Williams, Rowan

Williams was born into a Welsh-speaking family. After attending the Dyvenor Secondary School, he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, where he earned bachelor's

Mahajanga

Formerly  Majunga,   town and major port, northwestern Madagascar. It lies on the island's northwest coast, at the mouth of the Betsiboka River, whose estuary widens there into Bombetoka Bay. The town was the capital of the 18th-century kingdom of Boina. The French occupied Mahajanga in 1895 at the beginning of their conquest of Madagascar. The town's old sector is confined mainly to the harbour

Uchimura Kanzo

Uchimura came from a samurai (warrior) family and studied (1878–81) at the Sapporo Agricultural School (now Hokkaido University), where he was converted to Christianity. After several years' service in the government as

San Francisco, Exploration and early settlement

It is extraordinary that the site of San Francisco should have been explored first by land instead of from the sea, for San Francisco Bay is one of the most splendid natural harbours of the world, yet great captains and explorers—Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (1542–43), Sir Francis Drake (1579), and Sebastián Vizcaíno (1602)—sailed unheeding past the entrance. In 1769 a scouting party from an expedition

Agoult, Marie (-catherine-sophie) De Flavigny, Comtesse D'

Mme d'Agoult was the daughter of the émigré Comte de Flavigny. In 1827 she married Col. Charles d'Agoult, 20 years her senior. She had early shown strength of will and enthusiasm for justice and freedom, and her marriage disappointed

Mahasanghika

Its emergence about a century after the death of the Buddha (483 BC) represented the first major schism in the Buddhist community. Although traditional accounts of the second council, at Vaisali (now in Bihar state), attribute

Nicol, Davidson

Nicol was educated in medicine and natural sciences in Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and England, and he subsequently served in various medical posts in those countries. He became

Santa Cruz Island

Also called  Indefatigable Island,   one of the Galápagos Islands, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about 600 miles (965 km) west of Ecuador. Circular in shape, it has an area of 389 square miles (1,007 square km), and a central volcanic crater rises to 2,300 feet (701 m). Puerto Ayora, on the southern coast, originally a colony of Scandinavians and Germans, has a harbour that can accommodate boats. Subsistence farming, fruit and sugarcane cultivation,

Ca Mau Peninsula

Peninsula, the southernmost projection of Vietnam, lying between the South China Sea on the east and the Gulf of Thailand on the west, with drainage to each. The flat, triangular peninsula, with lengths ranging from 110 to 130 miles (180 to 210 km), averages about 7 feet (2 m) above sea level and owes its configuration largely to shore deposits of the Mekong River, which are also responsible

Mckinley

County, northwestern New Mexico, U.S., bordered on the west by Arizona. It is a scenic region with highly varied terrain, in the Navajo section of the Colorado Plateaus. In the west, a red shale valley lies between red sandstone cliffs; angular rock outcroppings rise amid the near-desert plains in the far west. Buttes and mesas appear throughout McKinley county, including

China, Aviation

Aviation development is particularly suited to China, with its extensive territory and varied terrain. Chinese civil aviation has two major categories: air transport, which mainly handles passengers, cargoes, and mail, traveling on both scheduled and nonscheduled routes; and special-purpose aviation, which mainly serves industrial and agricultural production,

Arab League

Also called  League Of Arab States (LAS) , Arabic  Al-Jami'a Al-'Arabiyah, or Al-Jami'a Ad-Duwal Al-'Arabiyah,   regional organization of Arab states in the Middle East, formed in Cairo on March 22, 1945. The founding member states were Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan (now Jordan), Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Other members are Libya (1953); The Sudan (1956); Tunisia and Morocco (1958); Kuwait (1961); Algeria (1962); Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (1971); Mauritania (1973); Somalia (1974); the Palestine Liberation Organization

Japanese Alps

The ranges are a popular skiing and mountain-climbing area. The Hida Range is included within Chubu-Sangaku National Park, which stretches over Gifu, Toyama, Nagano, and Niigata prefectures and