Garnet, Henry Highland, 1815–82, American abolitionist clergyman, b. Kent co., Md. Born a slave, he escaped in 1824 and was educated at the Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, N.Y. He was an eloquen...

Wolseley, Garnet Joseph Wolseley, 1st Viscount, 1833–1913, British field marshal. He fought in Burma (present-day Myanmar; 1852–53), the Crimea (1854–56), India (1857–58), and China (1860), an...

Garnett or Garnet, Henry, 1555?–1606, English Jesuit. He was converted to Roman Catholicism and in 1575 became a Jesuit. After some years on the Continent he returned as a missionary to Englan...

Kuprin, Aleksandr Ivanovich, 1870–1938, Russian novelist and short-story writer. Kuprin was an army officer for several years before he resigned to pursue a writing career. He won fame with Th...

Swakopmund, municipality (1991 pop. 17,681), W Namibia, on the Atlantic at mouth of Swakop River. A rail terminus and seaside resort surrounded by the Namib desert, the town was originally a p...

Gneiss, coarse-grained, imperfectly foliated, or layered, metamorphic rock. Gneiss is characterized by alternating light and dark bands differing in mineral composition and having coarser grai...

Month, in chronology, the conventional period of a lunation, i.e., passage of the moon through all its phases. It is usually computed at approximately 29 or 30 days. For the computation of the...

Pitta, name used to refer to a genus (Pitta) of small, plump, brightly colored birds. The genus, including some twenty-three species, constitutes the whole of the family Pittidae. Known also a...

Calcium [Lat.,=lime], metallic chemical element; symbol Ca; at. no. 20; at. wt. 40.08; m.p. about 839°C; b.p. 1,484°C; sp. gr. 1.55 at 20°C; valence +2. Calcium is a malleable, ductile, silver...

Sand, rock material occurring in the form of loose, rounded or angular grains, varying in size from .06 mm to 2 mm in diameter, the particles being smaller than those of gravel and larger than...