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head-hunting

(Encyclopedia) head-hunting, practice of taking and preserving the head of a slain enemy. It has occurred throughout the world from ancient times into the 20th cent. In Europe, it flourished in the…

Mead, Margaret

(Encyclopedia) Mead, Margaret, 1901–78, American anthropologist, b. Philadelphia, grad. Barnard, 1923, Ph.D. Columbia, 1929. In 1926 she became assistant curator, in 1942 associate curator, and from…

Makeba, Miriam

(Encyclopedia) Makeba, MiriamMakeba, Miriamməkāˈbə [key], 1932–2008, South African singer. She became the first black South African to achieve international fame and she played a fundamental role in…

Earhart, Amelia

(Encyclopedia) Earhart, AmeliaEarhart, Ameliaârˈhärt [key], 1897–1937, American aviator, b. Atchison, Kans. She was the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane (1928) and the first woman to…

bowerbird

(Encyclopedia) bowerbird, common name for any of several species of birds of the family Ptilonorhynchidae, native to Australia and New Guinea, which build, for courtship display, a bower of sticks or…

thylacine

(Encyclopedia) thylacinethylacinethīˈləsīnˌ [key] or Tasmanian wolf, carnivorous marsupial, or pouched mammal, of New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania, presumed extinct since 1936. The thylacine is…

plebiscite

(Encyclopedia) plebisciteplebisciteplĕbˈĭsīt [key] [Lat.,=popular decree], vote of the people on a question submitted to them, as in a referendum. The term, however, has acquired the more specific…

Bakassi

(Encyclopedia) BakassiBakassibäkäˈsē [key], peninsula, c.400 sq mi (1,000 sq km), E Cameroon, on the Cameroon-Nigeria border, at the SE end of the Gulf of Guinea. The swampy peninsula and associated…

Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries

(Encyclopedia) Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), multinational organization (est. 1960, formally constituted 1961) that coordinates petroleum policies and economic aid among oil-…