Mollendo

City, Arequipa departamento and regi�n, Peru, on the Pacific coast. Founded in 1872, its site was chosen by the American engineer Henry Meiggs, builder of the Arequipa-Mollendo Railroad. Additional rail connections to local mines and to Puno and Lake Titicaca, supplemented by its artificial harbour and the Pan-American Highway, have made Mollendo an export-import point

Assault Rifle

Military firearm that is chambered for ammunition of reduced size or propellant charge and that has the capacity to switch between semiautomatic and fully automatic fire. Because they are light and portable yet still able to deliver a high volume of fire with reasonable accuracy at modern combat ranges of 300 - 500 m (1,000 - 1,600 feet), assault rifles have replaced the high-powered

M�laga

Port city and capital of M�laga provincia, in the comunidad aut�noma (�autonomous community�) of Andalusia, southern Spain. It lies along a wide bay of the Mediterranean Sea at the mouth of the Guadalmedina River in the centre of the Costa del Sol. It was founded by the Phoenicians in the 12th century BC, conquered successively by the Romans and the Visigoths, and taken by the

Aquino, Corazon

Corazon Cojuangco was born into a wealthy, politically prominent family based in Tarlac province, north of Manila. She graduated from Mount St. Vincent College in New York City in 1954 but abandoned further

Aquino, Corazon

Corazon Cojuangco was born into a wealthy, politically prominent family based in Tarlac province, north of Manila. She graduated from Mount St. Vincent College in New York City in 1954 but abandoned further

Culverin

The culverin was adapted to field use by the French in the mid-15th century and to naval use by the English in the late 16th century. During the 17th century, cannons were classified according to the weight of projectiles fired, and

Abu Ruwaysh

Also spelled �Abu Roash, �

Liberation, Union Of

The Union of Liberation gave expression

Victor (iv)

Made cardinal by Pope Innocent II in 1138, he was elected by a minority of cardinals in September 1159, while, concurrently, a majority elected Alexander

Scandinavian Literature, Prose

Iceland's adoption of Christianity in 1000 opened the way for powerful influences from western Europe. Missionaries taught Icelanders the Latin alphabet, and they soon began to study in the great schools of Europe. One of the first was �sleifr, who after being educated and ordained as a priest was consecrated bishop. His school at Sk�lholt in southern Iceland was for

Shamanism

I.M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, 2nd ed. (1989), provides an excellent introduction. A thorough description of the shamanism of the peoples of Siberia is given in M.A. Czaplicka, Aboriginal Siberia (1914, reissued 1969); and Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy, rev. and enlarged ed. (1964, reissued 1989; originally published in French, 1951), with an extensive bibliography. Eliade's work not only deals with phenomena in Central and North Asia but also in North and South America, Southeast Asia, and Oceania; especially useful are the chapters on �Shamanic Ideologies and Techniques Among the Indo-Europeans� and �Shamanic Symbolisms and Techniques in Tibet, China, and the Far East.� Uno Holmberg, Finno-Ugric, Siberian, vol. 4 in Louis Herbert Gray and George Foot Moore, The Mythology of All Races (1927, reissued 1964), describes shamanism among these peoples. A very thorough summary of the worldview and specific traits of shamanism in North Asia, based on a good knowledge of literature on the subject in Russian, may be found in Georg Nioradze, Der Schamanismus bei den sibirischen V�lkern (1925); and the traits considered most significant are discussed by �ke Ohlmarks, Studien zum Problem des Schamanismus (1939). V. Di�szegi (ed.), Popular Beliefs and Folklore Tradition in Siberia (1968; originally published in German, 1963), contains studies on the shamanistic conceptions of the Sami, Hungarian, and Siberian peoples. Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer, Shamanism: Soviet Studies of Traditional Religion in Siberia and Central Asia (1990), summarizes contemporary Soviet research. Several studies explore Latin American shamanism. Jon Christopher Crocker, Vital Souls: Bororo Cosmology, Natural Symbolism, and Shamanism (1985), demonstrates the intimate relationship between social structure generally - and the structure of the village community in particular - and cosmological symbolism and analyzes the role of the shaman in conserving both the social and the cosmic order; this important study also challenges psychological approaches to the study of shamanism, which focus on the shaman's apparent psychological abnormality, and analyzes the larger social forces that are gradually destroying Bororo shamanism, and with it Bororo culture in general. Johannes Wilbert, Tobacco and Shamanism in South America (1987), examines both the pharmacological and the social aspects of nicotine use by the Warao shamans of Venezuela. A fascinating scholarly and artistic exploration of hallucinogenic medicine is found in Luis Eduardo Luna and Pablo Amaringo, Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman (1991), produced through a unique partnership between a professional anthropologist and a practicing Peruvian shaman. Women's roles in Korean shamanism are explored in Laurel Kendall, Shamans, Housewives, and Other Restless Spirits: Women in Korean Ritual Life (1985), while The Life and Hard Times of a Korean Shaman (1988) chronicles the shamanic career of one South Korean woman through extensive use of her own words and stories and thereby examines the recent social history of South Korea through an interesting lens. David Lan, Guns

Rubbia, Carlo

Italian physicist who in 1984 shared with Simon van der Meer the Nobel Prize for Physics for the discovery of the massive, short-lived subatomic W particle and Z particle. These particles are the carriers of the so-called weak force involved in the radioactive decay of atomic nuclei. Their existence strongly confirms the validity of the electroweak

Voyageurs National Park

Region of lakes and wilderness in northern Minnesota, U.S. The park lies along the Canadian border, east of International Falls. Authorized in 1971 and established in 1975, it was named for the mostly French Canadian frontiersmen called voyageurs (French: �travelers�), who were involved in fur trading in the area in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The voyageurs used large birch

Davies, Emily

Educated at home, Davies joined the campaign for the emancipation of women with

Visser 't Hooft, Willem Adolph

Visser 't Hooft was educated at the Haarlem Gymnasium and prepared for the ministry of the Netherlands Reformed Church at the University of Leiden. His long career as a leader of Christian organizations began with the post of

Clampitt, Amy

After graduating from Grinnell College (B.A., 1941), Clampitt worked as a reference librarian and as an editor, publishing her first book of poetry, Multitudes, Multitudes (1973), at her own expense. Her first full-length collection was The

Astrology

Type of divination that involves the forecasting of earthly and human events through the observation and interpretation of the fixed stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the planets. Devotees believe that an understanding of the influence of the planets and stars on earthly affairs allows them to both predict and affect the destinies of individuals, groups, and nations.

Astrology

Type of divination that involves the forecasting of earthly and human events through the observation and interpretation of the fixed stars, the Sun, the Moon, and the planets. Devotees believe that an understanding of the influence of the planets and stars on earthly affairs allows them to both predict and affect the destinies of individuals, groups, and nations.

Maine De Biran, Marie-fran�ois-pierre

After defending King Louis XVI at

Switzerland, Social welfare

Public welfare services have developed in a typically federalistic way: first in the communes, then in the cantons, and later in the confederation. Support for the indigent remains mainly a communal task, sometimes in cooperation with the cantons; this poses particular budgetary problems for cities and small rural communities, which have the highest poverty rates.

Indo-european Languages

Family of languages spoken in most of Europe and areas of European settlement and in much of Southwest and South Asia. The term Indo-Hittite is used by scholars who believe that Hittite and the other Anatolian languages are not just one branch of Indo-European but rather a branch coordinate with all the rest put together; thus, Indo-Hittite has been used for a family

Palatinate

German �Pfalz � in German history, the lands of the count palatine, a title held by a leading secular prince of the Holy Roman Empire. Geographically, the Palatinate was divided between two small territorial clusters: the Rhenish, or Lower, Palatinate and the Upper Palatinate. The Rhenish Palatinate included lands on both sides of the middle Rhine River between its Main and Neckar

West Allis

City, western suburb of Milwaukee, Milwaukee county, southeastern Wisconsin, U.S. Settlement began in 1880 when a station was established there by the Chicago and North Western Railway and named North Greenfield. It was renamed West Allis in 1902 when the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company, manufacturers of heavy machinery, purchased a site of 100 acres (40 hectares) near the village

Saint Catharines

City, Regional Municipality of Niagara, southeastern Ontario, Canada, on the south shore of Lake Ontario, at the entrance to the Welland Ship Canal. Named after the first wife of Robert Hamilton, member of the first legislative council of Upper Canada, it has grown from a small settlement established in 1790 to become the centre of the Niagara fruit belt and the largest city

Ancillon, Johann Peter Friedrich

Educated in Geneva, Ancillon acquired a chair in history at the Berlin Military Academy in 1792. After the publication of Tableau des r�volutions

Ashurbanipal

Also spelled �Assurbanipal, or Asurbanipal � last of the great kings of Assyria (reigned 668 to 627 BC), who assembled in Nineveh the first systematically organized library in the ancient Middle East.

Bartoli, Daniello

Bartoli entered the Society of Jesus in 1623 and wrote the well-known and frequently translated L'uomo di lettere difeso ed emendato (1645; The Learned Man Defended and Reformed). In addition to writing a history of the Jesuits in Italian, Istoria della Compagnia

Hyattsville

City, Prince George's county, central Maryland, U.S., a northeastern residential suburb of Washington, D.C., at the head of the Anacostia River. Settled about the time of the American Civil War as Hart, it was renamed at its incorporation (1886) for its founder, Christopher Clarke Hyatt. In 1892 it became the first community to adopt the controversial single-tax system of providing public

Chehab, Fuad

Chehab received a military education in Syria and France and served with French mandatory forces in Syria after World War I. In 1945 he became commander of the Lebanese

P�ez

The P�ez inhabit the high mountains and plateaus. Their chief crop is potatoes, and many also grow such nontraditional crops as wheat and coffee. Each family farms its own land, but the lands of

Elda

City, Alicante province, in the autonomous community (region) of Valencia, southeastern Spain, northwest of Alicante city. Of ancient origin, Elda was called Idella by the Iberians, early peoples of Spain. The city first achieved importance under the Moors, who occupied it in the 8th century and built a castle (ruins remain); it was re-Christianized by James I of Aragon in