Le Duan (1908-1986) was a major figure in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and the principal leader of all Vietnam in the postwar era. He proved to be a good wartime ruler, but was less successful as a leader dealing with the problems ...

L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) wrote 69 books beloved by children, including The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which became a classic movie. Lyman Frank Baum was born on May 15, 1856, near Syracuse, New York. His father, Benjamin, was a wealthy oil b...

A ground-breaking prime-time television series, L. A. Law emerged in 1986 from the stable that had brought a new veracity to ensemble series drama with Hill Street Blues. Setting his new show in a high-powered law office, trend-setting pro...

The history of L.L. Bean, Inc., founded in 1912, really begins with the quintessential rags-to-riches story of the company's founder, Leon Leonwood Bean. Born in 1872 to Benjamin and Sarah Bean, L.L. was the fourth of six children. ...

La BruyÈre, Jean De(1645–1696) Jean de La Bruyère, the French author and moralist, was born in Paris, the son of a city official. After some legal training he apparently fell on hard times, but through the influence of ...

Zeno’s Conscience by Italo Svevo Italo Svevo, whose real name was Ettore Aron Schmitz, was born in 1861 in Trieste to Jewish parents of mixed backgrounds. His mother, Allegra Moravia, belonged to an Italian Jewish family. His father,...

La Mothe Le Vayer, Fran cle. 2 vols. Paris: Boivin, 1943. Popkin, Richard H. The History of Scepticism: From Savonarola to Bayle. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003....

La Regenta (The Judge’s Wife) by Leopoldo Alas (“Clarín”) Leopoldo Alas, better known by the pseudonym “Clarín,” which he adopted in 1875, was born in Zamora, Spain, on April 25, 1852, but hi...

LA VALLÉE POUSSIN, LOUIS DE (1869–1938), was a Belgian Indologist and specialist in Buddhist philosophy. Educated in Liège, Louvain, Paris, and Leiden, La Vallée Poussin became professor at the University of Ghe...

LaberthonniÈre, Lucien(1860–1932) Lucien Laberthonnière, the French philosopher of religion and a leading figure in the modernist movement in the Roman Catholic Church, was born at Chazelet (Indre). He studied for the p...

Minorities and ethnic groups have always been an important part of the American labor force. In many instances, groups were allowed, or even encouraged, to immigrate to the United States to fill specific labor needs. Perhaps the most obvi...

United States 1874 The union label movement began in 1874. The first union label was white, to distinguish cigars made by white union men from those produced by Chinese immigrants. From these ignoble beginnings, the union label became one...

Japan 1945-1960 Post-World War II Japan faced a monumental struggle between labor and management. American postwar occupation goals included democratization to be achieved, in part, by the fostering of unionism. Management control of prod...

Japan 1936-1940 The early liberalism of the Japanese labor movement of the 1920s fell victim to internal and external pressures. Internally, the infighting between socialist, communist, and fifth column quasifascist factions undermined th...

United States 1878 The International Labor Union (ILU) was an alliance of U.S. radical labor activists with Marxist-influenced socialists. The ILU was seen as an attempted successor of the National Labor Union (1866-1872), but one that wo...

The labu Sayong (water calabash) is a Malay earthenware container. It takes its shape from the gourd or starfruit and is used as a water container. The clay used for Malay pottery is a terra-cotta clay found by streams, riverbanks, and pad...

The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz Octavio Paz was born in Mexico City in 1914 in the midst of the Mexican Revolution. His father, a journalist and lawyer deeply involved in the Revolution, was rarely home, so Paz was raised mainly by...

The Lac operon is an organized region of the genome that is present in the bacterium Escherchia coli. It is devoted to the metabolism of the sugar lactose (from which the lac designation arises). The lac operon is important in the history ...

Lachelier, Jules(1832 ailles, Gabriel. La philosophie de Jules Lachelier. Paris, 1921....

Wares made of wood, porcelain, or metal to which lacquer has been applied are known as lacquerware. Lacquer is the sap or resin of the lacquer (rhus verniciflua) or varnish tree. The tree is native to central and southern China and possibl...

Lactic acid is a naturally occurring hydroxy-carboxylic acid. It occurs in many acidic fermentation products, e.g., silage, sour milk, sauerkraut, and pickles, and also has numerous commercial uses such as in drug preparation, acidificatio...

Lactobacillus is the name given to a group of Gram-negative bacteria that do not form spores but derive energy from the conversion of the sugar glucose into another sugar known as lactose. The name of the genus derives from the distinctive...

(2001 est. pop. 118,000). Ladakh, formerly called Middle Tibet, is a mountainous district of Jammu and Kashmir that forms the northernmost area of the Indian Republic. It covers 82,665 square kilometers of very high and rugged country, and...

Well known throughout polite society for her wit and verse, English world traveller Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) also worked to introduce the practice of inoculation against smallpox to the medical establishment of eighteenth-cent...

The visit of Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, to the United States in 1824 and 1825 marked a high point of early American nationalism. Lafayette's triumphal tour of the United States signaled tha...