SuddenFinger: February 2005

Monday, February 28, 2005

Ya-an

Established as the seat of a county under the Ch'in (221 - 206 BC) and Han (206 BC - AD 220) dynasties,

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Palade, George E.

Palade received a degree

Friday, February 25, 2005

Gauguin, Paul

In full �Eug�ne-Henri-Paul Gauguin� French painter, printmaker, and sculptor who sought to achieve a �primitive� expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work. The artist, whose work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist, Synthetist, and Symbolist, is particularly well known for his creative

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Albacete

Capital of Albacete provincia, Castile-La Mancha comunidad aut�noma (�autonomous community�), southeast-central Spain. Albacete is located in the historic La Mancha region, on the Don Juan River at its juncture with the Mar�a Cristina Canal. Of Moorish origin (Arabic: Al-Basit), it was the scene of two battles between Christians and Moors, in 1145 and 1146. Refounded in 1365 as Albacete, it

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Athanasius, Saint

Athanasius' two-part work of apologetics, Against the Heathen and The Incarnation of the Word of God, completed about 335, was the first great classic of developed Greek Orthodox theology. In Athanasius' system, the Son of God, the eternal Word through whom God made the world, entered the world in human form to lead men back to the harmony from which they had fallen away. Athanasius

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Luristan Bronze

Luristan also spelled �Lorestan, � any of the horse trappings, utensils, weapons, jewelry, belt buckles, and ritual and votive objects of bronze probably dating from roughly 1500 - 500 BC that have been excavated since the late 1920s in the Harsin, Khorramabad, and Alishtar valleys of the Zagros Mountains in the Lorestan region of western Iran, especially at the site of Tepe Sialk. Their precise origin is unknown. Scholars

Monday, February 21, 2005

Telescope, X-ray telescopes

The X-ray telescope is used to examine the shorter-wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum adjacent to the ultraviolet region. The design of this type of telescope must be radically different from that of a conventional reflector. Since X-ray photons have so much energy, they would pass right through the mirror of a standard reflector. X rays must be bounced

Sunday, February 20, 2005

Meletius Of Lycopolis

For presuming to ordain clergy and bishops for Christian

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Ryleyev, Kondraty Fyodorovich

Ryleyev came from a family of poor gentry. He served in the army, spending time in Germany, Switzerland, and France. After his return to Russia, he went to live in Voronezh province, where his impressions from abroad sharply contrasted with the

Friday, February 18, 2005

Ear Disease, Leprosy

Leprosy, seen rarely outside the tropics today, was another scourge of ancient times that sometimes affected the outer ear. It is caused by the leprosy bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae, which causes a painless, slowly progressing thickening and distortion of the affected tissues. The diagnosis is made by examining a bit of the infected tissue under a microscope and

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Vaganova, Agrippina (yakovlevna)

Ballerina and teacher who developed a technique and system of instruction based on the classic style of the Imperial Russian Ballet but which also incorporated aspects of the more vigorous, acrobatic Soviet ballet developed after the Revolution. Her pupils included such outstanding dancers as Marina

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

World War I, The First Battle of the Marne

Already on September 3, General J.-S. Gallieni, the military governor of Paris, had guessed the significance of the German 1st Army's swing inward to the Marne east of Paris. On September 4 Joffre, convinced by Gallieni's arguments, decisively ordered his whole left wing to turn about from their retreat and to begin a general offensive against the Germans' exposed right flank

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Palaic Language

Ancient Indo-European language of northwest Anatolia. Modern knowledge of the language comes from 21 passages dealing with the cult of the deity Ziparwa that appear in the cuneiform tablets found in the ruins of the Hittite archives at Bogazk�y (the ancient Hattusa, in modern Turkey). In its inflectional systems and pronoun forms, it appears to be very close to the Hittite

Monday, February 14, 2005

Switzerland, Switzerland from 1848 to the present

The turning point, then, in modern Swiss history was 1848. Before that date internal conflict was a fact of Swiss political life; since then there has been an absence of major internal crises along ethnic and religious lines, and the country has prospered. With political stability, the Swiss could spend a greater portion of their time and efforts developing industry, agriculture,

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Hungary, Ethnic and religious structure

From its inception in the 11th century, the Kingdom of Hungary was a multi-ethnic country. Major territorial changes made Hungary ethnically homogenous after World War I, however, and more than nine-tenths of the population is now ethnically Hungarian and speaks Hungarian (Magyar) as its mother tongue. The Hungarian language is classified as a member of the Ugric branch

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Wright, Sewall

Wright was educated at Lombard College, Galesburg, Ill., and at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and, after earning his doctorate in zoology at Harvard University (Sc.D., 1915), he worked as a senior animal husbandman

Friday, February 11, 2005

Columbia Encyclopedia

First published in 1935 and continuing its indirect but important relationship with Columbia University, the encyclopaedia underwent major revisions in 1950 and 1963. The fourth edition (1975), with the present title, met a crucial

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Peter Iv

Peter was the most cultivated of Spanish 14th-century kings but was also an inveterate political intriguer whose ability to dissemble was notorious. Through his voluminous correspondence, the workings of his mind are far better known than those of any contemporary Spanish

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Levi, Primo

Levi was brought up in the small Jewish community in Turin, studied at the University of Turin, and graduated summa cum laude in chemistry in 1941. Two years later he joined friends

Monday, February 07, 2005

Marrah Mountains

Arabic� Jabal Marra,� mountain range, a rugged volcanic chain extending for 100 miles (160 km) west-southwest of Al-Fashir, in west-central Sudan. The highest point of the Nile-Lake Chad watershed, the mountains reach heights of more than 10,000 feet (3,000 m). Some intermittent tributaries of the Al-'Arab River rise on the southern flanks.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Hippocrateaceae

Family of woody vines, shrubs, and trees, belonging to the order Celastrales, comprising 21 genera common in the tropics. They have simple leaves and small, greenish flowers. The genus Hippocratea has 80 or more species, including H. ovata, a high-climbing vine - in tropical America and the West Indies - with leathery, oval leaves. Salacia, with 200 species, differs from Hippocratea

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Arges

Judet (county), southern Romania. The Transylvanian Alps (Southern Carpathians) and the sub-Carpathians rise above the settlement areas that are found in intermontane valleys. The county is drained eastward by the Arges, Cotmeana, and Teleorman rivers. It was formerly included in feudal Walachia. Agricultural activities consist of vineyard and orchard cultivation

Friday, February 04, 2005

Gauge

Also called �Railway Gauge, � in railroad transportation, the width between the inside faces of running rails. Because the cost of construction and operation of a rail line is greater or less depending on the gauge, much controversy has surrounded decisions in respect to it, and a proliferation of gauges has developed throughout the world. A narrow gauge has, in addition to cost advantages, a capability

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Arabia, History Of, Ghassan

The dynasty of the Ghassanids, though often called kings, were in fact Byzantine phylarchs (native rulers of subject frontier states). They had their headquarters well within the Byzantine Empire, a little east of the Sea of Galilee at Jabiyah in the Jawlan (Golan) area; but they controlled large areas of northwestern Arabia, as far south as Yathrib, serving as a counterpoise

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Amazon Rainforest

Large, tropical rainforest occupying the drainage basin of the Amazon River and its tributaries in northern South America, and covering an area of 2,300,000 square miles (6,000,000 square km). Comprising about 40 percent of Brazil's total area, it is bounded by the Guiana Highlands to the north, the Andes Mountain Ranges to the west, the Brazilian central plateau to the south, and the Atlantic

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Term

In logic, the subject or predicate of a categorical proposition (q.v.), or statement. Aristotle so used the Greek word horos (�limit�), apparently by an analogy between the terms of a proportion and those of a syllogism. Terminus is the Latin translation of this word, used, for example, by the 5th-century Roman philosopher Boethius. Hence in medieval logic the word came to be used

SuddenFinger