Nipsey Russell: …when he began appearing on Missing Links. Other TV game shows on which he made frequent appearances included Hollywood Squares, To Tell the Truth, and The $50,000 Pyramid. As an actor, Russell included among his credits the roles of Officer Anderson on the TV series Car 54, Where Are You?…

dark matter, a component of the universe whose presence is discerned from its gravitational attraction rather than its luminosity. Dark matter makes up 30.1 percent of the matter-energy composition of the universe; the rest is dark energy (69.4 percent) and “ordinary” visible matter (0.5 percent).

Patrick Modiano: …Rue des boutiques obscures (1978; Missing Person)—a thriller in which a man searches for his own identity—won the Prix Goncourt.

Baaba Maal: His 2001 release, Missing You (Mi yeewnii), was a stripped-down acoustic masterpiece that utilized the ambient sounds of the African environment as a background track. In July 2003 the United Nations Development Programme named him a youth emissary in recognition of his social works and his growing world…

Cate Blanchett: Films: Elizabeth and the Lord of the Rings series: In the western The Missing (2003), Blanchett brought her trademark complexity to the role of a young woman forced to confront her estranged father (played by Tommy Lee Jones) in order to reclaim her kidnapped daughter. She earned further critical acclaim for her performance as an Irish journalist…

Mission, city, Hidalgo county, southern Texas, U.S. It lies in the lower Rio Grande valley and is part of the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission metropolitan area. A settlement was made in 1907 near a mission established (1824) by the Oblate Fathers of the Franciscan order. It developed as a shipping and

mission, in Christianity, an organized effort for the propagation of the Christian faith. During the early years, Christianity expanded through the communities of the Jewish dispersion. Soon the separate character of Christianity was recognized, and it was freed from the requirements of Hebrew law.

Mongo Beti: …as Mission to Kala and Mission Accomplished), which attacks French colonial policy through a young man who, upon returning to his village with some hesitation because he has failed his college examinations, discovers himself to be not only revered by the villagers for his achievements but also alienated from their…

San Diego: The contemporary city: Mission Bay Park, just north of Point Loma, encompasses 4,600 acres (1,860 hectares) of land and water, with beaches, marinas, water-recreation activities, and wildlife preserves. Mission Bay is also the site of SeaWorld, an aquatic theme park famous for its shows featuring killer whales. San…

Ernest Renan: Early works: …discovered were published in his Mission de Phénicie (1864–74; “Phoenician Expedition”). They were later included in the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum (“Corpus of Semitic Inscriptions”), which he helped to bring out through the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. But archaeology was not his main interest. In April 1861, with his wife…

San Francisco: People of San Francisco: Before World War II the Mission District, named for the Mission Dolores, was principally working class and Irish. The Irish were largely replaced by Spanish-speaking Latin American immigrants, mainly from Central America and Mexico, although the neighbourhood saw another influx of white residents through gentrification in the first decades of…

Thomas Edward Bowdich: …1818, Bowdich wrote and published The Mission from Cape Coast Castle to Ashantee (1819), the earliest European account of the Asante at the height of their power and splendour; the work is still considered a classic in the field. His further criticism of the practices of the African Company led…

Deborah Meier: In 1997 she pioneered the Mission Hill School, a pilot project along the lines of the Coalition schools, in Boston’s Roxbury community.

hospital: Mission hospitals: The spread of Western medicine (or conventional medicine) and the founding of hospitals in developing countries can be attributed in large part to the influence of the medical missionary. The establishment of mission hospitals gained momentum gradually in the second half of the…

Angela Bassett: … (2015) and the action adventure Mission: Impossible—Fallout (2018). Bassett also played the mother of the character T’Challa (the Black Panther) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s action adventures Black Panther (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022). For the latter she won a Golden Globe

Tom Cruise: A-list star of the 1990s and 2000s: …in sequels in 2000, 2006, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2023, and 2025.

Tom Cruise: A-list star of the 1990s and 2000s: 2015, 2018, 2023, and 2025.

Tom Cruise: A-list star of the 1990s and 2000s: 2006, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2023, and 2025.

Mission Indians, North American Indians of what is now the southern and central California coast, among whom Spanish Franciscans and soldiers established 21 missions between 1769 and 1823. The major groups were, from south to north, the Diegueño, Luiseño and Juaneño, Gabrielino, Chumash, and

science fiction: Alien encounters: Hal Clement’s Mission of Gravity (1954) was a tour de force in that its hero is a tiny intelligent centipede-like creature who breathes poison gas in the crushing gravity of an alien world. This description alone makes it clear just how difficult imagining the alien can be.…

Mission Range, segment of the northern Rocky Mountains, in northwestern Montana, U.S. The range trends northwest to southeast and extends some 45 miles (72 km) from Flathead Lake in the north along the Swan River toward the city of Missoula. McDonald Peak (9,868 feet [3,008 metres]) is the highest

Alamo: …originally the chapel of the Mission San Antonio de Valero, which had been founded between 1716 and 1718 by Franciscans. Before the end of the century, the mission had been abandoned and the buildings fell into partial ruin. After 1801 the chapel was occupied sporadically by Spanish troops. Apparently, it…

St. Junípero Serra: …July 16, 1769, he founded Mission San Diego, the first within the present state of California. From 1770 to 1782 he founded eight more Californian missions:

Fremont: …the site of the Spanish Mission San José de Guadalupe (founded in 1797). The city, named for explorer John C. Frémont, was formed in 1956 through the amalgamation of five agricultural communities—Centerville, Irvington, Mission San José, Niles, and Warm Springs. Freeway connections stimulated residential and industrial growth as part of…

San Antonio: The contemporary city: …de la Concepción de Acuña, San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, San Juan Capistrano, and San Francisco de la Espada. The park, with a total area of about 1.3 square miles (3.3 square km), is located along the Mission Trail, which begins at the Alamo and extends 9 miles…

Tucson: …missions in the area, including Mission San Xavier del Bac, 15 miles (25 km) from the modern city. On August 20, 1775, the small walled pueblo of Tucson was made a presidio (fort) of the Spanish army, and when Spanish rule was superseded by that of Mexico, the walled town…

Santa Barbara: …there in 1782 and the mission of Santa Barbara in 1786; the mission, which is the western headquarters of the Franciscan Order, has been in continuous use since its founding, and the presidio is now maintained as a state historic park. A port and agricultural market subsequently developed. John Charles…

Santa Cruz: It became the site of Mission Santa Cruz (founded 1791, reconstructed 1931; now preserved as a state historic park), the 12th in the California chain of 21 missions, and of the model Spanish colony (village) of Branciforte (1797). The area came under Mexican control in the 1820s, and soon Americans…

aerospace industry: Spacecraft, launch vehicle, and missile development: …spacecraft will operate, and the mission simulator, which permits carrying out the entire range of maneuvers and system operations that might be performed on an actual flight.

astronaut: Astronaut training: …group was chosen to become mission specialist astronauts. These candidates were not required to be pilots (though some were); rather, they were individuals with advanced scientific, medical, or engineering training or experience. Beginning in 1992, in anticipation of participating in missions to the International Space Station (ISS), a number of…

Mission style, type of furniture popular in the United States during the turn of the 20th century. The furniture, distinguished by its simplicity of materials and design, arose out of the Arts and Crafts-inspired movement led in the United States by Gustav Stickley. Makers of this type of furniture

Mongo Beti: …as Mission to Kala and Mission Accomplished), which attacks French colonial policy through a young man who, upon returning to his village with some hesitation because he has failed his college examinations, discovers himself to be not only revered by the villagers for his achievements but also alienated from their…

Mongo Beti: …as Mission to Kala and Mission Accomplished), which attacks French colonial policy through a young man who, upon returning to his village with some hesitation because he has failed his college examinations, discovers himself to be not only revered by the villagers for his achievements but also alienated from their…

Brian De Palma: Later work: Mission to Mars (2000) was a slow-paced space odyssey that failed to find an audience, and the thriller Femme Fatale (2002) was a return to his earlier works. Directed and scripted by De Palma, it offered Antonio Banderas as a photographer and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as…

Michael Curtiz: The late 1930s and the 1940s: …of as a “prestige film,” Mission to Moscow (1943) ultimately became one of Warner Brothers’ biggest embarrassments. An elaborate, well-made dramatization of former U.S. ambassador Joseph E. Davies’s memoir about his two years in the Soviet Union, it was made in response to a confidential request from U.S. Pres. Franklin…

Vincentian, member of a Roman Catholic society of priests and brothers founded at Paris in 1625 by St. Vincent de Paul for the purpose of preaching missions to the poor country people and training young men in seminaries for the priesthood. To its original work the congregation has added extensive

Robert De Niro: Films with Scorsese: Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas: … (1981), Falling in Love (1984), The Mission (1986), and De Palma’s The Untouchables (1987).

Mission: Impossible: …is based on the 1966 TV show of the same name. Over its three-decade history, the franchise evolved from Cruise’s character, field operative Ethan Hunt, pursuing a double agent in the shadowy government agency he belongs to—the Impossible Mission Force (IMF)—to Hunt’s team fighting global terrorist organizations and taking down…

Brian De Palma: The 1980s and ’90s: In 1996 De Palma directed Mission: Impossible, one of the most-entertaining action movies of the 1990s and his only unqualified hit of the decade. Loosely based on the television series (1966–73), it helped launch a blockbuster franchise starring Tom Cruise as a secret agent. De Palma, however, directed only the…

Mission: Impossible, spy-action film franchise starring Tom Cruise, released between 1996–2025, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The series consists of eight films, with the seventh and eighth films forming a two-part finale, and is based on the 1966 TV show of the same name. Over its

John Woo: Mission: Impossible II (2000) was an even greater box-office hit, having grossed more than $215 million in the U.S. Windtalkers (2002), a portrayal of Navajo code talkers during World War II starring Cage, and Paycheck (2003), a science-fiction thriller, were less successful.

J.J. Abrams: …actor Tom Cruise to direct Mission: Impossible III (2006). Although the film was not as large a box-office hit as the franchise’s first two installments, many reviewers praised Abrams’s direction.

Mission: Impossible: Characters and cast: …returned in the final film, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025), in which her character has become the president of the United States. Alec Baldwin appears as CIA Director and later IMF Secretary Alan Hunley in the fifth film, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015), and in Mission: Impossible…

War Stories: 13 Modern Writers Who Served in War: Phil Klay: Klay’s debut novel, Missionaries—a sprawling complex story set in the United States, the Middle East, and Colombia after the attacks of September 11, 2001—was selected by former U.S. Pres. Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of 2020. In 2022 Klay released Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an…

White Father, a Roman Catholic international missionary society of priests and brothers whose sole field of activity is Africa. It was founded in North Africa in 1868 by the archbishop of Algiers, Charles-Martial-Allemand Lavigerie. The society’s first missions were in northern Algeria. In 1878 its

Missionaries of Charity, Roman Catholic congregation of religious women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India, founded by Mother Teresa in Kolkata in 1950. That same year the order received canonical sanction from Pope Pius XII, and in 1965 it became a pontifical

Missionaries of Charity, Roman Catholic congregation of religious women dedicated to the poor, particularly to the destitute of India, founded by Mother Teresa in Kolkata in 1950. That same year the order received canonical sanction from Pope Pius XII, and in 1965 it became a pontifical

Jules Chevalier: …Heart of Jesus), commonly called Sacred Heart Missionaries. This is a Roman Catholic congregation of men originally dedicated to teaching and restoring the faith in the rural sections of France and later expanded to world missions.

Jules Chevalier: …Heart of Jesus), commonly called Sacred Heart Missionaries. This is a Roman Catholic congregation of men originally dedicated to teaching and restoring the faith in the rural sections of France and later expanded to world missions.

boarding school: Features of boarding schools: …up by religious orders or missionaries or through royal patronage, and this heritage is reflected in the presence of a church or chapel on campus. Dormitories have a curfew time every night, past which students are expected to maintain silence and, in some cases, be in bed.

Christopher Hitchens: Books: In The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (1995), he was sharply critical of Mother Teresa, and among his allegations were claims that she supported dictators, including Haiti’s Jean-Claude Duvalier; many of the book’s accusations were featured in the television documentary Hell’s Angel (1994),…

prophecy: Types of prophecy: Missionary (or apostolic) prophets are those who maintain that the religious truth revealed to them is unique to themselves alone. Such prophets acquire a following of disciples who accept that their teachings reveal the true religion. The result of that kind of prophetic action may…

Battle of Missionary Ridge, in the American Civil War, battle that ended the Confederate siege of Union troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee. See Chattanooga, Battle

White Father: The White Sisters, or Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa, were founded by Lavigerie in 1869 to assist the White Fathers in their African missions.

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini: … nun and founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart. She was the first United States citizen to be canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. She is venerated as the patron saint of immigrants, hospital administrators, missionaries, and impossible causes.

Congregationalism: England: …was the founding of the Missionary Society (1795), later named the London Missionary Society (1818). Its purpose was not necessarily to spread Congregationalism but to proclaim “the glorious gospel of the blessed God,” leaving the new churches to determine their own form. Although it has always received support from Congregational…

Oblates of Mary Immaculate, (O.M.I.), one of the largest missionary congregations of the Roman Catholic Church, inaugurated at Aix-en-Provence, Fr., on Jan. 25, 1816, as the Missionary Society of Provence by Charles-Joseph-Eugène de Mazenod. By preaching to the poor, especially in rural areas,

David Livingstone: Opening the interior: …modestly but effectively in his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857), which quickly sold more than 70,000 copies and took its place in publishing history as well as in that of exploration and missionary endeavor. Honors flowed in upon him. His increased income meant that he was now…

Buddhism: Trends since the 19th century: …the Buddhist cause by promoting missionary activity in Asia and in the West. In the West they also adopted Christian forms of religious organization and practice, particularly in the United States. For example, the U.S. branch of Japanese Pure Land (Jōdo Shinshū) Buddhism adopted the word church in its official…

Judaism: Israel and the nations: …some groups engaged in extensive missionary activities, appealing to the individuals of the nations surrounding them to join themselves to the God of Israel, the one true God and the creator of heaven and earth.

Fatimid dynasty: Conquest of Egypt: …commanded a great network of missionaries and agents, and he used them to gain converts for the Ismāʿīlī faith and workers for the Fatimid cause; their task was also to preach and, where possible, to practice subversion against the Sunni order and the regimes that supported it. The mission was…

Christianity: Roman Catholic mission, 1500–1950: The Foreign Missionary Society of Paris (1663), directed exclusively toward outreach to non-Christian peoples, sought to produce rapidly an indigenous secular clergy (i.e., one not bound to a religious order), and focused its efforts on Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.

Church Missionary Society (CMS), society founded in London in 1799 as the Society for Missions in Africa and the East, by Evangelical clergy of the Church of England (those who stressed biblical faith, personal conversion, and piety). In 1812 it was renamed the Church Missionary Society for Africa

Latin American architecture: The new urban strategy: Checkerboard plans and the Laws of the Indies: …Spain, oversaw the creation of mission establishments. Representing different religious orders, these missions were inspired by the theories of Europeans such as Leon Battista Alberti, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More. The plan usually included a single nave church, a convent around a patio, a large walled atrium or churchyard with…

Mississauga, city, regional municipality of Peel, southeastern Ontario, Canada. It lies at the western end of Lake Ontario, immediately southwest of Toronto. First settled in the early 19th century on land purchased from the Mississauga Indians, the township of Toronto gave rise to the villages of

bagatelle: Mississippi is played with a bridge pierced with nine or more arches, according to the size of the table, the arches being numbered from one upward. All nine balls are usually played, though the black is sometimes omitted, each player having a round, the object…

Lorenz Hart: Collaboration with Richard Rodgers: … (1933; starring Al Jolson), and Mississippi (1935; starring Bing Crosby).

Mississippi, constituent state of the United States of America. Its name derives from a Native American word meaning “great waters” or “father of waters.” Mississippi became the 20th state of the union in 1817. Jackson is the state capital. Mississippi is smaller than most of the U.S. states and is

Mississippi College, private, coeducational institution of higher learning, located in Clinton, Mississippi, U.S. Affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, it is the second oldest Baptist college in the United States and the oldest and largest private college in Mississippi. The college

American alligator, (Alligator mississippiensis), species of alligator inhabiting freshwater rivers, lakes, and swamps and brackish waters in the Southern U.S. and northeastern Mexico. The alligator’s geographic range extends from the Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas

Tennessee: Relief: …stretches westward, terminating in the Mississippi alluvial plain, a narrow strip of swamp and floodplain alongside the Mississippi River.

Mississippi Bubble, a financial scheme in 18th-century France that triggered a speculative frenzy and ended in financial collapse. The scheme was engineered by John Law, a Scottish adventurer, economic theorist, and financial wizard who was a friend of the regent, the Duke d’Orléans. In 1716 Law

Alan Parker: titular rock band’s album; and Mississippi Burning (1988), a drama about the killing of three civil rights workers in 1964. For the latter, Parker received a second Oscar nomination. His later films included The Commitments (1991), Evita (1996), and The Life of David Gale (2003).

Mississippi College, private, coeducational institution of higher learning, located in Clinton, Mississippi, U.S. Affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, it is the second oldest Baptist college in the United States and the oldest and largest private college in Mississippi. The college

Nashville Convention: The resulting Mississippi Convention on Oct. 1, 1849, issued a call to all slave-holding states to send delegates to Nashville, Tenn., in order to form a united front against what was viewed as Northern aggression.

Mississippi: Relief and soils: …the great fertile crescent called the Delta is the old floodplain of the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, comprising some 6,250 square miles (16,200 square km) of black alluvial soil several feet deep. Once subject to disastrous floods, the land is now protected by levee and reservoir systems.

Mississippi Delta blues, regional style of early 20th-century American folk music, centered in the Delta region of northwestern Mississippi. The pioneers of the style played a key role in developing the market for traditional blues recordings in the 1920s and ’30s, while the subsequent generation

United States: The Atlantic Plain: …the Coastal Plain called the Mississippi Embayment.

Mississippi River: Plant and animal life: …seasons, has been called the Mississippi Flyway, an appropriate name for the vast aerial highway that reaches from the delta to the distant summer nesting grounds in northern Canada. An estimated eight million ducks, geese, and swans winter in the lower part of the flyway, and many more birds use…

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), political party formed in 1964 as an alternative to the dominantly white and conservative Democratic Party of Mississippi. After President Lyndon B. Johnson formed a coalition between liberal Democrats and liberal and moderate Republicans to address

Nina Simone: Her 1964 song “Mississippi Goddam” exemplifies this period. Her popularity grew as she added folk and gospel selections as well as songs by the Bee Gees, Bob Dylan, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins (“I Put a Spell on You”) to her repertoire. Angered by American racism, she left the…

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party: …Mississippi groups to form the Mississippi Loyal Democrats, which successfully deposed the Mississippi Democratic delegation to the national convention.

Mira Nair: Feature films: Nair followed this with Mississippi Masala (1991), which chronicles a love affair between an Indian woman and an African American man. In 1997 she was at the center of controversy as she battled India’s censors—eventually involving the Indian Supreme Court—over the release of the feature film Kama Sutra: A…

Jackson State University, public historically Black university located in Jackson, Mississippi, U.S. It was founded in 1877 as Natchez Seminary in Natchez, Mississippi, by the American Baptist Home Mission Society of New York for “the moral, religious and intellectual improvement of Christian

University of Southern Mississippi, public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, U.S. It offers some 170 bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs. Degrees are conferred through colleges of the Arts, Business Administration, Education and Psychology,

paddlefish, (Polyodon spathula), archaic freshwater fish with a paddlelike snout, a wide mouth, smooth skin, and a cartilaginous skeleton. A relative of the sturgeon, the paddlefish makes up the family Polyodontidae in the order Acipenseriformes. A paddlefish feeds with its mouth gaping open and

Jeffersonville: …that time, the 382-foot (116-metre) Mississippi Queen, commissioned in 1976 for luxury overnight cruises. Other manufactures include soap, kitchen cabinets, steel, and electronic components. Jeffersonville is the site of the Howard Steamboat Museum. Inc. town, 1815; city, 1830. Pop. (2000) 27,362; (2010) 44,953.

Mississippi River, the longest river of North America, draining with its major tributaries an area of approximately 1.2 million square miles (3.1 million square km), or about one-eighth of the entire continent. The Mississippi River lies entirely within the United States. Rising in Lake Itasca in

Mississippi River: Hydrology: Today the Mississippi River Commission is responsible for river work and considers it worthwhile to maintain a working scale model of the river so that its engineers can test new plans in miniature before embarking on expensive, full-scale projects. Indeed, by the 1920s it was generally believed…

Mississippi River flood of 1927, flooding of the lower Mississippi River valley in April 1927, one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States. More than 23,000 square miles (60,000 square km) of land was submerged, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and some 250

Mississippi River flood of 2011, flooding of the Mississippi River valley in the central United States from late April to May 2011 on a scale not seen since the floods of 1927 and 1937. Thousands of square miles of agricultural and residential land were submerged by water that had surged over the

Mississippi: Education: …blind and deaf children; the Mississippi School for the Deaf, established by an act of legislature in 1854, continues to operate in Jackson.

University of Southern Mississippi, public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, U.S. It offers some 170 bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs. Degrees are conferred through colleges of the Arts, Business Administration, Education and Psychology,

Mississippi State University, public, coeducational institution of higher learning near Starkville, Mississippi, U.S. It is a land-grant university that is made up of eight colleges and schools. There is also a branch at Meridian. Undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees are awarded in

Mississippi State University, public, coeducational institution of higher learning near Starkville, Mississippi, U.S. It is a land-grant university that is made up of eight colleges and schools. There is also a branch at Meridian. Undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees are awarded in

steamboat, any watercraft propelled by steam, but more narrowly, a shallow-draft paddle wheel steamboat widely used on rivers in the 19th century, and particularly on the Mississippi River and its principal tributaries in the United States. Steamboat pioneering began in America in 1787 when John

Battle of Horseshoe Bend: In the southeastern Mississippi Territory (central Alabama today), Creeks known as Red Sticks, fighting for their sovereignty, raided white settlements, which sparked an intratribal war and threatened an alliance with the pro-British Spanish in Florida.

Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan: Facts of the case: in Columbus, Mississippi, in 1884, Mississippi University for Women (MUW) historically limited its enrollment to female students. In 1974 the university instituted a four-year baccalaureate program in nursing. Five years later the plaintiff, Joe Hogan, applied for admission. The plaintiff, a registered nurse in Columbus, Mississippi, did not possess a…

Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5–4), on July 1, 1982, that a publicly funded women’s university, in denying admission to a male applicant on the basis of his gender, violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,

Salmon P. Chase: In Mississippi v. Johnson (1867) and Georgia v. Stanton (1867), Chase spoke for the court in refusing to prohibit Johnson and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton from enforcing the Reconstruction Acts. By disavowing the court’s jurisdiction in Ex parte McCardle (1868), Chase sidestepped the question…