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Lancaster, cities, United States

(Encyclopedia)Lancaster. 1 Uninc. city (1990 pop. 97,291), Los Angeles co., S Calif., in Antelope Valley and in the Mojave Desert; laid out 1894. It developed as a trade center for an irrigated farming area and has...

Daughters of the American Revolution

(Encyclopedia)Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), a Colonial patriotic society in the United States, open to women having one or more ancestors who aided the cause of the Revolution. The society was organiz...

chinook, warm, dry air mass

(Encyclopedia)chinook, warm, dry air mass that descends the eastern slopes of the U.S. and Canadian Rocky Mts. after having lost moisture by condensation over the western slopes. Chinooks occur mainly in winter. Th...

Sogn og Fjordane

(Encyclopedia)Sogn og Fjordane sôngˈnə ô fyôrˈdänə [key], county (1995 pop. 107,612), c.7,150 sq mi (18,500 sq km), W Norway, bordering on the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Hermansverk is the capital. The cou...

Constitutional Convention

(Encyclopedia)Constitutional Convention, in U.S. history, the 1787 meeting in which the Constitution of the United States was drawn up. The convention at Philadelphia drew up one of the most influential document...

island

(Encyclopedia)island, relatively small body of land surrounded entirely by water. (As the oceans form a continuous mass of water on the earth's surface, all continents are islands in the strict sense of the word.) ...

Narayan, Jaya Prakash

(Encyclopedia)Narayan, Jaya Prakash, 1902–79. Indian political leader. He was a founder (1934) of the Congress Socialist party and later (1952) the Indian Socialist party. He was an opponent of Indira Gandhi and ...

French Union

(Encyclopedia)French Union, 1946–58, political entity established by the French constitution of 1946. It comprised metropolitan France (the 90 departments of continental France and Corsica); French overseas depar...

Wind River Range

(Encyclopedia)Wind River Range, part of the Rocky Mts., W Wyo., running southeastward c.120 mi (190 km) and constituting part of the Continental Divide. Gannett Peak (13,804 ft/4,207 m) is the highest point in Wyom...

Siberian Platform

(Encyclopedia)Siberian Platform or Angara Shield, large, geologically stable area of Precambrian rocks, N Asia, comprising much of Siberia, Russia. It is bounded, in general, on the west by the Yenisei River, on th...

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