Queen, Ellery pseudonym of Frederic Dannay orig. Daniel Nathan and Manfred Bennington Lee orig. Manford Lepof-
sky (respectively b. Oct. 20, 1905, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—d. Sept. 3, 1982, White Plains, N.Y.; b. Jan. 11, 1905, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.—d. April 3,1971, near Waterbury, Conn.) U.S. writers. The two cousins collaborated on more than 35 best-selling detective novels featuring the detective Ellery Queen. They took turns writing stories about Queen after winning a detective-story contest with The Roman Hat Mystery (1929). The pair used the pseudonym Barnaby Ross to write about a second detective, Drury Lane. They also cofounded Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (1941), edited numerous anthologies, and cofounded Mystery Writers of America.
Queen Anne style Style of English decorative arts that reached its apex during the reign (1702-14) of Queen Anne. The most distinctive feature of Queen Anne furniture is the cabriole leg, shaped in a double curve (the upper part convex, the lower concave) and ending in either a claw-and-ball or paw foot. The Queen Anne chair is identifiable by a splat back curved to fit the hollow of the spine. The wood used was almost exclusively walnut, often embellished with marquetry, inlay, veneering, and lacquerwork. Ornamentation motifs include scallop shells, scrolls, Asian figures, and animals.
Queen Anne's lace or wild carrot Bristly biennial ( Daucus carota ) of the parsley family, native to Eurasia but now found almost worldwide.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
1576 I Queen Anne's War ► Quetelet
An ancestor of the cultivated carrot, it grows 5 ft (1.5 m) tall and has divided, long, feathery leaves. Flat-topped clusters (umbels) of white or pink flowers have a single dark-purple flower in the center and resemble lace. The enlarged root is edible but very bitter, and the ribbed fruits have sharp spines.
Queen Anne's War (1702-13) Second in a series of wars between Britain and France for control of North America. It was the American phase of the War of the Spanish Succession. American colonial settlements along the New York and New England borders with Canada were raided by French forces and their Indian allies. The British capture of Port Royal (1710) resulted in French-held Acadia’s becoming the British province of Nova Scotia. Under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Britain also acquired Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay region from France.
Queen Charlotte Islands Group of about 150 islands (pop., 2001: 4,935) off western British Columbia, Canada. They have an area of 3,705 sq mi (9,596 sq km). The two largest islands, Graham and Moresby, are irregular in shape and rise to nearly 4,000 ft (1,200 m). The inhabitants, including Haida Indians, engage in fishing and ranching.
Queen Charlotte Sound Broad, deep inlet of the Pacific Ocean indenting western British Columbia, Canada. Bounded on the north by the Queen Charlotte Islands and on the south by Vancouver Island, the sound feeds into a series of straits that once were the paths followed by the continental glaciers as they pushed out to sea. Its eastern border is a complex of islands, inlets, and fjords.
Queen Elizabeth Islands Island group, northern Canada. Part of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, it comprises all the islands north of latitude 74°30' N, including the Parry and Sverdrup island groups. The islands, the largest of which are Ellesmere, Melville, Devon, and Axel Heiberg, have a total land area of over 150,000 sq mi (390,000 sq km). Probably first visited by the Vikings c. ad 1000, they were partially explored (1615-16) by English navigators William Baffin and Robert Bylot. The islands, which are administratively split between the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, were named in 1953 to honour Queen Elizabeth II.
Queen Elizabeth National Park or Ruwenzori National Park National park, southwestern Uganda. Established in 1952, it has an area of 764 sq mi (1,978 sq km) and lies east of Lake Edward. One of the largest parks in Uganda, it has areas of rainforest and savanna grass¬ land. It is within the western branch of the Great Rift Valley and is dotted with Pleistocene volcanic craters. Wildlife includes chimpanzees, leopards, lions, and elephants.
Queens Borough (pop., 2000: 2,229,379) of New York City, coextensive with Queens county, southeastern New York, U.S. The largest of the five boroughs, it lies on western Long Island and extends across the width of the island from the junction of the East River and Long Island Sound to the Atlantic Ocean. The first settlements, made by the Dutch 1636-56, came under English control in 1664. It became a county in 1683 and a borough in 1898. Queens was primarily rural during the 19th century, but some of its shore communities began attracting summer vacationers. Development was spurred by the construction of the Queensboro Bridge and the Long Island Railroad tunnel. It is mostly residential, though it has extensive manufacturing around Long Island City and storage and shipping facili¬ ties lining the East River. It is the site of New York City’s major airports, Kennedy and La Guardia.
Queen's University at Kingston Privately endowed university in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1841 and modeled after the University of Edinburgh. It is a comprehensive research institution, offer¬ ing undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees in most major fields. Research facilities include centres for the study of international relations, industrial relations, and natural resources.
Queensberry rules Code of boxing rules. It was written by John Gra¬ ham Chambers (1843-1883) and published in 1867 under the sponsor¬ ship of John Sholto Douglas, marquess of Queensberry (1844-1900), who was known also for precipitating the downfall of Oscar Wilde. Besides calling for the wearing of gloves, the rules forbade wrestling holds, required a fallen man to be given a free count of 10 to recover, estab¬ lished the three-minute round with a one-minute rest period, and disal¬ lowed seconds from entering the ring during the round.
Queensland State (pop., 2001: 3,635,121), northeastern Australia. Bounded on the north by the Pacific Ocean and the Great Barrier Reef, it
has an area of 668,210 sq mi (1,730,650 sq km); the capital is Brisbane. Its coastal region, the most tropical part of Australia, attracts many tour¬ ists. Inland from the Great Dividing Range, which runs the entire length of the state, mining and cattle ranching are important. Capt. James Cook charted the coast in 1770. In the 19th century the state housed several penal colonies and drew settlers to mine its gold. It became a constituent state in 1901 when the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed.
quenching Rapid cooling, as by immersion in oil or water, of a metal object from the high temperature at which it is shaped. Quenching is usu¬ ally done to maintain mechanical properties that would be lost with slow cooling. It is commonly applied to steel objects, to which it gives hard¬ ness. The quenching media and the type of agitation during quenching are selected to obtain specified physical properties with minimum internal stresses and distortions. Oil is the mildest medium, and salt brine has the strongest quenching effect. In special cases, steel is cooled and held for some time in a molten salt bath, which is kept at a temperature either just above or just below the temperature where martensite begins to form. These two heat treatments, called martempering and austempering, both result in even less distortion of the metal. Copper objects hardened by hammering or other deformation at ordinary temperatures can be restored to malleability by heating and quenching. See also tempering.
Queneau Mra-'noN, Raymond (b. Feb. 21, 1903, Le Havre, France—d. Oct. 25, 1976, Paris) French author. After working as a reporter, he became a reader for the prestigious Encyclopedic de la Pleiade, a scholarly edition of past and present classical authors; by 1955 he was its director. Verbal play, black humour, pessimism, and a derisive posture toward authority appear often in his more than 30 works of prose and poetry, which include the novels Zazie dans le metro (1959; film, 1960), perhaps his best-known work, and The Blue Flowers (1965).