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Churchill, town, Canada

(Encyclopedia)Churchill, town, NE Manitoba, Canada, a remote port on Hudson Bay at the mouth of the Churchill River. The northern terminus of the Hudson Bay Railway, ...

abominable snowman

(Encyclopedia)abominable snowman or yeti yĕtˈē [key], humanlike creature so named because it is associated with the perpetual snow region of the Himalayas. A figure unknown except through tracks ascribed to it a...

Nilsson, Lennart

(Encyclopedia)Nilsson, Lennart lĕnˈnärt nĭlˈsôn [key], 1922–2017, Swedish photographer who made pioneering microphotographs of embryos and the human body. Nilsson began his career as a photojournalist, chro...

staff tree

(Encyclopedia)staff tree, common name for some temperate members of the Celastraceae, a family of trees and shrubs (many of them climbing forms), widely distributed except in polar regions. These plants typically b...

tundra

(Encyclopedia)tundra tŭnˈdrə [key], treeless plains of N North America and N Eurasia, lying principally along the Arctic Circle, on the coasts and islands of the Arctic Ocean, and to the north of the coniferous ...

Weyprecht, Karl

(Encyclopedia)Weyprecht, Karl kärl vīˈprĕkht [key], 1838–81, German arctic explorer. With Julius von Payer he made a voyage to Novaya Zemlya in 1871. Weyprecht and Payer were leaders of an Austrian expedition...

Callisto, in Greek mythology

(Encyclopedia)Callisto kəlĭsˈtō [key], in Greek mythology, an attendant of Artemis. Because she forsook her chastity and bore a son, Arcas, to Zeus, she was transformed into a bear by Artemis. According to anot...

Franklin, Sir John

(Encyclopedia)Franklin, Sir John, 1786–1847, British explorer in N Canada whose disappearance caused a widespread search of the Arctic. Entering the navy in 1801, he fought in the battle of Trafalgar. On his firs...

solvent

(Encyclopedia)solvent, constituent of a solution that acts as a dissolving agent. In solutions of solids or gases in a liquid, the liquid is the solvent. In all other solutions (i.e., liquids in liquids or solids i...

Bruce, William Speirs

(Encyclopedia)Bruce, William Speirs spĭrz [key], 1867–1921, Scottish explorer and authority on the polar regions. He first went to the Antarctic as ship's surgeon in 1892 and later did survey work in Franz Josef...