Alden, John (b. 1599?, England—d. Sept. 12, 1687, Duxbury, Mass.) British-born American pilgrim. He was hired as a cooper by the London merchants who funded the Mayflower’ s expedition to the New World in 1620. Alden signed the Mayflower Compact and held various civic posi¬ tions in the colony, including assistant to the governor (1623-41, 1650- 86). He was mythologized as the first Pilgrim to set foot on Plymouth Rock and as the stand-in for Myles Standish in his suit for Priscilla Mullens’s hand in marriage in the poem “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858) by Henry W. Longfellow. Alden in fact married Mullens in 1623.
alder Any of about 30 species of ornamental shrubs and trees in the genus Alnus, of the birch family, found throughout the Northern Hemisphere and western South America on cool, wet sites. Alders are distinguished from birches by their usually stalked winter buds and by cones that remain on the branches after the small, winged nutlets are released. Alders have scaly bark, oval leaves that fall without chang¬ ing colour, and separate male and female flowers (catkins) borne on the same tree. Some familiar North American alders are the red alder (A. rubra or A. oregonaf, the white, or Sierra, alder (A. rhombifoliaf and the speckled alder (A. rugosa). Alder wood is fine-textured and durable, even under water; it is useful for fur¬ niture, cabinetry, and lathe work and in charcoal manufacture and mill- work. Alders’ spreading root systems and tolerance of moist soils lend them to planting on stream banks for flood and erosion control.
Aldrich, Nelson W(ilmarth) (b. Nov. 6, 1841, Foster, R.I., U.S.—d. April 16, 1915, New York, N.Y.) U.S. senator and financier. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1879-81) and the Senate (1881-1911). His work as chair of the National Monetary Commission (1908-12)
Louisa May Alcott, portrait by George Healy; in the Louisa May Alcott Memo¬ rial Association collection, Concord, Mass.
Alder (Alnus glutinosa)
EARL L KUBIS-ROOT RESOURCES
© 2006 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
42 I Aldrich ► Aleut
helped prepare the way for the Federal Reserve System (1913). He also invested profitably in banking, electricity, gas, rubber, and sugar.
Aldrich V61-drich\, Robert (b. Aug. 9, 1918, Cranston, R.I., U.S.—d. Dec. 5, 1983, Los Angeles, Calif.) U.S. film director and producer. He held various jobs at RKO from 1941, working under such directors as Jean Renoir and Charlie Chaplin. After directing his first feature film, The Big Leaguer (1953), he formed his own production company and earned a reputation for socially conscious yet often violent films, including Apache (1954), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), and The Dirty Dozen (1967).
Aldrich Vol-drichV, Thomas Bailey (b. Nov. 11, 1836, Portsmouth, N.H., U.S.—d. March 19, 1907, Boston, Mass.) U.S. poet, short-story writer, and editor. Aldrich left school at age 13 and soon began to con¬ tribute to newspapers and magazines. He was editor of The Atlantic Monthly 1881-90. He drew on his childhood for his classic children’s novel The Story of a Bad Boy (1870). His use of the surprise ending influ¬ enced the development of the short story in the U.S. Aldrich’s poems reflect New England culture and his experiences visiting Europe.
Aldrin Vol-dronX, Edwin Eugene, Jr. known as Buzz Aldrin (b.
Jan. 20, 1930, Montclair, N.J., U.S.) U.S. astronaut. He graduated from West Point and flew 66 combat missions in the Korean War. In 1963 he received a Ph.D. from MIT and was chosen as an astronaut. In 1966 he joined James A. Lovell, Jr. (b. 1928) on the four-day Gemini 12 flight. Ald¬ rin’s SV^-hour walk in space proved that humans can function effectively in the vacuum and weightlessness of space. In July 1969, on the Apollo 11 mission, he became the second human to walk on the Moon.
ale Fermented malt beverage, full-bodied and somewhat bitter, with strong flavour of hops. Until the 17th century it was an unhopped brew of yeast, water, and malt, beer being the same brew with hops added. Mod¬ ern ale (now largely synonymous with beer) is made with top-fermenting yeast and processed at higher temperatures than lager beer. Pale ale has up to 5% alcohol content; the darker strong ale contains up to 6.5%.
Alea \a-'la-3\, Tomas Gutierrez (b. Dec. 11,1928, Havana, Cuba—d. April 16, 1996, Havana) Cuban film director. After earning a law degree in Cuba, he studied filmmaking in Rome (1951-53). A supporter of Fidel Castro, he helped develop Cuba’s film industry after 1959 and made the Communist regime’s first official feature film, Stories of the Revolution (1960). Later he worked within the restrictions of the regime to satirize and explore various aspects of life in postrevolutionary Cuba in such internationally acclaimed films as Death of a Bureaucrat (1966), Memo¬ ries of Underdevelopment (1968), The Survivors (1978), and Strawberry and Chocolate (1993). He is regarded as the finest director Cuba has pro¬ duced.
aleatory Va-le-s-.tor-eV music (from Latin, alea : “dice game”) Any 20th-century music, particularly that of the 1950s and ’60s, the compo¬ sition or performance of which incorporates elements of chance. In alea¬ tory music aspects such as the ordering of a piece’s sections, its rhythms, and even its pitches are decided at the moment of performance. When not purely improvising, players follow lists of arbitrary rules or interpreted “graphic” notation that merely suggest the sounds. Charles Ives and Henry Cowell had used such techniques, but John Cage became the principal figure in aleatory; other aleatory composers include Earle Brown (1926- 2002), Morton Feldman (1926-87), and Pierre Boulez.
Aleichem, Sholem See Sholem Aleichem
Aleixandre \,a-la-'san-dra\, Vicente (b. April 26, 1898, Sevilla, Spain—d. Dec. 14, 1984, Madrid) Spanish poet. A member of the group of Spanish writers known as the Generation of 1927, he was strongly influenced by Surrealism. His first major book, Destruction or Love (1935), won the National Prize for Literature. Other works include Historia del corazon (1954), En un vasto dominio (1962), and Dialogos del cono- cimiento (1974). He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1977.
Aleksandrovsk See Zaporizhzhya
Alekseyev \3-lyi-'ksya-yif\, Vasiliy (b. Jan. 7, 1942, Pokrovo- Shishkino, Russia, U.S.S.R.) Soviet weight lifter. A superheavyweight, he broke 80 world records between 1970 and 1978 and won Olympic gold medals in 1972 and 1976. He was the first man ever to lift more than 500 lbs (227 kg) in the clean and jerk. He retired after failing to win a third gold medal in the 1980 Olympics.
Aleman V.a-la-'manX, Mateo (baptized Sept. 28, 1547, Sevilla, Spain—d. c. 1614, Mexico) Spanish novelist. Descended from Jews who had been forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism, he expressed many aspects of the experiences and feelings of the New Christians in 16th- century Spain. His most important literary work is Guzman de Alfarache (1599, 1604), one of the earliest picaresque novels, which brought him fame throughout Europe but little profit.
Alembert \a-la n -'ber\, Jean Le Rond d' (b. Nov. 17, 1717, Paris, France—d. Oct. 29, 1783, Paris) French mathematician, scientist, phi¬ losopher, and writer. In 1743 he published a treatise on dynamics contain¬ ing “d’Alembert’s principle,” relating to Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. He developed partial differential equations and published findings of his research on integral calculus. He was associated with the Encyclopedie of Denis Diderot from c. 1746 as editor of its mathematical and scientific articles; he contributed articles on music as well, and he also published treatises on acoustics. He was elected to the Academie Fran^aise in 1754.
Alentejo \a-la n n-‘ta-zhu\ formerly Alemtejo Historical province, Por¬ tugal. Lying southeast of the Tagus River, it borders Spain and the Atlan¬ tic Ocean. The region produces two-thirds of the world’s cork. Until the Portuguese revolution of 1974, Alentejo contained vast estates, mostly owned by absentee landlords; many have since been divided among the Alentejanos.