Czerny, Carl

He studied piano, first with his father, Wenzel Czerny, and later with Ludwig van Beethoven and knew and was influenced by Muzio Clementi and Johann Nepomuk Hummel. He began teaching in Vienna at the age of 15; among his pupils were Franz Liszt and Beethoven's

Kuchma, Leonid

After graduating from Dnipropetrovsk State University in 1960, Kuchma embarked on a career as an engineer, serving as Communist

Itami

City, Hyogo ken (prefecture), Honshu, Japan. It lies along the Fukuchiyama railway line, 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Osaka. Itami was a castle town from the 13th to the 16th century and became a major sake-brewing centre in the Tokugawa period (1603–1867). The opening of the railway and the construction of company-owned housing made Itami a residential suburb of the Osaka-Kobe metropolitan area. The

Lenoir, (jean-joseph-) étienne

Lenoir's engine was a converted double-acting steam engine with slide valves to admit the air-fuel mixture and to discharge exhaust products. A two-stroke cycle engine, it used a mixture of coal gas and air. Though only

Alexander Island

Also called  Alexander Land,   large island in the Bellingshausen Sea, separated from the Antarctica mainland by the George VI Sound. An extremely rugged region with peaks up to 9,800 feet (2,987 m) above sea level, it is 270 miles (435 km) long and up to 125 miles (200 km) wide and has an area of about 16,700 square miles (43,250 square km). The Russian explorers Bellingshausen and Lazarev discovered the land in 1821 and named it after the Russian tsar.

Musical Notation

Two developments in musical style in the 20th century have placed great strain upon staff notation: integral serialism—in which the music is controlled by a mathematical system—and indeterminacy, or chance music. In the former, every note in a texture may have its individual dynamic marking and type of attack (for example, in Olivier Messiaen's Mode de valeurs et

Reproductive System, Human, The vagina

The vagina (the word means “a sheath”) is the canal that extends from the cervix (outer end) of the uterus within the lesser pelvis down to the vestibule between the labia minora. The orifice of the vagina is guarded by the hymen. The vagina lies behind the bladder and urethra and in front of the rectum and anal canal. Its walls are collapsed; the anterior wall is some 7.5 centimetres

Dach, Simon

After earning his living for many years as a private

Fable, Parable, And Allegory, Parable

Like fable, the parable also tells a simple story. But, whereas fables tend to personify animal characters—often giving the same impression as does an animated cartoon—the typical parable uses human agents. Parables generally show less interest in the storytelling and more in the analogy they draw between a particular instance of human behaviour (the true neighbourly

Pijao

Extinct Indian people of the southern highlands of Colombia. The Pijao spoke a language of the Chibchan family, related to that of the Páez, their neighbours to the south. They were agriculturists, raising corn (maize), sweet manioc (yuca), beans, potatoes, and many fruits; they also hunted and fished. They lived in settlements of several families in houses built of wood and

Ussuri River

Chinese  (Wade-Giles) Wu-su-li Chiang,  or (Pinyin)  Wusuli Jiang,  northward-flowing tributary of the Amur River that for a considerable distance forms the boundary between China (Heilungkiang province) and Russia (Siberia). The Ussuri is formed by the confluence of the Ulakhe and Arsenyevka rivers, both of which rise on the southwestern slopes of the Sikhote-Alin mountains. Its length from the source of the Ulakhe is 565 miles (909 km), and

La Palma

In full  San Miguel De La Palma  island, Santa Cruz de Tenerife provincia in the comunidad autónoma (“autonomous community”) of Canary Islands, Spain. Located in the North Atlantic off the northwestern coast of Africa, it has an area of 281 square miles (728 square km). Its central geographic feature is La Caldera de Taburiente, a national park and a large volcanic caldera (6 miles [10 km] in diameter). The rim is breached

Breckland

The name Breckland was first applied in 1894 by the Norfolk naturalist W.G.