The St. Lawrence Seaway is a series of canals, locks, and lakes giving ocean-going ships of the Atlantic access to the Great Lakes and dozens of inland ports, including Toronto, Cleveland, Chicago, and Duluth. A herculean engineering pro...

MASHTOTSʿ, MESROP (c. 345–440), inventor of the Armenian alphabet and saint of the Armenian church. The major source for his biography is the Life of Mashtotsʿ written by his pupil and associate, Koriwn. The name Mesro...

(d. c. 62–68 CE), early Christian saint, apostle to Gentiles. Saint Paul converted the Jews and Christians of the Roman empire to Christianity from about 40 to 64 CE. He undertook three missionary journeys in Asia Minor and Greece a...

St. Peter (died ca. 65) is traditionally considered to be the head of Jesus' 12 Apostles and the first bishop of Rome. Peter's original name was Simon, Peter being a name given him by Jesus. At the time of Jesus' public life, Peter was a g...

SHENOUTE. This early Christian monastic leader and outstanding Coptic author is often referred to as "the Great" or "the Archimandrite," a title equivalent to "abbot" and given to him by Cyril of A...

Saint-Hyacinthe, Th and the novel Histoire du prince Titi (1735)....

Kimmochi Saionji (1849-1940) was the last elder statesman, or genro, of Japan. Catapulted by birth into high position, he played a major role in the Japanese government both during and after the Meiji restoration of 1868. He made the final...

YAKUT RELIGION. The Yakuts, who numbered 328,000 during the 1979 census, are the northernmost of Turkic peoples. Beginning in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under pressure caused by Buriat encroachment, they gradually emigrated nort...

SAKYA PAṆḌITA (SA SKYA PAṆḌITA) (1182–1251). The religious culture of Tibet came to be characterized, from the thirteenth century on, by a remarkable emphasis not just upon Buddhist thought and practice, ...

Bridget Bishop (died 1692) was a tavern keeper whose wild temperament and flamboyant dress enventually caused her to be tried and hanged for witchcraft. The seventeenth century was a time of great religious excitement both in Europe and Am...

A salt is a compound of a metal with a nonmetal other than hydrogen or oxygen. NaCl (sodium chloride), or table salt, is the best-known example. The solubility of various salts in water at a standard temperature is highly variable. When sa...

SAṂNYĀSA. The Sanskrit term saṃnyāsa commonly means "renunciation of the world." It refers both to the initiatory rite at which a renouncer (saṃnyāsin) formally breaks all his ties wi...

Viewpoint: Yes, the genetic and historical evidence strongly suggest that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one child with Sally Hemings. Viewpoint: No, the DNA testing is inconclusive and, at best, proves only that any of Thomas Jefferso...

Best known for her sexually provocative dance, using ostrich feather fans, that she introduced at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair (supplemented in 1934 by a bubble dance), Sally Rand eventually made her form of erotic movement more ac...

The issue of depleted salmon stocks has been hotly debated for years. The public can finally see that the Atlantic salmon population is decreasing. Acid rain, caused mainly by the combustion of fossil fuels, has had an adverse effect on t...

Salmonella food poisoning is a bacterial food poisoning caused by the Salmonella bacterium. It results in the swelling of the lining of the stomach and intestines (gastroenteritis). While domestic and wild animals, including poultry, pigs,...

Maimon, Salomon(1753–1800) Born in 1753 in a small village in Lithuania, Shlomo ben-Yehoshua later named himself "Maimon" after the great medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. After being married at the age of ...

Easily the most successful form of music named for a condiment, salsa transcended its humble beginnings as a marketing hook to become a powerful influence on music and culture worldwide. A blend of African rhythms and European harmony born...

United States 1950 In October 1950, after several months of unsuccessful bargaining with Empire Zinc, the members of Local 890 of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW, or Mine-Mill) went on strike in Hanover,...

Salt-n-Pepa At a time when hip-hop music was shunned by mainstream radio, Salt-n-Pepa broke through in 1986 with their multi-platinum crossover debut, Hot, Cool and Vicious. Along with Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys, Salt-n-Pepa were ...

SALUTATIONS are more or less formally ordered expressions acknowledging the presence of another. They occur generally upon meeting but also upon departure from the person met. Salutations include an enormous variety of oral and ritual form...

SOTERIOLOGY The term soteriology means "doctrine of salvation" or, more concretely, the "way of salvation," and derives from the Greek sōtēria, which in turn is built on sōtēr, or &#x...

OFFICIAL NAMES:Salvia divinorum (Epling and Jativa-M.), salvinorin A, divinorin A STREET NAMES: Hierba Maria (the Virgin Mary's herb), ska Maria Pastora (the leaves of Mary, the shepherdess), semilla de la Virgen (the Virgin'...

The Salween (Thanlwin) River is one of the major waterways of Myanmar (Burma). Entering northeastern Myanmar from China's Yunnan Province, it flows southward through the mountain valleys of Shan, Kayah, and Karen (Kayin) States befo...

Sam Bass Born: July 21, 1851 Died: July 21, 1878 “Sam Bass was not much of an outlaw as outlaws go. He was no gunman, nor was he a killer,“ wrote Charles L. Martin in A Sketch of Sam Bass, the Bandit. But somehow, he was transfo...