O'Connor, Frank orig. Michael O'Donovan (b. 1903, Cork, County Cork, Ire.—d. March 10, 1966, Dublin) Irish writer. Brought up in poverty, O’Connor became a librarian and a director of Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. He won popularity in the U.S. for short stories in which appar¬ ently trivial incidents illuminate Irish life. They appeared in volumes including Guests of the Nation (1931) and Crab Apple Jelly (1944) and in The New Yorker magazine. He also wrote critical studies on Irish life and literature and translations of Gaelic works of the 9th-20th centuries, including the great 17th-century satire The Midnight Court (1945).
O'Connor, Sandra Day orig. Sandra Day (b. March 26, 1930, El Paso, Texas, U.S.) U.S. jurist. After graduating first in her law school class at Stanford University (1950), she entered private practice in Ari¬ zona. She served as an assistant state attorney general (1965-69) before being elected in 1969 to the state senate, where she became the first woman in the U.S. to hold the position of majority leader (1972-74). After serving on the superior court of Maricopa county and the state court of appeals, she was nominated in 1981 by Pres. Ronald Reagan to the Supreme Court of the United States, becoming the first female justice in the court’s history. Known for her dispassionate and meticulously researched opin¬ ions, she proved to be a moderate and pragmatic conservative who some¬ times sided with the court’s liberal minority on social issues (e.g., abortion rights). O’Connor retired from the court in 2006.
OCR in full optical character recognition Scanning and compari¬ son technique intended to identify printed text or numerical data. It avoids the need to retype already printed material for data entry. OCR software attempts to identify characters by comparing shapes to those stored in the software library. The software tries to identify words using character prox¬ imity and will try to reconstruct the original page layout. High accuracy can be obtained by using sharp, clear scans of high-quality originals, but it decreases as the quality of the original declines.
Octavian See Caesar Augustus
October Manifesto Document issued by Tsar Nicholas II in October 1905. In response to the unrest caused by the Russian Revolution of 1 905 and on the advice of his minister Sergey Witte, Nicholas promised to guar¬ antee civil liberties and establish a popularly elected Duma. The manifesto satisfied the moderate revolutionaries, and further unrest was crushed. In 1906 the Fundamental Laws were established to serve as a constitution and to create the Duma. The Duma was in fact given only a limited voice in the government, and the civil rights actually granted were far less sub¬ stantial than those promised by the manifesto.
October Revolution See Russian Revolution of 1917
octopus In general, any eight-armed cephalopod of the order Octopoda; specifically, members of a large, widely distributed group (genus Octopus ) of shallow-water species.
Species range from about 2 in. (5 cm) to 18 ft (5.5 m) long with an arm span up to 30 ft (9 m). The head is usually only slightly demarcated from the saccular body. Each arm is contractile and bears fleshy suckers.
Two sharp beaks and a filelike organ in the mouth drill crustacean shells and rasp away flesh. Most octopuses crawl along the bottom; when alarmed, they may jet-propel them¬ selves backward, and they some¬ times eject an inky substance to cloud the water and protect them¬ selves from predators. They can change colour rapidly, a reflection of their environment or mood. The common octopus ( O. vulgaris ) is thought to be the most intelligent of all invertebrates.
oculus Va-ky 9-las \ (Latin: “eye”) In architecture, any of several ele¬ ments resembling an eye, such as a round or oval window or the round opening at the top of some domes (see Pantheon). The capital of an Ionic column features an oculus in the form of a disk at the centre of each of its spiral scrolls.
Oda Nobunaga Vo-da-.no-bu-'na-gaX (b. 1534, Owari province, Japan—d. June 21, 1582, Kyoto) With Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, one of the three unifiers of premodem Japan. He brought the domain of his birth, Owari, under his control and followed that success by defeating the huge forces of a neighbouring daimyo. In 1562 he formed an alliance with Ieyasu, and together they captured Kyoto, which Nobunaga controlled from 1573, thereby ending the Ashikaga shogunate (see Muromachi period). He then turned his attention to crushing the mili¬ tant Tendai Buddhist monks of Enryaku temple, destroying their head¬ quarters in 1571. He spent the next decade fighting the fanatically religious Ikko sect, defeating their fortress-monastery in Osaka in 1580. His efforts to weaken the strength of the Buddhist temples extended to permitting Jesuit missionaries to build a church in Kyoto; his own inter¬ est in Christianity was purely political. In 1582 he had conquered central Japan and was attempting to extend his control over western Japan when he was wounded by a discontented general and committed suicide.
ode Ceremonious lyric poem on an occasion of dignity in which per¬ sonal emotion and universal themes are united. The form is usually marked by exalted feeling and style, varying line length, and complex stanza forms. The term ode derives from a Greek word alluding to a choric song, usually accompanied by a dance. Forms of odes include the Pindaric ode, written to celebrate public events such as the Olympic games, and the form associated with Horace, whose intimate, reflective odes have two- or four-line stanzas and polished metres. Both were revived during
Octopus granulatus, a South African species.
ANTHONY BANNISTER FROM THE NATURAL HISTORY PHOTOGRAPHIC AGENCY-EB INC.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
Odense ► Oedipus I 1399
the Renaissance and influenced Western lyric poetry into the 20th cen¬ tury. The ode ( qasidah ) also flourished in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry.
Odense Vu-3n-zo,\ English Vo-den-s3\ City and municipality (2000 est.: 183,912), north-central Funen Island, Denmark. Sacred in pagan times as the sanctuary of Odin, the Norse god of war, it first appears in records c. ad 1000. A bishop’s seat from the 10th century, it became a centre of pil¬ grimage to the shrine of Canute IV. It was burned in 1247, but many medieval structures remain. It grew after its port and harbour were built and the Odense Canal was opened in 1804. Denmark’s third largest city, it is a shipbuilding and manufacturing centre. The home of Hans Chris¬ tian Andersen, who was born there, is now a museum.
Oder-Neisse Line Vo-dor-'nI-soV Polish-German border along the Oder and Neisse rivers proposed by the Allied Powers at the end of World War II. After inconclusive talks at the Yalta Conference to redraw the Polish-German border so as to grant more territory to Poland, the Soviet Union unilaterally occupied all territory east of its preferred Oder-Neisse line. The U.S. and Britain, dubious about Soviet domination of an enlarged Poland, protested the action but eventually agreed to the provi¬ sional border, which was not recognized by West Germany until it signed treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland in 1970.
Oder \'o-dor\ River or Odra \'o-dra\ River ancient Viadua River, northern Europe. It flows from its source in the Oder Mountains in the Czech Republic north through western Poland, where it forms the bound¬ ary between Poland and Germany. As the second largest river emptying into the Baltic Sea, it is economically important as a transport route. Navi¬ gable for 475 mi (765 km), it is connected by canal with the Vistula River and with the western European waterway system. It was partially inter¬ nationalized under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Considered German until the 1945 Potsdam settlement, it was formally recognized as the Polish-German border in 1950 by East Germany and in 1970 by West Germany.