Glendower \glen-'dau-3r\, Owen Welsh Owain Glyndwr (b. c.
1354—d. 1416) Self-proclaimed prince of Wales who led an unsuccess¬ ful rebellion against England. Educated in England, he returned to Wales and touched off an uprising against Henry IV (under whom he had pre¬ viously fought) in northern Wales in 1400. He was soon in control of most of Wales and had set up a Welsh Parliament. In 1403 his alliance with English nobles was crushed at Shrewsbury, and a later French alliance also failed; his strongholds at Aberystwyth and Harlech fell to the future Henry V in 1408-09. Glendower nonetheless remained active as a guer¬ rilla warrior as late as 1412. His rebellions were the last major Welsh attempts to throw off English rule.
Glenn, John H(erschel), Jr, (b. July 18, 1921, Cambridge, Ohio, U.S.) U.S. astronaut and senator. He flew 59 missions as a Marine Corps pilot in World War II and 90 during the Korean War. The oldest of the seven astronauts selected in 1959 for the Mercury project’s spaceflight training, he was a backup pilot for Alan B. Shepard and Virgil I. Grissom (1926-67), who made the first two U.S. suborbital flights into space. Glenn was selected for the orbital flight, and in February 1962 his space capsule. Friendship 7, was launched and made three orbits. He retired from the space program in 1964 and pursued his interest in politics, serv¬ ing as U.S. Senator from Ohio (1975-99). In 1998, at age 77, he made his second spaceflight (as part of the crew of the space shuttle Discovery), becoming the oldest person to go into space.
Glenrothes \glen-‘ra-this\ Town (pop., 1995 est.: 36,000), Fife council area and historic county, eastern Scotland. It was established in 1948 as the country’s second new town to provide housing for coal miners near the experimental Rothes Colliery. When the coal-mining industry declined, new industries were developed, including the manufacture of electronic components, computers, and plastics.
gley \'gla\ Sticky clay soil or soil layer formed under the surface of some waterlogged soils. Characteristic of poorly drained areas, gley soils con¬ tain reduced amounts of iron and other elements and are gray and mottled in colour.
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
glider ► Gloucestershire I 769
glider Nonpowered heavier-than-air craft capable of sustained flight. Early experimenters in glider flight included George Cayley, who built the first man-carrying glider in 1853, and Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896), who introduced tail stabilizers on his first practical man-carrying craft in 1891. Improvements by Octave Chanute (1832-1910) in 1896 and by Wilbur and Orville Wright in 1902 perfected the control needed for developing the Wrights’ powered airplane in 1903. The slender-winged glider was launched by being towed behind an airplane or a car. Gliders were used in World War II to carry troops. Today they are mainly used for recre¬ ation; the sailplane type is built for soaring on the lift from thermals. See also HANG GLIDING.
gliding See soaring
Glinka, Mikhail (Ivanovich) (b. June 1, 1804, Novospasskoye, Russia—d. Feb. 15, 1857, Berlin, Prussia ) Russian composer. He stud¬ ied in Italy and Berlin, and in 1836 his first opera, A Life for the Tsar, immediately earned him a reputation as Russia’s leading composer. Ele¬ ments of Russian folk music were heard even more clearly in the opera Ruslan and Ludmila (1842) and the orchestral work Kamarinskaya (1848). The influence of these works on later Russian composers, includ¬ ing Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, was significant, and Glinka is regarded as the father of the Russian national school.
Global Positioning System (GPS) Precise satellite-based naviga¬ tion and location system originally developed for U.S. military use. GPS is a fleet of more than 24 communications satellites that transmit signals globally around the clock. With a GPS receiver, one can quickly and accurately determine the latitude, the longitude, and in most cases the altitude of a point on or above Earth’s surface. A single GPS receiver can find its own position in seconds from GPS satellite signals to an accuracy of one metre; accuracy within one centimetre can be achieved with sophis¬ ticated military-specification receivers. This capability has reduced the cost of acquiring spatial data for making maps while increasing carto¬ graphic accuracy. Other applications include measuring the movement of polar ice sheets or even finding the best automobile route between given points.
global warming Increase in the global average surface temperature resulting from enhancement of the greenhouse effect, primarily by air pol¬ lution. In 2001 the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change esti¬ mated that by 2100 global average surface temperatures would increase 2.5 to 10.4 °F (1.4 to 5.8 °C), depending on a range of scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions. Many scientists predict that such an increase would cause polar ice caps and mountain glaciers to melt rapidly, sig¬ nificantly raising the levels of coastal waters, and would produce new patterns and extremes of drought and rainfall, seriously disrupting food production in certain regions. Other scientists maintain that such predic¬ tions are overstated. The 1992 Earth Summit and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change attempted to address the issue of global warming, but in both cases the efforts were hindered by conflicting national economic agendas and dis¬ putes between developed and developing nations over the cost and con¬ sequences of reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
globalization Process by which the experience of everyday life, marked by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, is becoming standard¬ ized around the world. Factors that have contributed to globalization include increasingly sophisticated communications and transportation technologies and services, mass migration and the movement of peoples, a level of economic activity that has outgrown national markets through industrial combinations and commercial groupings that cross national frontiers, and international agreements that reduce the cost of doing busi¬ ness in foreign countries. Globalization offers huge potential profits to companies and nations but has been complicated by widely differing expectations, standards of living, cultures and values, and legal systems as well as unexpected global cause-and-effect linkages. See also free trade.
Globe and Mail, The Daily newspaper published in Toronto, the most prestigious and influential journal in Canada. It was formed in 1936 when George McCullagh bought and merged two competing papers, the liberal Globe (founded 1844) and the conservative Mail and Empire (founded 1872 as The Mail). The paper sees its role as “independent but not neu¬ tral.” Its publication of the texts of speeches, parliamentary debates, and other documents has made it Canada’s newspaper of record. It is espe¬ cially strong in international news coverage.
Globe Theatre London theatre in which the plays of William Shakes¬ peare were performed after 1599. It was built by two brothers, Cuthbert and Richard Burbage; half the shares were kept by the Burbages, and the rest were assigned equally to Shakespeare and other members of the Chamberlain's Men. The wooden theatre, built in the shape of an O with no roof over the central area, was destroyed by fire in 1613, rebuilt in 1614, and finally pulled down in 1644. Reconstructed (beginning 1987) near the site of the original theatre, the new Globe Theatre inaugurated its first regular season in 1996.
globular cluster Any large group of old, Population II (see Popula¬ tions I and II) stars closely packed in a symmetrical, somewhat spherical form. About 150 have been identified in the Milky Way Galaxy. Most are distributed in a spherical volume above and below the Galaxy’s disk (see galactic halo). Globular clusters contain many more stars (10,000- 1,000,000) than open clusters do and can be several hundred light-years in diameter. Because they are so distant from the solar system, most are not visible to the unaided eye. Omega Centauri and a few others can be seen without a telescope as hazy patches of light.