• Pearl River Convention (American history)

    Columbia: …was the site of the Pearl River Convention (1816), at which the delegates agreed on Mississippi’s boundaries and began the petition process for its admission to the Union. Inc. 1819. Pop. (2000) 6,603; (2010) 6,582.

  • Pearl River Delta (delta, China)

    Pearl River Delta, extensive low-lying area formed by the junction of the Xi, Bei, Dong, and Pearl (Zhu) rivers in southern Guangdong province, China. It covers an area of 2,900 square miles (7,500 square km) and stretches from the city of Guangzhou (Canton) in the north to the Macau Special

  • pearl tapioca (food)

    tapioca: A pellet form, known as pearl tapioca, is made by forcing the moist starch through sieves. Granulated tapioca, marketed in various-sized grains and sometimes called “manioca,” is produced by grinding flake tapioca. When cooked, tapioca swells into a pale, translucent jelly.

  • Pearl, Judea (Israeli-American computer scientist)

    Judea Pearl is an Israeli-American computer scientist and winner of the 2011 A.M. Turing Award, the highest honor in computer science, for his “fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence.” Pearl received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Technion–Israel Institute of

  • Pearl, Minnie (American entertainer)

    Minnie Pearl was an American entertainer who performed at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry for more than 50 years and on the television show Hee Haw for 20 years. Announcing her presence with a signature "How-dee! I’m just so proud to be here!" and sporting a trademark flowered hat with a $1.98 price tag

  • Pearl, Raymond (American zoologist)

    Raymond Pearl was an American zoologist, one of the founders of biometry, the application of statistics to biology and medicine. As an instructor at the University of Michigan, where he had earned a Ph.D. in zoology (1902), Pearl recognized the advantages to be gained from applying standard

  • Pearl, The (short story by Steinbeck)

    The Pearl, short story by John Steinbeck, published in 1947. It is a parable about a Mexican Indian pearl diver named Kino who finds a valuable pearl and is transformed by the evil it attracts. Kino sees the pearl as his opportunity for a better life. When the townsfolk of La Paz learn of Kino’s

  • Pearl, the (American basketball player)

    Earl Monroe is an American basketball player who is regarded as one of the finest ball handlers in the sport’s history. In 1967 Monroe entered the National Basketball Association (NBA) as an urban legend, a high-scoring virtuoso with fabled one-on-one moves. He retired 13 years later, after he

  • Pearl, The (painting by Vrubel)

    Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel: One of these paintings, The Pearl (1904), is frequently cited as one of the most characteristic paintings of Russian Art Nouveau.

  • Pearl, The (periodical)

    pornography: …periodical of the era was The Pearl (1879–80), which included serialized novels, short stories, crude jokes, poems, and ballads containing graphic descriptions of sexual activity. Such works provide a valuable corrective to conventional images of Victorian prudery.

  • pearlfish (fish)

    pearlfish, any of about 32 species of slim, eel-shaped marine fishes of the family Carapidae noted for living in the bodies of sea cucumbers, pearl oysters, starfishes, and other invertebrates. Pearlfishes are primarily tropical and are found around the world, mainly in shallow water. They are

  • pearling (pearl industry)

    Torres Strait Islander peoples: History and governance: …to the establishment of the pearling industry, which brought a large influx of foreigners but exhausted the natural marine resources. Bêche-de-mer (trepang, or sea cucumber) fishing also drew outsiders to the Torres Strait. With this increased activity, Torres Strait Islander peoples were subject to abuse from the pearlers and trepangers.…

  • pearlite (chemical compound)

    iron processing: …leads to the formation of pearlite, which in a microscope can be seen to consist of alternate laths of alpha-ferrite and cementite. Cementite is harder and stronger than ferrite but is much less malleable, so that vastly differing mechanical properties are obtained by varying the amount of carbon. At the…

  • Pearls Airport (airport, Grenada, West Indies)

    Grenada: Transportation of Grenada: Pearls Airport—providing service to nearby islands with connecting flights to Venezuela—is located on the northeastern coast. An airport on Carriacou also provides flights to nearby islands.

  • Pearls of Wisdom (American periodical)

    Church Universal and Triumphant: …were published in the periodical Pearls of Wisdom and mailed to followers around the world. Following her husband’s death, Elizabeth Clare Prophet soon reorganized the movement as the Church Universal and Triumphant and moved its headquarters to southern California in 1976 and then to its present location in Montana in…

  • Pearls, Isle of (island, Venezuela)

    Margarita Island, island in the Caribbean Sea, 12 miles (19 km) north of the Península de Araya in northeastern Venezuela. Also known as the Isle of Pearls, Margarita is the largest of 70 islands comprising Nueva Esparta estado (state). In reality two islands joined by a low narrow isthmus,

  • Pearlstein, Philip (American painter)

    Philip Pearlstein was an American painter whose portraits and images of nude models in studio settings reinvigorated the tradition of realist figure painting. After graduating (B.F.A., 1949) from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), where one of his

  • pearlstone (natural glass)

    perlite, a natural glass with concentric cracks such that the rock breaks into small pearl-like bodies. It is formed by the rapid cooling of viscous lava or magma. Perlite has a waxy to pearly lustre and is commonly gray or greenish but may be brown, blue, or red. Some perlites are of intrusive

  • pearly everlasting (plant)

    everlasting: In North America the pearly everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea) is widely distributed, occurring in dry soils from Newfoundland to Alaska and south to North Carolina and California. Several members of the family Amaranthaceae are considered everlastings: such are the globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa), with oval heads of white, orange, rose,…

  • pearly lustre (mineralogy)

    mineral: Lustre: …is common in sphalerite [ZnS]); pearly, having the lustre of mother-of-pearl (i.e., an iridescent pearl-like lustre characteristic of mineral surfaces that are parallel to well-developed cleavage planes; the cleavage surface of talc [Mg3Si4O10(OH)2] may show pearly lustre); greasy, having the appearance of being covered with a thin layer of oil…

  • Pears, Sir Peter (English singer)

    Sir Peter Pears was a British tenor, a singer of outstanding skill and subtlety who was closely associated with the works of Sir Benjamin Britten. He received a knighthood in 1977. Pears studied at the University of Oxford, at the Royal College of Music, and then with Elena Gerhardt and Dawson

  • Pears, Sir Peter Neville Luard (English singer)

    Sir Peter Pears was a British tenor, a singer of outstanding skill and subtlety who was closely associated with the works of Sir Benjamin Britten. He received a knighthood in 1977. Pears studied at the University of Oxford, at the Royal College of Music, and then with Elena Gerhardt and Dawson

  • Pearse, Patrick (Irish poet and statesman)

    Patrick Pearse was an Irish nationalist leader, poet, and educator. He was the first president of the provisional government of the Irish republic proclaimed in Dublin on April 24, 1916, and was commander in chief of the Irish forces in the anti-British Easter Rising that began on the same day. The

  • Pearse, Patrick Henry (Irish poet and statesman)

    Patrick Pearse was an Irish nationalist leader, poet, and educator. He was the first president of the provisional government of the Irish republic proclaimed in Dublin on April 24, 1916, and was commander in chief of the Irish forces in the anti-British Easter Rising that began on the same day. The

  • Pearson distribution (mathematics)

    Pearson distribution, in statistics, a family of continuous distribution functions first published by British statistician Karl Pearson in 1895. In particular, Pearson showed that many probability density functions satisfy a differential equation of the form (in simplified notation) Pearson devised

  • Pearson International Airport (airport, Ontario, Canada)

    airport: Unit terminals: , London’s Heathrow, Pearson International Airport near Toronto, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City), terminals fulfilling different functions (e.g., Heathrow, Arlanda Airport near Stockholm, Barajas Airport near Madrid), or terminals serving different airlines (e.g., Paris’s Charles de Gaulle, John F. Kennedy, Dallas–Fort Worth). The successful…

  • Pearson PLC (British media firm)

    Marjorie Scardino: …of the British media firm Pearson PLC from 1997 to 2012.

  • Pearson’s correlation coefficient (statistics)

    Pearson’s correlation coefficient, a measurement quantifying the strength of the association between two variables. Pearson’s correlation coefficient r takes on the values of −1 through +1. Values of −1 or +1 indicate a perfect linear relationship between the two variables, whereas a value of 0

  • Pearson’s Magazine (British magazine)

    The War of the Worlds: Wells, first published serially by Pearson’s Magazine in the U.K. and by The Cosmopolitan magazine in the U.S. in 1897. The novel details a catastrophic conflict between humans and extraterrestrial “Martians.” It is considered a landmark work of science fiction, and it has inspired numerous adaptations and imitations.

  • Pearson, Andrew Russell (American journalist)

    Drew Pearson was one of the most influential newspaper columnists in the United States. Pearson was the son of a Quaker professor who became governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and attended Swarthmore College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and

  • Pearson, Arthur (British publisher)

    history of publishing: General periodicals: …empire was built up by Arthur Pearson, another former Tit-Bits employee, with Pearson’s Weekly and Home Notes, among others.

  • Pearson, Bill (New Zealand author)

    New Zealand literature: Fiction: …of the postwar period include Bill Pearson, whose one novel, Coal Flat (1963), gives a sober, faithful, strongly written account of life in a small mining town on the West Coast of the South Island; David Ballantyne (Sydney Bridge Upside Down [1968] and The Talkback Man [1978]), the “lost man”…

  • Pearson, David (American stock-car racer)

    David Pearson was an American stock-car racer who was one of the most successful drivers in National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) history. Pearson could well have been the greatest NASCAR driver of all time had he competed in as many races as his rivals. He never raced a complete

  • Pearson, Drew (American journalist)

    Drew Pearson was one of the most influential newspaper columnists in the United States. Pearson was the son of a Quaker professor who became governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands. He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and attended Swarthmore College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and

  • Pearson, George (British physician)

    Edward Jenner: …the inoculant, and the doctors George Pearson and William Woodville. Difficulties arose, some of them quite unpleasant; Pearson tried to take credit away from Jenner, and Woodville, a physician in a smallpox hospital, contaminated the cowpox matter with smallpox virus. Vaccination rapidly proved its value, however, and Jenner became intensely…

  • Pearson, Hesketh (English writer)

    Hesketh Pearson was an English actor, director, and biographer. After attending the Bedford Grammar School, he took his first job in a shipping office. In 1911 Pearson turned to the theatre, but his acting career was interrupted by World War I; he joined the army and fought as a private in

  • Pearson, James B. (United States senator)

    Nancy Kassebaum: , to work for Senator James B. Pearson of Kansas as a caseworker. In 1978 she was elected to replace the retiring Pearson, who was expected to leave office in January 1979. However, he resigned early, and Kassebaum was sworn in on December 23, 1978. At the time, she was…

  • Pearson, John Loughborough (British architect)

    Western architecture: From the 19th to the early 20th century: architects William Butterfield and John Loughborough Pearson. Pearson’s masterpiece was St. Augustine’s (1870–80), Kilburn Park Road, London.

  • Pearson, Karl (British mathematician)

    Karl Pearson was a British statistician, leading founder of the modern field of statistics, prominent proponent of eugenics, and influential interpreter of the philosophy and social role of science. Pearson was descended on both sides of his family from Yorkshire Quakers, and, although he was

  • Pearson, Lester B. (prime minister of Canada)

    Lester B. Pearson was a Canadian politician and diplomat who served as prime minister of Canada (1963–68). He was prominent as a mediator in international disputes, and in 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Pearson served in World War I (1914–18) and lectured in history at the

  • Pearson, Lester Bowles (prime minister of Canada)

    Lester B. Pearson was a Canadian politician and diplomat who served as prime minister of Canada (1963–68). He was prominent as a mediator in international disputes, and in 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. Pearson served in World War I (1914–18) and lectured in history at the

  • Pearson, Mary (English author)

    Mary Norton was a British children’s writer most famous for her series on the Borrowers, a resourceful race of beings only 6 inches (15 cm) tall, who secretly share houses with humans and “borrow” what they need from them. Norton was educated in a convent school in London and trained as an actress

  • Pearson, Richard (British naval officer)

    engagement between Bonhomme Richard and Serapis: …frigate Serapis, commanded by Captain Richard Pearson, in a memorable 3 12-hour duel. The American commander answered a challenge to surrender early in the battle with the famous quotation, “I have not yet begun to fight!” The slaughter on both sides was great; an estimated 150 Americans and nearly as…

  • Pearson, Sally (Australian athlete)

    Sally Pearson is a retired track athlete and Olympian considered to be one of the most successful Australian hurdlers of all time. Pearson won a gold medal in the 100-meter hurdles at the London 2012 Olympic Games, and she was also the world champion in the event in 2011 and 2017. In 2014 she was

  • Peart, Neil (Canadian musician)

    Rush: Formation and early albums: In 1974 Neil Peart replaced Rutsey on drums. Peart joined only two weeks before the launch of the band’s first major tour, which had it performing at venues in Canada and across the United States.

  • Peary Land (region, Greenland)

    Peary Land, region, northern Greenland, extending about 200 miles (320 km) east and west along the Arctic Ocean, between Victoria Fjord and the Greenland Sea. One of the northernmost land regions of the world, ending at Cape Morris Jesup, it is Greenland’s largest ice-free part, with a generally

  • Peary, Harold (American actor)

    Harold Peary was an American actor. He created the colourful, arrogant character Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve on the hit radio comedy series Fibber McGee and Molly in 1937. He starred in his own popular serial, The Great Gildersleeve (1941–50), considered the first spin-off created from another

  • Peary, Robert (American explorer)

    Robert Peary was a U.S. Arctic explorer usually credited with leading the first expedition to reach the North Pole in 1909. Peary entered the U.S. Navy in 1881 and pursued a naval career until his retirement, with leaves of absence granted for Arctic exploration. In 1886—with Christian Maigaard,

  • Peary, Robert Edwin (American explorer)

    Robert Peary was a U.S. Arctic explorer usually credited with leading the first expedition to reach the North Pole in 1909. Peary entered the U.S. Navy in 1881 and pursued a naval career until his retirement, with leaves of absence granted for Arctic exploration. In 1886—with Christian Maigaard,

  • Pearya (geological region, Canada)

    Silurian Period: Clastic wedges: …of another Laurentian highland, called Pearya, is found in the Canadian Arctic in the vicinity of northern Ellesmere Island. Clastic sediments eroded from this source were deposited in the Hazen Trough. One Lower Silurian (Llandovery) unit called the Danish River Formation is composed of interstratified conglomerates, sandstones, and shales 1…

  • peasant (social class)

    peasant, any member of a class of persons who till the soil as small landowners or as agricultural labourers. The term peasant originally referred to small-scale agriculturalists in Europe in historic times, but many other societies, both past and present, have had a peasant class. The peasant

  • peasant (social class)

    peasant, any member of a class of persons who till the soil as small landowners or as agricultural labourers. The term peasant originally referred to small-scale agriculturalists in Europe in historic times, but many other societies, both past and present, have had a peasant class. The peasant

  • Peasant and Bird Nester (painting by Bruegel)

    Pieter Bruegel, the Elder: Artistic evolution and affinities of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder: …figures in such works as Peasant and Bird Nester (1568) have something of the grandeur of Michelangelo. In the very last works, two trends appear: on the one hand, a combined monumentalization and extreme simplification of figures and, on the other hand, an exploration of the expressive quality of the…

  • Peasant Bruegel (Flemish artist)

    Pieter Bruegel, the Elder was the greatest Flemish painter of the 16th century, whose landscapes and vigorous, often witty scenes of peasant life are particularly renowned. Since Bruegel signed and dated many of his works, his artistic evolution can be traced from the early landscapes, in which he

  • peasant commune (Russian community)

    mir, in Russian history, a self-governing community of peasant households that elected its own officials and controlled local forests, fisheries, hunting grounds, and vacant lands. To make taxes imposed on its members more equitable, the mir assumed communal control of the community’s arable land

  • Peasant Cottage in a Landscape (painting by Ruisdael)

    Jacob van Ruisdael: Ruisdael’s early work, such as Peasant Cottage in a Landscape (c. 1646; Hermitage, St. Petersburg), reflects his obsession with trees. Earlier Dutch artists used trees merely as decorative compositional devices, but Ruisdael made them the subject of his paintings and imbued them with forceful personalities. His draftsmanship was meticulously precise…

  • Peasant Dance (painting by Bruegel)

    Western painting: Low Countries: …Institute of Arts) and “Peasant Dance” and “Peasant Wedding” (both in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

  • Peasant Mandarin (essays by Murray)

    Les Murray: Peasant Mandarin (1978) champions the antielitist vitality of “Australocentrism,” at the same time demonstrating a high regard for a classical education and its traditions. The essays in A Working Forest (1997) indict academia for making poetry inaccessible to the average reader and give vent to…

  • Peasant Movement Training Institute (Chinese Communist organization)

    Mao Zedong: The communists and the Nationalists: …he also served at the Peasant Movement Training Institute, set up in Guangzhou under the auspices of the Nationalists, as principal of the sixth training session. Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) had become the leader of the Nationalists after the death of Sun Yat-sen in March 1925, and, although Chiang still…

  • Peasant Party (political party, Bulgaria)

    Bulgarian Agrarian National Union, Bulgarian political party founded under the name Bulgarian Agrarian Union in 1899. The party controlled the government between 1919 and 1923 and introduced extensive land reforms. Originally a professional organization, it became a peasants’ political party by

  • Peasant Party (political party, Romania)

    Ion Mihalache: …leader and founder of the Peasant Party.

  • Peasant Party (political party, Poland)

    Stanisław Mikołajczyk: Mikołajczyk’s Peasant Party leaders, as the only organized non-Communist opposition, suffered from repeated intimidation and arrests. When the manipulated election of 1947 foreshadowed a Stalinist takeover, Mikołajczyk fled to England and then to the United States.

  • peasant society (social class)

    peasant, any member of a class of persons who till the soil as small landowners or as agricultural labourers. The term peasant originally referred to small-scale agriculturalists in Europe in historic times, but many other societies, both past and present, have had a peasant class. The peasant

  • Peasant Wedding (painting by Bruegel)

    Pieter Bruegel, the Elder: Artistic evolution and affinities of Pieter Bruegel, the Elder: Though transformed into peasants, the figures in such works as Peasant and Bird Nester (1568) have something of the grandeur of Michelangelo. In the very last works, two trends appear: on the one hand, a combined monumentalization and extreme simplification of figures and, on the other hand, an…

  • Peasants (work by Chekhov)

    Anton Chekhov: Melikhovo period: 1892–98: …work, most notably in “Peasants” (1897). Undistinguished by plot, the short sequence of brilliant sketches created more stir in Russia than any other single work of Chekhov’s, partly owing to his rejection of the convention whereby writers commonly presented the Russian peasantry in sentimentalized and debrutalized form.

  • Peasants (film by Ermler)

    Fridrikh Markovich Ermler: …regained, his memory; Krestyanye (1935; Peasants), also a classic, a grand-scale film on collectivization that mirrors peasant folkways with warmth and sympathy; Veliky grazhdanin (Part 1, 1937, Part 2, 1939; The Great Citizen), dealing with interparty conflicts; and Veliky perelom (1946; The Great Turning Point), extolling Stalin’s leadership of the…

  • Peasants Returning from Market (painting by Gainsborough)

    Thomas Gainsborough: Bath period: This is particularly noticeable in Peasants Returning from Market, with its rich colour and beautiful creamy pastel shades. The influence of Rubens is also apparent in The Harvest Wagon in the fluency of the drawing and the scale of the great beech trees so different from the stubby oaks of…

  • Peasants’ Land Bank (Russian bank)

    Russia: Economic and social development: …assisted by loans from the Peasants’ Land Bank, set up by the government in 1882. The Nobles’ Land Bank, set up in 1885, made loans to landowners at more favourable rates of interest; it may have retarded, but did not prevent, the passage of land from landowners to peasants. In…

  • Peasants’ Revolt (English history)

    Peasants’ Revolt, (1381), first great popular rebellion in English history. Its immediate cause was the imposition of the unpopular poll tax of 1380, which brought to a head the economic discontent that had been growing since the middle of the century. The rebellion drew support from several

  • Peasants’ War (German history)

    Peasants’ War, (1524–25) peasant uprising in Germany. Inspired by changes brought by the Reformation, peasants in western and southern Germany invoked divine law to demand agrarian rights and freedom from oppression by nobles and landlords. As the uprising spread, some peasant groups organized

  • Peasants, The (work by Reymont)

    Władysław Stanisław Reymont: (1904–09; The Peasants; filmed 1973), is a chronicle of peasant life during the four seasons of a year. Written almost entirely in peasant dialect, it has been translated into many languages and won for Reymont the Nobel Prize.

  • peascod (clothing)

    doublet: An extreme fashion, the peascod, or goose-bellied doublet, came to England from Holland in the 1570s; it was padded to a point at the waist and swelled out over the girdle. It survives in the traditional costume of Punch.

  • Pease, Edward (British railroad builder)

    George Stephenson: …Darlington he interviewed the promoter, Edward Pease, and so impressed him that Pease commissioned him to build a steam locomotive for the line. On September 27, 1825, railroad transportation was born when the first public passenger train, pulled by Stephenson’s Active (later renamed Locomotion), ran from Darlington to Stockton, carrying…

  • Pease, Edward Reynolds (British political scientist)

    Edward Reynolds Pease was an English writer and one of the founders of the Fabian Society. Born to a prosperous family, Pease left a business career and joined with Frank Podmore, a spiritualist and socialist writer, to found the Fabian Society in London in January 1884. The Fabians sought a

  • Peaslee, Horace W. (American sculpture designer)

    Marine Corps War Memorial: It was designed by Horace W. Peaslee and was dedicated on Nov. 10, 1954.

  • peat (fuel)

    peat, spongy material formed by the partial decomposition of organic matter, primarily plant material, in wetlands such as swamps, muskegs, bogs, fens, and moors. The development of peat is favoured by warm moist climatic conditions; however, peat can develop even in cold regions such as Siberia,

  • peat moss (plant)

    peat moss, (genus Sphagnum), genus of more than 300 species of moss (division Bryophyta). The taxonomy of Sphagnum species has been controversial, and various botanists accept quite different numbers of species. Peat mosses form dense clumps around ponds, in swamps and bogs, on moist acidic cliffs,

  • peatification (geology)

    peat: Peat formation: Peatification is influenced by several factors, including the nature of the plant material deposited, the availability of nutrients to support bacterial life, the availability of oxygen, the acidity of the peat, and temperature. Some wetlands result from high groundwater levels, whereas some elevated bogs are…

  • Peau de chagrin, La (novel by Balzac)

    The Wild Ass’s Skin, novel by Honoré de Balzac, published in two volumes in 1831 as La Peau de chagrin and later included as part of the Études philosophiques section of La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy). A poor young writer, Raphael de Valentin, is given a magical ass’s skin that will grant

  • Peau noire, masques blancs (work by Fanon)

    Frantz Fanon: …Peau noire, masques blancs (1952; Black Skin, White Masks) is a multidisciplinary analysis of the effect of colonialism on racial consciousness. Integrating psychoanalysis, phenomenology, existentialism, and Negritude theory, Fanon articulated an expansive view of the psychosocial repercussions of colonialism on colonized people. The publication shortly before

  • Peavy, Jake (American baseball player)

    San Diego Padres: …by the pitching of starter Jake Peavy and Trevor Hoffman (who became the league’s all-time save leader in 2006), but each postseason appearance ended with a loss in the first round of the playoffs. A disgruntled Bochy left the Padres after the 2006 season to manage the divisional rival San…

  • pebble (geology)

    gravel: …gravel range in size from pebbles (4–64 mm [0.16–2.52 inches] in diameter), through cobbles (64–256 mm [2.52–10.08 inches]), to boulders (larger than 256 mm). The rounding of gravel results from abrasion in the course of transport by streams or from milling by the sea. Gravel deposits accumulate in parts of…

  • Pebble Beach Golf Links (golf course, Pebble Beach, California, United States)

    U.S. Open: Jack Nicklaus’s personal reflections: Pebble Beach has always been one of my favourite courses. In fact, I have commented many times that if I had just one round of golf to play, it would likely be at Pebble Beach. I fell in love with the seaside layout in 1961…

  • pebble chopper (primitive hand tool)

    pebble chopper, primordial cutting tool, the oldest type of tool made by forerunners of modern humans. The tool consists of a rounded stone struck a number of blows with a similar stone used as a pounder, which created a serrated crest that served as a chopping blade. The tool could be used as a

  • pebble dash (building construction)

    plaster: Splatter dash and pebble dash are textured surfaces resulting from throwing mortar or pebble with some force on the finish coat while it is still soft.

  • pebble mosaic (decorative arts)

    pebble mosaic, type of mosaic work that uses natural pebbles arranged to form decorative or pictorial patterns. It was used only for pavements and was the earliest type of mosaic in all areas of the eastern Mediterranean, appearing in Asia Minor in excavated floors from the 8th and 7th centuries

  • pebble tool (primitive hand tool)

    pebble chopper, primordial cutting tool, the oldest type of tool made by forerunners of modern humans. The tool consists of a rounded stone struck a number of blows with a similar stone used as a pounder, which created a serrated crest that served as a chopping blade. The tool could be used as a

  • pebbles (game)

    number game: Nim and similar games: The game of pebbles, also known as the game of odds, is played by two people who start with an odd number of pebbles placed in a pile. Taking turns, each player draws one, or two, or three pebbles from the pile. When all the pebbles have been…

  • pebbly mudstone (geology)

    sedimentary rock: Matrix-supported conglomerates: …rarer diamictites, known as laminated pebbly (or cobbly or bouldery) mudstones, consist of delicately laminated mudrocks in which scattered coarser clasts occur. Laminations within the muddy component are broken and bent. They are located beneath and adjacent to the larger clasts but gently overlap or arch over them, suggesting that…

  • pébrine (animal disease)

    microsporidian: …Nosema bombycis causes the disease pébrine in silkworms (see Nosema).

  • Peć (Kosovo)

    Pejë, town, western Kosovo. It lies on a small tributary of the Beli Drim River, between the North Albanian Alps (Prokletije) and the Mokra Mountain Range. It is populated largely by ethnic Albanians, who are primarily Muslim. It is noted for its mosques, narrow streets, and old Turkish houses.

  • PEC (philosophy)

    speciesism: …on what he calls the principle of equal consideration of interests (PEC). This is the claim that one should give equal weight in one’s moral decision making to the like interests of all those affected by one’s actions. According to Singer, the PEC expresses what most people now understand (or…

  • Pecalongan (Indonesia)

    Pekalongan, kota (city) and kabupaten (regency), Central Java (Jawa Tengah) propinsi (or provinsi; province), Indonesia. The city, which is the capital of the regency, is situated on the northern coastal plain of the island of Java. The population of the regency is primarily Javanese, with a

  • pecan (plant and nut)

    pecan, (Carya illinoinensis), nut and tree of the walnut family (Juglandaceae) native to temperate North America. Rich and distinctive in flavour and texture, the pecan has one of the highest fat contents of any vegetable product and a caloric value close to that of butter. The pecan may be eaten

  • Pecan Shellers’ Strike (strike, San Antonio, Texas, United States [1938])

    Pecan Shellers’ Strike, labour dispute (January–March 1938) in which thousands of pecan shellers, most of whom were Latina women, walked off their jobs in San Antonio, Texas, protesting low pay and substandard working conditions. Though the strikers ultimately received a small pay increase, most

  • Pecatonica, Battle of (American history)

    Black Hawk War: Raids and retreat: Another early encounter was the Battle of the Pecatonica in southwestern Wisconsin. Eleven Kickapoo who had attacked a group of settlers on June 14 and ambushed another settler on June 16 were trapped, killed, and scalped that day at a bend in Pecatonica River by soldiers. Also on June 16…

  • peccary (mammal)

    peccary, (family Tayassuidae), any of the three species of piglike mammal found in the southern deserts of the United States southward through the Amazon basin to Patagonian South America (see Patagonia). Closely resembling the wild pig (see boar), the peccary has dark coarse hair and a large head

  • Pecci, Vincenzo Gioacchino (pope)

    Leo XIII was the head of the Roman Catholic Church (1878–1903) who brought a new spirit to the papacy, expressed in more conciliatory positions toward civil governments, by less opposition to scientific progress, and by an awareness of the pastoral and social needs of the times. Vincenzo Gioacchino

  • Peçevi (Turkish author)

    Islamic arts: Belles lettres: …works, such as those of Peçevi (died c. 1650) and Naima (died 1716), for this reason almost defy translation. Later Persian prose in India suffered from the same defects. This development in Persian and Turkish prose is also reflected in the handbooks on style and letter writing that were written…

  • Pech language

    Mesoamerican Indian languages: The classification and status of Mesoamerican languages: