedy of manners....
Véroia (Greece)
commercial centre of Greek Macedonia (Modern Greek: Makedonía) and capital of the nomós (department) of Imathía, Greece. It lies on a plateau at the western edge of the Thessaloníki (Salonika) plain, at the eastern foot of the Vérmio (also spelled Vérmion) Mountains north of the Aliákmonos (also spelled Aliákmon) River. The town stradd...
Veroli casket (Byzantine sculpture)
...heads in profile; because of this, the caskets are often termed rosette caskets. The most exquisite in execution, if also mannered in style, is one in the Victoria and Albert Museum known as the Veroli casket. A few caskets of different type are also known; one at Florence has the rosette borders, but they frame panels bearing Christ, the Virgin, and saints; one at Troyes, France, has......
Véron, Louis Désiré (French publisher and journalist)
...press barons. He introduced new features and serials to raise circulation as high as 20,000 and thus to enable him to lower the price of his newspapers. A prominent contemporary of Girardin was Louis-Désiré Véron, who founded the Revue de Paris (1829) and revived the liberal daily Le Constitutionnel (1835).......
Verona (Italy)
city, episcopal see, Veneto regione, northern Italy. It lies at the foot of the Lessini Mountains, 65 miles (105 km) west of Venice, and is half-encircled by the Adige River....
Verona (province, Italy)
city, episcopal see, Veneto regione, northern Italy. It lies at the foot of the Lessini Mountains, 65 miles (105 km) west of Venice, and is half-encircled by the Adige River.......
Verona, Congress of (European history)
(Oct. 20–Dec. 14, 1822), the last of the meetings held by the European powers in accordance with the terms of the Quadruple Alliance (1815) between Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain. Held at Verona, the congress was also the last effective manifestation of the Holy Alliance (Austria, Russia, Prussia). It was held mainly to consider the revolut...
Verona, Giocondo da (Italian architect)
Italian humanist, architect, and engineer, whose designs and written works signal the transition in architectural modes from early to high Renaissance....
“Verona illustrata” (work by Maffei)
...1723). His only other major work, however, aside from Merope, is a valuable account of the history and antiquities of his native city: Verona illustrata, 4 vol. (1731–32; A Compleat History of the Ancient Amphitheatres and in particular that of Verona)....
Verona, League of (Italian history)
...he refused to make concessions. Failing to win over Louis VII of France, he journeyed once again to Italy, only to face strong opposition from the patriarch of Grado, who organized the anti-imperial League of Verona. When Victor IV died in 1164, Rainald of Dassel arranged for the election of the strongly imperial Paschal III (antipope 1164–68) as a rival to Alexander III. But Alexander.....
Veronese, Paolo (Italian painter)
one of the major painters of the 16th-century Venetian school. His works usually are huge, vastly peopled canvases depicting allegorical, biblical, or historical subjects in splendid colour and set in a framework of classicizing Renaissance architecture. A master of the use of colour, he also excelled at ...
Veronese school (Italian painting)
early Renaissance painter who was the effective founder of the Veronese school and perhaps the most significant northern Italian artist of the 14th century....
veronica (bullfighting)
After these passes are conducted by the banderilleros on each side of the arena, the matador then steps into the ring with the large colourful cape, usually performing the basic two-handed veronica (named after St. Veronica, who, according to Christian legend, wiped Christ’s brow with a cloth as he passed by on his way to Golgotha). The veronica is the basic pass from which nearly all other...
Veronica (plant)
any plant of the genus Veronica (order Lamiales), especially the small, sometimes weedy, herbaceous types. There are about 450 species, which are found mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. Speedwells are grown as ornamentals. Their small blossoms are usually white, blue, purple, or pink....
Veronica, Saint (Christian saint)
renowned legendary woman who, moved by the sight of Christ carrying his cross to Golgotha, gave him her kerchief to wipe his brow, after which he handed it back imprinted with the image of his face. This account is not the primitive form of the legend derived from Historia ecclesiastica by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea....
Veronicellidae (gastropod family)
...behind right tentacle; female gonopore middle of right side; sole of foot narrow; no shell; 2 pairs of retractile, or invaginable, tentacles; marine (Onchidiidae), terrestrial and herbivorous (Veronicellidae), or terrestrial and carnivorous (Rathouisiidae); about 200 species.Superorder BasommatophoraMantle cavity present;...
Verpa (Pezizales genus)
...mushrooms. They have a convoluted or pitted head, or cap. Morels are varied in shape and occur in diverse habitats. The edible M. esculenta is found during early summer in woods. The bell morel (Verpa), an edible mushroom with a bell-shaped cap, is found in woods and in old orchards in early spring. Most species of Gyromitra, a genus of false morels, are poisonous.......
Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi (work by Pavese)
...Prize for literature was established in 1957, and some of Pavese’s most significant work was published after his death, notably a volume of love lyrics that is thought to contain his best poetry, Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi (1951; “Death Will Stare at Me out of Your Eyes”); the story collection Notte di festa (1953; Festival Night and O...
Verrazano, Giovanni da (Italian navigator)
Italian navigator and explorer for France who was the first European to sight New York and Narragansett bays....
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (bridge, New York City, New York, United States)
suspension bridge spanning New York Harbor from Brooklyn to Staten Island, built by Othmar H. Ammann from 1959 to 1964. Its 4,260-foot (1,298-metre) main span was, until the completion of the Humber ...
Verrazzano, Giovanni da (Italian navigator)
Italian navigator and explorer for France who was the first European to sight New York and Narragansett bays....
verre églomisé (glass)
(French: “Glomyized glass”), glass engraved on the back that has been covered by unfired painting or, usually, gold or silver leaf. The method owes its name to Jean-Baptiste Glomy (d. 1786), a French picture framer who used the process in glass mounts....
Verreaux’s eagle (bird)
Verreaux’s eagle (Aquila verreauxi) is an uncommon bird of eastern and southern Africa. It is black with white rump and wing patches. It reaches about 80 cm (31 inches) in length, and it subsists mainly on hyraxes. See bateleur; golden eagle....
Verreaux’s sifaka (primate)
Verreaux’s sifaka (P. verreauxi) is white with dark shoulders and sides, sometimes with a dark crown cap. Coquerel’s sifaka (P. coquereli) is somewhat similar; it lives in the thorny forests of Madagascar’s southern desert. Two other species live in the dry forests of western Madagascar. The l...
Verres, Gaius (Roman magistrate)
Roman magistrate notorious for his misgovernment of Sicily. His trial exposed the extent of official corruption in the Roman provinces during the late republic....
Verri, Pietro (Italian scholar)
political economist, journalist, government official, leader of a Milanese academy, and author of literary, historical, and economic works....
Verrier, Le (astronomy)
The other five known rings of Neptune—Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago, and Galatea, in order of increasing distance from the planet—lack the nonuniformity in density exhibited by Adams. Le Verrier, which is about 110 km (70 miles) in radial width, closely resembles the nonarc regions of Adams. Similar to the relationship......
Verrier, Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le (French astronomer)
French astronomer who predicted by mathematical means the existence of the planet Neptune....
Verrill, Addison Emery (American zoologist)
zoologist and naturalist who, as curator of zoology at the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University, developed one of the largest, most valuable zoological collections in the United States....
Verrines (work by Cicero)
...his Sicilian clients. He also published the second part of what came to be called his Verrine Orations. (Only the speech of the first part was actually delivered.) The complete Verrines drove home the evidence for senatorial corruption and are modern historians’ best source for studying the workings of Roman provincial administration in the late republic. (They w...
Verrius Flaccus, Marcus (Roman scholar)
Roman freedman who became a learned scholar and grammarian and the most famous teacher of his day. Verrius Flaccus introduced the principle of competition among his pupils and awarded old books, beautiful or rare, as prizes. Augustus entrusted the education of his two grandsons to him, and thenceforward his school was in the imperial house on the Palatine. He died at an advanced age during the rei...
Verrocchio, Andrea del (Italian painter)
15th-century Florentine sculptor and painter and the teacher of Leonardo da Vinci. His equestrian statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, erected in Venice in 1496, is particularly important....
verrou system (sports)
...centre-forward to confuse opposing defenders, who could not decide whether to mark the player in midfield or let him roam freely behind the forwards. The complex Swiss verrou system, perfected by Karl Rappan, saw players switch positions and duties depending on the game’s pattern. It was the first system to play four players in defense and to use one...
verruca (dermatology)
a well-defined growth of varying shape and size on the skin surface, caused by a virus. Essentially an infectious, benign skin tumour, a wart is composed of an abnormal proliferation of cells of the epidermis; the overproduction of these cells is caused by the viral infection. The most common type of wart ...
Verrucaria (lichen)
genus of lichens of the family Verrucariaceae, often found as a black crust covering seashore rocks. Along with the effects of weathering, Verrucaria helps break down limestone rocks by secreting acids that dissolve the cement holding together the rock particles. This produces an environment for the growth of mosses and higher plants. ...
Verrucariales (order of fungi)
...asci evanescent; ascospores may be pigmented; included in subclass Chaetothyriomycetidae; example genera include Pyrenula and Pyrgillus.Order VerrucarialesForms lichens on rocks and other substrates; perithecia (closed ascocarps with a pore in the top) have small depression-like spots on the surface; include...
Verrückte König Ludwig, Der (king of Bavaria)
eccentric king of Bavaria from 1864 to 1886 and an admirer and patron of the composer Richard Wagner. He brought his territories into the newly founded German Empire (1871) but concerned himself only intermittently with affairs of state, preferring a life of increasingly morbid seclusion and developing a mania for extravagant building projects....
Verrucomorpha (crustacean)
The third suborder of sessile barnacles, the Verrucomorpha, or wart barnacles, differs from the first two suborders in having the plates of the wall and operculum asymmetrically arranged. With the exception of a primitive genus, Neoverruca, found to be associated with abyssal hydrothermal springs at 3,600 metres in the western Pacific, the simple, asymmetrical shell wall and operculum of......
verruga peruana (pathology)
...Rickettsiales. Bartonellosis is characterized by two distinctive clinical stages: Oroya fever, an acute febrile anemia of rapid onset, bone and joint pains, and a high mortality if untreated, and verruga peruana, a more benign skin eruption characterized by reddish papules and nodules, which usually follows the Oroya fever but may also occur in individuals who have not exhibited previous......
vers de société (poetry)
(French: “society verse”), light poetry written with particular wit and polish and intended for a limited, sophisticated audience. It has flourished in cultured societies, particularly in court circles and literary salons, from the time of the Greek poet Anacreon (6th century bc). The tone is flippant or mildly ironic. Trivial subjects are treated in an intimate, subje...
Vers et Prose (French literary magazine)
...the Théâtre d’Art (1890–93), in which formalized backcloths and stylized performances were substituted for realistic settings and acting. He also founded and edited the review Vers et Prose (1905–14), which published the work of Paul Valéry and other important Symbolist writers. Between 1897 and 1924 Fort produced 30 volumes of ballads. His ......
vers libre (French poetry)
(French: “free verse”), 19th-century poetic innovation that liberated French poetry from its traditional prosodic rules. In vers libre, the basic metrical unit is the phrase rather than a line of a fixed number of syllables, as was traditional in French versification since the Middle Ages. In vers libre, the lengths of lines may vary according to the sense of the poem, the complete ...
vers mesurés à l’antique (poetic metre)
...poetic text. Musique mesurée was one of several late 16th-century attempts to emulate the unity of verse and music supposedly achieved in classical antiquity. It was associated with vers mesurés à l’antique, poetry written to classical quantitative metres (based on long and short syllables)....
vers romantique (poetry)
...and Jean Racine. In the late 19th century, a loosening of structure occurred, notable in the work of Paul Verlaine; poets frequently wrote a modified alexandrine, a three-part line known as vers romantique, or trimètre. Vers libre (“free verse”) soon replaced the alexandrine as the leading verse form of French poetry....
vers trimètre (poetry)
...and Jean Racine. In the late 19th century, a loosening of structure occurred, notable in the work of Paul Verlaine; poets frequently wrote a modified alexandrine, a three-part line known as vers romantique, or trimètre. Vers libre (“free verse”) soon replaced the alexandrine as the leading verse form of French poetry....
“Vers une architecture” (work by Corbusier)
...Saugnier, the name of his grandmother, and suggested for Jeanneret the name Le Corbusier, the name of a paternal forebear. The articles written by Le Corbusier were collected and published as Vers une architecture. Later translated as Toward a New Architecture (1923), the book is written in a telling style that was to be characteristic of Le Corbusier in his long career as a......
Versace, Donatella (Italian designer)
Economic analysts—assessing Donatella Versace’s decision to go public on July 29 with the news that she had checked into a rehabilitation centre to seek treatment for cocaine addiction—claimed that the announcement would not harm the pursuit by investment banks Crédit Suisse First Boston and Lazard to sell a minority stake in the Milan fashion empire to an outside inves...
Versace, Gianni (Italian fashion designer)
Italian fashion designer known for his daring fashions and glamorous lifestyle....
Versailles (France)
capital of Yvelines département, Île-de-France région, northern France, 14 miles (22 km) southwest of Paris. The town developed around the 17th-century Palace of Versailles, built by Louis XIV, the principal residence of the kings of France and ...
Versailles, Palace of (palace, Versailles, France)
former French royal residence and centre of government, now a national landmark. It is located in the city of Versailles, Yvelines département, Île-de-France région, northern France, 10 miles (16 km) west-southwest of Paris. As the centre of the ...
Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards
With the development of advanced ceramics, a more detailed, “advanced” definition of the material is required. This definition has been supplied by the 1993 Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards (VAMAS), which described an advanced ceramic as “an inorganic, nonmetallic (ceramic), basically crystalline material of rigorously controlled composition and......
Versailles, Treaty of (1756)
...proposals for a French alliance (August 1755). Strongly supported by Louis XV himself, these negotiations resulted in the first (defensive) treaty of Versailles between France and Austria (May 1, 1756) and then to the second (offensive) treaty of Versailles (May 1, 1757). This alliance with France’s old enemy and the abandonment of t...
Versailles, Treaty of (1783)
...French until 1762, when it capitulated to the British. It was formally ceded to Britain in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris. In 1779 it was recaptured by the French, but it was restored to Britain in 1783....
Versailles, Treaty of (1919)
peace document signed at the end of World War I by the Allied and Associated Powers and by Germany in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, France, on June 28, 1919; it took force on Jan. 10, 1920....
Versalle, Richard (American opera singer)
U.S. opera singer and tenor with the New York City Metropolitan Opera since 1978; he died onstage after having sung the line "Too bad you can only live so long" before falling from a ladder (b. March 12, 1932--d. Jan. 5, 1996)....
“Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua, Die” (play by Schiller)
...Heribert Baron von Dalberg, the director of the theatre that had launched his first play. He brought with him the manuscript of a new work, Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua (1783; Fiesco; or, the Genoese Conspiracy), subtitled “a republican tragedy”: the drama of the rise and fall of a would-be dictator, set in 16th-century Genoa, picturing, in Schiller...
verse (literature)
...on an analysis of poetry, because the aesthetic problems of literature are there presented in their simplest and purest form. Poetry that fails as literature is not called poetry at all but verse. Many novels—certainly all the world’s great novels—are literature, but there are thousands that are not so considered. Most great dramas are considered literature (although the......
verse anthem (music)
...may be earlier than that, but it is not possible to assign definite dates. As far as is known, most of his anthems, whether for the full choir (full anthems) or with sections for soloists (verse anthems), were written between 1680 and 1685, the year of Charles II’s death. The decline of the Chapel Royal during the reigns of James II and of William and Mary may have been responsible for.....
verse drama (literature)
Encouraged by the actor Charles Macready, Browning devoted his main energies for some years to verse drama, a form that he had already adopted for Strafford (1837). Between 1841 and 1846, in a series of pamphlets under the general title of Bells and Pomegranates, he published seven more plays in verse, including Pippa Passes (1841), A Blot in the ’Scutcheon (prod...
Versek (work by Petőfi)
...recommendation of Mihály Vörösmarty, then the leading Hungarian poet, he became an assistant editor of the literary periodical Pesti Divatlap. His first volume of poetry, Versek, appeared in the same year and made him famous at once, though the tone of his poems scandalized many. In 1847 he married Julia Szendrey, who inspired his best ......
Verses (work by Dowson)
...Masks (1893) and Adrian Rome (1899), and a book of short stories, Dilemmas (1895), but his reputation rests on his poetry: Verses (1896), the verse play The Pierrot of the Minute (1897), and Decorations in Verse and Prose (1899). His lyrics, much influenced by French poet ......

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