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  • Weinstein, Nathan (American novelist)
    American writer best known for satiric novels of the 1930s....
  • Weinstock of Bowden, Arnold Weinstock, Baron (British industrialist)
    British industrialist (b. July 29, 1924, London, Eng.—d. July 23, 2002, Bowden Hill, Wiltshire, Eng.), led the U.K.’s General Electric Co. (GEC) as managing director for more than three decades (1963–96); his stern management and conservative tactics evoked strong praise as well as fierce criticism. Before his tenure at GEC, Weinstock was managing director of Radio and Allied ...
  • Weintraub, Aaron Roy (American author)
    American novelist and short-story writer whose near-autobiographical fiction avoids plot, instead concentrating upon careful, close description of feeling....
  • Weintraub, Al (American businessman)
    Al Weintraub opened Bell Sound in the early 1950s on West 87th Street, and when he moved closer to the midtown action (to 46th Street and 8th Avenue) in 1954, Bell became New York City’s busiest independent studio. Recording sessions in the city were closely monitored by the local chapter of the Musicians Union, which ensured that overtime was paid if a session ran a minute over the statuto...
  • Weinzweig, John Jacob (Canadian composer)
    Canadian composer (b. March 11, 1913, Toronto, Ont.—d. Aug. 24, 2006, Toronto), introduced modernist elements to Canadian music and through his teaching influenced younger composers. A tireless promoter of his country’s music, he became known as the “dean of Canadian composers.” He studied at the University of Toronto (B.M., 1937) and at the Eastman School of Music, Roc...
  • Weipa (Queensland, Australia)
    Aboriginal community and mining town, northern Queensland, Australia, on the northwestern coast of Cape York Peninsula. It lies on Albatross Bay at the estuaries of the Hey, Embley, and Mission rivers, facing the Gulf of Carpentaria. In 1802 the explorer Matthew Flinders noted the red cliffs that extended for 100 miles (160 km) along the coast. It was not until 1902 that these r...
  • weiqi (game)
    board game for two players. Of East Asian origin, it is popular in China, Korea, and especially Japan, the country with which it is most closely identified. Go, probably the world’s oldest board game, is thought to have originated in China some 4,000 years ago. According to some sources, this date is as early as 2356 bc, but it is more lik...
  • weir (fishing)
    ...a branch line to a main line. Hauling is accomplished with small hand-operated or motor-driven winches. More important for catching fish in commercial sea fisheries are the big wooden corrals, or weirs, and the large pound nets. The oldest type may be the Italian tonnara, used in the Mediterranean for tuna from the Bosporus to the Atlantic. Very large pound nets are also used by the Japanese......
  • weir (engineering)
    any control or barrier placed in an open channel to permit measurement of water discharge. The latter may be computed from a formula expressing the discharge in terms of crest length of the weir, depth of flow above the weir, weir geometry, and other factors. A variety of weirs have been used in streams, the so-called sharp-crested and trapezoidal forms being relatively common; but broad-crested,...
  • Weir, Ernest T. (American industrialist)
    The steel company was formed in 1929 by Ernest T. Weir (1875–1957) through an amalgamation of Weirton Steel Company, Great Lakes Steel Corporation, and Hanna Iron Ore Company; the company controlled not only steel mills but also iron-ore mines and coalfields. National Steel was consistently one of the most profitable steel companies throughout the Great Depression of the 1930s and the......
  • Weir, J. Alden (American artist)
    ...Artists and the National Academy of Design, they chose to exhibit independently, hoping to draw public attention to their paintings. The members of The Ten were Childe Hassam, John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, Thomas W. Dewing, Joseph De Camp, Frank W. Benson, Willard Leroy Metcalf, Edmund Charles Tarbell, Robert Reid, and......
  • Weir of Hermistion (work by Stevenson)
    ...(it was a complete reworking of a first draft by Lloyd Osbourne), showed that Stevenson had reached an important transition in his literary career. The next phase was demonstrated triumphantly in Weir of Hermiston (1896), the unfinished masterpiece on which he was working on the day of his death. “The Beach of Falesá” (first published 1892; included in Island Nigh...
  • Weir, Peter (Australian director)
    ...the federal states had its own funding agency), the first films began to appear in the early 1970s, and within the next few years several talented directors began to receive recognition, including Peter Weir (Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975), Bruce Beresford (The Getting of Wisdom, 1977), Fred Schepisi (The Chant of Jimmy......
  • Weir, Robert Stanley (Canadian politician)
    ...were written by Sir Adolphe Basile Routhier (1839–1920), later chief justice of Quebec. The English lyrics (which are not a translation or rendering of the French) were written in 1908 by Robert Stanley Weir (1856–1926), a lawyer and recorder of Montreal.O Canada! Our home and native land!True patriot-love in all thy sons......
  • Weir, Tony (British scholar)
    ...used and are entitled (in one of the rare instances of English law) to award punitive damages. No summary can do justice to this peculiar but important tort, but, according to English legal scholar Tony Weir’s A Casebook on Tort (1974), it may well be that its defects arisebecause it uses a single remedy, the action for damages, in order to perform th...
  • Weird Sisters (fictional characters)
    the creatures who prophesy the destinies of the main characters in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The term Weird Sisters was first used by Scots writers as a sobriquet for the Fates of Greek and Roman mythology. Through its appearance in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles, the expression p...
  • Weird Women (work by Barbey d’Aurevilly)
    ...the French Republic, and Un Prêtre marié (1865; “A Married Priest”), dealing with the sufferings of a priest under the new regime. Les Diaboliques (1874; Weird Women), a collection of six short stories, is often considered his masterpiece....
  • Weirdstone of Brisingamen: A Tale of Alderley, The (novel by Garner)
    Garner attended local schools before spending two years in the Royal Artillery and attending Magdalen College, Oxford. His first book, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen: A Tale of Alderley (1960), is a conventional albeit J.R.R. Tolkien-like tale for young readers set in Alderley Edge in his native Cheshire. The following two—The Moon of Gomrath (1963) and Elidor......
  • Weirton (West Virginia, United States)
    city, Brooke and Hancock counties, in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, U.S., on the Ohio River (bridged just south to Steubenville, Ohio). The area, originally settled during the American Revolution, has a long history of iron making. In the 1790s Peter Tarr built a crude furnace on nearby King...
  • Weisenfreund, Muni (American actor)
    American stage and film actor acclaimed for his portrayals of noted historical figures....
  • Weiser, Artur (German scholar)
    ...40 psalms to a hypothetical autumnal New Year festival at which the enthronement of Yahweh as the universal king was commemorated; the festival was associated with a similar Babylonian celebration. Artur Weiser, a German scholar, sought the cultic milieu of the Hebrew psalms especially in an annual feast of covenant renewal, which was uniquely Israelite....
  • Weiser, Johann Conrad (American colonial agent)
    North American colonial Indian agent, musician, evangelist, and public official....
  • Weiser, Mark David (American computer scientist)
    American computer scientist and visionary who developed the pioneering idea for what he referred to as “ubiquitous computing,” the use of tiny computers in “smart” devices—everyday items such as coffeepots and copy machines—and their connection via a network; he also was a drummer for Severe Tire Damage, the first band that broadcast live on the Internet (...
  • Weisgall, Hugo (American composer and educator)
    Czech-born American composer and educator (b. Oct. 13, 1912, Eibenschutz, Moravia [now Ivancice, Czech Republic]--d. March 11, 1997, Manhasset, N.Y.), was considered one of the most influential opera composers in the U.S.; his works were praised for their literary merit, psychological drama, and strong vocal line. Born into a musical family that had produced several generations of composers and ca...
  • Weisgall, Hugo David (American composer and educator)
    Czech-born American composer and educator (b. Oct. 13, 1912, Eibenschutz, Moravia [now Ivancice, Czech Republic]--d. March 11, 1997, Manhasset, N.Y.), was considered one of the most influential opera composers in the U.S.; his works were praised for their literary merit, psychological drama, and strong vocal line. Born into a musical family that had produced several generations of composers and ca...
  • Weishi (Buddhist school)
    school of Chinese Buddhism derived from the Indian Yogācāra school. See Yogācāra....
  • Weismann, August Friedrich Leopold (German biologist)
    German biologist and one of the founders of the science of genetics, who is best known for his opposition to the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired traits and for his “germ plasm” theory, the forerunner of DNA theory....
  • Weiss, Alta (American baseball player)
    In its early stages, women’s involvement in professional baseball was largely an attempt to profit from the novelty of female players. An Ohio woman, Alta Weiss, pitched for the otherwise all-male semiprofessional Vermilion Independents in 1907. Jackie Mitchell became the first female professional baseball player when she signed a contract with the minor league Chattanooga Lookouts in 1931....
  • weiss beer (alcoholic beverage)
    ...Märzbier (“March beer”) is a lighter brew produced in the spring. While all German lagers are made with malted barley, a special brew called weiss beer (Weissbier; “white beer”) is made from malted wheat. In other countries such as Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United States, other...
  • Weiss, Bernhard (German biblical scholar)
    ...the priority of Mark and its use as the patterning form of Matthew and Luke. This insight led to a so-called two-source hypothesis (by two German biblical scholars, Heinrich Holtzmann in 1863, and Bernhard Weiss in 1887–88), which, with various modifications and refinements of other scholars, is the generally accepted solution to the Synoptic problem....
  • Weiss, Carol (American lawyer)
    American lawyer who specialized in immigration law and the defense of the civil rights of immigrants....
  • Weiss domain (physics)
    ...a ferromagnetic substance at the Curie point and suggested that spontaneous magnetization could occur in such materials; the latter phenomenon was later found to occur in very small regions known as Weiss domains. His major published work was Le magnetisme (with G. Foex, 1926)....
  • Weiss, Donna (American designer)
    Internationally acclaimed fashion designer Donna Karan captured the spotlight in 1993 both with her mix-and-match clothing in soft fabrics and neutral colours and with the public offering of shares--worth more than $160 million--in her company, Donna Karan Co. The nine-year-old concern was initially bankrolled with a $3 million investment, and its explosive growth provided testament to the popular...
  • Weiss, Harvey (American archaeologist)
    ancient city in northeastern Syria. Excavations of the mound at the site were begun by Harvey Weiss of Yale University in 1979. His work uncovered archaeological remains dating from about 5000 bc to 1726 bc, when the once-flourishing city was destroyed by Babylon....
  • Weiss, Janet (American musician)
    ...Face the Truth (2005), and Real Emotional Trash (2008), all with his new assemblage, the Jicks, who by 2008 included former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss. Weiss, like Malkmus, lived in Portland, Ore., where slacker collegiate types had bought homes and become parents. Even before the breakup of Pavement, Malkmus and Nastanovich had begun a......
  • Weiss, Johannes (German theologian)
    German theologian known for his work in New Testament criticism. He wrote the first eschatological interpretations of the Gospel (1892) and also set forth the principles of “form-criticism” (1912)—the analysis of biblical passages through the examination of their structural form....
  • Weiss, John (American historian)
    ...was quite fraudulent in this respect. Although some workers were duped by it before the fascists came to power, most remained loyal to the traditional antifascist parties of the left. As historian John Weiss noted, “Property and income distribution and the traditional class structure remained roughly the same under fascist rule. What changes there were favored the old elites or certain.....
  • Weiss, Paul Alfred (American biologist)
    Austrian-born American biologist who did pioneering research on the mechanics of nerve regeneration, nerve repair, and cellular organization. During World War II Weiss and his colleagues developed and tested the first practical system of preserving human tissue for later surgical grafting....
  • Weiss, Peter (German writer)
    German dramatist and novelist whose plays achieved widespread success in both Europe and the United States in the 1960s....
  • Weiss, Peter Ulrich (German writer)
    German dramatist and novelist whose plays achieved widespread success in both Europe and the United States in the 1960s....
  • Weiss, Pierre-Ernest (French physicist)
    French physicist who investigated magnetism and determined the Weiss magneton unit of magnetic moment....
  • Weiss, Theodore Russell (American editor and poet)
    American poet and editor (b. Dec. 16, 1916, Reading, Pa.—d. April 15, 2003, Princeton, N.J.), was the founding editor in 1943 (with Warren Carrier) of the Quarterly Review of Literature, which published works by poets William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, and Ezra Pound, as well as those of little-known poets, non-English-language writers, and especially women, including the then-u...
  • Weissbier (alcoholic beverage)
    ...Märzbier (“March beer”) is a lighter brew produced in the spring. While all German lagers are made with malted barley, a special brew called weiss beer (Weissbier; “white beer”) is made from malted wheat. In other countries such as Denmark, The Netherlands, and the United States, other...
  • Weissen Blätter (Swiss journal)
    Schickele was active as a foreign correspondent, editor, and, from 1915 to 1919, as the publisher of the Weissen Blätter (“The White Papers”), which he had transferred from Berlin to Zürich and which he made the most effective mouthpiece of European anti-war sentiment during World War I....
  • Weissenborn, Friederike Caroline (German actress and manager)
    actress-manager who was influential in the development of modern German theatre....
  • Weisses Buch (Swiss historical book)
    ...(demicanton), central Switzerland, at the efflux of the Sarner River from the northern end of Lake Sarnen, southwest of Lucerne. In its town hall (1729–31), the Weisses Buch (“White Book”) contains the oldest chronicle extant (c. 1470) of the history of Swiss liberation; the book is also the principal source of the legend of......
  • Weisshorn (mountain, Switzerland)
    ...Great St. Bernard Pass east of Mont Blanc on the Swiss-Italian border to the region of the Splügen Pass north of Lake Como. Within this territory are such distinctive peaks as the Dufourspitze, Weisshorn, Matterhorn, and Finsteraarhorn, all 14,000 feet high. In addition, the great glacial lakes—Como and Maggiore in the south, part of the drainage system of the Po; and Thun, Brienz...
  • Weisskircher Heights (region, Saarland, Germany)
    ...the south by the scarps of the French région of Lorraine. The small Blies and Prims rivers flow into the Saar River. The state’s highest point is in the Weiskircher Heights (2,280 feet [695 metres]). The climate is largely continental in character, but a maritime influence is quite evident in Saarland’s moderately warm summers and mild ...
  • Weisskopf formula (physics)
    Transition rates are usually compared to the single-proton theoretical rate, or Weisskopf formula, named after the American physicist Victor Frederick Weisskopf, who developed it. The Table gives the theoretical reference rate formulas in their dependence on nuclear mass number A and gamma-ray energy Eγ (in MeV)....
  • Weisskopf, Victor Frederick (Austrian-American physicist)
    Austrian-born American physicist (b. Sept. 19, 1908, Vienna, Austria—d. April 21, 2002, Newton, Mass.), worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II; he later became a noted campaigner against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. After earning a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Göttingen, Ger., in 1931, Weisskopf studied under Niels Bohr at t...
  • Weisskunig (work by Maximilian I)
    ...patterns of thought, he was nevertheless open to new ideas, enthusiastic about promoting science as well as the arts. He not only planned a Latin autobiography but wrote two poetical allegories, Weisskunig (“White King”) and Teuerdank (both largely autobiographical), and the Geheimes Jagdbuch, a treatise on hunting, and kept a bevy of poets and artists busy wi...
  • Weissman, Natalia (Polish-born concert pianist)
    Polish-born concert pianist who survived a Nazi concentration camp in part on the strength of her musical talent. She made her professional debut in Berlin in 1929 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra but later returned to Krakow to care for her family. Karp, who was Jewish, was arrested in 1943, and the Gestapo sent her to the Plaszow forced-labour camp near Krakow. The camp’s commander,...
  • Weissmuller, Johnny (American athlete and actor)
    American freestyle swimmer of the 1920s who won five Olympic gold medals and set 67 world records. He became even more famous as a motion-picture actor, most notably in the role of Tarzan, a “noble savage” who had been abandoned as an infant in a jungle and reared by apes....
  • Weissmuller, Jonas (American athlete and actor)
    American freestyle swimmer of the 1920s who won five Olympic gold medals and set 67 world records. He became even more famous as a motion-picture actor, most notably in the role of Tarzan, a “noble savage” who had been abandoned as an infant in a jungle and reared by apes....
  • Weissmuller, Peter John (American athlete and actor)
    American freestyle swimmer of the 1920s who won five Olympic gold medals and set 67 world records. He became even more famous as a motion-picture actor, most notably in the role of Tarzan, a “noble savage” who had been abandoned as an infant in a jungle and reared by apes....
  • weisuo (Chinese military history)
    (Chinese: “guard post”), any of the military garrison units utilized by China’s Ming dynasty (1368–1644) to maintain peace throughout its empire. Originally developed by the preceding Yuan (or Mongol) dynasty (1206–1368), the system consisted of a guard unit of 5,600 men known as a wei....
  • Weisweiler, Adam (French cabinetmaker)
    one of the foremost cabinetmakers of the Louis XVI period, whose works were commissioned by many European courts....
  • Weisweiler, Jean (French cabinetmaker)
    ...Bonaparte family. His other royal commissions included those for the Prince of Wales and Duke of Northumberland. He retired after his wife’s death in 1809, and his business was continued by his son Jean Weisweiler (died 1844)....
  • Weisz, Erik (American magician)
    American magician noted for his sensational escape acts....
  • Weisz, Rachel (British actress)
    Other Nominees...
  • weites Feld, Ein (novel by Grass)
    ...Unkenrufe (1992; The Call of the Toad), which concerned the uneasy relationship between Poland and Germany. In 1995 Grass published Ein weites Feld (“A Broad Field”), an ambitious novel treating Germany’s reunification in 1990. The work was vehemently attacked by German critics, who denounced Grass’s port...
  • Weiting (president of China)
    Chinese army leader and reformist minister in the twilight of the Qing dynasty (until 1911) and then first president of the Republic of China (1912–16)....
  • Weitz, Hans Werner (American fashion designer)
    German-born American fashion designer, novelist, and historian (b. May 25, 1923, Berlin, Ger.—d. Oct. 3, 2002, Bridgehampton, N.Y.), enhanced his renown as a menswear designer—and greatly increased his income—when he became one of the first to lend his name to the licensing of products. The wide variety of items sold under his name included men’s cologne, neckties, umbr...
  • Weitz, John (American fashion designer)
    German-born American fashion designer, novelist, and historian (b. May 25, 1923, Berlin, Ger.—d. Oct. 3, 2002, Bridgehampton, N.Y.), enhanced his renown as a menswear designer—and greatly increased his income—when he became one of the first to lend his name to the licensing of products. The wide variety of items sold under his name included men’s cologne, neckties, umbr...
  • Weitzmann, K. (German art historian)
    ...be dated exactly. But in most cases, dates can only be suggested on the basis of style. The ivories have been classified under a number of headings in a monumental survey made by A. Goldschmidt and K. Weitzmann. They term their first group that of Romanus and associate a number of ivories with that showing his crowning, mentioned above; they include triptychs with the deesis on the central......
  • Weixian (China)
    city, east-central Shandong sheng (province), eastern China. It is situated on the main route along the northern slopes of the Shandong Hills at the northern end of the central plain. The locality is watered by the Wei and Jiaolai rivers, which divide the Mount Tai complex to the west from the mountains of the Shandong P...
  • Weizenbaum, Joseph (American computer scientist)
    German-born American computer scientist who was a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when he set the stage for the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) as the developer (1964–65) of an advanced computer program called Eliza, which was capable of holding a conversation (in the manner of a Rogerian psychotherapist) in plain English with humans who interacte...
  • Weizhou (China)
    city, east-central Shandong sheng (province), eastern China. It is situated on the main route along the northern slopes of the Shandong Hills at the northern end of the central plain. The locality is watered by the Wei and Jiaolai rivers, which divide the Mount Tai complex to the west from the mountains of the Shandong P...
  • Weizman, Ezer (president of Israel)
    Israeli soldier and politician who was the seventh president of Israel (1993–2000)....
  • Weizmann, Chaim (Israeli president and scientist)
    first president of the new nation of Israel (1949–52), who was for decades the guiding spirit behind the World Zionist Organization....
  • Weizmann, Chaim Azriel (Israeli president and scientist)
    first president of the new nation of Israel (1949–52), who was for decades the guiding spirit behind the World Zionist Organization....
  • Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich Freiherr, Baron von (German physicist and philosopher)
    German theoretical physicist and philosopher who was a member of the team that sought to develop an atomic bomb for Nazi Germany; he later was one of the “Göttingen 18,” scientists who in 1957 signed a manifesto opposing the proposed acquisition of atomic weapons by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). In 1941 Weizsäcker accompanied his colleague and mentor physicist...
  • weka (bird)
    ...the most interesting of which are flightless. The moa was a large bird, eventually exterminated by the Maori. The kiwi, another flightless species, is extant, though only in secluded bush areas. The weka and the notornis, or takahe (barely rescued from extinction), probably became flightless after arrival. The pukeko, a swamp hen relative of the weka, is even now in the process of losing the us...
  • Weland the Smith (medieval literary figure)
    in Scandinavian, German, and Anglo-Saxon legend, a smith of outstanding skill. He was, according to some legends, a lord of the elves. His story is told in the Völundarkvida, one of the poems in the 13th-century Icelandic Elder, or Poetic, Edda, and, with variations, in the mid-13th-century Icelandic prose Thidriks saga. He is also mentioned in the Anglo-S...
  • Welawa, Treaty of (Poland [1657])
    (Sept. 19, 1657), agreement in which John Casimir, king of Poland from 1648 to 1668, renounced the suzerainty of the Polish crown over ducal Prussia and made Frederick William, who was the duke of Prussia as well as the elector of Brandenburg (1640–88), the duchy’s sovereign ruler....
  • Welch (West Virginia, United States)
    city, seat of McDowell county, southern West Virginia, U.S., at the confluence of Elkhorn Creek and Tug Fork. Settled in 1885, it was named for I.A. Welch, an early settler. The county seat was moved there from Perryville in 1891. There were no bridges or wagons in this extremely mountainous area until the 1880s, and the principal products at that time were furs and ginseng. The...
  • Welch, Adam Cleghorn (British biblical scholar)
    one of the greatest Scottish biblical scholars....
  • Welch, Denton (British artist and writer)
    English painter and novelist chiefly remembered for two imaginative novels of adolescence, Maiden Voyage (1943) and In Youth Is Pleasure (1944)....
  • Welch, Elisabeth Margaret (British-American singer)
    American-born British musical theatre and cabaret singer (b. Feb. 27, 1904, New York, N.Y.—d. July 15, 2003, Northolt, Middlesex, Eng.), was known for her show-stopping performances in plays by Cole Porter, Ivor Novello, and Noël Coward. Welch began her career in New York City, where she created a sensation in 1931 with her rendition of Porter’s “Love for Sale.” ...
  • Welch, James (American author)
    Novels such as N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969, James Welch’s Winter in the Blood (1974) and Fools Crow (1986), Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony (1977), and Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine (1984), The Beet Queen (1986), and The Antelope Wife...
  • Welch, Laura Lane (American first lady)
    American first lady (from 2001)—the wife of George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States....
  • Welch, Robert H. W., Jr. (American politician)
    private organization founded in the United States on Dec. 9, 1958, by Robert H.W. Welch, Jr. (1899–1985), a retired Boston candy manufacturer, for the purpose of combating communism and promoting various ultraconservative causes. The name derives from John Birch, an American Baptist missionary and U.S. Army intelligence officer who was killed by Chinese communists on Aug. 25, 1945, making.....
  • Welch, William Henry (American physician)
    American pathologist who played a major role in the introduction of modern medical practice and education to the United States while directing the rise of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, to a leading position among the nation’s medical centres....
  • Welcker, Friedrich Gottlieb (German scholar)
    ...of the different parts of Greece, which he believed could shed much light on early history. He was a strong upholder of the importance of art and archaeology in the study of antiquity, as was F.G. Welcker (1784–1868), who applied deep knowledge of Greek art and religion to the interpretation of literature and did much to shape the wider conception of the study of antiquity that was......
  • Welcome (drinking vessel)
    ...The guilds, for instance, commissioned drinking vessels in the shape of larger than life-size versions of the tools of their trade or their coats of arms. Another type of vessel was called the Welcome, a drinking vessel that was handed around as a form of greeting or when a toast was being drunk. The body of these vessels was generally cylindrical or potbellied, with a lid and a short......
  • Welcome Songs (music by Purcell)
    The instrumental movements are the most striking part of the earliest of Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II—a series of ceremonial odes that began to appear in 1680. Possibly he lacked experience in writing for voices, at any rate on the scale required for works of this kind; or else he had not yet achieved the art of cloaking insipid words in signif...
  • Welcome to all the pleasures (work by Purcell)
    ...that appeared in vocal collections, little of Purcell’s music was published in his lifetime. The principal works were the Sonatas of III Parts (1683); Welcome to all the pleasures, an ode for St. Cecilia’s Day, written in 1683 (published in 1684); and Dioclesian, composed in 1690 (1691). After his...
  • Welcome to Mooseport (film by Petrie)
    ...Age. In the dark comedy Eulogy (2004), he was cast as the maladjusted eldest son mourning the death of the family patriarch. Romano also appeared in Welcome to Mooseport (2004), a comedy about a small-town political race in which Romano costarred with Gene Hackman, and he voiced Manfred in Ice Age: The Meltdown...
  • Welcoming Disaster (work by Macpherson)
    ...traditional verse forms, her poems repeatedly stress the importance of the imagination. Four Ages of Man (1962) is an illustrated account of classical myths, designed for older children. Welcoming Disaster (1974) is a collection of her poems from 1970 to 1974. Her study of the pastoral romance, The Spirit of Solitude: Conventions and Continuities in Late Romance, was......
  • Weld, Sir Frederick Aloysius (prime minister of New Zealand)
    politician, statesman, and prime minister of New Zealand (1864–65), whose “self-reliant” policy was that the colony have full responsibility for the conduct of all Maori affairs, including the settlement of difficulties without help from the crown....
  • Weld, Theodore Dwight (American abolitionist)
    American antislavery crusader in the pre-Civil War period....
  • welded rail
    One of the most important developments is the welding of standard rails into long lengths. This continuous welded rail results in a smoother track that requires less maintenance. The rail is usually welded into lengths of between 320 yards and 0.25 mile. Once laid in track, these quarter-mile lengths are often welded together in turn to form rails several miles long without a break....
  • welded tuff (rock)
    rock composed of compacted volcanic ejecta (see tuff)....
  • welding (metallurgy)
    technique used for joining metallic parts usually through the application of heat. This technique was discovered during efforts to manipulate iron into useful shapes. Welded blades were developed in the first millennium ad, the most famous being those produced by Arab armourers at Damascus, Syria. The process of carburization of iron to produce h...
  • Weldon, Fay (British author)
    British novelist, playwright, and television and radio scriptwriter known for her thoughtful and witty stories of contemporary women....
  • Weldon, Walter F. R. (British statistician)
    ...emphasizing especially the importance of quantification for biology, medicine, and social science. It was the problem of measuring the effects of natural selection, brought to him by his colleague Walter F.R. Weldon, that captivated Pearson and turned statistics into his personal scientific mission. Their work owed much to Francis Galton, who especially sought to apply statistical reasoning to....
  • Welensky, Roland (South African politician)
    Northern Rhodesian trade unionist and statesman who helped found the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and served as its deputy minister (1953–56) and prime minister (1956–63)....
  • Welensky, Sir Roy (South African politician)
    Northern Rhodesian trade unionist and statesman who helped found the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and served as its deputy minister (1953–56) and prime minister (1956–63)....
  • Welf Dynasty (German history)
    dynasty of German nobles and rulers who were the chief rivals of the Hohenstaufens in Italy and central Europe in the Middle Ages and who later included the Hanoverian Welfs, who, with the accession of George I to the British throne, became rulers of Great Britain....
  • Welf I (duke of Bavaria)
    ...plotting the murder of the King (1070). Then a rebellion broke out among the Saxons, which in 1073 spread so rapidly that Henry had to escape to Worms. After negotiations with Welf IV, the new duke (as Welf I) of Bavaria, and with Rudolf, the duke of Swabia, Henry was forced to grant immunity to the rebels in 1073 and had to agree to the razing of the royal Harz Castle in the final peace treaty...
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