A civil war erupted in Tajikistan in May 1992 and lasted until December 1997, when the winning faction, called the Kulabis, succeeded, after bloody clashes, in expelling the bulk of the opposition forces, known as Gharmis, along with tens ...

Excerpt from U.S. Supreme Court trial of 1922 Opinion written by U.S. Supreme Court justice George Sutherland on November 13, 1922 An upstanding twenty-year Japanese immigrant resident of the United States fails in his application to becom...

The term "takings" refers to the practice of taking, or otherwise restricting the use of, private property through the governmental power of eminent domain, environmental regulation, or other restrictions. The power of eminen...

American sociologist, Talcott Parsons (1902-1979), analyzed the socialization process to show the relationship between personality and social structure. His work led to the development of a pioneering social theory. Talcott Parsons was bor...

Dr. Manette's and Sydney Carton's love for Lucie Manette bring about their resurrection and a new sense of happiness, in Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. Dr. Manette is freed from the confines of his physical and mental prison, throu...

Political and religious faction and militia that came to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Following the Soviet Union's 1989 withdrawal from Afghanistan (see Afghan Wars), the Taliban (Persian: “Students”)—whose name...

AMULETS AND TALISMANS. An amulet is an object, supposedly charged with magical power, that is carried on the person or displayed in a house, barn, or place of business in order to ward off misadventure, disease, or the assaults of malign b...

Radio or television program in which a well-known personality interviews celebrities and other guests. The late-night programs hosted by Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Conan O'Brien have emphasized entertainment, incorporati...

The Talloires Declaration was created in October 1990 in Talloires, France. Jean Mayer, then president of Tufts University in Boston, called together 22 other university presidents and chancellors from universities throughout the world i...

The Taman Siswa, or "Garden of Students," was an anticolonial educational movement in the Dutch East Indies founded by the Javanese nobleman Raden Mas Soewardi Soerjaningrat, also known as Ki Hadjar Dewantoro (1889–195...

state of India. It is located in the extreme south of the subcontinent. The state has an area of 50,215 square miles (130,057 square kilometres). It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the east and south and by the states of Kerala to the we...

Mesopotamian god of fertility. He was the son of Enki, god of water, and Duttur, a personification of the ewe. Worship of Tammuz was centered around two yearly festivals, one in the early spring in which his marriage to the goddess Inanna ...

(born May 5, 1942, Itawamba county, Miss., U.S.—died April 6, 1998, Nashville, Tenn.) American singer, who was revered as the “first lady of country music” from the 1950s to the '80s, perhaps best known for her 1968 hit &...

TORAJA RELIGION. The Sa'dan Toraja, a people numbering about 325,000, live in Tana Toraja, the mountainous northern part of the southwest peninsula of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi (formerly Celebes). The name Sa'dan is d...

Tanch'ong is the Korean technique of decorating wooden buildings. Although tanch'ong work dates back to at least the Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE–668 CE), the earliest extant examples date to the Koryo dynasty (918&#x...

Tandem repeats are repeated DNA sequences arranged together one after another. The total number of iterations can vary from site to site and person to person. In general, this group of repeats can be subdivided by size into four categories...

Tang instant beverage entered American popular culture in the 1960s with a remarkable journey to outer space. The vitamin-fortified drink was first marketed in the late 1950s as a healthy alternative to soda pop. After being chosen by the ...

TANGAROA is the most important of the "departmental" gods of Polynesia. In his many cognates, he was worshiped by most Polynesians as the chief god and creator of the world. His popularity, however, depended chiefly on his ro...

TANNAIM. The term tanna is used to refer to an authority of the Mishnah and its related works, in contradistinction to amora, referring to a sage of the gemaraʾ. The word derives from the Aramaic teni ("to repeat") and...

chemical treatment of raw animal hide or skin to convert it into leather. A tanning agent displaces water from the interstices between the protein fibres and cements these fibres together. The three most widely used tanning agents are vege...

Metallic chemical element, one of the transition elements, chemical symbol Ta, atomic number 73. It is a dense, hard, unreactive, silvery gray metal with an extremely high melting point (5,425 °F [2,996 °C]). Relatively rare, it oc...

Tantrums Also called temper tantrums. In young children, an episode of extreme anger and frustration characterized by crying, screaming, and violent body motions, including throwing things, falling to the floor, and banging one's he...

East African country situated just south of the Equator. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean on the east and eight other nations: Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo (Kinshasa), Zambia, Malaŵi, and Mozambique. Tanzania was formed as...

TAO HONGJING (456–536 CE), a polymath scholar of Daoism, was largely responsible for establishing the textual corpus of the Maoshan or Shangqing (Highest Clarity) lineage, of which he is recognized as the tenth patriarch. Tao'...

Below is the opening chapter of Laozi's Daodejing ("The Way and the Power"). The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. (Co...