KOBDO, a town in Mongolia, the entrepot of Russian dealers in connection with the Altai mines.
KOCH, ROBERT, an eminent bacteriologist, born at Klansthal, in Hanover; famous for his researches in bacteriology; discovered sundry bacilli, among others the cholera bacillus and the phthisis bacillus, and a specific against it; b. 1843.
KOCK, CHARLES PAUL DE, popular French novelist and dramatist, born near Paris, and educated for a mercantile career, but turned to writing and produced a series of works, not of first merit, but illustrating contemporary French middle-class life (1794-1871).
KOHELETH (the preacher, originally gatherer), the Hebrew name for the book of Ecclesiastes, and a personification of wisdom.
KOLA, a small town, the most northerly in Russia, on a peninsula of the same name, with a capacious harbour.
KOLIN, a Bohemian town on the Elbe, 40 m. SE. of Prague, where Frederick the Great was defeated by Marshal Daun in 1757.
KOeLLIKER, an eminent embryologist, born at Zurich; professor of Anatomy at Wuerzburg; b. 1817.
KOeLN, the German name for COLOGNE (q. v.).
KOeNIG, FRIEDRICH, German mechanician, born in Eisleben; bred a printer, and invented the steam-press, or printing by machinery (1774-1833).
KOeNIGGRAeTZ (16), a Bohemian town 60 m. E. of Prague; was the scene of a terrible battle called Sa’dowa, in Austria, where the Germans defeated the Austrians in 1866.
KOeNIGSBERG (161), the capital of E. Prussia, on the Pregel, with several manufactures and an extensive trade; has a famous university, and is the birthplace of Kant, where also he lived and died.
KORAN (i. e. book to be read), the Bible of the Mohammedans, accepted among them as “the standard of all law and all practice; thing to be gone upon in speculation and life; it is read through in the mosques daily, and some of their doctors have read it 70,000 times, and hard reading it is”; it contains the teaching of Mahomet, collected by his disciples after his death, and arranged the longest chapters first and the shortest, which were the earliest, last; a confused book.
KORDOFAN (280), an Egyptian Soudanese province on the W. bank of the Nile; an undulating dry country, furnishing crops of millet, and exporting gums, hides, and ivory; was lost in the Mahdist revolt of 1883, but recovered by Lord Kitchener’s expedition in 1898; El Obeid (30), the capital is 230 m. SW. of Khartoum.