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Cape Town

(Encyclopedia)Cape Town or Capetown, city, legislative capital of South Africa, capital of Western Cape prov., and seat of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality; a port on the Atlantic Ocean. It was the c...

Melville, Herman

(Encyclopedia)Melville, Herman, 1819–91, American author, b. New York City, considered one of the great American writers and a major figure in world literature. Like Moby-Dick, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities (18...

Saint Helena

(Encyclopedia)Saint Helena həlēˈnə [key], island, 47 sq mi (122 sq km), in the S Atlantic Ocean, 1,200 mi (1,931 km) W of Africa. Together with the islands of Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, it comprises the Br...

Salem, cities, United States

(Encyclopedia)Salem. 1 City (1990 pop. 38,091), seat of Essex co., NE Mass., on an inlet of Massachusetts Bay; inc. 1629. Its once famous harbor has silted up. Salem has electronic, leather, and machinery industrie...

marine engine

(Encyclopedia)marine engine, machine for the propulsion of watercraft. The earliest marine power plants, reciprocating steam engines, were used almost exclusively until the early 1900s. In later ship construction t...

genealogy

(Encyclopedia)genealogy jēˌnēŏlˈəjē, –ălˈ–, jĕ– [key], the study of family lineage. Genealogies have existed since ancient times. Family lineage was originally transmitted through oral tradition and...

Andaman and Nicobar Islands

(Encyclopedia)Andaman and Nicobar Islands ănˈdəmən, nĭkˈōbär [key], union territory (2001 provisional pop. 356,265), India, in the Bay of Bengal. Port Blair, in the Andamans, is...

Opium Wars

(Encyclopedia)Opium Wars, 1839–42 and 1856–60, two wars between China and Western countries that marked the shift of wealth and power from East to West. The first was between Great Britain and China. Early in t...

Frobisher, Sir Martin

(Encyclopedia)Frobisher, Sir Martin frōˈbĭshər [key], 1535?–1594, English mariner. He went to sea as a boy, and spent much of his youth in the African trade. He later gained the friendship of Sir Humphrey Gil...

Hirst, Damien Steven

(Encyclopedia)Hirst, Damien Steven, 1965–, British artist-provacateur, b. Bristol. While at Goldsmiths College, London (grad. 1988), he organized the exhibition Freeze, whose participants, led by Hirst, became kn...