Florida

The surrounding region is characterized by rolling hills. In addition to its

Arabia, History Of, Yemen

To quell a rising in Yemen, the 'Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun dispatched Ibn Ziyad, who refounded in 820 the southern city of Zabid and became overlord of Yemen, Najran, and Hadhramaut. About a century later, the Najahids—Ethiopian slaves or local Afro-Asians—supplanted the Ziyadids in Zabid; however, though independent, neither dynasty renounced vague 'Abbasid suzerainty. The Banu Ya'fur

Apollo Theater

The Apollo was the central theatre on Harlem's main commercial street, and its position reflects its central role in Harlem's culture. Designed by New York architect George Keister, the building was leased by Jules Hurtig

Brian, Havergal

In his youth Brian played the violin, organ, piano, and cello. His chief love, however, came to be composition. Between the ages of 20 and 45, he wrote more than 100 songs and some dozen orchestral works, in addition to two cantatas and an opera, The Tigers (begun in 1916), considered a remarkably

Backgammon

Precursors of backgammon

Black, Conrad

In 1994 financier Conrad Black, whose inherited wealth and acquisitive nature helped establish him as an international press baron, expanded his already vast empire by purchasing the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. As head of one of Canada's largest conglomerates, he was a symbol of Canadian capitalism. Black began in 1967 as part-owner and operator of two small Quebec weeklies.

Literary Criticism, Medieval period

In the Christian Middle Ages criticism suffered from the loss of nearly all the ancient critical texts and from an antipagan distrust of the literary imagination. Such Church Fathers as Tertullian, Augustine, and Jerome renewed, in churchly guise, the Platonic argument against poetry. But both the ancient gods and the surviving classics reasserted their fascination,

Wake Island, Battle Of

Battle for a small atoll named Wake Island in the central Pacific in December 1941, waged between U.S. Marine and civilian defenders and Japanese invaders. At that time, Wake Island was the site of a half-completed U.S. air and submarine base. The Japanese first attacked Wake with 36 bombers at noon on Dec. 8, 1941 (Wake time; December 7, Hawaiian time), a few hours after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Kshitigarbha

Bodhisattva (“buddha-to-be”) who, though known in India as early as the 4th century CE, became immensely popular in China as Dicang and in Japan as Jizo. He is the saviour of the oppressed, the dying, and the dreamer of evil dreams, for he has vowed not to stop his labours until he has saved the souls of all the dead condemned to hell. In China he is considered the overlord of hell and is

Lima

Department of central Peru and site of the national capital of Lima. The department stretches from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Cordillera Occidental of the Andes in the east. There is little rainfall along its coastal section, and irrigation is possible only where rivers descend from the Andes. Fog often blankets the coast, especially from June to October;