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  • Cagliostro, Alessandro, count di (Italian charlatan)
    charlatan, magician, and adventurer who enjoyed enormous success in Parisian high society in the years preceding the French Revolution....
  • Cagney, James (American actor)
    American actor noted for his versatility in musicals, comedies, and crime dramas....
  • Cagney, James Francis, Jr. (American actor)
    American actor noted for his versatility in musicals, comedies, and crime dramas....
  • Cagniard de La Tour, Charles (French engineer)
    ...a piercing sound of definite pitch. Used as a warning signal, it was invented in the late 18th century by the Scottish natural philosopher John Robison. The name was given it by the French engineer Charles Cagniard de La Tour, who devised an acoustical instrument of the type in 1819. A disk with evenly spaced holes around its edge is rotated at high speed, interrupting at regular intervals a......
  • Cagnola, Luigi (Italian architect)
    Neoclassical buildings after 1800 were more numerous, and a few examples illustrate the character and range of the movement. Peter von Nobile’s Sant’Antonio, Trieste (1826–49); Luigi Cagnola’s Rotunda, Ghisalba (1834); and Giovanni Antonio Selva’s Canova Temple, Possagno (1819–33) all took the Pantheon as their starting point. Cagnola also built the Ionic ...
  • Cagoule (French organization)
    ...Barrès, a former member of the Faisceau, crossed the channel in 1940 to serve under Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French movement. Eugène Deloncle, one of the leaders of the Cagoule, France’s major right-wing terrorist organization of the 1930s, was killed in 1944 while shooting at Gestapo agents who had come to arrest him. Another Cagoulard, François Duclos,...
  • Caguas (Puerto Rico)
    town, east-central Puerto Rico. Caguas lies in the fertile Caguas valley, the largest interior valley of the island. It is linked to San Juan, the capital, by a divided highway. Founded in 1775, Caguas derives its name from a local Indian chief who was an early Christian convert. The town’s economic activities include diamond cutting, tobacco processing, and the manufact...
  • Caguas Basin (geographical feature, Puerto Rico)
    ...There is a continuous but narrow lowland along the north coast, where most people live, and smaller bands along the south and west coasts that also include densely populated areas. The Caguas Basin, in the Grande de Loíza River valley south of San Juan, is the largest of several basins in the mountains that provide level land for settlements and agriculture. The islands of......
  • Cahaba (historical village, Alabama, United States)
    historic village, Dallas county, southwest-central Alabama, U.S. It lies at the confluence of the Cahaba and Alabama rivers, 8 miles (13 km) southwest of Selma. Founded in 1819 as the first capital of Alabama, Cahaba thrived until floods forced the state government to move to Tuscaloosa in 1826. The site of a Confederate p...
  • Cahaba River (river, United States)
    ...winds westward to Selma, and then flows southward. Its navigable length is 305 miles (491 km), and the river drains 22,800 square miles (59,050 square km). It receives its chief tributary, the Cahaba, about 10 miles (16 km) southwest of Selma. The Alabama is joined 45 miles (72 km) north of Mobile by the Tombigbee to form the Mobile and Tensaw rivers, which flow into Mobile Bay, an arm of......
  • Cāhamāna (Indian dynasty)
    Inscriptional records associate the Cauhans with Lake Shakambhari and its environs (Sambhar Salt Lake, Rajasthan). Cauhan politics were largely campaigns against the Caulukyas and the Turks. In the 11th century the Cauhans founded the city of Ajayameru (Ajmer) in the southern part of their kingdom, and in the 12th century they captured Dhillika (Delhi) from the Tomaras and annexed some Tomara......
  • Cahan, Abraham (American writer)
    journalist, reformer, and novelist who for more than 40 years served as editor of the New York Yiddish-language daily newspaper the Jewish Daily Forward (Yiddish title Forverts), which helped newly arrived Jewish immigrants adapt to American culture....
  • “Cahiers d’André Walter, Les” (work by Gide)
    ...it in 1889, he decided to spend his life in writing, music, and travel. His first work was an autobiographical study of youthful unrest entitled Les Cahiers d’André Walter (1891; The Notebooks of André Walter). Written, like most of his later works, in the first person, it uses the confessional form in which Gide was to achieve his greatest successes....
  • Cahiers de la Quinzaine (French journal)
    Besides running a bookstore that was a centre of pro-Dreyfus agitation, Péguy in 1900 began publishing the influential journal Cahiers de la Quinzaine (“Fortnightly Notebooks”), which, though never reaching a wide public, exercised a profound influence on French intellectual life for the next 15 years. Many leading French writers, including Anatole France, Henri......
  • Cahiers de Sainte-Hélène (work by Bertrand)
    ...Helena (1815–21). His diary is considered invaluable for its frank account of Napoleon’s character and life in exile. It was decoded, annotated, and published by P. Fleuriot de Langle as Cahiers de Sainte-Hélène, 1816–21, 3 vol. (1949–59, “Notebooks from St. Helena”)....
  • Cahiers du cinéma (French magazine)
    ...Gazette du cinéma in 1950, along with François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jacques Rivette, and he became editor in chief of the New Wave publication Cahiers du cinéma in 1957. That year he and Claude Chabrol coauthored the film study Hitchcock. In 1963 he quit Cahiers after......
  • Cahiers, Les (notebooks of Valéry)
    ...meditate for several hours on scientific method, consciousness, and the nature of language, and record his thoughts and aphorisms in his notebooks, which were later to be published as the famous Cahiers. Valéry’s new-found ideals were Leonardo da Vinci (“Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci” [1895]), his paradigm of the Universal ...
  • Cahill, Holger (American art director)
    ...sponsored a more varied and experimental body of art, and had a far greater influence on subsequent American movements. This was chiefly the result of the leadership of its national director, Holger Cahill, a former museum curator and expert on American folk art, who saw the potential for cultural development in what was essentially a work-relief program for artists. Cahill and his staff......
  • Cahill, Joe (Irish paramilitary leader)
    Irish paramilitary organization leader (b. May 19, 1920, Belfast, Ire.—d. July 23, 2004, Belfast, N.Ire.), dedicated his life to the cause of ending British rule in Northern Ireland and reuniting Ireland; in 1969 he helped to establish the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the paramilitary wing of the IRA. Cahill became active with the IRA in his late teens. In 1942 he and five other IRA m...
  • Cahill, Joseph (Irish paramilitary leader)
    Irish paramilitary organization leader (b. May 19, 1920, Belfast, Ire.—d. July 23, 2004, Belfast, N.Ire.), dedicated his life to the cause of ending British rule in Northern Ireland and reuniting Ireland; in 1969 he helped to establish the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the paramilitary wing of the IRA. Cahill became active with the IRA in his late teens. In 1942 he and five other IRA m...
  • Cahill, Thaddeus (American inventor)
    The first major effort to generate musical sounds electrically was carried out over many years by an American, Thaddeus Cahill, who built a formidable assembly of rotary generators and telephone receivers to convert electrical signals into sound. Cahill called his remarkable invention the telharmonium, which he started to build about 1895 and continued to improve for years thereafter. The......
  • Cáhita (people)
    group of North American Indian tribes that inhabited the northwest coast of Mexico along the lower courses of the Sinaloa, Fuerte, Mayo, and Yaqui rivers. They spoke about 18 closely related dialects of the Cahita language or language grouping, which belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family. When first encountered by the Spaniards in 1533, the Cáhita peoples numbered about 115,...
  • Cáhita language
    ...North American Indian tribes that inhabited the northwest coast of Mexico along the lower courses of the Sinaloa, Fuerte, Mayo, and Yaqui rivers. They spoke about 18 closely related dialects of the Cahita language or language grouping, which belongs to the Uto-Aztecan family. When first encountered by the Spaniards in 1533, the Cáhita peoples numbered about 115,000 and were the most......
  • Cahn, Sammy (American songwriter)
    American lyricist who, in collaboration with such composers as Saul Chaplin, Jule Styne, and Jimmy Van Heusen, wrote songs that won four Academy Awards and became number one hits for many performers, notably Frank Sinatra....
  • Cahn-Ingold-Prelog (molecule nomenclature)
    ...configurations (like a person’s right and left hands). With Robert Cahn and Sir Christopher Ingold, he developed a nomenclature for describing complex organic compounds. This system, known as CIP, provided a standard and international language for precisely specifying a compound’s structure....
  • Cahokia (Illinois, United States)
    village, St. Clair county, southwestern Illinois, U.S. It lies along the Mississippi River, opposite St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1699 by Quebec missionaries and named for a tribe of Illinois Indians (Cahokia, meaning “Wild Geese”), it was the first permanent European settlement in Illinois and became a ce...
  • Cahokia Mounds (archaeological site, Illinois, United States)
    archaeological site occupying some 5 square miles (13 square km) on the Mississippi River floodplain opposite St. Louis, Missouri, near Cahokia and Collinsville, southwestern Illinois, U.S. The site originally consisted of about 120 mounds spread over 6 square miles (16 square km), but some of the mounds and other ancient ...
  • Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site (park, Illinois, United States)
    ...The site originally consisted of about 120 mounds spread over 6 square miles (16 square km), but some of the mounds and other ancient features have been destroyed. Some 70 mounds are preserved in Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Established in 1979 and encompassing 3.4 square miles (8.9 square km), it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1982....
  • Cahora Bassa (dam and hydroelectric facility, Mozambique)
    arch dam and hydroelectric facility on the Zambezi River in western Mozambique. The dam, located about 80 miles (125 km) northwest of Tete, is 560 feet (171 m) high and 994 feet (303 m) wide at the crest. It has a volume of 667,000,000 cubic yards (510,000,000 cubic m)....
  • Cahora Bassa (waterfall, Africa)
    ...movements, that caused ridges to be formed across the courses of the major rivers. Waterfalls are often found where the rivers are still engaged in cutting downward as they flow across these ridges; Cahora Bassa (falls) on the Zambezi and the Augrabies Falls on the Orange River are examples. Another factor that contributes to the creation of rapids or falls is the incidence of rock strata that....
  • Cahora Bassa Dam (dam and hydroelectric facility, Mozambique)
    arch dam and hydroelectric facility on the Zambezi River in western Mozambique. The dam, located about 80 miles (125 km) northwest of Tete, is 560 feet (171 m) high and 994 feet (303 m) wide at the crest. It has a volume of 667,000,000 cubic yards (510,000,000 cubic m)....
  • Cahora Bassa, Lake (lake, Mozambique)
    The dam impounds Lake Cahora Bassa, which is 150 miles (240 km) long and 19 miles (31 km) wide at its widest point. The lake has a capacity of 51,075,000 acre-feet (63,000,000,000 cubic m) and extends to the Zambia-Mozambique border. The dam was built by a consortium of Portuguese, German, British, and South African companies; construction of the dam began in 1969 and was completed in 1974. The......
  • Cahors (France)
    town, capital of Lot département, Midi-Pyrénées région, formerly capital of Quercy province, southern France. It is situated on a rocky peninsula surrounded by the Lot River and overlooked (southeast) by Mont Saint-Cyr, northeast of Agen. It was the capital of the ancient Cadu...
  • Cahour, Claude Jacqueline (French art patron and first lady of France)
    French art patron and first lady of France who was the guiding force behind the creation of the Pompidou Centre, the sometimes controversial Paris contemporary visual arts museum, which opened in 1977. She studied law in Paris and in 1935 married Georges Pompidou, who later served as prime minister (1962–68) and president (1969–74) of France. As the country’s first lady, she c...
  • cahow (bird)
    Some of the better known gadfly petrels are the endangered Bermuda petrel, or cahow (Pterodroma cahow, sometimes considered a race of P. hasitata); the dark-rumped petrel, also called the Hawaiian petrel (P. phaeopygia), another endangered species, now concentrated almost entirely on the island of Maui; the phoenix petrel (P. alba), which breeds on several tropical......
  • Cahuachi (archaeological site, Peru)
    In the time of the Nazca style what has been described as a small city was located in each of the south-coast valleys of Pisco, Ica, Nazca, and Acarí. At Cahuachi, in Nazca, this included a ceremonial centre consisting of six pyramids, which were terraced and adobe-faced natural hills associated with courts. Tambo Viejo in Acarí was fortified, which supports inferences drawn with......
  • Cahuilla (people)
    North American Indian tribe that spoke a Uto-Aztecan language. They originally lived in what is now southern California, in an inland basin of desert plains and rugged canyons south of the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains....
  • CAI
    a program of instructional material presented by means of a computer or computer systems....
  • Cai Lun (Chinese inventor)
    Chinese court official who is traditionally credited with the invention of paper....
  • cai luong (Vietnamese theatre)
    Vietnamese theatre style, the term meaning reformed or renewed theatre. It evolved during the French colonial period of Vietnam’s history (1862–1954) and clearly showed the influence of European drama. It transformed (though it did not supplant) the old established classical theatre (hat tuong) and somewhat resembled European comic opera in its blend of dialogue and song. Per...
  • Cai Shen (Chinese deity)
    the popular Chinese god (or gods) of wealth, widely believed to bestow on his devotees the riches carried about by his attendants. During the two-week New Year celebration, incense is burned in Ts’ai Shen’s temple (especially on the fifth day of the first lunar month), and friends joyously exchange the traditional New Year greeting “May you become rich” (“Kung...
  • Cai Yuanpei (Chinese educator)
    educator and revolutionary who served as head of Peking University in Beijing from 1916 to 1926 during the critical period when that institution played a major role in the development of a new spirit of nationalism and social reform in China....
  • Caiaphas (Jewish high priest)
    ...prefect and the local populace, which was hostile toward pagans and wanted to be free of foreign interference. His political responsibility was to maintain order and to see that tribute was paid. Caiaphas, the high priest during Jesus’ adulthood, held the office from about ad 18 to 36, longer than anyone else during the Roman period, indicating that he was a successful and ...
  • Caibarién (Cuba)
    port city, central Cuba. Caibarién is a major centre for the collection and distribution of goods from the agricultural hinterland, which produces mainly sugarcane, tobacco, and fruit. Sponge fishing is carried on offshore, and the city has sawmills, sugar refineries, and fish canneries. Caibarién is linked by highway and railroad to Placetas and to communities alo...
  • Caicos Islands (islands, West Indies)
    overseas territory of the United Kingdom in the West Indies. It consists of two groups of islands lying on the southeastern periphery of The Bahamas, of which they form a physical part, and north of the island of Hispaniola. The islands include eight large cays (keys) and numerous smaller cays, islets, reefs, banks, and rocks. Cockburn Town,...
  • Caieta (Italy)
    town, seaport, and archiepiscopal see, Latina province, Lazio region, south-central Italy, on the Gulf of Gaeta, northwest of Naples. Gaeta first came under the influence of the Romans in the 4th century bc; a road was built c. 184 bc connecting the town with the port, and it became a favoured Roman resort. After the fall of ...
  • Çailendra dynasty (Indonesian dynasty)
    a dynasty that flourished in Java from about 750 to 850 after the fall of the Funan kingdom of mainland Southeast Asia. The dynasty was marked by a great cultural renaissance associated with the introduction of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and it attained a high level of artistic expression in the many temples and monuments built under its rule. During the reign of one of its kings, the famous...
  • Caillaux, Joseph (French statesman)
    French statesman who was an early supporter of a national income tax and whose opposition to World War I led to his imprisonment for treason in 1920....
  • Caillaux, Joseph-Marie-Auguste (French statesman)
    French statesman who was an early supporter of a national income tax and whose opposition to World War I led to his imprisonment for treason in 1920....
  • cailleac (sheaf of corn)
    ...antiquity and surviving to modern times in isolated regions. Participants celebrate the last day of harvest in late September by singing, shouting, and decorating the village with boughs. The cailleac, or last sheaf of corn (grain), which represents the spirit of the field, is made into a harvest doll and drenched with water as a rain charm. This sheaf is saved until spring planting....
  • Caillebotte, Gustave (French painter)
    French painter, art collector, and impresario who combined aspects of the academic and Impressionist styles in a unique synthesis....
  • Cailletet, Louis-Paul (French physicist)
    French physicist and ironmaster, noted for his work on the liquefaction of gases....
  • Caillié, René-Auguste (French explorer)
    the first European to survive a journey to the West African city of Tombouctou (Timbuktu)....
  • Caillois, Roger (French socialist)
    Not only is there an ambivalence in the individual’s reaction to the numinous quality of the sacred but the restrictions, the tabus, can be expressive of the creative power of the sacred. Caillois has described at length the social mechanism of nonliterate societies, in which the group is divided into two complementary subgroups (moieties), and has interpreted the tabus and the necessary......
  • caiman (reptile group)
    any of several species of Central and South American reptiles that are related to alligators and are usually placed with them in the family Alligatoridae. Caimans, like all other members of order Crocodilia, are amphibious carnivores. They live along the edges of rivers and other bodies of water, and they reproduce by means of hard-shelled eggs laid in nests built and guarded by the female....
  • Caiman (reptile genus)
    Caimans are placed in three genera: Caiman includes the broad-snouted (C. latirostris) and spectacled (C. crocodilus) caimans; Melanosuchus, the black caiman (M. niger); and Paleosuchus, two species (P. trigonatus and P. palpebrosus) known......
  • Caiman crocodilus (species of caiman)
    Caimans are placed in three genera: Caiman includes the broad-snouted (C. latirostris) and spectacled (C. crocodilus) caimans; Melanosuchus, the black caiman (M. niger); and Paleosuchus, two species (P. trigonatus and P. palpebrosus) known as the smooth-fronted caimans....
  • Caiman latirostris (species of caiman)
    Caimans are placed in three genera: Caiman includes the broad-snouted (C. latirostris) and spectacled (C. crocodilus) caimans; Melanosuchus, the black caiman (M. niger); and Paleosuchus, two species (P. trigonatus and P. palpebrosus) known as the smooth-fronted caimans....
  • caiman lizard (reptile)
    any member of a genus (Dracaena) of lizards in the family Teiidae. These lizards (D. guianensis and D. paraguayensis) are found streamside in forested areas of South America. D. guianensis reaches a maximum length of 122 cm (48 inches)....
  • Caimanas (islands, West Indies)
    island group and overseas territory of the United Kingdom in the Caribbean Sea, comprising the islands of Grand Cayman, Little Cayman, and Cayman Brac, situated about 180 miles (290 km) northwest of Jamaica. The islands are the outcroppings of a submarine mountain range that extends northeastward from Belize to Cuba. The c...
  • Cain (biblical figure)
    in the Old Testament, first-born son of Adam and Eve, who murdered his brother Abel (Genesis 4:1–16). Cain, a farmer, became enraged when the Lord accepted the offering of his brother Abel, a shepherd, in preference to his own. He murdered Abel and was banished by the Lord from the settled country. Cain feared that in his exile he could be killed by anyone, so the Lord g...
  • Cain, Henri-Louis (French actor)
    French actor whom Voltaire regarded as the greatest tragedian of his time....
  • Cain, James M. (American novelist)
    novelist whose violent, sexually obsessed, and relentlessly paced melodramas epitomized the “hard-boiled” school of writing that flourished in the United States in the 1930s and ’40s. Three classics of the American screen were made from his novels: Double Indemnity (1936, filmed 1944), Mildred Pierce (1941, filmed 1945), and The Postman Always Rings Twice ...
  • Cain, James Mallahan (American novelist)
    novelist whose violent, sexually obsessed, and relentlessly paced melodramas epitomized the “hard-boiled” school of writing that flourished in the United States in the 1930s and ’40s. Three classics of the American screen were made from his novels: Double Indemnity (1936, filmed 1944), Mildred Pierce (1941, filmed 1945), and The Postman Always Rings Twice ...
  • Cain, John (American artist)
    Scottish-born American artist who painted primitivist scenes of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Scotland....
  • Cain, John, Jr. (Australian politician)
    Bolte was succeeded as premier by two other Liberals, Sir Rupert Hamer (1972–81) and Lindsay Thompson, who was defeated by Labor’s John Cain, Jr. Cain’s administration (1982–90) was marked by vigorous intervention in education, social welfare, health, transportation, public utilities, industry and commerce, and antidiscrimination initiatives. Victoria’s economy i...
  • Caine Mutiny, The (work by Wouk)
    During World War II Wouk served in the Pacific aboard the destroyer-minesweeper “Zane”. One of his best known novels, The Caine Mutiny (1951), grew out of these years. This drama of naval tradition presented the unforgettable character Captain Queeg and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1952....
  • Caine, Sir Hall (British novelist)
    British writer known for his popular novels combining sentiment, moral fervour, skillfully suggested local atmosphere, and strong characterization....
  • Caine, Sir Michael (British actor)
    internationally successful British motion-picture actor renowned for his versatility in numerous leading and character roles....
  • Caine, Sir Thomas Henry Hall (British novelist)
    British writer known for his popular novels combining sentiment, moral fervour, skillfully suggested local atmosphere, and strong characterization....
  • Caingang (people)
    ...extremely rare; nowhere does it appear to have existed as the prevailing form of marital arrangement. Of the 250 societies reported by the American anthropologist George P. Murdock (1949), only the Caingang of Brazil had chosen group marriage as an alternative form of union; even there the frequency was but 8 percent....
  • Cainites (Gnostic sect)
    member of a Gnostic sect mentioned by Irenaeus and other early Christian writers as flourishing in the 2nd century ad, probably in the eastern area of the Roman Empire. The Christian theologian Origen declared that the Cainites had “entirely abandoned Jesus.” Their reinterpretation of Old Testament texts reflected the view that Yahweh (the God of the Jews) was not mere...
  • Cains, Thomas (American glassmaker)
    Fine lead glass in the New England area was first successfully made in the South Boston works of the Boston Crown Glass Company. Thomas Cains was making flint glass there in 1813. He left the firm in 1824 to found the Phoenix Glass Works in South Boston, which survived until 1870. One particular device usually associated with the Boston manufactories of this period is the guilloche, or chain,......
  • Caiophora (plant genus)
    ...hairs that can result in discomfort for days; its oddly formed flowers have five pouchlike yellow petals covering united stamens and distinctive large coloured nectaries. The closely related Caiophora (or Cajophora), with about 65 tropical American species, as withLoasa, mostly grows in rocky slopes of cool Andean areas and also has stinging hairs....
  • Caiphas (Israel)
    city, northwestern Israel. The principal port of the country, it lies along the Bay of Haifa overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Haifa is first mentioned in the Talmud (c. 1st–4th century ce). Eusebius, the early Christian theologian and biblical topographer, referred to it as Sykaminos. The town was conquered in 1100 by the Crusaders, who called it Caiphas. In later tim...
  • Caiquetia (people)
    Indians of northwestern Venezuela living along the shores of Lake Maracaibo at the time of the Spanish conquest. They moved inland to avoid enslavement by the Spaniards but were eventually destroyed as were their neighbours, the Quiriquire and the Jirajara....
  • Caiquetio (people)
    Indians of northwestern Venezuela living along the shores of Lake Maracaibo at the time of the Spanish conquest. They moved inland to avoid enslavement by the Spaniards but were eventually destroyed as were their neighbours, the Quiriquire and the Jirajara....
  • Caird, Edward (British philosopher)
    philosopher and leader in Britain of the Neo-Hegelian school....
  • Caird, John (British theologian)
    British theologian and preacher, and an exponent of theism in Hegelian terms....
  • Cairene rug (Egyptian carpet)
    Egyptian floor covering believed to have been made in or near Cairo from at least as early as the 15th century to the 18th. The early production, under the Mamlūk dynasty, is characterized by geometric, centralized schemes featuring large and complex star shapes, octagons, or polygonal centerpieces, subdivided and graced with a multitude of tiny radial or clustered forms. Presumably, those ...
  • Cairina moschata (bird)
    Domestic ducks belong to the subfamily Anatinae of the waterfowl family Anatidae. The Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) and wild mallard (Anas platyrhyncos) are believed to be the ancestors of all domestic ducks. The Muscovy duck was domesticated in Colombia and Peru by the pre-Columbian Indians. The mallard was domesticated in China about 2,000 years ago and has undergone numerous......
  • Cairinini (bird)
    any of the species of the tribe Cairinini, family Anatidae (order Anseriformes), waterfowl that typically inhabit wet woodlands, nest in holes in trees, and perch on branches by means of their long-clawed toes. The tribe is widely represented, especially in the tropics. Perching ducks are closely akin to dabbling ducks, which they resemble in feeding habits and, in some species, courtship behavio...
  • cairn (burial mound)
    a pile of stones that is used as a boundary marker, a memorial, or a burial site. Cairns are usually conical in shape and were often erected on high ground. Burial cairns date primarily from the Neolithic Period and the Early Bronze Age. Cairns are still used in some parts of the world as burial places, particularly where the soil is difficult to excavate or where wild animals might disturb the bo...
  • Cairn Gorm (mountain, Scotland, United Kingdom)
    ...north-central Scotland. Established in 1948 and comprising 12,000 acres (5,000 hectares), the park extends upward from 1,000 feet (300 metres) near the town of Aviemore to include the summit of Cairn Gorm at an elevation of 4,084 feet (1,245 metres). A road and chairlift provide access to within 400 feet (120 metres) of the summit. The park offers the best skiing in Britain, excellent......
  • cairn terrier (breed of dog)
    working terrier breed developed in Scotland to rout vermin from cairns (rock piles). The modern breed’s characteristics are carefully patterned on those of the dog’s ancestor, a 17th-century terrier of the Isle of Skye. The cairn terrier is a short-legged dog with a short, broad face fixed in a “keen” expression that is typical of the breed. Its harsh...
  • Cairncross, John (British government official and spy)
    British government official who was identified in 1991 as the long-sought "fifth man" in the notorious Soviet spy ring that included Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Donald MacLean, and Anthony Blunt (b. July 27, 1913--d. Oct. 8, 1995)....
  • Cairnes, John Elliott (British economist)
    Irish economist who restated the key doctrines of the English classical school in his last and largest work, Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded (1874)....
  • cairngorm (mineral)
    very common, coarse-grained variety of the silica mineral quartz that ranges in colour from nearly black through smoky brown. No distinct boundary exists between smoky and colourless quartz. Its abundance causes it to be worth considerably less than either amethyst or citrine. Heating bleaches the stone, the colour sometimes passing through yellow; these yellow pieces are often...
  • Cairngorm Mountains (mountain range, Scotland, United Kingdom)
    highest mountain massif in the British Isles, named after one of its peaks—Cairn Gorm, with an elevation of 4,084 feet (1,245 metres)—part of the Grampian Mountains in the Highlands of Scotland between the Spey and Dee river valleys. The mountains are divided among the Highland, Moray, and Aberdeenshire counc...
  • Cairngorms National Nature Reserve (nature reserve, Scotland, United Kingdom)
    ...Mountains, centred on the town of Aviemore, has developed and expanded rapidly since World War II. Recreational activities include skiing, ice and rock climbing, and pony trekking. The associated Cairngorms National Nature Reserve, with an area of 100 square miles (259 square km), was established in 1954 and has rare flora and fauna....
  • Cairns (Queensland, Australia)
    city and port, northeastern Queensland, Australia, on Trinity Inlet of Trinity Bay. Founded in the 1870s as a government customs collection point, it grew in the late 19th century as the result of gold discoveries along the Hodgkinson and Palmer rivers, tin discoveries at Herberton on the Atherton Plateau, and the introduction of sugarcane cultivation in the area. Named for Sir ...
  • Cairns, James Ford (Australian politician)
    Australian left-wing politician (b. Oct. 4, 1914, Melbourne, Australia—d. Oct. 12, 2003, Melbourne), was best known for his passionate antiwar activism. Cairns was first elected to Parliament in 1955 and soon became a leading light in the Labor Party. In 1970 he led a huge demonstration in Melbourne against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. Cairns ably served in several ministerial...
  • Cairns, Jim (Australian politician)
    Australian left-wing politician (b. Oct. 4, 1914, Melbourne, Australia—d. Oct. 12, 2003, Melbourne), was best known for his passionate antiwar activism. Cairns was first elected to Parliament in 1955 and soon became a leading light in the Labor Party. In 1970 he led a huge demonstration in Melbourne against Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. Cairns ably served in several ministerial...
  • Cairo (Illinois, United States)
    city, seat (1860) of Alexander county, extreme southern Illinois, U.S. The city stands on a low-lying delta at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Bridges over both rivers connect the city with Kentucky (east) and Missouri (west). Cairo was so named because its site was thought to resemble that of the Egyptian city (see...
  • Cairo (Egypt)
    city, capital of Egypt, and one of the largest cities in Africa. Cairo has stood for more than 1,000 years on the same site on the banks of the Nile, primarily on the eastern shore, some 500 miles (800 km) downstream from the Aswān High Dam. Located in the northeast of the country, Cairo is the gateway to the Nile d...
  • Cairo Conference (World War II, 1943)
    (November–December 1943), either of two meetings of Allied leaders held in Cairo during World War II. At the first Cairo Conference (November 22–26), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt discussed plans for the prosecution of the Normandy Invasion. With Chinese lea...
  • Cairo Conferences (international relations)
    ...to confirm the nomination. Sir Percy Cox, recently appointed a high commissioner for Iraq, was responsible for carrying out the plebiscite. A provisional government set up by Cox shortly before the Cairo Conference passed a resolution in July 1921 declaring Fayṣal king of Iraq, provided that his “Government shall be constitutional, representative and democratic.” The......
  • Cairo Declaration (international history)
    ...The campaign to open a land route across northern Burma had run into serious difficulty. At the first Cairo Conference in November, Chiang met Churchill and Roosevelt for the first time. The Cairo Declaration issued there promised that, following the war, Manchuria, Taiwan, and the Pescadores Islands would be returned to China and that Korea would gain independence. The three allies......
  • Cairo Prophets (Hebrew Bible)
    The earliest extant Hebrew Bible codex is the Cairo Prophets written and punctuated by Moses ben Asher in Tiberias (in Palestine) in 895. Next in age is the Leningrad Codex of the Latter Prophets dated to 916, which was not originally the work of Ben Asher, but its Babylonian pointing—i.e., vowel signs used for pronunciation purposes—was brought into line with the Tiberian......
  • Cairo spiny mouse (mammal)
    ...Depending upon the species, fur covering the upperparts may be gray, grayish yellow, brownish red, or reddish. Black (melanistic) individuals occur in populations of the golden spiny mouse and the Cairo spiny mouse (A. cahirinus)....
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