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Maximus the Confessor, Saint (Byzantine theologian)
the most important Byzantine theologian of the 7th century, whose commentaries on the early 6th-century Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and on the Greek Church Fathers considerably influenced the theology and mysticism of the Middle Ages....
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Maximus the Cynic (religious leader)
...his deep knowledge of Scripture; among his hearers at Constantinople was the biblical scholar Jerome, who gained a greater understanding of the Greek scriptures from Gregory. A religious adventurer, Maximus the Cynic, however, was set up as a rival to Gregory by bishops from Egypt, who broke into the Anastasia at night for a clandestine consecration....
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Maximus the Greek (Greek Orthodox monk and scholar)
Greek Orthodox monk, Humanist scholar, and linguist, whose principal role in the translation of the Scriptures and philosophical–theological literature into the Russian language made possible the dissemination of Byzantine culture throughout Russia....
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Maximus the Hagiorite (Greek Orthodox monk and scholar)
Greek Orthodox monk, Humanist scholar, and linguist, whose principal role in the translation of the Scriptures and philosophical–theological literature into the Russian language made possible the dissemination of Byzantine culture throughout Russia....
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Maxinquaye (album by Tricky)
...Eng). Featuring the forlorn vocals of Martina Topley-Bird alongside Tricky’s croaky, mumbled rhymes, Tricky’s debut album, Maxinquaye (1995), is a masterpiece of paranoid ambience. Songs such as Aftermath and Ponderosa drew i...
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maxixe (dance)
“Cheek-to-cheek” dancing became popular in the second decade of the 20th century. Such exotic numbers as the turkey trot, the bunny hug, and the maxixe were influenced by the new music of jazz. The tango, purged of its more erotic elements, became acceptable to the clientele of the thé dansant (tea dance), and the Charleston epitomized the Jazz Age. When the quickstep.....
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Maxsted, Jack (British art director)
...for The HospitalAdapted Screenplay: Ernest Tidyman for The French ConnectionCinematography: Oswald Morris for Fiddler on the RoofArt Direction: Ernest Archer, John Box, Jack Maxsted, Gil Parrondo for Nicholas and AlexandraOriginal Dramatic Score: Michel Legrand for Summer of ’42Scoring—Adaptation and Original Song Score: John Williams for......
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Maxton, James (British politician)
British politician, one of the leaders of left-wing Socialism from shortly after World War I through World War II. He was a teacher from 1906 to 1916, although he spent much of his time attempting to gain support for the Independent Labour Party (ILP). After a year’s imprisonment in 1916 for a strong antiwar speech, Maxton became a paid organizer for the ILP and in 1922 w...
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Maxwell Communication Corporation (British company)
Following Maxwell’s death, the European ceased publication, and the Maxwell Communication Corp. filed for bankruptcy in the United States and petitioned for court protection in Britain. His two sons were charged with, among other things, allying themselves with their father in fraudulent financial dealings....
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Maxwell, Elsa (American writer and hostess)
American columnist, songwriter, and professional hostess, famous for her lavish and animated parties that feted the high-society and entertainment personalities of her day....
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Maxwell gap (astronomy)
...Some of the major gaps have been named after famous astronomers who were associated with studies of Saturn (see below Observations from Earth). In addition to the Cassini division, they include the Maxwell gap (1.45 Saturn radii), within the C ring; the Huygens gap (1.95 Saturn radii), at the outer edge of the B ring; the Encke gap (2.21 Saturn radii), a gap in the outer part of the A ri...
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Maxwell, Gavin (British author)
Scottish author and naturalist....
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Maxwell, Grover (American philosopher)
...no basis for supposing that language purporting to talk about unobservables must be treated differently from language about observables. Third was an influential argument by the American philosopher Grover Maxwell (1918–81), who noted that the concept of the observable varies with the range of available devices: many people are unable to observe much without interposing pieces of glass (...
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Maxwell, Ian Robert (British publisher)
Czechoslovak-born British publisher who built an international communications empire. His financial risks led him into grand fraud and an apparent suicide....
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Maxwell, James Clerk (Scottish mathematician and physicist)
Scottish physicist best known for his formulation of electromagnetic theory. He is regarded by most modern physicists as the scientist of the 19th century who had the greatest influence on 20th-century physics, and he is ranked with Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein for the fundamental nature of his contributions. In 1931, on the 100th anniversary of Maxwel...
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Maxwell, Lois (Canadian-born actress)
Canadian-born actress who played the role of the dryly flirtatious Miss Moneypenny, secretary to spymaster M, in 14 James Bond films, beginning with Dr. No (1962) and ending with A View to a Kill (1985). She also made numerous appearances in British television shows, notably The Saint (1966–67), as well as the 1969 Canadian show Adventures in Rainbow Country. Ear...
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Maxwell, Marilyn (American actress)
Canadian-born actress who played the role of the dryly flirtatious Miss Moneypenny, secretary to spymaster M, in 14 James Bond films, beginning with Dr. No (1962) and ending with A View to a Kill (1985). She also made numerous appearances in British television shows, notably The Saint (1966–67), as well as the 1969 Canadian show Adventures in Rainbow Country. Ear...
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Maxwell, Mary Elizabeth (British writer)
English novelist whose Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) was the most successful of the sensation novels of the 1860s....
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Maxwell Montes (mountain, Venus)
the tallest mountain range on Venus, rising to about 11 km (7 miles) above the planet’s mean radius. It forms part of the continent-sized upland called Ishtar Terra and lies just to the east of Ishtar’s high plateau, Lakshmi Planum. First observed as a bright feature in Earth-based radar observations of the planet made in the 1960s, the region in...
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Maxwell Motor Company (American company)
...By 1916 he was company president. He resigned in 1919 after making Buick the strongest unit of General Motors. Six months after his resignation he assumed direction of Willys-Overland Company and of Maxwell Motor Company, Inc., which became the Chrysler Corporation in 1925. The new company produced a car that Chrysler designed. The car, which featured a high-compression engine, was highly......
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Maxwell of Terregles, Sir John (Scottish noble)
a leading supporter of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, respected for his loyalty to the Scottish crown....
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Maxwell relations (physics)
This is one of four Maxwell relations (the others will follow shortly). They are all extremely useful in that the quantity on the right-hand side is virtually impossible to measure directly, while the quantity on the left-hand side is easily measured in the laboratory. For the present case one simply measures the adiabatic variation of temperature with volume in an insulated cylinder so that......
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Maxwell, Robert (British publisher)
Czechoslovak-born British publisher who built an international communications empire. His financial risks led him into grand fraud and an apparent suicide....
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Maxwell, Vera (American fashion designer)
(VERA HUPPÉ), U.S. fashion designer (b. April 22, 1901, New York, N.Y.--d. Jan. 15, 1995, Rincón, P.R.), was dubbed "the American Chanel" as the creator of timeless fashions that were comfortable yet chic, and she was one of the first U.S. designers to introduce sportswear for women. A onetime dancer (1919-24) with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Maxwell became interested in designing...
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Maxwell, William (American author)
American editor and author of spare, evocative short stories and novels about small-town life in the American Midwest in the early 20th century....
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Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution law (chemistry)
a description of the statistical distribution of the energies of the molecules of a classical gas. This distribution was first set forth by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1859, on the basis of probabilistic arguments, and gave the distribution of velocities among the molecules of a gas. Maxwell’s finding was generalized (1871) by a German physicist, Ludwig Boltzmann, to expr...
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Maxwell’s demon (physics)
hypothetical intelligent being (or a functionally equivalent device) capable of detecting and reacting to the motions of individual molecules. It was imagined by James Clerk Maxwell in 1871, to illustrate the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. Essentially, this law states that heat does not naturally flow from a cool body to a warmer; work must be expend...
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Maxwell’s equations (physics)
four equations that, together, form a complete description of the production and interrelation of electric and magnetic fields. The physicist James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century based his description of electromagnetic fields on these four equations, which express experimental laws....
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Maxwell’s Hill (hill, Malaysia)
...is approximately 100 inches (2,540 mm); the driest location, Kuala Kelawang (in the district of Jelebu), near Kuala Lumpur, receives about 65 inches (1,650 mm) of rain per year, while the wettest, Maxwell’s Hill, northwest of Ipoh, receives some 200 inches (5,000 mm) annually. Mean annual precipitation in Sabah varies from about 80 to 140 inches (2,030 to 3,560 mm), while most parts of S...
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Maxyes (people)
any of the descendants of the pre-Arab inhabitants of North Africa. The Berbers live in scattered communities across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt and tend to be concentrated in the mountain and desert regions of those countries. Smaller numbers of Berbers live in the northern portions of Mauritania, Mali, and Niger. They speak various languages belonging to the Afro-Asiatic language...
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May (month)
fifth month of the Gregorian calendar. It was named after Maia, a Roman fertility goddess....
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May (work by Mácha)
...prose works remained unfinished, but they exhibit a mastery not previously attained by writers in the newly revived literary language. His best work is the lyrical epic Máj (1836; May). Coldly received at the time of its publication, May exercised an almost magical fascination on Czech poets and critics of the 20th century. Mácha’s letters and diaries a...
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May 7 cadre school (Chinese history)
Many bureaucrats were forced to leave the relative comfort of their offices for a stint in “May 7 cadre schools,” usually farms run by a major urban unit. People from the urban unit had to live on the farm, typically in quite primitive conditions, for varying periods of time. (For some, this amounted to a number of years, although by about 1973 the time periods in general had been......
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May beetle (insect)
a large European beetle that is destructive to foliage, flowers, and fruit as an adult and to plant roots as a larva. In the British Isles, the name “cockchafer” refers more broadly to any of the beetles in the subfamily Melolonthinae (family Scarabaeidae), which are known in North America as June beetles, June bugs, or May beetles. See also chafer; ...
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May beetle (insect)
any insect of the genus Phyllophaga, belonging to the widely distributed, plant-feeding subfamily Melolonthinae (family Scarabaeidae, order Coleoptera). These red-brown beetles commonly appear in the Northern Hemisphere during warm spring evenings and are attracted to lights. The heavy-bodied June beetles vary from 12 to 25 mm (0.5 to 1 inch) and have shiny wing covers (elytra). They feed o...
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May, Billy (American musician and arranger)
...of songs built around a single theme or mood. His new approach also demanded new arrangements, and the in-house arrangers at Capitol were among the best. He worked with veteran big-band musician Billy May on outstanding up-tempo albums such as Come Fly with Me (1958) and Come Dance with Me! (1959), and with the arranger-composer......
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May, Brian (British musician)
...metal, glam rock, and camp theatrics made it one of the most popular groups of the 1970s. Although generally dismissed by critics, Queen crafted an elaborate blend of layered guitar work by virtuoso Brian May and overdubbed vocal harmonies enlivened by the flamboyant performance of front man and principal songwriter Freddie Mercury. The members were Freddie Mercury (original nam...
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May bug (insect)
a large European beetle that is destructive to foliage, flowers, and fruit as an adult and to plant roots as a larva. In the British Isles, the name “cockchafer” refers more broadly to any of the beetles in the subfamily Melolonthinae (family Scarabaeidae), which are known in North America as June beetles, June bugs, or May beetles. See also chafer; ...
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May Constitution (Polish history)
...and Austria (Prussia obtained less actual territory, but what it acquired was of great economic value). Polish patriots attempted to bring political stability to their country by drafting the “Constitution of 3 May 1791,” which provided for stronger royal authority, established four-year sessions of the elected Sejm (the Polish diet), abolished the liberum veto in its proceedings....
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May Day (European holiday)
in medieval and modern Europe, holiday (May 1) for the celebration of the return of spring. The observance probably originated in ancient agricultural rituals, and the Greeks and Romans held such festivals. Although later practices varied widely, the celebrations came to include the gathering of wildflowers and green branches, the weaving of floral garlands, the crowning of a May king and queen, a...
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May Day (holiday)
day commemorating the historic struggles and gains made by workers and the labour movement, observed in many countries on May 1. In the United States and Canada it is celebrated on the first Monday of September as Labor Day....
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May Department Stores Company (American company)
...Industries PLC. The Dayton Hudson Corporation (later Target Corporation) purchased Marshall Field & Co. from BATUS in 1990. In 2004 Target sold the Marshall Field’s department store chain to the May Department Stores Company, another American retailing corporation, and in 2005 the May Company was acquired by Federated Department Stores, Inc., which operated Macy’s....
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May, Elaine (American writer and comedienne)
...family to the United States at the age of seven. He attended the University of Chicago (1950–53), studied acting under Lee Strasberg in New York City, and then returned to Chicago, where, with Elaine May, Shelley Berman, Barbara Harris, and Paul Sills, he formed the comic improvisational group The Compass Players. Nichols and May then traveled nationwide with their social-satire routines...
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May, Elizabeth (American-born Canadian politician)
American-born Canadian politician who became leader of the Green Party of Canada in 2006....
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May, Elizabeth Evans (American-born Canadian politician)
American-born Canadian politician who became leader of the Green Party of Canada in 2006....
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May Events (France [1968])
During the student revolt in May 1968, streets, factories, schools, and universities became the stage for a spontaneous performance aimed at subverting bourgeois culture (a show with no content, occluding real life, according to Guy Debord, La Société du spectacle, 1967; The Society of the Spectacle). Posters and graffiti, the instruments of subversion,......
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May Fourth Movement (Chinese history)
intellectual revolution and sociopolitical reform movement that occurred in China in 1917–21. The movement was directed toward national independence, emancipation of the individual, and rebuilding society and culture....
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May, Jan (Dutch explorer)
The island was possibly first sighted in 1607 by Henry Hudson, who called it Hudson’s Tutches (Touches). In 1614 a Dutch sea captain, Jan May, claimed territorial rights to the island for his company and Holland. It was early used as a whaling base, but by 1642 the whales had been exterminated from the surrounding waters. It was frequently visited, but the first to winter on the island were...
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May, Karl (German author)
German author of travel and adventure stories for young people, dealing with desert Arabs or with American Indians in the wild West, remarkable for the realistic detail that the author was able to achieve....
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May, Karl Friedrich (German author)
German author of travel and adventure stories for young people, dealing with desert Arabs or with American Indians in the wild West, remarkable for the realistic detail that the author was able to achieve....
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May Laws (1873, Prussia)
...in June all religious teachers were excluded from state schools, and the Jesuit order was dissolved in Germany; and in December diplomatic relations with the Vatican were severed. In 1873 the May Laws, promulgated by the Prussian minister of culture, Adalbert Falk, placed strict state controls over religious training and even over ecclesiastical appointments within the church. The climax......
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May, Mark A. (American psychologist)
...who point out that behavioral consistency across situations and across time is not the rule. For example, in a study of children’s moral development, the American psychologists Hugh Hartshorne and Mark A. May in 1928 placed 10- to 13-year-old children in situations that gave them the opportunity to lie, steal, or cheat; to spend money on themselves or on other children; and to yield to o...
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May Organization (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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May Pen (Jamaica)
town, southern Jamaica, on the Minho River, west of Kingston. It has a citrus-processing plant, a rope factory, and canneries. Pop. (2001 est.) urban area, 57,334....
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May, Peter Barker Howard (British athlete)
English cricketer (b. Dec. 31, 1929, Reading, Berkshire, England--d. Dec. 27, 1994, Liphook, Hampshire, England), was widely regarded as England’s finest post-World War II batsman. In his first-class career (1948-63)--all as an amateur--May scored 85 centuries and 27,592 runs (average 51), including 4,537 runs (average 46.77) and 13 centuries in 66 Test matches. At age 14 while at Charterh...
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May, Phil (British caricaturist)
British social and political caricaturist whose most popular works deal with lower- and middle-class London life in the late Victorian period....
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May, Philip William (British caricaturist)
British social and political caricaturist whose most popular works deal with lower- and middle-class London life in the late Victorian period....
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May Revolution (Argentine history [1810])
...of Nuestra Señora del Rosario (“Our Lady of the Rosary”) was erected and became the early centre of the city. Unlike interior cities such as Córdoba, Rosario supported the May Revolution of 1810, and it was there in 1812 that Gen. Manuel Belgrano hoisted the first Argentine flag. Throughout the struggle for independence and later internal civil wars the town endured....
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May, Robert McCredie (American scientist)
...by an arithmetic example, one that lay behind some of the more fruitful early work in the study of chaos, particularly by the physicist Mitchell J. Feigenbaum following an inspiring exposition by Robert M. May. Suppose one constructs a sequence of numbers starting with an arbitrarily chosen x0 (between 0 and 1) and writes the next in the sequence, x1, as......
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May, Rollo Reece (American psychologist)
U.S. psychologist and author (b. April 21, 1909, Ada, Ohio--d. Oct. 22, 1994, Tiburon, Calif.), was known as the father of existential psychotherapy. He was one of the first to abandon Freudian theories of human nature, and in his humanistic approach to therapy, he stressed that anxiety could be harnessed and used as a positive force and that people could use their inner resources in making the ch...
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May, Samuel J. (American clergyman and religious reformer)
...in 1833 she admitted to the school a young African American girl, Crandall was immediately the focus of heated protest and controversy. In March 1833, on the advice of William Lloyd Garrison and Samuel J. May, she opened on the same premises a new school for “young ladies and little misses of color.” The local citizenry were even more outraged and embarked upon a campaign of......
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May Thirtieth Incident (Chinese history)
(1925), in China, a nationwide series of strikes and demonstrations precipitated by the killing of 13 labour demonstrators by British police in Shanghai. This was the largest anti-foreign demonstration China had yet experienced, and it encompassed people of all classes from all parts of the country. The Chinese Communist Party greatly benefited by the anti-imperialist sentiment ...
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May, Thomas (English scholar)
English man of letters known for his historical defense of the English Parliament in its struggle against King Charles I....
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May wine
There are various flavoured wine beverages, frequently mixed by the consumer and sometimes bottled by a manufacturer, in which flavouring materials are added after the manufacture of the wine. May wine, of German origin, is a type of punch made with Rhine wine or other light, dry, white wines, flavoured with the herb woodruff and served chilled and garnished with strawberries or other fruit.......
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May-Day (poems by Emerson)
...reveals a developed humanism together with a full awareness of man’s limitations. It may be considered as partly confession. Emerson’s collected Poems (1846) were supplemented by others in May-Day (1867), and the two volumes established his reputation as a major American poet....
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Maya (people)
Mesoamerican Indians occupying a nearly continuous territory in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. In the early 21st century some 70 Mayan languages were spoken by more than five million people, most of whom were bilingual in Spanish. Before the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America, the Maya possessed one of the greatest civilizations of the Western Hemisphere. They practic...
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Maya (mother of Gautama Buddha)
the mother of Gautama Buddha; she was the wife of Raja Shuddhodana....
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maya (Indian philosophy)
(Sanskrit: “wizardry,” or “illusion”), a fundamental concept in Hindu philosophy, notably, in the Advaita (Nondualist) school of the orthodox system of Vedānta. Maya originally denoted the power of wizardry with which a god can make human beings believe in what turns out to be an illusion; by extension it later came to mean the powerful force ...
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māyā (Indian philosophy)
(Sanskrit: “wizardry,” or “illusion”), a fundamental concept in Hindu philosophy, notably, in the Advaita (Nondualist) school of the orthodox system of Vedānta. Maya originally denoted the power of wizardry with which a god can make human beings believe in what turns out to be an illusion; by extension it later came to mean the powerful force ...
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Maya languages (language)
family of Mesoamerican Indian languages spoken in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize; Maya languages were also formerly spoken in western Honduras and western El Salvador....
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Maya Mountains (hills, Belize)
range of hills mostly in southern Belize, extending about 70 miles (115 km) northeastward from across the Guatemalan border into central Belize. The range falls abruptly to the coastal plain to the east and north but more gradually to the west, becoming the Vaca Plateau, which extends into eastern Guatemala. Both the range and the plateau are extensively dissected and of uniform elevation througho...
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Mayadunne (king of Sītāwake)
...father to death and partitioned the kingdom among themselves. The oldest of the brothers, Bhuvanaika Bahu, ruled at Kotte, and the two others set up independent kingdoms at Sitawake and Rayigama. Mayadunne, the king of Sitawake, was an ambitious and able ruler who sought to expand his frontiers at the expense of his brother at Kotte. Bhuvanaika Bahu could not resist the temptation of seeking......
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Mayagüez (municipality, Puerto Rico)
Among the city’s educational institutions is the Mayagüez Campus of the University of Puerto Rico. There are some nuclear research facilities associated with the campus....
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Mayaguez (ship)
...an airlift of some 237,000 anticommunist Vietnamese refugees from Da Nang, most of whom were taken to the United States. Two months later, after the seizure by Cambodia of the American cargo ship Mayaguez, Ford declared the event an “act of piracy” and sent the Marines to seize the ship. They succeeded, but the rescue operation to save the 39-member crew resulted in the los...
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Mayagüez (Puerto Rico)
city, western Puerto Rico. Created in 1760 as Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria de Mayagüez, it was elevated to the royal status of villa in 1836 and to a city in 1877. In 1918 the city and port were ravaged by an earthquake and tidal wave, but they were quickly rebuilt. Mayagüez has been one of the most progressive citi...
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Mayakovsky Peak (mountain, Central Asia)
...and, to the west of the latter, the Shugnan Range. The extreme southwestern Pamirs are occupied by the Shakhdarin Range, composed of north-south (Ishkashim Range) and east-west elements, rising to Mayakovsky Peak (19,996 feet) and Karl Marx Peak (22,067 feet). In the extreme southeast, to the south of Lake Zorkul (Sarī Qūl), lies the east-west Vākhān Mountains....
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Mayakovsky, Vladimir Vladimirovich (Russian poet)
the leading poet of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and of the early Soviet period....
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Mayall, John (British musician)
British singer, pianist, organist, and occasional guitarist who was among the guiding lights of the British blues movement in the early to mid-1960s. Always a popular performer, Mayall was nevertheless more celebrated for the musicians he attracted into his band, the Bluesbreakers. Through his patronage of several important guitarists, notably Eric Clapton, Pe...
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Mayama Seika (Japanese author)
...successful playwrights of the 1910s and 1920s, such as Okamoto Kidō, wrote works that, although the products of a modern mind, preserved the traditional stage language and historical themes. Mayama Seika wrote both traditional and modern works, but even in his most traditional, such as his version of the classic Kabuki play cycle Chūshingura, the......
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Mayan calendar (chronology)
dating system of the ancient Mayan civilization and the basis for all other calendars used by Mesoamerican civilizations. The calendar was based on a ritual cycle of 260 named days and a year of 365 days. Taken together, they form a longer cycle of 18,980 days, or 52 years of 365 days, called a “Calendar Round.”...
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Mayan Codices (Mayan literature)
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Mayan hieroglyphic writing
system of writing used by the Maya people of Mesoamerica until about the end of the 17th century, 200 years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. (With the 21st-century discovery of the Mayan site of San Bartolo in Guatemala came evidence of Mayan writing that pushed back its date of origin to at least 300 or 200 bc.) It was the only true writing system developed in the pre-Columbian...
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Mayan languages (language)
family of Mesoamerican Indian languages spoken in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize; Maya languages were also formerly spoken in western Honduras and western El Salvador....
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Mayan religion
...the elaborateness of the procedure may be reflected in the fee. In contrast to the worldly motives of some diviners, the calling of diviner-priest was seen by the ancient Etruscans in Italy and the Maya in Mexico as sacred; his concern was for the very destiny of his people. Divination has many rationales, and it is difficult to describe the diviner as a distinctive social type. He or she may.....
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Mayans (people)
Mesoamerican Indians occupying a nearly continuous territory in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. In the early 21st century some 70 Mayan languages were spoken by more than five million people, most of whom were bilingual in Spanish. Before the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America, the Maya possessed one of the greatest civilizations of the Western Hemisphere. They practic...
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Mayapán (ancient city, Mexico)
ruined ancient Mayan city, located about 35 miles (55 km) southeast of modern Mérida, Yucatán state, Mex. It became one of the most important cities of that region in the early Postclassic period (c. ad 900–1519). The art and architecture of the city were imitative of, but inferior to, that of Chichén Itzá, especially in the use of colonnades...
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Mayapán, League of (ancient political organization)
...Chichén appears to have been eclipsed by the rise of the city of Mayapán. For a time Chichén Itzá joined Uxmal and Mayapán in a political confederacy known as the League of Mayapán....
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mayapple (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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Mayas, Montañas (hills, Belize)
range of hills mostly in southern Belize, extending about 70 miles (115 km) northeastward from across the Guatemalan border into central Belize. The range falls abruptly to the coastal plain to the east and north but more gradually to the west, becoming the Vaca Plateau, which extends into eastern Guatemala. Both the range and the plateau are extensively dissected and of uniform elevation througho...
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Maybach (German ccompany)
...of Spain and France; the Bugatti, Delage, Delahaye, Hotchkiss, Talbot (Darracq), and Voisin of France; the Duesenberg, Cadillac, Packard, and Pierce-Arrow of the United States; the Horch, Maybach, and Mercedes-Benz of Germany; the Belgian Minerva; and the Italian Isotta-Fraschini. These were costly machines, priced roughly from $7,500 to $40,000, fast (145 to 210 km, or 90 to 130......
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Maybach, Wilhelm (German engineer and manufacturer)
German engineer and industrialist who was the chief designer of the first Mercedes automobiles (1900–01)....
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Maybeck, Bernard Ralph (American architect)
American architect whose work in California (from 1889) exhibits the versatility attainable within the formal styles of early 20th-century architecture....
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Maybellene (song by Berry)
...Chicago in search of a recording contract; Muddy Waters directed him to the Chess brothers. Leonard and Phil Chess signed him for their Chess label, and in 1955 his first recording session produced “Maybellene” (a country-and-western-influenced song that Berry had originally titled “Ida Red”), which stayed on the pop charts for 11 weeks, cresting at number five. Berr...
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Maybug (insect)
a large European beetle that is destructive to foliage, flowers, and fruit as an adult and to plant roots as a larva. In the British Isles, the name “cockchafer” refers more broadly to any of the beetles in the subfamily Melolonthinae (family Scarabaeidae), which are known in North America as June beetles, June bugs, or May beetles. See also chafer; ...
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Maydān, Al- (district, Damascus, Syria)
Urban development related to the hajj was naturally concentrated on the road to Mecca. Al-Maydān, an entire district encompassing several quarters and villages, developed south of the walled city. The saturation of lucrative trades in the city centre led to an increase in the building of khāns there. This construction boom culminated in two monumental khāns, erected in 1732......
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Maydān-e Emām (courtyard, Eṣfahān, Iran)
At the centre of Eṣfahān is the Meydān-e Shāh, a large open space, about 1,670 by 520 feet (510 by 158 metres), originally surrounded by trees. Used for polo games and parades, it could be illuminated with 50,000 lamps. Each side of the meydān was provided with the monumental facade of a building. On one of the smaller sides was the entrance to a large......
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Maydān-e Shah (courtyard, Eṣfahān, Iran)
At the centre of Eṣfahān is the Meydān-e Shāh, a large open space, about 1,670 by 520 feet (510 by 158 metres), originally surrounded by trees. Used for polo games and parades, it could be illuminated with 50,000 lamps. Each side of the meydān was provided with the monumental facade of a building. On one of the smaller sides was the entrance to a large......
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Mayday (signal word)
...gun or rocket fired at regular intervals, or a continuous sounding of a fog-signal apparatus; and (3) radio signals such as the Morse group SOS, the international code signal NC, or the spoken word “Mayday” (from French m’aider, “help me”), by radiotelephone. Distressed vessels may also actuate alarms of other vessels by a radio signal consisting of a s...
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Maydūm (ancient site, Egypt)
ancient Egyptian site near Memphis on the west bank of the Nile River in Banī Suwayf muḥāfaẓah (governorate). It is the location of the earliest-known pyramid complex with all the parts of a normal Old Kingdom (c. 2575–c. 2130 bc) funerary monument. These part...
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Mayekawa Kunio (Japanese architect)
Japanese architect noted for his designs of community centres and his work in concrete....
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