1344 résultats pour "first"

• Johann Sebastian Bach.

  from his duties, and even tossed him into jail for “too obstinately requesting his dismissal.” But after several weeks the duke saw it was of no use and let him go. E Köthen: 1717-1723 Bach’s new employer, Leopold, loved and understood music and could play the violin, viola da gamba, and harpsichord as well as sing bass. The prince held Bach in highregard and stood as godfather for his seventh child. Bach, in turn, named the child Leopold August in his employer’s honor. Bach later said that the...

• Mark Twain.

  father, who keeps him prisoner in an isolated cabin. The boy escapes and, together with a runaway slave, Jim, sails down the Mississippi on a raft. During their trip,Huck and Jim encounter many unusual characters, including two families involved in a senseless feud and a pair of scoundrels who swindle innocent townspeople. Theirexperiences bring about a strong friendship between the boy and the slave, but their adventures end when Jim is captured and held at the farm of Tom Sawyer’s AuntSally. W...

• Mark Twain I INTRODUCTION Mark Twain, pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), American writer and humorist, whose best work is characterized by broad, often irreverent humor or biting social satire.

  father, who keeps him prisoner in an isolated cabin. The boy escapes and, together with a runaway slave, Jim, sails down the Mississippi on a raft. During their trip,Huck and Jim encounter many unusual characters, including two families involved in a senseless feud and a pair of scoundrels who swindle innocent townspeople. Theirexperiences bring about a strong friendship between the boy and the slave, but their adventures end when Jim is captured and held at the farm of Tom Sawyer’s AuntSally. W...

• Mark Twain - USA History.

  father, who keeps him prisoner in an isolated cabin. The boy escapes and, together with a runaway slave, Jim, sails down the Mississippi on a raft. During their trip,Huck and Jim encounter many unusual characters, including two families involved in a senseless feud and a pair of scoundrels who swindle innocent townspeople. Theirexperiences bring about a strong friendship between the boy and the slave, but their adventures end when Jim is captured and held at the farm of Tom Sawyer’s AuntSally. W...

• Julius Caesar I INTRODUCTION Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), Roman general and statesman whose dictatorship was pivotal in Rome's transition from republic to empire.

  V CROSSING THE RUBICON In 52 BC, with Crassus out of the way, Pompey was made sole consul. Combined with his other powers, this gave him a formidable position. Jealous of his younger rival, he determined to break Caesar’s power. To achieve this objective, he first needed to deprive Caesar of the forces he commanded in Gaul. Pompey ordered him toreturn to Rome without his troops. To protect himself, Caesar suggested that he and Pompey both lay down their commands simultaneously, but this propos...

• Julius Caesar.

  V CROSSING THE RUBICON In 52 BC, with Crassus out of the way, Pompey was made sole consul. Combined with his other powers, this gave him a formidable position. Jealous of his younger rival, he determined to break Caesar’s power. To achieve this objective, he first needed to deprive Caesar of the forces he commanded in Gaul. Pompey ordered him toreturn to Rome without his troops. To protect himself, Caesar suggested that he and Pompey both lay down their commands simultaneously, but this propos...

• Health Insurance.

  needs services. Essentially, individuals make regular payments to the plan rather than having to pay especially large sums at any one time in the event of sudden illnessor injury. In this way, the group as a whole funds expensive treatments for those few who need them. Many people believe that in addition to providing financial stability, health insurance can promote good health. Supporters of this idea claim that by lowering thepersonal cost of services, insurance induces individuals to seek he...

• Renaissance Art and Architecture I INTRODUCTION Renaissance Composition During the Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) artists discovered new ways to help them create more realistic and compelling images.

  with reliefs, had been familiar for centuries. A Early Renaissance Sculpture Ghiberti’s Gates of ParadiseThe Gates of Paradise are bronze doors created by Italian Renaissance sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti between 1425 and 1452for the east entrance to the baptistery of the Florence Cathedral in Italy. This detail, showing Isaac and Esau, is from oneof the doors' ten panels, each of which illustrates a story from the Bible. Ghiberti endowed the scenes with volume, depth,and movement, and helped initi...

• Qur'an.

  man who profoundly influenced the history of the world. See Spread of Islam. Muhammad’s home, the Arab city of Mecca, was a major religious center and site of the revered sanctuary and shrine, the Kaaba. According to legend, the ancientreligious patriarch of the Hebrew Bible, Abraham, and his son, Ishmael, built the shrine using foundations laid by the first human being and father of humankind, Adam.During Muhammad’s years there, from about AD 570 to 622, Mecca was also an environment of spir...

• Washington, D.

  structures built according to L’Enfant’s plan. During the War of 1812, British troops set fire to the White House, destroying its interior. President James Madison and hisfamily lived in the Octagon while the White House was being rebuilt. South of the Federal Triangle is the Mall, a narrow park stretching roughly 1.6 km (1 mi) from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. Although the Mall officially endsat 14th Street, landscaped greenery extends to the Potomac. The Washington Monument, whose m...

• Segregation in the United States - U.

  acts of discrimination. Writing for the court, Justice Joseph Bradley declared: “When a man has emerged from slavery, and by the aid of beneficent legislation ... theremust be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be the special favorite of the laws, and when his rights as acitizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected.” Rather than being the “special favorites” of the law, blac...

• African American History - U.

  In their day-to-day lives, slaves and servants shared similar grievances and frequently formed alliances. Advertisements seeking the return of slaves and servants whohad run away together filled colonial newspapers. When a slave named Charles escaped in 1740, the Pennsylvania Gazette reported that two white servants, a 'Scotch man' and an Englishman, escaped with him. Sometimes interracial alliances involved violence. During Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, slaves and servants took up armsagainst Na...

• Invertebrate - biology.

  animals with a five-pointed design. They live in the sea and move with the help of tiny fluid-filled feet—another feature found nowhere else in the animal world. Zoologists recognize several different groups of worms. The phylum known as flatworms contains the simplest animals possessing heads. Nerves and sense organs areconcentrated in the head. Most flatworms are paper-thin and live in a variety of wet or damp habitats, including the digestive systems of other animals. Roundwormsrepresent anot...

• Invertebrate - biology.

  animals with a five-pointed design. They live in the sea and move with the help of tiny fluid-filled feet—another feature found nowhere else in the animal world. Zoologists recognize several different groups of worms. The phylum known as flatworms contains the simplest animals possessing heads. Nerves and sense organs areconcentrated in the head. Most flatworms are paper-thin and live in a variety of wet or damp habitats, including the digestive systems of other animals. Roundwormsrepresent anot...

• Christopher Columbus I INTRODUCTION Christopher Columbus (1451-1506), Italian-born Spanish navigator who sailed west across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a route to Asia but achieved fame by making landfall in the Americas instead.

  explorers, adventurers, entrepreneurs, merchants, and any others who saw their fortunes tied to the trade winds and ocean currents. Columbus’s brother Bartholomewworked in Lisbon as a mapmaker, and for a time the brothers worked together as draftsmen and book collectors. Later that year, Columbus set sail on a convoy loadedwith goods to be sold in northern Atlantic ports. In 1478 or 1479 Columbus met and married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, the daughter of a respected, though relatively poor, nob...

• Christopher Columbus.

  explorers, adventurers, entrepreneurs, merchants, and any others who saw their fortunes tied to the trade winds and ocean currents. Columbus’s brother Bartholomewworked in Lisbon as a mapmaker, and for a time the brothers worked together as draftsmen and book collectors. Later that year, Columbus set sail on a convoy loadedwith goods to be sold in northern Atlantic ports. In 1478 or 1479 Columbus met and married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, the daughter of a respected, though relatively poor, nob...

• Christopher Columbus.

  explorers, adventurers, entrepreneurs, merchants, and any others who saw their fortunes tied to the trade winds and ocean currents. Columbus’s brother Bartholomewworked in Lisbon as a mapmaker, and for a time the brothers worked together as draftsmen and book collectors. Later that year, Columbus set sail on a convoy loadedwith goods to be sold in northern Atlantic ports. In 1478 or 1479 Columbus met and married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, the daughter of a respected, though relatively poor, nob...

• Christopher Columbus - explorer.

  explorers, adventurers, entrepreneurs, merchants, and any others who saw their fortunes tied to the trade winds and ocean currents. Columbus’s brother Bartholomewworked in Lisbon as a mapmaker, and for a time the brothers worked together as draftsmen and book collectors. Later that year, Columbus set sail on a convoy loadedwith goods to be sold in northern Atlantic ports. In 1478 or 1479 Columbus met and married Felipa Perestrello e Moniz, the daughter of a respected, though relatively poor, nob...

• George Washington.

  A2 Promotion This was Washington’s first experience with the difficulties of raising troops while lacking equipment, clothing, and funds. Apparently he thought his efforts worthy ofsome recognition and successfully applied to Dinwiddie for a lieutenant colonel’s commission. He left Alexandria, Virginia, early in April with about 150 poorly equippedand half-trained troops. A3 First Battles Before he had advanced very far, Washington received news that the French had driven Trent’s men back from...

• George Washington

  A2 Promotion This was Washington’s first experience with the difficulties of raising troops while lacking equipment, clothing, and funds. Apparently he thought his efforts worthy ofsome recognition and successfully applied to Dinwiddie for a lieutenant colonel’s commission. He left Alexandria, Virginia, early in April with about 150 poorly equippedand half-trained troops. A3 First Battles Before he had advanced very far, Washington received news that the French had driven Trent’s men back from...

• History of Astronomy - astronomy.

  Egypt, the Sun was directly overhead at noon. On the same date and time in Alexandria, Egypt, the Sun was about 7 degrees south of zenith. With simple geometryand knowledge of the distance between the two cities, he estimated the circumference of the Earth to be 250,000 stadia. (The stadium was a unit of length, derivedfrom the length of the racetrack in an ancient Greek stadium. We have an approximate idea of how big an ancient Greek stadium was, and based on that approximationEratosthenes was...

• Telephone.

  digits is dialed. The development of inexpensive and reliable amplification provided by the introduction of the transistor in the 1960s made practical the design of adialing system based on the transmission of relatively low power tones instead of the higher-power dial pulses. Today most telephones have push buttons instead of a rotary dial. Touch-Tone is an optional service, and telephone companies still maintain the ability to receive pulsedialing. Push-button telephones usually have a switch...

• Ontario - Geography.

  governed Ontario’s initial settlement and development. The province’s most important river is the St. Lawrence. Its route was much improved and enlarged by dredgingand canal building in the mid-20th century. This enabled large ocean-going vessels to reach Great Lake ports ( see St. Lawrence Seaway). The Ottawa River was an important early route to the interior for fur traders and timber merchants. The Niagara River, because of its falls, is a great center of hydroelectric power as well as aninte...

• Ontario - Canadian History.

  governed Ontario’s initial settlement and development. The province’s most important river is the St. Lawrence. Its route was much improved and enlarged by dredgingand canal building in the mid-20th century. This enabled large ocean-going vessels to reach Great Lake ports ( see St. Lawrence Seaway). The Ottawa River was an important early route to the interior for fur traders and timber merchants. The Niagara River, because of its falls, is a great center of hydroelectric power as well as aninte...

• Abraham Lincoln I INTRODUCTION Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), 16th president of the United States (1861-1865) and one of the great leaders in American history.

  fence in 4 hectares (10 acres) to grow corn. Then he hired out to neighbors, helping them to split rails. That year, Lincoln attended a political rally and was persuaded tospeak on behalf of a local candidate. It was his first political speech. A witness recalled that Lincoln “was frightened but got warmed up and made the best speech of theday.” In 1831 Lincoln made a second trip to New Orleans. He was hired, along with his stepbrother and a cousin, by Denton Offutt, a Kentucky trader and specul...

• Abraham Lincoln.

  fence in 4 hectares (10 acres) to grow corn. Then he hired out to neighbors, helping them to split rails. That year, Lincoln attended a political rally and was persuaded tospeak on behalf of a local candidate. It was his first political speech. A witness recalled that Lincoln “was frightened but got warmed up and made the best speech of theday.” In 1831 Lincoln made a second trip to New Orleans. He was hired, along with his stepbrother and a cousin, by Denton Offutt, a Kentucky trader and specul...

• Abraham Lincoln

  fence in 4 hectares (10 acres) to grow corn. Then he hired out to neighbors, helping them to split rails. That year, Lincoln attended a political rally and was persuaded tospeak on behalf of a local candidate. It was his first political speech. A witness recalled that Lincoln “was frightened but got warmed up and made the best speech of theday.” In 1831 Lincoln made a second trip to New Orleans. He was hired, along with his stepbrother and a cousin, by Denton Offutt, a Kentucky trader and specul...

• Abraham Lincoln - USA History.

  fence in 4 hectares (10 acres) to grow corn. Then he hired out to neighbors, helping them to split rails. That year, Lincoln attended a political rally and was persuaded tospeak on behalf of a local candidate. It was his first political speech. A witness recalled that Lincoln “was frightened but got warmed up and made the best speech of theday.” In 1831 Lincoln made a second trip to New Orleans. He was hired, along with his stepbrother and a cousin, by Denton Offutt, a Kentucky trader and specul...

• Native Americans of North America.

  addition to smallpox and measles, explorers and colonists brought a host of other diseases: bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, pleurisy, mumps,diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, malaria, yellow fever, and various sexually transmitted infections. Despite the undisputed devastation wreaked on Indian populations after European contact, native populations showed enormous regional variability in their response todisease exposure. Some peoples survived and, in some cases, even...

• Native Americans of North America - Canadian History.

  addition to smallpox and measles, explorers and colonists brought a host of other diseases: bubonic plague, cholera, typhoid fever, scarlet fever, pleurisy, mumps,diphtheria, pneumonia, whooping cough, malaria, yellow fever, and various sexually transmitted infections. Despite the undisputed devastation wreaked on Indian populations after European contact, native populations showed enormous regional variability in their response todisease exposure. Some peoples survived and, in some cases, even...

• Manitoba - Geography.

  E Plant Life Forests cover 66 percent of Manitoba. The main forest area is divided into the boreal forest and the mixed-wood forest. The boreal, or northern, forest containsconiferous (cone-bearing) trees, especially white and black spruce, balsam fir, and jack pine. South of the boreal forest is the mixed-wood forest, which contains conifers as well as such deciduous trees as white birch, aspen, poplar, and Manitoba maple. Prairie land is found in the southwest, where the natural vegetation i...

• Manitoba - Canadian History.

  E Plant Life Forests cover 66 percent of Manitoba. The main forest area is divided into the boreal forest and the mixed-wood forest. The boreal, or northern, forest containsconiferous (cone-bearing) trees, especially white and black spruce, balsam fir, and jack pine. South of the boreal forest is the mixed-wood forest, which contains conifers as well as such deciduous trees as white birch, aspen, poplar, and Manitoba maple. Prairie land is found in the southwest, where the natural vegetation i...

• History of Colonial America - U.

  Despite the lack of settlement, New France prospered as a vast fur-trading enterprise. French explorers traveled deep into the North American continent seeking newsupplies of deerskins and beaver pelts. In 1673 French missionary Jacques Marquette reached the Mississippi River in present-day Wisconsin. In 1681 explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, traveled down the majestic Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. He honored the reign of King Louis XIV (1643-1715) by creating the newcolony...

• Middle Ages .

  Saints were very important in Late Antiquity. They were considered both models of virtue and powerful miracle workers. One of the most well-known saints of the periodwas Saint Anthony. Anthony gave away all his possessions and left his hometown in Egypt to live alone in the desert and pray. Anthony was one of the first Christianmonks. The word monk comes from a term meaning 'alone.' Gradually Anthony attracted followers, and he eventually became the center of a whole community of monks who wis...

• Ottoman Empire .

  fleets at Suez, Egypt; though the Portuguese were not expelled, Selim did manage to prevent the establishment of a total Portuguese monopoly over the spice trade. Selim I died in 1520 after having spent most of his short reign on matters pertaining to the east. His son and successor Süleyman I (reigned 1520-1566) again turnedthe attention of the Ottomans to the west. In August 1521 Süleyman, later known as Süleyman the Magnificent, opened the road to Hungary by capturing Belgrade, aHungarian str...

• Ottoman Empire - History.

  fleets at Suez, Egypt; though the Portuguese were not expelled, Selim did manage to prevent the establishment of a total Portuguese monopoly over the spice trade. Selim I died in 1520 after having spent most of his short reign on matters pertaining to the east. His son and successor Süleyman I (reigned 1520-1566) again turnedthe attention of the Ottomans to the west. In August 1521 Süleyman, later known as Süleyman the Magnificent, opened the road to Hungary by capturing Belgrade, aHungarian str...

• Greek Art and Architecture - history.

  powerful independent city-states. From 334 to 323 BC, Alexander the Great extended his father's empire into Asia Minor (now Turkey), Syria, Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan, and as far as India. D The Hellenistic Period (323-31 BC) Although Alexander the Great extended Greek civilization far beyond the Greek mainland and the boundaries of the Aegean Sea, his empire did not survive his death in 323.After Alexander died, his generals and successors divided the empire into a number of kingdoms: Ptolem...

• Cambodia - country.

  The population of Cambodia is 14,241,640 (2008 estimate). Population growth per year is estimated at 1.8 percent, one of the highest rates in Asia. The rate of infantmortality is also high. The population density is 81 persons per sq km (209 per sq mi), with the densest concentrations on the heavily cultivated central plain. Themountainous regions of the country, where malaria is widespread, are thinly populated, as are the poorly watered northern provinces. During the late 1970s, under thebruta...

• The Four-Minute Mile.

  The nervous runners false-started once before setting off cleanly. As planned, Chris Brasher led Bannister through the first half-mile. After a half lap (200 meters),Bannister called out to his teammate: “Faster! Faster!” Accelerating, the runners sped through the first quarter-mile in 57.5 seconds-ahead of pace. At 600 meters,Stampfl shouted from the infield: “Relax! Relax!” Running smoothly behind Brasher, Bannister reached the half-mile mark in 1 min 58.2 sec. Chataway sprinted into the l...

• Fiji Islands - country.

  the early 1990s. Fishing is done mainly at a subsistence level, but commercial fishing is increasing. The country also receives income from the sale of licenses to foreignvessels to fish in Fiji’s exclusive economic zone. Industry, including mining, manufacturing, and construction, employs 34 percent of Fiji’s wage earners and, in 2006, contributed 26 percent of GDP. The governmentinstituted tax-free incentives in 1988 that created a flourishing garment industry. Ready-made garments are now the...

• Bill of Rights - history.

  being indicted (formally accused) by a grand jury. Second, a criminal suspect may be prosecuted only once for each crime. If a jury acquits the accused person, there can beno retrial. Third, a person cannot be forced to testify against himself or herself in any criminal case. This is the right against self-incrimination. Fourth, the due process clausebars the government from arbitrarily depriving anyone of life, liberty, or property. Fifth, the government may not take anyone’s private property u...

• Alphabet I INTRODUCTION Bengali Script India developed a number of different writing systems over the course of its history.

  A Pictographic and Ideographic Systems Early systems of writing used pictures to represent things and then to represent the sounds of those things. Pictographic writing, in which a simplified picture of the sunstood for the word sun, was probably the first step toward a written language. Chinese began as a pictographic language. To represent abstract ideas, the Chinese writing system combined pictographs. For example, the pictographs for sun and tree were combined to represent the concept of...

• Asteroid - astronomy.

  Asteroids of the S type, related to the stony iron meteorites, make up about 15 percent of the total population of asteroids that can be seen from Earth. Much rarer arethe M-type objects, corresponding in composition to the meteorites known as “irons.” These objects are made up of an iron-nickel alloy and may represent the cores ofbodies that were large enough to differentiate into layers and to melt deep inside. Their rocky outer layers may have been removed by impacts with other asteroids . A...

• Slavery in the United States - U.

  tripled, from about 1.2 million to almost 4 million in 1860. The natural growth of the slave population meant that slavery could survive without new slave imports. Natural population growth also hastened the transition from an African to an African American slave population. By the 1770s, only about 20 percent of slaves in thecolonies were African-born, although the concentration of Africans remained higher in South Carolina and Georgia. After 1808 the proportion of African-born slavesbecame tin...

• Criminal Procedure.

  B State Criminal Procedure A person prosecuted in the courts of a particular state on a charge of violating the criminal laws of that state is subject to state criminal procedure. State criminalprocedure is found in the constitution, statutes, rules, and judicial decisions of that state. Furthermore, portions of the U.S. Constitution are applicable to state criminaldefendants. State constitutions generally guarantee a state criminal defendant most of the same rights that a federal defendant is...

• Genetic Engineering.

  Pseudomonas fluorescens bacterium. The genetically altered Pseudomonas fluorescens bacterium produces light in proportion to the amount of its activity in breaking down the naphthalene, thus providing a way to monitor the efficiency of the process ( see Bioremediation). A3 Medicine In 1982 the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for the first time the medical use of a recombinant DNA protein, the hormone insulin, whichhad been cloned in large quantities by inserting th...

• Herbert Hoover.

  E Postwar Work Even after the armistice, the Allies continued their blockade around Germany. Hoover, in Europe again, worked to have it relaxed. He was appointed chairman of theAmerican Relief Administration to assist in the economic restoration of Europe, receiving from the U.S. Congress $100 million to fight famine and plague. In this officialrole, and afterward as a private citizen, Hoover oversaw the distribution of 46 million tons of food to people in 30 countries. He controlled shipping,...

• Herbert Hoover

  E Postwar Work Even after the armistice, the Allies continued their blockade around Germany. Hoover, in Europe again, worked to have it relaxed. He was appointed chairman of theAmerican Relief Administration to assist in the economic restoration of Europe, receiving from the U.S. Congress $100 million to fight famine and plague. In this officialrole, and afterward as a private citizen, Hoover oversaw the distribution of 46 million tons of food to people in 30 countries. He controlled shipping,...

• James Polk.

  1824. Jackson had won a plurality of the popular and electoral votes. But because he lacked a majority of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives had todecide the election among the three candidates with the highest number of electoral votes. When Henry Clay, the candidate who had come in fourth, swung his supportto Adams, Adams won the election. Polk, with his firm belief in democratic rule, held that the election of Adams was a violation of the people's will. In his first speech befo...

• James Polk

  1824. Jackson had won a plurality of the popular and electoral votes. But because he lacked a majority of the electoral votes, the House of Representatives had todecide the election among the three candidates with the highest number of electoral votes. When Henry Clay, the candidate who had come in fourth, swung his supportto Adams, Adams won the election. Polk, with his firm belief in democratic rule, held that the election of Adams was a violation of the people's will. In his first speech befo...