woodpecker Any of about 180 species (family Picidae) of mostly nonmigratory, solitary birds found nearly worldwide. Woodpeckers spi¬ ral up tree trunks, probing for insects, and chisel nest holes in dead wood by means of rapidly repeating blows of the beak. Though they spend their entire life in trees, only the few ground-feeding species can perch. Some species eat fruits and berries or tree sap. Woodpeckers are usually silent, except in spring, when males call loudly and drum on hollow wood. Spe¬ cies range from 6 to 18 in. (15 to 46 cm) long. All have a straight, chisel¬ like bill, and most are patterned in black, white, or yellow and bright colours. See also fucker; ivory-billed woodpecker; sapsucker.
Woods, Lake of the Lake astride the Canadian-U.S. boundary, south¬ western Ontario, southeastern Manitoba, and northern Minnesota. Irregu¬ lar in shape, it is 70 mi (110 km) long and up to 60 mi (95 km) wide. It has an area of 1,727 sq mi (4,472 sq km), of which 642 sq mi (1,663 sq km) are in U.S territory. It has an estimated 25,000 mi (40,000 km) of shoreline and more than 14,000 islands. It receives the Rainy River from the southeast and drains north through the Winnipeg River into Lake Win¬ nipeg. Visited by French explorers in 1688, it became an important fur¬ trading route between the Great Lakes and western Canada. The Northwest Angle, the northernmost point of the coterminous U.S., is separated from the rest of Minnesota by a part of the lake.
Woods, Tiger orig. Eldrick Woods (b. Dec. 30, 1975, Cypress, Calif., U.S.) U.S. golfer. The child of a Thai mother and an African Ameri¬ can father, Woods was a golf prodigy and won the first of three consecu¬ tive U.S. Junior Amateur Championships (1991-93) when he was 15 years old. In 1994 at age 18 he became the youngest winner of the U.S. Ama¬ teur competition, which he also won in 1995 and 1996. In 1997 Woods at age 21 became the youngest player and the first of African or Asian descent ever to win the Masters Tournament, winning by a record margin of 12 strokes. Winner of five other PGA tournaments in 1997, Woods became the youngest player ever ranked first in world golf competition. On July 23, 2000, Woods became the fifth player—after Gene Sarazen, Jack Nicklaus, Ben Hogan, and Gary Player—in golf history, and the youngest, to achieve a career grand slam of the four major championships (the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open, and PGA Championship). In 2005 he completed his second career grand slam.
Woodson, Carter G(odwin) (b. Dec. 19, 1875, New Canton, Va., U.S.—d. April 3,1950, Washington, D.C.) U.S. historian. Born into a poor family, he supported himself as a coal miner and was unable to enroll in high school until he was 20. He went on to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. In 1915 he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History to encourage the study of African American history; he also edited the association’s Journal of Negro History. In the early 1920s he founded Associated Publishers to bring out books on African Ameri¬ can life and culture. Among his works was the college text The Negro in Our History (1922).
Woodstock in full Woodstock Music and Art Fair Rock music festival held near Bethel, N.Y., U.S. (its site was to have been the nearby town of Woodstock), on Aug. 15-17, 1969. It attracted about 450,000 young rock fans and featured performers such as the Grateful Dead, Jeffer¬ son Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, the Who, and Janis Joplin. The festival, the par¬ ticipants of which exhibited extraordinary good feeling in the face of rain and organizational chaos, marked the high point of U.S. youth countercul¬ ture in the 1960s. It was documented in the film Woodstock (1970). The festival was revived with mixed success on its 25th and 30th anniversaries.
Woodward, C(omer) Vann (b. Nov. 13, 1908, Vanndale, Ark., U.S.—d. Dec. 17, 1999, Hamden, Conn.) U.S. historian. He graduated from Emory University in 1930 and received his Ph.D. from the Univer¬ sity of North Carolina. His writings on the American South and the Civil War, including The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955) and The Burden of Southern History (1961), transformed the nation’s understanding of the region. He edited Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (1981, Pulitzer Prize) and The Oxford History of the United States. At his death he was professor emeritus at Yale University.
Woodward, Robert B(urns) (b. April 10, 1917, Boston, Mass., U.S.—d. July 8, 1979, Cambridge, Mass.) U.S. chemist. He attended MIT and taught at Harvard University (1938-79). Recognizing that physical measurement revealed molecular structure better than chemical reaction, in 1940^42 he developed “Woodward’s rules” for determining structure by ultraviolet spectroscopy. In 1945 his methods finally clarified the struc¬ ture of penicillin and of many more complex natural products. He pro¬ posed the correct biosynthetic pathway of steroid hormones. He was the most accomplished synthesist of complex organic compounds, including quinine (1944) and vitamin B 12 (1971, in more than 100 reactions), a task that led to the fundamental concept of conservation of orbital symmetry. He received a 1965 Nobel Prize, and in 1963 the new Woodward Research Institute in Basel, Switz., was named for him.
woodwind instrument Any musical wind instrument that produces sound by either directing a stream of air against the edge of a hole or by making a reed or a double reed vibrate (see reed instrument). In a brass instrument, by contrast, the airstream passes directly from the player’s vibrating lips into the air column. The orchestral woodwinds include the flute, piccolo, clarinet, oboe, English horn, and bassoon. Other woodwinds include the saxophone, recorder, panpipe, shakuhachi, and shawm.
wool Animal fibre that is the protective covering, or fleece, of sheep or such other hairy mammals as goats and camels. Wool is readied by wash¬ ing (lanolin is the by-product), carding, sometimes combing, then spin¬ ning. Coarser than such textile fibres as cotton, linen, silk, and rayon, wool is resilient after limited stretching or compression, so fabrics and garments made from wool tend to retain shape, drape well, and resist wrinkling. Wool is warm and lightweight and takes dyes well. Woolen yarns, usu¬ ally made from shorter fibres, are thick and full and are used for such items as tweed fabrics and blankets. Worsteds usually are made from longer fibres.
Woolf Vwulf\, (Adeline) Virginia orig. Adeline Virginia Stephen (b. Jan. 25, 1882, London, Eng.—d. March 28, 1941, near Rodmell, Sussex) British novelist and critic. Daughter of Leslie Stephen, she and her sister became the early nucleus of the Bloomsbury group. She married Leonard Woolf in 1912; in 1917 they founded the Hogarth Press. Her best novels—including Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927)—are experimental; in them she examines the human experience of time, the indefinability of character, and external circumstances as they impinge on consciousness. Orlando (1928) is a historical fantasy about a single character who experiences England from the Elizabethan era to the early 20th century, and The Waves (1931), perhaps her most radically experimental work, uses interior monologue and recurring images to trace the inner lives of six characters. Such works confirmed her place among the major figures of literary modernism. Her best critical studies are col¬ lected in The Common Reader (1925, 1932). Her long essay A Room of One’s Own (1929) addressed the status of women, and women artists in particular. Her other novels include Jacob’s Room (1922), The Years (1937), and Between the Acts (1941). She also wrote a biography of Roger Fry. Her health and mental stability were delicate throughout her life; in a recurrence of mental illness, she drowned herself. Her diaries and cor¬ respondence have been published in several editions.
Woollcott Vwul-k3t\, Alexander (Humphreys) (b. Jan. 19, 1887, Phalanx, N.J., U.S.—d. Jan. 23, 1943, New York, N.Y.) U.S. author, critic, and actor. He joined the New York Times in 1909 and became its drama critic in 1914. Known for his acerbic wit, he became the self-appointed leader of the Algonquin Round Table, the informal luncheon club at New York’s Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s and ’30s that included Groucho Marx, Dorothy Parker, Robert Sherwood, and George S. Kaufman. He later contributed articles to The New Yorker and wrote such books as Two Gentlemen and a Lady (1928) and While Rome Burns (1934). He inspired the play The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939).