Lockhart, John Gibson

Lockhart, the son of a Presbyterian minister descended from the landed gentry, studied at the universities of Glasgow and Oxford and began the practice

Lussy, Melchior

Representative of the Catholic cantons at the Council of Trent and at the courts of four popes—Paul IV, Pius IV, Gregory XIII, and Gregory XIV—Lussy devoted much of his life

Dee, John

Dee entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1542, where he earned a bachelor's degree (1545) and a master's degree (1548); he also was made a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, on its founding in 1546. Dee furthered his scientific studies on the Continent with a short visit

Lut Desert

Persian  Dasht-e Lut,  also spelled  Dasht-i Lut,   desert in eastern Iran. It stretches about 200 miles (320 km) from northwest to southeast and is about 100 miles wide. In the east a great massif of dunes and sand rises, while in the west an extensive area of high ridges is separated by wind-swept corridors. In its lowest, salt-filled depression—less than 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level—the summer heat and low humidity are believed to be unsurpassed

Essex Decision

Decision rendered by the British High Court of Admiralty in 1804 and confirmed the following year, which contributed to the bad feeling between the United States and Great Britain that eventually led to the War of 1812. Britain and France were at war, and the American merchant vessel Essex had been captured by the British while transporting goods from the French West Indies

Swaziland System

Major division of rocks and time in southern Africa in Precambrian Time (3.96 billion to 540 million years ago). The system consists of a great thickness of sedimentary and metamorphic (altered) rocks with numerous intrusions of igneous bodies. Two major subdivisions of the Swaziland System are recognized, an Upper and a Lower series. Many of the units that constitute the

Asti

City, capital of Asti province, Piemonte (Piedmont) region, northwestern Italy. It lies at the confluence of the Tanaro and Borbera rivers, 28 miles (45 km) southeast of Turin. Asti was the Hasta, or Colonia, of the Romans and was the seat of a bishopric from AD 932. It reached its zenith as an independent commune in the 13th century, after which it fell to several overlords before coming under

Sorokin, Pitirim Alexandrovitch

Russian-American sociologist who founded the department of sociology at Harvard University in 1930. In the history of sociological theory, he is important for distinguishing two kinds of sociocultural systems: “sensate” (empirical, dependent on and encouraging natural sciences) and “ideational” (mystical, anti-intellectual, dependent

Asia

In antiquity, the first and westernmost Roman province in Asia Minor, stretching at its greatest extent from the Aegean coast in the west to a point beyond Philomelium (modern Aksehir) in the east and from the Sea of Marmara in the north to the strait between Rhodes and the mainland in the south. The province was first constituted when Attalus III, king of Pergamum, bequeathed

Ringer's Solution

One of the first laboratory solutions of salts in water shown to prolong greatly the survival time of excised tissue; it was introduced by the physiologist Sidney Ringer in 1882 for the frog heart. The solution contains sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride, and sodium bicarbonate in the concentrations in which they occur in body fluids. Mammalian Ringer's

Botanical Garden

German  Botanischer Garten,   botanical garden founded in 1914 by the German botanist Karl von Goebel in Munich. The garden's vast array of greenhouses, completed in 1958, includes 17 for display and 8 for service functions. The palm house is particularly notable. Other significant greenhouse collections are composed of alpine plants, insectivorous plants, cacti, African succulents, Crassula, and Mesembryanthemeae.

China, Government and party

Despite its size, the People's Republic of China is organized along unitary rather than federal principles. Both the government and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP; Pinyin: Zhongguo Gongchan Dang; Wade–Giles romanization: Chung-kuo Kung-ch'an Tang), moreover, operate “from the top down,” arrogating to the “Centre” all powers that are not explicitly delegated to lower levels.

Quidor, John

At age nine Quidor moved with his family to New York City. He began his career

Gabon

Protesting the disparity between living conditions in the capital and those in the regional towns,

Chekhov, Anton (pavlovich)

Major Russian playwright and master of the modern short story. He was a literary artist of laconic precision who probed below the surface of life, laying bare the secret motives of his characters. Chekhov's best plays and short stories lack complex plots and neat solutions. Concentrating on apparent trivialities,

Gatling, Richard Jordan

Gatling's career as an inventor began when he assisted his father in the construction and perfecting of machines for sowing cotton seeds and for thinning cotton plants. In 1839 he perfected a practical

Manado

Also spelled  Menado,   kotamadya (municipality) and capital of Sulawesi Utara provinsi (province), Celebes island, Indonesia, located near the tip of the north-northeastern arm of Celebes island on an inlet of the Celebes Sea. Manado lies at the foot of Mount Klabat (6,634 feet [2,022 m]), about 600 miles (970 km) northeast of Ujung Padang. A trade centre for the surrounding agricultural and lumbering area, it exports

Mitchell, Charles E(dwin)

Mitchell took his first job with the Western Electric Company in Chicago and became the president's assistant in 1903. Three years later he left the firm and became assistant to the president at The Trust Company of America in New York City, a position he held for five years.

Furniture, Transitional modern

Conservative in style (but not imitative), well-constructed, and carefully finished, the best modern furniture earned its reputation of being in good, correct taste. Often relying on handcraft details and on wood, most factories used speeded-up variations of earlier cabinetmaking operations. This, along with the United States' emphasis on artificially stimulated

China, Political history

Ineptitude on the throne, bureaucratic factionalism at court, rivalries among Mongol generals, and ineffective supervision and coordination of provincial and local administration had gravely weakened the Yüan government by the 1340s. And in 1351 disastrous flooding of the Huang and Huai river basins aroused hundreds of thousands of long-oppressed Chinese peasants

Thomas, R.s.

Thomas was educated in Wales at University College at Bangor (1935) and ordained in the Church of Wales (1936), in which he held appointments in several parishes. He published

Babar Island

Bahasa Indonesia  Pulau Babar  island and island group in the Banda Sea, Maluku propinsi (province), Indonesia. Located between Timor to the west and the Tanimbar Islands to the east, the group consists of Babar, the largest island, surrounded by the five islets of Wetan, Dai, Dawera, Daweloor, and Masela, and the six cover an area of about 314 sq mi (822 sq km). Babar is roughly circular, about 20 mi (32 km) in diameter and mostly

Ruse

Also spelled  Russe , or  Roussé  city of northern Bulgaria, on the Danube River near the mouth of the Rusenski Lom. Bulgaria's principal river port and a transportation hub for road and rail, Ruse has regular shipping services on the Danube and an airport. Upstream is the Friendship Bridge, built in 1954, carrying road and rail traffic across the river to Giurgiu, in Romania. Ruse is an industrial town, with

Tobit

Also called  The Book Of Tobias,  apocryphal work (noncanonical for Jews and Protestants) that found its way into the Roman Catholic canon via the Septuagint. A religious folktale and a Judaicized version of the story of the grateful dead, it relates how Tobit, a pious Jew exiled to Nineveh in Assyria, observed the precepts of Hebrew Law by giving alms and by burying the dead. In spite of his good works,

Fracture

In mineralogy, appearance of a surface broken in directions other than along cleavage planes. There are several kinds of fractures: conchoidal (curved concavities resembling shells—e.g., flint, quartz, glass); even (rough, approximately plane surfaces); uneven (rough and completely irregular surfaces, the commonest fracture type); hackly (sharp edges and jagged points

Auer, Leopold

Auer studied under the celebrated virtuoso Joseph Joachim. From 1868 he was professor of violin at the St. Petersburg Conservatory

Papiamento

Also spelled  Papiamentu,   creole language based on Spanish, spoken on the islands of Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire, in the Caribbean Sea. Papiamento is apparently based on a Spanish pidgin or creole language, with early influences from Portuguese and, more recently, strong Dutch influences (Dutch is the official language of Curaçao). Twenty-five percent of the vocabulary of Papiamento is of Dutch

Scandinavian Literature, Post-classical literature in Iceland

In the period following the classical age, little was written that attracted attention outside Iceland. Realism and detached objectivity declined, and sentimentality and fantasy gained the upper hand. The decline in literary standards is sometimes attributed to Iceland's loss of independence in 1262 and the changes that followed. Interest in earlier manuscripts

Averroës

Averroës was born into a distinguished family of jurists at Córdoba and died at Marrakech, the North African capital of the Almohad dynasty. Thoroughly versed in the traditional Muslim sciences (especially exegesis of the Qur'an—Islamic scripture—and Hadith, or Traditions, and fiqh, or Law), trained in medicine, and accomplished in philosophy, Averroës rose to be chief

Plover

Any of numerous species of plump-breasted birds of the shorebird family Charadriidae (order Charadriiformes). There are about three dozen species of plovers, 15 to 30 centimetres (6 to 12 inches) long, with long wings, moderately long legs, short necks, and straight bills that are shorter than their heads. Many species are plain brown, gray, or sandy above and whitish