Night of the Long Knives, in German history, purge of Nazi leaders by Adolf Hitler on June 30, 1934. Fearing that the paramilitary SA had become too powerful, Hitler ordered his elite SS guards to murder the organization’s leaders, including Ernst Röhm. Also killed that night were hundreds of other

Taviani brothers: …notte di San Lorenzo (1982; The Night of the Shooting Stars), a mother recounts for her child her wartime memories of a night during which her village struggled to stay alive. Their later films, which were not as successful commercially, included Il sole anche di notte (1990; The Sun Also…

Per Olov Enquist: …successful drama, Tribadernas natt (1975; The Night of the Tribades, 1977), presents Enquist’s analysis of August Strindberg’s marital relationship. In 1999 he published Livläkarens besök (The Royal Physician’s Visit, 2001), a historical novel about sexual and political intrigue in 18th-century Denmark. It became his best-known work among American readers, and…

Night on Bald Mountain, orchestral work by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky that was completed in June 1867. The work had not been performed in public at the time of the composer’s death in 1881; it was revised by his colleagues and still later by other generations of composers and

animation: Animation in Europe: …Alexeïeff two years to create A Night on Bald Mountain (1933), which used the music of Modest Mussorgsky; in 1963 Nikolay Gogol was the source of his most widely celebrated film, the dark fable The Nose.

Night on Bald Mountain, orchestral work by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky that was completed in June 1867. The work had not been performed in public at the time of the composer’s death in 1881; it was revised by his colleagues and still later by other generations of composers and

Jim Jarmusch: … (1986), Mystery Train (1989), and Night on Earth (1992).

Rod Stewart: Solo career: …Deepest,” both from the album A Night on the Town (1976); however, the critical success that Stewart had enjoyed was fast approaching an end.

parrot: For decades the night parrot, or night parakeet (Geopsittacus occidentalis), of Australia was thought to be extinct, until a dead one was found in 1990. It feeds at night on spinifex grass seeds and dozes under a tussock by day. Its nest is a twig platform in a…

parrot: For decades the night parrot, or night parakeet (Geopsittacus occidentalis), of Australia was thought to be extinct, until a dead one was found in 1990. It feeds at night on spinifex grass seeds and dozes under a tussock by day. Its nest is a twig platform in a…

Charlotte Rampling: First marriage, The Night Porter, and other films from the late 1960s to the mid-’70s: In 1974 she starred in The Night Porter, which was cowritten and directed by Liliana Cavani. In one of her most famous films, Rampling played Lucia, a woman who reconnects with a former Nazi guard (played by Dirk Bogarde) who had raped her when she was in a concentration camp.…

Lucian Freud: In studies such as Night Portrait (1985–86), Freud both highlighted and undercut the erotics of the female nude, opting out of the idealizing tendencies of much of the history of Western art. Beginning in the 1980s, Freud was increasingly drawn toward what could be called extreme body types. His…

Joni Mitchell: Later albums: … (1985) to the more reflective Night Ride Home (1991) and the Grammy Award-winning Turbulent Indigo (1994). Having dealt with international political and social issues such as Ethiopian famine on Dog Eat Dog, she returned by the early 1990s to more personal subject matter—singing about true love, for instance, on Turbulent…

Robert Penn Warren: Warren’s first novel, Night Rider (1939), is based on the tobacco war (1905–08) between the independent growers in Kentucky and the large tobacco companies. It anticipates much of his later fiction in the way it treats a historical event with tragic irony, emphasizes violence, and portrays individuals caught…

Tiffany Haddish: …teacher with unconventional methods in Night School, a long-suffering wife of an outspoken liberal in the holiday farce The Oath, and a recently paroled ex-convict who helps her straightlaced sister with her love life in Tyler Perry’s Nobody’s Fool.

adult education: Adult-education agencies and institutions: …and they are popularly termed night schools because ordinarily they are housed in the same school buildings used in the daytime for school-age youth and also because some of the same teachers are often involved. (Much of the teaching, however, is also done by subject specialists not employed as schoolteachers.)…

Ron Howard: Directing: …series of comedies that included Night Shift (1982), which centered on two morgue employees (played by Henry Winkler and Michael Keaton) who turn their workplace into an escort service; Splash (1984), an unconventional romance between a man (played by Tom Hanks) and a mermaid (Daryl Hannah); and Parenthood (1989). In…

Stephen King: Short fiction: …collected in such volumes as Night Shift (1978), Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993; TV miniseries 2006), Hearts in Atlantis (1999; film 2001), Just After Sunset (2008), and The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015). His collection You Like It Darker was released in 2024. Among its stories is “The Answer Man,”

tank: Fire control: …major development was that of night sights, which enabled tanks to fight in the dark as well as in daylight. Originally of the active infrared type, they were first adopted on a large scale on Soviet tanks. Other tanks were fitted from the 1960s with image-intensifier sights and from the…

Sissy Spacek: Later credits: Simmons in the TV series Night Sky (2022– ), about a couple who discover a portal to another planet.

10 Must-Read Modern Poets: Ocean Vuong: …first full-length collection of poetry, Night Sky with Exit Wounds. Featuring poems about war and violence, immigration, and queerness, the collection won many honors, including the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Whiting Award, and the Forward Prize for best first collection. Vuong’s acclaimed first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019),…

Richard Ramirez was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar who murdered at least 13 people in California in 1984–85. He was convicted and sentenced to death but died while in prison. Ramirez grew up in El Paso, Texas, the youngest of five children born to Mexican immigrants. According to

Joan Baez: …cover of the Band’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” and her own “Diamonds and Rust,” which she recorded on her acclaimed album of the same name, issued in 1975.

Bert Lahr: …died in 1967 while filming The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968), in which he played a burlesque veteran.

Edward Young: …author of The Complaint: or, Night Thoughts (1742–45), a long, didactic poem on death. The poem was inspired by the successive deaths of his stepdaughter, in 1736; her husband, in 1740; and Young’s wife, in 1741. The poem is a blank-verse dramatic monologue of nearly 10,000 lines, divided into nine…

Dennis Hopper: …from horror films such as Night Tide (1961) to Cool Hand Luke (1967), a classic prison drama starring Paul Newman. However, it was his directorial debut—the drug-fueled motorcycle drama Easy Rider (1969), in which he starred alongside Peter Fonda—that established Hopper as a talent of note and situated him at…

A Night to Remember, British docudrama film, released in 1958, that is an adaptation of Walter Lord’s best-selling book (1955) about the sinking of the passenger liner Titanic. The movie is noted for its accuracy and emotional resonance. A Night to Remember chronicles one of the most famous

Martin Amis: … (1981), The Information (1995), and Night Train (1997).

Dick Lane was an American gridiron football player who is widely considered one of the greatest cornerbacks in National Football League (NFL) history. Lane was named to seven Pro Bowls over the course of his career, and his 14 interceptions during the 1952 season are an NFL record. Abandoned by his

bioluminescence: The range and variety of bioluminescent organisms: …Diplocladon hasseltii, called starworm, or diamond worm, gives off a continuous greenish blue luminescence from three spots on each segment of the body, forming three longitudinal rows of light, the appearance of which inspired the common name night train. Phrixothrix, the railroad worm, possesses two longitudinal rows, with a red…

Carol Reed: …an English mining town, and Night Train to Munich (1940), a Hitchcock-style thriller that featured Rex Harrison as a British double agent. During World War II, Reed directed documentaries for the British army’s film unit, including The True Glory (1945), which he codirected with Garson Kanin under the supervision of…

Mary Oliver: The Night Traveler (1978) explores the themes of birth, decay, and death through the conceit of a journey into the underworld of classical mythology. In these poems Oliver’s fluent imagery weaves together the worlds of humans, animals, and plants.

Don Siegel: Early work: Night unto Night was shot in 1947 but not released until 1949. The romantic drama featured Ronald Reagan as an epileptic scientist and Viveca Lindfors as a widow haunted by her late husband; Siegel and Lindfors were married from 1949 to 1954. He next made…

Tomas Tranströmer: Night Vision), written during a difficult time for the Swedish poet. Tranströmer’s next volume, Stigar (1973; “Paths”), included translations into Swedish of some of Bly’s work. The Baltic coast, which captured Tranströmer’s imagination as a boy, is the setting for Östersjöar (1974; Baltics). His later…

William Castle: King of the Gimmick: …movie…” Bloch also wrote Castle’s The Night Walker (1964), a middling suspense film that was perhaps most notable for its use of veterans Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Taylor, and Rochelle Hudson as headliners. Crawford was back in I Saw What You Did (1965), which featured John Ireland as a murderous psychopath…

bobby: …themselves taking over activities from night watchmen such as lighting lamps and watching for fires. The original uniform consisted of a blue tailcoat and a top hat and was meant to emphasize that the police were not a military force, as was the fact that the officers did not carry…

The Night Watch, oil on canvas by Rembrandt van Rijn completed in 1642. The painting is to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam what the Mona Lisa is to the Louvre in Paris, drawing huge numbers of visitors each year. The Night Watch, formally known as Militia Company of District II Under the Command of

Louise Erdrich: Novels: …1950s, was the inspiration for The Night Watchman. The book follows a small isolated community in North Dakota and its efforts to fight a congressional resolution to terminate Native tribes by forcing them to assimilate and give up their land. In 2021 The Night Watchman won the Pulitzer Prize for…

Braille: It was called night writing and was long thought to have been intended for nighttime battlefield communications. However, Barbier’s writings suggest that he hoped the system could be used by people with visual and hearing impairments and anyone who was unable to obtain a formal education. In 1824,…

The Lower Depths, drama in four acts by Maxim Gorky, performed in 1902 and published in the same year as Na dne. The play is set in the late 19th century in a dilapidated flophouse and examines society’s outcasts. The denizens of the rooming house are unexpectedly—and, as it turns out,

Anne Bancroft: (1972), The Elephant Man (1980), ’Night, Mother (1986), and 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), as well as three with her second husband, comedian-director-producer Mel Brooks—Silent Movie (1976), To Be or Not to Be (1983), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).

Max Beckmann: In The Night (1918–19), a scene of nightmarish sadism, the disquieting colours and violent forms convey Beckmann’s pessimism over man’s bestiality. The portraits, still lifes, and landscapes that he undertook in the 1920s are more conciliatory in mood.

moonlight cactus, (genus Selenicereus), genus of about 20 species of cacti (family Cactaceae), native to tropical and subtropical America, including the West Indies. They are widely grown in suitable climates in Central and South America and have escaped from cultivation. The queen-of-the-night

Robert Hayden: …his tribute to Malcolm X; The Night-Blooming Cereus (1972), concerned with the meaning of life; Angle of Ascent: New and Selected Poems (1975); and American Journal (1980). Hayden’s The Collected Prose (1984) and Collected Poems (1985, reprinted, with a new introduction, 1996) were posthumously published.

orchid: Fly pollination: For example, the flowers of B. nocturnum, the only orchid known to flower exclusively at night, are thought to attract fly pollinators by mimicking fungi in both shape and scent. Nocturnal flies are then attracted and act as effective pollinators.

Derek Mahon: Other collections include Night-Crossing (1968), The Snow Party (1975), The Hunt by Night (1982), Harbour Lights (2005), Life on Earth (2008), and New Selected Poems (2016).

stock: Evening, or night-scented, stock (M. longipetala) is a low and much-branched annual from southeastern Europe. It produces pink to purple intensely fragrant flowers that open only at night.

Joyce Carol Oates: Novels and short stories: …Without a Shadow (2016), and Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. (2020).

Amy Adams: Stage debut and later career: She next starred in Nightbitch (2024), a dark comedy about an exhausted mother who transforms into a dog.

Sweden: The Age of Freedom (1718–72): …known by the nicknames “Nightcaps” (or “Caps”) and “Hats.” Both parties were mercantilist, but the Nightcaps were the more prudent. Up to 1738 the Nightcaps were in power. They led a most careful foreign policy so as not to provoke Russia. From 1738 to 1765 power passed to the…

tap dance: Nightclubs: From the 1920s to the ’40s, fans of tap could find their favourite dancers in a new venue, nightclubs, where—together with singers and bands—dancers became regular features. A single evening’s show could involve as many as 20 tap dancers—a featured solo dancer, a featured…

The Innocents: …film inspired a 1971 prequel, The Nightcomers, starring Marlon Brando in the role of Peter Quint.

Jacques Tourneur: Later films: Stars in My Crown, Nightfall, and Curse of the Demon: Better than those were Nightfall (1957), a trim film noir from a David Goodis novel, and Night of the Demon (1957; also called Curse of the Demon), a superb adaptation of M.R. James’s supernatural story “Casting the Runes,” starring Dana Andrews. In The Fearmakers (1958) an adman (Andrews) returns…

nightglow, weak, steady light emanating from the whole night sky. See

F-117, single-seat, twin-engine jet fighter-bomber built by the Lockheed Corporation (now part of the Lockheed Martin Corporation) for the U.S. Air Force. It was the first stealth aircraft—i.e., an aircraft designed entirely around the concept of evading detection by radar and other sensors. After

the Defenders: …the group was joined by Nighthawk, a former villain who bore more than a passing resemblance to DC Comics’ Batman.

nighthawk, any of several species of birds comprising the subfamily Chordeilinae of the family Caprimulgidae (see caprimulgiform). Unrelated to true hawks, they are classified with the nightjars, frogmouths, and allies in the order Caprimulgiformes. They are buffy, rufous (reddish), or grayish

Nighthawks, painting by Edward Hopper completed in 1942, and one of the most immediately recognizable works of all of American art. In Nighthawks, curved geometric forms accentuated by an Art Deco facade and angular light provide an almost theatrical setting for a group of insulated and isolated

nightingale, any of several small Old World thrushes, belonging to the family Turdidae (order Passeriformes), renowned for their song. The name refers in particular to the Eurasian nightingale (Erithacus, or Luscinia, megarhynchos), a brown bird, 16 centimetres (6 1 2 inches) long, with a rufous

Tristan da Cunha: them—Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible, Nightingale, Middle, and Stoltenhoff—are located within 25 miles (40 km) of one another, and the sixth, Gough, lies about 200 miles (320 km) south-southeast of the group. The territory is located approximately 1,300 miles (2,100 km) to the south of St. Helena. Inaccessible, Nightingale, Middle,…

José Sarria was a Latino American drag performer and political activist who was the first openly gay person to run for public office in the United States. (He ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors—the legislative body of the city and county—in 1961). Sarria was the

nightingale thrush, any of 11 species of thrushes of the New World genus Catharus (family Turdidae). They are of slender build and have rather drab plumage and rich songs—qualities reminiscent of the European nightingale. In some tropical species, the eye rims, bill, and legs are orange, and the

Florence Nightingale was a British nurse, statistician, and social reformer who was the foundational philosopher of modern nursing. Nightingale was put in charge of nursing British and allied soldiers in Turkey during the Crimean War. She spent many hours in the wards, and her night rounds giving

nightjar, any of about 60 to 70 species of birds that make up the subfamily Caprimulginae of the family Caprimulgidae and sometimes extended to include the nighthawks, subfamily Chordeilinae (see nighthawk). The name nightjar is sometimes applied to the entire order Caprimulgiformes. (See

Nightline, American late-night television news program that officially debuted on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) network in 1980 and that began airing five nights per week in 1982. For many years it was among the highest-profile and most-influential television forums for discussion of the

nightmare, disturbing dream that provokes a strong negative emotional reaction. Nightmares differ from other dreams in that they typically cause the sleeper to awaken because of emotional distress. An upsetting dream that does not cause the dreamer to awaken is usually not considered a nightmare.

Thomas Love Peacock: In his best-known work, Nightmare Abbey (1818), romantic melancholy is satirized, with the characters Scythrop drawn from Shelley, Mr. Flosky from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Mr. Cypress from Lord Byron.

Edmund Goulding: The 1940s: Nightmare Alley (1947) was a radical departure for Goulding. The film noir featured Power as a carnival con man whose scheming leads to a horrendous end. Everybody Does It (1949) was based on a comic story by James M. Cain; Paul Douglas, Linda Darnell, and…

Cate Blanchett: Hepburn, Dylan, and Academy Awards: …Earth, and  Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. In the latter, a film noir adapted from a novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the actress played a manipulative psychoanalyst who meets a scheming carnival worker (Bradley Cooper).

Maxine Kumin: The Privilege (1965) and The Nightmare Factory (1970) address issues of Jewish identity and family and of love between men and women. Kumin’s New Hampshire farm was the inspiration for her collection Up Country: Poems of New England, New and Selected (1972; Pulitzer Prize, 1973). Critics compared Kumin to…

Patricia Arquette: …debut in the horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and worked steadily thereafter, taking guest roles in TV shows and larger parts in minor films. Arquette won praise for her performances as the naïve girlfriend of a former convict in The Indian Runner (1991), Sean…

Johnny Depp: Early life and career: …by his own bed in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). He divorced Allison the following year.

Stephen King: Short fiction: …volumes as Night Shift (1978), Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993; TV miniseries 2006), Hearts in Atlantis (1999; film 2001), Just After Sunset (2008), and The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015). His collection You Like It Darker was released in 2024. Among its stories is “The Answer Man,” which King began writing…

Greta Gerwig: …and star with him in Nights and Weekends (2008). Gerwig had a breakthrough of sorts when she was cast in Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg (2010), which starred Ben Stiller. She began to appear in more conventional movies, including Woody Allen’s To Rome with Love (2012). She and Baumbach wrote Frances Ha…

Nicholas Sparks: …including Nights in Rodanthe (2002; film 2008), Dear John (2006; film 2010), The Choice (2007; film 2016), The Last Song (2009; film 2010), The Lucky One (2008; film 2012), The Best of Me (2011; film 2014), and The Longest Ride (2013; film 2015). In 2015 he released the novel

Nicholas Sparks: …adapted for the screen, including Nights in Rodanthe (2002; film 2008), Dear John (2006; film 2010), The Choice (2007; film 2016), The Last Song (2009; film 2010), The Lucky One (2008; film 2012), The Best of Me (2011; film 2014), and The Longest Ride

Witi Ihimaera: Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1995; television film 2010) concerns a middle-aged married man with children who comes to realize that he is homosexual; the novel was widely viewed as a roman à clef. Ihimaera was himself married to a woman and later discovered…

Nights in the Gardens of Spain, a set of nocturnes for piano and orchestra by Manuel de Falla. Almost but not quite a piano concerto, it treats the keyboard instrument as a member of the orchestra rather than making a soloist of it. The piece premiered in 1916. Nights in the Gardens of Spain is

the Moody Blues: …Afternoon” and the signature “Nights in White Satin.” On In Search of the Lost Chord (1968) they traded the orchestra for the Mellotron, an electronic keyboard that reproduces orchestral sounds.

Federico Fellini: Major works: …Le notti di Cabiria (1957; Nights of Cabiria), developing the minor character she played in Lo sceicco bianco, a good-natured Roman prostitute who is optimistic even when humiliated and is swindled by the man she expects to marry. One of Fellini’s most likeable films, it won an Oscar for best…

Maeve Binchy: …lives by trading houses; and Nights of Rain and Stars (2004), a tale of vacationers in Greece who are linked by a shared tragedy. In 2008 Binchy released Heart and Soul, about a doctor who establishes a clinic in an underserved area while trying to juggle her own affairs. It…

Gianfrancesco Straparola: Straparola’s Piacevoli notti (1550–53; The Nights of Straparola) contains 75 novellas (short prose tales) that were later used as source material by William Shakespeare, Molière, and others. It drew from folk tradition and introduced into European literature some 20 fairy tales, among them what would eventually be known as…

Marina Abramović: …also traveled extensively, and their Nightsea Crossing (1981–87), a prolonged act of mutual meditation and concentration, was performed in more than a dozen locations around the world. When they decided to end their relationship in 1988, they symbolically marked the dissolution with a piece in which they walked from either…

nightshade, (genus Solanum), genus of about 2,300 species of flowering plants in the nightshade family (Solanaceae). The term nightshade is often associated with poisonous species, though the genus also contains a number of economically important food crops, including tomato (Solanum lycopersicum),

Michael Connelly: Origin of other characters: His May 2025 novel, Nightshade, came about when he learned that the Catalina Island sheriff’s department had only one detective. Connelly said he knew immediately that it would be a good story, so he created a new character, Stilwell, to carry the story forward. On other occasions he knows…

bittersweet: ) or woody nightshade (Solanum dulcamara), belongs to the family Solanaceae. It is an herbaceous vine, up to 4.5 m long; the violet and yellow star-shaped flowers are followed by shiny green berries that gradually turn bright red.

Solanaceae, the nightshade, or potato, family of flowering plants (order Solanales), with 102 genera and about 2,280 species, many of considerable economic importance as food and drug plants. Members of the Solanaceae family are found throughout the world but are most abundant and widely

geomagnetic field: Outer magnetic field: …to two regions called the nightside auroral ovals. The aurora borealis and aurora australis (northern lights and southern lights) appear within the regions defined by the feet of these field lines and are caused by bombardment of the atmosphere by energetic charged particles. On the dayside, magnetic field lines from…

John Banville: Fiction: …was followed by two novels: Nightspawn (1971), an intentionally ambiguous narrative, and Birchwood (1973), the story of an aristocratic Irish family in decline. Doctor Copernicus (1976), Kepler (1981), and The Newton Letter: An Interlude (1982) are fictional biographies based on the lives of noted scientists. These three works use scientific

police: Nonlethal tactics and instruments: The nightstick carried by police officers was originally made of wood, but most now are made of composite materials.

Thomas Kinsella: During this time he published Nightwalker, and Other Poems (1967), a sombre collection ruminating on Ireland’s past and turbulent present. His translation of the ancient Gaelic saga The Cattle Raid of Cooley (Táin bó Cuailnge) was published in 1969, and the following year he began teaching at Temple University in…

bobby: …themselves taking over activities from night watchmen such as lighting lamps and watching for fires. The original uniform consisted of a blue tailcoat and a top hat and was meant to emphasize that the police were not a military force, as was the fact that the officers did not carry…

Barry Hannah: In the less successful Nightwatchmen (1973), both a secret killer and a hurricane are unleashed upon a small college town.

Nightwing, fictional superhero. DC Comics’ Nightwing—formerly Robin the Boy Wonder—toiled for forty years under the shadow of the Batman as comics’ premier sidekick. First appearing in April 1940 in Detective Comics #38, Dick Grayson, the junior member of the Flying Graysons circus family,

Djuna Barnes: ” Her second novel, Nightwood (1936), is her masterpiece, about the doomed homosexual and heterosexual loves of five extraordinary, even grotesque, people. Her fluent style in this work imitates Elizabethan and other archaic writing, and the chapters are disjunct in time and place; the net effect is of horror…

Stephen Daldry: …which starred Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy as former lovers, earned Daldry a Tony nomination for best director. Daldry returned to cinema with Trash (2014), a drama about three boys who stumble upon a political scandal while picking through refuse in the favela they call home. He then reteamed with…

tama: …the power of transforming), the nigi-mitama (with the power of unifying, or harmonizing), and the saki-mitama (with the power of blessing). Some shrines pay homage to a particular mitama of a deity, such as the separate shrines dedicated to the ara-mitama and the nigi-mitama of the goddess Amaterasu.

onigiri, popular Japanese snack consisting of a ball or cone of rice, often with a filling and wrapped in nori (seaweed). Onigiri takes its name from the Japanese word nigiru, meaning “to grasp” or “to squeeze,” so called because it is pressed by hand into a ball. The snack has also been called

jiva: Clusters of minute beings, called nigodas, belong to the lowest class of jivas, which possess only the sense of touch and undergo such common functions as respiration and metabolism but have little hope of ever progressing to a higher spiritual or bodily state. The whole space of the world is…

soap and detergent: Boiling process: …percent water); the lower, called nigre, varies in soap content from 15 percent to 40 percent. Since colouring matter, dirt, salt, alkali, and metal soaps are soluble in nigre but relatively insoluble in neat soap, and since most of the impurities are dense and tend to settle, the nigre layer…