Ovid

Latin in full �Publius Ovidius Naso � Roman poet noted especially for his Ars amatoria and Metamorphoses. His verse had immense influence both by its imaginative interpretations of classical myth and as an example of supreme technical accomplishment.

Yemen

Yemen held the second parliamentary election in its history on April 27, 1997. The General People's Congress (GPC) party of Pres. Ali Abdallah Salih won 187 of the 301 seats, and the Islah Party finished

Ruzicka, Leopold

While working as an assistant to the German chemist Hermann

Adams, Marian

Marian Hooper was the youngest of three children of Boston Brahmins. When her mother died, about five years after Marian was born, the children were cared for by their father, who took great pains over their education. After her marriage to the historian

Aigrette

Jeweled

China, Royal burials

The royal cemetery lay less than two miles northwest of Hsiao-t'un, at Hsi-pei-kang. The hierarchy of burials at this and other cemeteries in the area reflected the social organization of the living. Large pit tombs, some nearly 42 feet deep, were furnished with four ramps and massive grave chambers for the kings. Retainers who accompanied their lords in death lay in or near

China, Reform and upheaval

Immediately after the triple intervention, Russia succeeded in 1896 in signing a secret treaty of alliance with China against Japan, by which Russia gained the right to construct the Chinese Eastern Railway across northern Manchuria. In November 1897 the Germans seized Chiao-chou Bay in Shantung and forced China to concede them the right to build two railways in the province.

China, Prehistory

Scholarly analyses include Chi Li, The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization (1957, reprinted 1968); Kwang-chih Chang, The Archaeology of Ancient China, 4th ed., rev. and enlarged (1986), a pioneering, comprehensive synthesis based on the coverage of excavations reported to the end of 1985; David N. Keightley (ed.), The Origins of Chinese Civilization (1983), a collection of articles about environment and agriculture, cultures and peoples, and the genesis of the state; Jessica Rawson, Ancient China: Art and Archeology (1980), a study of the artistic significance of Neolithic and Bronze Age artifacts; William Watson, Cultural Frontiers in Ancient East Asia (1971), an illustrated analysis of cultural interaction; and Rukang Wu and John W. Olsen (eds.), Palaeoanthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology in the People's Republic of China (1985), an account of Chinese research on early man.

Vanadium

Vanadium was discovered

Vanadium

Usually about 18 metres (60 feet) tall but occasionally reaching 40 m, the tree has ovate, dark-green, sharp-pointed leaves about 10 centimetres long. The bark, brown at first, whitens and peels into paper-thin layers, marked by narrow horizontal pores, or lenticels. On the copper-coloured

Azores

Portuguese �in full Arquip�lago Dos A�ores, � archipelago composed of nine major islands, in the North Atlantic Ocean; they lie roughly 1,000 miles (1,600 km) west of Portugal and are a part of that nation. The islands, which have a total land area of 868 square miles (2,247 square km), are divided into three widely separated groups: the eastern group, consisting of S�o Miguel, Santa Maria, and the Formigas islets; the central, of Faial, Pico,

Ombres Chinoises

(French: �Chinese shadows�), European version of the Chinese shadow-puppet show, introduced in Europe in the mid-18th century by returning travelers. Soon adopted by French and English showmen, the form gained prominence in the shows of the French puppeteer Dominique S�raphin, who presented the first popular ombres chinoises in Paris in 1776. In 1781 he moved his show to Versailles,

Subpoena

Formal instrument issued by a court, grand jury, legislative body or committee, or duly authorized administrative agency commanding an individual to appear before it at a specific time to give testimony, oral or written, in the matter identified in the document. The subpoena is used only in common-law countries, but it is similar to the citation or vocatio in jus of

Seward

City, southern Alaska, U.S., on Kenai Peninsula, at the head of Resurrection Bay. Founded in 1903 as a supply base and ocean terminus for a railway to the Yukon Valley (since 1913, the Alaska Railroad), it was named for William H. Seward, the secretary of state who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Its ice-free port provides an important freight dock for interior Alaska. Tourism

Artaxerxes I

He was surnamed in Greek Macrocheir (�Longhand�) and in Latin Longimanus. A younger son of Xerxes I and Amestris, he was raised to the throne by the commander of the guard, Artabanus, who had murdered Xerxes. A few months later, Artaxerxes slew Artabanus in a hand-to-hand fight. His reign, though generally peaceful, was

Charles, Thomas

Educated at the dissenting academy in Carmarthen and at Jesus College, Oxford, after holding curacies in Somerset, he settled in 1783 in the neighbourhood of Bala, his wife's home. He

Vigeland, Gustav

Vigeland's parents were farmers, and he was apprenticed to a wood-carver when he was 14 years old. His first work was shown in 1889, and, though early influenced by Auguste

Medicine, Former Soviet Union

The public health services for the U.S.S.R. as a whole were directed by the Ministry of Health. The ministry, through the 15 union republic ministries of health, directed all medical institutions within its competence as well as

Davies, Peter Maxwell

Davies studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music (1952 - 56) and at Manchester University (1952 - 57) and then in Italy (1957 - 59) with the composer Goffredo Petrassi. From 1959 to 1962 he taught music at the Cirencester Grammar

Chac

Like other major Mayan gods, Chac also appeared as four gods, the Chacs. The four gods were associated with the points of the compass and their colours: white, north; red, east; black, west; and yellow,

Mountain

Most mountains and mountain ranges are parts of mountain belts that have formed where two lithospheric plates have converged and where, in most cases, they continue to converge. In effect, many mountain belts mark the boundaries of lithospheric plates, and these boundaries in turn intersect other such boundaries. Consequently, there exist very long mountain systems

Bar Kokhba

During his tour of the Eastern Empire in 131, the Roman emperor Hadrian decided upon a policy of Hellenization to integrate the Jews into the empire. Circumcision was proscribed, a Roman colony (Aelia) was founded in Jerusalem, and a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus was erected over

Ice Skating

Rintje Ritsma of The Netherlands coped with hazardous weather conditions to claim the overall title in the men's world championships at the small Italian mountain resort of Baselga di Pin� on February 11-12. Keiji Shirahata of Japan finished second, and Roberto Sighel of Italy was third. Gunda Niemann of Germany captured the women's crown at Savalen, Norway, on March 4-5, ahead

Dehmelt, Hans Georg

German-born American physicist who shared one-half of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1989 with the German physicist Wolfgang Paul. (The other half of the prize was awarded to the American physicist Norman F. Ramsey.) Dehmelt received his share of the prize for his development of the Penning trap, an electromagnetic device that can hold small numbers

Hinshelwood, Sir Cyril Norman

Hinshelwood obtained his doctorate

Ore Mountains

Czech �Kru

Dee, River

River in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, rising at an elevation above 4,000 feet (1,250 metres) in the Cairngorm Mountains and flowing for about 90 miles (145 km) east to the North Sea at Aberdeen. Its headwaters flow turbulently in highland glens set amid grouse moorland. The main valley widens below Aboyne, and the river flows through well-farmed country. The River Dee is famed for its

Hood, Raymond M(athewson)

Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the �cole des Beaux-Arts (Paris), Hood gained national recognition in 1922 when the Neo-Gothic design submitted by John Mead Howells and his associate, Hood, won first prize in the Chicago Tribune

Hyde, Douglas

Irish �Dubhighlas de Hide�; pseudonym �An Craoibh�n Aoibhinn� distinguished Gaelic scholar and writer and first president of the Republic of Ireland (�ire). He was the outstanding figure in the struggle for the preservation and extension of the Irish language from 1893, when he founded the Gaelic League (a nationalistic organization of Roman Catholics and Protestants), until

Sarcophagus

Stone coffin. The original term is of doubtful meaning; Pliny explains that the word denotes a coffin of limestone from the Troad (the region around Troy) which had the property of dissolving the body quickly (Greek sarx, �flesh�; phagein, �to eat�). This explanation is questionable; religious and folkloristic ideas may have been involved in calling a coffin a body eater. The