North American Plains Indian people living mostly in southern Canada and the north-central U.S. Ojibwa is one of the Algonquian languages. The people's name, spelled Ojibwe in Canada and given as Chippewa in many official U.S. documents, i...

ken (prefecture), Japan, in the East China Sea. The prefecture is composed of the Ryukyu Islands (q.v.). Okinawa Island is the largest in the Ryukyu Islands archipelago, being about 70 miles (112 km) long and 7 miles (11 km) wide. Okinawa ...

Olaf II Haroldsson (ca. 990-1030), also called St. Olaf, was king of Norway from 1015 to 1028. The first king of the whole of Norway, he organized its final conversion and its integration into Christian Europe. Olaf was a son of Harold Gra...

1630-1702 Swedish naturalist who in 1651 discovered the lymphatic system, notably that of the digestive system and the thoracic duct. The lymph system of vessels moves lymph from the tissues to the bloodstream. Rudbeck was a student of med...

The Old Gringo by Carlos Fuentes Born in 1928 in Panama City to a Mexican diplomat, Carlos Fuentes spent much of his youth abroad in Chile, Argentina, and Washington, D.C. He had written more than a dozen novels before completing The Old Gr...

A hero can be defined as a man with great strength, courage, or ability who is considered to be a model or an ideal. Heroism is often associated with perseverance, poise under pressure, and a strong sense of duty or honor. Although a her...

OLDENBERG, HERMANN (1854–1920), German Sanskritist, Buddhologist, and historian of religions. Born in Hamburg on October 31, 1854, the son of a Protestant clergyman, Hermann Oldenberg completed doctoral studies in classical and Indi...

“The Old-Fashioned Castilian” by Mariano José de Larra Born in Madrid on March 24, 1809, Mariano José de Larra would later gain renown under the pseudonym “Fígaro.” One of the most critically...

The Norwegian-American writer Ole Edvart Rölvaag (1876-1931) was a powerful, realistic chronicler of the lives of Norwegian immigrants on the farms of the midwestern United States. His work is grimly pessimistic. Ole Edvart Rölva...

1931- Norwegian computer scientist who, with Kirsten Nygaard, developed Simula, the first object-oriented programming language. Object-oriented programming was a completely new paradigm in computer programming and has had a profound impact...

Olfaction, the act of smelling, is as primitive as it is sophisticated. The human sense of smell, although only a fraction as sensitive as most other animals', not only warns us of danger and helps bond babies and mothers, but also allows ...

1925- Russian mathematician who has developed applied mathematics techniques. Oleinik earned a doctorate from the Institute of Mathematics at Moscow State University, where she has since taught. In 1973 she became head of the Department of...

Soviet aviator who scored 17 kills during air combat in World War II. Yamshchikova was a flying instructor who volunteered for combat duty. Due in part to manpower shortages (the Soviet Union suffered millions of casualties, mostly among m...

Market situation in which producers are so few that the actions of each of them have an impact on price and on competitors. Each producer must consider the effect of a price change on the others. A cut in price by one may lead to an equal ...

1890-1974 American mathematician often referred to as "one of the two most noted American women in the field of mathematics." Hazlett spent the majority of her professional career as a mathematics instructor at the University...

(born May 18, 1850, London, Eng.—died Feb. 3, 1925, Torquay, Devon) English physicist. In 1902 he predicted the presence of the ionosphere. Since Arthur Kennelly (1861–1939) had made a similar prediction, the ionosphere was lon...

They are two entirely different things. Star wars, the billion-dollar film series from LucasFilm, loved by millions, and has spawned endless fortunes in advertising. Then, there¡¦s Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens 19th Century nove...

First elaborate pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica. The Olmec lived on the lowland coast of the Gulf of Mexico in what is now southern Mexico. They developed a wide trading network, their cultural influence spreading north to the Valley ...

athletic festival that originated in ancient Greece and was revived in the late 19th century. Before the 1970s the Games were officially limited to competitors with amateur status, but in the 1980s many events were opened to professional a...

In Hinduism and other Indian religions, a sacred syllable considered the greatest of all mantras. The syllable om is composed of the three sounds a-u-m (in the Sanskrit language, the vowels a and u join to become o), which represent three ...

Oman, John Wood(1860–1939) John Wood Oman, the philosopher of religion and theologian, was a Scotsman from the Orkney Islands. After being educated at Edinburgh and Heidelberg universities and serving for seventeen years in a rural p...

Omar Hassan Ahmed al-BashirPrime Minister (pronounced "oh-MAR hah-SAHN ah-MED al bah-SHEER") "As soon as we feel that the Sudanese people are capable of making good decisions free from sectarian considerations and...

Observed phenomenon that is interpreted as signifying good or bad fortune. The many and varied omens that the ancients noted included lightning, cloud movements, the flights of birds, and the paths of sacred animals. Each type of omen was ...

The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 is a piece of legislation intended to limit the creation of pollution. As part of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990, the Pollution Prevention Act differed from previous legislation, which ...

Darwin's theory of Common Descent says that all animals originated from an early descendent. This theory is more clearly explained through the tree of life. The very first organism within a certain type or class of organisms is at the bas...