681 résultats pour "history"
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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...
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Glacier.
covered. In spring the snow cover begins to melt in the lower reaches, exposing the ice surface. As temperatures increase, the melting moves up the glacier. Thesnowline is the highest position the melting reaches during the year. Firn is old granular snow. The firn limit may not exactly coincide with the annual snowline since insome years rapid melting leaves behind firn patches below the snowline. Some glaciers exhibit features called ice streams and icefalls. Ice streams are valley glaciers th...
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Anatomy.
The body defends itself against foreign proteins and infectious microorganisms by means of a complex dual system that depends on recognizing a portion of the surfacepattern of the invader. The two parts of the system are termed cellular immunity, in which lymphocytes are the effective agent, and humoral immunity, based on theaction of antibody molecules. When particular lymphocytes recognize a foreign molecular pattern (termed an antigen), they release antibodies in great numbers; other lymphocy...
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Alcoholism.
Although a consensus is growing among health professionals that alcohol dependence is a disease, society’s attitudes toward individuals with drinking problems remainambivalent and confused. Until the mid-20th century, the typical picture of the alcoholic was of someone without steady employment, unable to sustain familyrelationships and most likely in desperate financial straits. But this stereotype was largely dispelled when highly respected people publicly admitted their alcoholdependence and...
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Mexican War.
men, mostly Mexicans, rode to Nacogdoches to capture the rebellious Fredonians. The small garrison of Fredonians soundly defeated their attackers in the only battle ofthe rebellion. When Mexican troops arrived at Nacogdoches a short time later, the republic had been dissolved and the leader of the colonists had fled to Louisiana. B The Texas Revolution Although the Fredonians were not successful, by the 1830s the population of Mexican Texas included many immigrants from the United States. These...
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India - country.
delta in the north, are intensely farmed. B Rivers and Lakes The rivers of India can be divided into three groups: the great Himalayan rivers of the north, the westward-flowing rivers of central India, and the eastward-flowingrivers of the Deccan Plateau and the rest of peninsular India. Only small portions of India’s rivers are navigable because of silting and the wide seasonal variation inwater flow (due to the monsoon climate). Water transport is thus of little importance in India. Barrages,...
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Criminal Punishment.
In the United States and Canada, younger offenders may be sentenced to highly regimented, military-style correctional programs known as boot camps. Generally,offenders volunteer to participate in boot camp programs to avoid other types of incarceration. At boot camps, officials subject offenders to strict discipline and physicaltraining. They also provide educational or vocational programs. Boot camps serve as an alternative to traditional, long-term incarceration and attempt to train offenderst...
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China - country.
North China lies between the Mongolian Steppe on the north and the Yangtze River Basin on the south. It stretches west from the Bo Hai gulf and the Yellow Sea to theeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Administratively, North China includes Beijing and Tianjin municipalities; Shandong and Shanxi provinces; most of Hebei, Henan,and Shaanxi provinces; and portions of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and of Jiangsu, Anhui, and Gansu provinces. Humans have lived in the agriculturally rich region of Nor...
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African Literature
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INTRODUCTION
African Literature, oral and written literature produced on the African continent.
that few scholars of African culture know any African languages, and few Africans know an African language other than their own. The best-known literatures in Africanlanguages include those in Yoruba and Hausa in West Africa; Sotho, Xhosa, and Zulu in southern Africa; and Amharic, Somali, and Swahili in East Africa. In West Africa, Yoruba writing emerged after Bishop Ajayi Crowther, a former slave, developed a script for the language and in 1900 published the first Yorubatranslation of the Bible...
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St. Louis (city) - geography.
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INTRODUCTION
St. Louis (city) or Saint Louis,
Between 1940 and 1990 the black population in metropolitan St. Louis nearly tripled. Blacks are most heavily concentrated in three areas in the St. Louis metropolitanregion: East Saint Louis, the North Side close to downtown, and an east-west belt extending from the waterfront to beyond Forest Park. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, areas to the north and south of the central business district were settled by immigrant working families from Germany, Ireland,and many Eastern European countrie...
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John F.
by the United States, was unable to withstand the advance of Communist forces under Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung). By the end of 1949 government troops had beenoverwhelmingly defeated, and Chiang led his forces into exile on Taiwan. The triumphant Mao formed the People’s Republic of China. Truman’s critics, includingKennedy, charged that the administration had failed to support Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists. Kennedy easily won reelection to Congress in 1948 and 1950. In 1952 he decided to r...
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Martin Van Buren.
political ambitions. The Clintonians cited as one example of Van Buren's unscrupulous methods his support of a convention in 1821 to revise the state's constitution. Van Buren and hisBucktails said they wanted to make the constitution more democratic. The Clintonians retorted that the real aim was to oust them from office. Both sides were right. Therevised constitution introduced a needed extension of voting rights and improved the operation of the state government. However, it also removed many...
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Martin Van Buren
political ambitions. The Clintonians cited as one example of Van Buren's unscrupulous methods his support of a convention in 1821 to revise the state's constitution. Van Buren and hisBucktails said they wanted to make the constitution more democratic. The Clintonians retorted that the real aim was to oust them from office. Both sides were right. Therevised constitution introduced a needed extension of voting rights and improved the operation of the state government. However, it also removed many...
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Blacks in Latin America.
Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean the slave population declined at the astonishing rate of 2 to 4 percent a year; thus, by the time slavery was abolished, theoverall slave population in many places was far less than the total number of slaves imported. The British colony of Jamaica, for example, imported more than 600,000slaves during the 18th century; yet, in 1838, the slave population numbered little more than 300,000. The French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti)imported mo...
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Georgia (country) - country.
1917. During the subsequent Soviet period, religious practice was strongly discouraged because the Soviet state was officially atheistic; however, the GeorgianOrthodox Church was allowed to function openly. Orthodox Christianity is the religion of about 58 percent of the Georgian population. Muslims represent about 19 percent of the country’s population, with ethnicAzerbaijanis, Kurds, and Ajars comprising the principal Muslim groups. Ajars are ethnic Georgians who converted to Islam in the 17th...
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California - geography.
The Basin and Range province is an arid area of mountain ranges, basins, and deserts. In California it is represented primarily by parts of the Great Basin and SonoranDesert sections. Within the Great Basin lies Death Valley, whose lowest elevation, 86 m (282 ft) below sea level, is the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere. TheSonoran Desert section is characterized by numerous flat plains separated by low but rugged ranges. It includes the extensive Mojave, or Mohave, Desert. Also in thisprov...
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New York - geography.
The Adirondack province consists of a large highland area occupying 26,000 sq km (10,000 sq mi) in the northeastern quarter of the state. The region is domelike inshape, with the higher elevations toward the east. The western Adirondack province is more a rugged hill region and not truly mountainous. Geologically, this area isrelated to the Laurentian Upland, or Canadian Shield, which lies north of the St. Lawrence River, for it is composed of the same very old igneous rocks, principallygranite...
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Adolf Hitler
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INTRODUCTION
Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), German political and military leader and one of the 20th century's most powerful dictators.
A Economic Collapse At the end of World War I, the Allies (those countries who had fought against Germany) had demanded that Germany pay reparations—that is, payments for wardamages. The government refused to pay all that was demanded by the Allies. When Germany failed to pay enough, France and Belgium occupied the coal mines in theRuhr industrial area in west central Germany in January 1923. In protest, the German government halted all reparation payments and called for passive resistance by a...
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Adolf Hitler.
A Economic Collapse At the end of World War I, the Allies (those countries who had fought against Germany) had demanded that Germany pay reparations—that is, payments for wardamages. The government refused to pay all that was demanded by the Allies. When Germany failed to pay enough, France and Belgium occupied the coal mines in theRuhr industrial area in west central Germany in January 1923. In protest, the German government halted all reparation payments and called for passive resistance by a...
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Adolf Hitler .
A Economic Collapse At the end of World War I, the Allies (those countries who had fought against Germany) had demanded that Germany pay reparations—that is, payments for wardamages. The government refused to pay all that was demanded by the Allies. When Germany failed to pay enough, France and Belgium occupied the coal mines in theRuhr industrial area in west central Germany in January 1923. In protest, the German government halted all reparation payments and called for passive resistance by a...
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Federal Republic of Germany - country.
B Rivers and Lakes Rivers have played a major role in Germany’s economic development. The Rhine River flows in a northwesterly direction from Switzerland through much of westernGermany and The Netherlands into the North Sea. It is a major European waterway and a pillar of commerce and trade. Its primary German tributaries include theMain, Mosel, Neckar, and Ruhr rivers. The Oder (Odra) River, along the border between Poland and Germany, runs northward and empties into the Baltic; it provides an...
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Wars of Yugoslav Succession.
of Yugoslav succession was over. In January 1992 members of the European Community (EC; after 1993 the European Union, EU) recognized Slovenia’s independencealong with that of Croatia. The United States and other countries did so shortly thereafter. IV THE WAR IN CROATIA As the Yugoslav army withdrew from Slovenia in July 1991, a second and far more serious conflict erupted in Croatia. But the road to war in Croatia began more than ayear earlier. In April and May 1990 the Croatian Democratic U...
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Wars of Yugoslav Succession .
of Yugoslav succession was over. In January 1992 members of the European Community (EC; after 1993 the European Union, EU) recognized Slovenia’s independencealong with that of Croatia. The United States and other countries did so shortly thereafter. IV THE WAR IN CROATIA As the Yugoslav army withdrew from Slovenia in July 1991, a second and far more serious conflict erupted in Croatia. But the road to war in Croatia began more than ayear earlier. In April and May 1990 the Croatian Democratic U...
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Stone Age.
limestone, quartzite, and indurated shale. Ground stone tools could be made on a wider range of raw material types, including coarser grained rock such as granite. Flaking produces several different types of stone artifacts, which archaeologists look for at prehistoric sites. The parent pieces of rock from which chips have beendetached are called cores, and the chips that have been removed from cores are called flakes. A flake that has had yet smaller flakes removed from one or more edgesin orde...
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Prison.
Furthermore, experts disagree about whether imprisoning criminals actually prevents further crime. Some critics charge that American prisons simply warehouseviolence—meaning that U.S. prison inmates are confined and incapacitated in large numbers, with little or no effort made to rehabilitate them. Critics have labeled theresult of this process turnstile justice, referring to the fact that most inmates are chronic and persistent offenders and return to prison following conviction for new crime...
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Africa.
The highest elevations in Africa are found in the various ranges of East Africa. After Kilimanjaro, the next highest peaks are Mount Kenya (5,199 m/17,057 ft), north ofKilimanjaro in central Kenya; Margherita Peak (5,109 m/ 16,762 ft) in the Ruwenzori Range on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC); Ras Dashen (4,620 m/ 15,157 ft) in the Ethiopian Highlands of northern Ethiopia; Mount Meru (4,565 m/ 14,977 ft), close to Kilimanjaro in Tanzania; and MountElgon (4,...
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Constitution of the United States.
chief executive should have the power to veto legislation, should be elected by Congress or the people, should be eligible to run for reelection, and should command thearmed forces. Some delegates even hoped for a limited monarchy. Not until September 8, more than three months after the convention started, did the final shape ofthe presidency emerge: a single leader, elected to a four-year term and eligible for reelection, with authority to veto bills enacted by Congress. The president was alsog...
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France - country.
In both the Paris and Aquitaine basins, fertile soils derived from limestone and wind-deposited dust, called loess, have supported prosperous agriculture since ancienttimes. Other lowlands in France are scattered and relatively small. They include the Alsace Plain in the east, bordering Germany, the valley of the Rhône River in thesoutheast, and the Languedoc Plain along the Mediterranean coast. A2 Uplands France contains several regions of uplands, the worn down remains of ancient mountain sys...
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Israel (country) - country.
harbor in the northern part of the country, and Ashdod, an artificial deepwater port to the south, serve as the main seaports on the Mediterranean. The port of Elat onthe Gulf of Aqaba provides Israel’s only access to the Red Sea, making it extremely important to the country’s shipping interests. D Natural Resources Although much of Israel’s desert regions contain poor soils, the northern Negev, the coastal plains, and the interior valleys provide patches of productive soils. Anestimated 18 per...
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Alaska - geography.
depression surrounded by highlands and have the coldest winter and hottest summer temperatures in Alaska. Once the Kuskokwim River passes through theKuskokwim Mountains, it forms the southern edge of a vast lake-studded alluvial plain bounded on the north by the Yukon River. This water-logged lowland is a majorsummer nesting area for birds. Fairbanks is the major city in this region, while Fort Yukon is the major community in the Yukon Flats and Bethel the largest settlementon the Lower Kuskokwi...