Mayor
the chief magistrate of a city or corporate town.
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Single-source entries: M (48)
These 13 listings are so strange that each appears in only one of the 7 encyclopedias we compared. They include such classics as Mayor, Mayotte, Maysville.
Mayotte
or MAYOTTA (mä-yot'tä), an island in the Indian Ocean, one of the Comoros, at the N. E. entrance of the Mozambique Channel, and a French colony; length, about 30 miles; breadth, 20 miles; area, 140 square miles; pop. about 15,000. Some of its volcanic peaks are nearly 2,000 feet high.
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Maysville
a city and county-seat of Mason co., Ky., on the Ohio river and on the Louisville and Nashville and the Chesapeake and Ohio railroads; 63 miles S. E. of Cincinnati. There are the Hayswood Female Seminary, St. Francis de Sales Academy, a high school, the Maysville and Mason County Library, Odd Fellows' Library, electric light and street railroad plants, and National and State banks. It has cotton, flour, saw, and planing mills, shoe, furniture, ice, and cigar factories, plow works, daily and weekly papers. Pop. (1910) 6,141; (1920) 6,107.
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Mayweed
a European plant (Anthemis Cotula), order Compositæ. It is a troublesome weed in corn, and difficult to eradicate. It has daisy-like flowers, finely divided leaves, and an unpleasant smell, and sometimes blisters the hands of reapers.
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Maywood
a town in Cook co., Ill., on the Des Plaines river, 11 miles W. of Chicago, on the Chicago Great Western and other railroads. Seat of the German Lutheran Theological Seminary, and homes for old people and crippled children. Has large steel and tin plate works, and city-owned waterworks. Pop. (1910) 8,033; (1920) 12,072.
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Mazanderan
a province of N. Persia, bordering the Caspian Caspian Sea for about 200 miles, and lying between the provinces of Ghilan and Astrabad; consists of a belt of low marshy coast land, 10 to 20 miles wide, backed by the well-wooded slopes of the Elburz. The climate is very changeable, in summer both rainy and unhealthy, but on the uplands fairly salubrious. Owing to the fertility of the soil, which is watered by numerous small rivers, the Persians call the province the "Garden of Iran." Rice, wheat, and other cereals, cotton, mulberry trees, and a variety of fruits are produced; horses, asses, and camels are extensively bred; and iron ores and mineral oils very abundant; area of province, 10,400 square miles; pop. about 200,000. Chief town Sari, though Barfurush is the seat of trade with Russia.
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Mazatlan
a seaport in the State of Sinaloa, Mexico, at the entrance of the Mazatlan river, which of California, 230 falls into the Gulf miles S. E. of Sinaloa; is a well-built, all picturesque town, the houses nearly of one story, and possesses a cathedral, custom house, barracks, cotton factory, foundries, etc.; chief exports, silver, dyewoods, and mother-of-pearl. Pop. about 22,000.
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Maze
. See Labyrinth
Only in Aiton's Encyclopedia
Mazeppa
IVAN STEPHANOVICH (mä-zep'pä), hetman of the Cossacks; born in Mazepintzi, in 1644. He was descended from a poor but noble family of Podolia, and became a page at the court of John Casimir, King of Poland. A Polish nobleman, having surprised him in an intrigue with his wife, caused him to be stripped naked, and bound on his own horse, lying on his back, and with his head to its tail, and let the animal loose, leaving Mazeppa to his fate. The horse carried him, senseless from exhaustion, to its native wilds of the Ukraine, according to the usual account. He won the confidence of Peter the Great, who loaded him with honors, and made him Prince of the Ukraine; but he conceived the idea of throwing off the sovereignty of the czar, and for this purpose entered into negotiations with Charles XII. of Sweden. Mazeppa's hopes perished in the disaster of Pultowa, and he fled with Charles to Bender, where he died miserably, Sept. 22, -1709.
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Mazeppa, Ivan
Ivan (1644-1709), a Cossack chief. He was by birth a Pole. He belonged to a noble but poor family, and was brought up a page at the court of John Casimir, king of Poland. When a young man he was detected in an intrigue with a Polish lady of high rank. Her husband by way of revenge bound Mazeppa to the back of a wild horse from the Ukraine. The horse was turned loose to gallop away to his native haunts. Mazeppa was released by some Cossack peasants. He remained among them and became a hetman or chief. He enjoyed the favor of Peter the Great, who made him prince of Ukraine. Desiring next to become independent, he conspired first with the king of Poland, then with Charles XII, the Madman of the North. On the downfall of the latter Mazeppa took poison. He is the hero of Byron's poem, Mazeppa.
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Mazurian Lakes
BATTLE OF, one of the first encounters of magnitude between the German and Russian forces after the outbreak of hostilities in 1914. The lakes, numerous small sheets of water in a vast marsh, south of Königsberg, East Prussia, constituted invading very difficult ground for an army. It was his personal knowledge of this terrain that caused General von Hindenburg to be recalled from the retired list, to command the German forces which were sent to retrieve the initial defeat of the German forces, after they had been driven back by the Russians, under General Rennenkampf, on Aug. 20, 1914. Arriving in the field a few days later, Von Hindenburg, with a much inferior force, attacked the Russian forces under Samsonoff, numbering nearly 250,000, near Tannenberg, and through his intimate knowledge of the swamps, maneuvered the enemy into such a position that he was hopelessly defeated. Thousands of the Russians were engulfed in the mire, their escape cut off by the strategy of the German commander, Samsonoff himself being among the slain. One hundred thousand were taken prisoners. Practically this whole Russian army was annihilated, so that Von Hindenburg was able to turn Russian forces his attention to the main and force their retirement beyond the frontier.
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Mazurka
or MAZOURKA (-zör'kä), a Polish dance of lively grotesque character, with a peculiar rhythm.
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Mazzini
GIUSEPPE (mät-sēnē), an Italian patriot; born in Genoa, June 28, 1805; was graduated at the University of Genoa (1826); admitted to the bar there. After six months' imprisonment on the charge of conspiring against the government, he left Italy and resided in succession in Marseilles, Paris, and London, whence he agitated for the liberation of Italy. At the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he returned to Italy, where he became a member of the triumvirate in the republic of Rome, but was again exiled at the restoration of the papal power (1849). He afterward organized risings in Mantua (1852), Milan (1853), and Genoa (1857), though in the unification of Italy (except Venice and the "Patrimony of Peter") under Victor Emmanuel (1861) his part was subordinate. In 1870 he engaged in an insurrection at Palermo and was captured, but afterward released at the general amnesty after the occupation of Rome. He wrote much in English and French. His "Memoirs" were printed in 1875; "Complete Works" (18 vols. 1861- 1891). He died in Pisa, Italy, March 10, 1872.
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