A-Z Browse

Previous Next

Agnelli, Giovanni (Italian industrialist [1921-2003])
chairman of the automobile manufacturing company Fiat SpA, Italy’s largest private business enterprise, from 1966 to 2003....
Agnelli, Susanna (Italian politician and philanthropist)
April 24, 1922Turin, ItalyMay 15, 2009Rome, ItalyItalian politician and philanthropist who served (1995–96) as the first female foreign minister of Italy. The granddaughter of Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of the carmaker Fiat, she combined her elegant upbringing—detailed in h...
Agnelli, Umberto (Italian industrialist)
Italian automotive executive and grandson of Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of Fiat SpA. He served as the company’s chairman from 2003 to 2004....
Agnes (queen consort of France)
...1193, and on the next day, for a private reason, had resolved to separate from her. Having procured the annulment of his marriage by an assembly of bishops in November 1193, he took a Tirolese lady, Agnes, daughter of Bertold IV of Meran, as his wife in June 1196. Denmark, meanwhile, had complained to Rome about the repudiation of Ingeborg, and Pope Celestine III had countermanded it in 1195;.....
Agnes Bernauer (work by Hebbel)
...Tod (“Siegfried’s Death”), and Kriemhilds Rache (“Kriemhild’s Revenge”)—grandiosely pictures the clash between heathen and Christian. The prose tragedy Agnes Bernauer (1852) treats the conflict between the necessities of the state and the rights of the individual. Gyges und sein Ring (1854; Gyges and His Ring), ...
Agnès d’Aquitaine (empress consort)
second wife of the Holy Roman emperor Henry III. She was regent (1056–62) during the minority of her son, the future Henry IV....
Agnès de Poitou (empress consort)
second wife of the Holy Roman emperor Henry III. She was regent (1056–62) during the minority of her son, the future Henry IV....
Agnes Grey (novel by Brontë)
novel by Anne Brontë, published in 1847. The strongly autobiographical narrative concerns the travails of a rector’s daughter in her service as governess, first to the unruly Bloomfield children and then to the callous Murrays. Her sole consolations in an otherwise dreary and constricted life are the natural environment and her blossoming relationship with Weston, ...
Agnès, Mère (French abbess)
abbess of the Jansenist centre of Port-Royal and author of the religious community’s Constitutions (1665). She was one of six sisters of the prominent Jansenist theologian Antoine Arnauld (the Great Arnauld)....
Agnes of Aquitaine (empress consort)
second wife of the Holy Roman emperor Henry III. She was regent (1056–62) during the minority of her son, the future Henry IV....
Agnes of Poitou (empress consort)
second wife of the Holy Roman emperor Henry III. She was regent (1056–62) during the minority of her son, the future Henry IV....
Agnes, Saint (Roman saint)
virgin and patron saint of girls, who is one of the most celebrated Roman martyrs....
Agnes Scott College (college, Decatur, Georgia, United States)
private institution of higher education for women in Decatur, Georgia, U.S. A liberal arts college allied with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Agnes Scott College offers ...
Agnesi, Maria Gaetana (Italian mathematician)
Italian mathematician and philosopher, considered to be the first woman in the Western world to have achieved a reputation in mathematics....
Agnesi, Witch of (curve)
...Italian as versiera, which was confused with versicra (“witch”) and translated into English as the “Witch of Agnesi.” The French Academy of Sciences, in its review of the Instituzioni, stated that: “We regard it as the most complete and best made......
Agnew, Spiro T. (vice president of United States)
39th vice president of the United States (1969–73) in the Republican administration of President Richard M. Nixon. He was the second person to resign the nation’s second highest office (John C. Calhoun was the first in 1832) and the first to resign under ...
Agnew, Spiro Theodore (vice president of United States)
39th vice president of the United States (1969–73) in the Republican administration of President Richard M. Nixon. He was the second person to resign the nation’s second highest office (John C. Calhoun was the first in 1832) and the first to resign under ...
Agni (people)
African people who inhabit the tropical forest of eastern Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana and speak a language of the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo language family. About the middle of the 18th century most of the Anyi were expelled from Ghana by the Asant...
Agni (Indian god)
(Sanskrit: “Fire”), fire-god of the Hindus, second only to Indra in the Vedic mythology of ancient India. He is equally the fire of the sun, of lightning, and of the hearth that men light for purposes of worship. As the divine personification of the fire of sacrifice, he is the mouth of the gods, the carrier of the oblation, and the messenger between the human and the divine orders....
Agnihotrī Brahman (caste)
...the Rigveda he is sometimes identified with Rudra, the forerunner of the later god Śiva. Though Agni has no sect in modern Hinduism, his presence is invoked in many ceremonies, especially by Agnihotrī Brahmans, and he is the guardian of the southeast. ...
Agnihotri, Shiv Narayan (Hindu social reformer)
Hindu founder of an atheistic society called Deva Samaj (“Society of God”)....
Agnikula (Indian royal lineage)
Special usages of kul, or kula, are found in such appellations as Agnikula (“Family of the Fire God”), a putative ancient dynasty from which the Rājputs of Rājasthān derive their claim to be Kshatriyas (nobles). Another is the gurukula (“guru’s family”) system of education, in which a pupil, after his initiation, lives in...
agnoiology (philosophy)
Scottish metaphysician distinguished for his theory of agnoiology, or theory of ignorance....
Agnolo, Baccio d’ (Italian architect)
wood-carver, sculptor, and architect who exerted an important influence on the Renaissance architecture of Florence. Between 1491 and 1502 he did much of the decorative carving in the church of Santa Maria Novella and in the ...
Agnolo di Ventura (Italian sculptor)
late Gothic sculptor, best known for his work, with Agnolo di Ventura, on the tomb of Guido Tarlati....
agnomen (surname)
...“silent.” Thus the Roman name eventually consisted of three parts: Marcus Tullius Cicero, Gaius Julius Caesar. In addition, a person might acquire an individual surname, called an agnomen: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was so named because of his successful war in Africa....
Agnon, S. Y. (Israeli author)
Israeli writer who was one of the leading modern Hebrew novelists and short-story writers. In 1966 he was the corecipient, with Nelly Sachs, of the Nobel Prize for Literature....
Agnon, Shmuel Yosef (Israeli author)
Israeli writer who was one of the leading modern Hebrew novelists and short-story writers. In 1966 he was the corecipient, with Nelly Sachs, of the Nobel Prize for Literature....
Agnone Tablet (inscription)
...is a bronze tablet with penal laws concerning municipal administration, written in Latin letters during the first half of the 1st century bc. The oldest Oscan text of any length is the so-called Agnone Tablet of about 250 bc (a small bronze tablet found near Fonte Romito, between Agnone and Capracotta), detailing cultic instructions related to the worship of Ceres an...
agnosia (pathology)
loss or diminution of the ability to recognize objects, sounds, smells, tastes, or other sensory stimuli. Agnosia is sometimes described as perception without meaning. It is often caused by trauma to or degeneration of the parts of the brain involved in the integration of experience, perception, and memory. Examples of specific causes includ...
agnosticism
(from Greek agnōstos, “unknowable”), strictly speaking, the doctrine that humans cannot know of the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their experience. The term has come to be equated in popular parlance with skepticism about religious questions in general and in particular with the rejection of traditional Christian beliefs under the impact of mode...
agnostid (trilobite order)
From the 1960s, investigators began to recognize that many species of the trilobite order Agnostida have intercontinental distributions in open-marine strata. These trilobites are small, rarely exceeding a few millimetres in length, and they have only two thoracic segments. Specialized appendages, which were probably useful for swimming but unsuitable for walking on the seafloor, suggest that......
Agnostida (trilobite order)
From the 1960s, investigators began to recognize that many species of the trilobite order Agnostida have intercontinental distributions in open-marine strata. These trilobites are small, rarely exceeding a few millimetres in length, and they have only two thoracic segments. Specialized appendages, which were probably useful for swimming but unsuitable for walking on the seafloor, suggest that......
Agnostus (paleontology)
genus of trilobites (an extinct group of aquatic arthropods) found as fossils in rocks of Early Cambrian to Late Ordovician age (those deposited from 540 to 438 million years ago). The agnostids were generally small, with only two thoracic segments and a large tail segment. Agnostus itself was only about 6 millimetres (0.25 inch) long a...
Agnus Dei (liturgical chant)
designation of Jesus Christ in Christian liturgical usage. It is based on the saying of John the Baptist: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). In the Roman Catholic...
Agnus Dei (religious symbol)
...
Agobard, Saint (archbishop of Lyon)
archbishop of Lyon from 816, who was active in political and ecclesiastical affairs during the reign of the emperor Louis I the Pious. He also wrote theological and liturgical treatises....
agoge (Spartan education)
...over half of their produce to Sparta) was the determining feature in Spartan internal life. Spartan warrior peers (homoioi) were henceforth subjected to a rigorous military training, the agoge, to enable them to deal with the Messenian helots, whose agricultural labours provided the Spartans with the leisure for their military training and life-style—a notoriously vicious.....
agon (theatre)
debate or contest between two characters in Attic comedy, constituting one of several formal conventions in these highly structured plays. More generally, an agon is the contest of opposed wills in Classical tragedy or any subsequent drama....
“agonía del cristianismo, La” (work by Unamuno)
...which he stressed the vital role spiritual anxiety plays in driving man to live the fullest possible life. This and other themes were explored in La agonía del cristianismo (1925; The Agony of Christianity)....
Agonidae (fish)
any of the marine fish of the family Agonidae (order Scorpaeniformes). Poachers live in cold water, on the bottom, and are found mainly in the northern Pacific. They are small fish, measuring about 30 cm (12 inches) or less in length, and are distinguished by the bony, often saw-edged armour plates covering their bodies....
agonism (behaviour)
survivalist animal behaviour that includes aggression, defense, and avoidance. The term is favoured by biologists who recognize that the behavioral bases and stimuli for approach and fleeing are often the same, the actual behaviour exhibited depending on other factors, especially the distance to the stimulus....
agonism (drug)
...block AT1 receptors would produce antihypertensive effects. Once again, this assumption proved correct, and a second class of antihypertensive drugs, the AT1 receptor antagonists, was developed. Agonists are drugs or naturally occurring substances that activate physiologic receptors, whereas antagonists are drugs that block those receptors. In this case, angiotensin II is an agonist at AT1......
agonist (drug)
...block AT1 receptors would produce antihypertensive effects. Once again, this assumption proved correct, and a second class of antihypertensive drugs, the AT1 receptor antagonists, was developed. Agonists are drugs or naturally occurring substances that activate physiologic receptors, whereas antagonists are drugs that block those receptors. In this case, angiotensin II is an agonist at AT1......
agonistic behaviour (behaviour)
survivalist animal behaviour that includes aggression, defense, and avoidance. The term is favoured by biologists who recognize that the behavioral bases and stimuli for approach and fleeing are often the same, the actual behaviour exhibited depending on other factors, especially the distance to the stimulus....
Agonium (Roman festival)
...liturgies. The beginning of the day, month, and year, both calendrical and agricultural, were sacred to him. The month of January is named for him, and his festival took place on January 9, the Agonium. There were several important temples erected to Janus, and it is assumed that there was also an early cult on the Janiculum, which the ancients took to mean “the city of Janus.”...
Agonus acipenserinus (fish)
Notable species include the sturgeon poacher (Agonus acipenserinus), a large, common, northern Pacific poacher, and the hook-nose, pogge, or armed bullhead (A. cataphractus), a small fish, common in northern Europe and one of the few poachers found outside the Pacific. Little is known about the natural history of the poachers. The various species are of little commercial value....
Agonus cataphractus (fish)
...hiding them away in crevices. The eggs are relatively large, 1.5–1.9 mm (roughly 0.06 inch) in diameter in Agonus decagonus, a species found in the extreme North Atlantic. The European hook-nose (A. cataphractus) lays up to 2,400 eggs inside the hollow rhizoid (stalk) of the kelp Laminaria in a compact, membrane-covered mass. Incubation is prolonged, possibly as long...
Agony and the Ecstasy, The (work by Stone)
...Lady (1951), based on the life of Rachel Jackson, wife of the seventh U.S. president; Love Is Eternal (1954), a fictionalized account of the marriage of Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln; The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961), a life of the Renaissance artist Michelangelo; The Passions of the Mind (1971), about Sigmund Freud; and The Origin (1980), a life of Charles......
Agony in the Garden (painting by Gossart)
...the Virgin, and the Baptist, reflect his interest in the works of Jan van Eyck and Albrecht Dürer. Another early work, famous for its sense of mood, is the Agony in the Garden....
Agony in the Garden, The (painting by Mantegna)
...his portraits of doges and sultans of Constantinople and his large paintings of Venetian religious processions. Giovanni early fell under the influence of Mantegna. The paintings each executed of “The Agony in the Garden” (both in the National Gallery, London) indicate how close they were stylistically and also their common reliance on Jacopo Bellini’s sketchbook. At an unk...
Agony in the Garden, The (painting by Bellini)
...at that time. In these earliest pictures the sky is apt to be reflected behind the figures in streaks of water making horizontal lines in a mere strip of landscape. In The Agony in the Garden (c. 1465), the horizon moves up, and a deep, wide landscape encloses the figures, to play an equal part in expressing the drama of the scene. As with the dramatis......
Agony of Christianity, The (work by Unamuno)
...which he stressed the vital role spiritual anxiety plays in driving man to live the fullest possible life. This and other themes were explored in La agonía del cristianismo (1925; The Agony of Christianity)....
Agoondarro waa u nacab jacayl (novel by Cawl)
In his novel Aqoondarro waa u nacab jacayl (1974; Ignorance Is the Enemy of Love)—the first novel published in Somali—Faarax Maxamed Jaamac Cawl criticized the traditional past. He made use of documentary sources having to do with the struggle against colonialism in the early 20th century, when forces under the leadership of Maxamed.....
Agop (Armenian actor)
...a salary, and local writers presented their own plays. Originally built for foreign companies, the theatre was reconstructed in 1867 and reopened in 1868 for a Turkish company headed by an Armenian, Agop, who was later converted to Islām and changed his name to Yakup. For almost 20 years the Gedik Paşa Theatre was the dramatic centre of the city; and plays in translation were soon...
agora (ancient Greek meeting place)
in ancient Greek cities, an open space that served as a meeting ground for various activities of the citizens. The name, first found in the works of Homer, connotes both the assembly of the people as well as the physical setting; it was applied by the classical Greeks of the 5th century bc to what they regarded as a typical feature of their life: their daily relig...
Agoracritus (Greek sculptor)
Greek sculptor said to have been the favourite pupil of Phidias. His most renowned work is the statue of Nemesis at Rhamnous, Greece, part of the head of which is in the British Museum, while fragments of the pedestal reliefs are in Athens....
agoraphobia (psychology)
...are acrophobia, fear of high places; claustrophobia, fear of closed places; nyctophobia, fear of the dark; ochlophobia, fear of crowds; xenophobia, fear of strangers; and zoophobia, fear of animals. Agoraphobia, the fear of being in open or public places, is a particularly crippling illness that may prevent its victims from even leaving home. School phobia may afflict schoolchildren who are......
Agosta (Italy)
town, Sicily, Italy, north of the city of Syracuse; it lies on a long sandy island off the southeast coast between the Golfo (gulf) di Augusta and the Ionian Sea and is connected by two bridges with the mainland. The town was founded near the site of the ancient Dorian town of ...
Agostini, Angelo (Brazilian cartoonist)
...strips of extraordinary length and coherence. The European pioneer of the exotic adventure strip, Cilla was preceded, in a genre whose fruition in the comic book lay many years in the future, by Angelo Agostini, an Italian who settled in Brazil. His As aventuras de Nhô-Quim & Zé Caipora (initially 1883–86; “The Adventures of......
Agostini, Peter (American sculptor)
Other sculptors such as Peter Agostini, George Spaventa, Peter Grippe, David Slivka, and Lipchitz, who were interested in bringing spontaneity, accident, and automatism into play, returned to the more labile media of wax and clay, with occasional cire-perdue casting, which permit a very direct projection of the artist’s feelings. By the nature of the processes such work is usually on a smal...
Agostino (work by Moravia)
Meanwhile, Alberto Moravia and Mario Soldati defended their corners as never less than conspicuously competent writers. Moravia generally plowed a lone furrow. Of his mature writings, Agostino (1944; Eng. trans. Agostino), Il conformista (1951; The Conformist), and La noia (1960; “The Tedium”; Eng. trans. Empty......
Agostino di Duccio (Italian sculptor)
early Renaissance sculptor whose work is characterized by its linear decorativeness. His early work shows the influence of Donatello and Michelozzo, whom he assisted in adorning SS. Annunziata in Florence....
Agostino di Giovanni (Italian sculptor)
late Gothic sculptor, best known for his work, with Agnolo di Ventura, on the tomb of Guido Tarlati....
Agou, Mount (mountain, Togo)
mountain in southwestern Togo, near the border with Ghana. An extreme western outlier of the Atakora Mountains of adjacent Benin, it rises to 3,235 feet (986 metres) and is the highest point in Togo. It was initially named for Oskar Baumann (1864–99), an Austrian-African explorer, when Togo (then called Togoland) wa...
Agoult, Marie de Flavigny, comtesse d’ (French author)
writer known for her role in and descriptions of Parisian society in the 1840s....
Agouti (rodent)
either of two species of South American rodents with piglike bodies, large heads, and swollen cheeks. They have short ears, large eyes, and long whiskers, and their bodies are stout, with large rumps and short limbs. The front feet have four toes, and the hindfeet have five—two tiny side toes and three long, weight-be...
agouti (rodent)
any of about a dozen species of tropical American rodents resembling the small forest-dwelling hoofed animals of tropical Africa and Asia (see chevrotain; duiker; royal antelope). Agoutis weigh up to 6 kg (13 pounds), with an elongated body measuring up to 76 cm (2.5 feet) long. They have ...
Agouti taczanowskii (rodent)
The mountain paca (A. taczanowskii) is smaller and has a long dense coat. Found high in the Andes Mountains from northwestern Venezuela to Peru, it lives at the upper limits of mountain forest and in alpine pastures....
Agoutidae (rodent)
Pacas are the only members of the family Agoutidae. Their closest living relatives are agoutis and acouchys (family Dasyproctidae). Both families belong to the suborder Hystricognatha, which includes guinea pigs and chinchillas. No paca fossils have been discovered....
AGP (technology)
graphics hardware technology first introduced in 1996 by the American integrated-circuit manufacturer Intel Corporation. AGP uses a direct channel to a computer’s CPU (central processing unit) and system memory—unlike PCI (peripheral component interconnect), an earlier graphics card standard on which AGP was ...
AGR (engineering)
The advanced gas-cooled reactor (AGR) was developed in Britain as the successor to reactors of the Calder Hall class, which combined plutonium production and power generation. Calder Hall was the first nuclear station to feed an appreciable amount of power into a civilian network. It was fueled with slugs of natural uranium metal canned in aluminum, cooled with carbon dioxide, and employed a......
Agra (India)
city, west-central Uttar Pradesh state, north-central India. It lies on the Yamuna (Jumna) River about 125 miles (200 km) southeast of Delhi. Founded by Sultan Sikandar Lodī in the early 16th century, it was the Mughal capital during some periods of their empire. In the late 18th century the city ...
AGRA (international organization)
In 2007 Annan was named chairperson of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an organization aiding small-scale farmers; AGRA was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. He later played a crucial role in resolving the Kenyan election crisis that began in late December 2007, eventually brokering a power-sharing agreement between the......
Agra Fort (monument, Agra, India)
...the Taj Mahal is one the world’s best examples of Mughal architecture. The Mughal emperor Shah Jahān built it for his favourite wife, Mumtāz Maḥal, in the mid-17th century. The Red Fort (16th century), named for its massive red sandstone walls, was built by the emperor Akbar; it contains the Pearl Mosque (Moti Masjid; 17th century), constructed of white marble, and a...
Āgra, Great Mosque of (mosque, Āgra, India)
The Jāmiʿ Masjid, or Great Mosque, and the elegant Itimad al-Dawlah tomb (1628), of white marble, are located near the Taj Mahal. To the northwest, at Sikandra, is the tomb of Akbar....
agrafe (badge)
Besides the ampullae, hundreds and thousands of pilgrim badges were sold to devout visitors to places of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. These little plaques and agraffes (hat badges) were generally miniature versions of religious images worshipped at the place where they were on sale. A number of these Italian, English, French, and German pilgrim badges, dating from the 13th to the 16th......
agraffe (badge)
Besides the ampullae, hundreds and thousands of pilgrim badges were sold to devout visitors to places of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages. These little plaques and agraffes (hat badges) were generally miniature versions of religious images worshipped at the place where they were on sale. A number of these Italian, English, French, and German pilgrim badges, dating from the 13th to the 16th......
Agrammes (ruler of Magadha)
...genealogy of the Nanda dynasty is perfunctory in the Puranas, which mention only Sukalpa (Sahalya, Sumalya), while the Buddhist text Mahabodhivamsa enumerates eight names. Dhanananda, the last of this list, possibly figures as Agrammes, or Xandrames, in classical sources, a powerful contemporary of Alexander the Great. The Nanda line ended with him in about 321 bce......
Agramonte y Simoni, Aristides (Cuban-American scientist)
physician, pathologist, and bacteriologist, a member of the Reed Yellow Fever Board of the U.S. Army that discovered (1901) the role of the mosquito in the transmission of yellow fever....
agranulocytic angina (infection)
acute infection characterized by severe sore throat, fever, and fatigue and associated with an extreme reduction of white blood cells, or leukocytes (a condition known as leukopenia), particularly the white cells k...
agranulocytosis (infection)
acute infection characterized by severe sore throat, fever, and fatigue and associated with an extreme reduction of white blood cells, or leukocytes (a condition known as leukopenia), particularly the white cells k...
Agrarian (American literary group)
Ransom was also among those Fugitives who became known as the Agrarians. Their I’ll Take My Stand (1930) criticized the idea that industrialization was the answer to the needs of the South....
agrarian (political party)
...elsewhere in western Europe was generally represented by two or more parties, ranging from the liberal centre to the moderate and extreme right. The three types of conservative party were the agrarian (particularly in Scandinavia), the Christian Democratic, and those parties allied closely with big business. These categories are very general and are not mutually exclusive....
Agrarian Justice (work by Paine)
...he believed in a Supreme Being and, as a Deist, opposed only organized religion, the work won him a reputation as an atheist among the orthodox. The publication of his last great pamphlet, “Agrarian Justice” (1797), with its attack on inequalities in property ownership, added to his many enemies in establishment circles....
agrarian law (Roman law)
...of Italy) and now in Vienna, is a consular edict on Senate authority, regulating Dionysiac outbursts in Italy in 186 bce; pieces of the laws Lex Acilia Repetundarum (123 bce) and Lex Agraria (111 bce) were found in the 16th century on opposite sides of what was once a large bronze tablet; the local laws of the town of Bantia (on the borderlands of Lucan...
Agrarian League (German political organization)
extraparliamentary organization active under the German empire from 1893. Formed to combat the free-trade policies (initiated in 1892) of Chancellor Leo, Graf (count) von Caprivi, the league worked for farmers’ subsidies, import tariffs, and minimum prices. Caprivi’s successor promised to increase wheat tariffs, but by 1900 the Agrarian League had increased to 250,...
Agrarian Party (political party, Finland)
In June 2010 Finnish Prime Minister and Centre Party leader Matti Vanhanen stepped down from both posts for reasons he promised to fully disclose only in the distant future. Vanhanen had been implicated in the campaign contributions scandal of 2008–09 that was still reverberating. The party secretary, Jarmo Korhonen, who was at the heart of the scandal, failed to win reelection even......
Agrarian Party (political party, Belarus)
...parties supportive of Lukashenka are the Communist Party of Belarus (KPB), a successor of the monolithic ruling Communist Party of the Soviet era; the Liberal Democratic Party of Belarus; and the Agrarian Party. Opposition parties are permitted, but they have had little electoral success. They include the Party of Communists of Belarus (PKB); the Party of the Belarusian Popular Front (BPF);......
Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century, The (work by Tawney)
...Association in Rochdale, Lancashire, serving as its president from 1928 to 1944. He taught tutorial classes (for working-class students) at Oxford, where he wrote his first major work, The Agrarian Problem in the Sixteenth Century (1912). That study of the use of land in an underdeveloped economy that was simultaneously in the midst of a population explosion and a price......
agrarian reform (agricultural economics)
a purposive change in the way in which agricultural land is held or owned, the methods of cultivation that are employed, or the relation of agriculture to the rest of the economy. Reforms such as these may be proclaimed by a government, by interested groups, or by revolution....
Agrarian Reform Law (1950, China)
Under the Agrarian Reform Law of 1950, the property of rural landlords was confiscated and redistributed, which fulfilled a promise to the peasants and smashed a class identified as feudal or semifeudal. The property of traitors, “bureaucrat capitalists” (especially the “four big families” of the Nationalist Party [KMT]—the K’ungs [Kongs], Soongs [Songs], ...
Agrarian Reform Law (1958, Iraq)
The initial step in agrarian reform had been taken with the Agrarian Reform Law of 1958, which provided for distributing to peasants lands in excess of a certain maximum ownership. A decade later less than half of the land had been distributed. In 1969 a revised Agrarian Reform Law relieved the peasants from payments for their land by abolishing compensation to landowners, and a year later a......
Agrarian Union (political party, Finland)
In June 2010 Finnish Prime Minister and Centre Party leader Matti Vanhanen stepped down from both posts for reasons he promised to fully disclose only in the distant future. Vanhanen had been implicated in the campaign contributions scandal of 2008–09 that was still reverberating. The party secretary, Jarmo Korhonen, who was at the heart of the scandal, failed to win reelection even......
Agraulis vanillae (insect)
In June 2010 Finnish Prime Minister and Centre Party leader Matti Vanhanen stepped down from both posts for reasons he promised to fully disclose only in the distant future. Vanhanen had been implicated in the campaign contributions scandal of 2008–09 that was still reverberating. The party secretary, Jarmo Korhonen, who was at the heart of the scandal, failed to win reelection even.........
Agre, Peter (American doctor)
American doctor, corecipient of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2003 for his discovery of water channels in cell membranes. He shared the award with Roderick MacKinnon, also of the United States....
Agreda, María de (Spanish mystic)
abbess and mystic. In 1620 she took her vows as a Franciscan nun and in 1627 became abbess of a Franciscan monastery in Agreda, retaining this office, except for a brief period, until her death....
agreement (grammar)
...may be illustrated by an example from Swahili. Notice that in the sentence wa-tu wa-le wa-mefika (consisting of noun, demonstrative, and verb, meaning ‘those people have arrived’), concordial elements link all three parts of the sentence by the prefix wa-. This may be compared to the singular construction m-tu yu-le a-mefika ‘that pers...
agreement (law)
in the simplest definition, a promise enforceable by law. The promise may be to do something or to refrain from doing something. The making of a contract requires the mutual assent of two or more persons, one of them ordinarily making an offer and another accepting. If one of the parties fails to keep the promise, the other is entitled to legal recourse. The law of contracts considers such questio...
Agreement of the People, An (English political document)
Wildman was of obscure ancestry. Educated at Cambridge, he first came into prominence in October 1647, when he helped to write the first Agreement of the People. These expressed the political program of the democratic republican, or Leveler, section of the army, which opposed all compromise with Charles I. In the debates that took place during 1647 in the general council of the army he......