FROM THE EDITORS OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
Revised and Expanded Edition
Britannica
CONCISE
ENCYCLOPEDIA
Britannica
Britanrrica
CONCISE
ENCYCLOPEDIA
Front cover: (clockwise from top row, left) Vincenzo Pinto—AFP/Getty Images; Toni Angermayer; Hans Hinz, Basel; Sean Gallup/Getty Images; courtesy of the Schmuckmuseum, Pforzheim, Germany, John F. Shrawder/Shostal. Back cover: NASA/JPL;Goodshoot/Jupiterimages;Pramod Chandra; Anthony Mercieca from The National Audubon Society Collection/Photo Researchers; J.C. Allen and Son; Stephen Collins—Photo Researchers.
Britannica
CONCISE
ENCYCLOPEDIA
ENCYCLOPAEDIA
Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
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Britannica
CONCISE
ENCYCLOPEDIA
Encyclopaedia Britannica
First published in 1768, the Encyclopaedia Britannica has long been the standard by which all other reference works are judged. It represents a tradition of excellence that was built, over the centuries, on meticulous scholarship and unmatched attention to detail. Today, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., produces a range of fine products for reference, education, and learning in different media and in many different languages. Wherever you see the Britannica name—in print, on the Internet, CD-ROM, or DVD—it is your guarantee of quality, accuracy, and authority.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2006921235 International Standard Book Number-13: 978-1-59339-492-9
The original edition of this book, created in conjunction with Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, was published in 2000 as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Encyclopedia.
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Contents
V
Foreword vi
Explanatory Notes vii
Abbreviations ix
Pronunciation Symbols x
Guide to Plates and Map Legend xi
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia 1
Encyclopaedia Britannica Corporate Page 2115
Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff 2116
ENCYCLOPEDIA
Britannica
Foreword
T he need for information and the craving for knowledge are timeless and univer¬ sal. The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia satisfies the essence of both these needs. This volume represents the distillation of essential information into a compact and eminently useful single volume.
This latest version of Britannica Concise Encyclopedia answers today's need for a portable, convenient ref¬ erence work covering history, geography, the sci¬ ences, religion, sports, entertainment, technology, and the arts. We hope it will become a favourite source for helping students with their homework, for background to news events, for writers and crossword-puzzle enthusiasts, for solving disputes, and for random browsing.
This printing of Britannica Concise Encyclopedia has been broadly revised. Among the 2.8 million words that make up the nearly 28,000 entries are many new titles and many that have been updated. In the 16-page colour plates section, you will find the
newest versions of national flags as well as a world map, maps of world religions and popula¬ tion characteristics, a selection of World Heritage sites, and a useful world map depicting interna¬ tional time zones. More than 30 tables catalog everything from Nobel Prize winners to chemical elements to popes to the International System of Units of measurement and their U.S. equivalents. Many of the more than 190 maps have been revised, and all of the more than 150 illustrations have been redrawn. The more than 2,000 photo¬ graphs enhance both the appearance and content of Britannica Concise.
The editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica are proud to present the Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. We hope that you will consult it often and that it will both satisfy your immediate need for information and lead you to the in-depth information of the 40 million words of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Creating the highest level of reference works has been our goal for 238 years, and we are pleased to welcome you to the Britannica family.
Anita Wolff Editor
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
VII
Explanatory Notes
Alphabetization. The articles are alphabetized word by word, with further alphabetizing letter by letter within a word. A "word" is here defined as a unit of one or more characters set off from other words by spaces, dashes, hyphens, or other symbols. Entry titles consisting of more than one word are arranged in alphabetical order of the succeeding words. Titles with identical spellings are arranged in the order (1) persons, (2) places, and (3) things. The following list illustrates the word-by-word principle:
horn
Horn, Cape Horn of Africa hornbill Horne, Lena horned toad Hornsby, Rogers
Further alphabetization rules include the follow¬ ing: (1) Diacritics, apostrophes, dashes, periods, and ampersands are ignored in alphabetization. (2) Names of monarchs and popes that are identical except for the Roman numeral following the name are ordered numerically. (3) Names beginning with Mac- and Me- are ordered literally, all names begin¬ ning with Mac- preceding (by a number of pages) all names beginning with Me-. (4) Entry headwords beginning with numbers are alphabetized as if they were spelled out.
Entry headword style. Variant spellings or ver¬ sions of the encyclopedia's entry headwords are printed in boldface type when they are in common use; more obscure variants are printed in ordinary roman type. No effort has been made to be exhaus¬ tive in listing variants.
Several italicized terms are used to discriminate among the variants. The label or simply indicates a common alternative name or spelling. The label orig. precedes the birth name of a person who is entered under a name that was adopted or acquired subsequently. When a person's original surname is different from the name in the principal headword, the entire birth name is given, not enclosed in parentheses. The label known as precedes a common way of referring to a person that may never have had formal status. The label formerly indicates an
older and generally discarded name for an entity, usually a geographical locale. The label officially indicates a formal or legal version of a name. The label in full precedes a fully spelled-out version of a name that is usually encountered in its shorter form. A label consisting of a language name pre¬ cedes a native version or spelling of a name or term.
Biographical entry headwords in particular may employ parentheses in several ways. Parentheses may enclose portions of a person's name that are rarely used, a person's original given name or names, a later addition such as a title, or transla¬ tions of titles or epithets.
drum or croaker Odin or Wotan
Bacall, Lauren orig. Betty Joan Perske O'Connell, Daniel known as the Liberator Iqaluit formerly Frobisher Bay Latvia officially Republic of Latvia OCR infill optical character recognition fax infill facsimile
Magellan, Strait of Spanish Estrecho de Magallanes
Odysseus Roman Ulysses Connelly, Marc(us Cook)
Doctorow, E(dgar) L(aurence)
Hughes, (James Mercer) Langston Basil II known as Basil Bulgaroctonus ("Slayer of the Bulgars")
Pronunciations. Entries for terms and names whose pronunciation the encyclopedia's likely users might hesitate over are supplied with pro¬ nunciations. Foreign names or terms that are pro¬ nounced in a markedly different way by native speakers and English-speakers are frequently pro¬ vided with two pronunciations, one of them pre¬ ceded by a language label (e.g., English, French, Spanish). Thus, for Hassan II we provide the pro¬ nunciations Vha-san, English ha-'sanV The sym¬ bols employed and the sounds they represent are listed on page x.