Kaziranga National Park

National park in Sibsagar district, Assam state, northeastern India, situated on the southern bank of the Brahmaputra River, 60 mi (97 km) west of Jorhat on the main road to Gauhati. Established in 1908 as a game reserve, it became a national park in 1974. It has an area of 165 sq mi (430 sq km) and lies between the Brahmaputra River and the Mikir Hills. Much of the park is marshland interspersed with large

Newman, Arnold

Newman studied art at the University of Miami in Florida from 1936 to 1938 and then took a job as an assistant in a photography

Nature Worship, Water as fructifying

Wherever early archaic culture spread the myth of heaven and earth as the world parents, there also was a belief that heaven fructifies the earth with heaven's seed. The springs, pools, and rivers on the earth, therefore, may bring not only healing and expiation but also fertility. The Scamander (now Turkey's K���kmenderes) River in ancient Greece evidently was so personified;

Hu-lun Lake

Hu-lun Lake has varied considerably in area according to variations in the climate. At one time it was part of a large lake that included Pei-erh Lake, a somewhat

Biblical Literature, The Qumran texts and other scrolls

Until the discovery of the Judaean Desert scrolls, the only pre-medieval fragment of the Hebrew Bible known to scholars was the Nash Papyrus (c. 150 BCE) from Egypt containing the Decalogue and Deuteronomy. Now, however, fragments of about 180 different manuscripts of biblical books are available. Their dates vary between the 3rd century BCE and the 2nd century CE, and all but 10 stem from

Earth Sciences, The chemical analysis of rocks and minerals

The successive stages in the plate-tectonic cycle (see below) produce igneous rocks that have geochemical patterns distinctive for each stage. Consequently, the igneous petrologist is able to use both the major and trace element abundances of rocks to define the possible tectonic environment in which they formed. The metamorphic petrologist can use the bulk

Ganesha

Ganesha, considered the remover of obstacles, is the first god invoked at the beginning of worship or of a new enterprise, and he is often positioned near thresholds and gateways. He is a patron of letters and learning, and he is the

Tallis, Thomas

Nothing is known of Tallis' education. In 1532 he held a post at Dover Priory

Gamboge

Also spelled �Camboge, � hard, brittle gum resin that is obtained from various Southeast Asian trees of the genus Garcinia and is used as a colour vehicle and in medicine. Gamboge is orange to brown in colour and when powdered turns bright yellow. Artists use it as a pigment and as a colouring matter for varnishes. In medicine and veterinary medicine it is a drastic cathartic. On the skin it has

Architecture, African, Nomads and pastoralists

A hunting and gathering economy obliges the San of the Kalahari to move camp frequently. Some San scherms (shelters) may be little more than depressions in the ground, but groups such as the !Kung build light-framed shelters of sticks and saplings covered with grass. Other hunter-gatherers, such as the Hadza of Tanzania, live amid relative plenty; their dry savanna territory

Girdle Tie

Also called �blood of Isis� in Egyptian religion, protective amulet formed like a knot and made of gold, carnelian, or red glazed ware. Most samples of the girdle tie have been found tied around the necks of mummies; the amulets were intended to protect the dead from all that was harmful in the afterlife.

Race, The enslavement of Africans

Between 1660 and 1690, leaders of the Virginia colony began to establish practices that provided or sanctioned differential treatment for freed servants whose origins were in Europe. They conscripted poor whites, with whom they had never had interests in common, into the category of free men and made land, tools, animals, and other resources available to them. African Americans

Scythe

One of the most important of all agricultural hand tools, consisting of a curved blade fitted at an angle to a long, curved handle and used for cutting grain. In modern scythes the handle has a projecting peg that is grasped by one hand, facilitating control of the swinging motion by which grass and grain are cut. The exact origin of the scythe is unknown, but it was little

Middletown

City, Orange county, southeastern New York, U.S., 60 miles (97 km) northwest of New York City. Settled in 1756, it was organized around the local Congregational church in 1785 and named for its midway location between the Hudson and Delaware rivers. Until 1798 it was in Ulster county. It became headquarters for several turnpike companies and, after 1843, the terminal of the Erie Railroad (later Erie

Baranagar

Also spelled �Barahanagar� town, southeastern West Bengal state, northeastern India, just east of the Hooghly River, part of the Calcutta urban agglomeration. Originally a Portuguese settlement, it became the seat of a Dutch trading station and an important river anchorage for Dutch shipping; in 1795 it was ceded to the British. Constituted as the municipality of North Suburban in 1869, the town was renamed

San Angelo

City, seat (1875) of Tom Green county, west-central Texas, U.S. It lies about 90 miles (145 km) southwest of Abilene. Founded in 1869 near Fort Concho (now a museum) at the confluence of the North, South, and Middle Concho rivers, it was first known as Over-the-River but was renamed Santa Angela (later masculinized) for a sister-in-law of Bart J. DeWitt, one of the founders. The rivers have there been impounded

Arzner, Dorothy

Arzner was reared in Los Angeles, where her family owned a Hollywood

Aeolipile

Steam turbine invented in the 1st century AD by Heron of Alexandria and described in his Pneumatica. The aeolipile was a hollow sphere mounted so that it could turn on a pair of hollow tubes that provided steam to the sphere from a cauldron. The steam escaped from the sphere from one or more bent tubes projecting from its equator, causing the sphere to revolve. The aeolipile

Oratorian

The Institute of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri was founded by the saint in Rome in 1575, approved in 1612, and confederated and reapproved in 1942. It consists of independent communities of secular priests held under obedience but not bound by vows, and it is dedicated

Arabia, History Of, Central and northern Arabia

The oasis of Tayma' in the northern Hejaz emerged briefly into the limelight when the Neo-Babylonian king Nabu-na'id (Nabonidus, reigned c. 556 - 539 BC) took up his residence there for 10 years and extended his power as far as Yathrib. A few important monuments of this time are known.

Conscience, Hendrik

Conscience's father was French, his mother Flemish. He spent some of his early years as an assistant teacher (1828 - 30), took part in the uprising of July 1830 (which resulted in the independence of Belgium), and served in

Bruchsal

City, Baden-W�rttemberg Land (state), southwestern Germany. It lies along the Saalbach (Saal Stream), just northeast of Karlsruhe. First mentioned in 796 as the site of a Frankish royal villa, it was given to the prince-bishops of Speyer in 1056 and became their residence in 1720. Chartered in 1248, it passed to Baden in 1803. The city's magnificent Rococo castle (1722 - 32), one of the most distinguished in Germany,

Moscow, Grand Principality Of

Muscovy became a distinct principality during the second half of the 13th century under the rule of Daniel, the youngest son of the Rurik prince Alexander

Ashgabat

Formerly �Ashkhabad, Ashkabad, Askhabad, or (1919 - 27) Poltoratsk, � city and capital of Turkmenistan. It lies in an oasis at the northern foot of the Kopet-Dag (Turkmen: K�petdag) Range and on the edge of the Karakum (Turkmen: Garagum) Desert, about 19 miles (30 km) from the Iranian frontier. It was founded in 1881 as a Russian military fort and took the name of the nearby Turkmen settlement of Askhabad. It became the administrative centre of the Transcaspian

Sable Island

Gently curving sandbar in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, 110 mi (180 km) southeast of Cape Canso. It is treeless, about 20 mi long and 1 mi wide, and comprises the exposed portion of a vast shoal on the outer edge of the continental shelf. Gradually shrinking in size and shifting slowly eastward, the island, because of unexpected shallows, has been the scene of

Shield Fern

Also called �wood fern� any member of the fern genus Dryopteris, in the family Aspleniaceae. The genus has about 150 species with worldwide distribution, and it is placed in the family Aspidiaceae in some classification systems. Shield ferns are medium-sized woodland plants with bright-green, leathery leaves that are several times divided. They have numerous round spore clusters (sori) attached

Fischer-dieskau, Dietrich

Fischer-Dieskau studied with Georg Walter before serving in World War II and with Hermann Weissenborn afterward. In 1947 he made his concert debut in Johannes Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem at Freiburg, and the next year

Fischer-dieskau, Dietrich

Cystic fibrosis is the most common inherited disorder affecting people of European ancestry. It is estimated to occur in 1 per 2,000 live births in these populations and is particularly concentrated

Pacific Mountain System, Environmental concerns

The logging practice of clear-cutting left millions of acres of denuded mountainsides. Exposed

Aesop

The supposed author of a collection of Greek fables, almost certainly a legendary figure. Various attempts were made in ancient times to establish him as an actual personage. Herodotus in the 5th century BC said that he had lived in the 6th century and that he was a slave, and Plutarch in the 1st century AD made him adviser to Croesus, the 6th-century-BC king of Lydia. One tradition

Davidovic, Ljubomir

Entering the Serbian Parliament in 1901, Davidovic helped found the Independent Radical Party in the same year. He was elected leader of his party in 1912 and served as minister of education (1914 - 17) in Nikola Pa