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American writer whose works of historical fiction and reportage depicted the struggles of African Americans....

American singer and songwriter considered by many to be the father of rock and roll thanks to his 1955 hit “Rock Around the Clock.”...

On her way Dorothy befriends a Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) in search of a brain, a Tin Man (Jack Haley) looking for a heart, and a Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) in need of some courage. They are tormented by the witch on their journey but manage to reach the Emerald City. Before the Wizard of Oz will grant their wishes, however, he demands that they bring him the Wicked Witch of the West’s broomstic...

American film and television producer and director (b. Oct. 25, 1933, Los Angeles, Calif.—d. April 21, 2001, Santa Monica, Calif.), produced That’s Entertainment! (1974), a celebrated collection of highlights from classic Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) musicals; he also won an ...

American educator, a strong proponent and organizer of labour unions for Chicago public school teachers....

director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from 1944 to 1952, editor of The Times of London from 1952 to 1966, and editor in chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica from 1968 to 1969....

director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from 1944 to 1952, editor of The Times of London from 1952 to 1966, and editor in chief of the Encyclopædia Britannica from 1968 to 1969....

American singer and songwriter considered by many to be the father of rock and roll thanks to his 1955 hit “Rock Around the Clock.”...

...Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, a portrayal of the Islamic faith in the lives of ordinary people in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Half a Life (2001) is a novel about an Indian immigrant to England and then Africa. He becomes “half a person,” as Naipaul has said, “living a borrowed life.” Release...

...The following year, as a fellow of another settlement house, she began a study of housing and employment problems among New York’s African American population, which resulted in Half a Man: The Status of the Negro in New York (1911). In 1909 Ovington and fellow civil rights reformers established the NAACP, and she held a variety of positions in the organization f...

breed of terrier developed in 19th-century England for fighting other dogs in pits. The breed was created by crossing the bulldog, then a longer-legged and more agile dog, with a terrier, possibly the fox terrier or one of the old breeds known as the white English and the black-and-tan terriers. Once known...

...novel that follows five inanimate objects on a journey to Jerusalem while exploring the Arab-Israeli conflict and religious fundamentalism, among other political themes; Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994); Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000), the story of a hedonistic CIA operative who is cursed by a Peruvian shaman to......

The half cadence ends the phrase on a dominant chord, which in tonal music does not sound final; that is, the phrase ends with unresolved harmonic tension. Thus a half cadence typically implies that another phrase will follow, ending with an authentic cadence....

In Switzerland, canton is the name given to each of the 23 states comprising the Swiss Confederation. Three cantons—Unterwalden, Basel, and Appenzell—are subdivided into demicantons, or half cantons, which function as full cantons; thus, there is often reference to 26 states of Switzerland. Each of the cantons and half cantons has its own constitution, legislature, executive, and......

A half hitch is the simplest form of hitch and is actually a variant of the overhand knot. It is made by passing the end of a rope around its standing part and through the loop thus formed. Two half hitches, formed by making a second half hitch around the rope’s standing part, are often used to secure the end of a rope to itself after it has been wrapped around a ring, piling, or other moor...

...arsenal consisted of a mere handful of warheads and only 32 long-range bombers converted for their delivery. Second, the military was at a loss as to how to use the bomb. Not until war plan “Half Moon” (May 1948) did the Joint Chiefs envision an air offensive “designed to exploit the destructive and psychological power of atomic weapons.” Truman searched for an......

Hudson sailed from Holland in the Half Moon on April 6, 1609. When head winds and storms forced him to abandon his northeast voyage, he ignored his agreement and proposed to the crew that they should instead seek the Northwest Passage. Given their choice between returning home or continuing, the crew elected to follow up Smith’s suggestion and seek the Northwest Passage around 40...

...the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, awarded to a female author for a work written in English and published in the U.K., was Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her widely praised novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) had as its backdrop the Nigeria-Biafra civil war of 1967–70. The story was told by Ugwu, a 13-year-old houseboy, and was about a small group of......

...litre is maintained at 25° C (77° F) in equilibrium with hydrogen in its reduced form (hydrogen gas, H2) at a pressure of one atmosphere. The reversible oxidation–reduction half reaction is expressed by the equation 2H+ + 2e- ⇌ H2, in which e- represents an electron....

in prosody, two words that have only their final consonant sounds and no preceding vowel or consonant sounds in common (such as stopped and wept, or parable and shell). The device was common in Welsh, Irish, and Icelandic verse years before it was first used in English by Henry Vaughan. It was not...

...and uncertainty as to exactly where and how it will pitch. A good-length ball is one that causes the batsman to be uncertain whether to move forward to play his stroke or to move back. A half volley is a ball pitched so far up to the batsman that he can drive it fractionally after it has hit the ground without having to move forward. A yorker is a ball pitched on or inside the......

either of two species belonging to the horse family, Equidae, especially the African wild ass (Equus africanus) sometimes referred to as the true ass. The related Asiatic wild ass, sometimes called the Asian wild ass or the half-ass (E. hemionus), is usually known by the local names of its various races: e.g., kulan (E. hemionus kulan, Mongolia) and khur (E. hemionus......

A horse having only one Thoroughbred parent is called a Grade Thoroughbred in the United States and a half-bred in Great Britain. Grade Thoroughbreds may be used as hunters, polo ponies, stock horses, or riding horses, depending on their training....

Garfield had not been closely identified with either the Stalwarts or the Half-Breeds, the two major factions within the Republican Party, but, upon becoming president, he upset the Stalwarts by naming the Half-Breed Blaine secretary of state. He gave even more serious offense to the Stalwart faction by appointing as collector of customs at New York a man who was unacceptable to the two......

...France in her infancy and youth, a pioneer work in social history that holds the interest of the reader no less than his narrative volumes. Parkman’s literary artistry is perhaps best studied in A Half-Century of Conflict (1892), completed shortly before his death. This final link in his history France and England in North America is a fascinating but complex account of eve...

...several types of benefit. The clear benefit, coveted by all performers, provided the actor with the full proceeds of his performance, the management agreeing to pay all additional charges. With a half-clear benefit, the actor divided the gross income with the manager. The benefit proper stipulated that the actor pay for use of the theatre, receiving all profits above that. With a half......

...not have the opportunity for a fast break, employ a more deliberate style of offense. The guards carefully bring the ball down the court toward the basket and maintain possession of the ball in the frontcourt by passing and dribbling and by screening opponents in an effort to set up a play that will free a player for an open shot. Set patterns of offense generally use one or two pivot, or post,...

...not have the opportunity for a fast break, employ a more deliberate style of offense. The guards carefully bring the ball down the court toward the basket and maintain possession of the ball in the frontcourt by passing and dribbling and by screening opponents in an effort to set up a play that will free a player for an open shot. Set patterns of offense generally use one or two pivot, or post,...

...defeated the Lombards in 774 and entered Rome, becoming king of Lombardy as well. His deniers were later made wider and still heavier (about 25 grains), and he introduced the smaller and subsidiary obole, or half-denier. The main types of his deniers were threefold: the monogram of his Latinized name, Carolus; a temple (sometimes a gateway); and, more rarely, a portrait. Monogram deniers were.....

In half-hitch coiling, the thread forms half hitches (simple knots) holding the coils in place, the standard serving only as a support. There is a relationship between half-hitch coiling and the half-hitch net (without a foundation), the distribution of which is much more extensive. The half-hitch type of basketry appears to be limited to Australia, Tasmania, Tierra del Fuego in South America,......

in radioactivity, the interval of time required for one-half of the atomic nuclei of a radioactive sample to decay (change spontaneously into other nuclear species by emitting particles and energy), or, equivalently, the time interval required for the number of disintegrations per second of a radioactive material to decreas...

electronic game released by American game developer Sierra Studios in 1998 for personal computers (PCs) and in 2001 for the Sony Corporation’s PlayStation 2 video-game console. One of the most popular and critically acclaimed games of the late 1990s, Half-Life followed theoretical physicist Gordon Freeman as ...

...applications of networking technology in ways that increasingly merge in-game and out-of-game social experiences. For titles such as The Sims (2000), Half-Life: Counterstrike (2000), and Second Life (2003), this overlapping of virtual game worlds, in which multiplayer games are played, and virtual game......

...Conures are found from Mexico to Argentina. Several are familiar caged birds; though handsome, they tend to be bad-tempered, have unpleasant calls, and usually do not mimic. Among them is the half-moon conure, A. canicularis, called Petz’s conure, or “dwarf parrot”; from Central America, it is 24 cm (about 10 inches) long and mostly green, with orange forehead,......

A diving maneuver called the split-S, half-roll, or Abschwung was frequently executed against bombers. Heavily armed fighters such as the British Hurricane or the German Fw-190, instead of approaching from the side or from below and to the rear, would attack head-on, firing until the last moment and then rolling just under the big planes and breaking hard toward the ground. The object......

method of building in which external and internal walls are constructed of timber frames and the spaces between the structural members are filled with such materials as brick, plaster, or wattle and daub. Traditionally, a half-timbered building was made of squared oak timbers joined by mortises, tenons, and wooden pegs; the...

His orchestral works Polička (Half-Time, 1925) and La Bagarre (1928) were inspired by contemporary events, respectively a Czech-French football (soccer) game and the crowds that met Charles Lindbergh’s plane as it ended its transatlantic flight. Of his later works, the Concerto grosso for chamber orchestra (1941) uses the alternation between soloists and f...

motor vehicle that has wheels in the front and tanklike tracks at the back. Rugged armoured all-terrain half-tracks were widely used by American and German forces in World War II as armoured personnel carriers and for other purposes. They usually had open tops, armoured s...

...John’s children are asleep” (assuming that John has no children)—the question of truth or falsity “does not arise.” Another view is that a third truth value (say, “half-truth”) ought to be recognized as existing between truth and falsity; thus, it has been advanced that certain familiar states of the weather make the proposition “It is......

...forerunners was a script called uncial—a rounder, more open majuscule form influenced by cursive. Uncial was the most common script used to write books from the 4th to the 8th century ad. Half uncial script was developed during the same period and eventually evolved into an almost entirely minuscule alphabet. The origins of lowercase letters in the modern alphabet can be tr...

The half-wave dipole, whose dimension is one-half of the radar wavelength, is the classic type of electromagnetic antenna. A single dipole is not of much use for radar, since it produces a beamwidth too wide for most applications. Radar requires a narrow beam (a beamwidth of only a few degrees) in order to concentrate its energy on the target and to determine the target location with accuracy.......

If only one polarity of an alternating current is used to produce a pulsating direct current, the process is called half-wave rectification. When both polarities are used, producing a continuous train of pulses, the process is called full-wave rectification. ...

religious-political solution adopted by 17th-century New England Congregationalists, also called Puritans, that allowed the children of baptized but unconverted church members to be baptized and thus become church members and have political rights. Early Congregationalists had become mem...

either of two species of gray-green needlegrasses (Stipa tenacissima and Lygeum spartum) that are indigenous to southern Spain and northern Africa; the term also denotes the fibre produced by esparto....

...culture in Spain, which is broadly contemporary (c. 15,000 bc). Subsequent study, however, suggests that the Ibero-Maurusian industry is derived from a Nile River valley culture known as Halfan, which dates from about 17,000 bc. Human remains are rather frequently associated with Ibero-Maurusian artifacts, and it appears that the industry belonged to a group o...

any of about 70 species of marine and freshwater fishes of the family Hemiramphidae (order Atheriniformes). Halfbeaks are named for their unusual jaws—the upper is short and triangular, and the lower is long, slim, and beaklike. The fish are silvery, slender, and up to about 45 centimetres (18 inches) long. They can skip across the water to escape from danger, and some are able to make shor...

founder of the Danish kingdom of York (875/876), supposedly the son of Ragnar Lodbrok, the most famous Viking of the 9th century....

Latin American composers by and large followed international trends in the 20th century. In Mexico, Rodolfo Halffter at different times expressed the neoclassic aesthetic, then used polytonality, 12-tone techniques, and serialism. (Both 12-tone and serial techniques entail a means of ordering pitches or other aspects of musical construction, such as rhythm or dynamics.) He influenced several of......

(Medialuna californiensis), edible Pacific fish of the family Kyphosidae (order Perciformes). Some authorities place it in the subfamily Scorpidinae, as distinct from the other Kyphosidae, which are known as sea chubs. Halfmoons are bluish gray in colour, with dark gray fins. They normally reach a length of about 30 ...

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in printing, a technique of breaking up an image into a series of dots so as to reproduce the full tone range of a photograph or tone art work. Breaking up is usually done by a screen inserted over the plate being exposed. The screens are made with a varying number of lines per inch, depending on the application; for newspapers, the range is 50 to 85, and for magazines, 100 to 120. The highest qu...

The feasibility of the method was demonstrated in about 1850, when a halftone image was produced by photography through a screen of loosely woven fabric. The screen was placed some distance forward of the plane of the receiving photographic surface (film or plate) and had the effect of breaking the gray tones of the subject into dots of varying sizes, through a combination of geometric and......

religious-political solution adopted by 17th-century New England Congregationalists, also called Puritans, that allowed the children of baptized but unconverted church members to be baptized and thus become church members and have political rights. Early Congregationalists had become mem...

White-tailed sea eagles (H. albicilla), native to Europe, southwestern Greenland, the Middle East, Russia (including Siberia), and the coastlands of China, had disappeared from the British Isles by 1918 and from most of southern Europe by the 1950s; however, they began to recolonize Scotland by way of Norway in the 1950s and ’60s. By the early 21st century, more than 5,000 breeding p...

the only eagle solely native to North America, and the national bird of the United States....

...and can weigh up to 9 kg (20 pounds). The only sea eagle of North America is the bald eagle (H. leucocephalus), which is found across Canada and the United States and in northern Mexico. The white-bellied sea eagle (H. leucogaster), frequently seen on the coasts of Australia, ranges from New Guinea and Indonesia through Southeast Asia to India and China. A well-known......

...for grasping slippery prey. These birds eat much carrion but sometimes kill. They snatch fish from the water surface and often rob their chief competitor, the osprey. The largest sea eagle is Steller’s sea eagle (H. pelagicus), of Korea, Japan, and Russia’s Far East (particularly the Kamchatka Peninsula). This bird has a wingspan surpassing 2 metres (6.6 feet) and ...

...(H. leucogaster), frequently seen on the coasts of Australia, ranges from New Guinea and Indonesia through Southeast Asia to India and China. A well-known African species is the African fish eagle (H. vocifer), found along lakes, rivers, and coastlines from south of the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope....

...over much of the Old World. Both are large (to about 55 cm [22 inches]), reddish birds (the black kite darker), lightly streaked on the head, with long, angled wings and notched tail. The Brahminy kite (Haliastur indus; subfamily Milvinae) ranges from India to northeastern Australia. It is red-brown except for white foreparts. It eats fish and garbage. The buzzard kite......

Canadian writer best known as the creator of Sam Slick, a resourceful Yankee clock peddler and cracker-barrel philosopher whose encounters with a variety of people illuminated Haliburton’s view of human nature....

any of various flatfishes (order Pleuronectiformes), especially the large and valuable Atlantic and Pacific halibuts of the genus Hippoglossus. Both, as flatfishes, have the eyes and colour on one side of the body, and both, as members of the family Pleuronectidae, usually have these features on the right side....

...present municipal boundaries stretch a great deal beyond. The original peninsular city has seven hills, requisite for Constantine’s “New Rome.” Six are crests of a long ridge above the Golden Horn; the other is a solitary eminence in the southwest corner. Around their slopes are ranged many of the mosques and other historic landmarks that were collectively designated a UNES...

ancient Greek city of Caria, situated on the Gulf of Cerameicus. According to tradition, it was founded by Dorian Troezen in the Peloponnese. Herodotus, a Halicarnassian, relates that in early times the city participated in the Dorian festival of Apollo at Triopion, but its literature and culture appear thoroughly Ionic. The city, with its large sheltered harbour and key position on the sea routes...

one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The monument was the tomb of Mausolus, the tyrant of Caria in southwestern Asia Minor, and was built between about 353 and 351 bc by Mausolus’ sister and widow, Artemisia. The architect was Pyt...

(Halichoerus grypus), seal of the family Phocidae, found in North Atlantic waters along the coast of Newfoundland, the British Isles, and in the Baltic region. It is spotted gray and black and is characterized by a robust appearance and heavy head. The male grows to about 3 m (10 feet) in length and 300 kg (660 pound...

(Halichondria panicea), member of the class Demospongiae (phylum Porifera), so called because of the way in which it crumbles when handled. H. panicea is a common sponge that encrusts hard substrata and seaweed on the shore and in shallow subtidal regions. Varying in colour from dark green to light yellow, it i...

...are primitive wasplike bees consisting of five or six subfamilies, about 45 genera, and some 3,000 species; Andrenidae, which are medium-sized solitary mining bees, including some parasitic species; Halictidae (mining, or burrowing, bees), the best-known of which is Dialictus zephyrus, one of many so-called sweat bees, which are attracted to perspiration; Oxaeidae, large, fast-flying bee...

The social behaviour of Halictus (Evylaeus) malachurus has advanced another step. Morphological differences are apparent between the ovipositing female and the assisting females. The latter are poorly fed as larvae and, as a result, are smaller with poorly developed sexual organs. Bumblebee colonies are often highly developed, with different castes clearly established.......

The activities of certain solitary bees of the subfamily Halictinae are helpful in understanding certain aspects of the evolution of the highly organized hymenopteran societies. The females of Halictus quadricinctus survive the hatching of their own offspring. Mother and daughter stay together in the same nest, which consists of single brood cells. Thus, although each female takes care......

...the part of a state still much weaker than the Teutonic Knights, Bohemia, or Hungary. Between 1340 and the 1360s, however, Poland expanded by roughly one-third, acquiring a larger part of Halicz, or Red, Ruthenia (the future eastern Galicia), which Hungary and Lithuania also coveted. That acquisition marked an expansion beyond ethnic Polish territory. Casimir’s international prestige was...

writer who is considered the first true exponent in Turkey of the novel in its contemporary European form....

...another element, a halogen is itself reduced; i.e., the oxidation number 0 of the free element is reduced to −1. The halogens can combine with other elements to form compounds known as halides—namely, fluorides, chlorides, bromides, iodides, and astatides. Many of the halides may be considered to be salts of the respective hydrogen halides, which are colourless gases at room......

any of a group of naturally occurring inorganic compounds that are salts of the halogen acids (e.g., hydrochloric acid). Such compounds, with the notable exceptions of halite (rock salt...

(July 19, 1333), major engagement in Scotland’s protracted struggle for political independence from England. The battle ended in a complete rout of Scottish forces attempting to relieve Berwick-upon-Tweed, which was besieged by the English under Edward III. Edward was acting on behalf of his vassal ...

city, capital of Nova Scotia, Canada, and seat (1759) of Halifax county. It lies on Halifax Harbour, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean, in the central part of the outer (south) shore of the province. The city occupies a rocky peninsula, 4.5 miles (7.2 km) long and 2 miles (3.2 km) wide, that...

town, metropolitan borough of Calderdale, metropolitan county of West Yorkshire, historic county of Yorkshire, northern England. An old market town for grain, wool, and cloth trades, it lost its preeminence to Bradford in the 19th ce...

town, seat of Halifax county, northeastern North Carolina, U.S., on the Roanoke River about 70 miles (113 km) northeast of Raleigh. Settled about 1723, it was made a colonial borough in 1760, named for George Montagu Dunk, 2nd earl of Halifax. It thrived as a river port, and between 1776 and about 1782 it was an important ...

British heavy bomber used during World War II. The Halifax was designed by Handley Page, Ltd., in response to a 1936 Royal Air Force (RAF) requirement for a bomber powered by two 24-cylinder Rolls-Royce Vulture engines. However, the Vulture encountered problems in development, and the bo...

On January 19 Lloyds TSB completed its acquisition of the Halifax Bank of Scotland Group, to form the Lloyds Banking Group (LBG). The new bank remained vulnerable, however, like other major U.K. banks, which continued to require government support in the form of equity stakes and the insurance of “toxic” loans. The banks’ plight was underlined by the Royal Bank of Scotland...

Whig statesman, a financial genius who created several of the key elements of England’s system of public finance....

British viceroy of India (1925–31), foreign secretary (1938–40), and ambassador to the United States (1941–46)....

devastating explosion on Dec. 6, 1917, that occurred when a munitions ship blew up in Halifax Harbour, Nova Scotia, Can. More than 1,500 people died and more than 9,000 were injured in a disaster that flattened more than 1 square mile (2.5 square km) of the city of Halifax....

...(built 1829–32), and the University of Maine at Augusta (opened 1965). Other cities are Hallowell, Gardiner, and Waterville, which is the home of Colby College (founded 1813). Winslow contains Fort Halifax (built 1754; reconstructed 1988), which was the oldest extant blockhouse in the United States until it was destroyed in a flood in 1987. In addition to state government activities, the...

English statesman, after whom the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, is named....

English statesman and political writer known as “The Trimmer” because of his moderating position in the fierce party struggles of his day. Although his conciliatory approach frequently made him a detached critic rather than a dynamic politician, the principles he espoused have appealed to many 20th-century political thinkers....

Whig statesman, a financial genius who created several of the key elements of England’s system of public finance....

...Dunk, 2nd earl of Halifax. It thrived as a river port, and between 1776 and about 1782 it was an important political and social centre and a site of the provincial congress. It was there that the Halifax Resolves, the first formal sanction of American independence, were adopted on April 12, 1776. Political activity declined after 1783, when the state assembly moved to Hillsboro (now......

British viceroy of India (1925–31), foreign secretary (1938–40), and ambassador to the United States (1941–46)....

English statesman and political writer known as “The Trimmer” because of his moderating position in the fierce party struggles of his day. Although his conciliatory approach frequently made him a detached critic rather than a dynamic politician, the principles he espoused have appealed to many 20th-century political thinkers....

...where at an elevation of 6,801 feet (2,073 metres) lies the great undrained Lake Sayram. The Ili depression is bounded to the south by the highest mountains in the central Tien Shan—the Halik Mountains, reaching heights up to 22,346 feet (6,811 metres), and the isolated Ketpen (Ketmen) Range, which rises to an elevation of 11,936 feet (3,474 metres) in the central part of the......

...eager to take advantage of the accession of a child to the Ottoman throne—succeeded in organizing a crusade. Edirne was the scene of violent rivalry between the powerful grand vizier Çandarlı Halil, on the one hand, and the viziers Zaganos and Şihâbeddin, on the other, who claimed that they were protecting the rights of the child sultan. In September......

Turkish bath waiter, who, after a Turkish defeat by Persia, led a mob uprising (1730) that replaced the Ottoman sultan Ahmed III (ruled 1703–30) with Mahmud I (ruled 1730–54). This was the only Turkish rising not originating in the army. ...

Ottoman statesman who served as grand vizier (chief minister) from 1913 to 1916....

...to suckle their children in the belief that a healthy Bedouin woman would raise healthier children. The Prophet Muhammad himself was said to have been suckled by a famous Bedouin nurse named Ḥalīmah bint Abī Dhuʾayb....

pendentive form of architectural ornamentation, resembling the geological formations called stalactites. This type of ornamentation is characteristic of Islamic architecture and decoration. It consists of a series of little niches, bracketed out one above the other, or of projecting prismatic forms in rows and tiers that are connected at their upper ends by miniature squinch arc...

pendentive form of architectural ornamentation, resembling the geological formations called stalactites. This type of ornamentation is characteristic of Islamic architecture and decoration. It consists of a series of little niches, bracketed out one above the other, or of projecting prismatic forms in rows and tiers that are connected at their upper ends by miniature squinch arc...

Algerian-born boxer (b. Feb. 18, 1932, Constantine, French Algeria—d. Nov. 12, 2006, Paris, France), held the world bantamweight title twice, 1957–59 and 1960–61. He was born into a poor Jewish family but was adopted by a tailor in Algiers and trained as his apprentice. Halimi’s talents in the ring brought him three French amateur bantamweight titles (1953–55) be...

in feudal law, court through which a lord exercised jurisdiction over his tenants. The manorial court was presided over by the steward or seneschal, and it was there that various officials—such as the reeve, who acted as general overseer, and the hayward, who watched over the crops and brought offenders to court—were appointed. Tenants were punis...

From earliest times, humans have used many snail species as food. Periwinkles (Littorina) in Europe and South Africa, queen conchs (Strombus gigas) in the West Indies, abalones (Haliotis) in California and Japan, and turban shells (Turbo) in the Pacific are the most frequently eaten marine snails. Occasionally limpets and whelks are used for food, but they are more......

...countries. Depending on the species, abalones usually range from 10 to 25 cm (4 to 10 inches) across and up to 7.5 cm in depth. About 50 species have been described. The largest abalone is the 30-cm red abalone (H. rufescens) of the western coast of the United States. H. rufescens and several other species are raised commercially in abalone farms, particularly in Australia, China,...