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Potter, Beatrix

(Encyclopedia)Potter, Beatrix, 1866–1943, English author and illustrator. She published her first animal stories, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) and The Tailor of Gloucester (1903), at her own expense before she...

Powers, Hiram

(Encyclopedia)Powers, Hiram, 1805–73, American sculptor, b. Woodstock, Vt. Having moved to Ohio, he made wax models for a Cincinnati museum. In 1835 he began his career as a sculptor, spending some time in Washin...

Olympiad

(Encyclopedia)Olympiad, unit of a chronological era of ancient Greece, a four-year period, each one beginning with the Olympic games. Timaeus (c.356–c.260 b.c.) of Sicily was the first to use, as a check on chron...

Osborne, Dorothy

(Encyclopedia)Osborne, Dorothy ŏzˈbərn [key], later Lady Temple, 1627–95, English letter writer. The daughter of a royalist, she became engaged to Sir William Temple against the wishes of her family. Her lette...

Friesz, Othon

(Encyclopedia)Friesz, Othon (Achille Émile Othon Friesz) ôtôNˈ frēˈĕs, äshēlˈ āmēlˈ [key], 1879–1949, French painter. He studied under Bonnat at the École des Beaux-Arts, along with Matisse, Marquet...

Amru al-Kais

(Encyclopedia)Amru al-Kais ämˈro͞o äl-kīs [key], fl. 6th cent., Arabic poet. His verse, like much of the poetry of the pre-Islamic period, is intensely subjective and stylistically perfect. He was esteemed by ...

Italian East Africa

(Encyclopedia)Italian East Africa, former federation of the Italian colonies of Eritrea and Italian Somaliland and the kingdom of Ethiopia. The federation was formed (1936) to consolidate the administration of the ...

Kirkwood gaps

(Encyclopedia)Kirkwood gaps, regions in the asteroid belt within which few asteroids are found. Astronomer Daniel Kirkwood first observed (1886) that few asteroids had an orbital period close to 1⁄2, 1⁄3, or 2�...

Strype, John

(Encyclopedia)Strype, John strīp [key], 1643–1737, English ecclesiastical historian and biographer. A graduate of Cambridge, he took holy orders. Much of his early life was spent in collecting old charters, lett...

soma

(Encyclopedia)soma sōˈmə [key], psychotropic plant, the juice of which was sometimes drunk as part of the Vedic sacrifice (see Veda). Many hymns in the Rig-Veda are in praise of soma. In the late Vedic period su...