Philipp Melanchthon, engraving by Albrecht Durer, 1526.
COURTESY OF THE STAATUCHE MUSEEN KUPERST1CHKABINETT, BERUN
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newsreel. Overtaken by the commercial growth of the film industry, he was forced to sell his studio in 1913.
Melilla \m9-'le-ya\ Spanish enclave and autonomous community (pop., 2001: 66,411), North Africa. It covers 5 sq mi (12 sq km) and is a mili¬ tary station and seaport. Located on Morocco’s northern coast, it was suc¬ cessively colonized by the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans. It fell as a Berber town to Spain in 1497 and remained Spanish despite a long his¬ tory of attack and siege. In the early 20th century Spain modernized its port and made it an administrative centre for Spanish Morocco. It was the first Spanish town to rise against the Popular Front government in 1936, helping to precipitate the Spanish Civil War. It was retained by Spain when Morocco achieved independence in 1956.
Melkarth See Melqart
Mello, Fernando Collor de See Fernando Collor de Mello
Mellon, Andrew W(illiam) (b. March 24, 1855, Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S.—d. Aug. 26, 1937, Southampton, N.Y.) U.S. financier. He joined his father’s banking house in 1874 and through the next three decades built up a financial empire by supplying capital for corporations in industries such as aluminum, steel, and oil. He helped found the Aluminum Co. of America (Alcoa) and the Gulf Oil Corp., and he joined Henry Clay Frick to found Union Steel Co. and Union Trust Co. By the early 1920s he was one of the richest men in the U.S. As secretary of the Treasury (1921— 32) he persuaded Congress to lower taxes in order to encourage business expansion. He was praised for the economic boom of the 1920s but criti¬ cized during the Great Depression, and in 1932 he resigned to serve as ambassador to England. A noted art collector and philanthropist, Mellon donated an extensive art collection and $15 million to establish the National Gallery of Art.
melodrama Sentimental drama marked by extravagant theatricality, subordination of character development to plot, and focus on sensational incidents. It usually has an improbable plot that features such stock char¬ acters as the noble hero, the long-suffering heroine, and the hard-hearted villain, and it ends with virtue triumphing over vice. Written by such playwrights as Guilbert de Pixerecourt and Dion Boucicault, melodramas were popular in Europe and the U.S. during the 19th century. They often featured spectacular events such as shipwrecks, battles, fires, earthquakes, and horse races. Melodrama died out as a theatrical form in the early 20th century but remained popular in silent film. It can still be seen in con¬ temporary film genres such as the action movie.
melody Rhythmic succession of single tones organized as an aesthetic whole. The melody is often the highest line in a musical composition. Melodies may suggest their own harmony or counterpoint. As fundamen¬ tal as rhythm AND metre (and more so than harmony), melody is common to all musical cultures.
melon Any of the seven groups of Cucumis melo, a trailing vine grown for its edible, sweet, musky-scented fruit. Members of the horticulturally diverse gourd family, melons are frost-tender annuals native to central Asia but widely grown in many cultivated varieties in warm regions worldwide. They have soft, hairy, trailing stems, large round to lobed leaves, yellow flowers, and large flat seeds. The fruits of the numerous cultivated varieties differ greatly in size, shape, surface texture, flesh colour, flavour, and weight. Examples include cantaloupe, honeydew, and casaba. Plants resembling true melons include the watermelon, the Chi¬ nese watermelon, the melon tree (see papaya), and the melon shrub, or pear melon {Solarium muricatum).
Melos \'me-,las\ Greek Milos Vme-,16s\ Island (pop., 1991: 4,302) of the Cyclades, Greece. It is 14 mi (23 km) long and occupies an area of 58 sq mi (151 sq km). Melos (Milos) is the chief town. On the ancient acropolis of Adamanda, the Venus de Milo (now in the Louvre Museum) was found in 1820. The settlement of Phylakopi, dating from 1550 bc, was destroyed c. 1100 bc by Dorian settlers. In 416 bc Melos was con¬ quered by Athens, which killed the entire male population in reprisal for the island’s neutrality in the Peloponnesian War. Lysander later restored the island to the Dorians, but it never recovered its prosperity. Later, under Crusader rule, it formed part of the duchy of Naxos.
Melqart or Melkarth Phoenician god, the chief deity of Tyre and of two of its colonies, Carthage and Gadir (Cadiz, Spain). Probably a sun god, he was often depicted as a bearded figure wearing a high, rounded hat and a kilt; he held an Egyptian ankh as a symbol of life and an ax as
a symbol of death. His sanctuary in Tyre was the scene of annual winter and spring festivals and is believed to have been the model for Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.
meltdown Occurrence in which a huge amount of thermal energy and radiation is released as a result of an uncontrolled chain reaction in a nuclear power reactor. The chain reaction that occurs in the reactor’s core must be carefully regulated by control rods, which absorb neutrons, and a moderator, which reduces their energy. If the core becomes too hot, it can melt, releasing large amounts of radiation. See also Chernobyl accident.
melting point Temperature at which the solid and liquid states of a pure substance can exist in equilibrium. As heat is applied to a solid, its temperature increases until it reaches the melting point. At this tempera¬ ture, additional heat converts the solid into a liquid without a change in temperature. The melting point of solid water (ice) is 32°F (0°C). Though the melting point of a solid is generally considered to be the same as the freezing point of the corresponding liquid, they may differ because a liq¬ uid may freeze into different crystal systems and impurities can lower the freezing point.
Melville, Herman orig. Herman Melvill (b. Aug. 1, 1819, New York, N.Y., U.S.—d. Sept. 28, 1891, New York City) U.S. writer. Born to a wealthy New York family that suffered great financial losses, Melville had little formal schooling and began a period of wanderings at sea in 1839. In 1841 he sailed on a whaler bound for the South Seas; the next year he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands. His adventures in Polyne¬ sia were the basis of his successful first novels, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847). After his allegorical fantasy Mardi (1849) failed, he quickly wrote Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), about the rough life of sailors. Moby-Dick (1851), his masterpiece, is both an intense whaling narrative and a symbolic examination of the problems and possibilities of Ameri¬ can democracy; it brought him neither acclaim nor reward when pub¬ lished. Increasingly reclusive and despairing, he wrote Pierre (1852), which, intended as a piece of domestic “ladies” fiction, became a parody of that popular genre, Israel Potter (1855), The Confidence-Man (1857), and magazine stories, including “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853) and “Benito Cereno” (1855). After 1857 he wrote verse. In 1866 a customs- inspector position finally brought him a secure income. He returned to prose for his last work, the novel Billy Budd, Foretopman, which remained unpublished until 1924. Neglected for much of his career, Melville came to be regarded by modern critics as one of the greatest American writers.
Melville Island One of the largest of the Parry Islands, in the Arctic Ocean, Canada. Located north of Victoria Island, it is 200 mi (320 km) long and 30-130 mi (50-210 km) wide, with an area of 16,274 sq mi (42,149 sq km). It has no human inhabitants, but it supports MUSK OXEN and has natural-gas deposits. It was discovered in 1819 by William Parry.