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phytotron (botany)
...one to give a new degree of precision. Fortunately, the methodology of measurement has been vastly improved in recent decades, largely through the development of various electronic devices. The phytotron at the California Institute of Technology represents the first serious attempt to control the environment of living plants on a......
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pi (Chinese art)
in art, Chinese jade carved in the form of a flat disk with a hole in the centre. The earliest examples, which are unornamented, date from the Neolithic Period (c. 5000–2000 bc). Later examples, from the Shang (18th–12th century bc) and Zhou dynasties (1111–256/255 bc), have incr...
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pi (mathematics)
in mathematics, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The symbol π was popularized by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in the early 18th century to represent this ratio. Because pi is irrational (not equal to the ratio of any two whole numbers), an approximation, such as ...
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pi (musical instrument)
...century ce). The Korean piri, the Japanese hichiriki, and the Southeast Asian pi are similar instruments....
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PI (chemistry)
...limits, which vary with the kind of exchangeable cations and the salt concentration in the adsorbed water. The plastic and liquid limits for different clay minerals are given in the Table. The plasticity index (PI), the difference between the two limits, gives a measure for the rheological (flowage) properties of clays. A good example is a comparison of the PI of montmorillonite with that......
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π (mathematics)
in mathematics, the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The symbol π was popularized by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler in the early 18th century to represent this ratio. Because pi is irrational (not equal to the ratio of any two whole numbers), an approximation, such as ...
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pi bond (chemistry)
in chemistry, a cohesive interaction between two atoms and a pair of electrons that occupy an orbital located in two regions roughly parallel to the line determined by the two atoms. A pair of atoms may be connected by one or by two pi bonds only if a sigma bond...
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Pi Cephei (star)
...as F5 Ib, which means that it falls about halfway between the beginning of type F (i.e., F0) and of type G (i.e., G0). The Ib suffix means that it is a moderately luminous supergiant. The star Pi Cephei, classified as G2 III, is a giant falling between G0 and K0 but much closer to G0. The Sun, a dwarf star of type G2, is classified as G2 V. A star of luminosity class II falls between......
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Pi i Margall, Francesco (Spanish politician)
...Proudhon, founded the world’s first anarchist journal, El Porvenir, in La Coruña in 1845, which was quickly suppressed. Mutualist ideas were later publicized by Francisco Pi y Margall, a federalist leader and the translator of many of Proudhon’s books. During the Spanish revolution of 1873, Pi y Margall attempted to establish a decentralized, ...
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Pi Kan (Chinese mythological character)
Another account identifies Ts’ai Shen as Pi Kan, put to death by order of Chou Hsin, last Shang emperor, who was enraged that a relative should criticize his dissolute life. Chou Hsin is said to have exclaimed that he now had a chance to verify the rumour that every sage has seven openings in his heart....
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Pi Lake (lake, Taiwan)
...is only 6 miles (10 km) north of the central city. Both the mountain and the town of Pei-t’ou at its base are known for their hot springs. Pi Lake has boating and water sports. There are ocean beaches not far from the city, and Tan-shui is a popular resort town....
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pi meson (subatomic particle)
...a host of new subatomic particles had also been discovered; all these particles are now known to have corresponding antiparticles. Thus, there are positive and negative muons, positive and negative pi-mesons, and the K-meson and the anti-K-meson, plus a long list of baryons and antibaryons. Most of these newly discovered particles have too short a lifetime to be able to combine with electrons.....
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pi orbital
...shown in the middle of Figure 14. The 2px orbitals on each atom do not have cylindrical symmetry around the internuclear axis. They overlap to form bonding and antibonding π orbitals. (The name and shape reflects the π bonds of VB theory.) The same is true of the 2py orbitals on each atom, which form a similar pair of bonding and.....
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pi phat (music)
...occur in the gagaku, or court music, of Japan (two- and four-measure divisions marked by a drum and hanging gong) and in the pi phat (percussion and oboe) ensembles of Thailand....
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pī phāt (music)
...occur in the gagaku, or court music, of Japan (two- and four-measure divisions marked by a drum and hanging gong) and in the pi phat (percussion and oboe) ensembles of Thailand....
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Pi Ramesse (ancient city, Egypt)
ancient Egyptian capital in the 15th (c. 1630–c. 1523 bce), 19th (1292–1190 bce), and 20th (1190–1075 bce) dynasties. Situated in the northeastern delta about 62 miles (100 km) northeast of Cairo, the city lay in ancient times on the Bubastite branch of the Nile River...
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Pi Sheng (Chinese alchemist)
About 1041–48 a Chinese alchemist named Pi Sheng appears to have conceived of movable type made of an amalgam of clay and glue hardened by baking. He composed texts by placing the types side by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax, and paper ash. Gently heating this plate and then letting the plate cool solidified the type. Once the impression had been made, the type......
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pi star orbital
...in the middle of Figure 14. The 2px orbitals on each atom do not have cylindrical symmetry around the internuclear axis. They overlap to form bonding and antibonding π orbitals. (The name and shape reflects the π bonds of VB theory.) The same is true of the 2py orbitals on each atom, which form a similar pair of bonding and antibon...
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pi theorem (physics)
one of the principal methods of dimensional analysis, introduced by the American physicist Edgar Buckingham in 1914. The theorem states that if a variable A1 depends upon the independent variables A2, A3, . . . , An, then the functional relationsh...
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Pí y Margall, Francisco (Spanish politician)
...Proudhon, founded the world’s first anarchist journal, El Porvenir, in La Coruña in 1845, which was quickly suppressed. Mutualist ideas were later publicized by Francisco Pi y Margall, a federalist leader and the translator of many of Proudhon’s books. During the Spanish revolution of 1873, Pi y Margall attempted to establish a decentralized, ...
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P’i-chia (emperor of Mongolia)
khagan, or great khan, of Mongolia from 716 until his death. His name literally translates as “Wise Emperor.”...
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Pi-lo-ko (Tai ruler)
Nanzhao was formed by the unification of six Tai kingdoms in 729. Piluoge, the leader of one small tribal state, extended his control over the five neighbouring kingdoms while acting in alliance with China, which needed an ally against the aggressive Tibetans. Once unification was complete, Piluoge established Nanzhao’s centre of power near Lake Er. Geographic factors rendered the capital.....
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P’i-lu-che-na (Buddha)
(“Great Illuminator”), the supreme Buddha, as regarded by many Mahāyāna Buddhists of East Asia and of Tibet, Nepal, and Java....
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P’i-nan (Taiwan)
coastal shih (municipality) and seat, T’ai-tung hsien (county), southeastern Taiwan, on the southern bank of the Pei-nan River, 58 miles (94 km) northeast of Kao-hsiung....
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p’i-p’a (musical instrument)
short-necked Chinese lute prominent in Chinese opera orchestras and as a solo instrument. It has a shallow, pear-shaped body with a wooden belly and, sometimes, two crescent-shaped sound holes. The modern pipa has 29 or 31 frets, 6 on the neck and the rest on the body of the instrument...
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Pi-shan (Chinese silversmith)
...be established. Some of these details correspond very closely to those in sculptured reliefs on the gate at the Ch’ü-yung Pass north of Peking. The most famous Yüan dynasty silversmith was Pi-shan, whose figure of a Taoist immortal on a raft in the form of a hollow tree trunk is signed and dated equivalent to 1345....
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Pi-yen lu (Buddhist work)
...notice,” or “public announcement”) are based on anecdotes of Zen (Chinese: Ch’an) masters. There are said to be 1,700 koans in all. The two major collections are the Pi-yen lu (Chinese: “Blue Cliff Records”; Japanese: Hekigan-roku), consisting of 100 koans selected and commented on by a Chinese priest, Yüan-wu, in 1125 on the basis ...
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PIA (Pakistani company)
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), established in 1954, is the national carrier; until the mid-1990s it was the sole domestic carrier, but since then a number of small regional airlines and charter services have been established. (PIA also runs international flights to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and ......
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“Pia Desideria” (work by Spener)
In his most famous work, Pia Desideria (1675; Pious Desires), Spener assessed contemporary orthodoxy’s weaknesses and advanced proposals for reform. His proposals included greater private and public use of the Scriptures, greater assumption by the laity of their priestly responsibilities as believers, greater efforts to bear the practical fr...
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Pia Maria Bridge (bridge, Portugal)
Eiffel also designed two major arch bridges that were the longest-spanning structures of their type at the time. The first, the 1877 Pia Maria Bridge over the Duoro River near Oporto, Portugal, is a 157-metre (522-foot), crescent-shaped span that rises 42 metres (140 feet) at its crown. Again, a wide spreading of the arches at their base gives this structure greater lateral stiffness. The......
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pia mater (anatomy)
...is transitional into the simpler spinal cord. Roof regions of the telencephalon, diencephalon, and myelencephalon differentiate the vascular choroid plexuses (including portions of the pia mater, or innermost brain covering, that project into the ventricles, or cavities, of the brain). The choroid plexuses secrete cerebrospinal......
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Piacentini, Marcello (Italian architect)
...movement of 1926 produced one of the outstanding Italian architect-engineers of the 20th century, Pier Luigi Nervi, architect of the Turin exhibition complex and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Marcello Piacentini was responsible for much of the imposing architecture of the fascist period, such as the Esposizione Universale di Roma (EUR) area in Rome. Innovative architecture is represented......
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Piacenza (Italy)
city, Emilia-Romagna regione of northern Italy, on the south bank of the Po River just below the mouth of the Trebbia, southeast of Milan. It was founded as the Roman colony of Placentia in 218 bc. After being besieged unsuccessfully by the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal in 207 ...
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Piacenza (province, Italy)
city, Emilia-Romagna regione of northern Italy, on the south bank of the Po River just below the mouth of the Trebbia, southeast of Milan. It was founded as the Roman colony of Placentia in 218 bc. After being besieged unsuccessfully by the Carthaginian general Hasdrubal in 207 ......
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Piacenza, Domenica da (Italian dancing master)
...treatises leave no doubt about their scholarly ambitions. Many of them were Jewish, descended from the Klesmorim, a group of medieval Jewish entertainers. The first dancing master known by name was Domenico da Piacenza, who in 1416 published the first European dance manual, De arte saltandi et choreas ducendi (“On the Art of Dancing and Directing Choruses”). His disciple,.....
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Piacenza, duchy of (territory, Italy)
...treatises leave no doubt about their scholarly ambitions. Many of them were Jewish, descended from the Klesmorim, a group of medieval Jewish entertainers. The first dancing master known by name was Domenico da Piacenza, who in 1416 published the first European dance manual, De arte saltandi et choreas ducendi (“On the Art of Dancing and Directing Choruses”). His disciple,.....
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Piacenzian Stage (paleontology)
the uppermost division of Pliocene rocks, representing all rocks deposited worldwide during the Piacenzian Age (3.6 million to 2.5 million years ago) of the Neogene Period (the past 23 million years). The Piacenzian Stage is named for the city of Piacenza, which lies midway between Parma and Milan in Italy....
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“piacere, Il” (novel by D’Annunzio)
...in Canto novo (1882; “New Song”) had more individuality and were full of exuberance and passionate, sensuous descriptions. The autobiographical novel Il piacere (1898; The Child of Pleasure) introduces the first of D’Annunzio’s passionate Nietzschean-superman heroes; another appears in L’innocente (1892; The Intruder). D...
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“Piacevoli notti” (work by Straparola)
Straparola’s Piacevoli notti (1550–53; The Nights of Straparola) contains 75 novellas (short prose tales) that were later used as source material by William Shakespeare, Molière, and others; it introduced into European literature 20 folktales, among them “Beauty and the Beast” and “Puss i...
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Piaf, Edith (French singer)
French singer and actress whose interpretation of the chanson, or French ballad, made her internationally famous. Among her trademark songs were Non, je ne regrette rien (“No, I Don’t Regret Anything”) and La Vie en rose (literally “Life in Pink” [i.e., thro...
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piaffe (horse movement)
...school in its traditional white Lippizaner horses. Some characteristic haute école airs, or movements, are the pirouettes, which are turns on the haunches at the walk and the canter; the piaffe, in which the horse trots without moving forward, backward, or sideways, the impulse being upward; the passage, high-stepping trot in which the impulse is more upward than forward; the levade,......
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Piaget, Gérald (Swiss watchmaker)
Swiss watchmaker who turned a small family business into a fashion phenomenon known for its high-quality but unusually expensive jeweled and ultrathin women’s watches (b. 1918--d. April 19, 1997)....
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Piaget, Jean (Swiss psychologist)
Swiss psychologist who was the first to make a systematic study of the acquisition of understanding in children. He is thought by many to have been the major figure in 20th-century developmental psychology....
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Piaggia, Carlo (Italian explorer)
Italian explorer who discovered Lake Kyoga (in Uganda) and investigated the Upper (southern) Nile River system....
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Piagnoni (Florentine history)
...enjoying power, dominion, and success in this world. This flattering teaching, which was especially appealing after Florence’s humiliation, brought a wide circle of personal adherents (the Piagnoni, or “Wailers,” as their opponents called them), who enthusiastically backed Savonarola’s campaigns (not in themselves untypical of revivalist movements of the age) against...
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Pialat, Maurice (French director)
French film director (b. Aug. 31, 1925, Cunlhat, France—d. Jan. 11, 2003, Paris, France), created a body of work considered among the best of modern French cinema. His movies limned domestic desperation and were notable for their immediacy and difficulty. Many of the 10 feature films Pialat made were nominated for major film awards. À nos amours (1983) won the César Awa...
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Pianissimo (work by Sbarbaro)
...of tradition and rhetoric, had been seeking new expression: some, like the Futuristi, had tried to work rhetoric out of their system by letting it run amok; others, such as Camillo Sbarbaro (Pianissimo [1914], Trucioli [1920; “Shavings”]), cultivated a style purified of unessential elements. Out of those efforts grew a poetry combining the acoustic......
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Pianist, The (film by Polanski [2002])
...actress Emmanuelle Seigner, who starred in Frantic, Bitter Moon, and the 1999 mystery The Ninth Gate. The Pianist (2002), which tells the true story of Władyslaw Szpilman’s survival of the Nazi-occupation of Poland during World War......
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Piankhi (king of Cush)
king of Cush (or Kush, in the Sudan) from about 750 to about 719 bc. He invaded Egypt from the south and ended the petty kingdoms of the 23rd dynasty (c. 823–c. 732 bc) in Lower Egypt. According to Egyptian tradition, his brother Shabaka f...
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piano (musical instrument)
a keyboard musical instrument having wire strings that sound when struck by felt-covered hammers operated from a keyboard. The standard modern piano contains 88 keys and has a compass of seven full octaves plus a few keys....
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piano accordion (musical instrument)
...two reeds of each pair are tuned to the same note, thus making each treble or bass note available from the same key or button with both directions of bellows movement. Among these instruments is the piano accordion, with a piano-style keyboard for the right hand. Its invention in the mid-19th century is credited either to the manufacturer Busson or to M. Bouton, both of France....
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Piano Concertino (concerto by Francaix)
...very early, publishing a piano composition at age nine. He later studied at the Paris Conservatory and became a pupil of Nadia Boulanger. One of his first important works, the Piano Concertino (1932), a characteristically witty piece, shows the complete mastery of form that distinguishes all of his music. In addition to concerti for the piano and the violin and a.....
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Piano Concerto (work by Carter)
...and canonic texture (based on melodic imitation). The conflict generated between the two orchestral groups and the great difficulty of the concerto were mirrored in his Piano Concerto (1964–65). Carter’s Concerto for Orchestra was first performed in 1970 and the String Quartet No. 3, for whic...
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Piano Concerto in A Minor (work by Grieg)
...miscalculations, intrinsically inaudible passages, which even the most illustrious performance could not render audible. A striking case of inaudibility occurs toward the end of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, in which the “big tune” of the finale returns in full orchestral splendour and obliterates the part of the solo pianist. In the ......
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Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor (work by Tchaikovsky)
...work in progress. However, his instrumental works began to earn him his reputation, and, at the end of 1874, Tchaikovsky wrote his Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat Minor, a work destined for fame despite its initial rejection by Rubinstein. The concerto premiered successfully in Boston in October 1875, with Hans von......
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Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (work by Rachmaninoff)
...No. 2 in E Minor (1907), the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead (1909), and the Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (1909). The last was composed especially for his first concert tour of the United States, highlightin...
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piano éolien (musical instrument)
...attempts have been made to build stringed instruments sounded by other means than plucking or striking—including vibrating the strings by blowing a current of air past them, as in the piano éolien of 1837. The most successful of these other instruments adopted the principle of the hurdy-gurdy—i.e., vibrating the strings by friction....
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Piano Lesson, The (play by Wilson)
...August Wilson emerged as the most powerful black playwright of the 1980s. Devoting each play to a different decade of life in the 20th century, he won a second Pulitzer Prize, for The Piano Lesson (1990), and completed the 10-play cycle in 2005, shortly before his death....
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Piano Man (album by Joel)
...of Joel’s song Captain Jack caught the attention of Columbia Records executives, who extricated him from his contract. His first album for Columbia, Piano Man (1973), featured a hit single of the same name; based on his piano bar experience, it became his signature song. Mixtures of soul, pop, and rock, Piano.....
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piano nobile (architecture)
(Italian: “noble floor”), in architecture, main floor of a Renaissance building. In the typical palazzo, or palace, erected by an Italian prince of the Renaissance, the main reception rooms were in an upper story, usually the story immediately above the basement or ground floor. These rooms had higher ceilings than the rooms on the other floors of the palace and were more elegantly ...
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Piano Quartet in G Minor (work by Brahms)
In 1937 Schoenberg completed an orchestration of Brahms’s Piano Quartet in G Minor, Opus 25. As a young man, he had regularly participated in performances of the quartet. Time and again, he was bothered by its intermittent inaudibility: the piano tended to swamp the strings. Schoenberg’s orchestration, as he himself claimed, attempted to put matters right. It remains an exerci...
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“Piano Quintet in A Major” (work by Schubert)
...his music. At Steyr he composed the first of his widely known instrumental compositions, the Piano Sonata in A Major, D. 664, and the celebrated Trout Quintet for piano and strings. The close of 1819 saw him engrossed in songs to poems by his friend Mayrhofer and by Goethe, who inspired the masterly ......
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Piano, Renzo (Italian architect)
Italian architect best known for his high-tech public spaces, particularly his design (with Richard Rogers) for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris....
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piano roll (musical instrument)
a piano that mechanically plays music recorded by means, usually, of perforations on a paper roll or digital memory on a computer disc....
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Piano Sonata (work by Berkeley)
Berkeley’s works are characterized by rich melodies and a flair for orchestral texture. His more notable works include the Divertimento (1943), a highly polished orchestral piece, and Piano Sonata (1945), which displays his subtle use of harmony. He is also known for his vocal music, much of it religious, such as the St...
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Piano Sonata (work by Carter)
His Piano Sonata (1945–46) marked a turning point in Carter’s stylistic development; in it he used a complex texture of irregularly cross-accented counterpoint within a large-scale framework. In the Cello Sonata (1948) the principles of metric modulation were well established. In a 2002 radio interview, Carter said,......
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Piano Sonata in B Minor (work by Liszt)
...Faust Symphony or some of his symphonic poems—are not often performed. In Liszt’s works without written program, notably the Piano Sonata in B Minor and his two piano concerti, similar types of moods are expressed in a style resembling that of the symphonic poems....
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Piano Sonata in B-flat Major (work by Beethoven)
...(1822–24); in the Mass in D Major, Opus 123 (1819–23; Missa solemnis); in the enormous finale of the Piano Sonata in B-flat Major, Opus 106 (1817–18; Hammerklavier); and in the Grosse Fuge in B-flat Major for string quartet,.....
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Piano Sonata in C Sharp Minor, Opus 27, No. 2 (work by Beethoven)
...daughters of the Graf von Brunsvik. It was to Giulietta that he dedicated the Piano Sonata in C-sharp Minor, Opus 27, No. 2, known as the Moonlight Sonata. But the countess married the Graf von Gallenberg in 1803, and in later years Beethoven seems to have remembered her only with mild contempt. It seems clear, however, that he......
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Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat Major (work by Schubert)
...Schwanengesang (Swan Song). In September and early October the succession was concluded by the last three piano sonatas, in C Minor, A Major, and B-flat Major, and the great String Quintet in C Major—the swan song of the Classical era in music....
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Piano Suite, Opus 25 (work by Schoenberg)
...will assure the supremacy of German music for the next 100 years.” This was the method of composition with 12 tones related only to one another. Schoenberg had just begun working on his Piano Suite, Opus 25, the first 12-tone piece....
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Piano Teacher, The (book by Jelinek)
...the entrapment and victimization of women within a dehumanizing and patriarchal society. Her semiautobiographical novel Die Klavierspielerin (1983; The Piano Teacher, 1988) addressed issues of sexual repression; it was adapted for the screen in 2001. In her writings, Jelinek rejected the conventions of traditional literary technique in......
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Piano, The (film by Campion [1993])
...Sweetie (1989), was followed by the successful An Angel at My Table (1990). She wrote and directed the internationally acclaimed The Piano (1993) and directed The Portrait of a Lady (1996) and Holy Smoke (1999)....
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piano trio (music)
...trios are for two violins and cello. Two notable 20th-century string trios are by Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern. As the piano became more widely available in the 18th century, the piano trio (piano, violin, and cello), which makes possible a fuller and more varied texture, attracted the attention of composers. Haydn wrote nearly 40 of them; Beethoven’s ......
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pianoforte (musical instrument)
a keyboard musical instrument having wire strings that sound when struck by felt-covered hammers operated from a keyboard. The standard modern piano contains 88 keys and has a compass of seven full octaves plus a few keys....
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Pianola (musical instrument)
a piano that mechanically plays music recorded by means, usually, of perforations on a paper roll or digital memory on a computer disc....
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Pianosa Island (island, Italy)
island of the Toscany Archipelago, in the Tyrrhenian Sea, part of Tuscany regione (region), Italy. Situated 8 miles (13 km) southwest of the island of Elba, Pianosa has an area of 4 square miles (10 square km). It is, as its name (Italian piano, ...
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pianwen (Chinese literary genre)
...guwen, the free, simple prose of these early philosophers, a style unencumbered by the mannerisms and elaborate verselike regularity of the pianwen (“parallel prose”) style that was prevalent in Han’s time. His own essays (e.g., On the Way, On Man, and ......
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Piar, Manuel (Venezuelan general)
...ascension of individual mestizos and castas to positions of prominence. Service in the wars was particularly useful in this regard. Men such as the mulattoes Manuel Piar in Venezuela and José Padilla in New Granada rose to the rank of general and admiral, respectively, in Bolívar’s forces. In practice, however, the old hierarchies did...
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Piarists (Roman Catholic order)
...Roman Catholic schools, and founder of the Ordo Clericorum Regularium Pauperum Matris Dei Scholarum Piarum (Order of Poor Clerks Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools), popularly called Piarists. The Piarists are a teaching order that, in addition to the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, practiced a fourth vow: the special care of youth....
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Piasa bird (mythical creature)
mythical man-eating monster that, according to Native American legend, would swoop down and carry off hunters. A drawing of the bird, on a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River north of what is now Alton, Illinois, was seen by the French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis J...
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Piasecki, Frank Nicholas (American mechanical engineer)
American mechanical engineer who developed his first helicopter (the PV-2), a small one-man chopper, in the early 1940s, and in 1943 he piloted the craft and became the second American (after Russian-born engineer Igor Sikorsky) to design a helicopter that actually worked. It was Piasecki’s second effort, however, that gained him renown. The PV-3 (dubbed the “Flying Banana” be...
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piassava (plant fibre)
...The hair of other animals such as horses, oxen, squirrels, and badgers is used in certain kinds of household and toilet brushes, as are various types of plant fibres, the most important of which are piassava obtained from a Brazilian palm and palmyra bassine derived from the palmyra palm of Africa and ......
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Piast dynasty (Polish ruling family)
first ruling family of Poland. According to a 12th-century legend, when Prince Popiel of Gnesen (now Gniezno) died, in the second half of the 9th century, he was succeeded by Siemowit, the son of the prince’s plowman, Piast, thus founding a dynasty that ruled the Polish lands until 1370. (The name Piast was not applied to the dynasty until the 17th century.) By 963 Mieszko I...
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Piast Route (Poland)
...western outskirts of Poznań. Tourist and recreational traffic centres on the province’s lakes. The most popular holiday resorts include Sieraków, Boszkowo, and Skorzęcin. The Piast Route, a tourist track associated with the beginnings of Polish history, runs through Lednica, Gniezno, and Trzemeszno, which is one of the earliest settlements in the region and the site ...
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piastre (African coin)
...independence were achieved from the mid-20th century. Egypt, gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1914, based its currency on the piastre, with Arabic inscriptions; some gold and silver multiples were produced. Under Fuʾād I (1922–36) and Farouk I......
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Piatigorsk (Russia)
city, Stavropol kray (territory), southwestern Russia. It lies along the Podkumok River in the northern foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. It has long been a spa famous for its gentle climate and mineral springs....
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Piatra lui Craciun (Romania)
city, capital of Neamţ judeţ (county), northeastern Romania. It lies in the valley of the Bistriţa River and is surrounded by mountains. It is first documented in the 14th century as Piatra lui Crăciun, or Camena, a market town where fairs were held. Stephen...
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Piatra-Neamţ (Romania)
city, capital of Neamţ judeţ (county), northeastern Romania. It lies in the valley of the Bistriţa River and is surrounded by mountains. It is first documented in the 14th century as Piatra lui Crăciun, or Camena, a market town where fairs were held. Stephen...
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Piatt, John (American journalist and poet)
...her poems began appearing regularly in the Louisville (Kentucky) Journal and then in the New York Ledger. Bryan was widely known as a poet by the time of her marriage in 1861 to John L. Piatt, a journalist, poet, and coauthor with William Dean Howells of Poems of Two Friends (1860). Sarah Piatt produced several volumes of poetry over the next 20 years, including......
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Piatt, Sarah Morgan Bryan (American poet)
American poet whose verse, modest in range and often tinged with sadness, won critical appreciation in her day....
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Piauí (state, Brazil)
estado (state) of northeastern Brazil, bordered on the east by the states of Ceará, Pernambuco, and Bahia, by a very small part of Tocantins on the south, by Maranhão on the west, and by the Atlantic Ocean on the north. The state capital is Teresina, located at the co...
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Piave River (river, Italy)
river in northeastern Italy. It rises on the slopes of Mount Peralba in the Carnic Alps near the Austrian frontier and flows southward to the Belluno basin and its gorge at Feltre, where it turns southeast to meander across the Venetian plain, reaching the Adriatic Sea...
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Piazetta, Giambattista (Italian painter)
painter, illustrator, and designer who was one of the outstanding Venetian artists of the 18th century. His art evolved from Italian Baroque traditions of the 17th century to a Rococo manner in his mature style....
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piazza (Italian square)
square or marketplace in an Italian town or city. The word is cognate with the French and English “place” and Spanish “plaza,” all ultimately derived from the Greek plateia, “broad street.” The most celebrated Italian piazza is that designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. It is 650 feet (19...
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Piazza Armerina (Italy)
town and episcopal see, central Sicily, Italy, west-southwest of Catania. Among the many historic monuments in the town are the 17th-century cathedral, with a 14th-century campanile, the Baroque palace of Trigona della Floresta, the Church of San Rocco (1613), the Civic Museum, the 14th-century four-sided castle, and the well-preserved remains of the Roman villa of Casale. The N...
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Piazzetta, Giovanni Battista (Italian painter)
painter, illustrator, and designer who was one of the outstanding Venetian artists of the 18th century. His art evolved from Italian Baroque traditions of the 17th century to a Rococo manner in his mature style....
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Piazzi, Giuseppe (Italian astronomer)
Italian astronomer who discovered (Jan. 1, 1801) and named the first asteroid, or “minor planet,” Ceres....
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Piazzolla, Astor (Argentine musician)
Argentine musician, a virtuoso on the bandoneón (a square-built button accordion), who left traditional Latin American tango bands in 1955 to create a new tango that blended elements of jazz and classical music. He was a major Latin American composer of the 20th century....
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Pibor (river, Africa)
...rainfall on the East African Plateau of the previous summer. The second source is the drainage of southwestern Ethiopia through the Sobat (contributed mainly by its two headstreams, the Baro and the Pibor) that enters the main stream below As-Sudd. The annual flood of the Sobat, a consequence of the Ethiopian summer rains, is to a great extent responsible for the variations in the level of the....
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