Wampum

Tubular shell beads that have been assembled into strings or woven into belts or embroidered ornaments, formerly used as a medium of exchange by some North American Indians. The terms wampum and wampumpeag were initially adopted by English settlers, who derived them from one of the eastern Algonquian languages; literally translated, wampumpeag means �strings

Ramathibodi I

Little is known of Ramathibodi's early career, but he is thought to have been related to the ruling family of the principality of Lop Buri and to have married the daughter of the ruler of U Thong (now Suphan Buri) in central Siam. He succeeded to the throne of U Thong in about 1347 and moved

Colfax

County, northeastern New Mexico, U.S., bordered on the north by Colorado. Its westernmost section is in the Southern Rocky Mountains and includes the Cimarron range, topped by 12,441-foot (3,782-m) Baldy Peak, and the Sangre de Cristo range, which rises to more than 10,000 feet (3,000 m) and includes the Carson National Forest. Between the two mountain ranges is Eagle Nest Lake, the county's largest body

Extraterritoriality

Also called �Exterritoriality, or Diplomatic Immunity, � in international law, the immunities enjoyed by foreign states or international organizations and their official representatives from the jurisdiction of the country in which they are present. Extraterritoriality extends to foreign states or international organizations as entities and to their heads, legations, troops in passage, war vessels, mission premises,

Ataulphus

In 412 Ataulphus led the Visigoths, who had recently sacked Rome (410), from Italy to settle in southern Gaul. Two years later he married the Roman princess Galla Placidia (sister of the emperor Honorius), who had been seized at Rome. Driven from Gaul, he retreated into Spain early

Boston, Continuous park system

When the Back Bay was nearing completion during the 1880s, the American landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (1822 - 1903) developed an imaginative and large-scale design for the city's parks. It linked the Common, Public Garden, and Commonwealth Avenue with Franklin Park in West Roxbury by way of an open park known as the Fenway, which followed the Muddy River off to Brookline

Kirishitan

Christian missionaries led by Francis Xavier entered Japan in 1549, only six years after the first Portuguese traders,

Art And Architecture, Oceanic, Aesthetics

Pacific languages seem to be deficient in terms to express appreciation of or reactions to art, apart from a few that designate the mastery of individual specialists. Little is understood, moreover, about the islanders' aesthetic concepts. Reactions to works of art seem to range from the pragmatic and rational in the secular realm to the violently emotional in the

Morand, Paul

Morand joined the diplomatic service in 1912, serving as attach� in London, Rome, Madrid, and Siam (Thailand). In his early fiction, Ouvert la nuit (1922; Open All Night), Ferm� la nuit (1923; Closed All Night), and Lewis et Ir�ne (1924; Lewis and Irene), he borrowed the cinematic techniques of rapid scene changing and transported the reader

Argentina, Drainage

The largest river basin in the area is that of the R�o de la Plata (often called the River Plate). It drains an area of some 1.6 million square miles (4.1 million square km), which includes northern Argentina, the whole of Paraguay, eastern Bolivia, most of Uruguay, and a large part of Brazil. The river is actually an estuary formed by the confluence of the Paran� and Uruguay rivers;

Cabbage Looper

Distinctive green, white-lined larva, or caterpillar, of Trichoplusia ni, of the owlet moth family Noctuidae (order Lepidoptera). Like other larvae in this family, the cabbage looper lacks the usual lepidopteran legs beneath the mid-region of the body, which therefore rises up in a loop when the tail advances while the head stands still. It is an economic pest of cabbages

North America, 30 to 2.5 million years ago

About 30 million years ago North America began to override the East Pacific Rise, an oceanic spreading ridge. This activity placed a progressively longer segment of the coast in contact with the plate west of the ridge. The western plate - which contains the Pacific Coast Ranges of California - has been moving to the northwest relative to North America along the San Andreas

Dahshur

Two of its five extant pyramids date from the 4th dynasty (c. 2575 - c. 2465 BC) and were built by King Snefru (2575 - 51). The earlier one, because

Andong

City, North Kyongsang do (province), east-central South Korea. It lies 215 miles (345 km) from the mouth of the Naktong River, at the terminus of its navigable section, near a multipurpose dam. The city has been in existence since the Three Kingdoms period (beginning c. 57 BC) under various names, and since the Koryo period (935 - 1392) it has been known by its present name. Until the end of the Choson (Yi) dynasty

Medicine, Naval and air force medicine

Naval medical services are run on lines similar to those of the army. Junior medical officers are attached to ships or to shore stations and deal with most cases of sickness in their units. When at sea, medical officers have an exceptional degree of responsibility in that they work alone, unless they are on a very large ship. In peacetime, only the larger ships carry a

Medicine, Naval and air force medicine

Naval medical services are run on lines similar to those of the army. Junior medical officers are attached to ships or to shore stations and deal with most cases of sickness in their units. When at sea, medical officers have an exceptional degree of responsibility in that they work alone, unless they are on a very large ship. In peacetime, only the larger ships carry a

Gully

Trench cut into land by the erosion of an accelerated stream of water. Various conditions make such erosion possible: the natural vegetation securing the soil may have been destroyed by human action, by fire, or by a climatic change; or an exceptional storm may send in torrents of water down the streambed. Gully erosion is closely related to intense local thunderstorms

Astoria Canyon

Submarine canyon and fan-valley system of the Pacific continental margin, off the coast of Oregon, U.S. The canyon's head is in water about 330 feet (100 m) deep, 11 miles (18 km) west of the mouth of the Columbia River. The canyon crosses the seaward half of the continental shelf in a westerly direction and trends sinuously down to the base of the continental slope and the apex of Astoria

Abraham, Karl

While serving as an assistant to the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler at the Burgh�lzi Mental Hospital in Z�rich (1904 - 07), Abraham met the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and made his initial

Wellingborough

Town and borough (district), administrative and historic county of Northamptonshire, England, situated east of Northampton along the River Nene. Wellingborough grew as a market town in the Middle Ages. After a fire in 1738, it was rebuilt on its present hill site. Wellingborough School, founded in 1595, was endowed with revenues from a suppressed medieval guild. Wellingborough's

Parakou

Town and administrative capital of Borgou province, central Benin (formerly Dahomey), West Africa. It is the terminus of the so-called Benin - Niger Railway, which was originally planned to extend to the Niger River. The railway runs northward from Cotonou, Benin's major port and commercial centre on the Gulf of Guinea, to Parakou, whence goods must be transported by road

Amol

Also spelled �Amul� town, northern Iran, on the Harhaz River. The exact date of the founding of the town is unknown and enshrouded in legend, but it is certain that there has been a town on the site since Sasanian times. During the Sasanian period, the district of Amol, together with the neighbouring district of Gilan, formed a Nestorian Christian episcopate. After the Arab conquest in the 8th century,

Sore Mouth

Also called �doby mouth, �pustular dermatitis�, or �contagious ecthyma (CE)� viral disease of sheep and goats. Blisters, pustules, ulcers, and scabs form on the lips especially but also on the face and ears. In severe cases sores form inside the mouth. Infections occur in the spring and summer and heal in about a month. Humans who work around the sheep sometimes become infected.

Vald�s Leal, Juan De Nisa

His father was Portuguese, and Vald�s Leal was educated in C�rdoba under the guidance of Antonio del Castillo and worked there until 1653. For the next few years he

Settat

City, central Morocco. Situated on the coastal plain immediately south of Casablanca, the city is the largest market centre in the fertile Chaouia coastal plain. Settat city's most notable features are a late 17th-century casbah built by the 'Alawi ruler Moulay Isma'il and a millah (traditional Jewish quarter) established in the 19th century. The city is connected by road and

Sporophyte

In certain plants and algae, nonsexual phase (or an individual representing the phase) in the alternation of generations - a phenomenon in which two distinct phases (a haploid and a diploid phase) occur in the life history of a plant, each phase producing the other. (The alternate, sexual phase is the gametophyte.) In the sporophyte phase, a diploid plant body grows and eventually

Biblical Literature, The Hellenistic period

The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek by Alexandrian Jews in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC provided opportunities for recording interpretations that were probably current in Hellenistic Judaism. Literal translations might be misleading to Greek readers; metaphors natural in Hebrew were rendered into less figurative Greek. �Walking with God� or �walking

Tanzania, Early exploration

Most of the known history of Tanganyika before the 19th century concerns the coastal area, although the interior has a number of important prehistoric sites, including the Olduvai Gorge. Trading contacts between Arabia and the East African coast existed by the 1st century AD, and there are indications of connections with India. The coastal trading centres were mainly

Furuta Oribe

After serving as a soldier Oribe was made a daimyo (feudal lord) and placed in charge of the Fushimi Castle in Kyoto. There he became the favourite pupil of the famous tea master Sen Rikyu and, after Rikyu's death in 1591, the foremost tea master in Japan. In 1615, however,

Biblical Literature, Biblical literature in the liturgy of Judaism

Because the synagogue arose in a land separated from the Jerusalem Temple with its sacrificial

Chile, Political stagnation, 1952 - 64

Various conditions explain the victory in 1952 of the former dictator Gen. Carlos Ib��ez del Campo. Under Radical rule the middle class had affirmed its political importance without injuring the economic power of the landed oligarchy, but the lower classes fell farther behind the middle and upper strata. In 1949 the vote was granted to women, and the electorate thus expanded