Pamplona Basque Iruna ancient Pompaelo City (pop., 2001: 183,964), capital of Navarra, northern Spain. According to tradition, it was founded in 75 bc by Pompey the Great as a military settlement. It was left almost derelict after Moorish and Frankish invasions in the 5th cen¬ tury ad. It was captured from the Moors by Charlemagne in 778 and became the capital of the kingdom of Navarra under Sancho III. In 1512 the armies of King Ferdinand of Aragon-Castile entered Pamplona, and the portion of Navarra south of the Pyrenees was incorporated into Spain. The citadel built by King Philip II of Spain in 1571 made it the most strongly fortified town of the north. In 1841 it became the capital of the new Navarra province. The chief tourist attraction is the Fiesta de San Fermfn (honouring its first bishop), which is celebrated with bullfights and the running of the bulls through the city streets. The fiesta is described in Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.
Pan Greek fertility deity with a half-human, half-animal form. The Romans associated him with Faunus. Pan was usually said to be the son of Hermes. He was often represented as a vigorous and lustful figure with the horns, legs, and ears of a goat; in later art his human parts were more emphasized. Some Christian depictions of the Devil bear a striking resem¬ blance to Pan. Pan haunted the high hills, where he was chiefly concerned with flocks and herds. Like a shepherd, Pan was a piper, and he rested at noon. He could inspire irrational terror in humans, and the word panic comes from his name.
pan See playa
Pan-African movement Movement dedicated to establishing inde¬ pendence for African nations and cultivating unity among black people throughout the world. It originated in conferences held in London (1900, 1919, 1921, 1923) and other cities. W.E.B. Du Bois was a principal early leader. The important sixth Pan-African conference (Manchester, 1945) included Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah. The first truly intergovern¬ mental conference was held in Accra, Ghana, in 1958, where Patrice Lumumba was a key speaker. The Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) was founded by Robert M. Sobukwe and others in South Africa in 1959 as a political alternative to the African National Congress, which was seen as contaminated by non-African influences. The founding of the Organiza¬ tion of African Unity (OAU; now the African Union) by Julius Nyerere and others in 1963 was a milestone, and the OAU soon became the most important Pan-Africanist organization.
Pan American (Sports) Games Quadrennial sports festival. The games, conceived in 1940 as an event for the nations of the Western Hemisphere, were first held in 1951. Patterned after the Olympic Games
and sanctioned by the International Olympic Committee, the games are conducted by the Pan American Sports Organization (PASO), or Orga¬ nization Deportiva Panamericana (ODEPA), headquartered in Mexico City. All major international sports and several more specialized events are included in the regular program. They are held the year preceding the Olympics, in various host cities.
Pan-American Highway International highway system connecting North and South America. Conceived in 1923 as a single route, the road grew to include a number of designated highways in participating coun¬ tries, including the Inter-American Highway from Nuevo Laredo, Mex., to Panama City, Pan. The whole system, extending from Alaska and Canada to Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, totals nearly 30,000 mi (48,000 km). Only some 240 miles (400 km) in the Panama-Colombia border area remain uncompleted.
Pan-American Union Organization formed in 1890 to promote coop¬ eration among the countries of Latin America and the U.S. It was estab¬ lished (as the International Union of American Republics) at the first Pan- American conference, which was called by U.S. secretary of state James Blaine in order to reach agreements on various common commercial and juridical problems among the countries of the Americas. In 1948 it was reconstituted as the Organization of American States.
Pan American World Airways, Inc. known as Pan Am Former U.S. airline. It was founded in 1927 by former World War I pilot Juan Trippe, who secured a contract to fly mail between Key West, Fla., and Havana. In 1929 Pan Am established passenger service to the Caribbean and Central America. It inaugurated the first transpacific flights (San Fran¬ cisco to Manila) in 1936, the first transatlantic flights (New York City to Lisbon) in 1939, and the first round-the-world flights in 1947, and it pio¬ neered commercial jet travel in the 1950s. Its business declined in the 1960s and ’70s, and its acquisition of National Airlines in 1980 failed to improve its position. In 1988 a bomb planted aboard a Pan Am 747 caused the airliner to crash near Lockerbie, Scot., killing 270 people. Despite selling its Asian and South Pacific routes to United Airlines and its trans¬ atlantic, European, and Middle Eastern routes to Delta Air Lines, it was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1991. In the late 1990s another group bought the rights to the Pan Am name and began operating flights as Pan American Airways.
Pan-Arabism Nationalist notion of cultural and political unity among Arab countries. Its origins lie in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when increased literacy led to a cultural and literary renaissance among Arabs of the Middle East. This contributed to political agitation and led to the independence of most Arab states from the Ottoman Empire (1918) and from the European powers (by the mid-20th century). An important event was the founding in 1943 of the Ba'th Party, which formed branches in several countries and became the ruling party in Syria and Iraq. Another was the founding of the Arab League in 1945. Pan-Arabism’s most char¬ ismatic and effective proponent was Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser. After Nasser’s death, Syria’s Hafiz al-Assad, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi tried to assume the mantle of Arab leadership.
Pan-Germanism Movement to politically unify all German-speaking people. The desire for German unification began in the early 19th century and was advanced by Ernst Arndt and other early nationalists. The Pan- German League was organized in 1894 by Ernst Hasse (1846-1908) to heighten German nationalist awareness, especially among German¬ speaking people outside Germany. The movement, which pressed for Ger¬ man expansion in Europe, gained support after World War I under the Weimar Republic and was actively promoted by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. After Germany’s defeat in 1945 and the expulsion of Germans from formerly German areas of eastern Europe, the movement declined.
Pan Gu or P'an Ku Vpan-'gu\ In Chinese Daoist legend, the first man. He came forth from Chaos (an egg) with two horns, two tusks, and a hairy body. He used his knowledge of yin-yang to separate heaven and earth, set the Sun, Moon, stars, and planets in place, and divide the four seas. He also shaped the earth by chiseling out valleys and stacking up moun¬ tains. Another legend says that the universe derived from Pan Gu’s gigan¬ tic corpse. His eyes became the Sun and Moon, his blood formed rivers, his hair grew into trees and plants, and the human race sprang from para¬ sites that infested his body. In art, he is often shown as a dwarf clothed with leaves.
Pan-p'o See Banpo
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
1440 I Pan-Slavism ► panchayat raj
Pan-Slavism Movement to unite Slav peoples of eastern and central Europe. It began in the early 19th century when Slav intellectuals stud¬ ied their common cultures. Political goals for Slavic unity increased in 1848, when a Slav congress organized by Frantisek PALACKy met in Prague to press for equal rights under Austrian rule. In the 1860s the movement became popular in Russia, to which Pan-Slavs looked for protection from Turkish and Austro-Hungarian rule; this led Russia and Serbia into wars against the Ottoman Empire in 1876-77. In the 20th century, nationalist rivalries among the Slav peoples prevented their effective collaboration.