cesium Vse-ze-9m\ Chemical element, one of the alkali metals, chemical symbol Cs, atomic number 55. The first element discovered by spectros¬ copy (1860), it is silvery white, liquid at warm room temperature (melt¬ ing at 83 °F [28.4 °C]), and very soft when solid. About half as abundant as lead, it occurs in minute quantities as ores. It reacts explosively with cold water and is used to scavenge traces of oxygen and other gases in electron tubes. Other uses are as a catalyst and in photoelectric cells, ion propulsion systems, atomic clocks, and plasma for thermoelectric conver¬ sion. Cesium salts have various specialty applications, including in min¬ eral waters.
Cespedes \'sas-pa-,thas\ (y Borja del Castillo), Carlos Manuel
de (b. April 18, 1819, Bayamo, Cuba—d. March 22?, 1874, San Lorenzo) Cuban revolutionary hero. Born to a prominent plantation family, he stud¬ ied law in Spain. On returning to Cuba, he opened a law practice and secretly organized an independence movement. He launched his insurrec¬ tion in 1868. Thousands flocked to his rebel army, which scored some stunning victories. He led a revolutionary government, which actively sought annexation by the U.S. Cespedes was deposed in 1873 and went into hiding, but he was discovered and shot by Spanish troops.
cetacean \si-'ta-sli9n\ Any of the exclusively aquatic placental mammals constituting the order Cetacea. They are found in oceans worldwide and in some freshwater environments. Modem cetaceans are grouped in two suborders: about 70 species of toothed whales (Odontoceti) and 13 spe¬ cies of toothless baleen whales (Mysticeti). They have a tapered body, no external hind limbs, and a tail ending in a horizontal blade of two lobes, or flukes. Cetaceans must come to the water’s surface to breathe through blowholes located on top of their head. See also whale.
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366 I Cetsamain ► Chad
Cetsamain See Beltane
Cetshwayo \kech-'wa-yo\ (b. c. 1826, near Eshowe, Zululand [S.Af.]— d. Feb. 8, 1884, Eshowe) Last great king of the Zulus (r. 1872— 79). Nephew of the great Shaka, Cetshwayo commanded a disciplined army of 40,000. Attacked by the British in 1879, he defeated them at Isandhlwana but lost at Ulundi. Part of his kingdom was returned in 1883, but his rivals drove him out of power.
Ceuta Vtha-ii-ta, 'syii-ta \ Arabic Sebta \,seb-to\ Spanish enclave (pop., 2001: 137,916), North Africa. A military station and seaport, it constitutes with Meulia an autonomous community of Spain with an area of 8 sq mi (20 sq km). The city is on a narrow isthmus that connects Jebel Musa (one of the Pillars of Hercules) to the mainland. Located in northern Morocco at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar, it was successively colonized by Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans. Long a flourishing trad¬ ing town, it was taken by the Portuguese in 1415, and it passed to Spain in 1580. In 1995 the Spanish government approved statutes of autonomy for Ceuta.
Ceylon See Sri Lanka
19, 1839, Aix-en-Provence,
Cezanne \sa-'zan\, Paul (b. Jan.
France—d. Oct. 22, 1906, Aix-en- Provence) French painter, one of the founders of modem painting. In 1859 he entered law school; in 1861 he left to study art in Paris. Critics denounced the works he exhibited at the Salon des Refuses (1863), but he persevered. He became associated with the Impressionists, exhibiting with them in 1874 and 1877. Unlike the other artists in the group, he emphasized the structure of objects rather than the vision presented by the light that emanated from them, basing his compositions on cubic masses, patches of colour, and archi¬ tectonic lines. By the late 1870s he had broken with the Impressionists, exploring his own radically new way of simultaneously depicting deep space and flat design; his later work is therefore often classified as “Post- Impressionist.” From 1890 to 1905 he produced masterpieces, one after another: variations of the Mont Sainte-Victoire landscape, three versions of Boy in a Red Waist-Coat, countless still-life images, and the Bathers series of nudes. Public reception to his first one-man exhibition (1895) was cool, but he slowly gained acceptance. His work was a major source of inspiration for the Cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. See also Cubism; Impressionism; Post-Impressionism.
Self-Portrait, oil on canvas by Paul Cezanne, c. 1878-80; in the Neue Pinakothek, Munich, Ger.
THE BRIDGEMAN ART UBRARY/GETTY IMAGES
CFC See chlorofluorocarbon
CGI in full Common Gateway Interface. Specification by which a Web server passes data between itself and an application program. Typi¬ cally, a Web user will make a request of the Web server, which in turn passes the request to a CGI application program. The program processes the request and passes the answer to the server, which in turn sends it to the user. The entire interchange follows the rules of the CGI specification, which is actually part of the HTTP protocol. CGI application programs can be written in such programming languages as C++ and Visual Basic, but are usually written in Perl.
Chaadayev V.cho-.o-'da-yofA, Pyotr (Yakovlevich) (b. June 7, 1794, Moscow, Russia—d. April 26, 1856, Moscow) Russian writer. In 1827-31 he wrote in French his Philosophical Letters, which explored among other issues Russia’s relation to the West; he urged a Western path of development for Russia. After a Russian translation of the first letter appeared, it was banned, and Chaadayev was declared insane. He contin¬ ued to live in Moscow, however, where he was venerated by young West- emizers, whose ideas of Russian history precipitated the debate between Slavophiles and Westernizers.
Chabrier \,sha-bre-'a\, (Alexis-) Emmanuel (b. Jan. 18, 1841, Ambert, Puy-de-Dome, France—d. Sept. 13, 1894, Paris) French com¬ poser. Though he was a piano prodigy, his parents obliged him to obtain
a law degree and take a government job, but he relinquished the latter in 1880 to pursue composition full-time. His opera Gwendoline enjoyed several productions in his lifetime, but he never achieved significant suc¬ cess. His other works include nine more operas and operettas, including Le Roi malgre lui (1887), and the orchestral rhapsody Espaha (1883).
Chabrol \sha-'brol\, Claude (b. June 24, 1930, Paris, France) French film director, screenwriter, and producer. After working in public relations in 20th Century-Fox’s Paris office, he directed The Cousins (1959), one of the first films of the New Wave movement. Among his many other films are Les Biches (1968), Violette (1978), The Story of Women (1988), and Merci pour la chocolat (2000). He admired Alfred Hitchcock and used a style similar to his in several mystery thrillers, including This Man Must Die (1969), Le Boucher (1970), and La Ceremonie (1995).
Chaco See Gran Chaco
Chaco \'cha-ko\ Culture National Historical Park National pre¬ serve, northwestern New Mexico, U.S. Established as a national monu¬ ment in 1907, it was redesignated and renamed in 1980. Occupying 53 sq mi (137 sq km), it contains 13 major pre-Columbian ruins and more than 300 smaller archaeological sites representing Pueblo cultures. Pueblo Bonito, built in the 10th century, is the largest Pueblo excavated site; it contained some 800 rooms.
Chaco \'cha-ko\ War (1932-35) Conflict between Bolivia and Paraguay over possession of the Chaco, a wilderness region thought to contain oil reserves. Bolivia, landlocked since the War of the Pacific, also was moti¬ vated by the need to gain access to the Atlantic coast through the Rio de la Plata system. The war cost about 100,000 lives and so seriously dis¬ rupted Bolivia’s economy that its deprived masses demanded reform. In a treaty arranged by neighbouring countries and the U.S., Bolivia was given a corridor to the Paraguay River and a port, but Paraguay gained clear title to most of the disputed region.