Tennessee River Navigable river, Tennessee, northern Alabama, and western Kentucky, U.S. Formed by the confluence of the Holston and French Broad rivers in eastern Tennessee, it flows 652 mi (1,049 km) before joining the Ohio River in Kentucky. During the American Civil War it served as a strategic invasion route into the western Confederacy. Its development as one of the world’s greatest irrigation and hydropower systems began with the establishment in 1933 of the Tennessee Valley Authority. The Tennessee River is linked to the Tombigbee River by the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) U.S. government agency estab¬ lished in 1933 to control floods, improve navigation, and generate elec¬ trical power along the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The TVA is a public corporation governed by a board of directors. It has jurisdiction over the entire basin of the river, which covers parts of seven states: Ala¬ bama, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Created by Congress as one of the major public-works projects of the New Deal, the TVA built a system of dams to control the region’s chronic flooding, deepened the channel to improve navigation, and encouraged the development of port facilities along the river. The projects greatly increased traffic on the river and provided cheap electricity, spur¬ ring the industrial development of what had been a chronically depressed regional economy. See also Public Works Administration.
Tennessee Walking Horse or Plantation Walking Horse
Breed of light horse with a distinctive, easy-to-sit gait, the running walk. It was developed for touring U.S. Southern plantations. It averages 15.2 hands (61 in. [154 cm]) high and weighs about 1,000 lb (450 kg). Coat colour varies. Its ancestors included any horse capable of a running walk, a natural gait that cannot be acquired, but the most influential stallion was a Standardbred. The running walk, faster than a flat-footed walk, is a low, gliding, reaching action; the front foot strikes the ground an instant before the diagonal hind foot, which then oversteps the front footprint by sev¬ eral inches.
Tenniel Vten-yslX, Sir John (b. Feb. 28, 1820, London, Eng.—d. Feb. 25, 1914, London) British illustrator and satirical artist. After attracting attention with his mural decorations, he was invited to contribute draw¬ ings to Punch magazine in 1850 and in time became its chief cartoonist.
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A professional tennis court. The person serving stands behind the baseline, alternately to the right and left of the center mark, and must land the ball alternately in the opposite left and right service court. A narrower portion of the court is used in singles tennis (one person on a side) than in doubles (two people on a side), though the size of the service court does not change. In doubles, the two partners alternate in serving, but (soth may otherwise roam freely over the entire court.
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His drawings lent new dignity to the political cartoon. Of his many book illustrations, best known are those for Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adven¬ tures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872), which are remarkable for their subtlety and cleverness.
tennis Game played with rackets and a light, elastic ball by two play¬ ers or pairs of players on a rectangu¬ lar court divided by a low net. Tennis is played indoors and outdoors, on hard-surface, clay, and grass courts.
The object is to hit the ball over the net and into the opponent’s half of the court in such a way as to defeat the opponent’s attempt to reach and return it. Each player serves for an entire game. Points are scored as 15,
30, 40, and game (the term “love” is used for 0). A tied score (“deuce”) requires continued play until a two- point margin is achieved. The first player to win six games, with a lead of two games, takes the set. A match consists of the best two out of three (or three out of five) sets. Since the early 1970s, tiebreakers have been employed to eliminate marathon sets. Tennis developed in the 1870s in Britain from earlier racket-and-ball games. The first world lawn-tennis championship was held in 1877 at Wimbledon; clay- and hard-court competitions emerged later. Current international team tournaments include the Davis Cup for men and the Federation Cup (since 1963) for women’s teams. The major tournaments for individual players constitute the “Grand Slam” of tennis: the national championships of Britain (Wimbledon), the U.S., Australia, and France.
Tennis Court Oath (June 20, 1789) Oath taken by deputies of the Third Estate in the French Revolution. Believing that their newly formed National Assembly was to be disbanded, the deputies met at a nearby ten¬ nis court when they were locked out of their usual meeting hall at Ver¬ sailles. They vowed never to separate until a written constitution was established for France. Their solidarity forced Louis XVI to order the clergy and the nobility to join with the Third Estate in the National Assembly.
Tennyson Vte-na-sanV Alfred, 1st Baron Tennyson (of Ald- wortn and Freshwater) known as Alfred, Lora Tennyson (b.
Aug. 6, 1809, Somersby, Lincolnshire, Eng.—d. Oct. 6, 1892, Aldworth, Surrey) English poet, the leading poet of the Victorian age. While attend¬ ing Cambridge University, Tennyson developed a deep friendship with Arthur Hallam. His reputation as a poet increased at Cambridge, and he published Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830). Another volume, including “The Lotos-Eaters” and “The Lady of Shalott,” was published in 1832 (dated 1833). Hallam’s sudden death in 1833 prompted Tennyson to write poems that eventually became part of the vast In Memoriam (1850) and lyrics that later appeared in the brooding Maud (1855), his favourite poem. Poems (1842), including “Ulysses,” “Morte d’Arthur,” and “Locksley Hall,” followed, then The Princess (1847), a long antifeminist fantasia that includes such lyrics as “Sweet and Low” and “Tears, Idle Tears.” In 1850 he married; that year he was also named poet laureate of England. Among his subsequent works are “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1855); Idylls of the King (1859), treating the Arthurian legend; and Enoch Arden (1864). A consummate poet who was inclined to melancholy, Ten¬ nyson was also regarded as a spokesman for the educated English middle class. His works often dealt with the difficulties of an age when tradi¬ tional assumptions were increasingly called into question by science and modern progress.
Tenochtitlan \ta-,n6ch-tet-'lan\ Ancient capital of the Aztec empire. Located at the site of modern Mexico City, it was founded c. 1325 in the marshes of Lake Texcoco. It formed a confederacy with Texcoco and Tla- copan and was the Aztec capital by the late 15th century. Originally located on two small islands in Lake Texcoco, it gradually spread through the con¬ struction of artificial islands to cover more than 5 sq mi (13 sq km). It was connected to the mainland by several causeways. The population in 1519 was estimated to be about 400,000 people, the largest residential concen¬
tration in Mesoamerican history. It contained the palace of Montezuma II, said to consist of 300 rooms, as well as hundreds of temples. It was destroyed by the Spanish coNQUiSTADORes under Hernan Cortes in 1521.
tenor High male voice range, extending from about the second B below middle C to the G above it. In the polyphony of the 13th-16th centuries, the tenor was the part that held (Latin, tenere : “to hold”) the CANTUS FlR- mus. Tenor voices are often classified as dramatic, lyric, or heroic (hel- dentenor). In instrument families, tenor refers to the instrument in which the central range is roughly that of the tenor voice (e.g., tenor saxophone).